City of Ice

by John Farrow

  Cinq-Mars slouched on the back steps leading to the parking garage and listened to the news from Déguire. The bomb was unusual. Wired to the driver’s door, it appeared to have no timer, yet the Bomb Squad hadn’t detected an electronic detonator either. Two blow sticks would rip the car but not do significant peripheral damage. They speculated that because the bomb at the racket club had been so easily disposed of, the bikers had rigged this one not to be removed. The squad had been working meticulously to extract the driver’s seat, having already taken off the door. The car was washed in bright lights. Residents in the high-rise, beginning with the bottom floor, had been taken out the back way and bused off-site.

  Cinq-Mars checked his watch. Five minutes to midnight.

  Mathers showed with coffee. “Where’d you get this?”

  “There’s no one upstairs. I found an apartment with the door open and a coffeepot left on.”

  “You’re incorrigible, Bill. You should be arrested.”

  They drank.

  “Will you make the call?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “What’ll you say?”

  “Nothing. He’ll kick my teeth in. I’ll beg his pardon.”

  Mathers left him alone after that.

  Cinq-Mars wanted to punch a wall. He compulsively checked his watch, and time seemed not to move. He counted down the seconds. Every joint in his body ached. He waited. He had to dial between midnight and two after. Déguire and Mathers gathered on the stairs below him. He stabbed the number with his middle finger. He’d split the difference. One minute after midnight. He touched his ring finger to the Send button.

  When the blast that afternoon had blown their car off the pavement, Cinq-Mars had lost a shoe. As the car somersaulted end over end, he’d followed the wild progress of the shoe around the vehicle until the flat sole thwacked him across the nose. He remembered yearning to leave his skin before he was actually killed, and after they’d landed, and settled, alive, he felt that he’d betrayed himself, thinking that way, that he’d given up too soon.

  Cinq-Mars raised his head. “Alain, did we scan the street?”

  “Yes, sir.” He seemed to be breathing easier, settling down.

  “No bomber?”

  “No sign. We’ve discreetly checked all the parked cars on the street. But he could be in a building.”

  “Not their style. What’s the squad saying about the bomb?”

  “Can’t be removed without being tripped.”

  “Clock?”

  “Haven’t found one.”

  “Remote receiver?”

  “Not found. I told you before.”

  “Alain—go fast—check—now! Ask if a cell phone is attached to the device.”

  Déguire possessed accreditation on-site, in that the Bomb Squad had named him their liaison with detectives. This allowed him to get close to the car without being challenged. He ran on the double, and Mathers watched as Cinq-Mars hit the Power-Off button. At first the two of them seemed hardly to be breathing, then suddenly they were breathing rapidly. They burst down the stairs and together waited for the news. Déguire was at the car standing under the blazing lights. He spun around. “Yes!” he yelled back. “Yes, sir!”

  “Everybody out now!” Cinq-Mars hollered, and he and Mathers went under the cordon ribbon and raced across the basement floor. “Bomb Squad—out now! Who’s got the keys? Where’re the keys?”

  Mathers manhandled cops to get them moving out.

  “Sir?” The man in charge of defusing the device pulled his head from the vehicle and stood. He extracted keys from his jacket, displayed them in his palm. He was a big curly-headed guy with chubby fingers, and Cinq-Mars wondered how he’d ever gotten into this line of work with those fat hands. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s in the trunk! A woman’s in the trunk! Throw me the keys and get the hell out!”

  “Émile!” Mathers brayed.

  Cinq-Mars hit his chest with his fist. “If I don’t phone, the Czar does!” He checked his watch. Two after twelve. He held out his hands to catch the keys.

  “Sir!” the big cop pointed out to him, “the trunk could be wired. We got lines all over. Some are trips, some are decoys. I haven’t run them all down, and this bomb is definitely not defused.”

  “Toss me the keys,” Cinq-Mars said calmly. “The bomber’s phoning that cellular any second now, and when he does, the car blows.”

  The cop tossed him the keys, peeled off his flak jacket, and handed that across to him as well. Mathers helped his partner slip it on.

  “Out, Bill. Think of your daughter and run.”

  “I’m behind the pillar in back of you.”

  “Bill!”

  “Don’t argue.”

  “I’m behind the other one,” Déguire declared.

  The rest of the cops scurried.

  The instant the last one was gone, Cinq-Mars opened the trunk.

  “Bill! Now! Hurry!” The young man returned on the run. Cinq-Mars pulled the half-conscious young woman partway out of the trunk and Mathers reached in, grabbing her by the legs. She was bound and gagged and sedated. They handled her like a rolled rug and ran and Déguire held open the near door. They reached him just as LaPierre’s cell phone warbled. Déguire pulled the fire door shut behind them, and the Q45 sucked wind and blew.

  In the stairwell, the men and the bound young woman collapsed into a pile on the floor. The blast shook the air out of their lungs, seared their minds, and their hearts felt bludgeoned. They scrambled to their knees again, and Cinq-Mars ripped the tape off Julia’s mouth. He bent over her and jerked up straight again. “We need an ambulance here!” he hollered to the cops on the stairs above him. “Get the ambulance down here!”

  The three detectives were all on their knees with Julia in the middle, their fists upraised, their mouths wide open, their faces rapt with wild grins.

  “Get that ambulance!”

  The woman, they wholly believed, was breathing.

  EPILOGUE

  THE WHISTLE

  Wednesday, June 1, and Monday and Tuesday, July 11 and 12

  She had gone home.

  Julia returned to her family’s summer farm and the comforting care of her mother, who would come up on the weekends to wonder what was wrong with her and to cook weird, delicious meals. She was grateful for the care she had received from Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars—Julia had been portrayed by him in the media as an anonymous biker’s moll, released due to a lack of evidence.

  “You fell in love with a Hell’s Angel?” her mother queried.

  “Mummy. Don’t ask.”

  “Was it really terrific? Did you get to ride on his Harley? You’re not into rough trade sex, are you, Jul, honey?”

  “Mummy!”

  The detective’s ploy was to lure as many of the bad guys as possible into believing that they’d made a mistake about her, that she had been one of them all along and not a mole. If he planted a doubt, they might forget about exacting revenge. It was also necessary for him to finesse his colleagues and the judiciary. He didn’t want her to be arrested for any part in the whole business, for that would surely place her life in jeopardy.

  The plan might not work. They could only hope.

  Julia knew that the Czar understood that she had been a mole, for she had told him about Selwyn Norris when, horrified by what she’d seen and scared to death, she was no longer able to withstand his threats. In her mind, the plan could never work. The Czar knew that she had betrayed him, betrayed them all. But Émile Cinq-Mars continued to insist that she be patient. So she stayed alone on the farm during the week and tried to keep busy, puttered and did her best to grow things in the wild, neglected gardens.

  One day a car came up the drive, and her heart was pounding with terror. She fled to the bushes, lay down on her belly, and watched. To her relief, Okinder Boyle stepped out of the car. She was delighted to see him, anyone from that world who was a friend. She took him into the house,
served him a cup of tea, and gave him a cranberry muffin she had made herself. “Émile sent me,” he told her.

  “What’s up?”

  A police officer had been intercepted displaying a picture of her around the campus of McGill University, trying to ascertain her true identity.

  “A cop?”

  “Not a good one.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “The Czar is still after you, Julia. And if he’s after you, he’ll find out who you are, sooner or later. You’re not safe here anymore.”

  She wept then, spontaneously and abruptly, and Boyle cradled her in his arms. After she pulled herself together, she asked him what she was supposed to do.

  “Émile and me, we’ve come up with an idea.”

  Julia was to travel to the island where he had been born and raised. A place sufficiently isolated that she’d be safe, a place where she had no connection. She had to depart the family farm immediately, and leave no trace.

  “My mother?”

  “Call her now. Tell her you have to go. That you can’t tell her where. Give her no clues. Tell her that when it’s safe again you’ll be in touch.”

  “When will it be safe?”

  Boyle gritted his teeth. But when he spoke he was upbeat, positive. “Émile says that day will come. You have to hang on.”

  “For what? What will change? What can change?”

  “Émile says something will happen. He’s waiting for a sign. Everything will be different then.”

  Boyle had relations on the island willing to provide a room and ask no questions. She’d be safe there, out of harm’s way. He’d drive her in his rental car, then return to the city himself.

  “And where is this place?”

  “The Bay of Fundy. Off the coast of northern Maine. South of Campobello Island, you know, where Roosevelt spent his summers? You’re going to a special place.”

  On the island of Grand Manan, a road runs west from the town of North Head past woods and wildflower highland meadows to a lookout, then veers down to a rocky beach. In the evening tourists arrive to observe the sunset, the view scanning the bay across to the coast of Maine. At times during the summer Julia Murdick had spotted whales feeding offshore. The Whistle, as the lookout is known, named for the fog whistle that blew warning from this place years before a light station was erected instead, attracts island residents as well. As a local man had advised early in her visit, “This is how you tell the tourists from the locals. Tourists look across the water to watch the sun go down, locals look up the road to see who’s coming down over the hill.” It’s a place where men and women talk and laugh and make jokes, a place that has provided her a welcome. People ask no pressing questions.

  Most nights, Julia comes down for a beer or two, to partake in the banter, the stories of fishermen’s lives, tales from the past. It’s a happy place. As her host informed her, “People with nowhere to go are going to go somewhere.”

  That made sense to her. She was like that, she had nowhere to go, and so she had gone somewhere. To the Whistle. This was a gentle place, a restorative place, that, despite its isolation, was somewhere.

  She walked the island trails, strolled the rocky beaches. She went lobstering with men happy to show her how.

  She hated her aloneness though.

  Showed her tattoo to no one.

  Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars had warned her, she mustn’t have it removed until her life was safe again. Doing so might invite discovery.

  “When will that be?”

  “The time will come,” he’d promised.

  One morning, Okinder Boyle knocked upon the kitchen door of the house where she was staying. She gave him a big hug. He was beginning his vacation, and Julia was delighted for the company. Boyle was a feature writer now, no longer an underpaid junior columnist, with particular responsibility for crime. They had a lot to catch up on and the morning and the noon hour passed quickly.

  He had something to show her. This was his island, his home, and he was proud of it. He launched a brother’s dory and took her onto Whale’s Cove, into the family weir. The weir was constructed with stout poles embedded in the bottom of the bay and bound together to form a heart shape. Nets were slung on the poles, the leading edge taken into shore. As herring followed the tide into the cove, conning the shoreline, they veered into the net. The design kept the fish moving in the same direction, following the curves of the net, always missing the opening.

  “So the exit remains wide open, but the fish are trapped?”

  “That’s it. Their habit is to trace the shoreline. In the net, they swim along the edge, which guides them when it turns to the other side of the weir away from the opening. They repeat the same swimming pattern over and over again, a modified figure eight, until the fisherman comes along and ties up the net and calls for a seiner to empty his catch.”

  She could understand that. She could see how fish might be trapped even when the exit was as large and inviting as had been the opening.

  “Julia,” Boyle told her as they bobbed upon the water. “It’s over.”

  “What is?” she asked.

  “Look.”

  From the backpack that he had brought along containing their lunch, he pulled out the front page of the New York Post. She gazed at the dead man in the cover photo and read the story inside. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “Somebody shot him, then somebody came along and cut off his shirt?” The dead man had been visiting a hospital in Baltimore.

  “To expose his chest. You’re not going to recognize the face, not after the bullets. But you will notice the tattoo—the Eight-Pointed Star. And his surgical scar.”

  Julia looked at the photograph again. The Czar was dead, his dreaded tattoo, a more elaborate example of her own, shining below his covered face.

  “Why would anyone do that?” she insisted. “I don’t get it. Who would kill a man, then cut off the front of his shirt?”

  “It’s his gift to you,” Boyle told her.

  “What? Whose?”

  “Your CIA guy. He wanted you to know.”

  She was quiet.

  Selwyn Norris had had the Russian assassinated. He’d instructed the assassin or assassins to cut the dead man’s shirt away to expose the Eight-Pointed Star for the tabloids. Selwyn had had him killed for his own reasons. He had revealed the tattoo so she would know that she was safe now. Or safer.

  The killing was described as a gangland slaying. A settling of accounts. An episode in the war between rival drug lords. Julia Murdick knew better.

  “You’re going to stay awhile?” she asked Boyle.

  “Two weeks,” he said.

  “I can use two more weeks here. I was wondering, after that, maybe you can drive me back to the city?”

  “Be happy to. Your risk factor has gone way down, Julia. But you know, there are no guarantees,” he cautioned.

  “Risk?” She smiled. “Tell me about it.”

  He returned her smile, and did not disguise his admiration.

  Boyle rowed the dory out of the weir before starting up the outboard again.

  Seals swam off the starboard quarter. A guillemot, a black bird with white wing patches, one she’d learned to identify during her stay, bobbed in their wake. She watched it for a long time, a small bird swimming alone on a great sea.

  As Bill Mathers drove onto the Cinq-Mars farm, his daughter was already shouting to the horses. They were greeted by Sandra Lowndes, who promptly scooped up the child and led her guests to the nearest paddock. Cinq-Mars emerged from the barn, dusting himself off.

  “Donna! Bill! How are you?”

  Greetings were effusive on this sunny afternoon, although Cinq-Mars noted that his partner seemed to prolong his opening smile an indefinite time. He finally sidled up to him while they watched the little girl ride an old gray gelding, her mother walking alongside to hold her up. “Why the smirk?”

  “Have you detected a smirk, Émile?”

  “Th
e look doesn’t become you.”

  The smirk expanded into a smile, and finally into a gentle, self-satisfied chuckle.

  “All right,” an irritated Cinq-Mars inquired, “what canary did you swallow?”

  “Surely you’ve heard about Baltimore.”

  “I know about Baltimore,” Cinq-Mars told him. He’d been on vacation. “That’s nothing to smirk about. It’s a brutal business.”

  More seriously, Mathers nodded. He was right, of course.

  “I had a hand in it,” Cinq-Mars admitted.

  “You?”

  “I told them where to find him, who his doctor was.”

  “You were right to do it, Émile. It’s better this way.”

  “Is it?”

  “Julia Murdick gets to stay alive. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “It’s what I wanted,” Cinq-Mars agreed. He was watching the horses, his wife, the child. His dog, Sally, came running out from behind the barn and rolled in the dirt at his ankles.

  “Last night,” the junior detective began, “I was watching TV.”

  “Some people get to lead a life of leisure, I suppose,” Cinq-Mars murmured.

  “Oh? You don’t watch the tube yourself?”

  He shook his head, arched his eyebrows. “On occasion,” he allowed.

  “PBS. Mystery! Do you know it? Last night it was Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Holmes is a fine fellow. I admire him.”

  “Do you?”

  “Sure thing. Intellect over brawn.”

  “But no cream puff. He’ll resort to drastic measures when called upon. Last night, for instance, Watson was surprised when Holmes took a pistol out of a drawer. He asked him, We go armed? And Holmes answered—but perhaps you can tell me how Holmes answered, Cinq-Mars.”