City of Ice

by John Farrow

  “On Mountain Street, up the hill, down from Penfield, a wild-haired man is sitting in the back of a blue Subaru wagon. He’s keeping his eyes peeled on an underground parking garage. He’ll show you which one. I want you to relieve him. He’s a civilian, Alain, so don’t go getting cop-chatty with him.”

  With a grave earnestness, Déguire accepted his instructions. “What’re we looking for?”

  Cinq-Mars looked first at Mathers, to convey the warning that he had better keep his mouth shut this time if he knew what was good for him. “We’re waiting on a green Infiniti Q Forty-five. We don’t know if it’s in the garage and will be coming out, or if it’s already out and will be going back in. Either way, I want to know when it’s spotted. The guy in the Subaru will give you the plate number. If you see the car, call me on the cellular. No police communications. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. If he leaves?”

  “Follow him. He’s smart, he’s accustomed to slipping a tail. When you follow, call me immediately, then keep me apprised. I’ll be driving to find you.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else?”

  “Just this. Don’t be lax. You’re up against a professional. Everything you do, do smart. I’ll understand if this guy beats you, but don’t beat yourself, all right?”

  “Okay. Sir? What do we want him for?”

  “I’m not saying. I’m trusting you, Alain. I expect that trust to be reciprocal.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  Alain Déguire was off. Through the windows, Cinq-Mars and Mathers saw him cross to his personal vehicle, a Jimmy.

  “You’ve found your source?” Mathers asked, marveling.

  “Looks like. Bill, until now you’ve been the only one who deals with Jim Coates. That just changed. Take me to him.”

  “My car or yours?”

  “I’m driving an issue. Let’s burn city gas.”

  On the drive, Bill Mathers was briefed on his partner’s meeting with Garo Boghossian and the news about the Q45. He was not brought up to speed on what Cinq-Mars intended to cover in the meeting with Jim Coates. “Play it by ear” was the best the senior detective would allow. A false dawn illuminated the east in the rearview mirror, shepherding a cold front that crossed the island and transformed water-covered roadways into skating rinks.

  “You been to bed at all?” Mathers asked Cinq-Mars.

  “Not lately.”

  “Things not going so well at home?”

  “Things are fine at home, not that it’s any concern of yours. Some cops just do what it takes to get the job done, and I happen to be one of them.”

  “Some cops take a whole day off to contemplate the breeze” was Mathers’s riposte, thinking of yesterday and trying to get his partner to crack a smile. He guided him through the tough municipality of Verdun, and they followed a canal out to Lachine. The city was named for the rapids nearby, for an early explorer believed that if he shot them successfully he would land in la Chine, French for China. “Next corner, left, then park.”

  Stepping out of the car, both men were astounded by how swiftly the temperature had dropped. They had to watch their footing as they crossed the glare ice to Jim Coates’s new apartment building.

  “Good location, Bill,” Cinq-Mars praised him. “A boy like Jim fits into a neighborhood like this.”

  Mathers rang the buzzer according to a code the two of them had worked out. They were getting Coates up and had to wait for his response. He was on the fifth floor this time, and they went up in the elevator and found the boy standing in his doorway in his underwear wondering if his world was about to end.

  “Put your pants on, son,” Cinq-Mars told him as he barged into the apartment, thinking that he should have told LaPierre the same thing. “We want to talk to you.”

  While the boy dressed, Cinq-Mars went around the apartment turning on lights. He grabbed a straightback chair, plunked it down in the center of the bare living room, and indicated for Coates to sit in it when he emerged. In a twinkling, he had transformed the apartment into an interrogation chamber.

  Having no idea what was going on, Mathers made himself comfortable on the sofa at the boy’s back while Cinq-Mars paced in front of him. He seemed to be fuming, building up steam. Finally, he put his hands on his knees and leaned down into the boy’s face.

  “Are you telling me it was jealousy?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t say what, Jimmy. Say, pardon me? Or let me know that you don’t understand the question.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Are you telling me, Jimmy boy, that you were jealous of Hagop Artinian and that’s why you turned him over to Kaplonski? Now you think about how you answer me, son, because I’m going to think about your reply.”

  Jim Coates squirmed on the hard chair. He was still half asleep. “Yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, Hagop had everything. He got time off, the easy assignments, he went to lunch with the boss. On top of that, I mean, he was a university guy. He was getting an education. Always I had to do the shitwork and get yelled at, and what did I have to look forward to? Hagop had it all.”

  “So you were jealous of him?”

  “I guess so. Sort of.”

  “Did you know he had plenty of girlfriends? Girls loved him, Jimmy, what do you think about that?”

  “Nothing. I’m not surprised.”

  “Does it make you jealous?”

  Coates didn’t know if he should say. “Hagop’s dead,” he whispered.

  “You can’t be jealous of a dead man, is that it?”

  He nodded to indicate that that was true.

  “Tell me something, Jimmy. How did it feel to be jealous of Hagop Artinian? Did it rot your socks? Did you think about him half your waking hours? Was it like being in love, Jimmy, like you didn’t have a brain of your own, all you could do was think about the other person? I really want to know.”

  The boy had to consider his response, and Cinq-Mars gave him time. “I used to think about him. Not all the time. Not so much. Once in a while.”

  “During these moments, Jimmy, would you get into a rage? Think evil things? Would you dream about punching him out, something like that?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. Nothing serious,” the boy said.

  “You ever dream about killing him?”

  “I didn’t kill Hagop!” Coates objected. “Jesus!”

  Cinq-Mars stared at him intently, motionless. “We’ll take it one question at a time, son. Did you ever dream about killing him?”

  Coates squirmed and uttered stressful sighs and twisted his body around to shake things loose. Mathers was equally focused on Cinq-Mars himself. He could not clearly discern whether his partner was possessed or whether the ferocity of his determination was an act, put on for the boy’s sake. He could not figure out where this line of inquiry might lead, why he was tilling soil that had been plowed before.

  “Yeah, okay, so I used to wish maybe something bad would happen to him. Not all the time. Just once in a while if I was pissed off or something like that. What’s the big deal? He’d be working under a car and I’d wish maybe the car would fall on him. Okay? So what?”

  “Jimmy, so what? The boy’s dead! You wished him dead and now he’s dead. Now, Jimmy, you can’t live your life unless you confess. You know that’s true. You can’t live with this thing on your shoulders. You knew, when you squealed to Kaplonski, that something bad would happen to Hagop. You knew you weren’t dealing with Boy Scouts. Talk had gone around the garage. Your own eyes were open. Nobody’s ever called you blind. Jimmy, you knew that Kaplonski and his pals were people nobody crossed. You had that on your mind. Talking to Kaplonski was no different than having a car fall on Hagop’s head, isn’t that right? You knew that.”

  The boy’s chest cracked. “I didn’t—think—they’d kill him.”

  “Maybe not so clearly. But, Jimmy, you knew you were running the risk, didn’t you?” Cinq-Mars was speaking softly now, coaxing the confession out of him. “You imagi
ned they’d beat him to a pulp. Maybe he’d survive that, maybe not. You were willing to take the risk. In your imagination you knew it was possible that somebody might get teed off enough to shoot him. These were people like that. You knew who you were working for, didn’t you, Jimmy? Be brave. You have to be brave here. Look at me.”

  The boy sat with his body shaking and his head slung low, and Mathers, behind him, knew those eyes would be flooded with tears, that the boy was veering close to his core.

  “You knew, didn’t you? After you got the information from Hagop, all you could think about was being a snitch. You didn’t want to do it because you’re a good kid, but it was on your mind, gnawing at you, eating you up inside. You were so damn jealous you didn’t care what it meant to poor Hagop. You didn’t think about that. You just thought from your rage, from your savage envy, from your conviction it wasn’t fair that someone should have so much when everything was so hard for you. Isn’t that right?”

  From his back, Mathers could see the boy nodding, giving in. “I guess so,” he whispered.

  “You don’t want to be jealous anymore, do you, Jimmy? You want to put it behind you. You want to get on with your life, be a proper man, someone people respect. That’s the kind of man you want to be, isn’t it, Jimmy? To do that you have to get rid of the jealousy part, and then the guilt for what you did. That’s your enemy. Take what life gives you and earn the rest. Right, Jimmy? There’s no point being envious of someone else, it’ll only destroy you. You know that now.”

  The boy had slumped forward, the ache inside bending him double. Cinq-Mars rested a peaceful hand upon his shoulder and let him weep. After a minute he pulled the boy’s shoulders back so that he was sitting upright again.

  “Listen, Jim. You told us about the Russian, and that’s good. But I want you to think back to that night. Clean yourself up inside, you have nothing left to hide. Cast your mind back to the night the Russian was in the garage. This was after you told Kaplonski. You were sweeping up, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were trying to hear what was said. You had to be. You’d squealed and now Hagop was going to be punished and you wanted to know exactly what they’d do to him.”

  “I couldn’t hear much.”

  “You wanted to hear, though. You left the door open a crack. I know that because we can hear your broom on a tape. You were doing your best to listen in. It’s okay if you didn’t hear it all, we’ve got that conversation taped. But we need your eyes, Jimmy, to confirm a few things. Through the glass that separates the drive bays from the office area you could see the Russian, am I right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “Kaplonski was there.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “No.”

  “Did he drive a car inside?”

  Coates shook his head.

  “Pay attention. Think back. It was cold weather. The snow was piled up against the curb, parking space was at a premium, especially on a night like that when everybody was staying home. Did the Russian drive a car inside?”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  “Did you hear a car outside with the motor running?”

  The boy thought hard. “He had a car outside. I don’t remember the motor running.”

  “Good. Now. How do you know he had a car outside? Maybe he took a cab.”

  “Just before he left, he told me to tell his driver to bring the car up. I had to go outside and wave at him.”

  “You did that? Did you see the driver, Jim?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “It was dark. He didn’t come in. All I did was wave and he started the car.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Nothing. He didn’t get out. The car was ordinary.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged again. “An American car. Big. GM or Ford.”

  “Come over to the window, Jim.”

  Mathers got up and accompanied the other two. More dawn light was showing, and the streetlamps provided adequate illumination in this neighborhood. Just then, Cinq-Mars’s cellular started ringing.

  “Yeah?” he asked. He listened a moment. Then he said, “Hold on, will you? Just hold on.”

  He held the phone in his hand by his side, and with his other hand he grasped Jim Coates by the elbow. “Look at the cars parked outside, Jim. Tell me which one most closely resembles the car you saw that night.”

  The boy surveyed the block. “That one there,” he said, and pointed.

  Coates had chosen the unmarked police cruiser in which Cinq-Mars and Mathers had arrived.

  “Know your enemy, Jim,” Cinq-Mars said quietly. “Your particular enemy was jealousy and now it’s guilt, and like everyone else your enemy is yourself. Know your enemy and kick its butt. You can do that now, son. You’ve met yourself tonight. You didn’t give up Hagop just because you wanted to be the apple of Kaplonski’s bloodshot eye. You gave him up because you wanted a car to fall on your friend’s head. You knew exactly what you were doing. You’ve seen that now. Now you know yourself. That’s your one chance to set yourself free. Take it.”

  The boy turned back away from the window and moved to an armchair, where he collapsed in exhaustion and misery.

  “Yeah?” Cinq-Mars said into the phone again. He listened awhile. “What?” he shouted. Then yelled louder, “What?” He listened another moment and hollered the loudest yet, “What? All right. Give me that address.” Cinq-Mars extracted a notebook and pen and wrote a number while cradling the phone between his shoulder and ear. “All right. You stay put. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Déguire?” Mathers asked after his partner had put away the phone.

  “Civilian. We’ve got to run, Jimmy. Will you be all right?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Good lad. Just so you know, I’m betting on you. Let’s go, Bill.”

  When they reached the hall they heard the elevator in use. Cinq-Mars had no patience to wait. “The stairs!” he exclaimed, and started off at a run. Jogging behind him, Mathers was already fearing the slippery streets ahead with this gung ho maniac behind the wheel.

  17

  Thursday, January 20, after dawn

  The city’s mechanical wizardry combated successive blizzards of snow and prevailed every time. Ice proved to be a more competitive adversary. As traffic increased, the streets jammed with immobile cars, expressways resembled parking lots, and the hilly streets downtown became impassable. Salt trucks sat motionless in the gridlock as the temperature sank and sirens wailed across the graying dawn. The system had broken down. The only responsible weapons were prudence and patience, and on this morning Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars possessed neither in adequate measure, pushing his unmarked car hard while the headlights flashed in alternate sequence and a blue beacon pulsed from the rooftop. He leaned on the horn, resorted to the siren once, and fought his way downtown.

  They drove on, and he climbed Guy Street, where cars had failed to manage the steep slope in either direction and city buses ascended or descended by increments. Pedestrians emerging from their high-rises hung on to lampposts or fell. At the top of the hill, where the massive Montreal General Hospital stood like a castle overlooking the city, ambulances wove through stalled traffic. Lights flashing, Cinq-Mars wheeled across both sides of the road to pick his way through the checker-board of vehicles and made a hard right on Wilder Penfield. Here the high-rises took advantage of being on a mountainside and were especially tall, overlooking downtown. Access was via steep streets only, and few cars had made it through, giving Cinq-Mars clear passage. He sped quickly. At Mountain Street he stopped abruptly and told Mathers to jump out, join Detective Déguire halfway down the hill.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What part of that didn’t you understand?”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Tick, tock, Bill. No time for chitchat. Relieve Déguire. Le
t him take a whiz. Keep a close watch. I don’t want this guy slipping through our fingers.”

  “Émile, come on, nobody drives a Q Forty-five on a day like today. It’s asking to get pranged. If he has someplace to go he’ll either walk or cab it.”

  “Watch anyway. We’re not dealing with just anybody. If he leaves, tail him.”

  “Émile—”

  “In case you’re wondering, that’s an order.”

  Reluctantly, Mathers stepped out of the car and promptly fell on his derriere. He shimmied into a snowbank.

  “You all right?” Cinq-Mars called to him. The side door remained open.

  Mathers thought about it. He had been awakened prematurely, commanded to be downtown. He’d witnessed an interrogation which demonstrated that his own had not been sufficiently vigorous. He was now being delegated to wait in a car with an officer he didn’t much like on a mission that looked like a huge waste of time, and in the meantime he was sitting with his ass on ice. Both wrists ached, his tail-bone felt bruised, but he was not about to seek his partner’s sympathy. “I’m fine,” Mathers grumbled. Struggling to his feet, he slammed the door shut.

  “Same to you,” Cinq-Mars said to no one in particular as he bolted back onto Penfield. Where the one-way avenue curved upward around McGill University, a bus had slid sideways into an old Beetle. Uniforms were on the scene, and Cinq-Mars employed his siren to clear spectators out of his way. Once through, he had to contend only with ice, as his was the lone car on the road all the way up to Pine and down to Park.

  He drove with reckless intent.

  East of downtown, he was working against the main flow of traffic, which provided him with roads less traveled and, consequently, better salted. He drove fast and turned off his emergency lights only as he neared his destination. Working people had left, leaving a selection of parking spots, and Cinq-Mars checked the address he’d gotten over the phone while in Jim Coates’s apartment. He exercised more caution getting out of the car than he had driving it and skated on ice to the door. He rang the bell.

  Okinder Boyle came down the inside stairs to let him in.