Forty Words for Sorrow

by Giles Blunt

  "That van outside, the blue one, is that yours?"

  "The ChevyVan, yeah. And the fact is, Eric, I parked in a bad spot. Snow removal. She's gonna get towed if I don't move her."

  The man didn't react to this at all. He was sighting down the barrel at Woody's belly.

  "Eric?" The woman came down another couple of steps and watched them intently, her mouth open a little. There was something wrong with her face. "Why don't you break his nose?"

  Woody was gauging the distance to the gun, still in the man's hand, still pointed at his stomach.

  "It's something I'd like to see," the woman went on. "Hear the bone break and everything."

  The kid stirred, and the man turned and kicked his head. It was now or never. Woody shoved him hard, straight-armed the woman, and he was up the stairs, hand on the doorknob. The door was swinging open when the bullet tore into his back, somewhere near the love handles. He toppled over backward, landed on top of the kid, and hit his head a hell of a bang on the concrete floor.

  A guy he'd shared a cell with once had told Woody what it was like to be shot: like a hot iron pressing through your body, man, those little fuckers are hot. And Woody discovered now that this was true.

  The man was standing over him, big as King Kong. That's how I must look to Dumptruck, Woody thought, and wondered how long before Martha started to worry.

  The man's hands were around his neck. Strong thumbs closing his windpipe.

  "Break his nose," the woman said again. "Why do you want to choke him, when you can break his nose?"

  And carefully, using the butt of his pistol, the man did exactly that.

  33

  DELORME sat in the half-dark of her kitchen, finishing her third cup of Nescafй. Before her was a stack of files Dyson had sent over. She liked to work in her kitchen at anything except cooking. The remains of a frozen dinner lay forgotten on her plate.

  The files were also mostly forgotten; Delorme was thinking about the three Fs. If she was going to do anything with the boat receipt she had seen in Cardinal's files, it would be through them. The three Fs stood for February, French Canadians, and Florida. As anyone who has been to that particular state in that particular month can testify, the Florida gulf in February becomes the Gulf of Quebec. Miami becomes Montreal-On-Sea. Suddenly, Cuban becomes a minority accent, and every other license plate proclaims Je me souviens. Come February, Florida's waiters and bellboys polish off their seasonal stable of Canadian jokes: What's the difference between a Canadian and a canoe? Answer: Canoes tip.

  Forty-five minutes and half a dozen phone calls later, Delorme had talked to two French Canadian cops who were about to visit Florida on vacation. Neither of them, unfortunately, was going to be anywhere near the Calloway Marina. So Delorme made a few more calls and got the number of Dollard Langois, who had been in her class at Police College. They had even dated a couple of times, and Delorme was at this moment very grateful to her younger self that she had not slept with him. He had been an awkward, gangly young man, with big gentle hands and hound-dog eyes, and one night after a movie in Aylmer he had confessed that he was absolutely crazy in love with her. Delorme had been all set to sleep with him until he said that. Dollard Langois had been one attractive guy, but she had not been about to mess up her budding career with romance. She had often wondered since, on lonely nights, how he was doing, and what would have happened if- Well, Dollard Langois was a road not taken, put it that way.

  They spent a few minutes catching up- speaking English, perhaps because that had been the language at Aylmer. Yes, she told him, she was pretty happy with her career as a cop. No, she was not married.

  "That's too bad, Lise. It's so nice to be married. Doesn't surprise me, though- and I don't mean that in a negative way."

  "Go ahead, Dollard. Tell me what a failure I am as a human being."

  "No, no. I just meant you were hell-bent on a career is all. Single-minded. It's a good thing."

  "I can't take any more. Tell me about you."

  He was Sergeant Langois, now, assigned to a Quebec Provincial Police detachment twenty miles outside Montreal. Two kids, lovely wife- a nurse, not a cop- and every February they spent a week down in Florida at a place where they had a time-share arrangement. "Why'd you ask?" he wanted to know. "Awful late in the season to be looking for a share."

  "It's for work. Something I need to trace."

  A heavy sigh traveled down the line from Montreal. "Why am I not surprised?"

  "I wouldn't ask unless it was really serious, Dollard."

  "It's my vacation, Lise. I'm going to be with my family."

  "I wouldn't ask unless it was serious. Do you remember me well enough to know that? We've got a child killer here, Dollard. I can't leave, even for a day."

  They went back and forth for a bit. Then, as much to distract him as anything else, Delorme asked where exactly he was going to be staying. It turned out- unhappily for Sergeant Langois- that he would be staying in Hollywood Beach at a condo in the same block as the Calloway Marina. His fate was sealed, and Delorme hung up exceedingly pleased with herself.

  SHE spent another hour with the files- early cases of Cardinal's- and found nothing of interest. According to the files, John Cardinal was exactly what he appeared to be- a hardworking cop who got the job done efficiently and thoroughly, without bending the rules. Nearly all his arrests resulted in convictions, although not in the case she was reading now, involving a ne'er-do-well called Raymond Colacott who had since killed himself. The suspect had been brought into custody along with four kilos of cocaine that Cardinal had every reason to believe Colacott was selling. But when the matter was brought to trial, the evidence had gone missing, stolen from the evidence locker. Case dismissed.

  The Crown had put its own investigator on the case (file handily included, courtesy of Dyson) and drawn a resounding blank. Cardinal had not been a particular suspect; too many people had had access to the evidence locker. A report was issued, procedures were changed.

  Yes, it could have been Cardinal, but for a cop in Algonquin Bay to start selling coke would be far too risky. And Raymond Colacott was not Kyle Corbett, not someone capable of putting a cop on his payroll. If the investigation at the time had got nowhere, Delorme was certainly going to get nowhere nine years later when half the personnel involved had transferred to Winnipeg, Moose Jaw, or God knows where else.

  Delorme scraped off her plate and put it in the sink. She had always intended to develop an interest in cooking, maybe even take a course up at the college one day, but lack of time and enthusiasm always seemed to weigh against it. Her mother, were she still alive, would have been horrified.

  She went into the living room and pulled aside the curtain. Snowbanks glittered under the streetlights. She remained at the window for some time, staring through her ghostlike reflection, coffee cup in hand. Ten minutes later, she was in her car, driving with no clear intention up Algonquin toward the bypass. She made a right onto the highway, keeping the speedometer well below the speed limit. It was a peculiarity of hers, this aimless driving, and she would have been embarrassed if any of her colleagues had discovered her nocturnal habit. She wasn't sure if it was restlessness or if it was just a way of making daydreaming a physical, as well as a mental, process.

  The bypass had a pleasant sweep to it, a graceful curve that held the higher end of town in a gentle embrace. It was a great pleasure to feel the slight but steady centrifugal pull as one drove the length of the city. Sometimes Delorme just drove the bypass out to the intersection with Lakeshore and then back into town along the bay. Other times, only when she was agitated, she did something rather more idiosyncratic: She drove out to the neighborhoods of friends and colleagues, not stopping to visit, just driving by seeing their lights on, their cars in the driveway. She knew it was neurotic, but it gave her a soothing sense of peace all the same.

  She made a left on Trout Lake Road and drove all the way out to where it turned into Highway 63. In winter you could
see right through the trees down to the houses on Madonna Road. She glanced over and saw the lights on in Cardinal's place, even saw a dark shape at the rear window. Probably that's the kitchen, she figured; he'd be doing dishes or having a late supper.

  At the Chinook Tavern, she turned around and headed back into town by way of the college. Traffic was sparse now, and the city below her was all lit up. Thoughts of the Pine-Curry case were turning in her head, and she tried not to force them in any direction. She would just have her little drive and let things fall into place. A few minutes later she was cruising by a handsome, two-story stucco house in a not-quite-posh enclave all but hidden in the shadow of St. Francis Hospital. Dyson's car was parked in the driveway.

  Delorme stopped at the side of the street, debating whether to pull in or not.

  A pretty little girl, perhaps twelve years old, came walking uphill toward the house, accompanied by a boy of the same age or not much older. She clutched a collection of books to her chest the way girls do, and walked with head down, staring intently at the sidewalk. The boy must have said something funny because she looked up suddenly, laughing, showing a mouthful of braces. Then her mother, a bony, wraithlike figure, appeared in a side doorway and called her daughter away in a voice utterly devoid of affection.

  The image stayed with Delorme all the way out to Edgewater Road. But somewhere between Rayne Street and the bypass, a plan of action had dropped into her head. She pulled into the driveway of the Swiss-style A-frame and rang the side doorbell. She had time to prepare her little speech, then forgot it all when the door was opened by Police Chief R. J. Kendall himself. "This had better be good," was all he said.

  She followed him down to the basement, the same clubby room where it had all begun. The cover had been removed from what she had taken to be a billiard table. On it tiny soldiers in uniforms of red and blue did battle along the steep bank of a papier-mвchй river. Delorme had interrupted the chief in the pursuit of his passion, building recreations of famous battles in fanatical detail, and he was not about to abandon it for the sake of an unmannerly visit.

  "Plains of Abraham?" Delorme asked, trying to ease her way in.

  "Just get to it, Detective. General Montcalme is beyond your help."

  "Sir, I've been combing the files for anything about Cardinal. Going over old cases of his, notes and everything."

  "I assume you've discovered something sensational in those files or you wouldn't be breaking every rule of protocol, not to mention common courtesy, by showing up at my home unannounced."

  "No, sir. The thing is, the files aren't going to lead anywhere. I'm just running in circles, and it's getting in the way of Pine-Curry."

  "Look at this." The chief held out a smooth hand, palm up. A tiny cannon nestled in his palm. "Exactly to scale. There are twelve of them I have to fix into fittings that are barely visible to the naked eye."

  "Incredible." Delorme responded with all the energy she could muster, but she could hear it wasn't enough.

  "The files are important. A jury will expect a pattern of behavior."

  "Sir, that will take forever, and it will all be old stuff impossible to prove."

  "You have the Florida condo. You have the boat receipt."

  "Dyson told you about those already?"

  "He did. I asked to be kept closely informed."

  "The receipt doesn't have Cardinal's name on it, sir." She had been about to tell him about Sergeant Langois, but no, better to wait and see what he might turn up down in Florida. "I've already contacted his American bank, but they're not exactly rushing to cooperate. What we need is something totally convincing. Something from right now. Something plain and simple."

  "Naturally. If you want to ask your partner for a signed confession, go ahead. I don't expect you'll see a lot of success." He turned to her, a miniature tube of glue in his hand. "Or were you intending to interview Kyle Corbett on the subject? Excuse me, Mr. Corbett, is one of our detectives supplying you with confidential information? Gee, no, Officer, I have far too much respect for the law."

  The chief was not by nature a sarcastic man. Delorme braced herself for one of his famous explosions, then plunged on. "Sir, I have an idea."

  "Please. Enlighten me."

  "What we do is we plant some information with Cardinal that he's sure to pass along- if he's really working for Corbett, that is. Something he'll have to let him know. Musgrave's crew will tap his phone and keep him under surveillance."

  Kendall regarded her coolly, then turned back to his model, a tiny soldier pinched between thumb and forefinger. "I'll say one thing, Detective. You've got nerve."

  "Sir, I think this could clear the air relatively-"

  The chief cut her off with a wave of the hand. "I'm rather surprised that you're seriously- you are serious, aren't you? Yes, I can see you are- proposing to wiretap your own partner."

  "With respect, sir. You're the one who assigned me to investigate him. Well, you and Dyson. If you want me to stop, I'd be happy to stop anytime."

  "You see this?" Kendall pointed to a frigate parked in the midnight-blue St. Lawrence. "This assembly here, with the mainmast and stays? Just that part of this project took a week to put together."

  "Incredible."

  "Sometimes making a thing convincing takes a little time, Sergeant Delorme. A little patience. I hope you're not entirely lacking in that quality."

  "My plan is better than thumbing through those endless files. If you look at it objectively, sir, I think you'll agree."

  "I am. Hand me the little silver tube, would you? Thank you." Using the point of a pin, the chief dabbed a trace of glue onto a cannonball the size of a bug's eye, and set it onto a tiny stack. "You're still intent on leaving Special Investigations, I suppose. Hate to lose someone with a record like yours."

  "Well, Chief, you're not losing me. I'm just moving over into CID."

  "I know, I know. But Special Investigations- one could make the case that it's the most important part of the department. Take away Special Investigations, you've got a brain, certainly- all the motor functions are intact- but without Special Investigations, you've got a brain without a conscience. And that, my young friend, is a dangerous thing."

  Delorme tucked away that young somewhere warm for later examination. "Sir, if we give him something no one else knows- even if we don't get him on the tap- we'll know he's the guy."

  "I have one question." The chief was bending the limbs of a soldier into a climbing position. He dabbed glue onto each miniature hand and knee and pressed the figure into position against the face of a cliff. Then he turned to face Delorme, and his gaze was suddenly almost sexual in its intensity. "Why are you bringing this to me? Why aren't you bringing it to Dyson?"

  "I'm working closely with Dyson, sir. But for this plan to stand up in court, there has to be no chance of anyone else having the same tainted information as Cardinal. You and I will be the only ones who know."

  "Of course you must do it, there's no question. The sooner the better. Is Corporal Musgrave on board?"

  "More than on board, sir. He can't wait."

  "Good. Talk to a JP and get your approval."

  "We've got it, sir. Musgrave got it."

  Kendall cut loose with that big laugh of his, Hah! Hah! Hah! Delorme felt the variation in pressure on her eardrums along with considerable relief. Then the chief held her once more with that prehensile gaze. "Listen to me, young Delorme. I'm older than you and wiser- they're possibly the only reasons I'm your boss, but they're good reasons, so hear me: I have read up on Corporal Musgrave, and Corporal Musgrave is hot to trot, Corporal Musgrave is a barn-burner, Corporal Musgrave does not like our inscrutable Mr. Cardinal. If said Musgrave were under my command, which he is not, he would not be on this case. So you be careful. I'm not saying he's the type to manufacture evidence, but he is the type to blow a case with an excess of zeal. So you be sure and keep your head- which is where, at the moment?"

  "Sir?"

  "Wher
e is your head on this case, Delorme? How do you see your Cardinal at this point?"

  "Do I have to answer that, Chief?"

  "Certainly."

  Delorme looked up at the ceiling, staring at the exposed beams.

  "I'm waiting."

  "To be perfectly honest, sir, I don't know. I do know there's no hard evidence against him. Nothing that would stand up to a good defense lawyer. So me, I consider him innocent until proven guilty."

  "You're being legalistic. Is that out of loyalty? Are you too close to Cardinal to be objective? You can speak honestly."

  "I don't know, Chief. I'm not a very introspective person."

  Kendall laughed again, hard and loud, as if Delorme had told a fabulous joke, then he stopped as suddenly as he had started, and the quiet that followed was deep, like the quiet that follows the silencing of a car alarm. "You bring this guy in, you understand me? If he has been selling out to some godless thug, I want him off the force and I mean now. If he hasn't, the sooner you're off his case the better. I'm not a very introspective person, either, Sergeant Delorme. Which means without facts I tend to become bored and upset. You don't want to see me bored and upset."

  "No, sir."

  "So, run your little experiment. And Godspeed."

  34

  AN Ontario Hydro lineman named Howard Bass was repairing a transformer out on Highway 63, about five posts north of the Trout Lake marina. The job required a whole new crossbar, and Howard had been up in the cherry picker most of the morning, freezing his ass off. And, twenty feet up like that, he was catching a bad ricochet of sunlight off the snow that practically blinded him, RayBans and all. A couple of hours into the job, though, and the sun had shifted around, casting a sharp shadow of Howard and the arm of the cherry picker across the snow.

  Stanley Betts, who was driving today, had strolled back to the marina to buy them both a couple of doughnuts and Cokes. He came back whistling a risquй little tune called "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl," the cat-eyed Lolita behind the counter having put him in that frame of mind.