Quintic (15 page)

L explained
the
nicknames were from video games. Good-night kiss. Taxi alone back
to my hotel.

Thankfully,
she had not put any
comments on the fucking kiss.

6th encounter: Supper. Next day. Video arcade (private
membership).

Meaning
underground
and illegal. The hackers’
world. In his dealings with Mario, Chris had experienced first-hand
how paranoid those guys were. That they had admired her in their
midst after only two dates with the guy told Chris how much Lemieux
had liked her.

L s
eemed well-known
at the place. He taught me the race car game. We played for 3
hours. Drank a lot. We went back to his place. He was staying with
a friend at the time. I never saw the friend. We drank some more.
Had sex. In a bed. No sex toys.

Chris had
stared at that part
for long minutes. Of
course, she had sex with the jerk. Why had she felt it necessary to
specify the kind? He suspected he wasn’t the only one she had had
sex with outside a bed, but they had yet to use sex toys. To him,
she was a hundred toys all by herself, dozens of women all in
herself.

We f
ell asleep. I
woke at four
and
left.

At
least
, she hadn’t spent the night.
Knowing the guy hadn’t had her in the morning made Chris feel
better. Her breakfasts were his.

7th encounter: Week later
.

A week? How could the guy have
waited that long?

He called. We stayed at his place. Had supper with a friend
who left afterwards.

What friend?

We had sex. Rougher.

How rough?

No toys. We went for a drink at an Irish pub after. Meet
some friends of his again (the kid, the king, Super Mario and
Joshua).

So she had
met Joshua barely hours afte
r having had
sex with his buddy? Interesting. That might explain the origin of
her never-date-colleagues-or-relatives-or-friends-of-exes
rule.

Following encounters at his place. Same.

Same
what
? Same sex? How many times? Still no
toys? Not rough? Rougher? Fuck. The Lemieux jerk wasn’t sounding so
friendly anymore. That part had made Chris smoke. Easier than going
down to the morgue and shooting the guy. Totally irrational as it
was.

Last time. L took me to a bi-gender strip club.

What
. The. Fuck?

We stayed for a couple of hours.

A
c
ouple of HOURS?

He paid for me.

Paid for what?

We didn’t meet any friends. Went back to his place. We
discussed the dances. No sex.

What dance?
Her dance?
The strippers? Male or female?
He had another cigarette.

With her,
one learned to read between the lines. Had
Lemieux paid her a dance? What kind of sicko pays a dance
for his girlfriend? Did the jerk want to turn her off? Unless she
was into that stuff?

Chris had
not
detected her being into that shit.
Had she been, surely he would have noticed. He could always tell
when she liked something. She did like rough sometimes but not
harsh or painful. It was easy to see she liked men with all the
paintings she did that featured the male body. But strippers? She
had models she hired. Weren’t naked models the same as naked
strippers?

And
what
about Lemieux? Chris couldn’t fathom
taking Patricia to a strip joint. No place in town was classy
enough for her in his opinion. And why the fuck would he want to
share her pleasures with anyone? He set the pace and controlled the
scene to hear her breath harder, bite her lips, moan. When he
aroused her, it was for his eyes only. His ears. His
hands.

Fucking
asshole. Two down, three t
o go. Mario.
The king. The kid. But he couldn’t, could he? Not yet. Not when he
couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t find out.

After, I met a new guy.

A new guy my ass. Joshua, the biggest sonofabitch
asshole.

Our encounters were always at the Irish pub or the friend’s
place. Or other places. A last date around two years ago.
Sex.

Sex
again?
In spite of everything she had
written so far, he found that entry the most unsettling. After the
strip dance? After Joshua? During?

Another place.

What place?
She had moved
into her hotel suite some
two years ago. Before that, she didn’t have a permanent place of
residence in the city (she used to bunk at Ingrid’s place; the old
broad had a room for her still). After that and until he came
along, her hotel had been a male-free zone; stay-overs were not
allowed for the young, the jerks and the old, or so she had told
him. He had believed her. No reason not to. Fuck and leave. He had
done exactly the same with his female-free place until
her.

Fo
llowing was a list of
addresses: the Convention Centre, coffee shop, Italian restaurant,
apartment and so on, in chronological order. Including the private
arcade (which for sure had closed down and disappeared by now). And
including the strip club, which, as far as Chris had heard, was
sleazy and in a very rough neighbourhood. It ended with a
postscript − clearly she was sure to whom he was going to show the
report − or not − for it just stated:

Joshua, dead two years. The kid, Super Mario and the king,
address currently unknown
.

A lie,
as
far as Mario was concerned at
least.

What MacLaren Doesn’t
Know Still

S
he was in regular contact with
Mario. She had asked the jerk for all kinds of favours and had
taken care of him too, way too closely to Chris’s taste. Yet, he
knew how acute the damn woman could be with her wording when she
chose to be, and the fatso did move around a lot. Hence,
technically, at the very moment she was writing the damn report, it
was not entirely impossible she might not have known Mario’s
current address.

But
Chris knew damn well she could contact her
hacker friend any time she needed to. Any. Fucking. Time. And for
fucking anything. She had contacted Mario during the quartet
fiasco, and the guy had been a big help. That meant Chris had to
let Mario out, right? For now at least.

He could
question her about Joshua’s knights again, but what would be the
point? She had once told him Joshua’s guys hadn’t stayed in contact
with one another, had also mentioned not liking the king much, and
that the kid was not the sharpest of the group. Hence, no hacker
jerks for now. Which left the coffee shop, arcade, Italian
restaurant and Irish pub. After two years, Chris wasn’t expecting
much from those ends.

Ham and
Charles
were doing the leg work. A damn
long shot. Maybe the apartment, if Lemieux had stayed there long
enough to be remembered? Or the strip club if he had been a
regular? If they could tie the hooker and the club. With a lot
of
if
s they might have something.

Chris
couldn’t begin to understand why
Lemieux
had taken Patricia to the strip joint. As a test, like her taking
him to ballet? Or to see if she was into those kinks? Worse, they
had stayed a couple of hours. Knowing her as Chris did,
hours
seemed like a long time, too damn fucking long. If she had
been angry at Lemieux for taking her there, she wouldn’t have gone
in to start with. Had she not wanted to?

Even with no
way back, no car, no money, no shoes, she would have walked rather
than gone in.
And yet she had gone in,
the fucking report stated in black and white! For what? Did she
like Lemieux? Or she liked
it
? Liked both? Or was it yet
again for research purposes? Curiosity. Chris smiled. Had she been
a cat, the damn woman would have long been dead more than her
allotted nine lives. She was so unbelievably inquisitive,
especially about the odd sides of people.

And yet,
strangely, besides the arcade, the Irish pub, and the trip to the
strip club, her report did not mention what the Lemieux guy did or
what he was. No jobs or volunteer work, no hobbies or social
associations he belonged to. She had to have known him more than
what the report described.

She must
have
snooped around the few times she had
been in the guy’s room. Chris recalled the first time she had come
to his place. She had surveyed his living room quite closely, his
bathroom, even his kitchen but hadn’t gone anywhere near his
bedroom, not that time. Later, she had looked everywhere. Not
searching per se, not as he would have when he did a search, but
more as if she was mapping out the place and trying to figure it
out. Figure
him
out.

“
Ever
checked on your cleaning lady’s work? Here, I’ll have a look,” she
had claimed as she looked under his bed, most likely to ascertain
he didn’t keep guns under there.

For sure
she
had done the same in Lemieux’s
bedroom. The damn woman was attentive to details. That first time
at his place, she had remarked on his lack of pictures. He made a
note to ask her what Lemieux’s room had told on the guy.

Th
e guy was neither young nor old
and yet since she had been in his place more than once, she had not
considered Lemieux a jerk either, thus betraying she had liked the
guy more than her report let on. Her liking the jerk bothered
Chris. That she had slept with the man, especially that last time,
bothered him. His mind kept circling back to that part of the
letter again and again.

She had
slept with Lemieux before Joshua
; she had
been with the jerk after too. Once after the club
and
Joshua. That last time, was she still with Joshua? If so,
why had she? He knew the letter had been difficult to write; it had
been damn difficult to read. And it was going to be even harder to
review it with her. A fucking lousy day. Damn woman. He missed
their escape at the beach. They shouldn’t have come
back.

P
atricia
breezed in at one o’clock sharp. She secretly hoped Christopher was
off to some meeting at Central. As they were sucking up for the
quartet fiasco these days, the Brass at Central liked to summon the
Big guy over. No such luck but, at least, he was busy on the phone,
so she walked by and waved without checking if he waved
back.

At
Bridget’s desk, she was dutifully informed that
“Big Chief MacLaren is not in a good temper.” Bridget only called
Christopher ‘Big Chief’ when the Big guy was in a very,
very
bad
mood. Great. “He has not left his office. And I have yet to see his
smile today.”

“
Christopher
is not the
smiliest guy to start with,
you know,” she pointed out to Bridget.

“
I know that
but still,” Bridget rambled on. The woman was not in a sunny
disposition either. “Tell, Patricia sweetie. Is something amiss
between the two of you?”

No, Patricia
thought, not yet but soon.
And we might as well get this done and over
with
. With that thought, as soon as she
saw Christopher hang up, she headed for his office.

He
stood still watching her approach. She knew she
looked pretty; she had to erase all signs of her sleepless night
that her too-short nap had only made worse. Her clothes and makeup
were her shield for her upcoming battle with the Big guy. When they
threw down the gloves, both she and Christopher were more offence
than defence. Way more.

Even
knowing Christopher would figure it out, she had
voluntarily left out details in the damn statement, intimate
details of her encounters with Lemieux and details that could lead
to Joshua. It was time to man up to her omissions.

He
open
ed the door for her and locked it
back softly behind her before retreating behind his desk. He had a
distinctly ready-to-fight stance, so no way was she going to sit.
He looked at her, visibly expecting her to talk. She didn’t. Set
for a fight but not quite ready to engage the hostility
yet.

They glared
at each other for a beat before h
e
surprised her by rounding his desk to circle her waist and gather
her into his arms in one swift movement. They never embraced or
touched at the office, but none of the team was in at the moment
(except for Bridget but the woman already thought they had had a
fight). She relaxed, melting into his body’s warmth and strength
and plastered her mouth against his neck. The vein pulsing under
his skin throbbed under her lips.

After a
while
, as he was holding her so she
couldn’t move yet alone storm out, she expected him to start
interrogating her; she never could lie to him when his body was
this close. But he just held her. She felt safe in his arms; she
had missed him last night and this morning.