by John Farrow
“Oh shit!”
“You’re in it above your shoe tops, aren’t you, Jim? I think that coffee’s ready now.”
“Fuck!”
“I know. Just pour the coffee. Start with that. Keep it together. Then we’ll go in the other room and you can tell me about it.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“That’s what we call denial, Jim. That’s what we call wishful thinking. You wish you didn’t know anything, but you know the identity of that Russian, don’t you? We call him the Czar. Did you know he killed Hagop? He did. With his bare hands.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Easy, Jim. Relax. We’ll take care of this. Tell me about him. He must be a powerful man. I mean physically. Is he a big guy, Jim?”
“He’s a freaking giant.”
“That figures, the way he broke Hagop’s neck. You know, between the Hell’s Angels, who blew up Kaplonski, and the freaking Russian giant and his gang, and the Mafia who are probably in on this, too, you sure as hell went out and made yourself the wrong bunch of friends. How old is he, Jim, the man we call the Czar, about?”
His shrug seemed to stem from the incomprehension of youth, equating all persons above a certain age as old. “Forty. Fifty.”
“Sixty?” Mathers asked.
“No. He has a lot of hair, it’s dark.”
“Not bald. Not gray. Height?”
“Six-four, or better.”
“Thin, fat, medium?”
“There’s no stomach on him, he’s in shape. Always wears a suit. Outside he wears a cape.”
The Czar. This was confirmation. In September, when Cinq-Mars had been with the surveillance team from the Wolverines, even in the heat the man had worn a cape. “Handsome, ugly?”
Another shrug. Mathers finally received his coffee, and he waved off sugar and cream. “Hard-looking, you know. Scary in a way. He looks like a Russian, like one of those hockey players. Like he’s never smiled in his lifetime.”
“Any marks, scars?”
“Yeah. Big one. From behind his ear,” Coates said, and he drew the line under his own jaw, “to the front of his chin.”
“That could be surgical,” Mathers theorized. “That’s the kind of scar they cut for a bypass to open up the main artery.”
“This guy doesn’t look like he’d have a heart problem.”
“You never know. There’s nothing like a coronary bypass to get a man into shape. Did he smoke? Eat greasy foods?”
“I don’t remember him smoking. No, that’s right! He came in one time and told Kaplonski to butt his cigar.”
“There you go, you see? The man’s a health fanatic because he’s had a coronary bypass. You see what you can find out when you put your mind to it? Now, Jim, you have to tell me this. Did you give up Hagop to Kaplonski?”
Coates was quiet, staring into his cup.
“We have to have something, Jim, to protect you. If things go bad, we want to be on your side. If Hagop told you something, then you have to tell us. Tell us what you told Kaplonski.”
He seemed disinclined to talk.
“I won’t kid you. Talking to Kaplonski about Hagop was not a good thing. I can see how it happened though, I’m not judging you. Tell me what Hagop said, that’ll put it right.”
“How can anything put it right?” Coates demanded bitterly. He took a sip, and his hand shook and his lower lip trembled. “Hagop’s dead.”
Cinq-Mars had warned his partner to keep the boy on his side, no matter what. Break him down, but no matter what, befriend him.
“You didn’t do it, Jim,” Mathers reminded him in a soft voice. “We both know that. We can’t bring Hagop back, but we can put away his killers.”
Tears welled. His head hung down. When Coates spoke he hesitated, grasping his words, forcing them from his lips. “I told Kaplonski—Hagop was a snitch.”
Mathers was patient. He coaxed him along. “How did you know that, Jim?”
“He told me. Like you said. He confided in me. I said something to him one time about him being a brownnoser. We were working late. He said he wasn’t no brownnoser. Said he was spying on Kaplonski.”
The youth wiped his eyes with the back of one hand and tried to sip his coffee, lips aquiver.
“Who for, Jim?”
“For the cops. A bigshot cop, he said.”
Mathers stepped down from the stool and stood close to the young man. “He said that?”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t mention anyone else?”
“Not that time.”
“But another time?”
“He said he had the whole CIA in back of him. I didn’t believe that bullshit.”
Mathers took a couple of deeper breaths. “You tell Kaplonski about that?”
“About the CIA? No. I’d sound like an idiot. About the rest, yeah.”
“When does your mother get back, Jim?”
The young man wiped his nose and eyes on his wrist. “Thursday.”
“Okay, listen to me. We’ll have that talk with her. We’ll work something out so we don’t embarrass you. But start packing. People know where you live. You’ve been receiving mail. We have to stop that. No more mail, Jim. No more letting the world know your whereabouts. All right? You’ve done the right thing, Jim. Don’t talk to your landlord or anything dumb like that. Let me take care of that part. Don’t tell anybody you’re on the go. Just pack.”
“He has a tattoo,” the boy said out of the blue.
“What?”
“I never saw it. He always wore suits. Hagop told me. He said he had a tattoo on his chest in the shape of a star. Hagop said it meant he was one of the godfathers of the Russian federation of gangs, some bullshit. He had all these stories. The CIA. Russian gangs. I thought he was nuts, man. I didn’t believe it.”
“Now you do?”
The boy shrugged. “He talked too much and he’s dead. That’s serious truth.”
Mathers gulped the last of his coffee and gave the young man another pat on the back, then headed out. Cinq-Mars was right. Coates had betrayed Hagop Artinian. That was why he’d run, because of his complicity in murder. That had scared him as much as any idle fear for his own life. Even now he didn’t have a clue about the real danger he had created for himself, all he had was the barest inkling.
The Lexus pulled up to the curb, and Julia Murdick climbed off her stool in the coffee shop, dropped coins across her bill, and stepped outside. She climbed into the plush front seat.
“Everything in shape?” Gitteridge wanted to know.
“Dad thinks so.”
“That cash get moved?”
“Child’s play. Dad’s grumpy. He wants a real challenge.”
Gitteridge stared at her.
“What?” Julia asked.
“Let’s make a withdrawal,” he commanded. “See if it works.”
“The money works,” she insisted. “It’ll buy things.”
“Let’s go see.”
“All right,” she agreed. “Let’s.”
The car peeled away from the curb.
With the meeting called for eleven sharp, Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars made it in the nick of time. Rémi Tremblay had cleared his desk, his secretary was holding calls, and the moment Cinq-Mars entered she shut the door behind him with a sense of finality, as though only one man would emerge from the room alive.
“Good morning, Émile.”
“What’s this I hear about Beaubien?” stormed Cinq-Mars. His chin was clenched and there was no mistaking the flame in his eyes.
“He’s been cleared.”
“That’s a crock.”
“Would you like to rephrase?”
“His name’s on that damn list!” In his mind, two officers, Gilles Beaubien and André LaPierre, were possible informants. He preferred both suspended. If one came back, it definitely should not be the superior officer, who carried the greater potential to do damage.
“Émile, the boss studied the ca
se personally.” The only man whom Tremblay called boss was Police Director Gervais. “He’s accepted Beaubien’s explanation that a uniform was assigned to get his car repaired. The uniform was offering, he’s a brownnoser. He got it fixed, told him he did it himself. No charge. Beaubien’s had his wrists slapped. You don’t ask a uniform to do your personal business. But that’s it. That’s all.”
Cinq-Mars put a hand behind his neck and gently shook his head. Things never worked out the way they should. “You know I respect Gervais.”
“He has enormous respect for you, too, Émile. He’s in your corner. He takes personal pride in you. Unfortunately, even the boss is not a saint.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Stiff and formal behind his desk, Tremblay lent his tone an air of authority, an inflection of experience, as though initiating Cinq-Mars into the back-room politics of the department. “Director Gervais is a bit miffed to have a captain in trouble with the law. Is that a surprise? He wants the issue to vanish, so he’s helped the process along. The matter has been investigated, Beaubien has been chastised, the issue has gone away, like magic.”
“This is outrageous,” Cinq-Mars declared, his voice calm, deliberate.
“Really? What’re you planning to do about it, investigate the boss for collaboration with the Hell’s Angels?” Seldom inclined to sarcasm, Tremblay used it to good effect now. “Émile, can you not see your way clear to accept that his job is largely one of public relations, essentially one of image, that his primary objective here has to do with public confidence and department morale?”
“Funny, I thought his primary objective was to create an outstanding police force.”
“Émile,” Tremblay explained, “it is. When he fails to achieve your lofty standard—his own high standard—the compromise objective turns on public confidence. Nothing we do will work without public confidence.”
“A regular increase in the budget, you mean.”
Tremblay conceded the point with a gesture of his hands. “We live in a time of restraint. The Police Department must be spared cutbacks. Support for the force begins with public confidence. Surely you can understand that much.”
“So in order to keep the money flowing, an incompetent boob, an idiot, a corrupt administrator with known links to Kaplonski and possibly to others, an officer who is potentially a traitorous informant, is put back on the job. Tell me—is he still directing our case?”
“He’s not.”
“Why not? He’s been reconstituted. Who took him off our case?”
“Director Gervais,” Tremblay admitted.
“On what grounds?” Cinq-Mars pressed, curious now.
Tremblay hesitated, taking time to form his words in the most politic way possible and yet, as Cinq-Mars divined, convey the weight behind the official course of action. “Captain Gilles Beaubien has been relieved of responsibility with respect to any ongoing investigation that involves organized crime on the grounds that there may be potential for conflict of interest. He’s been delegated other assignments.”
“What assignments?”
“The duty roster, vacation rotation, statistical analysis.”
The two men, old friends, colleagues who had been through the wars together, who had entered the combat of the streets as young men, survived and flourished and progressed, locked eyes. Tremblay’s gaze conveyed to Cinq-Mars that he should ask no further question, cause no further trouble in this regard. His look disclosed that any further query would be met by stony silence, or by official rebuke. Cinq-Mars did not speak, while in his own eyes he indicated thanks to a friend from whom he’d been distant for too long. As if answering a covert cue, the men stood together. In shaking hands they confirmed their intention to enlist in the battle ahead, without words, trusting no one, but together, engaged.
Beaubien had been restored but not vindicated.
Permission, Cinq-Mars knew as he stepped out of his colleague’s office, for him to proceed, without sanction, but more important, without impediment, had been granted.
Julia Murdick had been a passenger in fine cars in recent weeks—Norris’s Infiniti, once in a Cadillac that belonged to the biker in the beige suit, now the Lexus Gitteridge leased. “Only fools buy,” he said.
She closed her eyes and rested her head on the warm leather. Her tush had been toasted on so many car seats during the winter she wondered if she could accept being driven in a lesser vehicle again. They drove on, and the traffic was light. Reaching their destination, Gitteridge took his time finding a worthy parking spot, one with ample room for other vehicles to maneuver. They finally clambered out two blocks from the bank’s front door, and twice Gitteridge stopped to gaze back at his car, as though he expected to see hubcaps being heisted.
“You’re a walking advertisement. You should go on TV.”
“You don’t understand.” She had to agree, she didn’t. He shot another glance over his shoulder, but they had turned a corner. “Today’s going to be all right for us, isn’t it, Heather?”
“Something’s got you spooked,” she told him.
“You’re a college girl. What do you know about the real world?”
“I’m a quick study.”
“I’m counting on that. Know something? You walk funny.”
She was bounding along beside him, her head bobbing up and down. Quickly she reined herself in, realizing that her walk was particularly exaggerated due to anxiety, fear. She thought things with Gitteridge were going fairly well, but the goof over the weekend was still nagging her. The real Heather Bantry had showed up, and she had had to go to Okinder Boyle’s house and bail them out of that jam. She was mad at Norris for the oversight, but when he explained that the real Heather lived in Seattle now, she could see how her showing up had been a surprise. Nobody had guessed that McGill would put on a national debating festival, or that that would matter, that Heather Bantry would be on a team. Still. Mistakes were so damned dangerous. “There’s a term for it,” she told him. “Not my walk exactly, what causes my walk.”
“What’s the term?”
She stopped to explain herself, bending over and looking down at her legs. “See, my shinbones don’t appear to travel straight, they swerve, or so it looks, but they’re not the problem. The problem starts with my feet, what’s called the pronation, they roll inward toward each other, which causes the knees to point inward also. I’m knock-kneed, if you must know. I have emu kneecaps. The patella sit in a recess, but because of the pronation and the attendant problems, the outer quad muscles of my thighs get overworked compared to the inner muscles, consequently they develop more, and because of that they have a tendency to pull the kneecap out of alignment. That puts the whole knee apparatus out of wonk and ligaments overcompensate and the knee tries to rearrange the whole works and so I develop, subconsciously, this whole other work-sharing ethic thing to help my leg bones and joints and muscles get along. Nothing cooperates. Overall I’m a pathetic mess. A chiropractor’s wet dream.”
Gitteridge could not confirm anything Julia said because she was wearing pants. She looked up, suddenly aware that she’d been babbling, aware also that at that moment she was frightened half to death. “What’s the name for it, the term?” Gitteridge probed, his voice cold, and he was watching her with a skeptical gaze.
“Never mind. Is something wrong? Is everything okay, Mr. Gitteridge? You looked scared. You look like somebody just stole your Lexus.”
“It’s in our best interest that everything works as planned.”
“Then come on,” Julia urged. “Let’s get on with it.”
Gitteridge talked as he walked. “It’s been a tough year. Turf wars. One biker blows up another. Nobody knows who gets hit next. In September, the bikers’ banker was blown into pudding. Since then the boys haven’t had much luck with their financial management. Until your dad. They have to show some people they can handle money, move it around, demonstrate they’re on top of things. Your dad’s in the right plac
e at the right time. Funny how that worked out. You should understand, Heather. Don’t rub these guys the wrong way, but you have a certain limited leverage. They have to answer to a higher authority. As long as they’re cozying up to their new partners, you’ll be safe. Your dad’ll be taken care of, too.”
Julia walked and she was screaming to herself, New partners! New partners! He must mean Russians! Like Selwyn said! “Thanks for the advice, Mr. Gitteridge. I can use it. Some days I don’t know what I got myself into.”
“Handle this, Heather. Don’t bail out. That’s important, to you, to your old man, to me. You don’t want to know what happens if you bail out.”
Julia was fittingly subdued. “I’m not bailing,” she vowed.
“Tell me something,” he asked.
“What?”
“What’s the term for what’s wrong with your legs?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m curious.”
“I’m not saying. It’s too humiliating. I don’t tell anybody that.” They wound up on Peel Street in a snarl of traffic, waiting for the light to change. After crossing, they walked into a branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
“What do you want to get done?” she asked him.
“Verify the account balance and make a test withdrawal. I don’t want to be the one who lands in jail. I’ll stand behind you and watch.”
“This is one of seven accounts.”
“Do you have something better to do today? Did you have other plans?”
She shook her head. She wished he’d lighten up. “Do I get lunch out of this, at least?”
“McDonald’s.”
“No way. We’re eating upscale or I’m not participating.”
Gitteridge gripped her wrist and squeezed hard. “When do you get to understand that you never tell me what to do?”
“Fine.” She shook him off, and he let her, not wanting a scene in the bank. “Go back to the Angels or whoever,” she whispered hotly, “and tell them you couldn’t get the money back because you’d rather rough me up in a bank than do their bidding.” She arched an eyebrow. “Do you think they’ll be understanding?”