Running late, he hadn’t felt this nervous in a decade. Émile Cinq-Mars had started packing that morning but didn’t finish before leaving for the penitentiary. The solution was to book for another night and switch from the highway motel to the only downtown hotel in Joliette at the end of his workday. The department could pay for one, he’d chip in for the other. In the office, the motel clerk passed a folded note across the counter to him. Constable Dubroc, reporting in. The arranged meeting with the bikers had not transpired. Dubroc had waited through the day and been stood up.
‘Damn,’ the detective muttered under his breath. The bikers adding one more irritant – not entirely unexpected – maddened him. In retaliation he’d stick spikes in the spokes of their Harleys – he briefly reveled in that consoling fantasy.
Émile Cinq-Mars finished his arrangements with the clerk and, back in his room, pressed for time, he stuffed his suitcase in a rush. He did take his time with the papers and notes strewn around the room, rearranging them into a semblance of order.
Finally, he was done. He experienced a lurch within himself. A bit like tumbling off a spinning log into a cold dark lake: He hadn’t heard from Sandra. He expected her to be waiting downtown, perhaps anxious that he might never show. Wild horses, and he was familiar with the beasts if not the sensations coursing through him, could not drag him away. Super excited to see her again. Yet he had to face it: He was also super terrified to see her again.
Was he right? Was she the one? Or had he concocted a ludicrous notion in his head from the safety of distance? Love had never drawn a simple trajectory for him, the road ahead usually appeared potholed with sharp twists. The priest in him, in part – was he meant for marriage? And Sandra was nineteen years younger! A mature woman of thirty-one, that was true, but – yikes. She operated a horse farm. In another country. She was American. She was an atheist amused by his religious bent. How could this be broached, except as a short-term affair? Yet the notion of short-term explicitly saddened him. He felt ruptured when any thought of the two of them added up to nothing more than a fleeting encounter. Ships passing in the night, that sort of thing. Or colliding. When reality strikes, and sooner or later reality will clobber any couple, how would he absorb the blow? How would she? Would they hit the ground running and feel the pain or happily keep falling into eternity together?
He had all these questions. And many more.
He threw his bags into the front-end trunk of his VW Bug. Clambered in behind the wheel. Deep breaths. Pulled out of the motel lot and headed for town.
He soon had company. Two bikers on his tail. They had a few opportunities to kick it and go around but declined to do so. When he slowed, they did so, too. They weren’t generic enthusiasts or geriatrics on Hondas. A clear look in his rearview mirror confirmed they were full-patch members of the most notorious biker gang and one of its most deadly chapters on the planet.
Another pair pulled out from a service station down the highway and rode on ahead of him. No coincidence, he speculated. Easy to assume that they meant to be intimidating. They were good at it. They stuck precisely to the speed limit. Traffic was busy enough approaching town that a chance to pass never came up. Usually he had double lines and when he didn’t, oncoming vehicles foiled the attempt. The bikers took no obvious interest in him, but two in front, two in back, by design, posed a threat. In the habit of entering the penitentiary in recent days, Cinq-Mars had been locking his service revolver in the glovebox of his car, which is where it was now. Out of reach and locked in. If he was forced to pull over, he’d have to stop, pull the keys from the ignition, unlock the glove box, retrieve his weapon, insert the keys in the ignition again, start up in case he had to step on it, and hope that he did all that at something approaching the speed of light.
Now ten. Six more bikers pulled out and fell in behind. The sound of their engines reached jet-like decibels. A saving grace occurred when the town limits rose up to greet him – he welcomed the safety of population. The bikers slowed to fifty kilometers an hour to suit the new speed limit, and Émile Cinq-Mars slowed his Beetle accordingly.
He parked alongside the hotel in the center of town. All ten bikers did so as well, demonstrating that those ahead and the two groups behind were in this together. He retrieved his weapon, casually, no rush, and clipped the holster to his belt. As he exited his car and heaved out his bags, the others took no interest in him. He found that conspicuous by itself, the way they expressly paid him no mind. Cinq-Mars walked past them to check-in to the hotel where he hoped the love of his life was waiting. If she was waiting. If she was the love of his life.
And how was he going to win her over with all this scruff around …
Checking-in was perfunctory and quick, but Sandra had not arrived. Highly worrisome. He felt his heart lightly pound. He ditched his bags in his second story room, then waited for her in the street-level bar.
The presence of the bikers invoked danger into his liaison. If Sandra did arrive, he should perhaps dispatch her home. That they were ignoring him was no consolation. He knew that bikers didn’t threaten. The ride-in aside, they either went after you or they didn’t. But what did they have against him, other than his investigation which was going approximately nowhere? He reminded himself that bikers had always kept a victim’s family out of their actions. They knew that attacks on family would provoke a more concerted response from the authorities, so they simply didn’t go there. All things considered, he and Sandra should be safe.
All things considered, he wanted her to show up.
While he sipped a cold beer – which, after his day, felt miraculous – the bikers in their grungy pose were checking-in as well. The hotel manager came out to assist a disconcerted clerk, and the man’s consternation was apparent. He was not going to deny them entry – he was neither that brave nor that foolish. Paul Lagarde was not among the visitors. Cinq-Mars recognized none of the men as having stayed down the road a few days ago. Curiously, they were bereft of girlfriends, which suggested they had an agenda that excluded their molls. Cinq-Mars returned to ruminations aroused by the beer and the next time he looked up Sandra stood before him, three feet away, all smiles and beautifully brown quizzical eyes, a travel bag gripped in each hand.
‘You’re here.’
‘You doubted me?’ she asked.
She could fluster him so easily. ‘No, I—’
‘I did,’ she said. ‘I never thought. I got to the border with my dog—’
‘You came with a dog?’ He really did not know her well.
‘Sandy, my golden retriever. Sandy, Sandra, get it?’ She finally put her bags down. ‘Anyway, I got to the border and didn’t have the paperwork for the dog. Her shots, etcetera.’
‘Oh no.’
‘I mean, Canada really is another country. I don’t know what I was thinking. Then all this talk about the dog among the guards in French, of course, a language I haven’t spoken since university, and I’m like, what? Am? I? Doing? Here?’
‘Do you always take your dog on a date?’
‘Stop. This is a trip. It’s like a vacation, only not to any part of the world you’d visit on vacation. I don’t mean Canada. I mean Joliette. What’s jolly about it? First impressions, anyway, I can see why they chose this place for a prison. I mean, you don’t need to do a thing, right? No walls. Just put people here, it’s like jail. Anyway, long story short, I have friends in Vermont, fifty miles from the border. So fifty miles back there, drop off Sandy, fifty miles return trip to the border, and here I am, late, and without my doggie protector and why, tell me, is this hotel loaded with bikers who look like they want to kill me for breathing too loudly? Or only for breathing?’
He laughed. He loved her spiel. He loved her. He saw that she was nervous about all this, too, but he was so delighted to see her and now relieved that, if they slept together, it would only be the two of them, no dog.
‘Let’s get your room straightened away.’
‘It’s reserved, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Then finish your beer, Detective. Tell me, do you always wear a gun on a date? I’ll have one, too. Not a gun. A beer. I need a cold one. I passed a dozen bar salons along the way and was tempted. Neon signs advertising naked girls kept me driving.’
He kissed her then. It lasted. Then she laughed and gave him a quick peck back after they broke it off. Everything had happened so fast, but they were in love and both knew it.
They sat together at the bar in their own wee bubble of a world and shot the breeze. All wonderful. Nothing was awkward despite their lengthy separation. Then Sandra checked in and collected her key. She washed away the road dust, changed, and met him again within twenty minutes in the hotel dining room for dinner in the company of ten Hells Angels.
The maître d’ placed the gang members as far from the front windows as possible, to conceal their presence, leaving a table by the window as the preferred spot for a couple. Cinq-Mars hesitated.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sandra asked.
‘It’s not as though there’s a view. In this case, we’re the view, to anyone outside.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘You don’t like the table, monsieur?’ the maître d’ inquired. The restaurant was not high-end, its menu a mixed fare that catered to a variety of tastes. Yet the maître d’ was well dressed, black suited and bow-tied, as though to evoke a former, formal adherence to propriety and glamour. The restaurant was still the nicest spot in town, and the maître d’ was determined to evoke a bygone glory day that probably never existed. Not here.
‘I’ll take that one,’ Cinq-Mars said, and pointed.
Sandra Lowndes caught on once they were seated. Émile put his back to the wall to give himself an expansive view of the premises.
He felt more secure that way. She didn’t mind. ‘Ohh-kay …’ she said, drawing out both syllables. ‘You with the gun on your hip. I didn’t know Canada was like the Wild West. You’ll let me know if I need to duck.’
‘I only have eyes for you tonight. Not them,’ Cinq-Mars teased. ‘And yes, I just said that. On the other hand, I prefer to keep them in front of me. It’s not typical for the Hells to commandeer a place like this while wearing gang colors. It’s possible that it has something to do with me.’
‘Not to alarm me or anything like that.’
‘Not at all. If they’re making a spectacle of themselves, they intend no crime. That would be stupid, and unfortunately for me in my line of work, they’re not that.’
He wasn’t the only one to exercise a speck of caution. The waitress appeared frazzled, making faces to communicate her trepidation.
‘Nobody will blame you for leaving,’ she let them know.
‘Is the food good here?’ Cinq-Mars asked.
‘The best, but, you know, who can eat?’
Cinq-Mars took her at her word. He was confident the dinner would be an improvement over his hot dog and poutine diet lately. ‘We’ll stay. They’ll behave in public. They look quiet.’
‘They do, don’t they?’ the chubby brunette with an upturned nose and the rosiest of cheeks agreed. ‘Let’s hope they stay that way.’ Her tone betrayed her doubt.
‘Have they been by before?’
‘Not all at once, not like this. Can I get you drinks? You might need one.’
After she skipped away, Sandra turned more serious. ‘That was said for my benefit, wasn’t it? About the bikers being polite.’
‘I don’t always sit with my back to a wall, but honestly, I would get you out of here if I was concerned. I don’t expect them to be disruptive.’
‘Just sitting, they’re disruptive.’
He agreed. ‘What they do in secret we don’t want to imagine. Still, they’re a criminal enterprise. That takes discipline. When they’re a public spectacle, they make that work for them, it’s intimidating. It lets people know they’re present. But they won’t give people like me cause to arrest them.’
‘That sounds brave, but I think – let me count – yup, you’re outnumbered.’
Drinks and menus arrived. Settling into their meal, Cinq-Mars’s prognosis proved accurate until another biker arrived. The jangle of Paul Lagarde’s boots alerted the detective first despite his back-to-the-wall, eyes-on-the-room positioning. The biker seated himself at their table before the policeman could react. Cinq-Mars shot a glance at Sandra expecting her to be in panic mode, but she clearly thought the intrusion was a hoot.
‘Cinq-Mars! You fart!’ Lagarde slapped a beer bottle down on the table. ‘We meet again. Good looking lady.’ He addressed Sandra: ‘Me and this guy eat out. I admit, you are prettier than me. I don’t blame him not to send an invitation in the mail.’
Sandra raised an eyebrow. She retained more than a smattering of French from university, but the man’s dialect was impenetrable. Not receiving much of a reaction from her, he looked to Cinq-Mars, perturbed.
‘She doesn’t speak French,’ he told him.
Cinq-Mars didn’t mention that he struggled with the man’s unique patois himself, although he was getting the hang of it. Sandra thought to correct him, that she did speak a little, but given that she could not comprehend a syllable of their visitor’s diction, she explained instead, ‘I’m American.’
‘Love Americans,’ Lagarde announced in passable English. ‘I ride in New Hampshire. You know New Hampshire?’
‘That’s where I’m from.’ She glanced at Cinq-Mars, wondering if she should have admitted to that.
‘Live Free or Die. The best motto. Mine, too.’ He patted her shoulder with his big hand. ‘In New Hampshire, no helmets. I like to live free or die when I ride my bike.’
‘A private dinner, Paul,’ Cinq-Mars commented. ‘I’m sure you understand. Sandra, this is Paul Lagarde, who’s pretty high-up in the Hells Angels, although he might be splitting with a rebel group. Paul, this is Sandra.’
‘You a lawyer? A cop?’ the biker inquired.
‘I raise horses for a living.’
‘Good. Then we be friends. Not like this guy. He might shoot me someday. Or put me in jail with very bad men. Me, I am not a bad man. I am a sheep in the clothes of a wolf.’
Sandra smiled at his inversion of the familiar phrase.
‘Don’t believe him,’ Cinq-Mars interjected, sticking with English for Sandra’s sake. ‘Paul, your boys were supposed to show their faces to Constable Dubroc today. We agreed. They didn’t. That was not an option, Paul. I’ll scoop them up. Your fault.’
‘No need. They were delayed. Couldn’t be helped. I’ll get them to you real soon, Cinq-Mars. No problem. No worries.’
‘By noon tomorrow.’
‘Works for me.’
‘What can I do for you, Paul?’
Lagarde tried to explain himself in English but fumbled his words. He apologized to Sandra, then switched to his shotgun French. ‘What you told me, Cinq-Mars. Truth in it. Not like you think.’
‘What did I tell you?’ He and Sandra accepted that the interruption would not soon end so resumed their meal. Cinq-Mars had opted for the prime rib, while Sandra had chosen the chicken vol au vent. The fare did not rise to a gourmet standard yet was respectful of anyone’s pallet.
‘We do business, inside the organization.’
‘Have you voted yet?’
That gave Lagarde pause. He stuck his fists on his thighs and glared back at Cinq-Mars with a look that conveyed both mystification and respect. ‘Watch out for this guy,’ he said in English to Sandra. ‘There are different kinds of cops. He’s the worst kind there is.’
‘What kind is that?’
‘He’s informed.’
Her mouth full, Sandra suppressed a laugh. The heavyweight tough guy with the Iron Cross suspended from an earlobe and the skull and crossbones in his eyes was not devoid of charm.
Back to French. ‘A vote’s been taken, if you know what I’m talking about. If you’re only guessing, I say nothing more.’
‘Are you still a Hells Angel?’
‘Don’t ask. You know too much already. Not good for your health maybe.’
‘Paul, remind me. What did I say before, that now you find true?’
‘Not my turf, Cinq-Mars. I did not come here on my own. I’m away for the vote. I didn’t know about it at first. When it’s discussed, where am I? Not there. Not in the room. I’m out here in the wilderness with the deer and the wolves visiting a ladies’ prison.’
‘You still get a vote, no?’
‘We’re waiting on the count. Democracy, man. One jackass, one vote. But I got a rep even you maybe don’t know about. Guys call me the peacekeeper in the gang.’
‘Are you really?’
‘Don’t give me that look. My guys know that about me. I can persuade guys this way or that way. Did certain people around the countryside and in the city want a peacekeeper, a guy with a gift to show the blind how to see, did they want their peacekeeper in that meeting, help persuade the vote? Don’t think so. Some wanted me out in nowhere-land because they don’t want peace. They’re itching for war. If I was there maybe I’d find a way to make peace happen.’
‘Meaning, you’re not for the war.’
‘Bring it on. It’s coming anyway. You coppers will love it. Dead bikers all around. The streets littered with our corpses. The gutters will flow with our blood.’
Cinq-Mars put his knife and fork down. He was sensing an opportunity, and Sandra’s presence was not enough to let it pass him by. For her sake, though, he switched back to English.
‘It’s done? There’s been a vote? The Hells Angels are at war with their own satellites? And you, you’ve thrown in with the Alliance?’
‘I’ve made progress with the name. The Rock Machine. It’s catching on.’ He asked Sandra her opinion, in English. ‘Do you like the name?’
‘Much better than having the word devil or demon in it. Sounds modern.’
‘Keep her,’ Lagarde said. ‘She’s a smart cookie.’
‘What’s true?’ Cinq-Mars asked again.
He reverted to French. ‘I got played. Out here to visit the prison. That was a play. To keep me away when the big meeting happened. Now I’m on the outside, looking in. And the outside is at war with the inside.’
Meaning, the gangs across the Quebec countryside were going to fight Hells Angels in the cities.
‘I wanted to let you know, Cinq-Mars. Guys arranged for me to be here so I wouldn’t be someplace else. If being here makes me look bad when a prison guard is whacked, that doesn’t make me part of it. Because I wasn’t. My enemies used to be my brothers. Look at them for that.’
The man stood, his chains jangling.
‘Thanks for the visit, Paul.’ He had a thought. ‘You’ve been respectful. That’s appreciated. To be clear, I still need to see the four guys who were around earlier this week.’
‘Busy voting. A priority.’
‘This is my thought, or I should say my suspicion, Paul. I’m being respectful, too. Still, it’s my job to be suspicious. If a gang knows a war is on the horizon, then the side in the battle that carried out a killing might be motivated to see the other side take the blame.’
The biker glared back at him a moment; his gaze less friendly than it had been. He looked down at Sandra then, and nodded towards her dinner companion. In English: ‘Smart guy, hey? My advice, watch out for him.’
‘I promise,’ she told him, which made Lagarde laugh. ‘I will.’
‘See you later, Cinq-Mars.’ He picked up his beer bottle, empty now, and departed. He did not join his companions at their tables but vacated the hotel.
‘Sorry about that,’ Cinq-Mars said.
‘I’m not,’ Sandra replied, and they both smiled at one another before returning to a different conversation and their meal.
Their joy carried them into Émile’s room. The physical had been absent from both their lives for some time. His muscularity surprised her, although it should not have, she realized, this man who’d worked with horses since childhood and had attended to a farm before becoming a cop. For Émile, the electricity on contact with her skin astounded him. Mutual surprise and discovery yielded to passionate intensity, then later, their tender explorations.
They were lying curled and contented, in the shock of love, when the first violent volley occurred outside. The sound was startling, and in their state, disorienting. They did not know that the shattering sound came from a baseball bat missing a head and smashing a car window instead. The night erupted.
By the time he reached the window, peeking around the blind due to his nakedness even though the lights were off, Cinq-Mars saw about two dozen combatants arrayed in the street below. Kicking, punching, swinging chains. Growling and grunting. He felt it prudent to dress. Sandra flicked on a light switch and covered her breasts with the top sheet. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Bedlam. A fight. It’s the bikers.’
‘Do you have to go?’ He was tugging on his pants.
‘Their fight. Not my town. But if I’m pulled into it somehow, I’ll want my pants on.’ He was trying to take the edge off his alarm.
‘Should I call the police?’ Sandra asked. ‘In case?’
‘I’m the police.’
‘Should I call anyway?’
‘Call.’
Dressed, he raised the blind and peered below.
‘The front desk won’t answer,’ Sandra reported.
‘Dial nine. Get an outside line.’
‘I tried that. Nothing happens.’
‘Stay here,’ he instructed her. The room’s safe was in the closet by the front door. He opened it and extracted his holster and weapon. Cinq-Mars went downstairs where he showed his badge to the biker on-duty. ‘Out.’
‘You want to fuck with me?’
‘Not sure. Maybe I’ll kneecap you first, then decide.’
The thug noticed the pistol and obediently slumped out the door.
The night manager was sitting on the floor like a dog who’d suffered a reprimand. Sheet-white but he could still function and was beginning to stir with the biker out of the building. ‘Hook up the phones. Call the police,’ Cinq-Mars instructed him. The old guy had seen a few things in his day although this night was taking the cake. He made the call. By the time Cinq-Mars stepped outside, sirens wailed. A citizen had probably alerted the police sooner than did the clerk.
His call though put more units on the streets and ambulances as well. The night became a jeremiad of wailing sirens.
Men slammed one another to the pavement. Punched, kicked, kneed, elbowed. More than one combatant moaned in the dirt and held on to his testicles. Blows hit home; jaws popped. Cinq-Mars noticed a telling difference between this brawl and any other he might expect from men like these: the total absence of serious weaponry. A couple of bats and a couple of chains, but even those tools had fallen to the pavement and no one took an interest in retrieving them.
Curious, that.
The lack of weapons made the battle seem benign, and whatever it was about, the fight appeared to neutralize itself. A tussle between four men was being broken up by six, and two guys remained locked on the ground bound by each other’s grip. Three men lay on the pavement unable to rise from the damage done to them. Their injuries apparently took care of whatever score needed to be settled.
The first police unit wailed on to the scene and from the opposite direction a pair of ambulances followed.
Cinq-Mars maintained his position on the front stoop of the hotel. He leaned against a post. A uniform suggested he move back as more cops arrived. He showed his badge; otherwise, he did not impose himself on the proceedings. One ambulance peeled away with a victim; a second was loaded and a third showed up. Cinq-Mars displayed his badge again as he strolled through the battalions of bikers and cops right into the rear of the second ambulance. ‘Give me a minute,’ he told the medic before the next guy was loaded in. ‘Put him in the other one.’
He sat down opposite a bloodied man.
‘Well played,’ he told Paul Lagarde who was holding a towel to his bloody head.
‘What you mean by that?’
‘I counted twenty guys. Only fourteen were here at first. Then you. That’s fifteen. Five more showed up. I presume those five include the men who stayed at our motel a few nights ago.’
‘Maybe,’ Lagarde submitted. ‘In the confusion what do I know?’
‘Confusion, my ass. Those four were in the fight and like everybody else, their faces are bloodied and bruised now. That part was convincing.’
‘Can’t say,’ Lagarde admitted.
‘The total lack of knives gave you away. But like I said, well played.’
‘Something on your mind, Cinq-Mars?’
‘DNA. Off the carpets where Officer Isaure Dabrezil went down and from the cuts on your guys faces.’
‘Yeah, if it still exists. That DNA, I mean. That sort of thing gets lost or bungled in the system sometimes. I don’t trust it.’
‘More where it came from.’
‘You think? The grapevine – you know about the grapevine, Cinq-Mars? I heard those carpets got removed. Where they are now, you think?’
The man’s confidence staggered him. ‘So much for being the peacemaker,’ Cinq-Mars noted.
Lagarde removed the towel from his head, rested his wrists over his thighs and leaned in closer. Blood popped along his brow, sticking to his long and stringy hair. He needed stitches. ‘Like I told you, it comes down from the top, a hit like that. Like you told me, or you made me think about it anyway, maybe somebody wanted me to look bad for it.’
‘You said,’ Cinq-Mars reminded him, ‘that it had to be an outsider. That could be. But you’re an outsider, Paul. Living in a motel. Same with those close pals of yours.’
‘Let’s say that I didn’t like the fucking guilty arrow pointing right between my eyeballs. If an order comes through the door for a serious hit, if an outsider is brought in to carry it out, that don’t point an arrow at nobody. Especially not me. I get it now, what you said. I didn’t before.’
Cinq-Mars knew that he was catching him at an opportune moment. ‘The vote.’
‘My buddies are not my enemies. But here we are. At war.’
‘This show tonight wasn’t war.’
‘Tonight was nothing. Wait for what comes.’
‘No stopping it?’ Cinq-Mars inquired.
‘Not by you. Like I said, cops will like it. Lots of dead bikers. Seventh heaven for you guys.’
‘And you can guarantee that no innocent bystanders will also be killed or maimed, even accidentally?’
Lagarde shrugged to acknowledge the issue. ‘It’ll be a mess,’ he prophesied.
Cinq-Mars leaned in closer himself. ‘You’ve taken sides, Paul. You were a full-patch member of the Hells Angels yet I see you’ve torn yours off. You’re Rock Machine now.’
‘I been moving that way for a while.’
‘Take whatever side you’re on and help me with my case by giving me something – a truth, it has to be true – give me something that goes against the other side. You’ll be protecting your own. Anyway, all’s fair in war, right?’
Lagarde nodded and rotated his head from side to side. ‘Run down where you’re at so far.’
‘Isaure Dabrezil is dead. Florence is dead. Why are they dead? That’s one question. Here’s another. Jodi and Courtney are kids, but Jodi has knowledge of what’s happening.’ A bluff. But a substantive one. He wouldn’t want to be on a witness stand himself. He didn’t know it for a fact, but Courtney told him that Jodi had told her that everything turned around Abi. To know that, Jodi had to be in a loop, and he had assessed her background which had been a revelation. With some confidence he asked Lagarde, ‘How come?’
‘The Hells sent Jodi in,’ Lagarde said. ‘My old gang. She shot up a store, something like that? Not what you think. She didn’t panic. She did it on purpose. The whole point was to get arrested. The Hells would take care of her in prison. We – they, I should say – run the prisons, right? Then we – they – worked her through the system to arrive here. They worked Abigail through the system to arrive here, too, after her. For a different reason. Follow me so far?’
‘I follow. What else? What do you know about Temple? Or Rozlynn? Anything? How are they involved?’
‘Temple’s a helper for the new side. My side. Leave her alone in this.’
‘Temple’s buying guns for you, or showing you how,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. ‘How do I leave that alone?’
‘Don’t judge.’
‘She’s not coming off the radar screen.’
‘Temple’s invisible. She does what she does. She knows how to do. She is an asset. Who you call Rozlynn, I know nothing. Anybody else?’
‘A woman named Doi. Another called Malka. Older ladies.’ He expected no reaction. He was surprised when Lagarde hesitated.
‘Them I don’t know,’ Lagarde said, but why so slow to say that?
‘I know quite a lot about Abigail,’ Cinq-Mars told him. ‘I arrested her. Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘She made friends with Flo,’ Lagarde told him as though that was a serious matter.
‘She did.’
‘Some people maybe thought that could be a problem.’
‘How so?’
‘Think about it. Maybe Flo was supposed to be trouble for Abigail. Instead they became friends. You see? Somebody somewhere might’ve figured out that that wasn’t right. Not the way it should be. Not Flo’s purpose. If she wanted to get off the hook for throwing acid in the face of a biker’s moll, because she needed to get off the hook for that, or the alternative—’
‘The alternative?’
‘Whacked. She didn’t want to be whacked, she had to make up for the acid. Her job? Making friends, not part of it. You follow?’
Sort of. But yes, he did.
‘Maybe she was asked to switch sides and didn’t. Or maybe she wasn’t asked and did. Listen to me, Cinq-Mars, the SQ thinks Isaure Dabrezil was one of theirs. Right? It won’t be the first time in history they might be wrong.’
As instructed, he listened. He said, ‘That doesn’t get your people off.’
‘Time will tell. It might. But don’t miss the point here. If Flo was in with today’s Hells, then Temple or Malka might’ve been against her. Leaning that way anyhow. If she was in with what is now the Rock Machine, and remember, it didn’t exist then, so it’s hard to know what side was her side, and which side she was on, then Jodi and Marie-Philomène could’ve lined up against her. Hard to say. Even for me. Look, my head hurts. Kinda bad right now. I need to get to a hospital. Stitched up to keep me a handsome motherfucker. Scars, I got enough. If you don’t mind too much, time to piss off.’
Cinq-Mars was willing to let him go. He knew that the man had secretly loaded his responses with a clue.
Upon his eventual return to his room, Cinq-Mars found the bed abandoned and a note on his pillow.
Émile,
Totally beat. You will be too whenever you’re back.
Take care. See you in the morning.
Love,
San
He didn’t know her room number. He resigned himself to sleeping alone again, although he wasn’t certain that sleep would come easily given how his head buzzed. He was not long for the pillow – hard to judge as he fell asleep quickly – when his phone rang. He snapped it up, expecting the call to be from Sandra and hoping that she had changed her mind.
‘Hi,’ he said. A modicum of sexiness infused his tone.
‘Sergeant-Detective Cinq-Mars?’
He gave his head a shake. The voice sounded familiar, but in his sleepiness, he couldn’t place it. ‘Yeah. Who’s this?’
‘DesSaulniers.’ Alexandre DesSaulniers, Chief of Police. His boss.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘You’re still alive.’
‘I am. Why? I’m not necessarily fully awake, sir.’
‘Maybe my news will change that. I had a hard time tracking you down.’
‘Yes, sir. I booked out of the motel for a hotel. Better digs. Eighteen bucks more a night. The department can afford it, I’m sure.’
‘Why move?’
‘Long story, Chief.’
‘Good that you did, maybe. Are you aware? Somebody broke into your old room and shot up the mattress. Twenty rounds. The question is, did they know the bed was empty or did they think you were on it. Either way, a cause for concern, no?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Cinq-Mars agreed after a pause. Concern was an understatement, but he could not improve on the opinion in his current state of surprise. He had to assume that the assailants believed he was sleeping there. Which meant the bikers who had escorted him into town were not the mattress killers. They wouldn’t ask for that kind of trouble.
Still. A chill coursed through him. Never mind that he might have been in that bed. Under slightly altered circumstances, Sandra could have been in it, too.
But no. Thank God. He’d never have the bad sense to take her out to that dump.
Still.
‘Very least it’s a warning,’ DesSaulniers continued, another understatement. ‘Take care, Cinq-Mars. I know you’re fucking religious. If you say you left the motel on a whim, that could make me religious, too.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘Strict vigilance, Cinq-Mars.’
‘Yes, sir. No question.’
Strict vigilance. Somebody shot up his old mattress. The one he was now sleeping on felt less safe.
He had an idea. Cinq-Mars dressed and went downstairs. He had gained the trust of the night manager by kicking out a biker earlier. He parlayed that connection into receiving Sandra’s room number then had the clerk scrub her name from the hotel’s register, adding a Mr Alphonse Lemay as the occupant. He’d knock first. She might admit him. Under the circumstances, her bed was the preferred option for the night, not the one under his name.
A preferred option. Perhaps that might be true for the rest of his life.
He went upstairs after talking to the night manager. Went to his room and retrieved his pistol. Then went to her room on the next floor up. He knocked. She admitted him.
He made sure the lock was secure with his pistol on their bedside table.