by John Farrow
Mathers nodded. He had not expected the response. He wanted to contradict his superior, point out that one biker gang or the other had killed a child. That was a big line crosser, too, but he understood. To combat the enemy, you always had to show that you had greater force to prevail against them, and that the only thing restraining that force was an understanding that certain things would not occur. The biker gangs were feeling the heat from killing a child. Go any further, and they’d feel a lot more.
Mathers stopped and looked up to see who Cinq-Mars was waving over, and out of the crush of people Detective Alain Déguire emerged. Cinq-Mars had assumed a position on the snowy knoll of a neighbor’s lawn from where he had a good overview.
“Sergeant,” Déguire greeted him. He was wearing his usual grim look, as though everything was a riddle to him, as though whatever had caused that gouge in his forehead had left him permanently confused.
“Alain, you’re working long days. Who’s the investigating?”
“I am.”
Cinq-Mars gave him a second look, and the younger man shrugged to suggest that it was no big deal.
“We’re strapped. With LaPierre suspended I had to fill in. You don’t need a crystal ball to say this is a biker hit, the Wolverines will take it over. I’m just here because it’s late. By morning they’ll be in charge.”
Cinq-Mars appreciated the man’s modesty. “I need to know something from you, Alain. It’s important.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Did you tell anybody about my meeting with Kaplonski this morning?”
“No, sir.”
“You answered very quickly,” Cinq-Mars cautioned him. “I want you to think about this. It doesn’t matter to me if you did or if you didn’t, I just need to know the absolute truth. Did you discuss this morning with anyone?”
“I don’t need to think about it,” Déguire said testily. “Look, the way things have been lately, I’m not talking to anybody about anything.”
“Not even LaPierre?”
“What do you want from me, Sergeant?”
“The truth. Why is that such a difficult commodity these days?”
Déguire joined Cinq-Mars in surveying the confusion of flashing lights and flurry of official procedure. A bombing employed an impressive array of people.
“Me and LaPierre, we talk every day,” Déguire admitted. “I talked to him this afternoon. He’s my partner. I didn’t give him any details. Didn’t have any. I told him you picked up Kaplonski then released him.”
“That’s what you told him?”
“Yes, sir. When you asked if I talked to anyone, I didn’t include my partner in that. Of course I talk to my partner.”
“You told LaPierre we picked up Kaplonski and—what? twelve hours?—no, sixteen hours later Kaplonski is dead and you’re the IO.”
Déguire kicked some snow around with his boot. All three men stood with their hands in their pockets and their breath was visible in the night air.
“I’m a good cop,” Déguire said quietly. “You want to come after me for some reason, go ahead. I’m a good cop.”
Cinq-Mars looked at both junior detectives and shook his head, as though it was hard to ever decide. “If you want to know what I think, Alain, you’re on the right track. You’re on my mind. Any time a cop goes down, it’s inevitable—everybody wonders about the partner.”
“There’s no proof against him.”
“So he believes. But I’m not a judge. Tell me, you work the day shift, isn’t that right? I always see you around in the day.”
“I’m supposed to be days. We’re strapped right now.” A morgue van was trying to make its way in, led by a cop car with its cherries flashing, the lights cutting across the faces of the detectives talking on the knoll.
“So you keep telling me. Who set it up for you to work this case tonight?”
“My duty officer.”
“Who is?”
“Gilles Beaubien.”
“Excuse me? He’s suspended.”
“That was revoked this evening. The flu’s taking so many guys down, he’s filling in with the task list.” Déguire was nodding, jutting his chin out, defensive in all his remarks.
“Really? Now what do you think about that, Bill? Did you hear? Beaubien’s back, and nobody told me the good news. Alain, if you work days, how did you happen to be working the night shift on Christmas Eve, when the Artinian boy was killed?”
“Are you investigating me?” Déguire wanted to know. He looked from Cinq-Mars to Mathers and back again.
“I’m asking you a question,” Cinq-Mars told him.
“I don’t have to answer,” the officer replied.
“No, you don’t.”
Déguire thought back. He worked his toe around in the snow again. His facial muscles were pulled tight with growing rage. “That was a different story,” he recalled. “Me and André, we booked off. We had the best days off. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and Day both. First time I ever had all those days. What André gets, I get, we’re a team. He has the seniority.”
“That’s usually how it goes,” Cinq-Mars noted. “How’d you get booked on?”
Déguire rocked his head a few times, then rubbed his chin on the shoulder of his coat, as though he was trying to buy time to think the question over. “That’s a mystery. André called me late in the afternoon, said he’d booked us on standby, for later. I was pissed off. You got Christmas Eve off, then just like that, you don’t. Probably somebody did a favor for André, that’s what I figured, so he traded shifts.”
Mathers was staring at his colleague wide-eyed as if he was going to pop a rib. Cinq-Mars nudged his elbow, and he shifted demeanor, as if disinterested.
“In other words, André LaPierre has the flu, but instead of staying home with the day off and taking care of himself, he books on.”
Déguire considered the scenario and nodded to indicate that that was how things had been. He offered no explanation.
“Alain, if you’re a good cop, you will not speak about this conversation to André LaPierre. I don’t care if he is your partner. Don’t give him anything from your investigation tonight except what he’ll read in the morning papers. If you’re not a good cop, if you’re a dirty cop, then go ahead, tell him anything you want. But in that case, when you’re talking to him, say hello from me.”
Alain Déguire walked away ten feet and then came back. He was fuming, and when he talked his lower jaw didn’t move. With his anger mounting he looked like a ram anxious to batter something. “It’s you old guys, you know, who always talk about standing up for your partner.”
“I’m aware of that,” Cinq-Mars answered.
“I’m loyal to the guy, he’s my partner. But it’s you old guys who think it’s a fucking marriage. I’m not fucking married to him, you know.”
“All right. I’ll take that under advisement.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’d watch your tongue there, Alain. I’d think about controlling my temper if I were you.”
Déguire gave his body a shake and then his head to relieve the worst of his wrath. He aimed his index finger in the senior detective’s face. “I could have been your partner and Bill could’ve been LaPierre’s. Then you’d be busting his balls tonight and not mine.”
“That’s possible,” Cinq-Mars conceded.
“I don’t see why I have to be taking shit for that asshole.”
Cinq-Mars waited for that remark to clear the air before he asked him about it. “Are you calling my good friend LaPierre an asshole, Alain? What happened to your sense of loyalty?”
This time Déguire stepped right up to Cinq-Mars, and although he was two inches shorter, the uneven snow underfoot made them level. He put his eyes inches from the senior detective’s and glared at him with his full fury. Cinq-Mars was reminding himself that at all costs he had to avoid butting heads with this guy, because he’d come out hearing bells after that collision. “I am loyal as a pa
rtner,” he declared, with defiance and with something else that Cinq-Mars noticed, bitterness. “I have said nothing that would hurt him. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think he’s the biggest asshole this side of the moon.”
“I’ll take that under advisement as well,” Cinq-Mars noted.
Déguire twisted his shoulders around and spun on his heels and twisted his shoulders again, not knowing how best to combat his fury. He shook a finger at Bill Mathers, then aimed it again at Cinq-Mars. “I don’t understand,” he said, and his confusion was inherent by the way he trembled. “You’re a hero to us guys, you know. How come you get a squarehead for a partner? It’s not right that an English guy should get what you pass on.”
“We’re both cops,” Mathers reminded him quietly, startled that he was hearing this point of view so directly.
“You don’t get it,” Déguire thrust.
Sarcastically, Mathers said, “I guess not.”
“I don’t care that you’re a squarehead,” Déguire claimed.
“Not much you don’t. Anyway, I’d watch who you call a squarehead, Alain. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
Déguire stood there a moment, looking off in another direction, breathing heavily. He was trying to calm down before he put his foot in his mouth again. When he finally pulled himself together, he addressed Mathers directly. “He’s a hero to us French guys. That’s all I’m saying. You get him as partner. You’re English but you get him. Meanwhile, I draw André LaPierre for the past six months and the guy’s shit, you know? He lives like shit.” He shook his head a little more. “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing quickly at Cinq-Mars. “Forget it, all right?” He felt sorry for himself now, knowing that he had behaved badly. He turned to leave.
“Alain,” Cinq-Mars said, and he nodded with his chin at Mathers, “he’s a squarehead, but you know what? I don’t see any big chip on his shoulder. Maybe you should think about that.” He wasn’t looking at him, just saying what he wanted to say and letting his words ride.
With that, Déguire turned slowly on his heels and stomped down the knoll, back to his duties, his walk infused with renegade fury. “Alain!” Cinq-Mars called after him. He knew that the pressure could get to some guys. “How many?” He indicated the burntout Lincoln.
The young man had to stop and think, work to displace his fury for a few seconds. “Two,” he managed to answer, and his voice was sounding civil again. “Kaplonski and his wife, we figure. Both unrecognizable. The baby-sitter says they went out together. They arrived home on time. Started backing up, then boom.”
“Find out where they went. That’s where the bomb was planted.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bill Mathers and Émile Cinq-Mars returned to their car. Reporters were arriving in droves now and television crews setting up. Cinq-Mars had to wave off the journalists who recognized him.
“Does this confirm LaPierre?” Mathers asked. LaPierre knew that they’d picked up Kaplonski, and now the poor devil was history. LaPierre had booked himself on for Christmas Eve when he didn’t have to. Circumstantial evidence might not hold up in court, but it mattered a great deal to any smart cop. Mathers was distressed. That a policeman could act as a pawn for the Hell’s Angels shook his confidence in the scheme of things. He showed surprise when Cinq-Mars said no. “How come? Sounds to me like he arranged to be the IO for no good reason. You’re thinking he had some other excuse to put himself on the case? It’s suspicious to me.”
“Reasonable doubt, Bill. I’ve got one tucked in my pocket.”
“Show me.” They talked across the roof of the car.
“It might have to do with why André won’t share the tapes with us. He might have recorded Kaplonski and the Czar like he said. But he didn’t listen to the tape the day after the murder or whenever he got over his flu. He listened to it beforehand, when he was home sick.”
“Beforehand? You’re not saying—?”
“Either way, clean or dirty, he knew that boy was going to be bumped.”
“Then how’s he clean? He did nothing to stop it!”
“It’s only a theory. Consider this. Kaplonski was supposed to get arrested that night and LaPierre wanted that to happen. He figured he knew how to find the Czar, if that’s who the Russian is—straight through Kaplonski. After Mr. K lawyered up, with a biker lawyer, things got complicated. LaPierre lost his nerve. Like you, he gets nervous around people who blow up their enemies. Which doesn’t make him a good cop. It makes him a shit cop. But it’s possible he let that boy die so he could have the glory of solving the case. Now I’m ready to hoist him on a pole for that, and there’s no stick sharp enough, but I’m not willing to say right now, categorically, that he signed on for a shift that night so he could get this case and manipulate the evidence to keep suspicion away from the Angels. Since when do they care? I’m still diddling that one.”
They climbed into the car, and Cinq-Mars had to blare his horn to bully journalists’ vehicles out of the way. A couple of uniforms came by and directed traffic. He skirted the worst jam by driving on the sidewalk, got stuck in a snowbank, and uniforms had to shove him out. Finally they were free of the whole circus, riding down empty streets in their nocturnal quiet.
“Where to?” Mathers asked. He was hoping.
“Home,” Cinq-Mars confirmed. “Where we should have been all along.”
“There’s still one person who might know the identity of the Czar, who heard him set up Artinian’s murder with Kaplonski. Jim Coates.”
“LaPierre might think so, too. He’s looking for him. You know where he lives, partner—only you. Let’s keep it that way. Let the Coates boy sleep for now. Catch a bit of that ourselves. Finding him tonight won’t make him any safer. When you go, take precautions. Be paranoid. Personally, I’d wait until you come for work on Monday. If you see him, warn him to lie low. Tell him to lie so low the ground looks high. If he talks to you, fine. If he doesn’t, don’t scare him off. Build trust. Under no circumstances do you bring him down to Headquarters.”
They drove in silence awhile, hitting every red light along the way. Cinq-Mars avoided the expressways, and the city appeared weary, restful, asleep. Oblivious to bikers’ bombs.
“You know,” Mathers mentioned as they waited at an intersection, “it’s a funny thing. When I became your partner I was excited to be involved with downtown felony crime. A day later I’m involved with a homicide investigation. Before I know it, I’ve elbowed in on the work of the Wolverines. Now lately, especially today, I feel like I’m doing Internal Affairs’ job. Tell me something, are we taking on the entire Police Department as well as every criminal in the city?”
Cinq-Mars chuckled as the light turned green.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just think, Bill. All that, and we’ve only just begun.”
Shy about her body, worried that some day she might balloon up like her mother, not knowing what to expect because of the steeplechase arch, Julia Murdick undressed and snuck under the covers of Selwyn Norris’s bed while he dallied in the bathroom. She had been sexually precocious, active since thirteen, ready for teenage adventures, but she had never been held in the arms of an older man. Driving to his place, Norris had continued to be restrained, quiet, attentive. Unaccustomed to such patience, she was reconciled to the possibility that he might actually be a really lousy lover, but she needed to find that out for herself, once and for all.
She waited.
Listened to the toothbrush, the taps, the toilet. Boys weren’t like this. She supposed that adult sex might be terribly boring.
From the en suite he entered the dim light of the bedroom and Julia turned on her side, supporting her head with one hand. She loved the luxury of the room, the size of the bed, the clean sheets. She had never made love on such a big bed in such a huge bedroom in such a vast apartment with quiet jazz on the stereo and the lights of downtown perfectly reflected in the window.
Norris pulled the curtains closed.
/> “There’s my girl,” he said.
Julia replied, “Nooooo!” She punched the mattress.
“What?”
“Girl is so so so politically incorrect, especially, I would say, in younger woman-older man relationships.”
He leaned over and through the duvet squeezed her left big toe until she kicked him off.
“What do you call that?” she complained. “Foreplay?”
“At least you’re back on the right subject.”
The bedside lamp stayed on as he undressed. She admired the full, well-formed chest, the trim waist. He was not particularly muscular, but he had good tone, and she found the gentle aging of his pecs endearing. Just a light fluff of white chest hair. His penis was rising, and Julia enjoyed the view and yelped when he submarined under the covers from the foot of the bed, pulling her calves, then her thighs and hips under him. She wanted to be coy, but the novelty, the urgency, the long wait had her making yipping noises that embarrassed her, and when he surfaced she didn’t know what to do so she walloped him.
“Ow! Julia! You’re so—You’re so—”
“What?”
“Physical.”
“Yeah?”
“Beautiful, too.”
“Oh, here we go. Man seduces woman with compliments.”
He shut her up by kissing her then, the moment a surprise. His lips were nice. Soft. Interesting. She worried that hers were chapped. His tongue played along the edges of her mouth. She heard herself sigh, and Julia let herself feel this. It had been so long, her last boyfriend had not traveled with her to Montreal, and never had it been this slow, this…methodical. She moved to hold him, and in the action her body wrapped his and now she was willing to be hungry for this, the attention, the company, the sex, the return of desire, and it was stronger than she had expected or had been willing to count on. In wrapping her legs around him and cradling him, she felt safe again, she was made secure again. The madness of the world and the audacity of their work together and the risk of their enterprise contrived to excite her and all the dangerous moments and tense hours converged and her body swayed against his and everything they did together finally made some kind of wacky nutty crazy ludicrous sense.