by John Farrow
“Catch the criminal,” Cinq-Mars answered evenly, “solve the crime. It’s a simple philosophy, André. You’re welcome to your conspiracies. The Angels are back, so let them fight the Machine. While that’s going on, I’ll catch the crooks. We’ll see who gets arrests in the long run.”
“All right, you two,” Tremblay interjected. “What else do you have, André?”
The giraffe of a man used his long legs to step easily over an ottoman and seated himself again, mug in hand. “The secretaries, the mechanics, Kaplonski, everybody tells the same tale,” LaPierre continued. “Some believe the gospel chapter and verse, some know better. They say Garage Sampson is in the business of buying luxury cars secondhand, to ship them overseas, where they sell for more. They have records to show they’ve done that every so often.” He took a long gulp from his coffee. “They know how to cover their ass. The secretaries believe they’re not breaking any laws, only loopholing a few. Garage Sampson makes it look like their cars are being shipped by private owners, which would turn the whole thing legit. Kaplonski’s been around as an owner. Two priors for installing hot parts. Reduced to time served and fines. Legally, our people say he has a case if the cars aren’t hot. Beating him will be a battle.”
“We have the name of a ship waiting to load, and that’s it,” Tremblay mentioned.
“What country?” Cinq-Mars spoke up. He seemed unusually meditative and distracted, as though he’d been sidetracked by more urgent matters.
“Russia,” Tremblay said. “There’s a Russian freighter in the harbor waiting to pick up Kaplonski’s cars.”
Cinq-Mars stood and crossed the room to the coffee machine. He’d been running on adrenaline and caffeine most of the day, and exhaustion now moved through him like a flu. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. “I talked to the vehicle owners. Every one of them. The cars are hot. Nobody sold to Garage Sampson.”
“Thank God,” Tremblay declared. “At least we have a crime!”
“Mmmm,” Cinq-Mars murmured, tearing the edge off a Sweet’n Low. “That’s not all we’ve got. We’ve got trouble, Rémi. Big time. I ran down the cases. A stolen car report was filed for every theft, but only the paper files still exist. No records, and none of the plate numbers or VINs shows on our computer.”
“An access problem this morning, it happens,” Captain Gilles Beaubien speculated with a grin, as though all the world’s riddles could be summarized as neatly.
Cinq-Mars shook his head. “I wish. The files are entered into the computer, I’ve been assured of that, but some files don’t stay there for long. We have to assume that certain files are systematically being deleted. Consequently, a uniform phoning in a plate number would never get notification that the vehicle was hot.”
“What are you saying?” Tremblay asked, leaning forward.
“A glitch. It happens,” Beaubien analyzed, still smiling. “I’ll get our software people on it.”
“No glitch. The records of certain hot cars have systematically been deleted from our computer records.”
The room was quiet awhile digesting this news.
“Are we talking a hacker?” Beaubien asked. An essentially sedentary man, he was given to extended lunches, naps, and considerable liquid refreshment through the course of the day. Years of service and a willingness to work with the top brass counter to the interests of the Policeman’s Brotherhood, the cops’ union, had earned him his rank. Whenever there were issues of income or pension, Beaubien came down strictly on the side of management. He didn’t care that everybody knew it, and as he rose through the ranks that attribute had made him both despised among his peers and exceptionally valued by the brass.
“Not likely,” Tremblay had already determined. Sometimes it was best not to humor his superior. “Sounds like an insider to me.”
“Top priority!” Beaubien bellowed out. “Find out who!”
Although he was the senior in the room, nobody jumped to do his bidding.
“Let’s say bikers are doctoring our computer,” Tremblay summarized. “What do we do about it? First, nobody mentions this to anybody. If it’s internal we might set up a sting, and I don’t want a leak. Any leak, I’ll know it came from this room. I’ll take charge of this myself. What about the Russian freighter?”
No one was quick with a thought.
“Talk to the ship’s captain,” Mathers suggested, anxious to redeem himself. “Maybe get a lead off him. Maybe a shipping broker’s dirty. Maybe a union local on the docks is involved. We can see where that leads.”
“Émile, you and Mathers jump on it. André, don’t give me a hard time, I know you’re Homicide, but I’ve got more detectives down with the flu than I’ve got uniforms. Anyway, this case is related to Santa Claus. I want you to keep tabs on Kaplonski. Find out who his friends are. Okay. Let’s run down what we’ve got. You, Mathers, fill us in.”
Bill Mathers cleared his throat and sat a little straighter. He was anxious to prove his mettle but had not expected the limelight. He swallowed hard. “We’ve intercepted a stolen car ring that delivers automobiles to the former Soviet Union. Connections indicate Hell’s Angels involvement. Kaplonski is dirty but a small piece of the puzzle. Probably so small you’ll need a magnifying glass to figure out his place in things. But an Angels lawyer, Gitteridge, formerly with the Mafia, is in his corner. An employee at Garage Sampson, Hagop Artinian, was found dead on Christmas Eve wearing a Santa Claus outfit. We have to presume the murder and the stolen cars are related. Messages to Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars were part of both the Santa Claus killing and the raid today. In both cases the perps knew in advance who’d appear on the scene. To top it off, the police computer has been infiltrated, compromised by an unknown mole with apparent connections to Garage Sampson, stolen cars, the Russian freighter, Artinian’s murder, the Hell’s Angels, and the Mafia.”
Perhaps no one in the room had put everything together before. The officers were quiet, having difficulty deciphering the implications.
Mathers shot a glance at Cinq-Mars. He had deliberately held back mention of his conversation with Jim Coates. That seemed to be attached to their rogue investigation, not this department overview. As Cinq-Mars was issuing no objection, he presumed he’d done the right thing.
“Tomorrow, gentlemen,” Tremblay summed up. “Tonight we sleep.”
“Hang on,” Cinq-Mars requested. His body had settled so deeply into the cushions that he had to rouse himself with considerable exertion. He put his coffee cup on the floor and remained leaned forward, hands on his knees. “I want to discuss jurisdiction.” His tone conveyed a challenge.
“I don’t follow,” Tremblay said.
“We have a stolen car ring. That’s me. We have a homicide. That’s André. We have possible gang involvement, which means the Wolverines. And we have internal espionage. I guess that’s you, Rémi. What we don’t have is coordination of this investigation. I want to propose a solution.”
“I’m op leader,” Tremblay declared. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“I’d prefer it was me,” Cinq-Mars told him.
The officers made eye contact. The senior detectives had never heard Émile Cinq-Mars undertake this sort of initiative. He scorned political aggressiveness in others. Cinq-Mars and Tremblay stared at each other calmly, intently.
“I see no reason to step down,” Tremblay challenged him. “I’m curious, Émile. What’s up? Why do you want this?”
“Rémi, twice the perps left messages for me at the scene. Two signs. Merry Xmas, M-Five and Welcome, M-Five. That tells me I’m already involved with them, somehow, some way. My contacts can probably help in this situation. To be frank, I don’t wish to be impeded.”
“I see. Bottom line, I’m op leader. Live with it.” Even at this hour of the night he was well groomed, not a hair out of place. He was the only one among them to have shaven since dinner.
“You are about to head a crucial internal investigation that could burn
the bulk of your time and then some.”
“I’ll manage, Émile, now drop it.” “At the very least we need a field op leader.”
“That’ll be me,” André LaPierre spoke up. “What’s another stolen car? The major crime here is homicide. I work with the Wolverines on a regular basis, since half the killings in this town are gang-related. They don’t even know you, Émile.”
“I have the contacts to break this case. You don’t. Today we raided the garage where Hagop Artinian worked and you didn’t know why you were invited along.”
“Fuck off, Émile! I had the flu, okay? You know that!”
“André’s right, Émile,” Tremblay decided. “It’s the Santa Claus murder we want to break. Why put somebody away for car theft if we can nail him for murder? The fact that you’re involved, that the perps took the trouble to scrawl your initials at the scene, that’s good enough reason to work behind André. Keep your distance. Let him do his job without interference. As for your contacts, I assume and I expect that you will share any information that comes your way. Which brings up the next issue, Émile. Why didn’t you tell André about Hagop Artinian being a snitch?”
Cinq-Mars shrugged and retrieved his coffee off the floor. “André was home sick. I was planning to tell him when he looked less green.”
“That’s a crock!” LaPierre fired out.
“Tell me something, André. Did you raise Artinian’s murder with Kaplonski? Or just the car thefts?”
“Just the cars.”
“Why? Shake him up. A good Mafia lawyer will take care of the cars, he knows that, so he has nothing to worry about. If he talks, he has to figure his pals will whack him, so where’s the incentive to speak up? Go after him for the murder, make him think twice.”
“I’m holding back on that,” LaPierre stated.
“Crap,” Cinq-Mars muttered.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” They had assumed that Gilles Beaubien had either fallen asleep or been left so far behind by the conversation that he’d been rendered mute. His round form appeared Buddha-like as he lifted his head slightly to speak. “I just had a thought.”
This news stirred no one’s interest given the lateness of the hour, the weariness of the men, their testiness and general disrespect for the speaker. Limp and bored, they waited. And looked up only when the captain’s silence was prolonged.
Finally confident of their notice, Beaubien announced, “I’ll take charge of this investigation myself.”
Tremblay responded quickly, virtually throwing himself into the breach. “Gilles, you’ve been at a desk a long time—”
“That’s a good reason to undertake the challenge, Rémi. Émile’s right. You’ll be wholly consumed by the internal investigation. We have different departments to coordinate. The Russian involvement, that’s RCMP. We’ll need someone with rank to talk to the Mounties. In fact, Cinq-Mars and Mathers will not talk to the Russian captain. I’ll ask the Mounties to do that.”
Mathers, not knowing what all this meant, noted that LaPierre and Déguire seemed apoplectic, Tremblay panic-stricken, Cinq-Mars merely bemused.
“You’ve been behind a desk a long time, Gilles—” Tremblay started again.
“I’m still behind a desk. Everything goes through me. That’s final. It’s not up for discussion. In case you have other ideas, Rémi, try to go above me and I’ll bust your balls. That’s solemn.”
“Gilles,” Cinq-Mars began, “don’t get us wrong. We appreciate your offer. We value your leadership. But, you know, your heart—”
“—is ticking, Émile. Thanks for asking. So’s the clock. First meeting of the task force will be tomorrow morning at eleven sharp. Be here.”
“Here?” LaPierre asked him.
Beaubien had committed his first blunder. “My office,” he corrected himself. “Eleven sharp.”
He slapped his hands on his knees as he stood and quickly departed, a marked spring to his heavy step.
“You had to bring up the issue, eh, Cinq-Mars?” Tremblay said. “Now we’re screwed.”
“Do you realize the paperwork with this guy?” LaPierre complained. “Five hundred words a day in triplicate. Déguire!”
“Sir?” Like the other junior detective in the room, Alain Déguire had chosen to keep his head low and try to follow the conversation. His misfortune was to be singled out while in midyawn.
“Tomorrow morning. Eleven o’clock. Walk into Beaubien’s office and shoot him dead. You’ll be declared a national hero.”
No one laughed. They rose and silently left the lounge. The elevator was a strained space, each man relieved when one of his colleagues departed or he stepped off himself. Only Mathers and Cinq-Mars already had their coats with them and journeyed all the way down to the garage.
“I guess we’re in a bad situation,” Mathers probed. “With Beaubien.”
“Think so?”
“You don’t share everyone’s opinion?”
“Ask yourself, who invited him to the meeting in the first place?”
Mathers detected a sly grin lurking below his partner’s placid surface. “You?”
Cinq-Mars bopped his chin. “Tremblay—on our tail all day. LaPierre? He’d have us at our desks, sharpening pencils for life. Which of those two would voluntarily let me be in charge? When you’re stuck, Bill, you look for another option.”
“Beaubien’s an option?”
“He’ll never know what’s going on.” In a manner that Mathers found strikingly fraternal, Cinq-Mars put a hand on his near shoulder. “I just finessed our freedom on this case. I’m proud of myself. By the way, that wiretap? At the garage? Cop issue. An obsolete model, at least a decade old. Good night, Bill. See you in the morning. Don’t forget now. Big meeting. Come prepared. Bring donuts. Beaubien will love you for it.”
“Eleven sharp,” Mathers said as he watched his mentor move through the cold damp of the garage. He surmised that he might never learn the secrets that had made Cinq-Mars top cop, but no doubt the man could teach him a few things.
7
Friday, January 7
A van blew in the early morning hours, shattering windows across a three-block radius. Wearing night-clothes and boots, and huddled in blankets stripped from their beds, residents fled to the streets fearing gas leaks, the end of the world, earthquakes, a comet. Details were slow to be processed. Policemen stomped their boots in the frigid dark. The driver’s wallet and its contents had disintegrated in his hip pocket along with most of his gluteus maximus, but the vehicle registration in the glove box had been spared. If the driver was the van’s owner, then he was a known member of the Rock Machine, a former B & E specialist conscripted into the gang while in prison. Upon release, Jacques “Ladder” Dufour had taken a driver’s ed course to learn to ride a motorcycle. When he showed up for his road test the Motor Vehicles Bureau officer glanced at him and at the four bikers at his side and passed the exam paper across the counter along with the answers. The officer later declined to test the prudence of his driving habits on the street. Instead, he issued the driver’s permit valid for motorcycles. Ladder had enjoyed the perks of being a gang member, especially the extraordinary access to women and the gaming rooms of Las Vegas—now he had paid a common consequence. In the Gang Room, André LaPierre pinned his name to the history board. “Jacques Dufour,” he wrote down. “Known as Ladder. Bomb blast. January 7. 3:52 A.M.” In the margin he scribbled, “Burnt cherry pie. We’ll miss his cute ass. So will he.”
At the first ring of the phone, horses whinnied and stomped lightly, as though the sound was threatening. Brushing a gray colt, Émile Cinq-Mars spoke soothing, wordless utterances as dust flew off the animal’s back to settle on the frosty concrete floor.
He had been in the stables since dawn, feeding and watering the animals and participating in a major muck-out of the stalls. He and Sandra owned two dressage horses, a pair of show jumpers, and six polo ponies, and boarded another eight mounts. By the phone’s second brrrr, most were contr
ibuting to the racket, talking back, their breath puffing in the brisk, damp air like a remnant of dragon fire. Either they knew that calls to the stable were ominous or they picked up on the dread the humans felt.
Sandra answered. Cinq-Mars allowed himself to hope, but she called out, “It’s for you.” She held the receiver as she might a dead rat, waiting for him to take it off her hands.
Cinq-Mars feigned reluctance. “Who is it?”
“He won’t say.”
For the sake of his marriage, he suggested, “Take a message.”
Sandra and Émile had met while he was in New Hampshire buying horses for a friend. For Sandra Lowndes the combination of a big-city, French-speaking detective who knew horseflesh, traded with the cunning of a poker player, and carried himself with the bearing of a president was too exceptional not too warrant an extended look. They hit it off. She learned that his first wife had died seven months into the marriage, when Émile had been twenty-nine, and that his second wife had persevered for five years before crumbling from the long absences, her worry about violence, her infertility, and recurring, prolonged bouts of depression. While the marriage had never been a happy one, divorce did not come easily to Émile’s strict Catholic upbringing. In the end, an annulment was procured and he adjusted to both the edict and its inherent hypocrisy.
Watching as she spoke into the phone, Cinq-Mars was nicked by a sense of admiration. Here was a woman out in the cutting cold of a humid barn tending to her animals, working tirelessly until each horse was watered and fed, warmed and soothed. When they had first met, they talked horses by day, American politics through the evening. Sandra was fiery and opinionated, invigorated by her feelings for him. They discussed the impossibility of forging a life together and jointly chose a long-distance relationship, with visits. Another two years of delightful romance passed before the notion of marriage began to evolve.