Detective Norville Geoffrion had a choice. Stay put or take a risk. He was staking out the Bondar family home on Bloomfield Street in Park Extension. A party in full swing. Beer flowed, guests continued to arrive. He should stay in his car, and if he had to take a leak, find a stout maple. Instead, he made a toilet run to the deli a half-block down on Jarry Street. Then picked up a sandwich, coke and chips. And Jujubes. Candy went well with all-nighters.
He gambled that Bondar wouldn’t leave the party in his absence. He was right. Nord walked away and when he returned the festivities had moved onto the front balcony of the upper duplex. The flat swelled with well-wishers. Older folk arrived, some with kids; even hoodlums had families. A woman wearing a clerical collar showed up. Religion, too. Tough guys arrived, on foot, in hot-rods. Girls sashayed down the sidewalk in their high heels, the world their oyster as they joined the throng. Nord spotted the young man, once through his living room window, once on the balcony. Matched him to his mugshot.
He wrote everything up in exacting detail, omitting his deli run.
Then chowed down in peace.
With his radio on, he didn’t feel lonely. Happy for the assignment. Early days, but he fell into reflections on his new partner. A lofty rank for his age; still, he came across as a stand-up guy. Standoffish, and damn smart, but a couple of times he’d spoken kindly to him. Rare in his life.
Geoffrion polished off his ham-and-cheese, half a bag of chips, and was digging into the Jujubes – he’d bought three packs – when the party abruptly went quiet. The music switched off. People on the balcony were squeezing back inside. The cacophony of voices ceased, as if everybody wanted to hear one person speak. The minutes ticked by with no sign, then the music went loud again with a thumping bass, the thrum of conversation picked up steam. Out of the front door came two men he recognized. He needed a moment to place them. They clambered into their sedan, and Geoffrion lowered himself down below the top of his steering column as they passed by. No doubt: the two homicide detectives from the other day. He wrote down their names – Sergeant-Detective Jerôme LaFôret and Detective Alfred Morin. He noted the time of their departure from Johnny Bondar’s house on his pad.
Their appearance spurred consequences. Three minutes later, Johnny Bondar was on the move.
His target slid onto the vinyl passenger seat of a red Plymouth convertible. Norville Geoffrion again eased down behind his steering wheel as the car passed by. He waited, wrote a note, then casually pulled out from the curb. At the corner, the convertible gunned it as the light turned amber, zipping across the intersection.
Geoffrion respected the red light as the convertible bombed up Bloomfield. Two cars turned off Jarry and traveled behind it, more slowly, single file. He took a gamble then. He ignored the red and did a quick left onto Jarry. Went right on Querbes, ignoring a red light there as well. He sped down that four-lane boulevard at impressive speed. Half-a-dozen blocks later, at busy Jean Talon, he slowed to let the green change to red and waited to see if he’d guessed correctly.
He gambled that, with only a few exits from Park Ex available, the odds were in his favor. He came out on top. The convertible went past him on Jean Talon. The boys were probably headed for the downtown lights of the big city. On a wider, faster street now – southbound on Park Avenue – Geoffrion could keep the car in view, travel fast, without drawing undue attention.
They sped down the immigrant corridor and over the hump of the lower mountain into the Student Ghetto. Geoffrion got on his radio. He told the dispatcher to telephone Cinq-Mars at home. ‘Tell him, Johnny Bondar is headed downtown. Got that? Over.’
He’d abandoned a party in his honor. Something was up.
In the Ghetto, the Plymouth diverted from its downtown trajectory, making a left onto narrow Milton Street, one designed in horse-and-buggy days. The detective followed and was dead behind the car at the first red light. They carried on straight then made a right down Ste Famille. Geoffrion took the turn and pulled in next to a hydrant to let the boys gain separation. Good thing, as they parked halfway down the block. Geoffrion disembarked and crossed the street. He dug out a couple of Jujubes to plop into his mouth as he sauntered along, then entered an apartment building where he kept an eye on the street from the lobby.
The boys did not remain at their address for long.
Johnny Bondar came out with a rifle carrying-case – the detective would bet his eyeteeth it wasn’t empty. The ex-con put it down on the floor of the backseat. The two boys were off again, and the cop hustled back to his car.
This time, he identified himself then hollered into his two-way: ‘Call Cinq-Mars! Bondar’s got a rifle! Headed downtown on Sherbrooke Street from Ste Famille. Red convertible. Over!’
‘License plate?’ the pleasant lady’s voice at the other end inquired.
‘It’s a red Plymouth convertible! What the hell do you want from me? It’s probably the only one downtown right now! I want every car responding.’
Two minutes later he was back on the radio.
‘Suspect entered the Bar El Paso with a rifle. I’m going in. Over.’
‘Wait for backup, Poof-Poof. Acknowledge.’
He didn’t know who was giving the orders now. A man’s voice, not the pleasant lady dispatcher’s. Who had called him that? A voice he gladly defied.
‘The gang’s all here. Out.’
Call him that? Poof-Poof? Over the radio? Over the fucking radio! His fury seized him by his diaphragm and that adrenalin drove him into the club.
Patrol cars gathered behind him. More lights were flashing in the distance, coming to his aid. Cops were organizing outside. The hell with every last one of them. I’ll Poof-Poof them.
The detective went in, pistol in hand. He ran into eight guys in Stetsons. Cowboys? ‘What is this,’ he taunted them out loud, ‘the wild fucking west?’ They’d take it up with him but noticed the pistol, then the first shot from Bondar’s rifle was fired. Sudden screaming. A stampede. Geoffrion found cover, looked around. He didn’t have a shot in the melee. Then he did. In the light of the stage from where the band had fled stood the silhouette of a man with a rifle. Norville Geoffrion didn’t take time to identify himself or the gunman. He aimed. Who was the fucker calling him Poof-Poof over the radio for every cop to hear? Who was that? He fired.
Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars drove onto Sherbrooke Street under the sudden gaze of high-rise hotels, apartment and office towers, into the flashing lights of squad cars and ambulances.
Cops did not admit his Volkswagen Bug inside their perimeter. On foot, he penetrated more easily. That he had no business on-site was no one’s concern, he had rank, and in the chaos of the night’s events he wandered with impunity. Just off the sidewalk, wedged into a corner of a first-floor balcony, a young man with a rifle in his lap lay dead. A bullet wound in his forehead, two more in his chest. One in his left kneecap. A mess. Cinq-Mars took a long look before a medic covered the corpse with a sheet.
Moving around, he spotted the homicide cops from the other day, LaFôret and Morin, and skirted behind a supervisor’s car to avoid them. Geoffrion was nowhere in sight. He showed his badge and asked a uniform if detectives were inside. The cop explained that the gunfight started there, then came back to the street. Cinq-Mars entered the El Paso. Overheads had turned the space bright. Cops were conducting multiple interviews with traumatized witnesses. He went deeper and came upon a white sheet over another victim. He showed his badge, gestured with his chin.
‘Ours,’ the uniform told him.
‘Name?’
‘Like the hockey star. Geoffrion.’
Cinq-Mars stood stunned. He didn’t speak. He didn’t want to speak, then he said, ‘Let me see him.’
‘Sir?’
‘Pull the sheet back. He’s my partner.’
Confirmation. Norville Geoffrion was dead. A single bullet to the left temple. Cinq-Mars bent at the waist. He felt ill. He could have taken the assignment himself but had not done so. He’d sent this man to his death. He could not blame himself for doing his job, but in the moment, regret soaked through him.
He straightened up.
‘The dead kid outside. Do you have a name?’ The uniform was young, possibly a rookie.
‘I could ask.’
‘Ask.’ They were being gentle with one another because one man had lost his partner.
Cinq-Mars looked around, then approached the stage. Another body on the floor, covered. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know,’ a different uniform told him. ‘The detectives have a name. They think he’s the guy the other guy came to kill.’
‘They say why?’
‘Over a girl, what I heard. She’s in back. Two lovers. One gets out of jail. The guy who’s been doing her in the meantime gets whacked.’
Cinq-Mars went back to the front of the bar. The uniform who’d gone outside returned.
‘Johnny Bondar,’ the cop said.
‘Yeah,’ Cinq-Mars said. The man he had failed to keep in jail had killed his partner and was dead himself. He was doubly to blame. Living with himself was not going to be easy.
‘I told the detectives outside that our guy’s partner was here.’
‘Mmm,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘Who’d you tell?’
‘Me.’ Sergeant-Detective LaFôret stepped up behind him. ‘Real sorry about Poof-Poof.’
‘Geoffrion. That was his name.’
‘Sure. Any idea what he was doing here?’
Earlier, Geoffrion radioed the station to ask dispatch to contact him. He could not now deny their involvement in a case, although he hated admitting anything to LaFôret.
‘The shooter was released from prison today. We had a tip. Not this. Nobody expected this. Norville tailed him.’
‘Who tipped you? A tip about what?’
Cinq-Mars shrugged. He was exercising the limits of his cooperation with this second-rate detective. ‘No clue. Geoffrion took the tip. The info died with him. Bondar kill him?’
‘Ballistics will confirm. Look, we don’t get along. That won’t change. But this. I don’t want this for nobody. Real sorry.’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
‘You should go home, Cinq-Mars.’
He didn’t know why he should, but he had no fight in him. ‘Sure. I will. Say, Nord called the station about a red convertible. I didn’t see it outside.’
‘Not accounted for. The only extra car is Geoffrion’s unit.’
‘Bondar wasn’t driving. He was a passenger, one message said.’
‘We know. We’ll track down the car. Go home.’
At first, he thought LaFôret was being kind sending him home. Now he felt differently.
Cinq-Mars went outside. He looked up at the sky. City lights obliterated any starlight. The moon was not in view. On his way back to his Bug he noticed yellow tape around an unmarked squad car and presumed the unit to be Geoffrion’s. He ducked under the tape.
The driver’s side door was open. Inside, a sandwich wrapper. The remains of a coke. A bag of chips, half-eaten. Crumbs. Two unopened packs of Jujubes. An investigator’s pad. Kneeling in the doorframe, Cinq-Mars glanced inside the small book. A couple of names popped up. He pocketed the pad. Damn the consequences. His partner had been killed, he was entitled to take measures. Anyway, he could hand it back in the morning.
Or not.
Émile Cinq-Mars drove to the lookout on Mount Royal, which surveyed the eastern half of the city from a high promontory. The moon above him at half-mast. He put a hand across his brow. Time had passed since any prayer he murmured contained conviction or import, yet he fell into a sorrow that eclipsed his previous inattention. He said words for the soul of Detective Norville Geoffrion, who wanted the world to know he was not related to a famous man. The poor fellow would not enjoy his latest grandchild, and that broke Émile’s heart. His prayer surprised him when it transformed into a resolve to get to the bottom of the case they’d worked on together. He implored himself to be stronger and smarter; intuition told him he’d need to be. He’d be calling Touton to say that Bondar was dead, no longer their problem, and recite the sorrowful news that a detective had fallen in the line of duty.
Life went on. He needed sleep. He’d wake in the morning. Start over. A cop was killed by Johnny Bondar. Then Bondar was killed by cops. Who was the other dead guy in the bar? Why was Bondar so important that Cinq-Mars had been instructed to keep him in prison?
As well, why on earth did LaFôret’s and Morin’s names appear in Geoffrion’s case pad? Why were those two at Johnny Bondar’s shortly before he left on a rampage? Why were they even out at night? He could have blurted his queries to the relevant individuals had it not been for instinct: he might be better served if he had answers before asking difficult questions.
He came down from the mountain, flush with a gentle grief for a man he hardly knew. He drove home, and with sluggish labor prepared for bed.
Cinq-Mars yearned for a girlfriend, at times more powerfully than at other times. His anger was misplaced as he grumbled to his ceiling and to the walls, ‘I’m not supposed to live like this, OK? Like a fucking monk. I quit the priesthood, remember?’
He rarely swore. His rage got away from him, even if the vitriol felt necessary. Living like a monk wasn’t the thing. He knew that. He was living like a prisoner, like the guys he put away. Not a life. Half-asleep, half-dreaming, he felt the world roaring, roaring, all around him. Why did he have to think about gangs and racketeers when what he wanted was to keep good citizens safe from harm inflicted by thieves and pickpockets, by muggers and scammers. The big picture didn’t interest him. He wanted to focus on petty criminals. That was his bailiwick. His forte. His purpose in life. Protect the little guy from the bad guy. Keep the peace. A necessary component in the social order. A worthy occupation. Why was he obligated to contemplate convoluted plots and organized carnage? Him, of all people, in his little cell. Monk-like. Convict-like. He’d rather contemplate the universe. Gravity. The Big Bang. S-Matrix theory – what some were calling string theory. Energy and light. Fresh notions were being devised every day. Like quantum chromodynamics. Hard to keep up when he had to worry about the mob. He didn’t sign on for the tumultuous commotion of vast criminal enterprises, yet the tumult kept seeking him out. His previous partner had been shot and wounded and his current partner shot and killed. He wanted to rage against his own inclinations, show a little mercy for his own life, yet also roar back against those whose criminal enterprises constantly interfered with his desire and the desire of so many for a simple loving life. They made it so difficult, these killers, if not impossible. They hijacked peace, the mobsters did, and he wanted them to stop that. It wasn’t supposed to be up to him. He preferred countering small fry. Yet once again, he was coming up against the really bad guys. He could feel it coming on. He’d have to roar back against them again.
Something was in the air. E=MC2.
As though the night itself roared in his ears.