The Marble Mask Page 20

  He closed the book. “I don’t know what happened to Charlie Webber. He was probably blown to bits and never found. But he might be living over there right now, happy as a clam. I think he’s dead, though, ’cause if he’d made it, he’d be living where you come from—Vermont.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, startled. “He have family there?”

  “Hell, no. That would defeat the purpose. It’s just that when we were in Burlington, he never missed a chance to leave base and explore the state. Used to say it was Heaven on earth and a bunch of other crap—made it sound like a woman. We used to kid him about it.”

  The old man’s shoulders slumped at the thought and he lowered himself into the room’s one chair, as if conceding defeat. “I wish I’d had someplace like that. Instead, I came back here and spent the rest of my life in a brewery, going through wives till I finally gave it up.”

  I sat on the bookcase next to the roster, my legs stretched out before me. “Civilian life takes some getting used to afterward, doesn’t it?”

  He looked up at me tiredly. “You been there, too?”

  I didn’t go into detail. “Oh, yeah.”

  He sighed. “It was like living a dream—the action, the friendships, the strain of staying alive. Adrenaline was like breathing back then. Didn’t matter if you were fighting the enemy or stealing a general’s jeep. We were always on the go, walking the edge, looking for a challenge. We hated it when they’d pull us back from the line, and sometimes we’d creep back up on our own just to raise a little hell.”

  He examined his damaged hand, flexing it on his lap. “After that, life can get pretty empty.”

  I picked up the book beside me. “Mr. Kearley, can I borrow this for a while? I promise I won’t let it out of my hands.”

  He didn’t bother looking up. “Hell, yeah. It’s not doing me any good.”

  Chapter 19

  GILLES LACOMBE WAS DRIVING OUT OF THE Sûreté parking lot as Paul and I got out of our car. He rolled his window down and called us over. “Where have you been? I have not seen you in days. Are you okay?”

  I leaned on the windowsill, feeling slightly guilty. “To be honest, I’ve been staying out of your way. I’m still trying to live down what happened in the old jail.”

  He looked almost horrified. “Joe, are you always this way? I would think that anyone who lives with you would like to strangle you. You are not married, correct?”

  I laughed. “Correct.”

  “As I thought.” He called out past me to Paul. “Paul, get your boss into this car. We are going to dinner right now. Very nice place. We will have some wine, talk a little. Okay? Right now. Come on.”

  “What about your own family?” I chided.

  He pulled out a cell phone as we climbed into the vehicle. “I call my wife. She knows the value of rest and relaxation.”

  We drove downtown to a dark, quiet, and possibly expensive restaurant on North Wellington, although neither Paul nor I ever saw a bill.

  “Alors,” Lacombe said once we’d settled into a discreet rear booth with the feel of executive privacy. “Is this all right?”

  “Wonderful, and much appreciated,” I told him.

  He flagged down a waiter and took our drink orders. He and Paul both had wine. I held out for a glass of Coke, much to our host’s disgust. “You are not also going to order a hamburger, do you understand? It is not that kind of restaurant. But you will have to order meat—it is the only thing that will stand up to that awful stuff.”

  I conceded the point, even though we hadn’t been offered menus yet.

  “So,” Lacombe asked after the drinks had arrived, “what have you been doing?”

  “Digging into the past, trying to find out what happened to Antoine.”

  “You have proof now Marcel did not stab his father?”

  “God, no—we’re a long way from there.”

  “It does not matter any more,” Lacombe said. “That is why I was looking for you.”

  “He took the polygraph?” Paul blurted out.

  “Yes, and passed like a sweet child. It was this morning. His lawyer called in a surprise, said they would do it, and it was done—bim, bam—just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Jesus,” I murmured. “Does that kill your investigation?”

  Lacombe was all smiles, no doubt practicing what he’d been preaching to me to do in the parking lot. “Yes, it is gone into smoke. Fini. The procureur told me not an hour ago that he sees no reason to go on with what we have.”

  “But where’s that leave you?” Paul asked.

  Lacombe shrugged and distributed the newly delivered menus. “Only in a different place. Another thing that happened this morning was the discovery of another Deschamps worker, dead in an alley behind a bar not far from here.”

  “Any leads?” I asked.

  “A button from a denim jacket, like what the Angels wear. Very convenient. It was even found in the dead man’s hand, just like in a mystery story. Not,” he added carefully, “that we and the Sherbrooke police won’t make sure the Angels did not do this thing.”

  I looked at him for a moment, sensing much more behind his words. “What do you think’s going on, Gilles?”

  He’d already begun scanning the menu but now put it flat on the table, suddenly solemn. “I know no more than I did, my friend, but I do think something has changed. A house of cards has fallen into pieces, and it was built to make us put Marcel Deschamps into jail.”

  “Until he passed the polygraph,” I suggested.

  “That is it. Now we can see two things: Marcel was probably set up with the ice pick and all the rest, and a carefully laid plan is now in chaos. That means to me two more things: at this moment, Marcel is mad as hell, and the person who laid the plan is desperate. This is a very bad situation, I think.”

  There was dead silence around the table. Lacombe then smiled, sat back, retrieved his menu, and brightly asked, “And so what will you have with your Coca-Cola?”

  · · ·

  As advertised, the dinner was a nice break from routine, but the conversation leading up to it continued to rattle around in my head, even though all three of us worked hard to avoid shop talk while we ate.

  Over coffee and dessert, however, I felt free to relax. “What’s Plan B, Gilles?”

  “Now is when the rules begin to work for us,” he explained. “In the old days, when we wanted to get a wiretap, it was very easy, and the federal people from the U.S. would look at us with envy. Nowadays, we are much in the same boat as you, except,” he held up a finger, “in a situation like this. If the judge can be persuaded that all other options have been exhausted, then we can get a tap. It is an irony that with the polygraph, the case against Marcel Deschamps is over, which also means I can tell the judge that the case against the Deschamps family is finally without other options. That will therefore be the first thing I will do—put not Marcel but his organization under surveillance for twenty-four hours a day, including his phones. As for the rest, I am less sure.”

  “You don’t have any candidates for who’s trying to screw Marcel?”

  He waved his hand equivocally from side to side. “Many choices. It could be someone inside, like Picard or Guidry or one of the lower people. It could also be an outsider, like the Rock Machine, which has been very silent through all this. We may also be making assumptions we should not, in thinking the Angels are not involved.”

  “If we’re playing Machiavelli,” Paul added, “we could also throw in Marcel himself, who’s now been proven innocent by the prosecution, which is a great place for a guilty man to be.”

  Lacombe raised his eyebrows at me. “So you see. It is that way. The one good thing—assuming Paul is not right about Marcel, however—is that a great plan has been thrown off the rails, which means anything can happen. I think somebody is very frustrated right now.”

  He took a sip from his coffee and then added, “It could get interesting.”

  · ·
·

  I was up late that night, fiddling with my notes, calling Sammie in Vermont for an update, watching television inattentively, feeling like I was sifting through the remains of a shattered mosaic covering an acre of floor space. There was the prominently mounted ice pick, complete with incriminating trace evidence, an ancient and elaborate trail connecting it to Marcel, a growing pile of bodies implying a gang war between two Sherbrooke factions, and several old-timers with intriguing tales of internecine rivalry. I’d also heard the Sûreté might be corrupt, that Marcel and Antoine had either been a great team or the equivalent of Cain and Abel, and how Antoine was either murdered or died a hero in combat. My brain was teeming with voices in contradiction, in support of one another, or just saying things I simply couldn’t understand. I was racked by the conviction that at some point in all this, I’d stared the truth in the face and had simply kept moving.

  The knock on the motel room door, therefore, brought me back with a start, making me drop the pen I was holding and causing my reading glasses to slip off my nose. I glanced up at the TV screen, now filled with two people standing silent and transfixed in what looked like a gloomy cellar, and realized I must have dozed off. The bedside clock read three-ten in the morning.

  Still dazed, I climbed off the bed, my back stiff and my butt sore, and walked to the door, discovering I was still wearing my shoes. I also noticed I’d dropped the door key upon entering after dinner.

  Shaking my head, I bent down for the key and simultaneously opened the door, expecting to see Paul Spraiger, whose room was next door.

  Instead, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark pair of high-heeled cowboy boots—still damp from the snow outside—and heard the distinct and chilling pop of a silencer just inches above my head. As something shattered behind me, I instinctively kept tucked over and charged like a linebacker at the pair of legs before me.

  I heard the air go out of the shooter’s lungs as we smashed into the wall across from my door, and felt a halfhearted blow of a gun butt glancing off my shoulder as we slid to the floor.

  My life-saving position now did me a disservice, folding me under the other man’s collapsed body, an advantage he used not to fire another shot but to push me aside and scramble to his feet, obviously so surprised at the turn of events that he could only think of running.

  But I did not feel so accommodating. Perhaps due to the frustration I’d been wrestling with moments earlier, I lashed out at his ankles as he regained his footing, tripping him up and making him sprawl on his face, his long-barreled gun bouncing away on the rug ahead of him.

  The sight of the weapon brought my vulnerability sharply to mind, and I made a flat dive up and over his squirming body in an attempt to get hold of it. But he was younger than I, faster, and more desperate, and he managed to catch the side of my head with his elbow just as I went over him, throwing me off balance and giving him the chance to get back on his feet.

  Fortunately, even my last-minute meddling didn’t alter his eagerness to escape. Ignoring the gun, he took off down the long hallway as I untangled myself, picked up the weapon, and gave chase.

  So far, not a word had been said.

  My room was on the third floor, with the stairs and an elevator at one end of the hall and an interior fire escape at the other. My assailant had chosen the latter, no doubt hoping for the fastest way out, which, considering my chances of catching him, was a smart move—and made me all the angrier I hadn’t yelled for Paul before taking off in pursuit.

  The shooter took the stairs in leaping bounds, bouncing off the stairwell walls like a careening bowling ball. Much as I wished I could do the same, however, my older anatomy wouldn’t stand for it. I moved as fast as I could, but he was putting some serious distance between us.

  He reached the bottom with a crash and slammed through the door to the parking lot like a bull leaving a chute, smashing the plate-glass window in the process. By the time I reached the same spot, he was halfway across the lot, heading toward a small, rust-splotched sedan.

  Which is where his luck took another downward turn.

  Apparently, this presumed hit man had pocketed his car keys as he might have on a trip to the supermarket, and now—extracting them from his pocket at a dead run—he dropped them in the snow. He slid to a scrambling stop, dropped to his knees, and flailed around in the slush for a few seconds as I stopped also, grasped the gun in both hands, and tried to draw a bead on his leg to slow him down without killing him. But he was still too far off, I was breathing too hard to be steady, and my opportunity disappeared almost as fast as it had cropped up. With a frustrated punch at thin air, he regained his feet and ran for the embankment overlooking King Street, vaulting the guardrail and vanishing from sight.

  I didn’t know what options I had. By all appearances, the car was his and would lead us to him if I gave up the chase. But chances were just as good it had been stolen, or that this guy would end up as dead as the man I’d found in the old jail. I didn’t want to risk losing another piece to our puzzle.

  Despite the obvious arguments, therefore, not to mention that I was wearing only a shirt and slacks, I climbed over the guardrail after him.

  The bank was steep, covered with deep snow, and stopped right at the edge of the road below. By the time I reached it, I was wet, my hands were numb and nearly useless, and my face and ears were stinging with cold. Ahead of me, across a trickle of predawn traffic, the shooter was cutting across the sidewalk, heading for a dead-end road leading down toward the river. I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing.

  The side street he’d taken turned out to run between a darkened office building and an abandoned business lot, and ended at a metal barricade, beyond which were some smaller buildings and a few trees. In their midst, his bobbing shape receded, still aiming for the ghostly pale expanse of the river ahead.

  I was breathing hard by now, my lungs aching from the frigid air. My feet had become as numb as my hands, making me feel I was running like Frankenstein’s monster, stumbling and lurching in wooden clogs. I began to wonder how much longer I could keep this up.

  My quarry’s intentions, however, finally became clear, and their simplicity—for no reason at all—gave me the incentive to continue. He was going to cross the frozen river to the south side of town. There was no reason to think this man wouldn’t outpace me there as he had so far, but the appearance of that huge, pan-flat, almost shimmering expanse as I emerged from the trees inspired me with visions of ice skaters at full tilt, and for some reason I believed, as perhaps did he, that once on its surface, I would move like an arrow in flight.

  I didn’t, of course. Surprisingly, the river’s surface wasn’t crusty with frozen snow, as I’d expected, but smooth as a hockey rink, which put me flat on my butt almost as soon as I touched it. Thankfully, the target of this hypothermic exercise wasn’t faring much better. Although he was better dressed than I, his cowboy boots were serving him poorly.

  As a result, the distance between us remained roughly the same as we staggered and slid our way toward the river’s midpoint, two small silhouettes caught in the translucence of the city’s night lighting.

  Then things began turning in my favor.

  Accompanying a small but growing chorus of distant sirens, a twinkling of emergency lights began appearing out of the darkness like otherworldly fireflies being drawn to an open field. Also, announcing himself with a yell in my direction, Paul Spraiger stepped out onto the ice, moving with far more grace and speed than either I or the man we were after.

  I stopped and waited for him to catch up.

  “You okay?” he asked, panting as he drew abreast.

  “Yeah—just cold. How’d you know where I was?”

  “I thought a bomb had gone off when you two hit the hallway. The walls shook. But by the time I got out of bed and to the door, all I saw was you heading downstairs. I watched from the window, figured out what was going on, and called for backup.” He held up a cell phone
he was holding in his gloved hand. “I’ve been keeping them up to date on this.”

  We could see ahead of us how the winking, colored lights had concentrated on the far shore, making the man ahead pause, look back, and begin to consider an alternate plan, his body language making plain his confusion. Behind us on the north shore, additional shadows were stepping onto the ice.

  “Won’t be long before the snowmobiles arrive,” Paul muttered, and then spoke into the phone, “He’s stopped heading south. Now he’s going for the bridge.”

  True enough, the shooter had cut east down the river’s center toward the Montcalm Bridge and the gorge beyond. “Why’s he doing that?” I asked, beginning an angled course to shorten the distance between us.

  Paul, though capable of more speed than I, chose to slide along beside me, apparently not as ready as I’d been to act as though this were our jurisdiction. “Damned if I know. Terrain’s wilder on the other side of the bridge—maybe he’s hoping to escape into the woods along the shore.”

  He put the phone to his ear and updated whoever was on the other end. Within minutes, we saw the festive police lights rearranging themselves, moving like a herd toward the bridge. Simultaneously, we heard the distinctive whine of several snowmobiles firing up behind us and saw their jittery headlights spring forth from the dark shoreline as they headed onto the ice. Slowly but surely, the cordon was tightening around the eastern end of the river.