City of Ice

by John Farrow

  Julia lay in the dark, flat on her back with one knee up, immobile with shock.

  The door opened and she gasped again, recoiled again, feared death, then craved it, quickly.

  The light was switched on.

  A man wheeled in a tray of food.

  An array of sandwiches and a choice of juices in small packets on a dainty silver cart.

  He left.

  She stared at the food.

  She was free to eat.

  But she did not, could not, comprehend food.

  Her breast was to be tattooed. Mutilated. Then she’d kill a man, a cop.

  Why did I do that, suck him, what did I do?

  She had something worse to do. She had said it. She had repeated it.

  He’s going to make me kill somebody. Oh God. God.

  Émile Cinq-Mars waited in his car for Okinder Boyle, closing his eyes to give them a rest. He had phoned the columnist by cellular, saying he wanted to meet him in half an hour. At the other end the silence was momentary. “Sooner, if you want,” Boyle had responded.

  “Make it ten minutes. On the street. Your place.”

  That time was up. Cinq-Mars was hoping the boy would not arrive until the conclusion of the piano concerto on the radio, a wish rudely interrupted by a sharp rap on his window. He snapped the music off, and the journalist went around to jump in the other side.

  “Pulling the night shift, Émile?” Boyle asked him.

  “I suppose this is the middle of the day for you.”

  “Nearly bedtime. I’m glad you called. What’s up?”

  “What’s your position on forgoing sleep?”

  Boyle was ready for anything. “No problem. What do you need?”

  “I need someone who isn’t a cop to spy on a cop.”

  “Guess what? I’m volunteering.”

  “I appreciate that, Okinder. He has a girl staying with him right now—I want you to make contact with her. Be exceedingly careful. I don’t know if she loves him or despises every breath he takes. Find that out. Maybe you can approach her from the point of view of a journalist, but don’t give away who you are. You’ve already sewn this guy’s ass to the can—”

  “What guy?”

  “Sergeant-Detective André LaPierre.”

  “Ah.”

  “Be wary.”

  “‘Nuff said. I’ll be careful. Émile, I need to talk to you about Garo Boghossian.”

  “Hagop’s uncle. Your boss. What about him?”

  A gentle rain hit the windshield, a brief sprinkle.

  “I’ve been keeping him apprised. He wants to know what’s going on with the investigation. I’ve kept him informed about things, but he’s been less than forthcoming about his own activities.”

  “Which are?”

  “He just called. Apparently he spends most evenings and a lot of his nights driving around the streets of Montreal.”

  The detective’s sympathy was waning with the late hour. “Is he having a breakdown?”

  “No way. Apparently he’s been hunting down green Infiniti Q Forty-fives.”

  Cinq-Mars tapped the steering wheel a couple of times. “I can’t stand this. Too many civilians are involved here, beginning with the fake Heather Bantry.”

  “Including me, when it comes to that. I haven’t been a liability, have I?”

  Cinq-Mars conceded the point. He was accustomed to losing debates to this young man.

  “He’s found one, Émile.”

  “A Q Forty-five? Okinder, they’re out there.”

  “He knows that. He’s been following Q Forty-fives in his free time. He tails drivers from the workplace to their homes, or from their favorite bars home, whatever. He checks the people out, decides they’re benign, and moves on. But tonight, he came across one that sounds interesting. We should go see him. He lives close by.”

  Cinq-Mars considered the news, choosing in the end to relent. “Better take two cars. Then you can leave Uncle Garo’s for LaPierre’s place.”

  “I don’t have a car,” Boyle told him.

  Cinq-Mars gave him an irate look.

  “I can’t afford one,” he defended.

  “Can you drive, at least? All right, use mine. After Uncle Garo’s you can drive me back to HQ. I’ll check out a squad car. We’ll go see him first.”

  “Lend me your phone, I’ll let him know.”

  They arrived in four minutes, made contact over the intercom, and ascended in the elevator to the fifteenth floor of a downtown high-rise. They were met in the hall by a wild-haired, animated man. “Come in come in come in,” he insisted, and the two men entered the apartment.

  “You’re Cinq-Mars. I’m glad you’re on my nephew’s case.”

  “I’m not. Officially.” In surveying the apartment, the detective liked what he saw, the plethora of books, the patina of study. Electronic gadgetry was kept to a minimum and, while the apartment was comfortable, he got no sense of excessive material possession. The bachelor’s home served as a retreat for thought and inquisitiveness, which Cinq-Mars appreciated, although he also wished that men of intellect would not aspire to being men of action. “I understand you’ve been tailing luxury automobiles.”

  “All over town, Detective. South shore, west island, as far as Hudson. Up north. Wild goose chases, every one. But I’ve stuck with it.”

  “And tonight?”

  “Tonight—can I get you something? Coffee?”

  An eye-opener would not be unwelcome. “Thanks. I could use a cup. Okinder, too.”

  “I’m going undercover,” Boyle remarked proudly.

  “Okinder,” objected Cinq-Mars, “the first rule about being undercover is that you don’t tell anybody you’re undercover.”

  Boghossian shook his head in agreement. “I have to kick his butt myself.”

  “You old farts,” Boyle summed up.

  They had drifted toward the kitchen, which was visually connected to the main living and dining area by a pass-through in one wall. Boghossian went through and put the coffee on, then came out again.

  “Tonight I followed a green Q from downtown to the east end.”

  “Did you get a plate number?”

  “Yup.” The editor rummaged through his billfold. He pulled out a slip of newsprint and handed it across to Cinq-Mars.

  “This isn’t the number we’ve been looking for,” he stated.

  “You know his license plate?” The tremor of his dismay caused a row of wineglasses to tinkle slightly.

  “We’ve known for some time. It’s untraceable. Our prey has the capability of providing his own license under fictitious identification.”

  The editor ruminated on this a moment. “So it’s possible that he changes his license from time to time?”

  Cinq-Mars tapped the hard bone behind his ear. “It’s possible,” he said, meaning that it was highly unlikely. “What sparked your interest in the car?”

  “One, the car went into the east end. I’m sorry, but a vehicle like that hardly ever shows up in those neighborhoods. Two, the driver parked on the street—so did I, farther down the road. That’s a risk, to park a car like that there. Three, I followed the guy on foot.”

  “A man.”

  “One man. Well dressed. Got no closer than that.”

  “Go on.”

  “He walked five blocks. Five. He went into a building and I waited outside. I was hoping to see a light go on, so I could find out what apartment he was in. No light came on.”

  Garo Boghossian seemed quite enamored by his report. He looked from one of his guests to the other, his arms crossed, beaming.

  “That’s it?” Cinq-Mars asked him.

  His face fell. Boghossian realized then that in his excitement he had left out the most important development. “That’s not it. I went back to my car to come home. I walked right past the spot where he’d parked—and his car was gone. The Infiniti was gone! I’m sorry, but how does that happen? Who parks five blocks away from his destination, goes into a buil
ding by the front door but never comes out that door, turns on no lights whatsoever in any apartment, and somehow gets back to his car by a different route and drives away? Who does that? Any normal person you can think of?”

  The story did carry the validation of intrigue.

  “We don’t have the car,” Cinq-Mars reminded him. “All we have is a license plate that may or may not be real.”

  “You can run down the plate or whatever policemen do. If he turns out to be a married accountant visiting his mistress who mistook me for an angry husband, then fine, there’s nothing to this. But that’s not all we’ve got, Detective.”

  “What else?”

  “I told you I followed him from downtown. I spotted the car as it emerged from an underground garage on Mountain. Not a public garage, you understand, the Q Forty-five came out of an apartment building on Mountain Street. I know which one. Either the guy lives there or he has friends there. Odds are, he’ll be back.”

  Taking note of the avid faces of the civilians before him, Cinq-Mars had to smile. “Mr. Boghossian—”

  “Please, call me Garo.”

  “Garo. You may call me Émile. Tell me about the license plate. It’s wet out. It’s hard to see at night when the roads are shiny and water splashes your windshield. Was it an easy thing for you to read the plate? Could you have made a mistake? Did you get a good look?” Cinq-Mars was gunning for a particular clue.

  “It was hard to see, sure. I didn’t want to get too close. You’re right about the sheen of water.”

  “I think what Émile is asking—” Boyle was about to postulate.

  “No, Okinder. Please, don’t prompt him.”

  The reporter was dutifully silent.

  “Listen,” Boghossian said testily, fearful that he was being cited as an unreliable witness, “at one point I had no choice. We both got the same red light on Sherbrooke. I had to drive right up behind him. I double-checked the plate then.”

  “Did you write it down then?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “That’s when he made you.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “That’s when he knew he was being followed. A man like that is aware of the driver behind him. That’s why he did the walk, to shake you off his tail.”

  “Jesus Murphy.”

  “So you saw the license, no problem.”

  “Square in my headlights. Which was important because he didn’t have a light over the plate.”

  Cinq-Mars snatched a glance at Boyle, already knowing he’d find the young man beaming. They both knew that green Q45s were rare in the city, that the car had not caught on. How many of those vehicles had their license plate lamps burned out or intentionally extinguished? Possibly just the one. When Boyle had failed to catch the number of the car parked on his street, he’d given the lack of a light above the plate as his excuse.

  “All right,” Cinq-Mars decided. “Garo, I’m going to ask you to watch the Mountain Street building until I send a replacement. What’re you driving?”

  “A blue speckled Subaru wagon.”

  “Speckled?”

  “Rust spots.”

  “Okay. You’ll be relieved in a couple of hours. I’ll let my man sleep a bit. Meanwhile, I’m running Okinder over to another site. I want him in position before dawn. After that I’ll come back and arrange your replacement. Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Yup.”

  “Let’s exchange numbers. I don’t care if the car’s in the apartment now. What I want you to do is report if it arrives, try to follow if it leaves. Either way, call me on the cellular. I’m sorry about your nephew, Garo. I’m profoundly sorry about the suffering your family’s endured. Usually I’m not too happy about civilians playing cops and robbers, but in this case you’ve done your nephew’s memory a service. You’ve honored him.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Let’s roll,” Boyle chipped in.

  “No no no no no! Let’s not roll. Let’s keep our heads up and do our assigned tasks properly. Garo, what are the chances of having that coffee in a thermos?”

  “Damn good, if you ask me.”

  “I’m asking.”

  Cinq-Mars established Garo Boghossian farther up the steep hill from the apartment they were putting under surveillance, instructing him to sit in the backseat opposite the driver’s side. In this way the car would appear to be empty if scanned from an upper window. Spotted from ground level, the editor would look like a passenger awaiting the return of friends.

  At Headquarters, Cinq-Mars switched to an unmarked squad car, and Boyle followed him out in the Taurus. He chose a parking spot on the same side of the street as LaPierre’s apartment. The gentle incline provided good sight lines. Cinq-Mars sat with him a moment and told him what he hoped to collect from the girlfriend. He said he’d understand if he wanted to back out now. Boyle sat glumly, chewing on the news. With reluctance, the young man consented to proceed.

  “How do you know she’ll come out?” he asked him.

  “I went into his bedroom closet. Never mind why or how. The girl had no clothes in there. She keeps a robe at his place, probably a toothbrush, but she has to have a place of her own where she keeps her stuff.”

  “You should think about becoming a detective when you grow up, Émile.”

  Cinq-Mars left him the thermos. “There’s a lane at the top of the street. Duck in there if you need to take a leak.”

  “The voice of experience,” Boyle mocked.

  For a moment Cinq-Mars attached meaning to his words, and regretted that it had to be so.

  16

  Thursday, January 20, before dawn

  Émile Cinq-Mars drove back downtown at a fair clip and along the way awakened his partner over the cell phone. “Up and at ‘em, Bill. Saddle your horse. We got stuff going down.”

  “What time is it?” the sleepy voice asked. He must have looked across at his bedside table. “It’s not five yet.”

  “Are you awake?”

  “More or less.”

  “Call Alain Déguire. Meet me at Ben’s, the two of you. Smoked meat for breakfast, Bill. It’ll put hair on your chest and sludge in your arteries.”

  “When, exactly?”

  “ASAP. Sooner. Time is of the essence.”

  Cinq-Mars snapped off his cellular as though to emphasize the point and sped down streets that were relatively quiet, racing the cabbies answering radio calls. Ben’s was an all-night deli downtown. As always, the fifties-era venue was brightly lit, and Cinq-Mars chose the Poet’s Corner. All around the room, which was vast, hung the photographs of stars who had traveled through town. Lemmon and Matthau. Cole Porter and Sophia Loren. Movie stars, singers, comedians, from the vaudeville era to the present, a rogues’ gallery of the famous with their signatures and pat messages to the owners of Ben’s. Frank Sinatra. Bob Hope. In one alcove, the poets of the city had been granted space, so among the Hollywood stars hung the mugs of local scribblers. From here Cinq-Mars had a good view of the street through a wall of windows. He ordered eggs and sausage, toast and orange juice. He’d been running on caffeine and pumpkin pie for too long.

  Detective Mathers landed, looking as though he’d been roped with a cowboy’s lariat and dragged through the streets. He bumbled into the bright room, squinting, puzzled. Cinq-Mars feared that a waiter might escort the miscreant out when Alain Déguire bumped into his fellow officer from behind. He was unbuttoning his coat and doing up his shirt at the same time, and together the two dazed young men found Cinq-Mars and staggered over.

  “Sit,” Cinq-Mars advised. “Eat. This could be an interesting day.”

  Déguire seemed relieved that he could eat and drink before dashing off, while Mathers remained miffed about his interrupted sleep. They packed away a good breakfast, and Cinq-Mars plied himself with coffee and watched.

  “Alain,” he began, “you were the IO on the Kaplonski blowup.”

  “For a while. The Wolverines took it over.”

  �
��Before they did, you were involved. Did you find out who Kaplonski was visiting that evening?”

  “He was down at the University Club, near McGill.”

  “Since when is Kaplonski an academic? Was the bomb planted inside or outside the car?”

  “Inside. That seems to be the new biker style.”

  “Both gangs?”

  “Ah, no,” Déguire corrected himself. “The bomb inside the car makes it a Hell’s Angels’ blowup.”

  Mathers roused himself enough to ask a question. “What’s going on, Émile?”

  His senior ignored him. “Who was he visiting at the University Club? Or are you telling me Kaplonski had a degree?”

  “He and his wife had dinner with his lawyer.”

  “Gitteridge?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who checked the club?”

  “I went down myself,” Déguire said, “while I was still the investigating, before the Wolverines tossed me out.”

  “Good man. Do you know what’s significant for us about the University Club?” Cinq-Mars asked.

  “No. What?”

  “No indoor parking. None for blocks. You have to park on the street or in a small lot that’s usually full. The bad guys would’ve known that. Did Gitteridge and Kaplonski leave together?”

  “The staff said they didn’t. The doorman saw Gitteridge shake Kaplonski’s hand and kiss Mrs. Kaplonski on the cheek. He left later, five minutes or ten, nobody’s sure.”

  “What’s this about, Émile?” Mathers asked.

  Cinq-Mars raised both mighty eyebrows to remind his partner that he should know better than to ask direct questions when other people were present. “Alain,” Cinq-Mars decreed, “I’m going to give you an assignment. This is important, so I think you should take it as a sign that I like your face. Besides, you never would’ve told us about Christmas Eve if you’d known what was going down that night.”

  “What’d I tell you?” the confused officer asked.

  “You said LaPierre booked back on after booking off.”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “The fact that you don’t know is in your favor, Alain. You’re in the clear with me. I want you to understand that.”

  Déguire nodded. “I appreciate it, sir.”