River City (69 page)

“Go!” he said, and Cinq-Mars descended the ramp like a missile.

The air flew out of him with the rush of the fall. He felt as though he’d exhaled his heart. This was too fast, too extreme, and he uttered involuntarily small cries as he whooshed down towards his destiny.

He yearned to hit soft mattress.

Instead, the chute expelled him, he flew through the open air in the dark, and suddenly his body dove feet first into a fluid.

He was sinking into a pool of molasses-thick darkness, a rheumy substance heavier than water, like oil, and he struggled back up to the surface.

He gasped for breath, and breathed the ghastly scent. He had to act quickly, for his mark might soon follow. Should he knock on the chamber, to demonstrate that he should follow and survive? Or should he spare him the ignominy of this awful bath?

He crawled up and out of the chamber that held him, the air fetid, the slimy texture of the fluid over his clothes quite revolting, when suddenly a bright light shone on him, blinding him. Then he heard a great roar, which he thought for a moment might be an alarm. But that wasn’t it. His heart sank. He wanted to shoot himself. That wasn’t an alarm going off.

People were cheering.

They started to applaud.

As Émile Cinq-Mars climbed down from the chamber and shielded his eyes against the light, he discerned that he was surrounded by police officers, who were being joined by croupiers and customers from the room above. The man laughing the loudest, almost convulsing, was Detective Fleury. Standing beside him, with a massive grin on his face, stood Captain Armand Touton.

When their eyes met, Touton raised his hands and joined in the applause.

The intense light was turned off, and others that lit the courtyard turned on, so that Émile Cinq-Mars could see that he had fallen into a deep vat, likely of oil, grease, tar and water, and molasses, too, and that his fellow officers were enjoying the prank they’d played on him. He saw also that his brand new suit, the pride of his wardrobe, was ruined. Every pore, every thread, every stitch, had been soaked with smelly grime.

What he could not see, but could readily imagine, and what kept the other cops laughing, was that he looked a sight. When he smiled a little, his white teeth were almost blinding, emerging as they did from his blackened form.

Touton stepped towards him. As he did so, the other men allowed their jeers, laughter and whistles to ebb.

The “mark” came running from the building to join the party. Touton waited before he spoke.

“So we hear you want to be a member of the Night Patrol. To join us. Well, son, you’ve been initiated now. You’re still assigned to your beat, but when we want you, we’ll know where to find you.”

“Not tonight—” Cinq-Mars started to protest.

“No, son,” Touton smiled. He almost placed a hand upon the younger man’s shoulder, but wisely pulled it back. “Not tonight.”

Cinq-Mars could not take a cab home. No taxi would admit him. No bus driver would appreciate his smelly, oily presence, either, but in any case buses were too public a mode of transportation. Certainly no cop was going to offer him a lift, so he had no option but to walk home, a good distance made longer by his condition.

In an alley, he removed his shoes, then wrung out his socks. That seemed too hopeless a task, so he tossed the socks away and put his shoes back on barefoot. Much better. Less squishy. Next, he peeled off his jacket and did a fitful job of squeezing out the ooze from the fabric and scooping oil from his pockets. The cause was futile, but he needed to improve his mobility.

He wanted to stop dripping as he walked, and leaving footprints marked in oil. Noticing that small portions of his white shirt had been spared, protected by the jacket, he removed it and wiped his face on the bare sections, then threw it away and put on the still-oily jacket over his bare skin. The clothing felt a little better. Looking around, he ducked in behind a telephone pole, opened his trousers and, with his hands, scraped away the residue from his underwear and from around his genitals, then wiped his hand against the brick wall.

Yuck.

And he still had a long walk home.

He stuck to the back streets. At least it was early morning and only a few people were up. Those in cars were too sleepy to notice, or perhaps they habitually drove past weirdoes covered in black oil, their hair plastered against their scalps.

The few incidents that did crop up didn’t affect him particularly. The woman who crossed the street to avoid passing him on the sidewalk. The cabbie who slowed down, bolted ahead, then slowed down again. The gawk of a child from a back-seat window, but the child showed no surprise, suggesting he might have gawked at Cinq-Mars in any circumstances. Émile made it to his block, which revived him somewhat, although he was grumpy and determined that, when he was in charge, when he was made a captain, when he had a police force to command, rookies would never be treated this way.

And then he spotted Anik Clément upon the outside steps to his second-storey flat, about halfway up, waiting for him, and his heart sank at the same moment that it floated upward. He felt stretched to the brink of snapping.

His initial instinct was to hide. But she’d been watching him for a while, certain that she recognized the posture, that it had to be him, but how could it be? What in the world had happened? He came closer. She stared with her mouth open, not knowing whether to call an ambulance or run for cover.

Then he was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up, grinning in an odd way, his teeth as bright as pearls.

“What the hell—” she began.

“Don’t ask,” he advised her.

“I’m asking.”

“It’s a cop thing.”

“Cops did that to you?”

“Anik, what are you doing here?”

“Apparently, I’m here to wash you off, although I didn’t know that until now. Émile—isn’t that …? That’s your brand new suit.”

“Which your friend Touton made me buy. Knowing that this would happen.”

That’s when she laughed, uproariously and bent double, and that’s when he knew they’d be together.

Cinq-Mars showed off his grimy palms. She was trapped on the stairs, with nowhere to flee. “Hi there, Anik,” he said.

She could only run up a half-flight. Which she did. She scrambled on the spiral staircase to reach his door, and there awaited his blackening, smelly, grimy, oily repulsive embrace.

On his doorstep at dawn, she squealed, after a fashion. More a mock scream shared between them. He clamped a gooey black hand over her mouth to shush her, and once he had done so, her fate was sealed. She had to go inside to clean herself up also. He unlocked the door.

“I thought you were Catholic,” she said. They were lying in the nude on his narrow bed, their bodies cleansed and depleted. Their feet entwined.

“I am
so
Catholic.”

“Are you going to confess this sin, then?”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing. I just want to know.”

“If I have the courage to do so, I will confess this sin.”

No other boy in her general field of vision would ever say such a thing.
“So you feel bad about this?”

“That’s the trouble.” Cinq-Mars sighed. “I don’t. I know I should, though.”

“So you’re troubled? No—don’t sigh and moan to yourself, Émile. I’m trying to understand. We took a shower together and made love—you for the first time, I take it? We had a wonderful time. I did. I know you did. Now … you’re troubled.”

He moaned and sighed despite her admonition. “It’s ingrained, Anik.”

He wasn’t going to allow her to just make fun of him. He’d make sure she discovered that she had gone to bed with a serious man, notwithstanding their sport in the tub, soaping the goop out of his hair and from between the cheeks of his derrière. That had embarrassed him so much. She delighted in making him squirm in his private agony.

Or, perhaps, she was finding out, in his private hell.

“The world is moving on,” she pointed out to him.

“Does that mean the universe is, too? The world has never been known for its acumen, its spirituality, its commitment to truth, or wonder, or love, or grace. The world’s a wretched place. It’s murderous, it’s deceitful, arrogant and cunning. The world’s judgment does not fill me with great faith, Anik.”

She didn’t have conversations like these with other friends. Certainly not whenever they lolled around together on a bed. With others, she’d be more likely to talk revolution, and the heat of that expectation would lead them to smoke a joint. Cinq-Mars didn’t smoke joints.

“You’re weird,” she analyzed.

“You’re pretty,” he said.

“Ah, but does being pretty make me wicked? Have I not seduced a man of God? Therefore, I’m a sinful creature. Bound for hell on a freight.” “That’s you, all right.” She poked him in the ribs.

“I’m not passing judgment. What do I know? I’m just happy to be with you. Some things are ingrained, though. I can’t pretend they don’t affect me.” “But you’re willing to grapple with them?” “Apparently, I’m willing to grapple with you.” “Yeah. Then moan and sigh about it.” “That’s about the size of it.”

“Speaking about size.” She held his penis in her fingers, and he was certain she would say something lewd, so he steeled himself. She moved her lips to his ear. “I’m on the pill. How sinful is that for you?”

He was mortified. He just didn’t know how to express it. Anik anticipated his dilemma and, still kneading him as he was rising in her hand again, kissed him.

“This,” Émile Cinq-Mars told his new girlfriend, “is the case I’m working on.” “Impressive file. Big,” Anik Clément noted.

The pages had been three-hole punched and gathered in a black binder. “It’s the history of the Cartier Dagger—” “What?” Anik was astounded, frightened, amazed. “The dagger—” he began.

“—that killed my father,” she said. She was perplexed. “You’re investigating my father’s murder? Why you?”

“I’m not the only one. Captain Touton is bringing me onto the case so that the investigation will not end with his retirement. He wants the hunt for your father’s killers to carry on from one generation to the next. Continue on after that even, if necessary. But if Touton doesn’t bring the culprits to justice, then I will.”

She remained astonished. She had been struck by Touton’s faithfulness to the case previously, although always doubtful, lacking full confidence in any official. That his ardour extended beyond his life on the police force did stun her.

“So this file—this is the whole case so far?”

“No. I’m starting with the history of the dagger. I need to know it, backwards and forwards. It’s a place for me to begin—my entry point, let’s say.”

They were less naked. Cinq-Mars had donned underwear and an undershirt, having packed his suit and his other soiled clothes into a garbage bag for disposal. Anik had put on her underwear, but also wore one of Émile’s large T-shirts, which hung low on her thighs. They had slept, and woken up timid
with one another despite the passion they’d known hours earlier. After showering again, separately this time, they had partially dressed. Then returned to the narrow bed.

“The history of the Cartier Dagger.”

“The history,” he said.

“A bunch of things I know, but not enough to fill the pages of this file.” Cinq-Mars flipped through the binder and detailed salient points of what was known or surmised of its early history. He highlighted the dagger’s movements, as far as researchers had been able to determine.

“It’s been an adventure. I can’t forget that the dagger was last seen—that it was used to kill your father. A story I like is how the knife came into the hands of the Sun Life Assurance Company.”

“Tell me.”

He lay on his stomach and went to the pages that gave him the story’s chronology. Anik slid over, onto his back, her weight on her knees and sometimes on a hand or an elbow, and on top of him she felt as light as a feather, for he was so large, she so small, and she loved the farmboy strength of him, those massive shoulders. She even adored the immensity of his nose, and had bitten it already and teased him about its prominence.

She hadn’t known Sarah Hanson’s story, and was interested to hear it, about how the Mohawks had handed the dagger to the Sulpicians, who made a gift of the relic to the brave, wise young woman living by the Ottawa River. She had later deployed the relic to make an impression on the governor of New France, to try to influence him to prevent the army, and the populace, from eating horses, a lobbying effort that had so rudely been rebuffed.

“He threatened to hang her? Jesus.”

“Then the history of the dagger takes an odd turn,” Cinq-Mars noted. “Not its first strange twist, I’ll admit, and not its first tenure of neglect either. But it stayed in the Hanson family for a couple of generations, and they stayed in the same house by the river. The known value of the heirloom decreased with Sarah’s death. Apparently, a family member had it appraised, as he was interested in cashing in on the diamonds and the gold, but the appraiser assayed the diamonds as being quartz and the yellow nubs as fool’s gold. Not
true, and no assayer could possibly reach that conclusion, so it’s my guess that the man was either incompetent, which I think is unlikely, or he was really planning to rob a backwoods farmer who might not have a clue.”

“You’re a cop, so you figure people to be thieves,” she whispered in his ear.

“Am I that jaded already? I’m only a
rookie
cop. Come back and see me in a few years.”

“I might.”

They kissed awhile to commemorate that thought.

“Anyway, instead of buying the relic cheap, which is what I presume the jeweller was hoping to do, he lost out on it entirely. The family chose not to sell it at all, but to keep it as a family heirloom, since it was only a worthless piece of junk.”

“Gotcha,” Anik said, and kissed him again. “Then what?”

“It gets interesting. The English were dying of starvation in the Lake District.”

“Oh, the poor fucking English,” Anik piped up. “Hey. That’s not nice. They were dying.”

“Yeah, right. Anyway, I’ve got nothing against dead Englishmen.” “And Englishwomen. And English children.” “Easy. I’m only teasing. Sort of.”