There was a pause and then Billy said, “Gimme a sec.”
Wild Billy Weaver emerged a moment later, all three and a half feet of him, waddling down the hall in a white satin robe with his name stitched over the breast in royal blue. He was rubbing his dark hair dry with a towel.
“Yeah, yeah, I remember you now. How’s it hanging, sarge?” Billy reached a hand up to where Max could shake it and squeezed harder than he needed to.
“Okay, Billy. You?”
“Just perfect, only I can’t get a decent payday and I can’t get laid unless I pay for it, even though I’m hung like a normal guy. Bigger, even. Plus I gotta live with this sad sack.” Billy stuck his head to one side, at the same sick angle as Albrecht’s, and gave Max a big grin. Max didn’t return it.
“I thought midget wrestling was catching on,” Max said.
“It’s starting to. But Sky Low Low and Little Beaver get the headline fights. I’m stuck on the undercards with Tiny Roe and Pee Wee James. If things don’t get better, I’ll have to take a job at the Midgets Palace, showing the tourists how us little-halves live.”
“At least you can still fight,” Albrecht said.
“Yeah, I still got that. So what brings you here, sarge? Who got killed?”
“Shush,” Albrecht said. “It’s about the little girl across the street.”
Billy put the towel down on the sofa. “They found her?”
Albrecht picked up the towel and shook his head at the dark wet spot it had left.
“This morning,” Max said. “We’re trying to pin down a guy seen around here the day she went missing. Pale guy standing out in the street smoking.”
Billy rubbed his chin like he was thinking deep. “Real pale? Like almost pink?”
“The neighbor said white.”
“’Cause I saw this one guy who’s beyond pale. He’s one of those guys that’s got no color at all. What do you call them, with the pink eyes and white hair?”
“Albino?”
“Right. Albino.”
“You never told me this,” Albrecht said.
“Do I tell you every damn thing? Anyway, that’s what this guy is. Albino. You see him in a club at night, he looks like a goddamn vampire.”
“What do you mean, club?” Max said. “You know him?”
“Sure, I know him. He’s a drummer, plays with Kenny Piper’s quintet.”
“What’s his name?”
“Eddie. Eddie Whelan.”
“You sure it was him?”
“I saw him, didn’t I?”
“The neighbor said he had a hat. She couldn’t see his face. How is it you saw him?”
“I just did. Maybe the hat was off for a minute.”
“When did you see him?”
“The day she disappeared, like you said.”
“What time?”
“In the morning.”
“What time in the morning?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t have my watch on.”
“What was he doing?” Max asked.
“Nothing. Just hanging around.”
“Why would he just hang around here?”
“The hell should I know? Maybe he was looking to buy a little tea.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know, I never touch the stuff.”
“Then why did you say—”
“’Cause he’s a smoke hound.”
“Someone around here sells it?”
“I don’t know. I only been staying here a few weeks. Right, Baron?”
“Yes,” Albrecht said. “A few weeks.”
“You sure it was Eddie Whelan you saw?”
“I guess so. He’s the only albino I know.”
“Guessing isn’t good enough, Billy,” Max said harshly. “Snatching and killing a nine-year-old girl is the most serious charge there is.”
“Then I’m sure, okay? It was Eddie Whelan, 110 percent.”
“He ever had this kind of trouble before?”
“How would I know? I never talk to the guy. I just know him because he looks so different.”
“You’re one to talk,” Albrecht said.
The Albatross Club was on Sainte-Catherine, the great glittering strip that cut across the heart of downtown Montreal. It wasn’t in the top rank of clubs; Sammy Davis Jr. and Oscar Peterson were never going to play there. But it was no dive. Kenny Piper’s quintet pumped out quality tunes, and if the drinks were watered down, it wasn’t with a hose.
A clutch of uniformed constables went around back and huddled by the door that opened onto the laneway. Max went in the front with Marois and two other plainclothes detectives. The band was on a raised stage in the back, playing “Cool Breeze,” Kenny Piper doing his best to imitate Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet part. Max brushed aside the maître d’, and walked past the long bar and through the tables on the dance floor, focusing in on the drummer, whose pallor was pronounced, even by nightclub standards. Marois was at his heels, the other detectives right behind him.
The albino, Eddie Whelan, looked like he had his eyes closed as he worked his snare and high hat. But as the four men approached the bandstand with their hats still on, no drinks in their hands, he leaped from his stool and ran through a slit in the black curtains behind him. Kenny Piper kept playing his horn a few measures but gave it up as the cops jumped onto the stage and followed the drummer through the dark passage.
They ran through a kitchen where pots steamed on gas burners and men in white aprons turned chops and steaks on a flame grill. Whelan knew his way better than they did and had a good ten steps on them when he hit the back door. Max lost sight of him, and then heard shouts from the alley.
Then a gunshot. Then another. Max pulled his Cobra .38 and had it up by his ear as he got to the door. He stopped, not wanting to run out into the middle of a firefight. He leaned slowly out and saw a trash can overturned outside the door. Just beyond the trash can lay Eddie Whelan, blood staining his bright yellow shirt. One round had hit him in the chest, the other in the throat. He had something in his outstretched hand.
“I thought he was pulling a gun,” a constable said. He looked almost as pale as Whelan and his forehead was shiny with sweat.
“You shot him?” Max asked.
“Yes sir.”
Max took a closer look at the object in Whelan’s hand. A syringe. He kneeled down by the body and slipped his hand into Whelan’s right pants pocket. Found a couple of singles and a book of matches. In the left was a folded square of paper. Max opened it and saw fine white powder nestled at the bottom.
Forget tea. Whelan was a junkie, not a smoke hound.
Old Vaillancourt had wanted whoever had killed the girl to taste some pain when Max caught him. If Whelan was the one, he hadn’t tasted enough.
Even in the best of times, Max struggled to sleep. Too often he’d lie awake missing Naomi and David, his dead wife and child. When he did fall asleep he dreamed of smoke and fire, of burning woods, of charred meat left on a forgotten stove.
At dawn he was walking the lane behind the house where Irene’s body had been found. No one else was out except an old woman tending to tomato plants staked in a small patch of earth. When she saw Max, she clutched her robe and moved quickly back into her kitchen.
He didn’t know why he was there. The crime scene had been processed. Irene’s autopsy was complete. Reports were waiting on his desk. He just didn’t want to be at the office yet. He wanted — needed — to be here where Irene had been dumped. Whelan’s miserable room on Rue Craig had been searched, but no trace of Irene had been found. She clearly hadn’t been killed there.
And who was to say Whelan was guilty of anything other than standing across the street from Irene’s house? Since when did junkies abduct and kill little girls? Max had known plenty of them when he worked for vice before the war. Most were only interested in finding heroin or finding money to buy heroin or finding a safe place to shoot up their heroin and ride out the nod.