City of Ice

by John Farrow

  “Message. My legs,” she said. “A deformity. Gitteridge knows. Send it.”

  Arthur again nodded. His fingers were nimble upon the keys. Julia looked at the screen. Nothing he typed appeared. The screen was a mask.

  “Neat,” she said. “Daddy, be aware. Malicious malalignment—it might mean we’ve been discovered.” He nodded before breaking off their mutual gaze. Julia arose to receive the coffee and sandwich being offered by Jean-Guy.

  Intent on a cafeteria bologna sandwich despite the thinness of the meat and the tasteless bread, Émile Cinq-Mars had his break interrupted in the officers’ lounge by Captain Gilles Beaubien. “Émile, a word, please, my office.”

  “Sir, I’m swamped, really.”

  “A word, Émile.” The man was always willing to pull rank over pragmatic concerns. He was already walking away, and the irritated detective wolfed down his lunch while he tagged along.

  He followed the captain past a fleet of secretarial desks made vacant by the lunch hour, into his sumptuous office. Cinq-Mars sat in one of two chairs facing the broad, mahogany desk while Beaubien elected to stand, hands tucked in his trouser pockets, his jacket open, stomach humped over his belt as he gazed upon the city. “I’m in a pickle,” he confided. Half the time Beaubien spoke in that silly manner.

  “What’s on your mind?” Cinq-Mars had never been summoned to a meeting with Beaubien from which he did not retreat with more unnecessary work upon his shoulders and a reduced will to tackle it.

  The man played with the coins in his pocket. The gravity of his present mood was rare, perhaps unprecedented, and Cinq-Mars grew interested. “They come at you when you don’t expect them, Émile, when you’re not looking. They’re standing in front of you and you can’t recognize their faces.”

  Cinq-Mars classified the man’s words as a preamble to confession. First, the excuse for the sin is bequeathed, chewed upon, presented. Then the inviolability of the sin is addressed, its magnitude, the ruthless stalking of a vulnerable victim. Finally, the confession itself is released to the light of day.

  “Things seem simple enough at first,” Beaubien soldiered on. “One morning, you change a tire on the freeway coming into work. You grumble about it over coffee. Somebody asks if you want the old tire repaired. You give the man a look. He shrugs. It’s no big deal. A tire. I’m a policeman, I need good tires, I often wear down my tires in the service of the city. What can it hurt?”

  Beaubien gave his sergeant-detective a quick glance, to see how he was taking this. Cinq-Mars offered neither loathing nor sympathy. Like a psychiatrist solemn in his chair, he waited to hear more. Like a priest mute in his confessional, he anticipated the deeper fabric of repentance.

  “Your car comes back. The blowout ruptured a sidewall, there’s no hope for repair. One tire can’t be replaced by itself, it’s dangerous to drive with unequal tread. Consequently, you have two new tires. You ask, how much? The guy gives you a shrug, a smile. It’s no big deal. There’s no bill and nobody cares.”

  The man was nodding now, as though the murky had at last cleared. “Nothing comes of it. One day you need a repair in a tight month, there’re other expenses, and this is the difference—this time you seek the guy out yourself. Your car gets repaired. There’s no bill. What’s the harm? What damage has been done? None, really, except this time they want a small favor in return. An infinitesimal favor. It’s nothing. How can you refuse someone who’s shown you kindness? A felon looking at thirty days, max, gets off because his prints were wiped from a stolen VCR. So many perps, who cares about a B & E?”

  He could no longer stand, the burdens were intensifying. Gilles Beaubien sat down, folded his hands, and stared at a space on his desk between them.

  “They do more favors for you. Help with your career. Provide information that gives you an edge. You, Émile, especially you, you have contacts. Everybody knows that. You accept information. Not only you, not just me—every detective has contacts, every cop is willing to receive information on consignment. You mention in passing that you are up for promotion but so-and-so will get the nod. Two days later, so-and-so has a black mark printed against his record, a reprimand in his file. Little is asked of you. So much is granted.

  “You learn one day that your credit card limit has been increased, that the limit will be paid on your behalf every six months, no questions asked. But you ask questions anyway. You protest. You say, I don’t want this, I didn’t ask for this, I don’t accept money. No one’s listening. Every six months five thousand dollars is paid into your credit card account whether you have a debit or not. You do not give it back, there’s no one to give the money back to. No one calls. No one makes a request of you. Finally, you just accept. Money is paid. It doesn’t matter. No big deal. You are not the first cop with a blemish and you won’t be the last. Besides, you’ve done nothing to help the other side, nothing of significance. Your own side has no use for you. Fellow officers laugh at you. What do you owe them? Loyalty? Ethics? No one respects you. You owe the department bugger all.”

  Cinq-Mars folded his arms across his chest, wondered if he hadn’t gone through a similar experience. Was the only difference between himself and Gilles Beaubien the accident that he, Cinq-Mars, had responded to the overtures of the CIA, and allowed himself to be sucked in, while Beaubien had been victimized by the Hell’s Angels? He didn’t think so on first perusal, but the argument could be made.

  “Then one day, a day you knew would come, you’re invited to a meeting. You’re asked to supersede the Promotions Committee. You have the power to do that under special circumstances, and you don’t have to explain yourself. A young man is given his shield, the rank of detective, and assigned to be Émile Cinq-Mars’s partner. You’re thinking that now you know how Émile does it, that he takes favors from the bad guys, that he must be a dirty cop himself to make all those busts, that someday you’ll expose him as the dirtiest cop of all.”

  Cinq-Mars could not keep his silence here. “Was Normand Lajeunesse dirty, or just being used?”

  Beaubien squirmed around on his rear as though bound to his chair by invisible restraints. Cinq-Mars guessed that he didn’t have to go through the theatrics to come up with a reply. That he knew the answer.

  First, the excuse is proffered. “I didn’t know, Émile, what they intended.” Then the inevitability of the action is recorded, as though all errors of judgment and deficiencies of character had been ordained by fate itself. “The wheels were in motion, I was only a pawn.” Finally, the sin itself is broached. “Normand didn’t know you were bringing your buddies along on that play. His job was to let you take him into the warehouse where he’d shoot you dead. This I found out later. He couldn’t, not with your arsenal backing you up. He always makes it sound like he didn’t know your friends were along, but he detected them, Émile, before he went in. He was calling it off. What he didn’t know was that the other side had a sniper in the rafters to take him out if he turned color. They were probably going to burn him anyway. A cop killing a cop takes the edge off the killing, keeps the bikers out of it, keeps the Wolverines at bay.”

  Cinq-Mars had other matters to discuss, queries, ploys, but first he needed to know where Beaubien intended to go with this. The captain hadn’t finished his speech.

  “Now you know that you’re in deep. Everything got botched, a cop was shot. A bulletproof vest protected him—you tell yourself, he was a dirty cop anyway—but a cop was shot. You tell your voices you want out. You tell them you’ve done more than they ever should’ve asked. They issue threats, say they’ll reveal you, ruin you, so you back off the hard talk. You strike a deal. You make them promise they’ll never ask such a terrible thing of you again. They promise. With evil men, now, you are making pacts.”

  Neither prodding nor discouraging him, Cinq-Mars merely waited. The man had gotten himself into what he called a pickle, he was damn well on his own. He had acquitted himself with an excuse, now he was prepared to embark upon the eminence of his crim
e, not to revile the crime but to glorify it, to declare that the combined forces of the world could not have stood ground against the tyranny.

  “Émile, what can I do? I say no, I will not accept your gifts, and they describe my daughters to me. They tell me about the schools they attend, the names of their teachers, the color of the car their ballet instructor drives, how their best friends wear their hair. They tell me the names of my daughters’ hamsters and goldfish. They will kill my daughters, Émile. They snip the buttons off my wife’s blouse while she’s taking a nap in the afternoon, in our own house, and they send them to me in a small black box meant to look like a coffin. They are everywhere, they know everything, they are ruthless, they are not human, they mock the idea of mercy. Émile, they say to me, from your lips to our ears. Then I know that I am alone. I can’t talk to anybody. Who will save me? If I bring up the matter in the department, my children don’t make it home from school. My wife goes shopping and the car blows up.”

  “You should have spoken to the boss.”

  “I did. At last. I told him that if he kept me on suspension the chance of my children surviving to their next birthday was negligible.”

  “Ah,” Cinq-Mars said.

  “Émile, now I’m speaking to you. I need you to save me. Director Gervais can give me back my job, or what looks like my job, but he cannot remove the enemies from my house. Émile. Please. Help me.”

  Cinq-Mars shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “Émile! Please! You want me to beg you?”

  The detective leaned forward, his forearms resting comfortably on his knees. “Tell me why you are talking to me now, Gilles. Without that, I will not help you.” He swiftly raised a finger to interrupt whatever his senior was about to say. “The truth, Gilles. No stories.”

  The large man sighed. “I have nothing to give you, Émile. I’ve been told that soon I will have more room to maneuver.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I always complain to them that my hands are tied. They have decided to undo the knots. I don’t know, Émile—I don’t know—but I believe they intend to remove one or more police officers. I have the impression that they are prepared to kill us again, like they were when Lajeunesse was assigned the job. This time, I don’t think they’ll miss. I can’t be sure, but I think you’re the target. They botched it the first time, of course they’re going to try again. These people don’t give up. Émile, Émile, my heart’s weak. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t sleep. I can’t be calm. I need your help. I’m not so dirty, Émile, I’m not that dirty! But I’m in this situation, I’m having this trouble, I can only talk to you. Anyone else, it’s from my mouth to their ears.”

  Cinq-Mars nodded solemnly. Eventually he stood, moved toward the door. Turning back, he said, “I’m not going to my grave worrying about you. Remember that if I die, you’re on your own. Until then, you will cooperate with those in contact with you. Play along. You will also inform me of everything that passes between you and them. Leave nothing out. If you are tempted to leave something out, the lives of your daughters are on your head. For now, that’s your only hope, Gilles. You might also want to pray that I remain alive. If I don’t, you won’t, that seems likely to me.”

  Abruptly, he left the captain to his woes and headed down to his cubicle to find LaPierre, their appointment overdue. Things were happening, the air was rich.

  André LaPierre looked and smelled as though he’d already enjoyed a liquid lunch, which, Cinq-Mars suspected, had been both more nourishing and more satisfying than his bite of bologna. A radiance seemed to shine from the man’s eyes, born of an intensity, the swift rejuvenation of vigor. “Émile! You got to tell me now. What’s going on? This could save me, man, this could bring me back in.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Are you dense? If that killing isn’t biker-related, the Wolverines are off the case and I’m back on.”

  “Only if you’re reinstated.”

  “We’ve been through this. Let me help out, Émile, any way I can. Put in the good word. I need my job back, buddy.”

  Cinq-Mars nodded with the fullness of a sympathetic colleague. “André, keep your voice down, all right? This is hush-hush.”

  The man put a finger to his lips.

  Cinq-Mars leaned into him and whispered. “This is big. Look, I’ve got the kids, Mathers and Déguire, upstairs with a perp. Have to look in on them. Do you mind? Come upstairs, we’ll take a room next door, we can chat, no one will disturb us. I may need your expertise on this one, André.”

  “Lead the way, partner.”

  Throwing his coat over his sleeve, LaPierre consented to be escorted out of the squad room and to the elevators. He exchanged courtesies with other cops encouraged by his buoyant mood. The word had gone around that he’d been severely depressed of late, and his friends were glad to see him back in form. A few wished him good luck.

  Mathers and Déguire had marked their names on the chalkboard outside Interrogation Room 9, so Cinq-Mars brought the other officer along to Room 8. “I’ll check how things are going,” he said, leaving LaPierre stranded.

  In the stark light of Room 9, Max Gitteridge was beside himself, stressed out by the delay. “What the hell do you want, Émile? I’m a busy man.”

  “Sorry, sir. Brass held me up. You guys all right?”

  Déguire and Mathers indicated they were fine, and Cinq-Mars told them he had to go next door and would be back soon.

  “Where’re you going?” Gitteridge demanded.

  Cinq-Mars told him to hang on awhile longer. “All will be explained in due course. I promise, sir, you will not consider this a wasted day. Are you hungry, Mr. Gitteridge? Would you like a coffee? Some juice? Déguire, stay here. Don’t let anybody in. Mathers, buy this guy lunch.” Neither officer appeared pleased with his assigned task, but Gitteridge responded with a shopping list. “Tell you what,” Cinq-Mars suggested. “You get his coffee from the squad room,” he told Déguire, “and you fetch his lunch,” he told Mathers. “That’ll be quicker. You don’t mind if we lock you in for a few minutes, sir? I don’t want someone walking in on you. Being here is not something you’d want to explain.”

  Gitteridge was only too willing to have his privacy defended.

  The moment the three officers departed the room, Cinq-Mars told his glum colleagues, “Forget lunch, I’m not feeding that shyster. Follow me.” The younger men fell into step behind him, thoroughly confused. They entered the observation chamber off Room 8 and did a double take spotting LaPierre on the other side of the one-way glass. “Listen in. Run a tape,” Cinq-Mars instructed them, and he promptly returned to the room with his suspended colleague, removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeves as though this could be a long haul. LaPierre, they saw, seemed perturbed by the gesture.

  “Émile, what’s up? You look like you’re ready to shake me down.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Did you bring me here under false pretenses? Don’t mess with me, partner. I want to know. Is there somebody on the other side of that glass?”

  Cinq-Mars laughed. “Who would I trust on the other side?”

  LaPierre chuckled along with him. He had had his confidence nicked, he was wary but anxious to believe that everything was okay here, that Cinq-Mars had come around. “Okay, André, this is how it’s going to play out. I have to clear some things up, then I’ll tell you what’s on the burner. It’s big stuff. It’ll change your situation. But you haven’t had a clean nose lately, so I have to check that out.”

  “Go ahead. I’ve got nothing to hide that you don’t know about.”

  “Let’s start with the Jim Coates tape,” Cinq-Mars suggested. He stood, leaning forward, with one foot up on a chair, his fist pressed down on the tabletop.

  “I knew it.” LaPierre laughed. “It’s in your craw. Maybe I’ll release the tape soon, if I can get leverage, you know? I’m backed into a corner here.”

  “So I guess in your
mind you associate that tape with Jim Coates, just like I do?” Cinq-Mars asked him.

  The tall man swallowed hard. “What?” He knew that he’d been nailed.

  “Where’d you make the tape, André?”

  “Where?”

  “We’ve been in this room before, me and you. You know how I hate to repeat myself.”

  “Émile—” LaPierre tried to plead him off.

  “Answer the fucking question!” Cinq-Mars raised his fist up and brought the side of it down hard on the tabletop. LaPierre flinched.

  “Easy, Émile. What do you think I am, some punk you can scare?”

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy, André! Do you want to know what I found out? Do you want to know what I know? Normand Lajeunesse was a hit man for the Mafia. He was hired to take me out except he had a belly flop, so a backup sniper took him down. He told the bad guys that he’d spotted my buddies, that’s why he didn’t shoot, but I’ll tell you something you don’t know—he never spotted my buddies. He suffered a serious belly flop and that’s that. Couldn’t pull the trigger. The only reason he’s alive today is because my buddies came in behind us. Bright boy, he turned them into his excuse. Otherwise, the Angels would’ve taken a hacksaw to his balls by now. I’m not in a good mood, André. Cops are killing cops and I seem to be a target. Now, tell me, damn it! Where did you make that tape?”

  “In my house.”

  “Bullshit! You don’t have the capability. You don’t have a remote receiver. Where did you make the tape, André? You’re losing ground fast with me.”

  “You motherfucker,” LaPierre muttered.

  “Answer the question.”

  “So I drifted by, what’s the big deal?”

  “You tell me. What’s the big deal, André?”

  LaPierre’s body was bobbing now. He put his elbows on the table, then took them off, shifted from one side of the chair to the other, looked down, up at Cinq-Mars, away from him. He was fuming, but no incriminating word escaped his lips.

  “You need time to think about that one?”