River City (8 page)

“What’s your point?”

“Your head’s not in the game. We have a pretty daring robbery here, don’t you think? Well planned, well executed, from what I’ve seen so far. All this to acquire a weapon that was then used to kill a man. Wake up, for God’s sake. You can’t be going off half-cocked about some dumb-assed suspension.”

Contrite, Sloan put his hands in his pants pockets and hung his head most of the way down. As they reached the main floor, he asked, “So you agree?”

“About what?”

“It was a dumb-assed suspension.”

“Totally.” Touton smiled as they headed outside. “Officer Miron.”

“Yes, sir?”

“If Detective Sloan brings up the Richard suspension again, or even mentions the name Rocket Richard—”

“Yes, sir?”

“Load two shells into the shotgun, peel his overcoat off his back and shoot it full of holes.”

“Ah, shoot his back, sir, or his coat?”

“His coat, for crying out loud. I’m not asking you to commit murder.” “Yes, sir,” Miron agreed.

They were on their way down the outside stairs when Sloan thought to say, “Miron?”

“Yes, sir?” the young cop asked.

“You know he’s kidding, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the officer in uniform deadpanned. “Whether he’s kidding or not, I’ll do it anyway.”

Touton laughed under his breath as Sloan gave the young cop a second glance. He might have to alter his initial opinion on the young man in uniform.

With the street blocked off due to the riot, they didn’t have to look for traffic as they stepped off the curb and crossed to the park and a crowd of cops. Dominion Square occupied a short city block, a park with the usual complement of trees, open spaces and benches to provide a measure of rest amid the
haste of the city. Grass showed through here and there, but snow had been ploughed into piles to keep the walkways clear, and these drifts, hard packed and dirty, would be the last to melt.

The Sun Life was a building associated particularly with the English, and to a degree the park possessed an English motif as well. The Frenchman Laurier, who had been one of the fledgling country’s early prime ministers, had a statue here, but another monument paid homage to the fallen heroes of the South African War, which held no interest at all among the French—and not much among the English, either, as it harked back to British colonial rule. The poet chosen to be honoured was Robbie Burns, a Scot who had never set foot in the country. On the steps below the Burns statue, the poet’s back to him, lay the sprawled, inert body of the murdered victim.

Cops had driven onto the walkways, and the area was lit by the headlights of their cars. Touton was quickly able to spot the coroner, Claude Racine. A small, wiry man, around fifty-five, with a salt-and-pepper moustache and greying temples, he was wearing a Montreal Canadiens jacket with Richard’s famous number 9 across the biceps, perhaps a deliberate ploy to manage his way through the crowds on this night. His trip to the crime scene had been slower than usual, given the ruckus in the streets.

“Claude,” Touton said, both to acknowledge the man’s presence and to announce his own.

“Armand.”

“What do we have here?”

“Go look for yourself. It’s not a pretty sight.”

Touton was about to do so when the coroner thought twice, put a hand to his chest and stopped him. “Wait.” He addressed Sloan. “Does he know yet?”

“Know what?” Sloan asked him back.

“Do you even know?”

Sloan was befuddled. “What am I supposed to know?”

“What is it, Claude?” Touton asked him gently, for something told him that matters in this place might be serious. All he could see from his current vantage point was the dead man’s boots.

“Prepare yourself, Armand. You’re not going to like it. He’s not your best friend or nothing like that, but you know the victim.”

Touton stepped around the coroner and moved cops aside to get a proper view of the corpse. He knelt down beside the dead man, and tipped his fedora back from his brow, his sadness palpable to all who could see his face. The coroner crouched next to him. The dead man was square-shouldered and square-jawed, with a boxer’s big chest and a drinker’s swollen paunch.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Roger Clément,” Touton acknowledged. “How do you know him?”

“Coincidence. We’ve been witnesses at the same trials a couple of times.”

“He wasn’t the accused?”

“A defence witness. Paid to lie. But I’m right? You’ve been friends?”

“Acquaintances. More or less. I’ve busted him a few times. We respected each other—that’s probably fair to say. He could punch, this guy. A strong man, but I never knew him to really hurt anybody. Even though he was hired to do so, from time to time.” Touton glanced over his shoulder at Sloan, standing behind him. “Do you know him?”

“No, sir. He has a record?”

Touton stood up. “He was still a decent guy. Shit. I’ll have to tell his family.”

“We could send someone,” Sloan suggested. “He’s only a hood, right?”

Touton was looking up at the highest level of the columns on the Sun Life.

“He was never
only
a hood. I just told you, he was a decent guy. It wouldn’t take much for me to have been him, or for him to have been me. We have the same physique, similar background. He’s a family man. To his family he was never a hood. He was a father, a husband. Make sure nobody gets to his house before me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He was also an ex-hockey player. He played for Chicago, and somebody else. New York, I think.”

They waited for him to lower his gaze, and when he didn’t, the other cops around him and the coroner also looked up at the Sun Life.

“He could have done it,” Touton stated. “He had the balls. The strength. He could have broken in and slid down by rope. But he never could have
planned all that. Not Roger. He’s not that kind of thief. He would’ve been hired to carry it out.”

“Then he gets back down here and somebody kills him with what he stole,” Sloan pointed out. “Makes no sense, no matter how you cut it.”

“Unless somebody else stole the knife and he crossed paths with the thief in the dark. Still doesn’t make sense, though. To go to all that trouble to steal a million-dollar dagger, then to lose it in a guy’s heart.”

The coroner returned to the corpse and, with his gloved hands, tried to extract the knife from the body. The weapon did not slide free easily. He had to remove instruments from his bag and use them to slowly extract the weapon, working it loose with difficulty. Finally, the dagger slid up into his hands.

“I wish I could reward you with the crown of England, for pulling Excalibur from stone, Claude.”

“I’ll settle for a good night’s sleep. And a chance to hold this in my hands.”

“Interesting, though. Whoever implanted it might have had the same trouble getting it out. Then he might’ve had to take off before he succeeded.”

“That’s possible. Look at this thing.”

The handle was made of bear bone, the blade of stone. The cutting edge was serrated, not naturally, but had lost its edge over time and was quite jagged. The very tip of the knife had snapped off, Touton noticed.

“Look, the leading edge, the change of colour. I bet that piece is still in him.”

“I’ll be looking for it,” the coroner assured him. “Do you see the jagged edge? That’s what made it difficult to extract. It caught on the breastplate, a rib. The blade isn’t steel, after all. It’s soft. It’s only stone.”

The bone handle was partially wrapped with hide—very old, so that it was conceivable to think it was original. A remarkable aspect to the knife were the gold and diamonds embedded in the handle. They were not finely cut, but rough-hewn in a primitive fashion. The weapon was now centuries old.

“You’ll take care of this?” Touton asked him. “Don’t leave it lying around.”

The coroner nodded. “There’s a safe I can use, back at the office.”

“Probably it’s more secure with you than at the police station.”

“Definitely, I’d say.”

Touton grunted.

“All right, I’m going to bag the body now, Armand. Need anything else?”

He moved his chin slightly. “I could use that good night’s sleep you were talking about, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

In the distance, the wail of sirens and the roar of the mob still sounded. Closer to them, fire smoke drifted by and mingled with the exhaust fumes of their cars.

“This could go on for days,” the coroner concurred.

“The Rocket should talk,” Miron suggested.

“What?” Sloan asked him.

“The Rocket, he should get on the radio. Tell the people to calm down.”

“The Rocket! On the radio!” Sloan challenged him. “To save Campbell’s ass?”

“He should get on the radio,” Touton butted in, lending authority to the suggestion, “to save the city.”

The men nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation, when Miron disrupted their mood. “He mentioned the Rocket, sir. Do I get to shoot his coat?”

“You little shit!” Sloan burst out.

Touton glanced at the young cop. “Now you know you goaded him, Miron. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But keep your ears open. You may get to shoot his coat yet.” Sloan glowered at the young guy, then said, “Speaking of the radio, Captain, he has one on him. In his pocket. One of those fancy new transistors. The Regency TR-1.”

“Sophisticated. Imagine that, eh? A radio you don’t plug in. Damn thing costs fifty bucks, but I might buy one. Anything else?”

“A flashlight and a penknife, also in his coat pockets. A bit of putty. We picked up a woman’s kerchief that was lying beside him so it wouldn’t blow away. We can’t say if it belonged to him or just blew in.”

Touton shook his head, then nodded back at the Sun Life. “Look at that building. I don’t know what Fort Knox looks like, but it must be similar. Are you telling me he broke into that building with a transistor radio and a penknife?”

Sloan shrugged a little. “He also must have had several long stretches of rope and a few sticks of dynamite.”

“Dynamite, a kerchief and putty.” Touton blew out a gust of air.

The coroner bagged the knife and placed it in the glove box of his van, which he locked, then he locked the van. He came back for the body, which his assistants had bagged, and, while Touton questioned other cops on the scene, he loaded the corpse onto a gurney. The captain wanted to hear what the other cops had learned or guessed, if anything, and to know if any witnesses had stepped forward. This was a public park, one that was used at night, although, admittedly, the night had been exceptional. The cops confirmed what he’d expected: that the usual thrum of people had been drawn into the cacophony of the riot, and so far only one witness had turned up. That man had spotted a group of adult males, at least two of whom looked old, huddled over the victim. Suspiciously, aggressively, he said. He’d dashed away to call a cop. When the officer went to investigate, the men ran.

“The cop didn’t chase them?” Touton asked.

“He did, he says, but they vanished into the mob scene.”

Feeling glum, Touton went over to the coroner’s van and shut the driver’s-side door on him, giving it a slap as the vehicle departed. The coroner drove across the grass and snow, onto the sidewalk, then slowly dropped the van off the curb onto the street and headed south.

The captain of the Night Patrol turned back to the crime scene.

This one was perplexing. He knew that his men were seeing what they were meant to see. The acrobatic robbery, followed by a bold murder with a valuable, stolen weapon. But an aspect that had made the robbery work was the early preventative evacuation of the building due to the riot. Sloan had already made that connection. And another question—why would a thief lie dead, with the stolen prize lodged in his chest? That one was the real puzzle to anyone looking at this.

“Sir! Sir!” Miron called excitedly. Then, suddenly, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two shells.

“What? Did Sloan mention Richard?”

Miron stooped to retrieve a shell that had fallen in the snow, and nodded
in the direction the van travelled. Touton shot a glance that way. The coroner’s van had been cut off by a car at the intersection with Dorchester Boulevard. Both its front doors were flung open.

“Get down there! Go! Run!”

Touton ran, too, but the younger, lighter man who was free of war wounds dashed ahead of him. Spotting them on the move, Sloan and other cops came running. Touton could see a confrontation around the cars, a tussle, then heard a gunshot. Men leaped into a large, black Cadillac, and the car burned rubber, its tires squealing as the car vaulted away before its doors were closed. Still running, Touton caught sight of a coroner’s assistant bent over a body in front of the van, and he yelled at Miron, “Shoot! Fire that thing!”

The young man still had to load the shells. He stopped running to do so, then aimed and pressed both triggers. The right rear tail light popped and went dark, but the fleeing black Caddy continued off into the night.

The echo of the shotgun blast bounced off the Sun Life Building and, across the street, off Mary Queen of the World Cathedral. Touton raced towards the van. His longtime associate, the coroner, lay dead on the pavement. His head to one side, a bullet hole in his temple. Blood streamed down the back of his neck. An assistant held his hand and panted heavily, in shock. Another sat shivering in the front seat. Touton leapt to the second man. “What happened?”

Dazed, the man whispered, “The knife.” The glove box lay open. “I had to give it up. He’s dead?”

Sloan came running up.

“After them!” Touton shouted out. “Get cars! They’re in a black Caddy! Put it out on the radio!”

“Armand, there’s no one available.”

Touton looked at him and realized that what he said was true. Every cop on duty was fully engaged on this night. He spoke more calmly. “Get a couple of cars. Get after him. Put it on the air. Do whatever you can do. They killed Claude.”

Now the cops who had run up were sprinting back to their vehicles. Miron stayed behind and stood beside the captain over the dead man.