(Pure virgin white)
By mid-morning, the corridors of the municipal courthouse were a shamble. The press likened the situation to the aftermath of a riot. Many argued that the police were the rioters.
Mafia lawyers fulminated over the airwaves. Judges, some rumored to be in their pockets, sympathized from lofty benches but could make neither head nor tail of the night’s events. Were they experiencing an out-of-control police rampage? Or an orchestrated scheme to take down organized crime? To compound the confusion, dozens of crooks who’d been hauled in were released without a preliminary hearing, the charges evaporating, while line-ups for those waiting to be processed remained interminable. The entire system was befuddled, and then a shift-change complicated the chaos.
The Mayor of Montreal, commonly an ally of Armand Touton’s and vice versa, turned on his office TV to listen to the pundits. His days were obsessed with preparing for the Olympic Games in a year’s time and nothing was going well. Unions stymied him daily and the mob took a cut of every action, particularly in the construction industries. In Montreal, no crime had become more lucrative than pouring concrete. Commentators who praised the crackdown in the early going were equal in number and intensity to those who railed against it. Both viewpoints found impassioned audiences, and a theory coalesced that the mayor was eviscerating the unions and the mob to save the Olympics. The idea interested him. He called in advisors to discuss how to take advantage of this fortuitous development.
Emerging from his back-room lair, Ezra Knightsbridge responded to the bell above his pawnshop door as a tawdry youth who shouldered a backpack entered.
‘Solace in a dire time of need. If you seek that,’ Ezra told him, ‘travel elsewhere. Common sense says be fleet afoot, dear Leonard. Go away.’
‘Why?’
The pawnbroker sighed with genuine weariness. ‘Am I too old for this?’ he asked while rubbing his eyelids. ‘Do I remain the only person in the trades who has not been vandalized by the authorities? One of their number did pay a visit. I was preyed upon. Others might soon ring my bell. Do you want to be here when they do? This is not a day for me to consort with persons such as yourself, or you with me. Today, you do not know me. I cannot know you.’
‘Such as myself?’ Leonard objected glumly.
‘Petty criminals. No slight intended. Did I not include myself? I am wary of my own company, Leonard. What will happen this evening? The Night Patrol is on a rampage. Not my desire to give them an excuse to glance my way. My lights will be off. Go in peace. We’ll talk when the mood becomes less ominous.’
‘I’m here about Quinn,’ Leonard stated. ‘I know you know her.’
Ezra put a finger to his own lips, perhaps to silence him, perhaps to silence himself. He gestured for the young man to follow him through to the back room. There he switched the radio from the news to Brahms, only to decide that the music did not suit his mood. He turned it off and put his kettle on.
When Ezra sat down, the young man, who he thought of as being only a boy, was already seated. Waiting, his backpack on the floor. ‘Of Quinn, what do you hear? Arrested, is she?’ the old man inquired gravely.
‘She’s been taken,’ Leonard said.
‘Half the city they’ve rounded up. They set upon children now?’
‘Not the police,’ the boy explained. ‘I wish. The Mafia took her.’
Ezra Knightsbridge was hoping for a better report. He ruminated on the news. Ciampini had intimated his intentions. The Rabbit was undoubtedly involved. How could that young detective, Cinq-Mars, counter such forces?
‘For a fact, you know this?’ asked Ezra. ‘In times of war, rumors run wild.’
‘I called her father. They snatched her right out of her house.’
‘Oh my,’ Ezra said. He preferred that Leonard not know he had already been briefed. ‘Oh dear.’
How much of this explained the police action? Could everything really revolve around Quinn? Usually people reacted with such abandon only when at war or in love. Which was it?
‘Curious, I am, Leonard. Why come here? Mafia, I have nothing to do with. What do you look for?’
‘Your help, of course,’ Leonard said. ‘You’re her friend.’
Ezra Knightsbridge felt inclined, in the spirit of the moment, to explain the facts of a criminal life to the orphan. Do so in a fatherly fashion. Leonard had acquired experience down wayward alleys, that was true, yet he was not well versed in how the larger universe operated. He might have impressed upon him that friendship had nothing to do with the criminal world, other than as a fast track to lengthy incarceration. The opportunity to do so passed as the tinkling of the bell above his front door signaled another interruption.
‘Help yourself to a biscuit,’ he said, and returned to the storefront.
Sergeant-Detective Yves Giroux moved through the overcrowded lockup slowly, scanning faces, until he noticed the man he was searching for. He then proceeded to ignore the figure and moved as though distracted until beckoned by a sound like hissing. He moved across to the man, who now leaned against the bars, his forearms hanging out.
‘I gave you decent warning,’ Giroux reminded him. He undertook the precaution to whisper. ‘Not my fault.’
The Rabbit conceded the point. ‘They know me. If they want me, they find me. Now, real quick, spring me out of this rat cage.’
‘Spring you? I’m not a lawyer.’
‘The law is all fart and no shit today. Some guys hear their names called out and get booted. Make me one of those guys, Giroux. For once, I’ll take a kick in the ass if I land back on the sidewalk.’
Giroux understood. But he needed the Rabbit to fully grasp the challenge. ‘Your record’s as long as both my arms and both yours. Factor that in. It’ll be a tough slog.’
‘Not that tough,’ the Rabbit predicted.
‘Why? You have no idea—’
‘I got you on my side, Giroux. You and your fat gut. I own you. Get me out.’
‘I helped you. I warned you they were coming in.’
‘What good does that do me now? Except I can trace the call – evidence about a copper who tipped me off.’
‘Come on, no need for that talk. Anyhow, I called you from a booth. I was on the go. Not traceable. I took a risk.’
The Rabbit seized Giroux’s belt buckle in his right hand and drew him tight to the bars. ‘I been in here all night. Fun and games. Now I’m bored. Spring me out. That’s a fucking order.’
Giroux nodded. He left the lockup immediately. If a man knew what was good for him, he did what the Rabbit requested. Outside the cell block, he exited down a corridor and turned right. The layout was familiar to him from his time in the Night Patrol, which felt like eons ago. He turned another corner and took the elevator up. He entered the corridor for the Night Patrol operations and hurried through a congested area of desks and busy cops, where he caught up with Émile Cinq-Mars.
‘Well?’ Cinq-Mars asked him.
‘In the frying pan. Sizzling like bacon.’
‘You and breakfast. OK, forty minutes to fry, then drain the grease.’
‘That long?’
‘He needs to believe it took time to shake things loose. Has to feel real.’
‘I can stamp his release?’
‘We can’t hold him. If we didn’t hijack his lawyer, he’d be out by now.’
‘You arrested his lawyer?’
‘Yeah, well, tomorrow we’ll say we’re sorry.’
‘God, Émile, you’re up to your eyeballs in this shit.’
‘Something I don’t know? Forty minutes, Giroux. No delay beyond that.’
Ezra Knightsbridge identified the customer before him as European. In a bilingual city where the predominant language was French, variations in dialect were quickly discerned by the citizenry. A Parisian’s elocution was as obvious to a Quebecker as an Irishman’s lilt to a New Yorker. Ezra was generally more comfortable with people from the old countries; he appreciated their shared experience. That the dapper gentleman was from Belgium took a modicum of probing to uncover. To his mind, it explained the handlebar mustache under the shock of alabaster hair, the huge eyeglasses that magnified his pupils, and the fellow’s ebullient flair.
The man’s younger female companion was a Quebecker. Timid alongside the gentleman’s hubbub. While the man intoned that he was looking for a ring of antique distinction to place upon the finger of his betrothed, the woman’s manner hinted at the frugality of their situation. He was looking for something old and distinguished, he said – by which he meant cheap. She was looking for anything that would do.
Ezra displayed three possibilities. One struck their fancy. Two hundred and fifty dollars would stretch their budget, but they’d consider it. Ezra was confident of a return visit unless they found an acceptable piece of junk elsewhere. Of modest value, the ring met their criteria, and according to Knightsbridge had once been worth more. The gentleman took him to be an honest broker.
On his return to the back room, Ezra stalled. Something nagged him. The hair on both his forearms rose. A sign of the tension of these days, he assumed. Leonard was not in the chair but roaming loose amid the merchandise – the last place he wanted a street urchin to be. He assured him, politely, that he would give every thought to Quinn and do his best for her. Now, under the circumstances, Leonard needed to depart.
‘Noel,’ Leonard said.
‘Pardon me?’
‘It’s my real name, I found it out. I’m Noel now.’
‘Interesting. You must tell me the story. Another time. Noel, I am thanking you to close the door gently as you go. No. Wait.’
Noel waited. Knightsbridge approached.
‘Not to be offended. I trust a thief to be a thief, the ruffian from the streets to take what falls in his lap. Only is it natural.’
He rummaged through Leonard’s backpack. Nothing but books and notebooks. The ragamuffin dope dealer was a wannabe student who hadn’t stolen a thing.
‘No offense taken,’ the youth said as the backpack was returned to him. He left.
The pawnbroker turned on the radio news and obeyed his whistling kettle. While the tea steeped, he reflected upon poor Quinn. What could he do? He possessed dangerous knowledge. If he called Giuseppe Ciampini and offered him the baseball for her life, he might be shot for not giving it up sooner, or merely for knowing of its importance. If he tried to be an intermediary, a greater risk was apparent. Quinn might be shot the very moment she was no longer needed. Worse, someone might decide that secrets would remain secret if they both floated in the river. The two of them knew about the baseball. Where it had been. A knowledge that could be lethal. Either way, with the ball revealed or not revealed, Quinn was doomed. He failed to discern any significant benefit to dying alongside her.
Assuming that Ciampini had snatched Quinn to save himself, he was unlikely to let her go. If Quinn had a hope or a prayer, Ezra concluded, it did not rest with him.
He returned to the Brahms, although the music again failed to spark his spirit.
After forty minutes, Sergeant-Detective Yves Giroux went back to the lockup and isolated himself with the Rabbit.
‘Still here,’ the Rabbit pointed out. ‘How come is that?’
‘There’s a thing,’ Giroux explained. ‘A ballbreaker.’
‘Take care of it,’ the Rabbit insisted.
‘No can do. I can’t work fucking miracles. It’s what this is all about.’ His eyes indicated the lockup, the men waiting to be processed. By extension, he meant the entire police action, the apparatus, and the night’s wholesale operations. The Rabbit caught his gesture.
‘Say.’
‘A girl. Ciampini took her, the cops think. They raided his joints looking for her. Bars, clubs, restaurants, his establishments … You know what I mean. Not only his. Associates been hit, too. Still no girl. If we locate her, you’re back out. If we don’t, people need to wait their turn to be grilled by the Night Patrol.’
‘Night Patrol,’ the Rabbit repeated. His tone terse.
‘For someone important like you, that means Touton himself.’
Almost twenty years earlier, Touton ruptured the Rabbit’s spleen with a single punch. Over a notorious career, the Rabbit had been stabbed, slashed, beaten with knuckledusters and shot, all in a day’s work, but he counted that episode with Touton as the greatest horror in his life. As he related to others, taking that punch was like giving birth to twins through his nostrils. He feared death less than he feared Touton’s right hand. Never mind that the cop was getting on in years, as people said. He didn’t buy into that tall tale.
‘I don’t sell out Ciampini,’ the Rabbit whispered. ‘How can I anyway? I don’t know him.’
‘Of course not. Of course, you hardly know him. But it’s the girl, see. The girl. If she’s not found, nobody leaves. This doesn’t stop until the cops have her.’
‘The shits,’ the Rabbit summed up.
‘OK, you don’t know Ciampini, like you said. But if you can guess where the girl is—’
‘Watch your mouth, Giroux. I don’t sell out Ciampini. No price.’
‘Not selling out. Not selling. Nothing to do with you, right? Just about the girl. That’s all they need, these cops. This is strictly a rescue operation. Nobody’s looking to put Ciampini away. He walks. You walk. Nobody gets hurt. Just a rescue.’
They hung on, looking around the overcrowded lockup. The body odor in the nearly airless room pungent. Soon, men would glow.
‘Sounds like pure, virgin, white-ass bullshit to me.’
‘Sure, it does. It’s not legal what they do. Shit to pay for the cops. Touton doesn’t give a crap because he’s quitting. He only wants the girl.’
‘Why the fuck care about some girl? There’s lots of girls. New ones get born.’
‘Nobody tells me why. The thing is …’ Giroux allowed an implication to float in the air.
‘Say.’
‘Last night, I called you from a phone booth. Not a problem for me.’
The Rabbit waited.
‘Earlier. What I hear. A call went from Ciampini’s place to yours. This is not my operation. I’m speaking to you what I find out. Your name is all over this. Because of that call. They found out that Ciampini called your place. When Touton comes in tonight, you know what’s next. No lawyers. No rules. He’s in a real bad mood. Feeling righteous. That’s when you don’t want to know him. I prefer to get you out while we still have time.’
The Rabbit studied the detective closely. He considered what he knew about the man. Giroux had done all right, coming through the night before to alert him. Without that tip, he might have been nabbed with a kidnap victim on his premises. Never a good thing.
‘Same minute?’ the Rabbit asked.
‘Not even,’ Giroux assured him. ‘Same goddamn second.’
‘Get me a telephone.’
‘Who’re you gonna call? Ciampini won’t tell you nothing. He knows you’re locked up. Pass it on to me, your best guess where’s the girl at.’
‘I don’t know Ciampini. Bumped into him once or twice. Who can avoid? Why he call my place I don’t know. Wrong number? But maybe I know his driver. Maybe his driver knows who he drives around. Maybe he drops somebody someplace.’
Giroux arranged to take him to a room with a telephone.
The cops traced the call, as everybody knew they would. They’d pay the driver a friendly visit. The Rabbit was giving Joe Ciampini to the cops without mentioning anybody’s name. He didn’t have to utter a single incriminating vowel. He simply asked a guy over the phone where he’d been lately and accepted ‘nowhere’ for an answer. The cops knew then whose arm to twist. They possessed ways and means. The Rabbit stayed in the clear, soon to hop away.
Giroux was thrilled. Until the plan failed. His sure victory dashed.
The driver broke under pressure. With the sharp end of a fork pressed against a closed eyelid, he admitted to picking up a girl at the Rabbit’s club. But later the drivers were switched. He took a cab home. He couldn’t say where the girl went after that because he didn’t know.
After more pressure on the fork, he could not reveal the identity of the second driver quickly enough.
The new guy was an assassin. Nobody’s chauffeur.
He could not easily be tracked down.
They were out of moves.