“Michel, I’m not following this.”
“I will slow down, and start again.”
An edge of bitterness was in his voice as he told of the killing of Jerszy Schlizik and of his encounter today with Inspector Mitchell.
“They are washing their hands of me. He wants me to go on the run so there will be no embarrassment. Mitchell is a cock-sucker. Garbage. Like all of them.”
Carrie didn’t know what to think — this seemed yet another version of her client: dour, spiteful . . . and guilty of murder? Was there a reason? Had he gone haywire?
“Michel, there could be a defence — did Schlizik threaten you?”
“As I told you, he had just lowered his gun. No, it was not in self-defence. I just shot him. All I could feel then was a blindness in my heart, a hatred I could no longer fight.”
“Why this . . . blindness in your heart?”
“Because of Célèste.”
“Célèste . . .”
“She died of a ’eroin overdose.” He bit his lip, and swirled the liquid in his glass tumbler.
His wife . . . an addict.
“The truth, finally, as I ’ave promised. It is a . . . difficult story. She was well-off, from a good family. Spoiled, crazy, experimenting with everyt’ing, fast cars, drugs. I loved her as no one must ever love.” He swallowed the last of his whisky.
Carrie was pulled to him in his sadness. Célèste’s death had impelled him to undertake this dangerous undercover role. And perhaps it had derailed him slightly in that loft: the blindness in his heart.
“If I live past the night, I will tell you more about it.”
“Live past the night — what’s that, a joke?”
He shook his head. “It’s not’ing.”
Carrie frowned at him, wondering about this enigmatic man. Behind that charming front, a tortured soul?
“A blindness. Well, a lack of intent. Irresistible impulse, temporary insanity. God, Michel, I can come up with a dozen defences. Schlizik was a vicious murderer, a cop-killer. No jury would dream of convicting you.”
“There was full intent. I tried to cover up. I moved the bodies. I put the gun in a dead man’s hand. I t’ought I was being very clever.”
He wasn’t being co-operative. She couldn’t understand this, it was as if he wanted to be found guilty.
“The video tape — it’s illegal without a court order, it’s not admissible. No chance of a conviction — that’s why Mitchell wants you to skip town.”
But Lachance was coolly eyeing her. He seemed to want to tell her something else, but was unsure whether to do so.
“Okay. You will not like this. I did anod’er thing to cover up.”
He was the first to break eye contact. He bent his head and studied his empty tumbler of Ballantine’s.
“I made an anonymous call to Cacciati, to tell him where he could find Normie the Nose. He was a useless germ, a scheming junkie, I didn’t care. But I am guilty of that, too, aiding in a murder of a witness against me.”
Carrie was rendered mute by this. She was having trouble believing it. And she was feeling a discomfort with him now: there was a cold-bloodedness about all this — a man on some mission of his own, yes, but vaguely . . . what? Sociopathic?
They are garbage that ’as to be taken out.
She had been standing near his chair, but she now moved away a little and leaned against a table. “So what exactly are your plans now?”
“To finish my job.”
“To kill Billy Sweet.”
“Maybe. If I ’ave to.”
“I’m starting to think you are a little sick.”
He shrugged. “Now it doesn’t matter what I will do. I knew I would be betrayed. I know there will be death around me.”
“I don’t want to be hearing this. It’s absurd.”
“I have an appointment to see Billy. Tonight. Soon it will be over.”
“I won’t allow it.”
He suddenly switched on his five-alarm smile — it came from nowhere. “You look like her. Célèste. You remind me of her, too, sometime. She liked it too much on the edge . . . Anyway, ’ow are you after last night? I ’ave forgot to ask.”
“I’m . . . fine.” Her cheeks glowed but elsewhere she felt goose pimples. “I think it was a kind of madness.”
“When it is good it feels like madness.”
“It’s not something I often allow myself to do.” It sounded of simpering apology, cloying, defensive.
“I believe that. It was special for me, too.” He reached his hand out to her knee and stroked it, and she felt a chill run through her. The muscles of that leg were clenched, giving him a message, she hoped.
She spoke softly. “Let’s just call it a night we both enjoyed, Michel, and leave it at that.”
“Don’t try to deny what ”appened. Our energy was fantastic.” He looked at her with strange intensity. “I t’ink you want to deny, Carrington, but you can’t hide from your heart.”
She picked up his empty glass and escaped from him, refilling it at the counter.
“Stay here. I’m going to call the prosecutor.”
She left for the secretarial area, but he followed her.
“I ask you not to, Carrington.”
“Trust me on this.”
She picked up a receiver from a desk, but Lachance gripped her wrist, quite hard.
“And will you, too, betray me? My lady lawyer who felt madness in my bed?”
“Let go of me.”
“We made love. We shared our bodies. Our souls. Please, Carrington, keep faith with me. I have only you. I have nowhere to turn.”
His hand was hurting hers, and he was looking at her with an intensity that frightened her.
“Michel, I’m not going to say you’re here. I just want to find out what’s going on. Now let go.”
“I . . . forgive me. I guess I am upset.”
He released her hand and she dialled Oliver McAnthony at home. Annoyed, she saw Lachance pick up another phone and plug into the line, covering the speaker with his hand.
“I’m sorry to pull you away from your pool or whatever, Oliver . . .”
“My leisure hours are spent in menial mental labour, my dear. I am writing a report.”
“About Michel Lachance?”
A pause. “Yes. I suppose you wouldn’t be calling out of hours if you haven’t just learned something distasteful. I take it you’ve talked recently to your client?”
“Yes . . . on the phone.”
Lachance nodded to her, seemed to relax.
“I danced to the same tune you did, Carrington. My report details the whole indecent matter. Whether it will remain in my desk or be widely read will be up to you.”
“It’s too absurd. Mitchell?”
“Yes. The whole thing was his doing. His immediate supervisor didn’t have him under control. Rather a serious case of negligence.”
“Whose idea was it to have Captain Lachance face this murder charge?”
“I take it you know about the video footage?”
“It’s not admissible.”
“A judge less intelligent than you or I might not agree. May I be brutally frank with you, Carrie? They want his silence. They fear the reputation of the entire RCMP will be tarred. If he agrees to say nothing — to the press, to anyone — they will drop the charge. I will go along with it only if you do. I think we owe you at least that. You can either take a trial and blow the entire thing sky-high, or we all hold hands and duck.”
“I take it no one is trying furiously to nab my client.”
“You might advise him not to be too apparent. Call me when you’ve talked to him.”
After hanging up, she turned to Lachance. “Well?”
“I am going to finish what I started.�
�
***
Leon could no longer feel the pain; a numbness had set in. His voice sounded hollow in his own ears.
“I’m sorry to call you on the weekend, Mr. Blumberg.”
“It’s about Orff, right? You’re his lawyer.”
“I’m trying to find him.”
“Well, I don’t babysit the fat little fart. He’s supposed to come in on emergency septic backup tonight and I’ll leave a message.”
“Do you know anything about his friends? A Mrs. Pinkerton? Or Dottie?”
“Never knew he had friends.”
Leon started calling Pinkertons. From the secretarial area he could hear Carrie’s and Lachance’s voices, raised sometimes, then softer. Obviously she was enchanted with that man. He had read it in her face, an open book.
He guessed they wanted him to leave. They wanted to be alone. He couldn’t face them, yet couldn’t avoid doing so unless he left via his tenth-storey window. He’d have to say something to them, See you folks later, or Have a nice day. Maybe comment on the weather: Looks like we’re in for it tonight.
A rumble of thunder.
How could he bear to see her when she came for dinner?
He was at a dead end with his Pinkertons, and finally he willed his legs to move and stumbled his way out of his office, where Carrie was saying something to Lachance in severe tones, admonishing him. She cut her speech short when she saw Leon.
“I’m off.” He managed to get two syllables out.
“About six?” said Carrie. “I’ll help you in the kitchen and then we can relax over a drink.”
“Sure. Great. See you.” Sure, relax over a drink.
He offered a limp wave and fled.
In a fog of despair, he somehow found his way out of the G & C Trust Building, managed to unlock and mount his bicycle, to wobble into the traffic. Must stop at a liquor store. A light Chablis. That’s what Carrie usually likes.
***
“You are having dinner at his ’ouse?”
“Yes.”
“I want to see you tonight. Is it possible? After?”
Lachance had been wandering from desk to desk, looking at everything, letters, memos, unapologetic about it.
“After what? After Billy’s body has been carried away, and you’re in a cell?”
“Not’ing will happen tonight. The meeting is only for evidence.”
As he moved toward her, he undid the buttons of his shirt. This unnerved Carrie, and she lowered herself onto a swivel chair and slid forward until she was tight against a desk.
Lachance revealed a body pack strapped to him, a miniature tape-recorder. “I am going to deliver Billy to the cops, just as I promised.”
He came closer, and her hand jerked as he clasped it in his.
“Why are you acting so strange?” he said. “So distant. Last night we were as close as two humans can become.”
Last night was a mistake, she wanted to tell him. A thoughtless act of lust. “I just feel . . . odd about it.”
He bent to her, sought her mouth, but she twisted her head away.
“I ’ave never had a night like that with a woman,” he said huskily into her ear as his lips grazed her cheek.
“Michel, no!” She tried to push him away, but he resisted. Dissuade him somehow, placate him, don’t anger him. “Let’s go have a coffee and talk. The building isn’t locked — anyone could come in.” Please do, someone. But it was a weekend — the other tenth-floor businesses were closed.
He moved his face next to hers. “It is like we are brought together by the gods.”
The phrase was a horrible echo of Ted’s words, matched by the gods. She pulled away from him, but his hands were upon her now, ungentle, demanding, and he was still trying to manoeuvre her mouth toward his lips.
“Give me breathing room.”
She thought for a moment he was going to force her — she’d discovered a beast inside the gentleman. But he withdrew, and started to button his shirt.
“Je m’excuse. I t’ink I understand, an office is not for romance. But later, yes? Maybe I can come to your home tonight.”
“I’d rather you phone me. I’ll be at home about midnight.” She stood, tugged at her blouse. “I’m going to wash up. Then I think we should go.”
The truth was that Carrie’s nervousness had suddenly filled her up — she needed to relieve an intense pressure in her bladder. She escaped into the washroom, then headed quickly for the toilet. She sat and thought about how to avoid further entanglement with this man.
She didn’t feel safe with him at all. He wasn’t exactly the gentle knight she had taken him for, this soldier who had executed a man and assisted in the death of another. Of perhaps more import and more menacing was the fact he had read too much into last night.
She’d been fascinated with Lachance, tantalized, and, yes, she probably had wanted to go to bed with him. Now she was paying the price.
His meeting tonight with Billy Sweet — could any evil result from that? By midnight, when he called her, he could have his evidence. Mitchell would be pleased, McAnthony would be forgiving. Operation Sweet Revenge would be complete, and Michel could win the Victoria Cross instead of a murder sentence. And nothing need be said about Lachance’s misdeeds outside the line of duty — the RCMP need not be embarrassed.
Okay, a plan of action. But she must call McAnthony, speak to him in private before the night was over.
At the wall mirror, she repaired herself, washed her face, daubed away a smear of lipstick. She looked into her bright, scared eyes, took out her contacts, and put on her reading glasses. There. A proper lady, genteel. Unavailable.
She found Lachance wandering about and had the impression he’d been going through cabinets and drawers. Looking for what?
In the elevator, he was in a silent, childish sulk.
“Where are your going to stay?” she asked.
“I’ll find a place.”
Suddenly, just as the elevator door opened on the ground floor, Lachance took her by the shoulders and pulled her roughly to him until she could feel the heat of his breath.
“It was more than a madness. Do not reject me, Carrington.”
“Let me go, Michel.”
His eyes had gone crazed again. She was frightened, but couldn’t break free: his hands were like clamps. Through plate windows in the lobby, she saw there were customers in the trust office — it was open Saturdays — and there was Robert Barnsworth, studying sheets with numbers. He looked up, saw them inside the elevator, Lachance clutching her, their faces inches apart.
“For God’s sake, people are staring,” she said.
Lachance let go, but followed her. Carrie waved a taxi to the curb and quickly got in. “The islands ferry, please,” she said.
***
Speeder had a different van this time, a ’77 Dodge with an interior-decorating business painted on the side. Tinted windows you couldn’t see inside of. But Speeder could see out, and what he was watching was Carrie climb into a taxi, not looking as good as she usually did, and there was the Frenchman still standing on the sidewalk, rolling a cigarette, looking kind of sour. Dumb asshole had no idea he was being watched. Now he turned around, walked back into the building.
“What’s he gone back in there for?”
Deeley and Izzie, who were in the van there with him, just had stupid looks on their faces.
Who else was up there? All sorts of coming and going, but nothing from the bug under the lawyer’s desk.
“What you want we should do?” said Izzie.
“We play it by ear,” said Speeder. He turned up the volume on the receiver but still all he was getting was a deathly quiet from up there. He chewed like crazy on his gum, nervous, no dope in him today: he had to score something to brighten it.
***
Lachance had only glanced at the van, but that one quick look told him all he needed to know: smoked-glass windows and an aerial that seemed too complex for ordinary ham equipment.
Back inside the G & C Trust Building, he returned to the elevator and ascended again to the tenth floor where, using keys he had taken from a secretary’s desk, he quickly entered the offices of Robinovitch, Barr, and Tchobanian.
Carrington’s office — that must be where they put the transmitter. He assumed Cacciati hid it when he visited a couple of days ago. He tried to remember if he and Carrington had been in that office today. No, he was lucky: they had been in the lounge and the secretaries’ area.
It took him only seconds to find the bug. He didn’t touch it, didn’t want to make extraneous sounds.
He tried out Carrington’s chair, a tall-backed swivel, put his feet upon her desk, rolled a cigarette, and looked at her wedding picture: her husband, a weakling who hadn’t known how to satisfy her.
He picked up Carrie’s phone and dialled a number at random. A recorded voice: “I’m sorry this number is not in service.”
“Allô, Carrington?” He spoke loudly. “In case you gave me your only key, I left the office door unlocked for you. Meantime, I am going to take a nap on the couch in here, I am exhausted.”
He was silent for a few moments, as if listening to her voice. Then: “Yeah, Billy Sweet, he will go crazy with shock when he finds out who the spy is. But what if he is such a fool to think we are bluffing? What should we do?”
Another pause. “I agree. We will not give him a second chance.”
A shorter pause.
“Yes, I love you, too.”
He hung up, and waited for them.
27
Barnsworth had been summoned from home that evening to the G & C Trust Building. Now he was suffering nauseous tremors as he viewed the two bodies on the tenth floor. Near the elevator, a skinny young man with acne and horrible staring eyes, and just down the hall, another man, stouter, only his legs showing outside the door to the stairs.
“Ever seen them before?” asked a detective.
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