City of Ice (51 page)

“One more thing,” Cinq-Mars added.

“Don’t you ever quit?”

“This isn’t about me. It’s possible that your car has been leaked to the other side. Undertake precautions.”

“Noted,” Norris said. His eyes conveyed seriousness. “Thank you.”

With the door open and one foot on the icy pavement, Cinq-Mars dutifully raised his hand. He shook. The oath between them, he knew, was that solemn.

“Good luck!” Norris brayed, but Sergeant-Detective
Émile Cinq-Mars had already slammed the car door behind him.

The policeman scurried back to the cruiser, jumped in, and commanded Mathers, “Get me to a real phone! I don’t trust these damn toys and radios!”

Julia Murdick lugged dynamite in a computer satchel.

They parked, facing uphill, in front of a tractor-trailer, on Atwater Avenue. Julia’s destination was below her, partially within view.

Exceptionally careful getting out of the car, she moved now in slow, prodigious motion, planted both feet on the curb and clutched the door with her free hand to hoist herself upright. She lacked confidence in her body, was wary of the footing, anxious not to jostle the explosive.

Under that load, the short walk downhill from the car to the club was treacherous. Salt and sand had been layered over the ice, but slippery patches on the slope remained, and she put her arms out to maintain her balance. The driveway that adjoined the sidewalk just above the property for the badminton club was level and, with relief, Julia turned in. She noticed the valets. Somehow she had expected very young men, these struck her as older. For one infinitesimal fraction of a second she thought that one had given her a look, a nod, a greeting of some sort. Could that be possible? Was the place populated by Norris’s people?

More confident, Julia picked out the blue car she’d been told to look for. It was one of the largest, one of only a few that color. She walked to the end of the snow-topped wall that separated the driveway from the parking lot and sat on it a moment as though contemplating a matter of no particular urgency. The valets were looking elsewhere. In a trice, Julia slipped over the wall, dropped into snow, and bent down, hidden now behind parked cars.

Suddenly she was breathing heavily. She needed to calm herself, to quit making so much noise. She couldn’t stop. Her breathing was rampant and hectic, she feared she might faint. What if she passed out? Then what? Then Jean-Guy would blow her up and Carl Bantry—sweet Arthur, poor Arthur Davidson—would be dead too. That’s why he was along in the car. As life insurance. If she threw the bomb away and bolted, they’d kill him.

Or maybe they planned to blow her up, then shoot Arthur and dump him by the side of the road. The thought pulled a cord around her heart. Jean-Guy held the remote detonator. All he had to do was press the button. Norris could do nothing to stop him.
Selwyn?

She moved between the wall and the back row of cars, finding progress difficult along the crusty snow and frozen puddles. She slipped once and uttered a short cry. This time she remained still, hung herself on a breath and listened. As far as she could tell, she’d not been detected. Julia moved down a row of cars and crawled past the Crown Victoria on the passenger side and around by its rear. She checked the license plate. Confirmed. The space between the bumper of the Ford and the car behind was too narrow for her to pass. She could not stand up and be spotted. Julia chose to get down on her belly and shimmy between the two vehicles under their bumpers. Carefully, she pushed the bag with the bomb ahead of her and felt the city tremble under her belly, the traffic of trucks and buses, the ancient volcanic quiver of the mountain explosive again at her fingertips, and she slithered through to the other side.

Returning to her crouch prematurely, she bumped her head on a tailpipe. It hurt.

If you’re going to do it, Jean-Guy baby, do it now.
She thought she’d made too much noise.

The next problem was immediately apparent. Little
space existed between the Ford and the car alongside it. This was not a parking lot where cars were jockeyed in and out. After the postluncheon games were played, the participants would emerge at approximately the same time and await their cars in turn. In the interim, the vehicles were tightly packed. She did not know if she could open the driver’s door wide enough to stuff the bomb—about the size of a laptop computer, only a little fatter—inside.

She could hardly fit between the two automobiles. She had to get over on her side and push herself along the ground where both cars were narrower. She moved the bomb ahead of her, the case was getting mucky. She wanted out of this. She wanted to save Arthur and herself and see no more of this business. She wanted to go back in time and change everything.
Selwyn. About that giant step backwards.
At the front door she raised her arm and pressed the latch, and the door opened and a chime sounded. She could not reach in and remove the keys from the ignition. No way. That was definitely impossible. She had to rely on traffic to cover the chime with noise, and for the moment its consistent roar seemed sufficient.
Organized crime, my ass! You call this planning? Selwyn Norris never would’ve planned anything this badly.
Then she checked herself—his influence had precipitated her predicament.

With the door open as far as she could manage, Julia reached an arm in, and it fit, but only in one direction, toward the rear. She could never reach over the front seat with the bomb, then direct it back underneath and set the positioning device—a lever intended to snag the bottom of the seat—as she’d been taught. This was trouble now. The Czar and the Angels would not take kindly to failure. They’d be suspicious, for sure. Besides, Norris knew about the enterprise. If she had a hope of being saved, it lay with him, today, now. She had to follow through on all things and hope that
he was a superior mastermind to the Angels. She had to find a way to get the damn bomb planted without killing herself in the process.

Gently, she removed it from the sack and rested it on the ground. Persuaded by the wind, the door wanted to close on her, and she used the back of her head to keep it pried open. She propped herself on an elbow and tried to guide the package onto the seat. No use. The best that she might hope for was to tuck the bomb under the seat from the side.

Julia tried to wedge it in. She forced the bomb hard, but it would not break through. The case was too large for the side space, it would have to bend in half to fit, but the shell of the case was hard. The damn chime from the open door kept sounding, driving her to a pique of fury. She removed the bomb completely and lay on the ground, panting.

She had to do this. She had to succeed. She had to find a way.

She thought, could she open the window, then reach inside and insert the bomb that way, take her chances with being spotted?

No, no, she had to do this properly. She had to find a way to do it right.

Julia came to a higher crouch, her body pinned between the two vehicles. Keeping the bomb on its side, she was able to angle it up onto the front seat. If only she could leave it there. If only the victim would return to the car and oblige her by sitting on the bomb, oblivious to its presence. Rearranging herself so that she was able to curl her right hand over the casing, she guided the bomb on its side between the seat and the door toward the rear footwell. She got it through but couldn’t maintain her grip and the bomb tumbled onto the floor.

Julia gasped.

She panted, waiting, as though reaction from the fall
might be delayed. As though dynamite was sleepy, and awakened would yawn before it roared. The traffic was loud, intense in her ears, she heard a commotion of horns, the chime from the open door repeating itself endlessly, but the world for her was quiet, dormant, at peace. She waited. Breathing.

A horn bellowed and she jerked in a sudden spasm.

Damn.

Reaching in again, furious, she discerned that the bomb had fallen on end, a difficult position. She wiggled a hand along the rear floor until the casing nudged her palm, and worked her other hand in as well, higher, and lowered the bomb to lie flat upon the floor.
Gently gently.
Without proper purchase, she was able to budge it by tiny increments, slowly guiding the bomb forward and under the front seat.

She kept up the action with her fingers.

The bow of the casing tilted downward into a lower section of floor. Then the rear of the bomb went over the hump and settled under the seat. She almost cheered.
You’re good at this, girl!

Julia had still to reach inside, twisting her arm backward, and fiddle with the positioning mechanism. She struggled to raise the lever. The imbecile bomb maker had not made it long enough! She had the arm straight up, but the seat was too high above the bomb for the lever to make contact.

Hearing a bus noisily ascend Atwater, Julia gave the door a shove and it shut.

She sat paralyzed a moment. She needed to summon faith. Once planted, would the bomb explode? At what juncture would Norris intervene? Did he expect her to do it, to blow up the car with a policeman in it? Was that a piece of the puzzle, a portion of her disguise? Would he, like the Angels, stop at nothing? Her dread was interrupted by a quick, unwarranted burst of tears, and she wiped them off her
cheeks made cold by the wind. Now she had to move. She had to escape. She had to keep on playing the game until there was no game left to play.

Julia clutched the empty computer satchel and retreated. She went around the way that she had come, sliding under the rear bumper to get through and walking in a crouch up that side. She scampered low to the ground along the front row of cars and made it to the rear wall. No one had sounded an alarm. No one had challenged her. Slowly, she raised her head, looking through the glass of a Mercedes. She spotted one of the valets, idly pacing back and forth, eyes to the ground. The other was unseen. She jumped, leaped off her toes, and pulled herself up, dropping her rear onto the stone wall that was low on one side, high on the other. She spun on her bottom, stood again, and commenced walking away from the scene, her duty close to being accomplished.

Julia strode back up the hill to the Cadillac, opened the back door, and climbed in.

“All set?” Jean-Guy asked her. He was driving.

“All set.”

“No problems?”

“I had
plenty
of problems! Are you kidding me? I couldn’t get the door open, your damn lever arm is too short, I had
plenty
of problems.
Christ!
I dropped the damn thing, I thought I was dead.”

Jean-Guy was chuckling to himself. “If you dropped it and it went off, you’d never know.”

“Yeah yeah.”

Arthur reached for, and received, Julia’s hand in the back of the Caddy. They sat, eyes front, waiting, wondering. Jean-Guy turned around in the front seat and smiled at them.

“I like this part best,” he said. “Waiting for the pop.”

Julia was still. Frantic inside. Blood pulsed in her
temples. The car was cold, its engine off, yet she perspired and tore off her wool hat. She exercised her anxiety by tousling her hair, fluffing it up, then patting it back down into shape. She waited.

“It’s a nice day,” Arthur surmised.

“One thing I don’t talk about it’s the weather,” Jean-Guy said.

“Please don’t talk to my father in that tone of voice. He’s fragile.” She had to keep up appearances.

Half-turned in his seat, Jean-Guy grinned at her. “I love the time before the pop,” he repeated.

He was a psycho-killer-fanatic, Julia now knew. His cool demeanor, his sour disposition, had hid it from her. She had no illusions now. She was sitting in a car with a man passionate about his profession. His work inflicted horrible, swift death. She was his accomplice. Worse. His apprentice. He was her tutor.

“They’re coming out,” Jean-Guy noticed.

Below them, members were emerging from the club and hanging about the entrance. Many would have to wait until other members emerged, so that the cars on the end rows could depart first.

“God! You didn’t leave me much time. I could’ve been caught!”

“Can you see the car?”

Julia turned in her seat, first one way and then the other, and stared down through the rear window at the club. Atwater Avenue wound up the mountainside in great curves, with the bottom portion divided by a median. Traffic came in waves, depending on the lights at the base. She saw nothing going on in the parking lot. “No,” she answered. “Maybe when it backs up.”

“Keep looking.”

“It’s a nice day,” Arthur murmured.

“Heather, take this.”

She turned.

He passed her the remote control.

The killing device.

Looking back out the window, Julia scanned the street for a sign of Norris. The day was dreary, gray. Drivers had begun to climb into their cars, and one or two had made it out to the street. The Crown Vic hadn’t budged. More men were showing up under the canopy at the door, more cars were being backed up into their possession.

Eight cars departed.

Twelve.

The blue Ford Crown Victoria swung into view.

Jean-Guy saw it move in his side mirror. “Bingo,” he said.

Julia watched.

She saw the driver tip the valet and tuck his coat in under his knees, as a woman might a dress, sliding in behind the wheel. Three other men approached the car, and each got in a separate door. “Jean-Guy!”

“Shit.”

“There’s four men in that car!”

“Probably cops. We’ll blow them all away.”

“Jean-Guy! We can’t blow up four guys!”

“Maybe we can, maybe we can’t,” he postulated.

“You don’t have orders for that!” She had to think fast, she had to think smart. His position was precarious. He had to make a decision, and either way the end result would be different than anticipated by his superiors. Kill four men instead of one, or abandon a mission with a bomb already tucked in place?

“The car’s ready to pop. It hits a pothole, it could go off. A whole shitload of people could get whacked.”

“Jean-Guy! You can’t start a war on your own! We can’t whack four guys. Your bombs don’t go off by themselves.”