Ten days later, Sunday, January 30, 1999
Overcome with rage, and with a rumbling panic inside her, Lucy Gabriel had first cared for Luc Séguin before returning home. Erratic, distraught, she didn’t know if she should run or hide or confront someone, understood only that the world was not as she had imagined. Her instinct to forge passionate bonds, so long nurtured within her culture and her political experience, warred against a renewed conviction that no one could be trusted.
The assault weapon that she had defiantly deployed during the Oka crisis had been stripped from her the day the army had negotiated its advance onto the reserve, but she still owned a shotgun for hunting mallards in season. She had arrived home on a Friday, and when Andy Stettler called on Sunday and insisted on paying her a visit, she waited for him in her apartment above the garage, the shotgun across her lap, a finger crooked around one of the twin triggers.
When he knocked, she didn’t respond.
When he entered, she aimed both barrels at his belly.
“Easy, girl,” he said gently, raising his hands chest-high.
“Fast-talking man,” she warned him, “you better have something to say.”
“Don’t go off half-cocked. Aim the gun down, Lucy.”
“At your balls?”
“Where’s Luc?”
“None of your business.”
“He’s my friend,” Andy pointed out.
“Good thing you didn’t forget that. If you hadn’t told him he was dying I would’ve killed more people. Nice of you to let me know, Andy.” She crossed an ankle over a knee, and balanced the weapon across her calf, aiming now at the vicinity of his crotch, as promised.
“I let you know as soon as I found out.”
“How do you figure that? You said diddly-squat to me!
“Can I sit down, at least?”
“Suit yourself.”
“Will you put the gun away?”
“No.”
Andrew Stettler pulled up a wooden chair that long ago had lost its finish. Facing Lucy, he positioned himself the wrong way around on it, resting an elbow on the back and feeling more secure, perhaps, to have bits of wood between himself and the shotgun. Even now, she loved the way he moved his body, folding his long limbs with the easy confidence of a snake coiling itself on a rock. They confronted one another under the steeply sloped roof of the garage. At either end, the windowpanes were blotted with frost and windblown snow. Wind squealed around the walls.
“I’d been to New York. Luce, the news there was pretty grim. That morning with you, I called Camille for the latest report—the morning after we made love. I had to catch her early, before she went on her rounds. She gave it to me straight, and it was then, it was only then we decided to face facts. Camille and me. We couldn’t call certain things coincidences, or accidents, any more. We couldn’t kid ourselves that some people were having a run of bad luck. The evidence was mounting. We had to face facts. I didn’t wake you. All right, maybe I should’ve. I went straight to Luc and gave him the word instead. Luc could tell you everything. I had a plane to catch. All hell was breaking loose.” Andy grimaced at the bad memory. “To be perfectly honest with you, Lucy, I chickened out. All right? I didn’t want to be the one to tell you. It was hard enough telling Luc. I was a wreck after that. Anyway, I had to shake a leg. I had to get home, find out what was going on.”
“What was?”
“Lucy—”
“Don’t Lucy me! I got you hired, not the other way around. The next thing I hear, you’re telling Camille I’d make a good doctor. Well, thanks! Like you’re giving me a pat on the back. How come is that? Since when are you directing things? You came in on this as a fucking lab rat, Andy, a lab rat. Suddenly, you’re in tight with Honigwachs? He sends you to New York? To Baltimore? For what? When did this happen, anyway? Who the hell are you? How come, all of a sudden, you know more about everything than I do? Explain it to me. I really want to know.”
Snow was melting off his boots, creating a puddle on the floor. He held one forearm across the chair back and another along a thigh, a rattler sliding over rock, his gaze cool and animal-like and sexual, even with a shotgun aimed at his vital organs. She loved his hands, those long, curled fingers.
“Lucy, listen to me,” Andy started, and now his tone was grave. “I’m your best chance right now, so you have to figure this out in a hurry.”
“You’re my best chance?” she sneered. “Now I know I’m really fucked.”
“I’m in tight with Honigwachs because I’m his security director right now. I got promoted. When he found out what I could do for him, he boosted me up the ladder.”
“What can you do for him?”
He put both hands on the back of his chair now, as though to slither around it, to cover it with his full length, his legs coiled around the base. His long, black hair fell down one side of his face, casting a shadow across the other. “Bad boys don’t grow on trees, contrary to public opinion. We’re a breed apart. I know the criminal stuff, except I’m not interested in being a criminal no more. That’s old, it’s not for me. You know what they say, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. I can’t do the time, Lucy. I won’t do the time. I’m sick of being inside. I want to live for a change. I want to be around girls, you know? But for somebody like me—I don’t fit in this world, there’s no place for me. As it turns out, I’m somebody Honigwachs can use, and that’s been all right, until now.”
“Now what, a crisis of conscience?” She jerked her shotgun up and down in rhythm with her words. “I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?”
He pushed a hand through his hair, tucking the longer strands behind an ear. She could see his face much better now, and it seemed that he had wanted that, that he had wanted to indicate that he should be trusted in this circumstance. “Lucy, you’re in trouble here. You’re in deep. Do you know that much? You brought drug cocktails down to seventy, eighty guys. Half of them are dead now.”
She did not respond to his question right away, her gaze travelling off, and when she did speak she inquired, in a quiet voice, “Half?” Fear cascaded through her.
“About half, yeah.”
“So we had guys who were going to die and a control group, placebo boys?”
“Could be,” Andy acknowledged. “Something like that.”
“That was never our thing. We promised no placebos. We told our people we would give them the best shot available, no control groups, no dummy drugs.”
“Yeah, well,” Andy noted, “maybe this time it was lucky.”
That might be true, fewer men were dead, but she wondered where the larger betrayal began and where it ended.
“I know how much trouble I’m in,” Lucy confessed. “I always knew that something could go wrong, that a drug might not work. But never, never in my wildest imagination could I picture this. I never signed on for this horror story.”
“You weren’t part of it,” Andy said, “you couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“Of course I wasn’t!” she threw back, offended by the suggestion. “I mean, I was part of it, but I didn’t know what was really happening. Oh God. I know a judge and jury won’t care about the difference.”
“Where’s Luc?” he asked her abruptly.
Lucy looked down, at her shotgun, then up. “He’s dead, Andy.”
They were quiet awhile, letting that news resonate between them.
“Tell me about it,” Andy asked.
“There’s not much to tell.” Lucy looked away as she spoke. “I brought him to a hospital in Baltimore. He made a call down to Florida and the next day this hairy guy knocked on my motel room door—big hairy guy—and paid me cash for the truck. I took my stuff out and paid Luc the money. I knew about the deal. He was to get the truck. Luc put up the truck money for his hospital bills but he went down fast. I stayed for the five days he was alive. He could see the ocean from his room. That gave him an idea about his funeral. I took his ashes down to the harbour and floated them on a falling tide.”
Andy had expected the news, but he had to adjust to the image. A friend—someone he had not known well, but they had been in the can together, and that counted for something—had been reduced to ash. He’d floated out to sea. Andy had drawn him into this escapade, and to this end.
“Lucy,” he started up momentarily, then stopped. He put his hands on his widespread knees, thinking. “Lie low for a bit, okay? Say nothing to no one. Do nothing. No one should know that you treated Luc. If the wrong people find out, they’ll guess that you know too much. Tell them only that Luc got sick and died. No details. He had AIDS, it happens. It upset you and that’s what brought you home.”
Lucy aimed her shotgun at the ceiling, the butt-end tucked into the base of her hip. Then she stood, paced, and put the gun down on her kitchen counter. She had her back to Andy and looked at him over her shoulder. “I can’t just do nothing.”
He stood as well, pulling the chair out from under him and setting it aside. “What’s there to do?”
Lucy was gazing out her back window. The blackness outside reflected back her own image, but she wasn’t seeing it. She saw only space, the dark, a void. “We can lie low, like you said, but we can also gather information. Figure out what happened, why, who was responsible.” She turned around to face him. “We have to gather evidence, Andy. It’s the only way.”
“Dangerous, Lucy. If you just lie low—”
“Lie low, with the deaths of those poor men on my mind? Who knows how many? A few were my friends. I can’t live with it. Besides, I don’t want to go to prison for this, Andy, it wasn’t my fault.” Her body shook as she breathed deeply, a mix of rage and sorrow overtaking her. “I told them, I told my boys, leading-edge medicine is dangerous. Nothing’s been tested. You take your chances. But, the worst I ever counted on was failure. Failure means my boys would die, but they would have died anyway. This wasn’t mere failure, Andy. God. The drugs made them sicker. The drugs killed them a whole lot quicker than just having AIDS would’ve!” She breathed heavily, willing herself to calm down, without letting go of her anger. “I’m not a frigging martyr, Andy, but I sure don’t want whoever’s guilty—Honigwachs, presumably, but whoever—I don’t want anybody getting away with this. I’ll lie low, but I want justice for those dead men, for each and every one of them.”
“Lucy, it’s so risky right now—”
She turned to face him, putting her hands back on the rim of the counter behind her. “Choose, Andy. Whose side are you on?”
“Lucy, come on, I’m with you.”
“Are you? Don’t forget, it’s risky and dangerous, quote, unquote.”
“Come here,” he invited.
That was difficult for her, to cross that expanse of floor, although she wanted to go there. She hesitated at first, crossing her arms under her breasts. Eventually, she put her arms down, and her feet stepped on the area rug, and she moved cautiously across the floor, circling him somewhat, not going straight to him. When they met, she pressed herself against him, and they held onto to one another, and she was grateful for the contact, for the pressure of his arms and the warmth of his body. She did not know whom to trust, she did not know whom to love, but she had to have this also, she craved affection right now. She had killed people, inadvertently she had destroyed many lives, and she needed to affirm that she was not the evil one, not the criminal here. Lucy sought justice for the dead. She wanted to uncover and expose the hard truths, she would see to it that the truly responsible were identified. But clasped in the arms of Andrew Stettler she also required absolution, and needed, desperately, to be touched, now, here, to be comforted.
Emile Cinq-Mars drove up to the rectory and parked along one side. Modest shelter from the wind was available there as he walked to the back door, his head bent forward and turned away from the stiffer gusts. One of the things he had liked about this priest from the outset had been his generous, friendly invitation to drop by anytime, and to use the kitchen door in the rear.
A light was on, and Father Réjean quickly responded to his visitor’s knock. A night owl, he had been up with a book and a coffee.
“Come in, come in, Emile. Out of that weather. My goodness.”
Cinq-Mars dusted the snow off his chest, then slapped his wool cap against his thigh to knock it from both the cap and his coat. “I hope I’m not intruding, Father Réjean. I know it’s late.”
“Nonsense. I’m delighted to see you, Émile. I’m pleased to have the company. I hope that you can assure me, though, that you haven’t arrived with dire news.”
“No. It’s not that, Father.” Cinq-Mars pulled his coat off, and the priest helped him with it and hung it on a hook. The detective unwound his scarf, stuffed it into the coatsleeve, and plunked his wool cap on the hook to dry. “My dad had a difficult time yesterday, so I came up. But he was much better by this evening.”
“That’s good to hear. It’s a trial, I know. You’re heading home?”
“Yes, Father.” Cinq-Mars nodded with resignation. “No rest for the wicked. I have to work tomorrow.”
“That’s a long drive at night. You will be careful, Émile. Coffee?”
“Thanks.”
“Now you won’t consider me a ‘whiskey priest/will you, if I offer you a glass of Glenfiddich?”
“Are you a whiskey priest, Father?”
The priest shook his finger at him as Cinq-Mars took a chair at the long and narrow antique pine table. “I should remember that I’m talking to a detective.”
“I’m happy to join you for a small one.”
“Fine. Fine. I’d press a large one on you, but I know you have that drive.”
“I’d accept a large one, or two, Father, if not for that.”
The priest busied himself with glasses. He was a man of average height and build, although now that he was sixty his body had slumped. His hair was white and quite full, and he combed it straight back. He had a liverspotted forehead, soft, intelligent brown eyes, and a small, charming pug nose. He was wearing black, but not clerical garb—slacks and a heavy wool sweater. Over the door, as in most of Quebec Catholic households, hung a crucifix. Inside the kitchen, nothing distinguished the room from farmhouse kitchens for miles around. Old, a dark, sombre patina graced the woodwork, and the floor sloped gently in different directions, quietly buckling with age. Cinq-Mars felt comfortable here, not because he was in a priest’s residence, but because he was in a home similar to those he had visited during his childhood.
The refrigerator door had pictures of children pressed to its surface with magnets, unusual in a rectory. In his investigation of priests, Cinq-Mars had learned that Father Réjean had had a previous existence as a part-time lecturer in economics. He had also been a husband, a parent, and a failed entrepreneur. Some years after the death of his wife, he had opted for the priesthood, and had actually made his way through the seminary while still an active single parent. His children were now grown, educated, off on their own in distant big cities, while Father Réjean had been assigned to the countryside, an entirely new environment for him.
“How’s everything, Father?”
“Oh, you know.” He brought the tiny glasses back full. “There are days when I think that my real job is to be a glorified social director. At other times I know I’m needed. And with you?”
Cinq-Mars put his elbows on the table and folded his hands thoughtfully. “There are days when I know I’m useful. Other days when I believe the criminals are fortunate to have such a bungling idiot as an adversary.”
Father Réjean laughed. The two clinked glasses, and cried, “Santé!”
Both men enjoyed a sip.
“You can’t believe that, Emile. You’re no bungler.”
“Some days you’re right. I’m not. Then again, I’ve long believed that one of the most important aspects of my profession is learning to deal with failure. You have to be willing to make mistakes, and to suffer the consequences. Otherwise, in a job like mine, it’s easy to become paralysed. I’ll thank you to not to let the criminals know that. I wouldn’t want to give them comfort.”
“Ah, yes,” Father Réjean noted, “comfort to the criminals. Now that would be my profession, wouldn’t it?” He sat with a contented grin on his face, the wee glass held between the chubby fingers of both hands.
“Somebody has to do the dirty work, Father.”
“Someone must!” he burst out. “But is that my job or yours, that’s the question! Is it a dirtier job to comfort criminals, or to catch them?”
“I’ll concede the high ground.”
“You say that, Detective, but do you mean it? Or is it a ploy, culled from a policeman’s bag of tricks, to lead me down a road of no return? You do that sort of thing, don’t you, Emile?”
“What sort ofthing?”
“Snare people in the maze of their character flaws.”
Cinq-Mars laughed lightly, and took another sip of the single malt. “Let’s just say, Father, that when those in your profession fail, I’m left to pick up the pieces.”
The remark started the priest off on a deep-throated chuckle. At its conclusion, he proposed, “Let’s just say, Detective, that when your work succeeds, my work begins. Then it’s my job to go in and pick up the pieces.”
Cinq-Mars wasn’t going to allow him the final word. “It’s a matter of faith, Father. I have faith that the bad guys will not enjoy incarceration. You believe you can redeem the irredeemable. Misfits can reform, that’s true. Boys with wild hearts can straighten out. Men with troubles, or who took a wrong turn, sometimes choose to live properly for a change. But the bad guys, Father, the truly bad, once we turn the key on them, there’s nothing for you to do but provide them with a diversion in an otherwise dull week.”
“Our Lord might suggest otherwise.”
“Our Lord said to the thief on the cross next to his, ‘I’ll see you in Heaven, buddy, there’s nothing I can do for you down here.’”
The priest erupted into full-blown laughter. “Emile, who’re you trying to kid? You’re not a cynic. I haven’t known you for long but I know that.”
On the counter, the coffeemaker was starting to gurgle with a fresh pot, and the aroma filled the room.
“I’m not a cynic. I won’t even pretend to call myself a realist. I’m probably a romantic, as sinful as that may be. Ludicrous as it may be, in this world. But there are bad guys, Father, who are not redeemable, not by you, and not by me.”
“Your point being?” Father Réjean stood to pour the coffee.
“My point is…” Cinq-Mars required a few moments to think about it. The priest had time to pour the coffee and stir in cream and sugar for himself. He remembered that the detective took his black. “My point is, my father is dying, and there is nothing that I can do about it except to ask … except to hope and pray that the latest drugs he’s taking give him some comfort. In essence, Father, I pray to drug companies now, to doctors, and I thank God for nurses.”
Placing the cups on the table, the priest sat down again. He spoke softly to Cinq-Mars. “Ask,” he said.
The detective looked up. “Pardon me?”
“You started to say, that there was nothing you could do except ask. Ask what, Emile?”
“Ask that you go and see him.”
“Of course. I will go tomorrow.”
“I know it’s not good enough.”
“Emile.”
“I’m a man of faith, Father. So I’ve thought. But I’m a man of faith who doesn’t want his father to die. I’m aware of the inherent contradiction in that.”
“You don’t want him to suffer. But you know he will die, Emile.” The priest looked at him with his small and deep-set eyes. “What’s more, you know he’s ready to die. You know that he’s waiting to die. You know that there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re also quite right. Whatever I can do for him won’t be enough. Priests, like cops, must learn to live with failure too.”
The conversation had already helped. Emile Cinq-Mars wearily exhaled. He tried the coffee, which was hot and strong and a jolt to his system, and he laughed.
“What?” Father Réjean asked him.
“My father. He wanted me to find him a half-decent priest.”
“Thanks for that, Emile. From what I hear, you’re a half-decent cop yourself.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I think I do.” The priest wore a wry grin. “And yet, I do not feel overwhelmed with praise.”
“The point is, Father—” Cinq-Mars stared off into space a moment.
“Yes?”
“Now I’m wondering if the sly old codger didn’t mean to find a priest for me. Not for himself so much. For me.”
“Emile,” the priest said, as the wind outside shook the doors and shutters, “I cannot betray a confidence. But your father is facing death with some anxiety, regret, fear, and, frankly, with a measure of rage. He is also prepared to get on with it and see it through. He’s calm. He’s ready. His conscience, much to your surprise, perhaps, might have been blemished in the Cast, but more importantly it is clear now. I think, Emile, that you should phone your wife and tell her that you won’t be home tonight. The roads are too snowy, the north wind too strong. You’ll travel when it’s light out. In the meantime, you’ll stay holed up with a renegade priest drinking whiskey.”
“Renegade? You?”
The priest raised his glass and winked.
Cinq-Mars nodded. “Then what?” he asked quietly.
Father Réjean smiled. “Then comes the really scary part, Emile. I’ll either hear your confession, or, better still—scarier still—we’ll sit around in my kitchen, drink whiskey and chat. You can tell me about the bad guys. You can tell me about the boundless depths of evil in the world.”
“That’s the problem. I keep discovering new depths.”
“The phone’s on the wall, Emile.”
Cinq-Mars was surprised by his own weariness as he pushed himself to his feet and crossed the room to make that call. Sandra was understanding, even glad, that he wasn’t going to be out on the roads. Earlier she had counselled him to stay at his father’s for the night.
When he returned to his chair, the whiskey bottle stood between him and Father Réjean on the table. Cinq-Mars helped himself. He took a long sip, then poured again, this time filling his host’s glass as well.
“The murderers, the traffickers, the gangs, Father, they’ve been getting to me. They’re impairing my judgment.”
“How, Émile?”
“They’ve undermined my faith in the just. People in all walks of life have lacked courage. And the gangs have been teaching me how to hate.”
“That’s their job, Emile. The question is, what’s yours?”
Both men took a long sip, and this time the priest in his winter kitchen poured.
The question was a more difficult one than Father Réjean might have supposed. At different times in his life, Cinq-Mars might have rejoined with a cavalier remark, “My job is to defeat them,” or one that was merely pragmatic, “Put them in jail.” Time had eroded easy conclusions.
“Bearing in mind, of course,” Father Réjean encouraged him, “that you are a romantic.”
“I suppose,” Cinq-Mars sighed, “that my job is a prosaic one. It sounds uninspired to me. But if I combine my experience, my success, my failures, my observations, and my ideals—mix them all up in a blender—then here’s the best that I can muster. It’ll all sound a little boy-scouty. It already sounds foolish to me.”
“Yes?”
“My job is to be ready.”
The two men nodded. In time, each smiled, enjoying the company, the late hour, the drink.
“Emile,” the priest said, “I have snifters in the living room. The chairs are more comfortable in there, as well. Shall we go through?”
“You are a whiskey priest,” Emile Cinq-Mars remarked.
“For tonight, anyway.” Father Réjean laughed.
Two days later, Tuesday, February 1, 1999
Camille Choquette kept the engine running in her Mazda 626 in order to operate the heater, and she gave her seven-year-old strict instructions to remain in the back seat. A tape that repeated the little girl’s favourite children’s songs played, and Carole had two dolls to dress and undress and a teddy bear to keep her company. Camille entered the restaurant where Werner Honigwachs was waiting.
Drinking coffee in a corner booth, he put on a show of being disgusted with his environment, to the point of scowling whenever he looked at a patron. He’d shudder, as if mortified. Camille guessed that he was merely disgruntled about being overdressed in a greasy spoon. When she arrived at his table, he grumbled, “Why this place?”
“Do you know anybody here?”
“If I did I wouldn’t admit to it. But I don’t. Who would want to know anybody who comes here?”
“Well, that’s why we’re here, Wiener.”
“Don’t use that name in public. As a matter of fact, don’t use it at all.”
“Nobody can hear me. That’s another reason, Wiener, why we’re here.” The restaurant didn’t pump out recorded music, but kept a golden-oldies radio station turned on with the volume high. Camille unwound her purple scarf and unbuttoned her overcoat before sliding into the seat across from him. She made eye contact with a waitress, who popped over with a coffeepot. “Tell you what, just make me a grilled cheese sandwich, all right? Two, actually. One to go.”
“BLT,” Honigwachs requested.
Accepting that the room was warm and that Honigwachs was refusing to remove his overcoat only out of disdain for the premises, Camille shrugged hers off where she sat, pulling her arms free from the sleeves. She brushed bits of wool fluff from her pale-blue cardigan and tugged the collar on her white blouse. She liked to keep men waiting. All set, she said, “So.”
Leaning toward her, Honigwachs kept his voice down. “Have you spoken to Lucy?”
“I’m not sure that Lucy wants to talk to me.”
“I don’t like this,” he conceded. “She’s talked to Andy already—on Sunday. On Monday, she didn’t show up at Hillier-Largent. How did she find out? She was supposed to administer the doses, provide the cocktails, then move on. She was supposed to be in another city before anybody got sick, and be home before she was any the wiser. The plan was, she’d never know. That way, she’d never ask questions. We weren’t going to send her back down. Lucy wasn’t ever supposed to find out.”
“Andy Stettler spilled the beans.”
“This you know for a fact?”
Camille shrugged. That she was calmer than he was pleased her. “It’s how I’m betting.”
Honigwachs shook his head. “Not possible. Not Andy.”
She also leaned forward to whisper her opinion. “He called me, Andy did, from Baltimore, when I was still in New York. He wanted the latest news. What could I tell him? I knew that he knew the truth, he just didn’t know that I knew. So I had to tell him. I had to tell him that we had lab rats who were dead and dying.”
Werner Honigwachs raised his chin and moved his body back in his seat, as though to guard against her parry. “I don’t get it. Why’d you have to tell him that?”
“Wiener, get wise in a hurry, will you? If I had lied to Andy, it would have been like telling him that I was in on it. Why else would I be covering up? So I was frantic, I was worried, I was concerned and I gave him the bad news in my frantic, worried, concerned voice. I told him what he already knew. What choice did I have?”
“So you think he told Lucy?”
“How else did she find out? If she’s found out. Lucy never visited another lab rat after Andy’s phone call to me. And now she’s home. She never finished the job and she’s come home. She’s already talked to Andy, but she hasn’t called me yet. What does she know and who does she trust? I’m betting that she knows everything and that Andy’s not only her man, he’s her conduit.”
As the waitress passed by with food for other customers they stopped talking. When she was gone, Honigwachs stated the obvious. “I don’t like this.”
“You don’t like it, you! I’m the one with the exposure here, Wiener, me! I’m the one who cleaned their sores. I did the body count.”
“No, no,” Honigwachs insisted. “It wasn’t Andy. He couldn’t have been the leak. You don’t know his background like I do. He’d be the last one to talk.”
She shook her head and gave a little laugh, as if both amazed and annoyed by his intransigence. “He asked me, I gave him an answer. We know he was with Lucy. After that, Lucy stopped treating rats. She disappeared for a while and then came home. That’s all I’ve got to go on, but it adds up to something.”
He breathed deeply, taking in the full dimension of their predicament. “I’ll talk to Andy,” Honigwachs decided. “But you have to contact Lucy.”
Camille nodded aggressively, eager to make the call. “I can do that. I’ve got lots to say. I can vent about the disaster. I was just hoping she’d get in touch first.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I need a sign that she trusts me. That’s going to be important.”
Honigwachs’s tone was intense, commanding. “I’m counting on you, Camille. If she’s suspicious of you, you’ve got to turn her around in a hurry.”
“I’ve thought about it. I’ve got an idea.”
She had to keep it to herself for another minute, as their food was arriving. Both ate rapidly, and Camille, in particular, wolfed her sandwich down. The second grilled cheese was neatly wrapped in wax paper.
“So what’s the idea?” Honigwachs asked once the coast was clear.
“Okay. Andy told you that Lucy wants to gather evidence, right? So far it’s the two of them, her and Andy. I’ll convince Lucy that she’ll need help. I’m going to squeeze my way in, and I’m going to do it by suggesting that my boyfriend joins us. And no, I don’t mean you.”
Honigwachs was appalled. Both his hands fell to the tabletop with a thump. “He’s a cop!”
“Exactly. But he’s my cop.”
“No way, Camille, are you mad?”
She again leaned forward to drive her point home. “Wiener, if Lucy knows what I think she knows, sooner or later she’ll bring information to the cops. Better we do it in a situation I control. I go to Charlie. I tell him that Lucy can’t go down for the crime, because if she goes down, I go down. I work it so Charlie’s protecting me. You’re already protected. You’re so well insulated you have nothing to worry about. No one can link any aspect of this to you.”
“Andy can,” Honigwachs put in.
“How come?”
“I sent him down with new stock for Lucy. I arranged that with him.”
“You twit! You bonehead!”
“All right, a mistake, but Andy is on our side.”
“That doesn’t matter! You don’t give anybody a job to do that can be traced directly back to you! That’s basic! It’s your own damn rule!”
“I made a mistake. Now drop it.” He put his hands up as though to physically repel any countervailing argument.
Camille crossed her legs under the table, folded her hands on top of it, and straightened her posture. She seemed quite prim. She wanted to be the calm one. “Something happened in New York that you don’t know about. At first, I didn’t think it mattered. Just some strange New York thing.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
She cleared her throat. “One of our patients was murdered. Smothered with a pillow.”
Honigwachs offered back a quizzical expression. He seemed unimpressed. “He had a friend, I’m guessing. It was a mercy killing.”
“Well, whoever the friend was who snuffed him, also took the trouble to sew his lips together with a needle and thread.”
“What?”
“I’ve been going over it in my head. Andy was in New York then.”
“What are you saying? Come on, Camille. You’re getting out there.”
She lowered her voice so that he had to lean in to hear her. “How much do you really know about him? That’s all I’m asking. If you think about it, you don’t know Andy from Adam. He’s a hooligan, with the charm of an angel. But what do you know? So think about it, Werner. At the very least, be careful around him.”
He slumped back in the booth, and exhaled. “Oh God,” he murmured.
Placing her elbows on the table, Camille crossed her arms. “This is what I’m thinking. We’ll have our little playgroup to get to the bottom of all this. Me, Lucy, Charlie, Andy. By bringing in Charlie, I get Lucy to trust me. Because I’m bringing in a cop, it’s a sign of my commitment, it proves that I want to know the truth just as much as she does, that I’ve got nothing to hide. Charlie will be anxious to defend me, but clueless. He’ll let me know everything that comes through from the cop side of things. Me and Andy, we’ll be on your side in all this, only Andy won’t know where I’m coming from, so I get to keep an honest eye on him. Meanwhile, Lucy will be fighting her little fight, not knowing what’s really happening. It’s the only way, Wiener. I know Lucy. She’s a demon! We can’t let her take things out of our hands. Don’t forget, I’ve got exposure here. I can be identified. I’m looking out for myself, not just you.”
Werner Honigwachs studied her awhile. “You’ve been thinking about this.”
“Somebody has to.” She sipped her coffee.
“We need to know what they know.” He spoke as though the course of action being suggested was his own.
“That’s right. And if they learn more, we need to know that, too.”
Honigwachs nodded. “There’s a point—” he began to say.
“I know,” Camille said softly. “I just can’t bear to think about it. I won’t think about it.”
“If Andy is working for them against us—”
“No, please, don’t think that way. Andy would cause such trouble! You know what I’m talking about.”
Honigwachs engaged her eyes. “There’s no immunity here. None. If someone needs to be removed from the scene, I won’t hesitate.”
“Please, don’t talk that way. Would you even have the guts to do it?”
Honigwachs narrowed his gaze, continuing to nod, a rhythmic, menacing bob of his chin. “We’re not there yet. But Andy would have to be finessed, if it came down to that.”
“Oh, God. You would, wouldn’t you? You’d have the guts?”
Honigwachs put his two fists together, side by side, facing forward. He then made a snapping motion, as though breaking a twig in half. “I think first,” he told her. “When I act, I act. This is my time. I can feel it. I can feel how everything has been ordained. Nobody will step in my way. There’s no point being stupid, but if I have to take out Lucy, I will take out Lucy. I’d do it right now, but I need to know what she knows. I need to know who she’s talked to. Andy? Him too. Don’t doubt me on that one.”
Camille remained quiet, observing him for a while, then averting her gaze.
“It’s a rough business,” Honigwachs chided her. “You have to be in it for the whole game. Don’t go squeamish on me, we don’t have time for that.”
“Don’t speak of these things,” she whispered. “Never again. Not aloud. Not in public.”
He gazed at her coldly. “Stay on top of things, Camille. I want detailed, perfect reports of your meetings with the others. We won’t go down that road unless it’s absolutely necessary. But I need information.”
“I’m on top of it. Now, tell me, Wiener, what about the science? Have we done it? Did we find what we’re after? Have we marked the integrase enzyme yet?”
For the first time, he allowed a smidgen of a smile to sunny his sombre disposition. “I’ve talked to Largent. He thinks we’ve found the marker. He’ll write up the tests as if they were performed on rats. That requires a certain amount of translation, and after that we’ll pass the data through to Harry Hillier. It won’t be long after that. Harry’s brilliant, he’ll locate the marker and figure out how to exploit it, at least in theory. He’ll think he’s won the Nobel Prize.”
“Maybe he will.”
Honigwachs laughed. “Whatever makes him happy. As long as I come away with about eight billion or more, they can elect him Pope for all I care.”
“You’ll get the check here, rich man? I have to scoot. Carole’s in the car.”
He nodded.
Camille covered one of his hands in hers and leaned very close. “You’re the brains behind all this, Wiener. You set up the science, you set up the money end. Just remember, when the time came to get the job done properly and quickly you needed me. Hang tough. That’s your only job right now. Don’t think such dire thoughts! Everything will work as long as we do what has to be done. One little crisis with Lucy won’t wreck anything.”
She popped up from the booth then, excited by the next challenge. She wrapped herself up warmly and headed out.
She found Carole behind the wheel, pretending to drive, the keys in the ignition, the engine still running. A couple who had emerged from a Dodge Caravan were dismayed, but Camille Choquette murmured, “Lighten up,” under her breath, and rewarded her daughter with a bright, happy smile. Then she discovered that her child had locked the doors.
“Open up, Carole. Open up for Mommy.”
The little girl shook her head and stuck out her tongue.
Camille showed her the grilled cheese sandwich. “Do you want Mommy to throw it in the snow?”
Carole thought about that, and decided in the end that she’d rather unlock the front door. Her mother crawled in and commanded her to jump into the back seat. “Just for that little charade,” Camille told her tersely, “I’m eating your sandwich myself. You’ll just have to starve today.”
That brought on protests and tears, and through it all Camille Choquette, driving away from the restaurant, made exaggerated sounds of pleasure as she consumedthegrilledcheese. “Yummy,”shesaid.
“Yummy, yummy in the tummy.” The little girl pounded her fists against the back of the front passenger seat and wailed and her mother thought that that also was funny. She held up the final bite. Carole ceased her tantrum, hoping that it might be for her. Camille gave her a big smile in the rear-view mirror. “Pop!” She laughed, just before the bite vanished into her own mouth, and she chewed extravagantly while the child, astonished, stared at her with teary eyes, too shocked to bawl.
That week, Thursday, February j,
and Sunday, February 6, 1999
The three conspirators decided to meet at Lucy’s house.
For reasons both apparent and unknown, each was wildly suspicious of the others. Andrew and Camille both believed that Lucy would be difficult to manage. She’d be obstinate in the face of any pragmatic proposal if it did not appeal to her intensely passionate nature. For her part, Lucy couldn’t understand how Camille had been able to stick to the format of her job. Yes, she was supposed to examine the lab rats in the field and report her findings, but they were talking about human beings! Found dead and dying! How had she gone about her analytical work, calm and detached, as if detailing the march of a minor flu?
In the past, they had always managed to help people. The sick had been revived. The dying had had their days prolonged and the quality of their life improved. Suddenly, their patients had failed rapidly, succumbing overnight to a catalogue of plagues that relentlessly stalked them, now successfully. Yes, there had always been risks associated with administering untried drugs, but they had always had a beneficial, or at least a benign, result. That Camille had been witness to the carnage and had simply gone on about her work, just like always, as in the good old days of their successes, disturbed Lucy a great deal.
And Andy, why hadn’t he returned to her room in Baltimore and warned her to stop? How could he have assumed that Luc would do that job? His explanation didn’t wash.
Andy and Camille were leery of one another also. To Andy, Lucy’s passionate conviction to help people made sense, it was true to her nature, but Camille seemed a cold fish to him, aloof. He did not know her well enough to say what motivated her, nor could he evaluate how she’d hold up under pressure. From the beginning, he had accepted her because Lucy did so, he’d gone along with her judgment. That Lucy was now distrustful raised a warning flag.
In turn, Camille distrusted him. She had heard through Honigwachs that he was vaguely linked to organized crime, whatever that might mean, but she also held to a private conviction that the poor boy was in love, and love could be a dangerous tonic to antisocial, criminal behaviour. People had been known to change, go straight, mend their ways to serve the tyranny of love. Even if he was trustworthy, lust or infatuation could distract him, cause him to slip. Camille would watch for any sign of weakness in him.
As Lucy answered Camille’s knock, Andy was coming up the driveway in a rusty blue Chevy. He always seemed to be in a different vehicle. Camille was wearing a cockeyed smile and there were tears in her eyes, and at that signal Lucy did capitulate. The two friends hugged.
“Oh, baby,” Camille whimpered, “this is so terrifying! It’s so awful!” Both women wore jeans, as if their choice of clothes set the tone for the job ahead. It was time to work, to get things done, and to be practical. Nodding, the faces of dead friends they had both known vivid in her head, Lucy gave her pal another fierce hug.
Andrew Stettler was chugging up the stairs to her apartment above the garage. “Good,” he said upon entering, “we’re all here. Let’s get down to it.”
They thrashed things through. Being together proved their desire to tackle their problems as a group, but the discussion unearthed the doubts each had, and those had to be resolved.
“What Lucy’s saying, Andy,” Camille explained, “is that she doesn’t buy it. You left her alone in Baltimore without telling her that she was killing people.”
“Luc would tell her!” Andy protested, not for the first time.
“She doesn’t buy into that theory.”
“Well,” Andy reiterated, appearing contrite, “it’s not a theory. It’s the truth.”
Believing that Andy had been compromised by love, Camille encouraged Lucy to badger him, to see how he might respond. Stettler stood his ground. He had gone down to Baltimore with a job to do.
“I called Camille,” he explained for the fifth time. “Together we decided that things had gotten out of hand. I told Luc, then got on a plane.”
The explanation confirmed for Camille that Andrew Stettler was indeed the source of the leak—he had told Lucy, through Luc, about the deaths. But Camille now had to take into account the part that Luc had played in events, facts she hadn’t been in possession of before. Luc had been treated by Lucy and had quickly failed. Sooner or later, Lucy would have understood the truth for herself, whether or not Andy told her. Sooner, obviously, was proving to be a problem, but telling her had not been fatal, given that she’d had evidence travelling alongside her, in the company of poor Luc. So his indiscretion, under the circumstances, was explainable. As well, Andy had been placed in a tough position, as his own friend was being treated and so was in mortal danger.
“How did that make you feel?” Camille asked him. Only after she had posed the question did she realize that it was inappropriate, given her position here. She was supposed to be one of them, not an agent for Honigwachs. She had wanted to know how he felt about the situation as a conspirator, but she was not supposed to have that information.
“What?”
She had to push on. “Luc being sick. How did that make you feel?”
“Listen,” he said, and he placed a hand over his heart in an overt gesture of sincerity, “I’ve been a lab rat myself. You don’t think that every time you inject somebody he doesn’t have a twinge of fear, a worry? In New York you told me that things were bad. Then I find out that a buddy of mine is really sick, and it makes me wonder. I called for your latest report. I was hoping you’d tell me that things were getting better. That it was a freak situation. But that wasn’t the answer you gave me. So I told Luc the bad news, then headed home, because this was a major security issue, and my job at BioLogika happens to be security.”
The response, as Camille analysed it, suited the discussion alive in the room. She knew that Andy had already known that men were dying. He had been in on it from the beginning. He was privy to whatever Honigwachs knew. But what had possessed him to contact her? If he had already anticipated the problems he was facing now, then he was just plain brilliant, a genius in matters of deception. She admired him, but at the same time her antennae warned her to be careful. His explanation, she noted, did serve to placate Lucy.
“What about you?” Andy asked Camille. “Weren’t you freaking out when you found people dead or dying? Didn’t you report back with that?”
“Who to, bozo? The people behind this don’t want to hear from us. Let’s say it’s Honigwachs. We can assume it’s Honigwachs. But you know, he doesn’t ever come out and say so. Nobody ever comes out and says they’re doing it, or what we’re doing is for them. I get my marching orders on the sly, secretly, coded. When things go wrong, like they did this time, I don’t exactly have anybody to complain to, or to ask for advice. In this organization, you got to understand, the buck stops nowhere.”
“I don’t know, Camille,” Lucy interjected, “we’re talking about people dying.”
“No, no, listen to me, I did call Honigwachs. I did call Randall Largent. They didn’t want to hear from me. I kept trying to code it for them, to let them know that somehow they had to reach me and talk to me. When Andy showed up in New York, and then called from Baltimore, I figured that that was it. That was their way of getting in touch. Andy, I believed you were acting for the higher-ups, that that was my chance to let people know what was happening. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have told you everything I did.”
She thought that she was pretty brilliant, too—up there in the same league with Andrew Stettler—but Lucy did not seem to share the same impression.
“You set up the schedule, Camille, you could’ve found some way to track me down to stop me.”
A difficult point to counter. Camille knew right away that she was in trouble here. “The schedule had gone kaflooey, remember? Not to mention, do you have any idea what it was like for me? Lucy, how did you feel when you found out about it? And you only heard about it word of mouth, a rumour maybe, nothing confirmed. Me, everyday I had to go into the houses of people who had lost their loved ones. I had to ask them really personal questions about the progress of the disease. I had to find out what this was all about. I had to visit the dying. Do you know, can you imagine, the torment they were in? I was upset, I was scared, I was trying to get in touch with Montreal and have them do something. I didn’t believe what was right in front of my eyes. I thought about trying to get in touch with you, but how easy was that? I was in a daze, Lucy.”
The speech was the best that she could do, but it didn’t really clear up all the issues regarding her behaviour.
Camille added, “I’m sorry. I guess I screwed up.” She kept her eyes downcast.
“It’s understandable,” Andy offered, “under the circumstances. It’s not like anybody was prepared for this. The question is, what are we going to do? The two of you are in trouble, no matter how you look at it, but laying the blame on each other—I don’t see how that works for anybody.”
Lucy was tense, taut. She was sitting with her legs apart and her elbows on her knees. She covered her face with her hands, as though to conceal or perhaps contain her fury. She felt confused, apologetic and accusatory, and certainly she did not know what to do and had no solutions to propose.
Across from her, in the deep cushions of a sofa, Camille opted to play her magic card. In a weak position here, she had not been able to properly explain an aspect of her behaviour. She needed to elevate her position, and she needed to be trusted. “I think,” she proposed, “that you guys should let me tell Charlie.”
The suggestion altered the current in the room.
“What the hell for?” Andy asked.
“What are you thinking, Camille? Go straight to jail? Do not pass Go?”
She raised her hands in an attitude of surrender, but forged on with her argument. “I know it sounds weird. But Charlie loves me. I can explain it to him. I can paint it so that he has to save me, and that means saving Lucy. He can help us through the legal stuff. He might be able to contribute with a side-investigation of his own. At the same time, if we get into trouble, he can tip us off. I mean, it’s golden. My boyfriend’s a cop. Right now, that could be the motherlode.”
Lucy sighed and shifted her weight around. “He’s not exactly a big-shot cop.”
“He’s not exactly big” Andy put in, hoping to add a touch of levity.
Both Lucy and Camille did laugh, a little.
Camille took them up on their criticisms, using their points to her advantage. “That’s what I’m saying. He’s a cop, but not true blue. Nobody likes him on the force, they think he’s a little guy with family connections. So he’ll work on our side, I’m sure of it, because he doesn’t give a damn about other cops. He’s no hotshot, Lucy, but he has rank. He has—what’s the word? Latitude, you know? He can help.”
That night they couldn’t resolve the issue, despite talking it through repeatedly. A few days later, Lucy finally relented. She was willing to let Charlie Painchaud help them out, hoping that he would guide her through the legal entanglements and keep her out of trouble. Almost any gambit seemed worth a try—doing nothing irritated her the most. Andy hated the idea, but when he brought the notion on the sly to Werner Honigwachs his boss advised him to go along with it. He explained that they’d have an inside track on what the cops were thinking. Sooner or later, he forewarned, cops would be involved. In the long run, it was better to have one around that Andy could befriend. Reluctantly, Stettler agreed—he had little choice—and Charlie Painchaud became part of the counter-conspiracy.
At his first meeting, on the following Sunday night, again above Lucy’s garage, Charlie listened to their stories. He was appalled to find his girlfriend in such a serious jam, one with monumental repercussions. He assured both women that when the time came and they cooperated with the authorities to bring the real culprits to justice, they could probably leverage their testimony and walk freely away. What counted most was making absolutely certain that the men behind the crime were brought to justice. Otherwise, their own necks were seriously on the line.
Lucy liked that. She appreciated the leadership role that Charlie assumed.
He went on to say that his own department was a morass, a cesspool, that he himself was not the most experienced detective in the world, certainly not with a crime of this magnitude. He suggested that they lure a frontline cop onto the case, that they get a major detective to snoop around, that that would go a long way toward getting the job done. He did not believe that they could go it alone.
Lucy was again impressed, although Andrew and Camille were fit to be tied.
“Who?” Lucy asked.
“Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars, from the Montreal Police.”
They all knew the name. He was famous for both his integrity and his skill. His reputation was such that neither Andy nor Camille could object without generating suspicion.
“Let’s do it,” Lucy weighed in. A hesitation she had had with Charlie was his close association with Camille and his insignificance as a cop. Now he was offering a legendary detective independent of everyone in the room. “Let’s go for it.”
Neither Camille nor Charlie joined in her enthusiasm.
“We’ve got to be careful,” Charlie cautioned. “We’ll arouse his interest in the case. He won’t have jurisdiction. Give it to him piecemeal, educate him slowly, entice him. We need Cinq-Mars to learn to respect and trust Lucy and Camille. That’ll take time. Lucy, you’ll call him. Camille, we’ll use your fishing hut on the lake for the meeting. No, better—we’ll ask him to rent his own fishing hut and meet him there.”
Camille could not sustain an objection, not when she’d been the one to invite Charlie into their group. Andy had nothing to say, except, “All right.”
“What’s your problem?” Lucy asked him. “Speak up.”
“He’s a cop. Cinq-Mars is a cop. It’s habit. I’m sorry, Charlie, but I don’t like cops. Hello! I’m an ex-con, remember? Cops come around, I feel queasy.”
He had no argument to defeat the suggestion, and after a discussion they agreed to set up a meeting with Cinq-Mars if they could for the following Sunday morning.
“How do we get him to come, without a reason?”
Charlie pondered the matter. “He fishes on the lake. I’ve seen him there a few times when I’ve been with Camille. As a matter of fact, his photograph is up at the diner for catching a big doré. That’ll interest him, being invited to his own fishing hole. That’s one reason why I chose the lake. Also, I can dig up his home phone. He’ll notice that, too. With those two curiosities, he’ll show.”
“Sunday,” Andy repeated.
“Sunday.”
“Finally,” Lucy enthused, “we’re doing something.”
Camille was not happy. The famous detective was not the timid lover she could control, and this hotshot cop was being invited practically next door to her fishing hut. But she was stuck. She couldn’t define her concerns without implicating herself. “All right,” she agreed. “Let’s do it.”
“Cops,” Andrew Stettler muttered, shaking his head. “First one. Now two. Any cop gives me the shivers. Even you, Charlie. I don’t know what it is.” He’d been outvoted. He had no way to put the brakes on this development. He wondered how Werner Honigwachs would react. His employer had wanted the first cop around, would he also approve of the second? The others were gazing at him, wondering if he had a point to make. Andy shrugged. “Cops,” he repeated, as though that explained everything.
After dinner out, and a few drinks at a bar downtown, Andrew Stettler returned home. Along the way he parked the Chevy he was driving and picked up his regular Oldsmobile for the remainder of the trip. He entered his duplex as quietly as possible, hoping not to arouse the attention of his mother. Upstairs, he took off his shoes and walked softly on the carpeted floor.
He phoned Werner Honigwachs on his cellular.
“There’ve been some developments,” he told him.
“We should meet,” Honigwachs snapped. “No more phone calls.”
“When and where?”
“Tomorrow. At work. I’m free at eleven.”
“See you then.”
No sooner had he hung up than his mother’s coded knock thumped his door. The wonder of that woman. She should have been the spy, he thought.
Stettler went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, then answered the front door.
“Home alone?” she asked. His body blocked the doorway.
“Not exactly,” he lied.
“Andy.”
“What?”
“Is she someone special or just a floozy from the bar.”
“A bar-chick, Ma, and no, you can’t meet her. She’s in the shower.”
“At least she’s willing to wash. The two of you snuck in here like a couple of cat burglars, Andy. I thought you were a thief!”
“You thought no such thing. I didn’t want to disturb you, Ma, because I don’t want you coming up here bugging me.”
“Why, are you ashamed of her?”
“You could say that,” Stettler said.
His mother shook her head, smiled, then sighed heavily as she ventured downstairs. “The life you lead,” was her parting remark.
Andrew Stettler closed the door.
Yes, he was thinking, the life I lead.
The phone rang, disrupting that brief reverie. The call display did not reveal who was calling, indicating that it probably originated from a pay phone. Andy picked up. “Hello?”
Honigwachs. “Change of plans. I’m worried about security.”
“That’s my department.”
“Then get a handle on it, Andy! We’ll play squash. Talk there. I don’t want you showing up at the office for a while.”
“What time?”
“Eight.”
“All right. Sounds cloak-and-daggery,” Andrew Stettler said.
“That’s the way it’s got to be, Andy, from now on. See you then.”
Stettler put down the phone. His boss was rapidly becoming paranoid. He usually appreciated paranoia in a client. Fear created opportunities he could exploit. There was, he knew, much to fear. He wondered, with some anticipation, how Werner Honigwachs would react if he learned that the celebrated city detective, Emile Cinq-Mars, might be bumped off.
He was thinking about it. It would be a big step, knocking off a cop. A famous cop, especially. There’d be shit to pay for that, so the benefits would have to be large.
Stettler turned off the shower, then went to his fridge and helped himself to an individual-sized raspberry yoghurt. He retrieved a spoon off the dish rack by the sink. In his small living room, he slumped down in a big comfy chair, his legs slung over the armrest, and ate slowly, thoughtfully. He was tempted to see what was on the tube, but his mother might seize the opportunity. If she thought all he was doing was watching television, she might invite herself up to meet his date. Instead, Stettler sat in the dark and thought things through. He already had something in mind, but he needed to look at the benefits and weigh the consequences. His best option from various perspectives, he was guessing, and convincing himself by the minute, was to order the assassination of the Montreal detective, and tell Honigwachs about it in advance.
That’s what he would do. At his meeting with Honigwachs, he’d let him know that a new cop was on the scene, none other than Emile Cinq-Mars. He’d listen to the man fulminate and fret. Then he’d tell him that he was going to have him killed. He’d make sure that Honigwachs understood that he had no say in the matter. Just to keep him in his place, to keep him apprised of how the real world—the world in which he found himself—worked.
Andrew Stettler licked the last of his yoghurt from the container with his tongue. It had been a long time since he had exercised the full power at his disposal. He anticipated that his associates would object to the victim being a cop. He’d have to talk them through that. He’d have to demonstrate that too much was at stake. Tons of money, for openers. Not millions—billions. That would impress them. He’d point out that the time was right, for the gang had no particular grievance against Cinq-Mars at the moment and therefore would invite no suspicion out of the ordinary. His gang always got away with murder anyway. The last time anyone had been convicted of a gang hit was way before anyone’s time. If they used their media and internal police sources to protest that they weren’t involved, they might not have to endure excessive heat. In terms of convincing the gang members, it wouldn’t be hard to summon an array of grievances against this particular cop. That being the case, Andrew Stettler was confident that, through tact and strong argument, by measuring the payoff against the hurt they’d have to go through, he could persuade his people to dispose of the legendary detective.
He needed the spectacular hit. An end move to corral his prey. The drug project had proceeded as planned. Soon, money would be flowing into BioLogika in unprecedented amounts. He needed to implant more than mere paranoia in the brain of Werner Honigwachs. He needed the company president to tremble at the sight of him. Now was the time to seize full control of the entire operation, and the best way to do that was through a show-crime. See, fella? This could happen to you, too. Honigwachs would also fear the police, knowing that he was loosely attached to a cop’s murder. He’d be broken, fearful, compliant, anxious to protect himself and willing to cooperate. But for his own good, his own enlightenment, he needed to be removed from his executive suite and have his nose swished around in a cesspool, and he needed to have his natural cockiness surgically removed, as if it were a malignant tumour. Honigwachs needed to be convinced of the true might and the absolute authority of his colleagues. Time to turn down the lights on his party.
As for the cops, Stettler theorized, they’d get over it. Various departments would be in an uproar for months, but where would they look? All the obvious suspicions would lead nowhere. If anything came out about the drug deaths in the United States, if anything led investigators north, the local cops wouldn’t take much of an interest, not when they had a cop-killing on their hands.
Stettler smiled. There were more benefits. The death would give Lucy and the others pause. They’d not connect it to their own enterprise—why should they? But a doubt would fester. They’d move more fearfully. They’d be increasingly distrustful of one another. Their petty counter-conspiracy would disintegrate, going nowhere, accomplishing nothing.
As an added bonus, he believed that he might be saving Lucy’s life. Given the money at stake and the personalities involved, Honigwachs might be foolish enough to eliminate Lucy. If he was smart, if he had the nerve, he should do it. He probably had it in mind, it would only be a matter of figuring out how. Honigwachs was probably just waiting for the opportunity. One hadn’t come up, as Lucy was defending her home on Indian land with a shotgun and not going out in public. Stettler believed that if he informed Honigwachs that the police detective was going to die, and the president subsequently read about the killing in the papers, the man would not presume to act independently. He’d leave Lucy alone, or get permission first. He’d be putty, Play-Doh in Stettler’s hands. He’d tell him to leave Lucy alone, which would only help to keep him nervous.
The time had come to put the BioLogika Corporation under foreign ownership, and the aliens in charge would be the mob.
Returning to the kitchen, Andrew Stettler dropped the yoghurt container in the trash, then washed his hands. This would be a major play for him, the biggest of his career. He was pretty sure that he had everything covered.