City of Ice (9 page)

“No.”

“Liar. So what’s the urgency? What’s the big news?”

“I’ve got to know, Snoop. I have to find out where you stand.”

“Oh—you—you’re so infuriating! What d’you mean, where I stand? I don’t stand anywhere.”

“Keep your voice down,” he cautioned her.

“Don’t be shushing me, Mister Buddy. You’ve got some harebrained scheme I know nothing about and you’re asking me where I stand? What do you think I am, some neophyte groupie who’ll do anything you please no matter what the miserable fuck it is?”

“Ssshhhh.”

“Shush yourself. It’s two in the morning. I’m so tired. What’s the matter with you? Are you nuts? I’d like to know.” She didn’t like her feet. Her toes, anyway. Julia wrapped a finger around her big toe and squeezed it while she talked.
My toes are too long.

“Things have changed,” he said.

“What’s changed?”

“Circumstances.”

“Selwyn, nothing has changed for me. I’m spending Christmas in the same old country home with the same old nutty relations fighting the same old boring fights. I would
love
a change of circumstances. But no such luck for me.”

“I don’t need an answer now.”

“Too bad, I’ll give you one now.”
My arches are too flat.

“Think about this first. Matters have accelerated. We’ve had some good fortune and some bad luck. There has been an escalation in the terms of engagement.”

“Selwyn—”

“I have a spot for you, Jul. It’s safe. It’s exciting. It’s in the thick of things. You won’t believe your adventures. Engage the world. That’s what I’m asking of you. Look around your country home while you’re up there. Take a good look at your elders. Decent enough folk, I’m sure, despite your quibbles.”

“Quibbles!”

“Look at them, Julia. Each man, each woman, has one life to live. How is he or she living it? Are they bored with their own lives? With their spouses? Are they tired and burned out? Do they repeat the same old discussions they’ve had a thousand times before, and is that really passion you hear in their words? Become one of them if you want, Julia. Or choose to live by your wits where you’ll never feel bored or useless. You’ll never feel disconnected from the world. You’ll never experience what it’s like to believe that life has passed you by.”

“What have you been snorting? You’re on a roll.”

“Look around you, Jul. That’s all I’m asking for tonight. While you’re up there, think about the life that’s ahead. Think about what’s waiting.”

“You’re crazy, you’re an absolute loony bird. Why do I bother talking to you?”
I have lame duck feet. Duck feet and emu kneecaps.

“You talk to me because I’m offering what you can’t get elsewhere. A chance, Jul, to live a real life. Engaged. Valuable. Vital. I’m offering you the chance
not
to seep slowly into your dotage, to live on the edge. Maybe you can walk away from that, maybe you can’t. That’s what I need to find out. The only difference between today and yesterday is that now I need to know soon.”

“Why? What’s changed? What happened that’s so important, Sel?”
Give me something, anything.

“I can’t tell you that, Julia.”

“You’re so insufferable! If you can’t tell me, then I can’t help you out.”

“I can’t tell you if you’re on the outside looking in.”

“Give me a hint then.”

“A hint?”

“You’re a smart man. I’m sure you can do it without compromising your precious secrecy.”

“All right, I’ll give you a hint. It has to do with Santa Claus.”

Julia listened to the distant buzz across the telephone line.

“Jul?”

“Somebody stuck a hook in his back. That’s what they said on the radio.”

This time she could hear Norris breathing at the other end. She waited. “I didn’t think the news would have made it up there,” he responded eventually. “As I said, matters have escalated. I know—you don’t have much to go on, Snoop. But you’re smart and savvy and you can think for yourself. That’s why you’re important to me. I don’t have time for groupies. I’m nobody’s guru. I need people who can think on their feet and I need people who are committed. I can’t give you the details. All I can say is this, you can step away any time you choose. Just take one giant step back. But first, take a baby step forward. Take that step. Then decide. Think about it, Jul. Will you promise me that, at least?”

She wished that she held his throat in her hands at that moment rather than the telephone so she could choke him. “Think about what, Selwyn? Think about some vague concept of which I know nothing? Think about being a valiant hunter chasing down the villains of the world?
Exsqueeze
me, but saying I don’t have much to go on is a ridiculous understatement. Give me something to think about, Sel.”

“Santa Claus was murdered. A young man your age. Ask yourself about whether or not you want his killers to go free.”

“
Hello! Hello! Earth to Space Cadet, Selwyn Norris!
This has absolutely nothing to do with me!”

“It has everything to do with you.”

“How so? Just explain that part and maybe we can get somewhere.”

“If you work with me on this, Snoop, the boy’s killers will be apprehended. If you don’t, they’ll get off scot-free. It’s as simple as that. Justice in this case is in your hands.”

“Oo, you’re so aggravating! You have no idea!”

“The truth is rarely convenient, Snoop.”

“Oh, screw you! You can’t engage in philosophical debate when only you know what we’re discussing.”

Norris was chuckling to himself.

“What’s so funny?”

“You are. You’re a riot.”

“I’m glad you’re so amused.”

“Think about it, Jul.”

“Yeah yeah.”

“Think about it.”

“Good night, Sel.”

“Good night, Snoop. If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution—”

“Good night, Selwyn.”

Julia sat on the sofa in the aching silence of that country house. She switched off the lamp. She was fully awake now, although inert, unable to move much. She wanted to belt him. Julia let her body slide down the sofa until she was on the floor, and she sat there in the ambient dark, listening and wondering what there was to think about. What she hated most was that she had no arguments to refute him. Common sense warned her to run from the guy. Yet she had no reason to do so. Everything he said was enticing. She didn’t have to look around, for years it had been obvious that parents and stepparents and older folk were playing out their run without enthusiasm, with little aspiration, devoid of
any zest for the ideals they had once coveted. The farm was supposed to have been a colony for an alternative lifestyle, instead it was a paean to the great sellout, the relinquishing of expectations and values. She knew about the slide. She had seen it with her own eyes, she feared it, she had always feared it, and Selwyn Norris, she knew, played to the heart of her fears.

What she hated, and what she dreaded, was that she could imagine herself consenting. She wanted to. She wanted the unknown over the known. The adventure over the banal. Risk over prudence.
Damn him!
He knew how to work her.

Tuesday, December 28

A child, his name was Daniel, was walking to his local rink for a game of pickup hockey during his Christmas vacation. Skates were slung over one shoulder. He carried his stick while kicking a puck. The eleven-year-old loved soccer most of all, but in the winter he only got to kick pucks along the sidewalk. Sometimes the puck became embedded in a snowbank, and then he used the stick to dig it out. He figured that was all the stick was good for. Hockey was not his game and Daniel usually embarrassed himself on the ice, but the other kids knew he was a hotshot soccer player so they never teased him about it very much.

The street in the east end along which Daniel walked was run- down, overcrowded, with mostly crummy two-story walk-ups occupied by large families. At eight o’clock in the morning those off to work were starting their cars in the cold. One such man was short and exceptionally well dressed for the neighborhood. He had been visiting a new girlfriend overnight. Daniel did not know, nor would he have cared, that the man who kicked his puck back at him was a physician who did private consults for the Hell’s Angels. In a time of war the man had been kept busy. Daniel welcomed the challenge, did a little feint with his feet,
and kicked a goal between the man’s legs. The doctor laughed, fished his keys out of his coat, and climbed into a Camry.

The puck had careened into a snowbank and Daniel was digging for it. He wasn’t sure where it had gone after darting past the man. He thought he saw it and thrust his stick deeper, but the bank contained ice and he was unable to dislodge it easily. The boy hacked away at the ice to reach the black object there, then worked the blade of his stick under it and heaved with all his might. The ice broke free, the puck floated aloft and bounced off the hood of the car.

The physician was not amused. He opened his car door, put one foot down on the pavement, and stepped halfway out. He warned the boy to watch it. Daniel said that he was sorry. He scaled the snowbank and came down the other side and saw his puck lying on the road. The man was telling him that he could’ve put a dent in his car, that it was a lucky thing for him he hadn’t. Daniel gripped his stick and began to stick-handle the puck past the man and the automobile.

The doctor never put his key in the ignition. He never closed his door a second time. The car erupted just as Daniel was stepping past him, and they were both annihilated that instant.

The Wolverines stated that the bomb had been detonated by remote control, that the Rock Machine had taken out a Hell’s Angel sympathizer, that the killer could have waited for the boy to leave the area, or for the car to move on, but hadn’t bothered.

The same day, thanks to the immediate and intense public outcry, the Wolverines were granted the budget they’d been requesting. In the history of Canadian law enforcement, no agency had ever operated with such generous fiscal resources. Along with the check they were handed a simple mandate—break the backs of the biker gangs.

At last, the Wolverines said to one another, the bad guys had lost their shine, public opinion would finally turn against them. The people would demand justice, wouldn’t they?

An unofficial spokesman for the Hell’s Angels stated that his gang would never have done such a thing, none of their members would kill an innocent child. They weren’t animals. The Rock Machine, he said, was too stupid to be believed, too stupid, he stipulated, to be allowed to live.

To the astonishment of the Wolverines, out on the streets, as the days went by, citizens, in their rage and sorrow, were looking not to them but to the Hell’s Angels to exact revenge.

Wednesday, December 29

They drove into the poor neighborhoods that spread southwest from downtown. Made narrow by winter, the streets were lined by snowbound parked cars in igloos. Red-brick row houses were crammed together, never a gap between them, two- and three-story flats with crooked exterior staircases made of wrought-iron railings and worn wood steps, hard against the sidewalks. Some entranceways had been tramped smooth by boots, others had been shoveled out. Balconies, holding mounds of snow, were pitched in different directions, shifting with time and rot, and windows were sealed by plastic wrap and old newsprint to bar drafts. At the rooflines, snow drooped like wisps of white hair on aging gentlemen. Trees, leafless, rose from the snowbanks as knurly sentinels, their upper branches run through with electrical wire. In the front windows of a few homes, Christmas lights, off now, had been strung in the shapes of squares or circles or stars, a cheery defense against long winter nights. People waiting for a bus or tramping through the snow looked cold, scrunching their shoulders up and tucking their heads down into their collars as though they had no necks, their faces concealed by scarves, like bandits.

“Give me his name again.” Cinq-Mars let Bill
Mathers drive. He equated driving with thinking, except when the roads were this perilous.

“You’re not good at names,” Mathers observed.

“French ones I am.”

“Hagop Artinian. It’s not that difficult.” Mathers turned up an unplowed side street. “That the garage?”

“Should be,” Cinq-Mars guessed.

Above a broad garage door flush to the sidewalk a faded sign declared the premises to be Garage Sampson, bodywork and foreign cars the specialty.

“Watch first or go in?”

“Park. Give it a minute.”

What interested Émile Cinq-Mars was the innocuous style. By appearances the business was legitimate, although it had done little to advertise itself. No specials on fenders or tires, no night lights for the sign. He gave a moment’s thought to the little boy who had been killed the day before. At Headquarters, everyone was feeling both angry and saddened by the event. Not that rage or sorrow was going to win the war.

Mathers glanced across at the senior detective a few times.

“What’s on your mind, Bill?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Come on. Spit it out.”

“I was wondering what we’re doing here.”

Cinq-Mars could see that he was nervous. He didn’t bite his fingernails, but he kept bringing them up to his lips as though he was tempted to do so. “You mean this isn’t our case?”

“Something like that.”

“You haven’t taken an interest?”

“Like you said, it’s not our case.”

Cinq-Mars didn’t seem inclined to explain himself. No sign of life was visible from the garage. A minute passed before he spoke again, and when he did his voice was grave and Mathers listened intently.

“I received a call one night, directing me to a tavern in the east end. I was to go inside, sit down, order a draft, then look for a young guy sitting under the clock. I did what I was told. The guy would get up to take a leak, then leave. On his way out he’d stop to put on his hat and gloves. The moment he did that, the boys on his immediate right were the ones I wanted for a series of violent muggings. Bad boys, Bill. They didn’t just rob their victims. They pistol-whipped them, threatened them with knives, and always they were old people, men and women both. My contact inside would leave the tavern and I was to let him go. Which I did. I made my arrests. The young man who’d been sitting under the clock was Hagop Artinian, not that I knew his name back then. The night he died, Bill? The sign he wore around his neck?
Merry Xmas, M-Five.
That’s me. March the Fifth. To show contempt, the bad guys—especially the French—they say my name in English. So I’ve taken an interest in this case, Bill.”