by John Farrow
“Lucy,” Hillier repeated. “I can’t believe it.”
“Well,” Largent declared, “I can.”
“Her abduction is understandable to you, Mr. Largent?” Cinq-Mars asked. He and Mathers helped themselves to the twin chairs facing the desk. Neither man wanted to be on his feet too much today.
“Don’t get me wrong, Lucy’s a fine young woman. Not that I know her well, but she’s upstanding, a good worker. You know how it is, she lives on a reserve. With Indians. Who knows what goes on out there? During the Oka crisis we lost her services for weeks. I’d go home at night and there she’d be—my employee— on the evening news, taunting soldiers along the barricades, wearing feathers in her hair and war paint and those awful tie-dyed T-shirts. Can you imagine? Instead of being at her station and collecting a salary, she was behaving like a renegade. Okay, that’s Lucy. We’re tolerant. It’s the times. But things like that, kidnappings, abductions, I expect they happen out there as a matter of routine, am I right?”
“I doubt it,” Cinq-Mars told him, having stared at him throughout his discourse.
“She might have been shot as well,” Mathers added.
“Good night, don’t say that!” Harry Hillier stormed. He spun his body halfway around, then wound himself back again and shoved both hands down into his pants pockets and paced. “Coming on the heels of yesterday, this is très bizarre. I thought you’d come here to talk about Andrew Stettler.”
“Why would you think that?” Cinq-Mars inquired, finally breaking his eye contact with Largent.
“I watch the news. I heard your name mentioned. You found the body. When your arrival downstairs was announced, I assumed you’d come about Andrew.”
“Why would I?”
The partners looked at one another, as though they each needed the other to confirm their astonishment. “Sorry?” Largent asked. “Andrew was murdered. Doesn’t that interest the police?”
“That investigation is being conducted by the SQ. I’m city. But I meant something else by my question. I meant, why would the death of Andrew Stettler interest the police, any police, in you?”
This time, in checking each other’s reaction, the partners determined the source of their confusion, and the officer’s ignorance. “Sergeant-Detective,” Largent explained, and as he spoke smoky plumes of his white hair shook, “perhaps you’re unaware that Andrew Stettler worked here.”
Mathers and Cinq-Mars shared a glance.
“He doesn’t mean now,” Harry Hillier qualified.
“No,” Largent assured them. “He worked here, after a fashion, very briefly, but he’s not with us now. Pardon me, I don’t mean because he’s dead.”
“He’s with BioLogika.”
“That’s right. Well, was, poor soul.”
“You’re aware of that.”
“Yes, sir,” Largent confirmed.
“We were instrumental in finding him a job at BioLogika,” Hillier pointed out.
Cinq-Mars noticed that Largent might have wanted to censor that remark, his head snapping around rather abruptly, his wild hair flying, but he didn’t speak.
“Really? That’s surprising.”
“Why’s that?” Hillier asked.
“I don’t know what this has to do with anything,” Largent stated irritably.
“After talking to Werner Honigwachs over at BioLogika this morning,” Cinq-Mars continued, “I assumed the three of you weren’t on speaking terms.”
“Business is business,” Largent explained. “It doesn’t mean we have to like each other.”
“Lucy Gabriel, now she does work for you,” Cinq-Mars stated.
“Yes,” Largent confirmed.
“Currently?” Mathers double-checked.
“Yes. She’s been with us for a while now.”
“And Camille Choquette?”
“Camille works for us,” Harry Hillier spoke up. “Why are you asking about Camille?”
“Did she know Andrew Stettler when he was here?”
“I doubt it,” Hillier said.
“I’m rarely down in the labs. I wouldn’t know,” Largent said from his chair. “Is Camille all right?”
“I saw her this morning,” said Hillier, hands still deep in his pockets, still pacing. “She’s fine.”
“Mr. Largent,” Cinq-Mars asked, “are there any other connections between Lucy Gabriel and Andrew Stettler?”
“Connections?”
“Were they friends?”
Simultaneously, Largent replied, “I don’t really know,” while Hillier said, “Yes.”
Cinq-Mars looked at Harry Hillier.
“Lucy found Andy,” Hillier explained. “She hired him as a lab rat, as someone to undergo tests for our research. She’s the one who discovered he had talents. She was pleased when Randall got him the job over at BioLogika.”
“That was nice of her.”
“Lucy’s a sweet girl.”
“That’s right,” Largent concurred, “I remember that now. She spoke up for Andy. Lucy’s always looking out for the underdog.”
“In Stettler’s case, what talents did she perceive in him? He was here doing—what? What does a lab rat do? Ingest drugs?”
“He would’ve done something like that, I imagine. I can’t remember now.”
“What talent would show through?”
Largent shrugged. “I expect they talked. I expect she took a shine to him. She’s in the business. She knows where jobs are available. He ended up in security over at BioLogika.”
“Tell me,” Cinq-Mars inquired, “why don’t you use monkeys or rats for your tests?”
“We do. Of course. But there comes a time when a study must progress to humans. Give a cat morphine, Detective, it’ll climb the walls. Give a man morphine, he’ll relax and be immune to his suffering for awhile. Every drug has to be tested on people at some point.”
“You don’t have trouble finding these people?”
Hillier, still standing, sighed. “I’m not saying there’s an endless supply. We need people, usually, who are healthy. Generally speaking, your skid row derelict, or your drug user, they won’t do. But we do have a supply, Detective. Sadly.”
“Since it’s your livelihood, sir, I can’t imagine that your regret is too severe.” Cinq-Mars leaned forward to impress his next question upon them. “Yesterday, Andrew Stettler was found dead. He was killed the previous night, we suspect. At the time of his death, he was a young man in his late twenties and the Head of Security for a relatively substantial company. Are you telling me that he started in the field as a guinea pig—a lab rat, as you call him—and, what?—a short time later, he held a high position? I don’t know what needle you stuck in his arm, but I might want a shot of that myself.”
He took a breath. “Tell me, do you routinely take these unfortunates, these men and women at the bottom of society’s ladder, just trying to get by—let me get this straight now—do you routinely see that they’re promoted to the executive suite in competing companies? Do they come in one door, destitute and grim, then go out the other as middle-management types who have a president’s ear? Does that happen often, Mr. Hillier—sir?”
Hillier shook his bald head, confirming the oddity of the situation. “I would agree, Detective,” he mustered, “that Andrew Stettler was indeed a phenomenon.”
Avidly nodding as well, Randall Largent apparently concurred.
Cinq-Mars stood and picked up his overcoat, which he had slung across the arm of his chair. Surprised, Bill Mathers jumped up beside him, also clutching at his coat.
“That’s a story that’ll be revealed,” Cinq-Mars declared, “in due course. But I suspect it’s a long tale, and my time at the moment is precious. I take it that neither of you knows what’s happened to Lucy Gabriel?”
They both vehemently shook their heads.
“Concerning the death of Andrew Stettler—” With his coat slung over his forearm, Cinq-Mars suddenly sat back down again. Mathers didn’t know what to do
with himself at that moment. “Is his death as much a mystery to you as it is to us?”
“Indeed,” Hillier concurred.
“We’re in shock,” Randall Largent stressed.
“Shock? Really? Over someone who worked for you for—what?—a weekend? He must have made an impression. Tell me, what sort of work did Lucy Gabriel do? Was she working with four-legged rats, or with the sort of lab rat who walks in the door on two legs and actually expects a check for his misery?”
Largent deferred to Hillier, an indication that his realm was the executive suite, while his partner was more likely to keep his eyes and ears tuned to the lab.
“Lucy’s specialty is plasma, Detective,” the bald-headed man, Harry Hillier, explained. “She takes blood. Analyzes it. Reports on her study. She’s very good at what she does. But, yes, she works with the guests we hire. We discovered early on that she’s naturally sympathetic with these people, so she does both jobs.”
“Plasma,” Cinq-Mars postulated, leaving his hosts in the dark as to his meaning. He shifted in his seat, folded and unfolded his arms, and crossed his legs. “The blood trail continues. Gentlemen, I’m off! We’ll visit again. Cover some ground. I’ll want a quick tour of your lab, with your permission. And I’ll want to speak with Lucy’s co-workers—her lab rats, as well. Perhaps today. Gentlemen, I’ll see you later.”
He took his leave with a flourish, and Mathers rushed to catch him. In the corridor he reached out and clutched his elbow. “Emile!”
“God help me—diarrhea,” the senior partner explained, his facial muscles contorted in a fierce grimace. “Quickly! Bill. Damn it! A toilet!”
Although he had handled it with aplomb, Werner Honigwachs remained agitated by the visit from Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars. He had not expected to be interrogated at the start of his day about Andrew Stettler’s death, and had not expected aggressive questioning on the matter at any time. Part of the whole point of putting the body under the ice and creating a mystery around the death was to sidetrack the investigation and wrap the famous detective in a knot. The cop was not supposed to be on his doorstep first thing Monday morning with an attitude, that had never been the plan.
Honigwachs mentally replayed the conversation a thousand times, confident that he had not slipped, and yet confounded by the direction of the officer’s inquiry and his tenacity. Cinq-Mars had had the look of a man who didn’t believe him. No doubt it was a practised art, a voodoo developed over a lifetime of inquisitions. He could not allow the cop to faze him, nor could he let him push him into a blunder.
Honigwachs used his willpower to refrain from calling Camille Choquette. That would be the kind of mistake he could not afford.
Something else vexed him as well, a feeling that was difficult to identify. Not conscience, exactly. Good Lord, he was responsible, some might argue, for the deaths of dozens of people in the drug experiment program—how could he feel a pang of conscience over shooting just one man if he didn’t care a whit about them? Andy hadn’t been a worthy man, either. He’d been a twerp and a traitor, and although it was easy to forget it around him, he had also been a gangster, a low-life. Killing him was probably doing society a favour. He felt no remorse for offing Andrew Stettler. And he had seen blood before, and corpses, and had carved dead bodies, human and animal, and gone inside the bellies of monkeys and dogs and cats and rats with his bare hands to examine the results of lethal experiments, and a couple of times he had done so while the animals were still breathing, their frightened, teeny hearts palpitating. Gore was not the problem. And yet, he was fixated on the moment of Andrew Stettler’s death. The roar of the snowmobile outside. The explosive blast of the pistol in his hands. Shooting someone was a different kind of killing. The way his head had exploded forward, dashed against the ice as if walloped by a sledgehammer. The body suddenly in spasms.
He was not feeling remorse. He was not feeling revulsion. He wondered what it was, why he could not kick the images from his brain. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, he couldn’t stop being fascinated. He reviewed the murder because he wanted to revisit the moment, not to do it again—he was no goddamned maniacal killer for heaven’s sake—but because he regretted that he was not still right there in the moment. That sensation as the second neared, the time to shoot, to pull the trigger, knowing that the very next second he would do it, get the job done, then Stettler’s head flinching as he fired, the instant before he fired, the pistol jumping in his hand, that joy, the body slamming down, and for that nanosecond, for that magical, amazing flash, he knew power. And a certain cosmic connection he could not explain, as if the stars had taken notice. The moment had been an occasion. An experience to remember. Again and again he’d sift through it in his mind. Honigwachs logged minutes lost in the maze of the instant, frozen in time, out on the ice, entranced.
In the shower he had found himself thinking of those precious seconds, his hand on his soapy, erect penis. He knew he’d have to stop, square himself, claw back to reality. Reality, as it turned out, was an early-morning visit from Emile Cinq-Mars, and an impending visit from people and forces he would rather not see right now.
His secretary piped them in with her usual cheerful, singsong voice.
The first man who stepped into his office smiled and held out his hand, although he was still wearing gloves. He had very black hair that could have been dyed and was unnaturally stiff and greased back. Honigwachs knew him only as Jacques, and he had often wondered if his hair was real or a toupee. You didn’t see that too often, a greaseball’s toupee, but in this world you never knew. The visitor and Honigwachs shook hands, and the two guys following behind took up positions at the door. They closed it and stood on either side, each holding a wrist with his opposite hand just above his genitals, saying nothing and looking at no one.
Honigwachs offered him a chair. The man smiled again and positioned his rump on a corner of the broad desk instead. “You know why I’m here.”
“Not exactly,” Honigwachs told him.
The visitor was not impressed by his answer.
“Andy, he was working for your company. He was in your care, if you follow my drift. Do you think one of our boys gets blown away and me and my friends, we don’t take an interest? Is that what you think, Mr. Honigwachs?”
With the man posted on the corner of his desk, the company president did not want to take a lower position by sitting in a chair. He remained standing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your meaning, at first. It’s a big shock, to all of us.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, certainly. I never expected anything like that.”
“That’s good. Because if you’d expected something like that you would’ve mentioned it. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s, that’s absolutely right,” Honigwachs concurred, but even as he spoke he could feel the jaws of a trap closing, like a fierce, ungodly hand crushing his skull.
“How would you do that?”
The man was shorter than him by a foot, and as well dressed. He had pointy shoes and a pointy nose, high cheekbones and dimpled jowls. The lines on his forehead were wavy and deep, and his skin colour suggested that he visited southern climes regularly during the winter. His black hair, whether natural or synthetic, was slicked back close to his scalp. He was not the muscle on this crusade. Honigwachs knew him to be a spokesman of some standing. That he was here in person and hadn’t sent a lower-grade goon was encouraging, a sign of respect. Of course, Honigwachs held responsibility over many tens of millions of dollars that belonged to close associates of this man.
“How do you mean?”
“How would you get in touch?”
Honigwachs had to shake his head. “You’re right. You’re right. I don’t know how to do that. I could only get in touch through Andy, and—” He briefly held up his hands as a sign of helplessness.
“So, what, you were just going to forget about our association?”
Honigwachs tried to smile himself. He was
having difficulty. “No, I assumed, I guess, that you’d be in touch.”
“So you’re glad to see me?” the man suggested. He had one foot on the floor, and the other swung freely back and forth.
“Yes, of course. You could say that.”
“We’re not going to forget about you, you know that.”
“Of course not. No.”
The man nodded, looking down at the floor a moment. Finally, he looked up and said what was on his mind. “Was it you whacked Andy?”
“No,” the president objected, “no—”
“Because if you did, maybe you had your reasons. Sometimes people have reasons. Maybe we could talk about those reasons. Maybe Andy got out of line—”
“No! No, Andy was, Andy was great, actually. He was. He was great.”
“That’s true, in my opinion,” the visitor emphasized. “Andy was great. He had talent, you know. He could be different people. Maybe you didn’t know that about him. He could see things in ways different from other people. He could see things the rest of us missed. He was quite a guy, Andy.”
“Yeah,” Honigwachs said.
“Don’t you think so?”
Honigwachs answered with greater conviction. “Absolutely. He was quite a guy. I liked him. A lot. Andy—he was a great guy. Really.”
The man stood. He held his arms out from his body, and one of the men from the door came over and helped him out of his coat. Then Jacques removed his gloves and placed them neatly on the desk, one exactly on top of the other. He used the index finger on his right hand to draw a line down his left cheek. “If you didn’t whack our Andy, Mr. Honigwachs, who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. He was in your care.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that necessarily. He worked for me.
“No, no, Mr. Honigwachs.” Smiling again, but with only one side of his mouth, as if it was a strain to do so, Jacques came alongside the company president and, gripping his arm above the elbow, twisted it back. He hurt him. He steered him toward the window for a look at the view. When he spoke again, he lowered his voice. “Andy didn’t work for you. You worked for Andy. You work for me, and you work for anybody I send out here. You understand that? You’re in my pocket. See this?” Reaching into a trouser pocket, he pulled out a quarter. “This is you. This is you, Mr. Honigwachs. You’re in my pocket. Maybe you had a misunderstanding about that. Maybe you thought Andy worked for you, like you just said, maybe you had some kind of miscommunication like that. Maybe Andy set you straight and you got carried away with your response. Maybe you wasted him.”