Forty Words for Sorrow (26 page)

44

L
ISE
D
ELORME HAD NOT SPENT
a lot of time on stakeouts. She was discovering on Wednesday night that she was not much good at standing around waiting, especially in the middle of the night in an unheated storefront next door to the New York Restaurant. Luckily, the warm snap—assisted by a space heater—made it just about bearable.

The New York Restaurant has been a favourite with Algonquin Bay’s criminal element for as long as anyone can remember, certainly stretching back well before Delorme’s time. No one quite knows why, but they know it isn’t because of the food, which must give pause to even the most hardened ex-con. McLeod claimed the steaks were Aylmer-issue policewear. Perhaps the big-city name lends it—to the mind of a small-city thug—a certain glamour. It is doubtful in the extreme that any of Algonquin Bay’s casual assortment of lawbreakers has been anywhere near New York City; they’re no more keen on high-crime cities than anyone else.

Musgrave thought it was the two entrances. The New York is the only Algonquin Bay eating establishment that you can enter from the bright lights of Main Street at one end and exit into the darkness of Oak Street at the other. Delorme thought it might be the gigantic gaudy mirrors on one wall that made the place seem twice its actual size, or the red vinyl, gold flake banquettes that must have dated from the fifties. Delorme had a theory that bad guys were in many ways like children, and shared the toddler’s taste for bright colours and shiny objects, in which case the New York Restaurant, from its gold-tasselled menus to its dusty chandeliers, was a felon’s natural playpen.

And of course the New York is open round the clock, the only restaurant in Algonquin Bay that can make that claim, which it does boldly, in a flashing crimson neon invitation—or warning:
The New York Never Sleeps
.

Whatever the reason for its popularity, the New York is, as a result, of great interest to the various law enforcement agencies. Cops are encouraged to eat there, and often do, smack in the midst of people they have put in jail. Sometimes they chat with each other, sometimes merely nod, sometimes exchange cold stares. Unquestionably, it is a place where a smart cop might overhear useful information.

“Couldn’t have picked a better location,” Musgrave said. “Anyone spots you, it’s easy to explain how you happen to be in the company of a creep like Corbett. Not that anyone’s going to see them at two a.m. on a cold Wednesday morning.”

The former linen shop next to the New York Restaurant had been empty for six months, and the landlord, a bank, had happily provided the Mounties with a key. To cover their activities they had boarded up the window with an
Opening Soon
sign. The only lights in the place came from clip-ons above the electronic gear. Delorme was waiting in the shadows, along with Musgrave and two Mounties dressed in workman’s coveralls who—probably on orders—said not a single word to her. The “contractors” had been in place since noon; Delorme had come at nine p.m., entering through a back hall shared with a candle shop. Pleasant smells of sawdust and bayberry hung in the air.

A black-and-white video monitor showed a wide angle that took in most of the bar. Delorme pointed to the screen: “The camera’s movable?”

“Corbett said he’d be at the bar. Be very hard for Cardinal to explain how he happens to be at a table, actually sitting down with Canada’s number-one counterfeiter. Being at the bar’s a little different: you don’t control who your neighbours are.”

“Yes, but what if—”

“The camera’s on a turret, we can move it with a joystick from in here. We have done this before, you know.”

Touchy bastard, Delorme almost said. Instead she walked over to the boarded-up window and watched the street through a small hole carefully drilled in the dot over the I in
Opening Soon
. She knew he would enter through the back, the Oak Street entrance, if he came at all, but she wanted to be looking at something other than that vacant bar or the backs of her unfriendly colleagues. The peephole didn’t afford much of a view. The slush on Main Street was ankle-high. The sidewalks, thanks to their shopper-friendly heaters, were dry. Across the street an arts centre that had once been a movie theatre advertised an exhibition, called
True North
, of watercolours by new Canadian artists and an evening of Mozart courtesy of the Algonquin Bay Symphony Orchestra. The snow that had been forecast was coming down now as a light drizzle.

There were no pedestrians. A quarter to two in the morning, why would there be? Don’t come, Delorme was thinking. Change your mind, stay home. Sergeant Langois had called from Florida, confirming her worst suspicions, less than three hours ago. From that moment on, her feelings had been all over the place. All very well to talk about putting the cuffs on a man who sold out the department and the taxpayer to a criminal, another thing to destroy the life of someone you work with every day, the actual person, not the abstract prey. Even when she had bagged the mayor—now there was a man who had betrayed the city and had every reason to expect a stretch in jail—Delorme had gone through the same regret-in-advance process. When it came time to lock him up, all she could think about were the unintended victims of her expertise, the mayor’s wife and daughter. Collateral damage, she thought. I’m some true-believing pilot on a mission, following orders no matter what the cost; I should have joined the Air Force, I should have been American.

A red and white Eldorado came gliding into view, fishtailed a little in the slush, and stopped in front of the restaurant. Bright lights, shiny metal, like something you’d hang in miniature over an infant’s crib. Here we go, Delorme thought, too late for regrets now. It’s probably just stage fright anyway. The car had pulled too far forward for her to see who got out.

A radio crackled, and a male voice said, “Elvis is here,” which Musgrave tersely acknowledged. Delorme hadn’t even realized they had men positioned elsewhere. She hoped they were indoors somewhere.

She joined Musgrave in front of the video monitor. Onscreen, Kyle Corbett was handing his coat to someone out of view. Then he sat at the bar, well within the camera angle. Corbett looked mid-forties but styled himself like a much younger man, perhaps a rock star. He had long hair, cut all one length and swept back from a knobby brow, and an artistic goatee. His sports jacket was suede, with wide lapels, and he wore a crewneck sweater underneath. He leaned forward to adjust his hair and moustache in the mirror, then swivelled on his stool to greet the bartender. He flashed a billboard-size smile. “Rollie, how’s it going?”

“How you doing, Mr. Corbett?”

“How’m I doing?” Corbett gazed up at the ceiling for a moment as if pondering deeply. “Prospering. Yeah, I think you could say I’m prospering.”

“Pilsner?”

“Too cold. Gimme an Irish coffee. Decaf. I wanna sleep sometime this century.”

“Decaf Irish coffee. Coming up.”

“That’s my man.”

Delorme was trying to place what it was about Corbett’s manner that was so familiar: the big smile, the apparent thought expended on trivial questions. Then she realized what it was. Kyle Corbett, former drug runner and current counterfeiter, had adopted the kindly condescension of the very famous. Delorme had once seen Eric Clapton in the Toronto airport, cornered by fans, signing autographs. He chatted with them in the same easy yet distant manner that Corbett had appropriated for himself.

He had swivelled his back to the camera and spread his arms along the bar as if the place were his. “He doesn’t look that dangerous,” Delorme observed.

“Tell that to Nicky Bell,” Musgrave said. “May he rest in peace.” Then he gave a thumbs-up to his men. “Crystal clear, sound and picture both. Nice piece of work.”

The radio crackled again. “Taxi on Oak.”

Musgrave spoke into his radio. “Tell me it’s our man of the hour.”

“He’s getting out now.” There was a pause. “Can’t see his face. It’s raining and he’s wearing his hood. Headed your way, though.”

There was a loud clink of glassware, and the two men at the video console suddenly sat back.

“Jesus Christ,” Musgrave said. “The screen’s blank.”

“They put something in front of it. Stacks of bar glasses.” Frantic hands twiddled at dials. “It’s those huge dishwasher trays they have.”

“Jesus. Hit the joystick. Can’t you swivel around them?”

“I’m trying, I’m trying.”

“Shhh!” Delorme said. “Let’s at least hear what’s going on.”

Corbett was greeting somebody loudly, expansively, in his best “just folks” manner, and implying for the benefit of any restaurant staff that this meeting of cop and criminal was entirely accidental. “You gonna join me for a drink? Always glad to know a fellow insomniac, even if he’s playing for the wrong team.”

The reply was unintelligible. The other person was somewhere out of mike range, perhaps hanging up his coat.

“You guys always dress like Nanook of the North when you’re off duty?”

“Larry,” Musgrave said icily, “fix the fucking camera. We’re losing the main event.”

Christ, Delorme prayed. Let’s get it over with.

“What’re you drinking?” It was Dyson who spoke. “Shirley Temple or something?”

Musgrave whirled on Delorme. “Who is that? Is that Adonis Dyson? I thought you fed this pill to Cardinal.”

Delorme shrugged. A mixture of relief and sorrow was flowing into her veins as if from a hypodermic. “I fed Cardinal one date. Dyson got another.”

“You have something for me?” Dyson was saying on the darkened screen.

There was a crackle of paper. “Invest it wisely. Personally, I like index funds.”

“I got a cab waiting. So I’ll get right to the nitty-gritty.”

“What are you scared of? Didn’t you hear I’m immune these days? Amazing what a court order can do. I gotta say, the law’s really something when it works.”

“It’s late, and I’ve got a cab waiting.”

“Sit down. Don’t you haul ass on me. I told you I want a full fucking rundown. I don’t pay you for chicken feed.”

“The Mounties are going to hit you on the twenty-fourth. No chicken feed. The twenty-fourth. That’s all you need to know.”

“That’s the poison pill,” Delorme said quietly. “The twenty-fourth. Dyson’s the only one I gave that to.”

“And don’t clear out this time,” Dyson went on. “Leave something for them to find, and a couple of guys too. You’ve got nine lives, I realize, but you’re running on number ten and so am I, and if they nail me we’re all going down.”

Musgrave spoke into his radio. “We’re in play. Close the exits.” Then to Delorme: “Let’s get him, Sister.”

Musgrave went in through the front door, Delorme through the back, each accompanied by two Mounties. Musgrave took Corbett, and Delorme dealt with Dyson. “Really,” Delorme told people later, “it was smooth as a business transaction. Corbett didn’t put up any struggle, just cursed a few times.”

Perhaps Dyson had been expecting this ending all along. He folded his arms and put his head down on the bar in the time-honoured pose of the melancholy drunk, hiding his face.

“D.S., would you put your hands behind your back, please?” Delorme had no need to draw a gun; the Mounties behind her were taking care of all that. “D.S. Dyson,” she said, louder, “I need you to put your hands behind your back. I have to cuff you.”

Dyson sat up, his face paper white, and put his hands behind his back. “If it means anything, Lise, I’m sorry.”

“I’m arresting you for dereliction of duty, official misconduct, obstructing justice and accepting a bribe. I’m very sorry too. The Crown tells me more charges are likely.” She sounded very much the well-trained, don’t-mess-with-me modern policewoman. But she wasn’t really thinking of the Crown, or the charges, or even Adonis Dyson. The whole time she was executing this by-the-book arrest of her boss, Lise Delorme was thinking of that gawky young daughter she had seen outside his house, and of the wraithlike figure who had called her away.

45

I
T WAS THREE-THIRTY IN THE
morning, and Cardinal had the photographs pinned up on a shelf above the stereo, where a Bach suite was playing. He was not a classical music buff, but Catherine was, and Bach was her hero. Listening to his wife’s favourite music made the house seem less lonely, as if he might step into the living room and find Catherine curled up on the couch, reading one of her detective novels.

Katie Pine, Billy LaBelle and Todd Curry stared at Cardinal from across the room like a very young jury who had found him guilty. Keith London—who might yet be alive—was abstaining from the vote, but Cardinal could almost hear his cry for help, the accusation of incompetence.

There had to be some connection between all four victims; Cardinal did not believe a killer could be entirely random in singling out his prey. There must be some thread, however slender, that united the victims—something that later would turn out to be obvious and he would curse himself for not seeing sooner. It would exist somewhere: in the files, in the scene photographs, in the forensic reports, perhaps in a stray word or phrase, the import of which had been missed at the time.

A car prowled by on Madonna Road, its motor muffled by the banks of snow. A moment later, footsteps sounded on his front steps.

“What are you doing here?”

Lise Delorme was on his doorstep, rain sparkling in her hair, her cheeks pink. Her voice was full of excitement. “It’s a ridiculous hour, I know, but I drove past on my way home and saw your light was on, and I have to tell you what just happened.”

“You drove by on your way home?” Madonna Road was three miles out of her way. Cardinal held the door open for her.

“Cardinal, you aren’t going to believe this. You know the Corbett case?”

Delorme sat on the edge of the couch, hands flying every which way as she told Cardinal everything, from Musgrave’s first appearance to Dyson’s laying his head on the bar like a man about to be guillotined.

Cardinal leaned back in his chair by the wood stove, counter-currents of dread and relief flowing across his belly. He listened as she outlined Musgrave’s suspicions, Dyson’s ambivalence, her own moments of doubt when she discovered the Florida condo, the boat receipt.

“You searched my place without a warrant,” Cardinal said with as little inflection as possible.

She ignored him, small hands moving in the light, her accent stronger than he’d ever heard it. “For me, the worst moment—” Hand on heart, small round breast momentarily emphasized. “—worst moment absolutely was finding that boat receipt.”

“Which boat receipt was that?” Cardinal placed the question between them with a coolness he did not feel. Brazen as a professional thief, Delorme went straight to his file cabinet. She half knelt to open the drawer, and then her pale fingers were riffling through his papers. Cardinal was citizen enough to feel outrage at the invasion, cop enough to feel admiration, and man enough, he noted with annoyance, to find it slightly erotic.

Delorme pulled out the receipt: one Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, fifty-thousand dollars. “When I saw that date, my heart went like the
Titanic
. Boom. Straight down.”

“It’s right after we raided Corbett.” Cardinal held the thing to the firelight, looking for—well, he wasn’t sure what for. “It’s not mine.”

“You know what saved you? The three Fs saved you.” She proceeded to explain about Florida and French Canadians and how that peculiar combination had allowed her, from her location nearly a thousand miles north, to run down the purchase of that cabin cruiser.

“I fax Sergeant Langois the receipt number, he goes over there, and this guy, he’s very good-looking, okay? This poor Florida girl working in the back office she’ll do anything for him. I mean, his accent, everything about the guy is charming.”

The willing Florida girl, it turned out, had dug up the records of the sale. And because the boat was going to be delivered out of state (as much to avoid sales tax as anything else), they had required a photo ID. “Sergeant Langois sent me the fax this afternoon—not downtown, of course—a fax with a picture of Detective Sergeant Adonis Dyson.”

“So until this afternoon you thought I was working for Kyle Corbett.”

“No, John. I didn’t know what to think. This set-up, it was really because I wanted to rule you out as a suspect. I didn’t know it would bring down Dyson. I didn’t have that fax when I set it up.”

“He must’ve known we’d be able to trace the receipt. What was he thinking?”

“There was no name on it. And he didn’t know they had photocopied the ID in the back office and kept it on file. Anyway, these past couple of weeks he’s probably not
able
to think. He’s trapped between Kyle Corbett and Malcolm Musgrave, and he’s scared. He probably just panicked.”

“But you’re saying he placed that receipt in my personal files, in my home. I can’t believe he’d try to frame me. I mean, we weren’t exactly friends, but … What about the condo? That must’ve looked pretty bad.”

“I tried not to jump to conclusions. I know your wife is American. Her parents must be retirement age. A condo in Florida is not out of the question. I had my vacation friend check that out too. By then, I of course have your wife’s maiden name. She gets a condo from her parents, it’s supposed to make you a criminal? I don’t think so.”

Cardinal could not begin to sort out the tangle of his emotions. “So does this mean you’re finished investigating me?”

“Yes. It’s over. Me, I’m out of Special, and you, you’re in the clear.”

Cardinal didn’t feel ready to believe either. And there were things he wanted to know. “Why’d Dyson do it? I mean, Corbett was a disaster from beginning to end. Absolute disaster. It was obvious someone was tipping the guy off, but I always assumed it was one of Musgrave’s crew. When I ran that by Dyson, all he said was, ‘If you want to start investigating Mounties, do it on your own time.’ Then Katie Pine disappeared, and Corbett was off my radar. Why’d Dyson do it? I don’t love the guy, but I never pegged him for anything like this.”

“Few years ago, he’s feeling his retirement fund isn’t everything it should be. He takes most of it and puts it into mining stocks. One of my finance teachers used to say, ‘A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar.’ In this case, he turned out to be right.”

“Dyson sunk his money into Bre-X?”

“A lot of people did, John. Just not so much of it.”

“Jesus.” He gave it the briefest of pauses, then: “You searched my place, Lise. I wasn’t sure you’d actually do that.”

“Sorry, John. You have to see what position I was in: either search your place or get a warrant. When you told me to stay, that night you had to go back to the office, I took it as your permission. I’m sorry if I was wrong.” Those brown eyes, bright with flecks of firelight, searching his face. “Was I wrong?”

Cardinal waited a long time before answering. It was after four o’clock, and suddenly exhaustion hung about his shoulders like a leaden cape. Delorme was still wired from her triumph; she’d be running on the high-octane of victory for hours to come. Finally, he said, “It may have been permission. I’m not really sure. That doesn’t mean you had to take advantage of it.”

“Okay, look, it wasn’t nice. Every once in a while I remember that a good cop—like a good lawyer or a good doctor—is not necessarily a nice person, or pleasant to be around. So, you and me, we don’t have to work together if you don’t want. You can take me off Pine–Curry and I’ll understand. But me, I think we should finish out this case together.”
Togedder
, she pronounced it, and Cardinal was so tired it made him smile.

“What?” she asked him. “What are you smiling about?” Cardinal got up stiffly and handed Delorme her coat. She did up the snaps, looking at him the whole time. “You’re not going to tell me, are you.”

“Be careful driving home,” he said softly. “That slush could freeze again any time.”