City of Ice (44 page)

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 seemed 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.”

As the doorman ran off, the gentleman unraveled himself and emerged by degrees. He dusted himself off, stretched his spine, straightened up, and gazed upon his captor. “Something I’ve been meaning to tell you, Mathers,” he said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Your timing stinks. This is not convenient.”

“Tough,” Bill Mathers answered, unable to diminish his smile.

Receiving the call from his partner over his cell phone while ensconced in his cubicle, Émile Cinq-Mars responded with blind fury. He was utterly enraged that Mathers had taken their prey into custody. He had not issued that command. More important, he hadn’t determined what he intended to do with his source once caught. A serious negotiation lay ahead, and the first rule of horse trading was to know more about the animal than did his counterpart. He wasn’t there yet. Cinq-Mars resorted to English to properly insult Bill Mathers.

As soon as he had taken down the particulars, he cut off their connection and headed out.

On the way down in the elevator at HQ, Cinq-Mars confronted what really irritated him. He’d wanted to apprehend the man himself. He desired the
privilege of being first on the scene and had visualized poking his big nose into the unknown countenance of the man familiar to him only as a telephone voice.

He set off in an unmarked car across the city of ice.

A second rule of horse trading was to turn every disadvantage into a benefit. He had wanted to capture the man himself. That a junior detective had done so could be worked to his own favor. Don’t let the culprit believe that he was the center of the universe, or the focus of an investigation. He had merited nothing more than the attention of a junior officer. Make him believe, or suspect, or worry, that he was an inconvenient cog in machinations that traveled beyond his understanding. Sabotage his control, dispel the man’s natural savvy, diminish his import. Make him sweat.

Driving, he received another call, this one from André LaPierre.

“I’m surprised you’re awake,” Cinq-Mars told him, a lie. He had assumed that their conversation would stir his colleague to prompt action.

“Émile! I told you I’d get on the case. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“You tell me, André.”

“That hit—the gang’s moneyman, George Turner, the English guy—definite discrepancies. Looked like the work of the Rock Machine, but a few wrinkles were added that nobody’s seen since.”

“Such as?” To hear enthusiasm in LaPierre’s voice again was heartening, although Cinq-Mars wondered what had put him on edge.

“Okay, the Hell’s Angels plant their bombs
inside
the vehicle. This was on the outside, wired on, like the Rock Machine does.”