River City (95 page)
He had wanted to give them another battle to fight, to remove public attention from himself. He failed. Although the others got drunk with him, and made a good night of it, Pelletier would have the final word.
“Count—” he began.
De Bernonville’s whiskey was gone. He knew that whatever Pelletier said next would be significant. He smiled. “Yes, my dear, dear Gérard.”
“The souls of the dead torment me tonight. In particular, the souls of the resistance fighters you tortured.”
His face turned grim. “Are you convicting me without a trial, Gérard?”
“I’m convicting you in lieu of a trial. I will rescind my statement if you agree to return to France to be properly tried as a war criminal.”
De Bernonville shook his head. Then looked up. He had one last card in his hand. The time had come to play it. He had not wanted matters to depend on this. He said, “And where were you, my dear Gérard, when the battles raged?”
Pelletier looked him straight him in the eye. Among all of them, he was the least physically active, and the least likely to rise to intemperate rage. But he held the Count’s gaze and levelled his words with intent. “I did what I believed to be just. Do not suggest, sir, that the same holds true for you.”
He did not articulate his threat, but de Bernonville spoke no more that night.
What impressed Roger the most, as he awakened bleary-eyed the next morning and shunted off to visit his wife and child, was that he had achieved the impossible. People thought him to be a dumb thug, but he had finessed three sides against the middle and back again. Chartrand and Trudeau had each sustained severe blows, which should keep the premier happy. He’d never tell him that they punched each other. De Bernonville had been physically protected and managed to have his midnight party. The count had had an opportunity to press his charm upon the journalists, and so would send a good report back to the mayor. And Roger had served the monsignor well, and his wife, by maintaining order in a time of imminent peril.
Aware of what he had accomplished, he now considered that he had it in him to manipulate various forces, that he could surprise people with his acumen. For he now held an idea in his head, as did perhaps a few others who had been in that room, although among them he was the one most capable when disparate forces would again converge, this time to steal back for the people of Quebec their revered Cartier Dagger.
A
RRIVING HOME IN THE WEE HOURS AFTER A DOUBLE SHIFT, CONSTABLE
Émile Cinq-Mars slept past noon. He was vaguely aware of the women being up and having breakfast, and remembered them saying something about taking the dog for a walk, but when finally he roused himself, he was alone in his apartment. He awoke to a note, which made him want to just go back to sleep. He felt sad.
Émile needed time to feed himself, shower and shave, and generally prepare himself for the next foray. Yet there was no shaking a sluggish mood. After the double shifts and the deep lows of the job, and now the departure of the Clément women, he felt let down and lethargic. Late in the afternoon he received a call from his watch commander.
“Hey, kid, how’s it hanging?” the duty sergeant asked.
“Good. You?”
“Listen up. An SQ sarge called me ten minutes ago. Said he got the number from you. Your man’s down at the jailhouse again, he said. What’s that about?”
For a few seconds, Émile couldn’t recall. Then it hit him—Father François was visiting prisoners.
“A lead I’m following.”
“Yeah? So Touton told me you work for him now.” “Special duty, yeah. For a bit.”
“Take care, Émile. He didn’t seem all that pleased with you. He kept referring to you by your rectum.”
That didn’t sound good. “He’s trying to keep up our morale.” “I also heard you requisitioned a squad car this morning. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt using that word, ‘requisitioned,’ instead of saying you stole it.”
“I need it, sir.”
“We all need something, but you don’t need a brand new one. Get your ass down here. I’m also referring to you by your rectum, asshole. Trade the car in. You get to drive some old wreck.”
Sometimes life in the police department just seemed so damned trivial.
“I’ll be down as soon as I can, Sarge.”
“Whatever Touton’s got prepared for your arse won’t be nothing compared to what I do.”
If he ever acquired rank, Cinq-Mars vowed, he’d change a few things. Such as how things worked, even the way people talked to one another. “Sarge, make sure the replacement car is ready. I don’t have time to screw around on this.” He just had to fight back, snap out of his slump, although, really, he could think of nowhere to go.
“Look who’s high and mighty.”
“Whatever you say, Sarge, but I got a gold shield in my pocket.”
“What?” Cinq-Mars heard the other man sucking air. “Don’t shit me, son. You never made sergeant yet. You haven’t put in the time.”
“Desperate times. Desperate measures. I’ll show it to you when I get there.”
He listened to the pause at the other end of the line. This was probably a difficult adjustment for his sergeant. “Forget it,” he said. “Keep the car. If you got that shield—”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“Keep the car. Unless you want an unmarked.”
The sergeant had changed his tune. Amazing, the difference created by the hue on a badge. “The blue-and-white suits me fine,” Cinq-Mars told him. Then he chose to twist the knife deeper. He had nothing against his sergeant, although a few grievances against the department as a whole were brewing. He had logged time as an officer of the law, and his early romanticism was wearing thin. He added, “For now.”
He knew he was getting big for his britches as he flicked on the siren and flashed the cherries and drove down to SQ headquarters at blazing speed. At every main intersection, soldiers with automatic weapons watched him whiz by.
He felt his good energy flowing back.
He wasn’t really sure what to do once he reached the Sûreté lockup. He chose to park by the curb and sit in the car. His presence was insignificant. Half the other vehicles around were cop cars. Probably the majority of those that were unmarked were official vehicles or owned by cops. They had that aura.
On Parthenais Street, near the northern mouth of the Jacques Cartier Bridge, which rose high above the St. Lawrence, SQ headquarters stood as a narrow, black monolith. When he brought in prisoners, he processed them on the first two floors before they were transferred to penthouse suites via an elevator. Up there, way up the mast, the windows were barred. Prisoners were given rooms with a view. Escape was not impossible. Before the bars had been installed, and several times since, felons had knotted bedsheets together and slid down the external wall to freedom. Twice, fledgling escapees had lost their grip and fallen to their deaths. Another prisoner had miscalculated the distance. Bereft of enough sheets, helpless and exhausted from dangling four storeys up, he waited to be rescued by jailers who deliberately took their time before dialling the fire department. Cinq-Mars wondered how that man felt, dangling above the pavement, knowing that his scary bid for freedom reduced him to pleading for rescue by his captors. He felt vaguely sympathetic, and a bit that way himself, a dangling man. A yob. He didn’t know if he’d even be able to saw through the bars, or if his sheets would be long enough, and if he came up short, the man who’d have to save him would be his own boss, who’d probably prefer to watch him dangle for hours, then let him plummet.
Putting his hands behind his neck, he arched his back, and, really for the first time in his life, experienced an unruly duress—pressure. His body required release, his muscles a good stretch, although mentally he believed himself set now. Hadn’t he become a cop for this?
Still, what to do about Father François?
Cinq-Mars had no assurance that the cleric would depart through the same door as the last time he’d been there—likely, he’d leave by whatever exit
was convenient to where he’d parked, which could be at the other end of the building or even on another street altogether—nor did he have any idea how long he’d be staying or if he was still inside. But he waited. He called it a hunch.
Father François Legault, he knew, had been involved in every transformative social uprising that had occurred in the province. He’d walked in the big marches, been on the picket lines for the critical strikes, observed every riot. That was his way, his life’s blood. His appearance among prisoners during this crisis should have been expected, and had Cinq-Mars been making the bet ahead of time, he’d have assumed that the priest would be incarcerated by now. Of all citizens, his name should have come up on a warrant, and he ought never to walk freely down prison corridors offering pastoral support. His collar alone saved him. In a land where priests were still accorded residual respect, he’d been skipped over for arrest.
He was the prime minister’s pal. There was that, too.
Logically, Cinq-Mars believed that he had good reason to monitor the priest’s movements. He was here, suffering a potentially fruitless reconnaissance, to serve a hunch. If he was going to be the cop he wanted to be—and, eventually, the detective he intended to be—then he needed to develop a nose—
oh, that magnificent beak of his
—for crime. A nose for investigation.
Like it or not, he was going to have to trust his instincts. He’d wait for Father François and hope he had the right exit covered. He also prayed that the priest was no different than anyone else involved in this affair, busy busy busy, and that he wouldn’t be staying inside the building forever.
That aspiration, at least, was soon rewarded.
Father François emerged, large and shuffling, hands stuffed in his pants pockets, emitting both the lethargy of obesity and resolve. When the man checked his watch, Cinq-Mars checked his own. Twelve to five. Five o’clock would be a fitting time for a rendezvous. The man hadn’t parked anywhere. Instead, he was travelling by cab and hailed one near the entrance. Luckily for Cinq-Mars, he could tail the vehicle without the passenger becoming aware of him in the rear-view mirror.
They each headed off, first through the military checkpoint protecting the
SQ, then along broad, busy Dorchester Boulevard towards downtown, which commenced a couple of miles to the west. Jeeps occupied by soldiers and other military vehicles were interspersed along the way, standing guard over the intersections to the major cross-streets. The cab, before reaching downtown, veered south as though Old Montreal might be its final destination. This proved to be true, and Cinq-Mars took advantage of being in a blue-and-white to park his vehicle in an alley off narrow St. Paul Street, as parking spots in the district were otherwise scarce. The priest had to be intent on a meeting of some sort, for he piled out of the cab and entered a bar-restaurant just as people were pouring in for their afternoon cocktails.
Cinq-Mars surmised that the priest was not hearing confessions in there.
The English preferred the phrase
happy hour.
In Quebec, the French used the term
cinq à sept
—five to seven. The meaning was specific to the province, for in France the same phrase referred to an illicit romance, as a man typically might meet his mistress between five and seven before heading home to his family after work. In Quebec, the term referred only to the hours for early-evening drinks, though it borrowed from the Europeans a sense of the mischievous.
Cinq-Mars knew how meanings and pronunciations changed as language crossed the Atlantic. His own name literally meant the fifth of March. In researching his family background, he learned that the origins of his name were obscure, that it derived either from antecedents with a name similar to Mars, in which the offspring of the fifth son had prospered while families of the other four sons had petered out, or the pronunciation had drastically altered over time. Likely, the name had begun as Saint-Marc, and he was descended from inhabitants of such a village.
He sequestered himself on a barstool, hoping not to be spotted by the cleric.
Along a far wall, he caught sight of the priest’s shiny pate. The identity of the man seated across from him took a moment to determine, due to the congestion of patrons and the inconvenience of a pillar in his line of sight. When he shifted barstools, he could see the man clearly, and immediately the blood vacated his body and shot to his brain.
The priest and his confidant had fallen into a heated exchange.
As he made his exit, it occurred to Cinq-Mars that he was close to his own police headquarters. Father François had essentially travelled from one to the other—from the SQ to the Montreal Police Department—for the man he was talking to was none other than his own boss, Captain Armand Touton.
That gave him a lot to think about.
He had to wonder.
He was in awe that his boss maintained a pipeline into the SQ lockup where revolutionary suspects were being held. At the same time, he felt a rising dismay, for he remained a practising Catholic who felt seriously at odds with the priest’s conduct. How long had this liaison been in force? Cinq-Mars rehashed the order Touton had given him some time ago to check out Father François. When had Touton established contact? Before or after that command? In his deliberations and investigations, the neophyte detective could only tap the surface of the alliances, betrayals and deals that intertwined so many diverse people. Dwelling on that, he remembered what Captain Gaston Fleury had once told him: that they could be going up against the
people
—not this or that person or authority or institution, but a gallimaufry of mythologies and allegiances interwoven through the entire population.
Getting into the blue-and-white and creeping out of the alley, Émile Cinq-Mars told himself that he was learning fast. He experienced a sensation of being alone in the world. He had no one to call upon for reliance or favour, no one to signal. He also felt, for the first time when not under an overt threat, scared.