City of Ice (28 page)

“Don’t be a martyr in other words.”

“Don’t,” Norris agreed, raising the stakes of their work together, because he had never before acknowledged this level of danger, “be a martyr.”

Can I trust you, Selwyn?
Julia wondered as she poked a fork through her salad.
Who’re you looking out for here? Me or you? Can I trust you?

“Something’s been on my mind,” Norris began.

“Shoot.”

“I didn’t want to suggest it before. I never want to compromise your decisions. It’s important that everything you do be voluntary.”

“Allez vite, Sel.”
Like most Montrealers, she’d fallen into the habit of using phrases from one language to create an emphasis in the other. “What’s up?”

“Your place is bugged, probably you’re tired of always being on guard.”

Julia laughed in her chaotic fashion. “Makes masturbation difficult! No way will I give those goons a performance. And,
no!
Don’t you dare tell me that my propriety is suspicious! I will not masturbate for their listening devices. When I’m really horny I run the tub.”

“Stop, stop, Julia, you’re ranting. I can’t talk about these things with the ease of your generation.”

“You’re squirming!”

“I was wondering, would you consider coming home with me tonight?”

She had picked up a chunk of walnut between her fingers. “Ah—and sleep on the sofa?”

“Not what I had in mind.”

She nibbled on the nut. “You mean—But. You mean it? You know about my steeplechase arch thingee and—Do you want to?”

“I want to. Very much. Forget about the arch. There’s plenty of other ways for two people to enjoy each other.”

“Teach them to me,” she blurted out.

They were quiet a moment, looking at each other.

“Finish your salad, Jul,” Norris suggested. “And your wine.”

“Do I have to? Can’t we just go now?”

Squad cars, fire trucks, and ambulances had preceded the detectives to Walter Kaplonski’s door, lights flashing off the brick and glass of sedate neighborhood homes. A police barricade had cordoned off Kaplonski’s block, and Bill Mathers displayed his badge to be admitted, although they could not travel far through the battalion of emergency vehicles. Émile Cinq-Mars parked, and the two men strolled down the rest of the way.

What they expected to find they found.

The roof of a Lincoln Town Car had been peeled back by the explosion, both the trunk and hood had lifted and crumpled, the driver’s side door blown off. The remains of the car were charred and had been doused with water. Ice coated the vehicle now. From his vantage point Cinq-Mars noticed that the steering wheel was absent, either sheared off in the blast or
sawed away to extricate the driver. The only question about fatalities would be the number.

“They take no prisoners” was all that Cinq-Mars said.

Mathers considered his partner’s words. “Émile, they sent you a message, slung it around Hagop’s neck. Doesn’t that bother you?” He wrung his gloved hands, his breath billowing in the cold air. “I know it takes guts to be a cop, but sometimes, at night, when I’m looking at my kid asleep? I think about how much I want to see her grow up. I want her to have a father. These guys, like you said—man, they don’t mess around.”

Cinq-Mars had been watching his partner as he spoke, traveling with the words back to their origin. He recognized that bravado was a necessary component in a police officer’s personality, but he had never admired the trait. He appreciated more this reasoned response to danger. To be a policeman and also a father or a mother were never compatible duties. “Personally,” Cinq-Mars remarked, “if they’re going to blow me up, I’d rather they overdo it than not do it enough.”

Mathers managed a tight smile in the cold. “How sanguine of you, Émile.”

“We’re practically immune, Bill, don’t you know that?”

“Come again?”

They were making their way over spaghetti coils of fire hose and around clumps of neighbors who either lived nearby and had been jolted out of their beds or had penetrated the police perimeter by scaling back-yard fences. Cinq-Mars appeared to be in no particular hurry to investigate the crime, and perhaps, Mathers surmised, he wished not be to seen by more than a few of his colleagues.

“The gangs only go so far. Step over a line and the
wrath of the Wolverines falls upon them. Somebody killed that young boy, Daniel. A biker gang, obviously. Since then the Wolverines have been smoking them out. They’ve got the manpower now, they’ve got the budget, they’re getting legislation through which will allow them to seize assets, including bunkers and clubhouses. They keep on the bikers’ case day and night, they hassle their friends. But, it’s all remained civilized. Pretty much. Now. Add a campaign of cop killing, or kill a celebrity cop like me, and the rules will change. The Wolverines, and us, too, we’ll all become wild men for a while. Some cases will be lost in court because the evidence was wrongfully acquired, but some cases will be won, and more important, gang operations will be disrupted, sympathizers exposed. Some of the bad guys will be dead. Maybe some of us, too, but that’s not the point. Before the Wolverines can get really tough like that, the bikers have to cross that line. Let the Wolverines go on a rampage for six months or so, they’ll raise havoc with biker operations. Cop killing, now that’s a big line crosser. But you know, if they really want to make life miserable for themselves, they’d kill a cop like me, a celebrity cop, a local hero. I have immunity, Bill. So do you, now that you’re my partner. I’m not saying don’t be careful. Your name is on your mailbox. I think you should take it off as soon as you get home. Start doing more of the little things to protect yourself. But this won’t happen to us. You should know that.”

Mathers nodded. He had not expected the response. He wanted to contradict his superior, point out that one biker gang or the other had killed a child. That was a big line crosser, too, but he understood. To combat the enemy, you always had to show that you had greater force to prevail against them, and that the only thing restraining that force was an understanding
that certain things would not occur. The biker gangs were feeling the heat from killing a child. Go any further, and they’d feel a lot more.

Mathers stopped and looked up to see who Cinq-Mars was waving over, and out of the crush of people Detective Alain Déguire emerged. Cinq-Mars had assumed a position on the snowy knoll of a neighbor’s lawn from where he had a good overview.

“Sergeant,” Déguire greeted him. He was wearing his usual grim look, as though everything was a riddle to him, as though whatever had caused that gouge in his forehead had left him permanently confused.

“Alain, you’re working long days. Who’s the investigating?”

“I am.”

Cinq-Mars gave him a second look, and the younger man shrugged to suggest that it was no big deal.

“We’re strapped. With LaPierre suspended I had to fill in. You don’t need a crystal ball to say this is a biker hit, the Wolverines will take it over. I’m just here because it’s late. By morning they’ll be in charge.”

Cinq-Mars appreciated the man’s modesty. “I need to know something from you, Alain. It’s important.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did you tell anybody about my meeting with Kaplonski this morning?”

“No, sir.”

“You answered very quickly,” Cinq-Mars cautioned him. “I want you to think about this. It doesn’t matter to me if you did or if you didn’t, I just need to know the absolute truth. Did you discuss this morning with anyone?”

“I don’t need to think about it,” Déguire said testily. “Look, the way things have been lately, I’m not talking to anybody about anything.”

“Not even LaPierre?”

“What do you want from me, Sergeant?”

“The truth. Why is that such a difficult commodity these days?”

Déguire joined Cinq-Mars in surveying the confusion of flashing lights and flurry of official procedure. A bombing employed an impressive array of people.

“Me and LaPierre, we talk every day,” Déguire admitted. “I talked to him this afternoon. He’s my partner. I didn’t give him any details. Didn’t have any. I told him you picked up Kaplonski then released him.”

“That’s what you told him?”

“Yes, sir. When you asked if I talked to anyone, I didn’t include my partner in that. Of course I talk to my partner.”

“You told LaPierre we picked up Kaplonski and—what? twelve hours?—no, sixteen hours later Kaplonski is dead and you’re the IO.”

Déguire kicked some snow around with his boot. All three men stood with their hands in their pockets and their breath was visible in the night air.

“I’m a good cop,” Déguire said quietly. “You want to come after me for some reason, go ahead. I’m a good cop.”

Cinq-Mars looked at both junior detectives and shook his head, as though it was hard to ever decide. “If you want to know what I think, Alain, you’re on the right track. You’re on my mind. Any time a cop goes down, it’s inevitable—everybody wonders about the partner.”

“There’s no proof against him.”

“So he believes. But I’m not a judge. Tell me, you work the day shift, isn’t that right? I always see you around in the day.”

“I’m supposed to be days. We’re strapped right now.” A morgue van was trying to make its way in, led by a cop car with its cherries flashing, the lights cutting
across the faces of the detectives talking on the knoll.

“So you keep telling me. Who set it up for you to work this case tonight?”

“My duty officer.”

“Who is?”

“Gilles Beaubien.”

“Excuse me? He’s suspended.”

“That was revoked this evening. The flu’s taking so many guys down, he’s filling in with the task list.” Déguire was nodding, jutting his chin out, defensive in all his remarks.

“Really? Now what do you think about that, Bill? Did you hear? Beaubien’s back, and nobody told me the good news. Alain, if you work days, how did you happen to be working the night shift on Christmas Eve, when the Artinian boy was killed?”

“Are you investigating me?” Déguire wanted to know. He looked from Cinq-Mars to Mathers and back again.

“I’m asking you a question,” Cinq-Mars told him.

“I don’t have to answer,” the officer replied.

“No, you don’t.”

Déguire thought back. He worked his toe around in the snow again. His facial muscles were pulled tight with growing rage. “That was a different story,” he recalled. “Me and André, we booked off. We had the best days off. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and Day both. First time I ever had all those days. What André gets, I get, we’re a team. He has the seniority.”

“That’s usually how it goes,” Cinq-Mars noted. “How’d you get booked on?”

Déguire rocked his head a few times, then rubbed his chin on the shoulder of his coat, as though he was trying to buy time to think the question over. “That’s a mystery. André called me late in the afternoon, said he’d booked us on standby, for later. I was pissed off.
You got Christmas Eve off, then just like that, you don’t. Probably somebody did a favor for André, that’s what I figured, so he traded shifts.”

Mathers was staring at his colleague wide-eyed as if he was going to pop a rib. Cinq-Mars nudged his elbow, and he shifted demeanor, as if disinterested.

“In other words, André LaPierre has the flu, but instead of staying home with the day off and taking care of himself, he books on.”

Déguire considered the scenario and nodded to indicate that that was how things had been. He offered no explanation.

“Alain, if you’re a good cop, you will not speak about this conversation to André LaPierre. I don’t care if he is your partner. Don’t give him anything from your investigation tonight except what he’ll read in the morning papers. If you’re not a good cop, if you’re a dirty cop, then go ahead, tell him anything you want. But in that case, when you’re talking to him, say hello from me.”

Alain Déguire walked away ten feet and then came back. He was fuming, and when he talked his lower jaw didn’t move. With his anger mounting he looked like a ram anxious to batter something. “It’s you old guys, you know, who always talk about standing up for your partner.”

“I’m aware of that,” Cinq-Mars answered.

“I’m loyal to the guy, he’s my partner. But it’s you old guys who think it’s a fucking marriage. I’m not fucking married to him, you know.”

“All right. I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’d watch your tongue there, Alain. I’d think about controlling my temper if I were you.”

Déguire gave his body a shake and then his head to relieve the worst of his wrath. He aimed his index finger in the senior detective’s face. “I could have been
your partner and Bill could’ve been LaPierre’s. Then you’d be busting his balls tonight and not mine.”

“That’s possible,” Cinq-Mars conceded.

“I don’t see why I have to be taking shit for that asshole.”

Cinq-Mars waited for that remark to clear the air before he asked him about it. “Are you calling my good friend LaPierre an asshole, Alain? What happened to your sense of loyalty?”

This time Déguire stepped right up to Cinq-Mars, and although he was two inches shorter, the uneven snow underfoot made them level. He put his eyes inches from the senior detective’s and glared at him with his full fury. Cinq-Mars was reminding himself that at all costs he had to avoid butting heads with this guy, because he’d come out hearing bells after that collision. “I am loyal as a partner,” he declared, with defiance and with something else that Cinq-Mars noticed, bitterness. “I have said nothing that would hurt him. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think he’s the biggest asshole this side of the moon.”

“I’ll take that under advisement as well,” Cinq-Mars noted.

Déguire twisted his shoulders around and spun on his heels and twisted his shoulders again, not knowing how best to combat his fury. He shook a finger at Bill Mathers, then aimed it again at Cinq-Mars. “I don’t understand,” he said, and his confusion was inherent by the way he trembled. “You’re a hero to us guys, you know. How come you get a squarehead for a partner? It’s not right that an English guy should get what you pass on.”