by John Farrow
The boy shrugged in his compulsive manner. “I don’t know,” he said.
“What do you know?”
He squared his shoulders this time. “I don’t know nothing about stolen cars. Honest. I just do bodywork in the back.”
“A boy can get into serious trouble working for a stolen car ring.”
This time the young man raised his hands in his own defense. His glance was shifting around, but he wouldn’t look at anyone’s eyes. “I got nothing to do with that. I was out of work a long time, then I got this job. I mind my own business, that’s all.”
“Hold your hand out,” Cinq-Mars ordered.
“What?”
“Are you deaf? Hold your hand out!”
The boy did so, his left. He held it out as though expecting to be strapped by the school principal.
Cinq-Mars removed his own hand from the pocket of his topcoat and dropped small rectangular pieces of metal into the boy’s palm.
“Your hands are dirty now, son. Tell me what you’re holding there.”
The boy examined the contents of his hand. “Oh shit,” he said.
“Tell me what you got there.”
“You know what they are.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“VI numbers.”
“The VINs of hot cars, to be precise. Am I right?”
“Look, when I got here, the boss, he said, ‘Can you work?’ I said yes. He asked me if I knew how to mind my own business. I said sure. That’s it. That’s all I know.”
“Go on. Touch them. Rub your fingers on them. I want a good set of prints on those tags. Go on. Do what you’re told.”
“I don’t want to,” the boy said meekly.
“You do what a crook tells you to do you can damn well do what a cop tells you to do! Now put your fingerprints on those tags.” The boy did what he was told. Cinq-Mars lifted the flap and pulled his coat pocket open. “Now I want you to slip that evidence into my pocket here.” The boy did so. “Good. I guess your goose is cooked now. But I’m only guessing and that’s only an expression.”
The mechanic stood grimly silent.
“What’re you going to do?” he asked in a whisper.
“That’s not the question,” Mathers interjected, and he stepped toward the boy as Cinq-Mars backed off. “The question is, what are you going to do? Do you think you know too much, Jim?”
“I told you, I don’t know nothing about what’s going on.”
“Do you think Hagop Artinian knew too much?”
The mechanic thought about that. “Maybe,” he allowed.
“Look what happened to him. They dressed him up in a Santa Claus suit and broke his neck and stuck him through the back with a meat hook. I’m the one who opened the cupboard where they had him stashed. Not a pretty sight. You know something now, don’t you, Jim? You know you’re working as part of a stolen car ring. You know how dangerous that can be. If I were you I’d start looking for another job. One with improved benefits. Someplace where they don’t kill you for what you know. Get that job, Jim. Then give Mr. Kaplonski two weeks’ notice. That’s what I would do if I were you.”
“Here,” Cinq-Mars butted in, “I took Kaplonski’s card, so you take mine. If you ever get the feeling there’s a meat hook in your future, give me a call. In the meantime I want you to go back to your Penthouse magazine and turn on your radio. We’re going to have a look around. You’ll forget about the whole thing, right?”
“Yeah,” the mechanic agreed.
“Good,” Cinq-Mars confirmed. “Get his address and phone number,” he told Mathers.
“Start looking for that new job,” Mathers warned him as he wrote down the particulars. “Work is hard to find but you have an incentive now. You should have an easier time than before. Working here you’ve added some experience to your résumé.”
The two policemen opened drawers and scanned papers. Cinq-Mars moved slowly through files labeled with the letters P and C. He examined telephones and lamps, and Mathers checked under desks and the bottoms of drawers until he found a bug.
Cinq-Mars put a finger to his lips. They’d discuss this elsewhere.
Satisfied, the two men shouted a good-bye to Jim Coates and departed.
Outside, Mathers asked, “One of ours?”
“What are the choices?”
“One, it’s ours. Two, it’s theirs, and they keep surveillance on their own people. Three—unlikely—it’s some other gang.”
“Four,” Cinq-Mars cut in, “it belonged to Hagop Artinian. Or whoever he was working for. My contact. The person who calls me with good information. Hagop was on the premises. So that’s a point for that theory. It could be us. It’s primitive, so whoever planted it was on a budget. Which could be us, which could be anybody, I suppose. Outside gang? Like you said, not likely. We found it in the outer office, right? Who’d want to know what the secretaries talk about? The boss, maybe. My contact, I’m sure, would plant a bug in the boss’s office, if he had a choice. So would we. That’s a point for the boss spying on his staff, and less likely it was my contact or cops.”
Mathers opened the driver’s side door and got in. He reached across and flipped the latch for Cinq-Mars, then started up. He spun the tires on the hard snow pulling out, and they headed off down the street. They saw Jim Coates watching from the office window.
“Anything out of the files?” Mathers asked.
“Enough to know I’m coming back with a warrant.”
“Good show. What’s next, Émile?”
“Run his prints. I think he’s clean, but let’s check. Later on we’ll visit the Artinian family. Pay our respects. Share their grief. We were the ones who found their son.”
“Sounds like a plan. You must be good at this next part, Émile—how do we write this one up for the department?”
Cinq-Mars smiled. “You’re always so worried about the department.”
“I don’t carry your weight.”
“This one’s a cinch. We’re investigating a stolen car ring. We expect to move in a week or two. We’ll make it a department operation. Spread the credit around. Next week, or the week after, when we raid, they’ll either be around or gone. That might clue us who planted the bug.”
Riddled with flu and an ample dose of self-pity, Okinder Boyle lay in abject agony upon his bed. The city was enduring a horrendous winter accompanied by a virulent Asian flu, as if forces of nature had conspired to mete out retribution. All Boyle wanted to do was moan. Work was out of the question.
Answering the knock on the door seemed more than he could manage.
Boyle coughed on his way to the door. The very act of standing up seized his sinuses in an apoplectic fit.
“Quit faking it!” a voice shouted from the apartment corridor.
His editor. He didn’t know how to take a man who was gruff when he was angry and gruff when he was merely trying to amuse himself. One tone pretty much resembled the other. Boyle opened the door.
“Jesus,” the man said. His name was Garo Boghossian, and this was his first visit to his columnist’s apartment, which he found shockingly modest. “I guess we don’t pay you much. Boyle, you look like crap. Blow your nose for shit sake. Whatever you do, don’t breathe on me.”
“What’re you doing here, Garo?”
“Checking up on you, what do you think?”
Boyle held his aching head in his hand and instructed his feeble limbs to keep him upright awhile longer. He wobbled. “You checked. So go.”
“So you’re not faking. Big deal. Truth is I suspected as much. Figured you for a sniveling sickly sort who catches every germ that comes down the pike. I’m here on business, Boyle.”
The young man had to sit down. He waddled to the nearest chair and collapsed. “I’m not up for this. Save it until I’m better.”
“I was in the neighborhood. Let me say my piece, then I’ll leave.” Boghossian leaned over him. He was a man in his late forties with wild fluffed hair that arose at
the sides and thinned on top. His eyebrows were substantial, the lenses of his glasses thick. Usually he dressed as though he had slept in his clothes, but today he looked immaculate.
“I might vomit.”
“I hate that. Just hold on for a few more minutes, you pansy.”
Boyle looked up, but he was too weak to defend himself. “Garo, I’m not kidding. I’m sicker than you think. Help me lie down. I’ve never asked you for anything before. Help me back to bed or I’ll puke.”
Boghossian had underestimated his condition. The editor held him firmly as they crossed the floor and assisted him down gently onto his bed. He looked around. This was a one-room hovel, with a hot plate and a refrigerator the size of a typewriter for a kitchen. A side door led to the toilet, sink, and shower. Boyle possessed nothing but a broken-down dresser, desk, a computer, heaps of books piled in stacks, a potential bonfire of papers, and a swaybacked mattress on the floor.
“Have you eaten much?”
Boyle merely groaned.
“What about fluids? Have you been drinking lots of fluids?”
This time the patient managed to shake his head.
“Jesus, man, you’ve let yourself dehydrate. Didn’t I tell you when you came to work for me that I was your editor and not your bloody mother? Now look at you.” Boghossian checked the refrigerator and found two juice containers, both empty. He turned on the tap, but the water would not run clear. “Leave the door unlocked,” he instructed. “I’ll be back in five minutes, give or take.”
He returned in less, with a bag full of juices, aspirin, decongestants, and an assortment of crackers and soups. “I won’t let you die, Okinder. I haven’t given you enough shit yet. You feeling any better?”
“Yeah,” Boyle said. He looked yellowish.
“Drink this.”
“What do you want anyway, Garo? Talk slowly. Maybe I can concentrate.”
“Do you have a story in the works?”
“The best one ever. Can’t do the research until I’m over this.”
“Okay. That’s good. But listen. I’ve got another one for you. I know—you choose your own subjects, that’s the deal. But I’m asking you to look into this one as a favor to me. There’s no one else I can turn to.”
“That doesn’t sound too promising.”
The editor’s voice grew quiet. “Down the street from you—maybe you heard about it, maybe you’ve been too sick—a young man was murdered on Christmas Eve. His name was Hagop Artinian. He was wearing a Santa Claus suit. His neck was broken and he was stabbed with a meat hook through the back and heart. I just visited the crime scene. It was where he lived. Or where I thought he lived. As it turns out, maybe he only died there. The place has no furniture, Okinder. Less than you do. No food in the refrigerator. No clothes in the closet where he was found dead. Nothing. A table and that closet. That’s it.”
“How’d you get in?” Boyle asked him. He was listening, but his head swam. He brought his chin up when he noticed that Boghossian had not answered. The man sat hunched forward in a straight-backed chair with his wool cap in his hands. He turned it over and over again. “Garo?”
The editor cleared his throat. “I’m a relative, Okinder. Hagop’s my nephew. My sister’s boy. We don’t understand it. What was he doing in an empty apartment? Why was he dressed like Santa Claus? He was a good kid, a really fine kid. Who had any business killing him? And—some sign was slung around his neck. Merry Xmas, M-Five. What’s that about? I mean, what’s that? You know the streets, your specialty is young people when you’re not writing about the homeless. I hope this new story of yours isn’t about the homeless.”
“Sure it is. I’m really sorry about your loss, Garo. I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting anything like this.”
Boghossian waved him off. “Thanks. Don’t worry about me. But look. It’s your street. Your beat. It’s weird enough on the surface to be the kind of thing you do. Help us out. If he was mixed up in something bad, then you’ll have to write that story. But we need to know what it is. His mother needs to know. His father. Me—I just got back from the funeral. I need to know, too.”
Okinder Boyle had never imagined that he would see Garo Boghossian near tears. The sight was enough to temporarily diminish his own symptoms. “I’ll give it my best shot. You have my word on that.”
“Thanks.” The editor stood. “Now you drink your fluids. The first order of business is to get well. In your present state you’re of no use to a flea. I brought you crackers. If they stay down, there’s chicken noodle soup at the bottom of the bag.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Forget it. I’ll take it out of your hide another time. Just get well. I’ll look in tomorrow.”
“Who do you think you are,” Boyle pestered him, “my mother?”
Boyle listened to the man’s footsteps echo down the corridor. This was an editor who hated transparent emotion in journalism. He considered it a crock, a cheap coin. This was a man who edited his dispatches from the streets down to their bare bones. In his absence, all Boyle could feel beyond the aches and aggravations of his flu was the wellspring of pain running so deeply through Garo Boghossian he had scarcely recognized the man.
The house on Avenue d’Anvers was a simple working-class home of a style developed in the fifties and sixties and since abandoned, for it suffered three disadvan-tages in winter. The roof was only gently sloped, so it did not shed snow. The garage was located under the house and the access was steep, often impossible to navigate in winter. The stairs were also treacherous. Broad, without railings, they needed to be shoveled or deiced frequently. In recent days many feet had trod up and down the steps, hardening the snow with sadness, and Émile Cinq-Mars and Bill Mathers joined the brigade of mourners.
Bright light glowed through the broad living room bay window, which hung out over the garage door, and it was obvious, through the lace curtains, that many people were present. Through the diamond-shaped glass in the door Cinq-Mars saw someone approach after he had rung the bell.
Detective Mathers showed his badge, and the policemen were let in by a clean-cut, skinny, sullen boy of eleven or twelve dressed in creased trousers, a white shirt, and tie. They waited in a cramped foyer, touched by the grief resident in this household. Flowers and wreaths adorned every space available. Accentuating the discomfort of the two detectives were the trappings of Christmas. A tree decorated a corner of the living room, a crèche had been arranged across a cabinet, complete with toy sheep and cows. Cards of sympathy stood on the shelves alongside best wishes for the holidays and the new year. The family’s season of celebration and religious devotion had been truncated by tragedy, they would not enjoy a Christmas free from sorrow again. The boy returned with his arm in the crook of his father’s elbow. Émile Cinq-Mars introduced himself.
“We talk to police many times,” the man said with great weariness. “Please, today, no. This morning we put our boy to rest.”
“We don’t want to question you, sir. We don’t wish to disturb your family. I wanted to pay my respects, Mr. Artinian. My partner and me—we were the ones who found your son. We are not with Homicide, we’re not investigating his death. But, as I said before, because we found him, we wanted to pay our respects.”
The man nodded. “Please,” he said. “Come in. Vassil, my son, he will take your coats.”
A small contingent of relations had remained through to the late afternoon. The grieving mother occupied an armchair surrounded by photographs of her son and of the family in happier times. Cinq-Mars approached and stooped to have a word, holding her hand as he extended his sympathy. She dabbed her eyes and touched a Kleenex to her nose. She was a stout woman, and the flesh under her eyes had fallen. The strain of her sorrow made her appear a shambles. When Cinq-Mars arose to his full height again, he accepted an invitation to be seated on the sofa. Mathers sat beside him. They welcomed the offer of tea.
“These men,” Mr. Artinian explained to those assemble
d, “they were the last to see our Hagop alive.”
Other men and women in the small living room nodded with interest, and Cinq-Mars promptly raised his hand. How could he put this? You’re wrong. We were not the last to see him alive, we were the first to see him dead. Even that would not be wholly accurate.
“That is not quite so, sir. My partner and myself, it was our sad duty, to discover him. To find him.”
“Ah,” the father said, remembering that point now.
The room returned to quiet, and in the vacuum Mrs. Artinian burst into tears. For a parent to survive a child, Cinq-Mars believed, was the hardest.
“Mrs. Artinian,” the detective began, “I believe that your son was working on the side of goodness, of justice. I believe that he was trying to help out a friend who was in trouble. I believe that he died a hero to his friends.”
Her weeping ceased at this news. Everyone in the room was attentive.
Mr. Artinian leaned forward in his seat. “Mr.—”
“Cinq-Mars.”
“Mr. Cinq-Mars, the other officers, they always ask us, did your boy do drugs? Was he involved with criminals? Had he been in jail? In reform school? My boy is a good boy! A university student! He goes to McGill! He does not take drugs. I tell them that. They look at me like I am a bad parent who does not know what his boy is doing. They think, he doesn’t know. Hagop comes to see us for his dinner every Sunday. He is happy. He is talking of his job, his school, his life, his friends. I meet his friends. This is not a boy who sneaks around to do drugs.”
“Mr. Artinian, you’re right, and I apologize on behalf of the entire Police Department for that line of inquiry. It is the job of policemen to ask such questions. We have to ask such questions, but I am here today to tell you that they weren’t necessary in this case. Your boy was a good boy. He was trying to help others. In his trying to help others, something went wrong. We will try to find out what that was.
“We will want to know who his friends have been,” Cinq-Mars advised the boy’s parents. People spoke of names and possibilities. They offered also the names of neighborhood children who had been in trouble, and Mathers dutifully wrote down each potential lead. The senior detective looked sternly upon Vassil, the boy who had opened the door. He encouraged him with a smile. “Do you know of anyone who might help us? Did your brother ever say anything to you that might be important?”