I sat on the bookcase next to the roster, my legs stretched out before me. “Civilian life takes some getting used to afterward, doesn’t it?”
He looked up at me tiredly. “You been there, too?”
I didn’t go into detail. “Oh, yeah.”
He sighed. “It was like living a dream-the action, the friendships, the strain of staying alive. Adrenaline was like breathing back then. Didn’t matter if you were fighting the enemy or stealing a general’s jeep. We were always on the go, walking the edge, looking for a challenge. We hated it when they’d pull us back from the line, and sometimes we’d creep back up on our own just to raise a little hell.”
He examined his damaged hand, flexing it on his lap. “After that, life can get pretty empty.”
I picked up the book beside me. “Mr. Kearley, can I borrow this for a while? I promise I won’t let it out of my hands.”
He didn’t bother looking up. “Hell, yeah. It’s not doing me any good.”
Chapter 19
Gilles Lacombe was driving out of the Sûreté parking lot as Paul and I got out of our car. He rolled his window down and called us over. “Where have you been? I have not seen you in days. Are you okay?”
I leaned on the windowsill, feeling slightly guilty. “To be honest, I’ve been staying out of your way. I’m still trying to live down what happened in the old jail.”
He looked almost horrified. “Joe, are you always this way? I would think that anyone who lives with you would like to strangle you. You are not married, correct?”
I laughed. “Correct.”
“As I thought.” He called out past me to Paul. “Paul, get your boss into this car. We are going to dinner right now. Very nice place. We will have some wine, talk a little. Okay? Right now. Come on.”
“What about your own family?” I chided.
He pulled out a cell phone as we climbed into the vehicle. “I call my wife. She knows the value of rest and relaxation.”
We drove downtown to a dark, quiet, and possibly expensive restaurant on North Wellington, although neither Paul nor I ever saw a bill.
“Alors,” Lacombe said once we’d settled into a discreet rear booth with the feel of executive privacy. “Is this all right?”
“Wonderful, and much appreciated,” I told him.
He flagged down a waiter and took our drink orders. He and Paul both had wine. I held out for a glass of Coke, much to our host’s disgust. “You are not also going to order a hamburger, do you understand? It is not that kind of restaurant. But you will have to order meat-it is the only thing that will stand up to that awful stuff.”
I conceded the point, even though we hadn’t been offered menus yet.
“So,” Lacombe asked after the drinks had arrived, “what have you been doing?”
“Digging into the past, trying to find out what happened to Antoine.”
“You have proof now Marcel did not stab his father?”
“God, no-we’re a long way from there.”
“It does not matter any more,” Lacombe said. “That is why I was looking for you.”
“He took the polygraph?” Paul blurted out.
“Yes, and passed like a sweet child. It was this morning. His lawyer called in a surprise, said they would do it, and it was done-bim, bam-just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Jesus,” I murmured. “Does that kill your investigation?”
Lacombe was all smiles, no doubt practicing what he’d been preaching to me to do in the parking lot. “Yes, it is gone into smoke. Fini. The procureur told me not an hour ago that he sees no reason to go on with what we have.”
“But where’s that leave you?” Paul asked.
Lacombe shrugged and distributed the newly delivered menus. “Only in a different place. Another thing that happened this morning was the discovery of another Deschamps worker, dead in an alley behind a bar not far from here.”
“Any leads?” I asked.
“A button from a denim jacket, like what the Angels wear. Very convenient. It was even found in the dead man’s hand, just like in a mystery story. Not,” he added carefully, “that we and the Sherbrooke police won’t make sure the Angels did not do this thing.”
I looked at him for a moment, sensing much more behind his words. “What do you think’s going on, Gilles?”
He’d already begun scanning the menu but now put it flat on the table, suddenly solemn. “I know no more than I did, my friend, but I do think something has changed. A house of cards has fallen into pieces, and it was built to make us put Marcel Deschamps into jail.”
“Until he passed the polygraph,” I suggested.
“That is it. Now we can see two things: Marcel was probably set up with the ice pick and all the rest, and a carefully laid plan is now in chaos. That means to me two more things: at this moment, Marcel is mad as hell, and the person who laid the plan is desperate. This is a very bad situation, I think.”
There was dead silence around the table. Lacombe then smiled, sat back, retrieved his menu, and brightly asked, “And so what will you have with your Coca-Cola?”
As advertised, the dinner was a nice break from routine, but the conversation leading up to it continued to rattle around in my head, even though all three of us worked hard to avoid shop talk while we ate.
Over coffee and dessert, however, I felt free to relax. “What’s Plan B, Gilles?”
“Now is when the rules begin to work for us,” he explained. “In the old days, when we wanted to get a wiretap, it was very easy, and the federal people from the U.S. would look at us with envy. Nowadays, we are much in the same boat as you, except,” he held up a finger, “in a situation like this. If the judge can be persuaded that all other options have been exhausted, then we can get a tap. It is an irony that with the polygraph, the case against Marcel Deschamps is over, which also means I can tell the judge that the case against the Deschamps family is finally without other options. That will therefore be the first thing I will do-put not Marcel but his organization under surveillance for twenty-four hours a day, including his phones. As for the rest, I am less sure.”
“You don’t have any candidates for who’s trying to screw Marcel?”
He waved his hand equivocally from side to side. “Many choices. It could be someone inside, like Picard or Guidry or one of the lower people. It could also be an outsider, like the Rock Machine, which has been very silent through all this. We may also be making assumptions we should not, in thinking the Angels are not involved.”
“If we’re playing Machiavelli,” Paul added, “we could also throw in Marcel himself, who’s now been proven innocent by the prosecution, which is a great place for a guilty man to be.”
Lacombe raised his eyebrows at me. “So you see. It is that way. The one good thing-assuming Paul is not right about Marcel, however-is that a great plan has been thrown off the rails, which means anything can happen. I think somebody is very frustrated right now.”
He took a sip from his coffee and then added, “It could get interesting.”
I was up late that night, fiddling with my notes, calling Sammie in Vermont for an update, watching television inattentively, feeling like I was sifting through the remains of a shattered mosaic covering an acre of floor space. There was the prominently mounted ice pick, complete with incriminating trace evidence, an ancient and elaborate trail connecting it to Marcel, a growing pile of bodies implying a gang war between two Sherbrooke factions, and several old-timers with intriguing tales of internecine rivalry. I’d also heard the Sûreté might be corrupt, that Marcel and Antoine had either been a great team or the equivalent of Cain and Abel, and how Antoine was either murdered or died a hero in combat. My brain was teeming with voices in contradiction, in support of one another, or just saying things I simply couldn’t understand. I was racked by the conviction that at some point in all this, I’d stared the truth in the face and had simply kept moving.