by John Farrow
Without skipping a beat, Julia shook her head. “I’m just getting settled, I don’t have a phone yet. No permanent address either. I’ll have to call you later.”
“Here.” He handed her a business card from his desk. “How did you find me in the first place?”
She suffered a lapse. Not having a ready reply made her mind race. “You’re famous,” she answered quickly. “I asked around. You weren’t so hard to find.” She could hear Selwyn’s voice, Good, Julia. Good good!
“Thanks for dropping by, Heather. Keep in touch, okay?”
“I will. So long.”
Julia Murdick flew down the stairs and sailed out the door to the windy arctic street. She ran through the light scuff of snow on the plowed sidewalk, and by the time she turned the corner her lungs hurt from breathing frosty air too rapidly. She caught hold of herself. Slowed herself down. She did not want Norris to detect her excitement. This was going to be her more difficult challenge for the day—concealing her euphoria.
Detective Bill Mathers traveled into Verdun to locate Jim Coates, but no one answered his door. This was an old, run-down community, originally populated by Irish who’d come to build the bridges onto the island and stayed to labor in the railway yards or on the docks. All that was gone now, the area mostly French. Steep stairs led up to drafty flats. Mathers teetered on the top step, trying to see in the window. He looked down at the crowded street below. A dog barked up at him as though he emitted a foreign smell. The street looked like a tinderbox. Verdun was notorious for its fires. In winter the desperately cold made mistakes and set their homes ablaze. In summer, the back alley sheds were kindling to bored kids and firebugs and those out to cheat insurance firms. Mathers shivered and went down to the flat below, where the landlady revealed that the young man had moved without leaving a forwarding address.
“I asked the scalawag where he thought he was off to. The scamp didn’t know.” A diminutive, frail woman in her eighties, wrapped in a piss yellow housecoat, she stood with the aid of a cane and spoke with the voice of a cranky despot. “He paid for January and a month extra, to break his lease, then he packed off and left.”
“Have you rented the apartment? Can I see it?”
“Nothing to look at but dirt. Take the Hoover up if you go.” Mathers waited while she engineered her creaking form off in search of the key.
Not much of an apartment. Junk mail had tumbled through the slot, a Monday morning’s worth. Dust bunnies procreated. The telephone had been abandoned on the floor, yanked from the jack. Mathers plugged the phone back in, but there was no dial tone, the line had been disconnected. A lonely coaxial cable slipped out from one wall like a rat’s tail. Mathers departed, dropped off the key, and headed for the corner deli, where he ordered a bowl of soup. He sat in a booth that had been slashed with a knife and never repaired, and made a phone call while the can of Campbell’s was warming. After lunch he called the office a second time. He was told that Jim Coates had discontinued his telephone service and paid the electric bill but had advised neither utility of a forwarding address. Nor had he contacted the Post Office.
“One last try,” Mathers suggested. “Call the cable companies.”
Five minutes later Bill Mathers was on his way to the new address of Jim Coates. Dispensing with mail and telephone, the young man had been unable to cut himself off from his favorite shows. He’d moved to a small apartment eight blocks away, where utilities were probably included in the rent, and Mathers wondered if that had been intentional to avoid being traced. Good thinking if it was. He rang the doorbell and was buzzed up. Waiting on the third floor, the young man was not pleased to see him.
“How’re you doing, Jim?”
“How’d you find me? I just moved.”
“Can I come in?”
Coates considered his options a moment, then stood aside. “So how’d you find me?” he asked again.
“Were you trying to hide?”
The mechanic moved across the room and turned off the tube.
“You quit your job, Jim. Changed residences. You’ve been on the go in a hurry. We were wondering why.”
“You suggested it.”
“I suggested finding another job, giving Kaplonski notice. I didn’t say move.”
“Whatever,” the young man muttered. “Time for a change. It’s no big deal.”
“Why the fast tracks?”
Coates paced nervously around his living room, rubbing his hands as if they were cold. “Like you told me, they’re crooks. I wanted the hell out.”
“Why so fast?”
“You scared me, all right? Look—what is this? Since when is it a crime to quit my job? Can’t a guy move?”
Mathers stepped closer to him, inhibiting his restless wandering. “You didn’t give the Post Office a forwarding address. You don’t have a phone. If something’s going on I should know about, I want to know about it.”
“Nothing’s going on, all right?”
“We raided Kaplonski’s place this morning. Took everybody in.”
“Everybody?”
“The works.”
“Now you’re here for me?”
“We noticed your absence. Wanted to make sure you’re all right. Are you all right, Jim?”
“I’m fine.” He did not look certain.
“Yeah?”
This time the mechanic hesitated.
“What’s the trouble?”
Mathers had maneuvered him into a corner of the room, and the young man could only flap his arms in a gesture of worry. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I was having lunch the other day, okay? Near Garage Sampson. I used to go around the corner to this greasy spoon. A guy walks in. I’m at the counter. He sits down beside me. There’s other places at the counter but, you know, he sits down right beside me. Then he’s talking to me. The weather. Hockey. Politics. He’s reading the paper, whatever’s on the page he talks to me about it. He starts asking what I do. So I tell him. By now I’m ready to leave. Then he wants to know if I’d like to make a few.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I’m leaving. I mean, I’m not talking to this guy. I don’t know if he’s a creep or what, but I’ve seen him before, so I’m leaving.”
Mathers took another step forward, and the boy was blocked off now without hope of escape. “You saw this man before, Jim?”
“Yeah. In the same place.”
“So maybe he’s a regular, something like that.”
“Maybe. But the only time I saw him there he was talking to Hagop. And, you know, Hagop’s dead.”
Mathers nodded, and took a breath to control his own emotions. “So you just ran out, or what?”
“I told him I wasn’t interested. He laughed, he said I didn’t understand. He leaned into me, you know, he whispered. He was creepy. He said he had a business proposition. I asked him, what proposition? He’s talking differently now. His accent’s changed. Like this was his real voice and that other voice was fake. He said he wanted me to talk to Kaplonski. Say a few things. He said he wanted me to put a bug in his ear.”
“His exact words?”
“A bug in his ear, yeah. I was scared on account of Hagop. So I told him I couldn’t do that. I never talk to Kaplonski. He said he’d pay me five hundred bucks to have one conversation. I jumped out of my skin, man. I mean, Hagop talked to this guy and Hagop’s dead. Here’s some creep offering me five bills to talk to my boss and I’m supposed to believe that’s not dangerous? I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to know either.”
Mathers scratched himself under his collar. “Let’s sit down, Jim. Give me a description of the guy. Everything you can think of. Take your time. Try to remember every little detail. You did a good job covering your tracks, but I’ll fix it so nobody follows you the way I did. First, tell me everything you remember. Height. Hair color. Hairstyle. Eye color. Clothes. Jewelry. What kinds of accents he used. Dis
tinguishing marks. Everything. Talk to me, Jim.”
Detective Mathers sat back on the lumpy sofa. Opening his notepad, he began to write in earnest. He wrote down the details, such as they were, and coaxed more out of his witness, as though he was an artist lovingly crafting a portrait. He wondered who was forming on the page. The detail that he underlined three times was mention of a scar, about the size of two fingernails, that shone on the man’s cheek as a patch below his right eye.
As instructed, Julia Murdick undressed in the narrow confines of the examination room. Her doctor did her best to keep the heat cranked up, but the room felt chilly nonetheless. Julia donned the thin robe provided and climbed onto the examining table, fitting her feet into the stirrups, convinced that contrary to graffiti she’d seen on campus God was not a woman. Had God been female She never would have equipped women with such complicated sexual plumbing. And the speculum! God had to be a sexist to permit the invention of that device. Surely the contraption traced its origins to torture chambers.
Dr. Melody Weesner entered a few minutes later wearing a bright, earnest smile. “Let’s have a peek,” she chimed.
She’d warmed the speculum first, at least. Julia grunted as the instrument opened her wider. Perspiration broke across her forehead. The indignities, she chanted to herself.
“You already know about the retroverted uterus.”
“Inherited it.” Julia waved off the doctor’s protest. “All right, not exactly, but my mother has one too. Is that my problem? Mom says she manages, but I can’t.”
“We’re done here,” the doctor reported, and she removed the instrument and peeled off her rubber gloves.
“What’s the verdict?”
“Julia, you have an unusually high and narrow opening, what is frequently referred to as a steeplechase arch.”
“What does that mean?” She was jolted back again.
“The pain that you have experienced with intercourse, the discomfort—”
The doctor went mute.
“So it’s not some residual part of my hymen?” Which had been suggested during a preliminary discussion. Julia was extricating her feet and legs from the stirrups and climbing down from the table.
“There’s no scarring or tissue problem.”
“The uterus thing, that’s not it?”
“When you have intercourse, because of the position of your uterus, the cervix is likely to be in contact with the penis, and that can hurt.”
“Does it ever! But the rending, this feeling that I’m being—it’s hard to describe—a penis isn’t much more comfortable than that speculum.” With her feet on the floor again, she felt that she had a better perspective to figure this out.
“The pain that you experience, Julia, the discomfort, will likely persist.”
“The pain will persist? You make it sound like the pain should win a prize. Should earn merit points for perseverance.”
“Julia—”
“No! What are you telling me? That sex is always going to hurt me? And if I go through the pain and get pregnant, my kid has to be sawed out of me, my belly sewn up like I’m Frankenstein’s mom, is that what you’re telling me?”
“Julia—” The physician did not want to speak in such terms.
“Is it?” Julia Murdick was tall and square-shouldered and forthright when she had a mind to be. Dr. Weesner could not back away from her clear demand.
“It’s probably going to hurt to have intercourse. A woman’s pelvic muscles relax during pregnancy, the channel is apt to expand, but in your case, it’s unlikely to be enough. Birthing will require surgery, but that’s not uncommon.”
“Shit!” she called out. “Fuck!”
“I’m sorry, Julia.”
“Damn it!” she cried.
“There are other possibilities.”
“Such as?”
“You never know. You might fall in love with a man who—how can I put this delicately? Who is rather small in that area. That might solve the problem.”
Dr. Weesner left her alone to spew in private.
Julia Murdick was twenty-one years old and feeling cheated. A sadness welled within her, the premonition of depression. She leaned against the examining table, unable to stem a rising wave of distress.
What will I do with my life now? What will I do?
Outside, Selwyn Norris was waiting to drive her home.
Fuck it.
Fuck it, I’ll do it. I’ll do it, Selwyn.
Émile Cinq-Mars was the last person to arrive at the meeting on the top floor of the station. Tremblay was there, as were LaPierre, Mathers, Beaubien, and Déguire. The men sat slumped in the hefty furniture of the lounge, their legs stretched out before them, as though their bodies were prone to simulating sleep. Midnight had passed. Everyone was pulling long hours. “Nice of you to join us,” taunted André LaPierre.
“What’ve we got?” Lieutenant-Detective Rémi Tremblay demanded. He raised himself upright, seemed prepared to stand, as though rank and responsibility required that he assume a certain posture.
LaPierre blew out a gust of air as a signal that he was willing to start.
“Shoot,” Tremblay told him.
“Kaplonski gave up zilch. He’s a wild man who knows a few things, but he lawyered up and the Great Wall of Silence came down. The most interesting thing was his choice of lawyer—Gitteridge.”
Of those in the room, only Mathers was at a loss. He asked the question by lowering his eyebrows and holding open his palms.
“Old Mafia connection,” Cinq-Mars told him.
“No longer just the Mafia,” Alain Déguire piped up. Like Bill Mathers, he had never sat in on a meeting attended by rank, and he was anxious to prove himself. He frowned with the seriousness of the situation, which caused the upper fold in the crease along his brow to slump over the lower one. “Hell’s Angels, too.”
“Same difference,” Captain Gilles Beaubien put in. A hefty man who seemed proud of his paunch, the captain rested his hands on his stomach.
“How do you mean?” Mathers asked. He wanted to appear attentive.
“The Mafia hired the Angels to do their dirty work,” Déguire told him in a grave tone. LaPierre was nodding beside his protégé, proud that he had taught him well.
“Since when does the Mafia need help?”
“Since we busted their balls,” bragged Beaubien. “We put a few big boys away ourselves. The rest got nailed in Florida. They’re all doing time now.”
“A remnant remained,” Tremblay stated sharply. He was impatient with the discussion and would rather have called the meeting to order. He believed that his superior, Beaubien, always preferred amiable talk to getting any real work done.
He had a point. Beaubien was obviously in a jollier mood than the others, less weary, and was now leaning toward Mathers, delighted to have a junior around to instruct. “The remnant fought among themselves. Some splintered off and became the backbone of the Rock Machine. The rest picked up their balls if they still had any left and tossed in with the Angels.”
Standing to refill his coffee cup, LaPierre exercised a personal grievance, also addressing Mathers. “You know how it is, English? The Mafia do what the English do, they hire French lackeys for their dirty work. What’s new about that?”
Mathers was unsure if he should believe him.
“Bill, Hell’s Angels divide into chapters,” Tremblay broke in, wanting to get the lesson finished so they could move on. He spoke in a clipped manner that defied anyone to interrupt or question his opinion. “Each chapter’s a franchise, like McDonald’s. There was a time when any group could come along and take the franchise away by proving it was tougher, meaner, more brutal. In Montreal, in the old days, there was competition. The gang that finally won was tough, generally regarded as the most brutal on earth. But they left Montreal, mostly due to pressure from us—we were attacking back then, we had them on the run.”
“They left the city because they were doing so well elsewhe
re, that’s the real reason,” Captain Beaubien interjected. “More money, less hassle, out of town. We never bust their balls. I would never say that.”
Cinq-Mars was smiling and shaking his head.
“You don’t think so, Émile? You’re an expert on the gangs now?”
The detective looked as though he was about to speak, but he ended up shaking his head and folding his hands in resignation.
“Come on, Your Holiness,” LaPierre encouraged him, “give us the Sermon on the Mount. Why did the Angels leave Montreal for the countryside?”
“You want the sermon?” Cinq-Mars challenged him. “I’ll give it to you then. They left because they were buying time. They needed time to undermine the police. They needed time to undermine the judiciary. They needed time to put their own house in order, to undertake new alliances, to develop an intelligence network, and to secure the countryside so they’d have a stronghold from where they could return and successfully assault the city, in spite of any resistance from us. It was a strategic retreat, gentlemen. A retreat that probably won them the war.”
Each man mulled that perspective, perhaps surprised by both its force and its logic. Tremblay cleared his throat, making a bid for control again. “Everybody’s right. There’s truth in what everyone says. What we know for sure is, the Angels took up residence in the countryside. Now they want back in but the Rock Machine has other ideas. Yesterday a boy was killed, so the Wolverines have been set loose. We’ll see how that shakes down.”
Mathers nodded, his head bowed, feeling rather sheepish that his presence had necessitated an elementary lecture. He had more questions but wasn’t going to ask them here. Tremblay had called the after-hours meeting, and everybody, himself included, wanted to get through it and head home. They’d been run off their feet all day, and each man faced more drudgery tomorrow.
“Not your favorite subject, is it, Émile?” Tremblay added. “I know you feel we overemphasize the gangs.”
“Émile’s an idealist,” LaPierre intervened. “He likes his crimes straight up. Nothing too complicated. I’m surprised he had an opinion tonight. Conspiracies addle the brain, he told me once. Does gang talk addle your brain, Émile?”