(The fireball)
His skull felt like the clapper inside the Liberty Bell.
Once again hungover, a morose Émile Cinq-Mars met his station commander for the first time. He wore sunglasses, which he declined to take off. Captain Pierre Delacroix tore a strip off his hide and demanded for a third time that he remove the sunglasses ‘in-fucking-doors!’ He brayed an assessment to the entire poste: ‘Now we know why he got his soggy ass kicked off the Night Patrol.’
He objected to the description ‘soggy’, but feebly. And thought, ‘Saggy, not soggy.’ Though he didn’t approve of that description, either.
Second day on his new job and he was being sent home. Sergeant-Detective Yves Giroux watched him go out the door. Back-to-back epic hangovers provoked suspicion.
Home, Cinq-Mars slept it off in a comatose stupor.
The telephone woke him. A buzz-saw slicing through his scalp.
‘Yeah, what?’ he answered. He slurred both words.
‘Get washed, shaved, feed yourself. Picking you up in forty minutes.’
The commands struck him as reasonable, yet he had to ask, ‘Who’s this?’
‘Shit-bucket, it’s Giroux.’ His partner hung up before Cinq-Mars acquiesced to the edict. He sat up to verify that he remained ambulatory.
In the shower, the water assailed his chest. Twenty minutes passed before he stooped to wet his head. He was daydreaming of a tommy-gun from an old Al Capone movie. Rat-a-tat sound effects. In his fantasy, he lined up ex-cohorts from the Night Patrol and replicated the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.
He passed an electric razor over his jaw and chin. Dressed. Slapped peanut butter onto bread and wolfed it down.
He was standing by the curb when Giroux pulled up.
Checked his watch. He realized he’d slept with it on and worn it in the shower. Five forty-one. Late afternoon. An entire day lost.
He burrowed into the car.
They drove as far as the corner before anyone spoke.
‘How’d you know where I live?’ he asked Giroux.
‘I’m one helluva detective, Cinq-Mars.’
‘I’m not in the book.’
‘You’re in mine.’
‘Where’re we going?’
‘That’s your fault, too.’
‘Ah. Excuse me? What is? I was in bed all day.’
‘About that. You work days now, Cinq-Mars. Nights you sleep. Figure that one out in a hurry.’
‘Last night, it was the whole damn Night Patrol.’
‘I called. I got the story. Relayed it to the cap. Your ass survives for one more day, max.’
Cinq-Mars didn’t believe him. Then he did and thanked him. He asked, ‘Where we going?’
‘You asked that already.’
‘You didn’t answer.’
‘The fingerprints match, Cinq-Mars.’
‘Who matches?’
‘Not who. What. The robbery to the murder. Homicide doesn’t know yet. They may never.’
‘Why don’t they? You’re saying there’s no name?’
‘Still drunk? Catch up. Fingerprints are all over the passenger side of the car. Including in the blood. Those prints are a match for whoever went up the wall and into the house. What does that tell you?’
Cinq-Mars wasn’t turning over information in his head with his customary élan. ‘A buddy. A pair of thieves.’
‘Could be. Who’d be in the car a lot? Frigault and Caron asked around for us. About the dead boy. Visited his family. Talked to friends. Did their job.’
‘They weren’t asking around for us.’
‘A detail. The dead boy had a girlfriend. Who rides in a car if not the girlfriend? If those are her prints in the car, why are they also up the side of the house? If they’re not hers, she can probably tell us who drives around in her boyfriend’s car at night.’
Giroux was circling to navigate the one-way streets. They stopped outside a tiny detached house on Bloomfield Street.
‘You talked to Frigault and Caron,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. ‘They’re cooperating with you. Not you with them. How does that work?’ When Giroux didn’t volunteer a reply, he tried a different tack. ‘The girl. Anything of interest?’
‘A phone call between her and Frigault.’
Cinq-Mars looked over and his partner fluttered his lips.
‘Lazy, huh?’ Giroux confirmed. ‘They got what they wanted to hear. Dietmar Ferstel was a sweet boy. She saw him late that night but not for long. He had somewhere to go. Didn’t say where. If she’s broken up about it, they couldn’t tell because they weren’t in the same room. They were on the goddamned phone.’
The two men emerged from the car. ‘They told you all that,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. ‘They’re cooperating, Yves. You don’t reciprocate?’
‘They told me squat. My eyes happened to wander across a file left lying around. Maybe on Frigault’s desk. Maybe the breeze blew it open and I caught a glimpse. You owe me big time now, Cinq-Mars, did I mention?’
‘For what?’
‘I called a buddy on the Night Patrol. Pay attention. I heard what they did to you. Otherwise, Delacroix would’ve stuck your shield where you don’t dare pull it back out. You think I mean someplace nasty? I mean like in your right eye. When it comes to drunks, he’s a total psychopath. I explained about the Night Patrol giving you no choice. I was convincing. Delacroix said you can stick around, hanging by a thread. I’m supposed to put it to you that way, he said. The thread part. The hanging part, too.’
Cinq-Mars conceded. ‘I owe you a favor or two.’
They were at the front door. ‘Ring the bell, Cinq-Mars. Conduct the interview. Show me what you got.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’ Cinq-Mars pressed the buzzer.
‘Which one?’
‘What’s my fault?’
‘It was you who asked the lab to match the fingerprints. The night boss told me you came in. I’m blaming you for that. Between you and me, I’m not complaining. Just like you’re not complaining about me reading a wide-open file on a desk.’
‘Frigault’s desk is not exactly out in the open.’
‘Split hairs. I heard you were in his office, too,’ Giroux carried on.
‘The file was not accessible.’
‘Are you going to shut up about that in this decade?’
The door was opening. Before them stood a tall willowy blond, quite young, her eyes darting between them. ‘Yes?’ she asked. Then she grew more challenging. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Nice house, sweetie,’ Giroux replied. He made up his mind about her on the spot. ‘Really? You prefer prison to this pretty place?’
Cinq-Mars displayed his badge before his partner gummed up his interview. ‘Police, miss. I’m Detective Cinq-Mars. This is Sergeant-Detective Giroux. May I ask your name?’ He didn’t know. His partner hadn’t told him even that much.
‘Quinn Tanner. I talked to the police already.’
‘Only on the phone,’ Giroux interjected.
‘You were a friend of …’ Cinq-Mars had a hard time keeping non-French names in his head. He turned to his partner for assistance.
Quinn answered for him. ‘Dietmar Ferstel.’
‘She should know,’ Giroux chipped in. ‘The girlfriend. Even money says we’ll find her footprints on the ceiling of the boy’s car.’
Cinq-Mars moved over to stand in front of his partner. ‘May we have a word?’
‘That man can stay outside.’
‘He wants to sound tough. That way I’ll seem nice to you and you might be willing to talk to me. We don’t need to play those games, though, right?’
Gut instinct, the girl was clever and savvy. Meeting her on her own terms might have merit. Her blood was boiling. He couldn’t blame her. She stared at him with a judgmental gaze and tried to look over his shoulder at the one she already despised, except that Cinq-Mars was too large to permit a view. She finally gave a shrug, opened the door wider, and let them in.
‘That’s it from you,’ Cinq-Mars said.
The girl said, ‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Having a word with my partner.’
Giroux was all smiles, Cheshire-cat like.
‘That better be it from him,’ Quinn Tanner tacked on. She led them into the living room, a small, tidy space with scant light. She turned on her heels to face them. She clutched her left elbow with her right hand. ‘I spoke to the police this morning.’
‘On the phone,’ Giroux cut in. ‘Like that counts.’
‘Yves,’ Cinq-Mars censored him, ‘I’ll conduct the interview. As we agreed.’
‘Conduct. Pretend I’m not here.’
‘I wish,’ the girl said.
‘First,’ Cinq-Mars said, ‘you have my condolences on your loss. Was, ah …’
‘Dietmar.’
‘Was he your boyfriend for a long time?’
‘Part of the summer. He was super sweet.’
‘Tell her, Cinq-Mars,’ Giroux insisted.
This time he censored his partner with a look, and Giroux backed off.
‘Do you have identification, Miss Tanner?’
She shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘She told us who she is,’ Giroux pointed out.
Her wallet was handy, on the arm of the rust-colored sofa. What she chose to hand over indicated that she went to school.
‘Do you have a birth certificate?’
‘Cinq-Mars,’ an impatient Giroux complained.
‘Born in Quebec,’ Quinn Tanner told him. ‘We don’t have birth certificates. Not from back then.’
‘Your baptismal certificate, then.’
‘Yeah.’ The document was a full sheet of paper kept safely in a corner desk drawer. Giroux raised his hands to question the infuriating strategy. She returned with the document.
Cinq-Mars asked, ‘How old are you?’ He had checked her birth date and done the math. Still, he wanted her to confirm it out loud, and for Giroux to hear.
‘Seventeen.’
Giroux’s shoulders visibly slumped. He had figured her for nineteen, twenty, like the dead boy. Being only seventeen changed everything.
‘Thanks,’ Cinq-Mars said, and handed the document back. She returned it to the drawer, then resumed her protective pose. ‘Here’s the thing, Miss Tanner.’
‘Quinn,’ she said.
‘Quinn. You’re seventeen. That gives me a bit of leeway. I have some discretion when a person is underage. If I think you committed murder—’
‘I didn’t commit murder! Come on! That’s ridiculous!’
‘I’m not accusing you. I’m only explaining that I’m permitted to bring you in if you’re only seventeen. The law does not allow me, however, to hold you in custody without permission from the DPJ, in which case they would take over your case. Do you know who that is?’
Her shrug suggested that she didn’t.
‘The director of youth protection. In French, “Directeur de la protection de la jeunesse.” Hence DPJ. That takes time and evidence. Legally, Quinn, I must inform you that I cannot hold you overnight in custody.’
‘Give her the “But …”,’ Giroux instructed Cinq-Mars.
‘But,’ he warned her, ‘I can bring you in, fingerprint you, take your photo to be placed on file. I can question you. I must notify your parents that I’m doing so. Now, you say that you did not commit murder.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Is it equally ridiculous that you broke into a home on the night of the murder and committed a robbery?’
Quinn said, ‘What?’ Her response a heartbeat too slow.
‘Is it ridiculous that the fingerprints in your boyfriend’s car – which match the fingerprints of the person who broke into a house close to where he was killed – belong to you? Remember, before you reply, that we will have the answer to that question very soon. The fingerprints in the car and the house, do they both belong to you?’
In a search to remedy her plight, Quinn glanced at Giroux, as if help might arrive from that quarter. Cinq-Mars knew then, and Quinn Tanner caught on, that she was trapped.
‘It’s not ridiculous,’ she admitted.
‘You told the police in your phone call today that you were nowhere near the crime scene. I can understand why you lied. Would you like to change your testimony now? Better if you do.’
On meeting her, Giroux had assumed the girl to be an adult. Had he met her in her current state, he’d have guessed the truth. Her face contorted into that of an upset child. She was seeing something through the front window behind the detectives. ‘Oh no! My dad. He’s home.’
‘You lied to him, too,’ Cinq-Mars stated. In seconds, her father would march in.
She nodded to confirm the jam she was in now.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Jim Tanner demanded to know. He slammed the door shut. Two men were alone with his daughter, who appeared under duress.
‘Police,’ Giroux informed him. Civil, at last. He was taking point as the senior officer and showed his badge. ‘Sergeant-Detective Giroux, sir. This is Detective Cinq-Mars. We’re here to speak with Quinn.’
‘You’re not the cops from yesterday.’
Giroux had believed that the only communication with the family had been over the phone. That the father had had direct contact with Frigault and Caron undermined his jurisdiction. ‘We’re here to discuss a different crime.’
Jim Tanner held his gaze for an extended period, then looked at Quinn. She was crumbling. ‘Quinn?’
In their talk the night before, she’d told a few fibs to cover her tracks. Cinq-Mars noticed her deer-in-the-headlights look. A kid frightened to be in trouble held more promise than a kid digging a deeper hole. In his quick judgment, she was falling apart because she respected her dad. Her greatest fear was in disappointing him.
‘Do I know you?’ Giroux asked Tanner.
The query surprised Cinq-Mars, while Tanner ignored it.
A policeman on duty suggesting that he had ‘met’ someone did not typically suggest that they had bumped into each other or frequented the same deli. A meeting on the job implied a negative connotation. Oddly, Giroux appeared to be looking around Jim Tanner at that moment, out the front window.
‘A visitor.’ Giroux announced. Suddenly, his whole face seemed to expand. ‘Down! Everybody get down!’
Giroux jumped toward the front window. His command came too suddenly for the others to react. No one got down. Cinq-Mars instinctively moved the girl to his back while Jim Tanner spun around to follow the detective who’d yelled. Giroux pulled the heavy front curtain partially closed when the sound of shattering glass assailed their senses. Flames from a Molotov cocktail leaped up the fabric.
‘Quinn! Water!’ Tanner shouted and seized a large cushion from the sofa to beat the flames. Giroux was trying to yank the curtain right off its moorings to smother the flames that way. He was a strong man, but the mechanism resisted. Cinq-Mars was out the front door in pursuit of the attacker.
The incendiary-thrower dove into a black American sedan, which burned rubber and raced off. Then it braked hard. A city bus had passed by and then, perhaps because the driver had spotted the sudden burst of flames, stopped. The sedan’s driver spun out and ripped down a side lane on the left. Cinq-Mars ran hard. Lanes were sometimes obstructed, often by children on bikes or in the middle of a game.
He found the lane clear. The fleeing car careened onto the next street, bound north. Cinq-Mars had no radio. He wasn’t even carrying a revolver. The only official item brought with him was his badge as, off-work, he’d left his house in a mental daze, unprepared for anything like this.
The chase was over before it began.
Giroux jogged up. ‘Anything?’
‘Plymouth. Gran Fury. Black.’
‘Plate?’
‘Sorry. First letter G, nothing more.’
‘I’ll call it in. Guesses on the year?’
‘Like I said. A Gran Fury. This is their first year. So a ’75.’
Giroux called the details in from his car, then returned to the house where Jim Tanner and his daughter were waiting on the front stoop. Cinq-Mars was trying to shoo onlookers away, but failing. The policemen went inside with Quinn and her father and surveyed the damage. The curtain, soaked and charred. A scar of burn marks on the floor. A pair of cushions, blackened. An empty bucket lay tipped on its side, devoid of water. Bits of glass across the hardwood and carpet.
An unpleasant smell. Something plastic may have melted.
‘Here’s an interesting question,’ Giroux started in. ‘There’s four of us here. As it happens, no one knows much about anyone else, except for you two, father and daughter, although I’m not so sure about that, either.’
‘What’s the question?’ Jim Tanner inquired. He had a right to sound irritated.
‘Who was it for, the firebomb? You? Your daughter? Me? Or him?’ With his thumb, he gestured toward the junior detective. ‘I’m guessing one of you two, since it’s your house, but you never know. Pissed anybody off lately?’
Although they had not coordinated a response, the men in the room looked at Quinn.
She resented the implied rebuke. ‘Nobody,’ she said. Then, when no one appeared to believe her, she repeated it more emphatically. ‘Nobody!’
‘We’ll talk,’ Sergeant-Detective Giroux told her, and advised her father, ‘down at our poste.’