Cinq-Mars had pegged the janitor’s son as indolent, which didn’t jive with the young man in the back lane repeatedly chinning himself to a maple’s stout limb. Slick with sweat, the boy proudly showed off his prowess. Cinq-Mars waited for him to drop to the ground.
‘You’re in shape,’ he remarked. The boy wore a loose-fitting basketball shirt with the team logo of the Boston Celtics. He was lean and muscled.
‘I know you?’ the boy asked.
‘I was in your place yesterday. You were in bed.’
‘Sleeping it off.’
Another boy snickered.
‘Leave us,’ Cinq-Mars directed the second youth.
When the lad didn’t budge, he showed his badge. The boy moved along then, but not far. Cinq-Mars circled around to put the second teen at his back, so that the two friends could not easily check in with each other.
‘What’s up?’ the janitor’s son asked. Cinq-Mars assessed that he was neither keen on cooperation nor looking to bolt.
‘I’d like to ask what you know about the robberies.’
‘What I know? Nothing.’ The boy wiped sweat from his eyes with the hem of his shirt.
‘You go by Mick?’
‘Mick, yeah.’
Cinq-Mars formally introduced himself and his partner. ‘The murder last night must have surprised you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You weren’t expecting it.’
‘Why would I? Who expects that?’
Cinq-Mars glanced at Norville Geoffrion. He had thought him indolent, and Geoffrion had doubted his intelligence. Had they both been wrong? Geoffrion indicated that he couldn’t explain it, either.
‘What were you on?’ Cinq-Mars asked the boy. An educated guess.
The boy returned only a quizzical expression.
‘To be so sleepy?’
‘A couple of beers maybe.’
‘That’s not what I asked you.’
‘I thought it was.’
‘Think about it.’
The boy did. He scratched the side of his neck. Smiled a notch. He said, ‘I’m not going to stand here and tell a policeman I was taking drugs or anything dumb like that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Maybe you heard? Drugs are against the law.’
‘A man was murdered. I’m not interested in drugs.’
The boy seemed legitimately confused.
Cinq-Mars tried to put him at ease. ‘Being doped up explains why you didn’t get out of bed yesterday morning. It tells me you were doped up overnight. Puts you in the clear, no? Doped up, you were not carefully and precisely breaking into apartments. Gives you an alibi.’
‘I need an alibi?’
‘You need to tell me where you were and what you were doing last night.’
The boy thought about it some more.
‘I might’ve been high, yeah. Hanging out in the park. Bunch of us. Looking at the stars. A lot of stars up there, holy cow, once you look.’
‘Name the pharmaceutical for me, Mick. Helps with your credibility.’
Mick tried to look over at his pal, but Cinq-Mars was too tall and too close to him. He said, cautiously, ‘If I was taking a drug it was LSD.’
‘How was it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your trip. How was it?’
‘If I dropped acid, it was good. Mostly. When the cops were in my apartment, maybe I was still sleeping it off. If I took a pill. I wasn’t totally convinced you guys were real going through my place.’
‘Hmm,’ Cinq-Mars said. He allowed his doubt to show. He nodded toward his partner. ‘Detective Geoffrion thought you were stupid.’
‘Geoffrion?’ Mick asked. He looked excited.
‘Not related,’ Nord told him.
‘He’s not related,’ Cinq-Mars confirmed. ‘It makes me wonder.’
The boy waited for whatever came next. When the detective remained mute, he asked, ‘Wonder what?’
‘If you’re related.’
‘To Geoffrion?’
‘To anyone connected to this case. What can you tell us about the dead guy?’
‘We’re not related.’
‘What can you tell us about Willy?’
Mick looked up to the apartment where the murder took place, as though the victim’s ghost might be gazing down from the balcony. His compulsive shrug felt elaborate, indicating that he meant to convey a lot. He said, ‘Not much.’
‘Not much.’
‘I hardly ever talked to him. Why would I? He was a real quiet guy. Spooky, that way. The most we talked was this one time I fixed his leaky tap.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Girls, mostly. He wanted to know what they’re like these days.’
‘These days. Like he hasn’t seen any for a while?’
‘More like he’s remembering some olden time. That maybe never was.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘You know.’
‘I don’t, actually.’
‘Girls are girls.’
‘Hmm,’ Cinq-Mars noted. He was beginning to circle around Mick, and the boy followed him with his eyes by turning his torso. ‘What’s his last name?’
The teen gave the query serious thought. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I can get it from your dad, I imagine.’
‘Maybe. I guess.’
‘He must pay his rent every month.’
‘In cash, yeah.’
‘I see.’ He made a mental note to check the man’s phone records, his hydro bill. The thought instigated a worry. ‘Mick, is the hydro included in the rent here?’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Heat?’
‘Everything. Yeah.’
Not a confirmation, but if a man was looking to live anonymously, off the public grid, he’d look for a place like this. And pay cash.
‘What about the chalk marks?’ A technique he’d been developing. Ask questions straight out of left field.
‘Chalk marks?’ He seemed honestly confused.
‘The ones next to the apartments that were spared. The sheds got busted into instead. You didn’t mark up those apartments?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Did you see anybody marking doors with yellow chalk?’
‘No.’
‘Anybody hanging around lately who looked suspicious?’
‘Everybody looks suspicious.’
‘Try not to be a smart-ass, OK? You’ve been good until now. Don’t start.’
‘OK. No. I haven’t seen anybody look more suspicious than usual. Why ask me?’
‘Because half a squad of cops went through your apartment. You could barely open an eyelid. Makes it look as though you knew what was going on. That you didn’t need to ask.’
Cinq-Mars gave him marks for coming across as honest. He took a point off for willfulness. Cinq-Mars treated their exchange as a contest; the boy had no reason to do so.
‘Anyone come around trying to recruit kids like you?’
‘Kids like me?’
‘Kids in general.’
He shrugged. ‘The usual. If that’s what you mean.’
‘What’s the usual?’
‘Pedophiles. Pushers. The usual.’
The world kids lived in these days. A big word for him to use, though. Pedophiles. Rather than a street slur. Cinq-Mars was struck by that. Possibly, the response was prepared in advance, in case somebody asked. But he might be overthinking it.
‘Nobody else?’
‘Nope.’
‘Would you tell me if there was someone else or something new?’
‘Like what?’
‘A gang. Or an individual recruiting thieves.’
‘I guess I’d tell you. Why not?’
‘Will you tell me if it happens in the future? Give me a heads up?’
‘I guess so. Sure. Why not?’
‘How many chin-ups can you do?’
The boy looked across at the maple. ‘Thirty. The bark cuts into my hands or I’d do more.’
‘Then I won’t challenge you. I could blame the bark, but you’re doing too many for me.’
‘You have more weight to pull up. That matters.’
Modest of him to say so. Generous, also.
Cinq-Mars asked, ‘How many dogs in this building?’
‘Dogs? None. Not allowed.’
‘Who made that rule?’
‘The landlord, I guess. The owner.’
‘There’s other dogs around. Across the lane. Down the lane. Why do you think none were barking last night? You’d think they would, a bunch of thieves around.’
‘A bunch of thieves? Not one or two?’
‘A killer, too. Why wouldn’t they bark?’
‘They’d bark. But they always bark. Who’d notice?’
‘Good point.’ He had him there. Cinq-Mars pulled out a card and passed it to Mick. Although it did not signify his rank, the number was good. ‘Call, if anything comes up.’
‘What can come up?’
‘Somebody tries to sell you a toaster real cheap. Or who knows what? Call.’
Sergeant-Detective Cinq-Mars walked away, heading down the lane to take the long way back to the street. Detective Geoffrion fell into step alongside him. Then Cinq-Mars stopped, turned, and went back to the boy. He walked right up to him, nudged the boy’s pal aside once again, and leaned over to whisper in Mick’s ear.
‘You must know Moira Ellibee? Do you fix her taps, too? Do you stay away from her, Mick? Do you? You know what I mean.’
Taken aback, Mick nodded, to indicate he understood.
‘You stay away?’
He nodded again.
‘Other boys? Do they know her?’
Finally, Mick spoke up. ‘Men come and go. Older guys. My age? Never seen that.’
‘That’s helpful. See, that wasn’t so hard. Thanks.’
He joined Geoffrion and they continued their stroll down the lane. His partner wanted to know what he’d said to the boy, and Cinq-Mars told him.
‘Why ask him that?’
‘I’m trying to get a handle on how mad she really is.’
‘How mad is she?’
‘My hunch, she’s halfway sane. But she has her things.’
‘Don’t we all.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘You got your things, too. What I heard.’
‘Like what?’
‘Crazy religious, like what.’
Cinq-Mars walked on in silence for a time. Geoffrion feared he’d offended him. He didn’t say anything more, suspecting he’d make the matter worse. He was wishing he’d minded his tongue. They turned the corner and exited onto the street. De l’Épée. In English, the street of the sword.
‘Crazy can be religious,’ Cinq-Mars noted. ‘I’ve seen that. Religious can be crazy. Seen that, too. They’re not mutually exclusive. But just like crazy is not automatically religious, religious is not automatically crazy, in my opinion.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Geoffrion said, not with any conviction.
‘Try to,’ Cinq-Mars suggested. ‘I’d appreciate it.’
He was keeping to himself that he hadn’t felt religious lately, and not particularly crazy either. That was bothering him. In the same way that the case was bothering him. Something was off; the world as it should be was out-of-sync. As though the planet wobbled more than usual. Privately, he summed up: something’s wrong and I have no clue what.
The case, he thought, emitted an odor; one difficult to define, hard to locate.
Late in the afternoon, at the poste, after failing to find a record of the tenant known as Willy or evidence of his last name, despite a call to Mick’s father and another to the building’s landlord, Cinq-Mars took a call from Armand Touton. His former boss succumbed to an illustrious rage.
‘Calm down, Armand,’ he told him.
‘Who’re you telling to calm down? Who?’
‘You, if that’s a serious question.’
‘You’re not telling me to calm down!’
‘As a matter of fact, I am. What’s going on?’
‘He’s out already, you numbskull!’
He wanted to ask who was out, and out of what, but the likely answer froze any response. The best he could do was say, ‘It’s not Thursday.’
‘His hearing got bumped up. That minister sweet-talked the parole board—’
‘She’s a she, by the way. The minister. A woman. I presume you didn’t know.’
Touton spoke slowly, to more evenly and powerfully vent his rage. ‘Is that something,’ he asked, ‘I should care about deep inside my crotch?’
‘Sorry. He’s out? Bondar was released?’
‘Thanks to you. You did nothing to stop it.’
‘Armand, I know you don’t look twice when it comes to protocol. For you, the rule of law means next to nothing.’
‘Correct. There’s right. There’s wrong. That’s it. What more do you want?’
‘You’ve handed me that line before. I get it. Trouble is, the rest of us live and work within the law. There are rules, procedures. The minister wasn’t budging off her position. No matter what I did or said, I had no hope of changing her mind. She wanted Bondar out. Period.’
‘Then do something about it now, Émile.’
‘What do you mean, “do”? I can’t put him back in prison.’
‘Who said? You won’t know until you try. Why is it so important that he stays in jail?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the trouble. Maybe if you told me—’
‘I don’t know either! But you can find out. Tail him, Émile. One step over the line, arrest his skinny ass. A guy like that, a parole violation can’t be hard.’
Even Johnny Bondar had civil rights, but, yeah, it would probably not be a challenge to nail him on a misdemeanor. Out on parole, depending on the terms, he might not be allowed to consort with known felons. That might be difficult to avoid. If push came to shove, Cinq-Mars could make it unavoidable. Not kosher, but he could live with it.
‘Armand, how do you know about this? I thought you were incommunicado. Gone fishing. Out in the wilderness with the moose, the wolves, and blackflies.’
‘A village is close by. I was picking up an order for worms. They got a phone box. I put in a call, like I’m doing with you right now, wise guy. Lucky you didn’t come out with me. I would’ve throttled you on the spot.’
No doubt. ‘I’ll put a tail on him. You go fishing.’
‘I’m too upset for that.’
‘Give me the number where you buy your worms. Where I can leave a message.’
‘Don’t, unless it’s good news. Anything else, fix it first.’
He could remind the older man that he’d retired, that he was in no position to give commands. Figuring his blood pressure was already high enough, Cinq-Mars laid off. He wrote down the phone number, returned the receiver to its cradle. Then noticed Geoffrion waiting for him. ‘Punch in much overtime lately?’ he asked.
‘Me? I don’t pull extra duty.’ A cross he’d learned to bear, judging by his tone.
‘Saddle up, Nord. You’re working late. Find out where Johnny Bondar lives. Find out where he’s hanging out after his release—’
‘He’s out?’
‘Free as a bird. Find him. Tail him. Call me at home if anything comes up. Leave a message if I’m not there. Arrest him if he spits on a sidewalk. Got it?’
‘Are you exaggerating, boss?’
Cinq-Mars glared back at him. Geoffrion, perhaps, required very specific instructions.
‘Use your best judgment,’ he told him. ‘But before you do, call me.’
‘Will do, boss.’
Boss. Like Sergeant-Detective, he might not get used to that.
He wasn’t going to tail Johnny Bondar himself. Not tonight. He wanted to patrol the neighborhood of Park Ex. See what packs of boys were hanging out. Maybe see if anyone anywhere wanted to sell him a toaster.