by John Farrow
The place was run-down, smelly. The stench of old meals hung in the stairwell. Plaster had been gouged from the walls as if tenants periodically pulled tantrums, and a quick glimpse confirmed that the spray paint of graffiti offered nothing of interest—the usual sexual and racial slurs and inept rage.
“She’s here?”
“Upstairs,” Boyle told him.
“She understands? She’s willing?”
“LaPierre’s not her favorite guy. Which helps a lot. She seems willing, Émile, but she doesn’t want to make trouble for herself.”
“She’s already got trouble.”
“I gave her my word. I’m trusting you. Don’t let her down.”
“Let’s head up.”
Boyle opened the door for Cinq-Mars on the second landing as though he’d been living there a fortnight, guiding him into an unkempt, filthy, dark apartment. They stepped around clumps of unwashed clothes. Alone on a lumpy sofa in the living room, the girl wore jeans and a green shirt now, unlike at their first meeting.
“I’m Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars.” He flashed his hip badge. “Do you remember me?”
“You were at André’s last night. You had a peek, I remember that. Then you went snooping in his closet.”
“You’re not going to mention that again, are you?” he asked sternly.
She reached across to the arm of the sofa and retrieved a pack of smokes and her lighter, selected one, and lit up, studying him through the smoke. “That you was in his closet or gave my muff an eyeball?”
“That I was there at all.”
The girl had hard eyes and a determined slant to her chin. She’d known a measure of depravity through her teenage years, although her youth showed through the crust. Part of her persona was an act, the larger portion was composed of a bitterness that could not be faked and was impossible to conceal. She shrugged. “I got no need.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lise,” she said.
“Lise Sauvé,” Boyle added quietly.
“Are you using, Lise?”
“He said it didn’t matter.” She indicated the journalist with her chin.
“I’m just asking the question. I need to determine what sort of witness you’ll make.”
“I won’t be no witness.”
“No?” Cinq-Mars asked.
“I’ll whore for me, I ain’t gonna whore for no law.”
She sounded as though she was quoting someone. “Trouble is, that’s what we’re asking you to do, isn’t it?” he suggested gently.
The girl thought about that a moment. “You want me to spread my cheeks for medical science, I’ll spread my cheeks. But I ain’t gonna open my yap on no witness stand. For sure, not for the law.”
That didn’t sound like a quote, but like her own truth, her own definition of limits.
Cinq-Mars was weary enough that he would not have minded a seat. Disinclined to touch anything on the premises, he remained standing. “This young man has told me that you’re willing to make a donation to our cause. That you have something I can use. You’re willing to give it up voluntarily, and write down that you did so voluntarily. Is that right, Lise?”
“A donation?” She almost cracked a smile. “Now that’s a word for it. Yeah, I’m willing to donate. Ain’t good for nothing else, is it? Not where it’s hanging out. A donation. I like that. I don’t want no trouble out of this, that’s all.”
“You won’t get any from me, Lise. How long’s it been?”
She shrugged. Boyle answered, “Less than two hours now.”
“I wasn’t asking you,” Cinq-Mars told him.
The girl shrugged again and asked, “What’s it matter?”
“I want to ascertain that it’s one hundred percent pure. I don’t want a mixture, if you know what I mean.”
“I got a fresh batch,” she told him, smiling now, trying not to, poking her tongue into the side of her mouth.
“All right. You want to get your stuff on, we’ll go. When’s your next fix?”
“I can make it to eleven, twelve if I got to.”
“You holding?”
“André took care of that.”
“André’s your pal.”
“Oh yeah. He’s my guardian angel. He’s a charmer.”
Downstairs they helped one another across the ice on the sidewalk and made it over to the police issue. “Want me to drive your car back?” Boyle asked him.
“On ice? I don’t think so. You can come with us.”
The girl slid in the back alone, and Boyle clambered into the front. She noticed the absence of window and door handles. “Crack-up, I’m stuck here.”
“I got skates on my tires, Lise. I was born driving on ice.”
Cinq-Mars alone spoke on the journey downtown, talking into a cell phone to Dr. Marc Wynett, a pathologist at the Royal Victoria. He told him what he wanted, and Boyle shook his head as though he could not believe the indignities that some people suffered to stay alive. He shook his head again when Cinq-Mars typed up a document at the hospital and passed it across for Lise to sign. Boyle read it first. He leaned over her shoulder and had a little trouble with the French but deduced both the gist and the implications.
“You’ve got it wrong,” Cinq-Mars whispered to him. “This keeps her alive.”
“But if she dies, you’ve got that contingency covered.”
“That’s my job,” the detective reminded him.
“It’s not mine,” Boyle said, and he walked away while Cinq-Mars read his copy aloud to Lise Sauvé. She signed without protest and a minute later was called in to see the pathologist.
“It’s a grim world,” Cinq-Mars told the journalist.
“Is that some kind of justification?”
“The girl wants to do it.”
“Just because that’s true doesn’t make it right.”
“It has to be done.”
The journalist went over to the water fountain for a drink. He came back and sat on the bench beside the policeman, whose arms were folded on his chest.
“There are times,” Boyle said, “when you want to be on the side of those who get kicked around in life. Sometimes you kick them around a little yourself, and you think you’re doing them a favor, that you got to kick them around to keep them in line, that the line is good for them. In my book, Émile, just because something is necessary doesn’t make it right.”
The detective nodded. “I think that’s true, Okinder. Keep thinking that way. You’ve got a job to do and it’s not mine. I’ve got a job to do and it’s not yours.”
“Someday, when it’s safe, maybe I’ll do a story on her. I’ll mention today. You won’t come out of it smelling like a sweet petunia.”
“Neither will you,” Cinq-Mars mused.
“I’m complicit. I don’t deny that.”
Cinq-Mars looked sideways at him. He respected this young man a lot.
They waited in the dreary alcove, and Wynett was the first to emerge. Sticking his head through the swinging door, he chirped, “Prime sample,” and disappeared again, as though he’d rather not be party to the procedure either. When Lise Sauvé eventually returned, she seemed surprised to find them still there. She was accustomed to being dropped off at hospitals and found it novel that someone would actually wait around.
“Now what? You gonna arrest me for something?”
“I’m driving you home.”
“At least if a cop car cracks up we got a radio.”
“I’ll walk home,” Boyle announced.
“So do I get to sit in front?” Lise wanted to know.
“Will you keep your hands off the siren?” Cinq-Mars asked her.
“Sure.”
The solemn eagerness of her response made him smile. “What about the radio?”
“No problem.”
“The shotgun?”
“I hate guns.”
“Fine. You’ll sit up front.”
“All right,” Lise declared. She s
eemed really pleased. “All right.”
She was seventeen they’d found out, exactly the age Cinq-Mars had guessed, but he was thinking that, in the quiet of her heart, in the depths of that cubbyhole, she was stuck at around seven.
Detective Bill Mathers enjoyed a special fondness for meticulous police work, asking questions, piecing together bits of evidence, working down a chain of witnesses to find the crook holding the bag and wearing a scared, half-crazed gape induced by crack and fear. Grown tired of arresting juveniles for adult crimes, he had wanted out of the suburbs. He’d rather arrest crooks than brats. You could have a conversation with a crook. What he liked about police work was asking the right questions, what he didn’t like was sitting in a cramped car exchanging asides with a man with whom he had nothing in common and who didn’t want to be there either, who had also been awakened prematurely.
“Got much cash on you, Alain?”
Detective Déguire fished out his wallet and counted forty bucks in tens and fives.
“I’ve got fifteen,” Mathers told him. “Put in thirty-five of yours to my fifteen, we’re up to an even fifty. Sounds like a fair-sized bribe to me.”
“Hey, Bill, I don’t want any trouble with your partner.”
Mathers held out his hand, flicking the fingers into his palm. “Come on,” he said. “Fork it over.”
“Who’re you bribing?”
“I’m going in.”
Déguire looked across at the building. He was no less bored with this detail than Mathers. “As far as I’m concerned it’s your money, your action. You’re doing this over my objections.”
“Cough up.”
Pockets flush, Mathers climbed out of the car and sidestepped his way down the slippery slope to the apartment building, finding good traction only as he crossed the recently salted street. He had his eye on the doorman in the heavy woolen overcoat with the gold braid epaulets and the peaked cap who greeted visitors with a smile and sent residents on their way with a cheerful word of caution about the footing. Doormen were bribable, weren’t they?
As he got close, he got lucky. The subterranean garage door opened, and he waited to see who was coming out. Rather than a vehicle, the janitor and an assistant emerged with buckets of salt they spread across the incline by hand. Mathers strolled down that hill, not bothering with the front door. He believed he was home free, striding past the janitor and the assistant, who said hello, making it to the door, when a loud baritone interrupted his progress. He looked up at the doorman gazing down upon his wretched trespassing soul.
“Excuse me, sir?” the man said. The god of this dominion, a defender. “May I help you?” Politeness was inherent to the man’s position. The tone and words conveyed a more explicit thrust—who are you and what do you want, scumbag?
Mathers knew that if he blew this one Cinq-Mars would have his hide tacked to a barn door in a countryside where real wolverines prowled. Reaching inside his coat, he unclipped and flashed his hip shield. “Police,” Mathers stated with some force of his own. “We’re investigating a hit-and-run, checking garages in the downtown area.” Beats a bribe, he thought, which had potential to backfire besides being difficult to afford. “Shouldn’t be too long,” he added.
“What kind of car?” the doorman demanded, choosing to exercise authority.
Mathers considered the premises. “An Audi,” he said.
The doorman nodded. “We have a couple. But none of our tenants would ever leave the scene of an accident.”
“You know that? We figure the driver was inebriated. I suppose your tenants don’t drink either.”
Most toddled home tipsy. The man acknowledged as much with a slight nod. In moving away he neither granted nor denied access, and inside Mathers moved quickly to meld with the gloom of the garage.
The first thing that struck him was that all parking spaces were assigned apartment numbers. Stall 2301 was home to a green Infiniti Q45. He copied the plate number and knew he should get back outside and report. But he headed for the elevators. Mathers continued to be bothered by the Coates interview. Cinq-Mars had pushed the boy deeper and farther than he had done, and he was the one who was supposed to be adept with young people. He had blown it. Cinq-Mars had had the advantage of knowing what he was after, yet the fact remained that Mathers had failed to get everything out of him. What upset him more was that Cinq-Mars was obviously on to something and was shutting him out of the spree. Didn’t the old man trust him? Okay, if Cinq-Mars wanted to keep him outside of things that was his privilege. For his part, he’d also act on his own. Mathers ascended to the twenty-third floor and stepped off the lift.
This was an affluent zone. Mathers was dumbfounded to discover that no corridor existed, only a small landing fronting twin doors. These apartments would be immense. He listened at the door of 2301 and heard no sound, and nothing at the opposite address either. The carpet was thick, the doors heavy. An illuminated buzzer was beside each door. Mathers was tempted beyond his better judgment. He pressed one, setting off a musical chime. Cinq-Mars will kill me. He swung around and pressed the button beside the opposite apartment as well.
Then waited for someone to answer.
Footsteps approached 2301.
Bill Mathers kept his back to that door.
It opened behind him. He turned, threw up his hands, and apologized. “I’m sorry, sir. I goofed. Rang the wrong bell by mistake.”
The gentleman was neatly attired for the hour. Graying, with a high, narrow forehead, prominent cheekbones, and a sharp nose. His eyes were unwavering, at once reproachful and intrigued. The eyebrows were thin.
“Who’d you want to see?” he asked.
Mathers gestured with his finger, turning. “Twenty-three oh-two,” he said.
“Who,” the man asked, “in twenty-three oh-two?”
His hand still upraised, Mathers did a quick inventory of his options. He offered a conciliatory smile. “I’m toast, aren’t I?”
The man did not reply and chose to cross his hands in front of him, tilting his head as though to more acutely observe him.
“I don’t know who’s in twenty-three oh-two,” Mathers admitted.
“That’s not surprising, given that the apartment is unoccupied.”
With a laugh, Mathers brought his hands apart, then back together again. “It’s you I’ve come to see.”
“Think so? Who do you think I am?”
Mathers scratched his forehead. “Beats me.” He sighed. “I don’t know who you are, sir, but I think—I’m pretty sure—I’m willing to lay even money—that Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars would like to talk to you.”
The man had good eyes, Mathers noticed. They didn’t flinch, they didn’t break the connection.
“You are?” the man asked.
“Mathers, sir.”
The man tugged an earlobe. “I’ve heard good things about you, Mathers.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They stood in the quiet of the foyer, the elevator’s gentle whir the only attendant sound. “If the illustrious detective Émile Cinq-Mars would like to speak to me, Detective Mathers, I suggest that he drop by. Since you now know where I live, he’s welcome to do so. You can tell him I said so.”
The man moved to close the door on their conversation.
“Ah, sir?” Mathers asked.
The man paused to listen.
“If I lose you, sir, if you were to vanish, Émile would have my scalp. Would you mind if I made the call from inside?”
The question was considered in silence a moment. “Detective, I do. As to your quandary, it’s yours, not mine. Rest assured, I’m not about to run off like some petty criminal on the lam. If Cinq-Mars wants to talk to me, he knows where to find me. As far as your anxiety goes, I couldn’t care less.” He shut the door.
Mathers hit the elevator button. A building like this had to have a fire exit, and a man like him would only live in a place he could escape. A service elevator! Yes! Straight up from the
basement for groceries and tradesmen and movers. The elevator door opened, and he pressed the button for the garage.
Mathers bounced lightly on the floor as though to speed the car’s fall.
He was running the instant the door opened. Mathers spotted the doorman spy him and hurry along behind. Going past the dumbwaiter, he heard it before he saw it. The gizmo was in motion. He put his arm straight out with his badge in the doorman’s face. “Go,” he said. “Leave.”
“Sir! I am sorry. What is your business here?”
He brought his hand to his side, switched the badge for his pistol, and pointed that at the doorman. “East of Aldgate,” he told him, inexplicably. This time the man backed off in a rush.
The dumbwaiter stopped, rocking under a load. The doors were shut, but he saw the latch being turned from the inside. Some exit. Mathers stood aside. The two hinged doors swung open from the middle. Mathers stepped back in front. Before him, curled in a serpentine pattern, was the gentleman from the twenty-third floor. His spine was steeply curved, his head between his knees to fit himself into the cramped quarters. He was sitting on his coat.
“Undignified,” Mathers suggested to him. “Completely without class.”
“Hell, it was worth a try,” the man said.
“You have more to hide than I know about.”
“Help me out of here, Detective. Be a sport.”
“This could work as a holding pen.”
“It’s the only trick I had. Okay, so it didn’t work, but it’s not your place to rub it in.”
Mathers needed him on his feet and mobile. He frisked him where he sat cramped in a ball. No weapon. “Crawl out of there on your own,” he ordered. “Give me the slightest provocation and I’ll shoot.”
“What’s happening?” the doorman fretted. “Is that you, Mr. Norris? May I be of some assistance?”
“You’re asking the wrong person,” Mathers warned him. “Go outside. Look up the hill. Put your hands over your head and wave them like a maniac. Either do that or I’ll stuff you in this hole and send you up to the penthouse.”
The man was not easily dissuaded from his sense of duty.
“Do as he says, Hamilton,” the man called Norris advised him. “I’ll be fine.”