On rue St Denis, Le Gris drove north.
His passenger, Pasquale, a man of significant proportions, perspired at the temples in the noon-hour warmth. ‘How about you step on it?’
Le Gris said nothing. The Cadillac’s air-conditioning was on the fritz; he guessed that Pasquale desired the additional breeze that speed engendered.
Pokey traffic across four lanes. They hit each red light in sequence. Pasquale hemmed and hawed. He entwined his hands over the hump of his belly. He looked like a man who wanted to hawk a giant spitball and let it fly. At each red, Le Gris gunned the engine in neutral, as if to mollify the other man’s need for speed.
Pasquale mumbled incoherently under his breath.
‘You can’t do no better,’ Le Gris finally shot back.
‘I’m better on foot than you driving.’
‘That’s a laugh. You can walk even?’
‘Better in a golf cart than you in a car. Say that.’
‘A bigger laugh. Ha! Swing a club. Hit yourself in the head.’
‘Driving the cart, what I meant. Said nothing about golfing.’
‘The hell is the goddamned rush? Big hurry to save flowers so they don’t wilt? You care?’
‘It’s Tuesday,’ Pasquale said. ‘Keep that in your head.’
Le Gris was confused. ‘So what it’s Tuesday?’
‘Don’t piss me off on Tuesday.’
Le Gris knew that Pasquale meant to include any other day as well.
Leaving the Town of Mount Royal behind, traveling east through Park Ex, Detective Henri Casgrain was driving when Émile Cinq-Mars inexplicably slapped the bench seat between them repeatedly.
‘A favor, Henri. Put on a heavy boot.’
‘For stolen flowers? What’s the deal?’
‘I had a thought. Let’s go.’
‘Siren and flashing cherries, if you want.’
Cinq-Mars decided against that extreme.
‘What’s your thinking?’ Casgrain pressed him. He sped up. Not always easy on congested rue Jean Talon. Little point to it, anyway, as red lights thwarted swift progress.
‘Proximity. The boys on the lane were missing this morning. Now we have a heist of flowers relatively close by. That’s about their speed. Toasters. Flowers. Light. Easy to pack.’
‘Is this your legendary intuition, Émile? So-called. Your claim to fame?’
Cinq-Mars rejected the notion. ‘No claim that I make.’
‘I see no connection between flowers and toasters.’
Stalled again at a red light. Cinq-Mars appeared to be daydreaming before he spoke up. ‘If you want to know, I think the mind works with and without language. It’s that simple. Language is slow, it’s cumbersome. The brain is capable of firing on all cylinders as long as it doesn’t have to detail everything in words.’
‘If you say so,’ Casgrain noted. Traffic started up again, plodding on. A truck flashed a tail-light, looking to double-park.
‘Say for example,’ Cinq-Mars carried on, ‘you drop a fork. In mid-air, you grab it before it hits the floor. That’s a reaction. You don’t think to yourself, “I should grab my fork before it hits the floor.” You don’t think, “Make sure I don’t gouge myself on the tines.” You don’t think at all. You react and grab the handle. Perfectly. When the mind puts something together from various impressions, from observations, conscious and unconscious, and from hard information, sometimes the mind leaps to a conclusion. Voilà! The fork is in your hand again. That amazes you, even though you were hardly aware you dropped it.’
Casgrain darted into, then around, a knot of traffic. He irritated another driver who honked. Under his breath, the detective said, ‘You don’t say.’
‘You just proved my theory. Driving without thinking. You didn’t hit anybody.’
Cinq-Mars fell silent until they stopped again behind another delivery truck. He resumed his thread. ‘Doesn’t mean that your sudden thought is the right conclusion. It’s only a thought. But if you ignore thoughts like that, and most people do, those ideas won’t come around. Not early, not often. But if you give them the time of day, you’ll be rewarded.’
‘You sound as wacky as Moira Ellibee. Are you saying, if I think to give that truck driver a ticket for double-parking, I shouldn’t think about it, just do it?’
‘Exactly. Except, who has the time right now?’
To Henri Casgrain, his partner’s remarks sounded like a description, or an explanation, of intuition. Cinq-Mars did have a reputation for oddball thinking that eventually came out as sound. He figured the younger man to be sensitive about his opinions as his point of view found no favor among peers. Armand Touton, notoriously the toughest of the hard-crusts and bravest of the valorous, had apparently been the exception that proved the rule.
Which might explain how they’d bonded.
‘Faster,’ Cinq-Mars whispered as the car started forward again.
Casgrain was glad to be behind the wheel. He drove a tad more quickly, whereas given the mood he was in, Cinq-Mars might have been hellbent down this busy street. Casgrain had the better chance of preserving both their skins. He paid attention to the traffic, no matter what his partner said.
The marketplace soon loomed.
‘Why send us, you think?’ Pasquale wondered aloud. ‘Not my thing, pretty flowers. Pretty girls, that’s different.’
‘No idea,’ Le Gris said, then promptly contradicted himself. ‘Shortage of manpower, you know? Who’re you going to send? Massimo’s dead. Teddy’s in the dirt.’
‘Could’ve been you in the dirt. You started out riding with them.’
‘Could’ve been. Not supposed to be, but who knows? I can’t imagine in my head Willy could off me. Not him up against me.’
‘Teddy would’ve said the same thing. Massi, too. Why’d our Willy do it?’
‘So Teddy wouldn’t off him first.’
‘Not a bad reason when you think about it. So what’s the deal? We do everything now? Like this here? Flowers?’
‘Everything now, looks like.’
‘We need more guys.’
‘More guys. More bonus pay, too. But I don’t complain. You don’t hear that from me.’
‘Neither me. No complaints. More bonus would be nice, since we do everything like this. Not like we’re paid to go find somebody’s missing flowers.’
‘Not like.’
‘Or beat the crap out of who the fuck stole them.’
‘Neither that.’
‘We just do it.’
‘For justice. It’s our job.’
‘You got nothing you don’t got justice.’
Arriving at the market, they got lucky when a shopper departed her parking space.
‘Who do we talk to, you know?’ Pasquale asked.
Le Gris shrugged. ‘Who talks to us, we talk back.’
Pasquale shrugged also. ‘Good enough sense for me.’ He struggled out of the car, an everyday difficulty given his proportions and lack of physical dexterity.
Walking past a butcher’s, Pasquale took the initiative to resolve their minor tiff. ‘In my opinion,’ he began.
‘What you said to me,’ Le Gris countered.
‘What’d I say?’
‘Tuesday, is what I heard.’
Pasquale figured out what that meant. ‘I won’t bother you no more, Le Gris.’
‘Neither don’t piss me off.’
He didn’t.
Le Gris led the way in talking to the flower vendors. None could provide a description. There’d been a truck, somebody said. Who saw this truck? Nobody saw a truck. Then how do you know about a truck? Other people said so. Where are they, these other people? They were just people. You know. Citizens. Shoppers. They bought stuff. They went home or wherever they go when they’re not shopping.
‘Let me try,’ Pasquale said.
‘Shit, yeah,’ Le Gris said.
Pasquale addressed the contingent of vendors who were missing flats of flowers they had paid and signed for, then had stolen under their noses. ‘Who the fuck do I shoot in the head to get a straight answer around here? Tell me which one of youse do I kneecap?’
A few vendors had wanted the Mafia on the scene to give them a piece of their mind. They paid for protection, why weren’t they protected? Given Pasquale’s reputation, the impetus for their grievance dissipated. They chose to calculate and absorb their losses.
‘The next time flowers come in,’ one merchant suggested, ‘maybe guard the shipment?’
Some thought that that was a good idea. Worth considering.
‘What do you think we do all day?’ Pasquale asked them. ‘Twiddle our fucking thumbs?’
‘If we find out who did this, we’ll let you know,’ Le Gris spoke up. ‘Get your flowers back if they don’t wilt. Otherwise …’
His alternative hung in the air.
‘Otherwise what?’ a faint voice in the back of the group inquired. More curious than belligerent. Hard to tell who spoke.
‘Otherwise fuck off with your problems. You think we don’t got none of our own?’
‘We pay for protection,’ a bolder man whinged.
Pasquale glared at him. Then he said, ‘You want to repeat that once more out loud for the people in the back to hear?’
The man chose not to do so.
Pasquale and Le Gris took their leave. They both noticed two cops arriving at the other end of the marketplace. They could tell they were cops despite the plainclothes. Their walk, their demeanor, that they parked illegally, and mainly because both of them had had run-ins with each man. Not big enough run-ins that they could identify either one by name, but big enough they’d not forget the face. Each man was about to mention it to the other. Neither man, preoccupied that way, saw a pair of gunmen directly in front of them. Standing still. Waiting. Letting them walk close to them. Le Gris and Pasquale looked up. They saw the two guys raise their arms. Guns out. Neither man heard the bullets that killed both of them instantaneously, dropping them to the pavement in spreading pools of blood while panicked, caterwauling shoppers raced off in a multitude of directions.
Cinq-Mars and Casgrain spotted the gunmen as they fired. They drew their weapons on the run and shouted their presence. ‘Police! Arrêtez! Stop!’
One shooter turned. Saw them. Fired in their direction.
The detectives saw a bystander drop. She’d been hit. Both detectives instantly stopped in mid-stride, as if they’d pulled their hamstrings. Between the two pairs of men with guns, people leapt out of the way, but a woman was lying on her side between them in shock and dismay, blood visible on a shoulder. Hundreds of other people were behind the two policemen. Any shot aimed at the detectives that missed would probably hit another innocent.
The chance of missing everyone was close to nil.
No place for a gunfight. Not the right situation.
‘Hold up,’ Cinq-Mars said.
No need to give the order. Casgrain knew what to do and both men holstered their weapons. They pursued on foot, but cautiously and more slowly than their prey. Only when the gunmen lit out down a lane did Cinq-Mars sprint after them. Casgrain broke into a gallop, somewhat lumbering, favoring his left leg over his right, not ineffective, although he was less swift than his partner. One gunman broke out of the lane and onto the next street before Cinq-Mars had a clear shot, but he had to hit the deck as the second man reappeared and took aim. The shot missed; Cinq-Mars figured by as much as a city block. At least the only person behind him now was his partner and he was still on his feet and running. Or lumbering. Cinq-Mars was up again, the shooter out of sight, and when he made the turn onto the next block, he assumed that the vehicle using the street as a drag strip belonged to the killers. A getaway car, waiting where traffic was light and in one direction only. Too much of a blur to make out a dusty plate. A Pontiac or a Chevy, pale blue, with twin exhausts. Now out of sight. Gone.
Casgrain caught up but they were both out of breath and had to get back. Two men and an innocent woman shot before their eyes. Possibly two homicides to which they were eyewitnesses.
The woman was being cared for by passersby, including a physician. She was made of stern stuff, her dismay under control. An ambulance had been called. The police, too, the detectives were informed. Cinq-Mars and Casgrain worked their way through a circle of the curious around the two men dormant on the pavement. They knelt and checked. Both victims were dead. Their wounds and the blood spatter made their faces unrecognizable even to each other had they survived. Wallet identification told the policemen who they were. Well-known names among the criminal elite. Casgrain went back to their unit to radio it in. A mob hit had taken down two Mafioso killers in the Jean Talon market.
This was news.
Whatever the war was about, whenever it began and whoever was involved, some sort of roaring battle was heating up.