The worse for wear after his extended night, Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars fell back on a copious intake of caffeine. He had clocked between five and six hours of sleep, not consecutively. His go-to breakfast when in a rush – bagel with cream cheese – was consumed with crocodile-like efficiency. Lately, quickie breakfasts were becoming routine, as being in a hurry had become a habit.
He lugged himself into work where he introduced Casgrain to the dayshift in the suburban poste. His new partner noticed the telltale dark rings under his eyes.
‘Émile, did you have a nightcap after our nightcap?’ As far as family man Detective Henri Casgrain was concerned, single men could dump their social lives in the waste bin.
‘Am I under investigation? You work for Internal now?’
They were seated at side-by-side desks. Casgrain’s abysmal posture was more pronounced when he slumped forward in a chair. With his bald pate, white mustache and cute bulbous nose he resembled a happily sedated garden gnome.
‘Tired, Émile? Midnight oil?’
‘I was called out. Notice, I let you enjoy your beauty sleep. You need it. You can thank me now or owe me a massive favor later.’ Unable to prevent one coming on, Cinq-Mars emitted a broad yawn as though to underscore his sacrifice.
‘What call?’
‘Our murder scene. The toaster heist.’ Cinq-Mars filled him in on the brawl and his talks with residents there. He brought up the cameras mentioned by Moira Ellibee.
‘I saw no cameras,’ Casgrain noted.
‘Sounds nuts. And she’s nuts. Still, she might be on to something. You wanted to check out the building anyway. We can look for cameras while we’re at it. I sure as hell wasn’t climbing up in the dark last night, but I have no qualms sending you up a ladder in daylight.’
Glancing up, Cinq-Mars swiveled in his chair as Captain Delacroix arrived for the day and rushed past his desk. ‘Cap! Hang on. Meet the new man: Detective Henri Casgrain.’
Delacroix stopped, turned back, checked the new fellow out. Hunched over, with that mustache and those droopy eyes, the new guy in his mind resembled an under-the-bridge troll. The captain offered his hand. ‘I think we’ve met,’ he said.
‘We have, sir,’ Casgrain agreed. ‘Back in time.’ They shook.
‘You’re welcome here, Detective. Between you, me and the bedpost, I’m not happy with how you came through the door.’
‘Me neither. Not my idea.’
‘Good to hear. Don’t want it to become somebody’s habit. Are you listening, Cinq-Mars?’
‘A one-time thing, Cap.’
‘Better be. His previous partner,’ Delacroix reminded Casgrain, ‘lasted a day. May he rest in peace. You know about that. Did you know that his partner before Geoffrion was also shot? Took early retirement. You see where I’m going with this. I mean it when I say good luck.’
‘Ah, thanks, Captain.’
‘Requisition request,’ Cinq-Mars cut in. ‘Unusual one, boss. Emergency basis.’
‘Good luck with that.’ He was about to walk away and turned his back to do so.
‘Two Polaroid cameras, Cap. Film to go with them.’
Delacroix stopped and faced him again. ‘What for?’
‘I can explain. I’d rather not. Trust me, money well spent.’
‘Are nude women involved?’
‘Course not.’
‘Too bad.’ This was meant as a joke. Captain Delacroix was a straighter arrow than any ascetic in a cave. His spine, some said, was a ramrod inserted up his rectum at birth. As usual, he laughed at his own joke, and as usual he laughed alone.
Cinq-Mars placated him on the attempt at humor. ‘Good one, Cap.’
Delacroix declared, ‘One camera only. Take it or leave it,’ and carried on to his office.
Casgrain asked in his wake, ‘Polaroids?’
Cinq-Mars ignored the question. ‘Here’s a list of the brawlers from last night. The ones who hung around long enough to show ID. Anything strike you?’
Casgrain gave the names a glance. ‘Russian. Polish-sounding. Ukrainian. Others from that part of the world.’
‘No English. No French. Zero Italians.’
‘You’re saying the pattern’s no accident?’
‘Gangs form for different reasons. Different criteria. Ethnic origin, often a factor.’
‘The Polaroids?’
‘I want pictures of the brawlers. I’m putting together a photo album. Come on. Camera shop’s nearby.’
Cinq-Mars fostered the notion that the toaster thieves were on a test run or training mission. Casgrain augmented that idea, speculating that if the culprits were learning the ropes, it followed that they’d make mistakes. The theory was one Cinq-Mars was willing to test, and now with the tip about cameras, a return to the apartments took on fresh import.
Initially, outside Willy’s apartment, they saw no sign of cameras. Casgrain, in wandering the full length of the hall beyond Moira Ellibee’s door, detected a wire leading from an overhead light. It traced the seam where the ceiling met the wall, then dropped down in the corner and followed the rim of the baseboard after that. It could be the wire for the light fixture, but why would it not be inside the ceiling? Sure enough, the wire entered a hole drilled into Willy’s apartment. Painted the same color as the ceiling when on the ceiling, and the color of the walls when on a wall. Subtle shades of beige.
‘Let’s find a chair,’ Cinq-Mars suggested. ‘I prefer not to announce myself to Moira. One of these two doors is either the Bombardier’s or the Spitter’s. Either guy can lend us a chair.’
Better, the Bombardier offered a stepladder, then graciously shut his door behind him. Casgrain noticed how the man had been acutely curious yet had backed off anyway.
‘Émile, I see what you do. You glare. People slink away. Good technique.’
‘My nose is slightly large, some say. It seems the right size to me. When I stare down my nose at folks, a few get nervous. They don’t stare back because they’re embarrassed that they want to. Their problem, not mine.’
‘Slightly large, Émile, is not an understatement. It’s an oxymoron.’
He loved being with a partner who could use a word like oxymoron, even if he used it improperly. He warned, ‘Don’t go there. Anything you say I’ve heard before.’
They were setting up the ladder beneath the lamp.
‘Then you probably heard,’ Casgrain teased, ‘that people want to ski off it.’
‘Grade Two when that one came up the first time. A toboggan run, back then. If you want to make fun, be original.’
‘I accept the challenge.’
Casgrain went up the ladder. He peered over the lip of the shade.
‘Guess what?’ he asked.
‘Camera?’
‘Yup.’
They left the stepladder outside Willy’s door, went downstairs and walked around the block to return via the lane. They could enter Willy’s place through the unlocked rear door. In the apartment, they found where the wire from the front corridor entered behind a bookcase, then followed a baseboard to terminate in the dining room. It looked as innocuous as a discontinued wire to nowhere, once again painted the same color as the walls. Two more wires terminated nearby, arriving from the opposite direction.
Cinq-Mars studied the dust marks on the surface of the small mahogany cabinet. Where a toaster had been left behind.
‘He had two screens. Took them both away when he beat it out of here.’
‘He saw his attacker come up the back stairs. Maybe among thieves,’ Casgrain noted.
‘Or he came home and played back a film. If he’d been recording. That would warn him if somebody was already inside. Our guy creeps into the bedroom, jumps open the closet door and knifes him through the windpipe.’
‘Or,’ Casgrain postulated, ‘if he watched him come up the back stairs he ducked under the bed. When the assassin hides in the closet to wait for him to come home, our guy slides out from under the bed and does the dirty.’
‘Either way, he might strip,’ Cinq-Mars chipped in. ‘Pretend he’s getting ready for bed.’
‘The killer waits in the closet for his victim to undress and crawl into the sack.’
‘Instead, our boy rips open the door and slams him with a butcher’s knife. Naked, the blood that splatters him washes off in the shower.’
‘He dries himself off. Gets dressed in fresh duds. Removes all trace of his existence and blood on his clothes by getting rid of those clothes. He cuts the wires from the cameras and takes out the screens.’
‘Let’s check for more cameras. Moira told me where to look.’
They couldn’t accomplish the next task without acquiring an audience. The Bombardier thought he was helping by yelling down to the lane, ‘Nothing to see here! Everybody! Disperse! Go about your business! Scram! Don’t cha got nothing better to do with your lives today?’ He himself did not and his barrage assured that the viewing audience would be large. After hauling the ladder out from the corridor, Detective Casgrain grudgingly climbed onto the roof. On his belly, he peered back over the ledge. At opposite corners above the narrow balcony, half-sized bricks, protected from the elements, replaced full-sized ones, permitting cavities behind them. Both contained cameras. Their wires went up, unnoticed, onto the roof, coming down above Willy’s back door where they entered the apartment. From there, they ran back to the cabinet where at least two screens had been set up but were now gone.
‘Do you think the robbery’s on tape?’ Casgrain wondered, back in the living room.
‘Who’s that lucky?’
‘People say you are. Or were they being mean?’
Success on the job was dismissed as luck by many. ‘Depends how sophisticated our man is,’ he mused. ‘Can’t imagine he was interested in evidence, only in security. If there’s a tape, why would he keep it?’
‘Either way, the man was frightened. Or big-time paranoid.’
‘Paranoid and sophisticated. Could be our guy. Could be Coalface.’
‘No evidence to support that. Anyway, how do we find him now?’
Cinq-Mars mentioned the mob funerals, that Touton might be able to identify the missing man if he turned up there. ‘A longshot. Touton only saw him from a distance.’
‘You could show the residents photos of mourners we can’t identify. Won’t be that many. They could say if one of them is Willy or not.’
‘Hey, you’re not just another pretty face with a mustache.’
‘Like you’re not just another huge nose. Although that’s debatable. Yours is unique. Hey, have you ever used it as a shovel?’
‘Not since high school,’ Cinq-Mars assured him. ‘Back when it was first suggested.’
‘I’ll keep trying. Do we canvas the building again?’
‘We do. Find out how these beginners butchered the robbery.’
‘Don’t kid me, Émile. You’re not counting on that, either.’
‘Henri, it’s your idea. How can it fail?’
They confirmed that rookie thieves were prone to err. Nothing that might tip their own investigation – officially they had no jurisdiction to call it that. Glass in the doors had been repaired, and Casgrain discovered a canister that contained debris. Shards of glass, primarily, including sections cut out by toaster crooks. On one, a few dots of blood. Cinq-Mars discerned threads with a close examination. ‘A cloth glove. A gardener’s, something like that.’
‘Put out an APB for a thief with a cut thumb and a few threads missing from his glove. We’ll haul in ten thousand gardeners over the next week.’
‘We could do that,’ Cinq-Mars deadpanned. ‘Or check the thumbs of the young guys on our list. In case.’
Fair enough. They both knew they might as well be looking through the lens of a telescope while searching for galaxies extinguished for millennia. Still, their work paid homage to the theory that mistakes can happen, especially with respect to junior thieves. When mistakes were interbred with related errors, misshapen progeny might form.
The theory was borne out in the apartment of the woman Cinq-Mars referred to as Florence the Hen. She kept eggs in a basket and baked pies. Her kitchen floor had been washed since the break-in, but she pointed out where a culprit’s footprints remained visible on her balcony, and partially on the steel stairs going down. The thief had stepped through flour dust on her floor where she baked her pies for morning deliveries. He then tracked the imprint of his shoes behind him for a distance.
‘Let’s play Cinderella. Canvas the neighborhood, Émile. Check everyone’s shoes.’
‘We can do that. Or check the footprints made by the guys whose names are on our list. Do it while we’re checking their thumbs.’
That seemed almost as viable as it was absurd.
They thought they were done when Cinq-Mars spotted Mick on the lane below them.
‘Hang on a sec!’ he called down to him.
‘You there! Mick!’ the Bombardier echoed at full throttle. ‘Hang on a second!’
‘It’s OK,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘I got this.’
The Bombardier shrugged. ‘Helping the Man,’ he said. ‘I’m a good citizen.’
The boy and his dad waited for him to descend. Casgrain followed along behind. He had met the father on his first day and the two greeted each other.
‘I need a photograph,’ Cinq-Mars said to Mick. ‘Mind?’
He gave the boy no chance to respond and snapped the Polaroid without bothering to look through the viewfinder. Then he, Mick and his dad watched the miracle of the photograph developing on a stair and in the shade. Everyone agreed that it was amazing, and the purpose of the snapshot was almost lost.
‘What’s this for?’ the dad inquired eventually.
‘Routine,’ Cinq-Mars told him. ‘Helps me keep track. Mick, I know who you are. In your case, I wanted to test the camera. Pretty amazing, don’t you think?’
They gazed at the snap again as the details sharpened. Mick, and in the background, his dad, gradually came into sharp focus.
‘What’s the play?’ Casgrain wanted to know when they were on their own again, walking back to their unit.
‘Track down the names on our list. Interview them. Ask about the brawl, be cute about the robbery. And no, Henri, I’m not checking their footprints.’
‘I’m not checking their thumbs either, unless I see blood or a bandage.’
‘Agreed.’ Cinq-Mars shook an open palm in the air. ‘These boys were on hand for the fight last night. Let’s come around to the toaster heist at an angle, see what that brings. Also, I want their Polaroids. I need to show them to someone who was at Johnny Bondar’s party. I want to find out if any of our young brawlers were friends of his. If so, who, how many, and what do they know about him or about anything at all.’
Casgrain scanned the list again. ‘Not everyone lives in Park Ex. No one’s far away. We can get through this.’
‘Want to be the photographer?’
‘Sure. Be aware, I have an artistic side.’
‘Oh God. Don’t take twenty shots to get the perfect one.’
‘Don’t interfere with my craft. Why’d you want two cameras, anyway?’
‘I didn’t. I needed to give Delacroix something he could say no to. Pure hustle, that part.’
Casgrain whistled, impressed. ‘Keeping an eye on you.’
‘Keep your eyes peeled for a cut finger and a frayed cloth glove.’
‘Not to mention flour on some guy’s boots.’
They smiled together, knowing that such incidental clues could make a needle in a haystack look like a guided missile on a launchpad.