The Marble Mask

Chapter 7

It was snowing-the kind of fat, lazy flakes kids love to catch on their tongues. It came down gently, incessantly, softening the view of the hospital parking lot and crossing the window with a soothing, lulling monotony. It was all I could do to turn away at the sound of the door opening.

Gail stood on the threshold, watching me, her expression a mixture of concern and irritation.

I tried stacking the deck by giving her a big smile. “Hey, there.”

It had the opposite effect. She frowned and said, “Why’s it always you who gets banged up? Couldn’t you let someone else go first, just once in a while?”

“I was last in line this time, and someone else did get hurt.”

She shook her head. “I heard-a twisted ankle.”

Still, she came across the room to the bed and kissed me long and tenderly.

“You’re a pain in the neck, Joe Gunther,” she added after straightening up. She dragged a chair over to where she could sit within reach.

I hit the control button by my head and moved the bed to a more upright position. “You didn’t ask how I was feeling.”

She smiled grudgingly. “God, just like a kid. I know how you’re feeling. I just spent fifteen minutes with your doc getting the lowdown, and half an hour before that being briefed by Sammie Martens on the phone. It’s a miracle all you got was hypothermia-you should’ve at least lost some toes or fingers. You need to do something about that girl, by the way. She’s a walking grenade-steel on the outside and a wreck inside. If you ever do get yourself killed, she’ll go to pieces.”

I waved a hand dismissively, understanding from her rapid patter that Sammie wasn’t the only one wound up. Self-serving as it sounds, I found comfort in that. “She’s not that fragile.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

I knew not to. When it came to judging character, Gail, hyper or not, was rarely wrong. We’d known each other a long time, had been lovers almost from the start, and, whether living together or not, were as intertwined as any long-married couple.

An odd couple, of course-a lifelong rural cop with a hodgepodge education and an affluent, city-born, liberal lawyer, currently staff counsel for the state’s most powerful environmental lobby. Over the years, Gail had fought for women’s causes, the protection of children, to help the downtrodden, and to keep the planet healthy, working variously as a chronic volunteer, a selectman, a political advocate, and even briefly as a deputy state’s attorney. She’d made it her business to know what made people tick and how to win them over.

I therefore conceded her take on Sammie. “How is she?”

“Fine, now-in total denial. Ready for combat.”

“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”

Gail’s face softened. “Joe, she wasn’t the only one who thought you’d died.”

I reached over and took her hand in mine. “I’m sorry. When did you hear about this?”

“Kunkle called me on a cell phone when you were all still on the mountain. He didn’t want me to find out listening to the news. He also wanted me to know there was a chance. Good thing, too, because later the press had you all but buried.”

“You’ve been here a while, then.”

Her expression cooled once more. “Yet again, yeah.”

I didn’t respond. Our life together hadn’t been overly peaceful in that respect. This wasn’t the first time she’d come to see me in a hospital, or the first time she’d had to keep her own company for hours or days, wondering if I’d pull through. The toll had cost us both.

“Are we okay?” I suddenly blurted.

Gail looked at me, visibly startled, and then laughed, leaned forward, and kissed me again. “I’m sorry-yes, we’re okay. If I didn’t love you so much, I wouldn’t be so angry. I’m just a little frazzled-and being a hard-ass.”

She looked out the window at the snow. “I don’t tell you often enough what you mean to me, Joe,” she said softly.

“I don’t expect you to,” I told her. “I was just making sure, that’s all.”

But she was shaking her head. “No, it’s the least I can do. You give me freedom when I need it and support when I crash and burn. Sometimes I feel all I give you back is a hard time.”

“That’s not true. You tell me the truth. That’s why I asked what I did.”

She squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to worry-not from my end. I’m bugged about this job keeping me in Montpelier for so long, though. It’s tougher than I thought it would be. I miss you a lot.”

There was a discreet knock at the door, and Gary Smith stuck his head into the room. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said and began to retreat.

Gail stood quickly to stop him. “I have to get a cup of coffee. You can have him till then.”

Gary watched her pass him without comment but then raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Gail Zigman,” I explained. “My unofficial better half. How’s Mike?”

Smith took a few steps into the room and stopped, looking awkward. “Fine. Barely limping, already.”

The conversation stalled.

“Well, then,” I tried, “I guess it wasn’t such a bad deal after all. You get anything from that severed hand yet?”

He seemed lost in thought and looked up at me suddenly, as if dragged from some reverie. “What? No. The lab’s still working on it. Your contact at the Sûreté in Sherbrooke came through, though-Gilles Lacombe. Asked to meet with us.” He finished walking to the foot of my bed, grabbing the rail as if it separated him from a great fall. “I wanted to thank you for covering my butt.”

“I did?” I asked, momentarily lost.

“From what I heard, you told the inquiry team this morning you were the one who held us up on the ledge-till we were caught in the whiteout. You implied you didn’t follow my recommendation to leave when the leaving was good.”

“I did slow us up,” I countered. “Using the ice axes as crowbars took too long.”

He compressed his lips a moment, pondering whether to accept my gift or not. Being the oldest, the novice climber, and the injured party all in one, I’d known shouldering most of the blame wasn’t likely to result in any reprimand from the inquiry team, and in fact they’d been gracious to a fault. It hadn’t been a great sacrifice on my part-I’d been as aware as everyone of the closing weather, and I knew that both Woodman and Smith were judging themselves far more harshly for this near-miss than any disciplinary board could.

Smith’s appreciation showed in his response. “Still. I wanted to thank you. I should’ve had ropes-should’ve gotten us off in one piece. It was my responsibility.”

“Which is why you got Mike to safety instead of risking all three of us looking for me,” I said. “I know what those kinds of situations are like, Gary. I wish I didn’t, but they tend to crop up.”

“How long you been a cop?” he asked unexpectedly.

“Over thirty-five years.”

He nodded, as if coming to terms with the argument in his head. “You have a good reputation. I’m sorry I was a jerk before.”

“You didn’t know what I was up to.”

He smiled then. “I still don’t-not really. This VBI thing doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“It will,” I said, sympathizing with his confusion. “And I’ll try to make you like the end result.”

Gail reappeared at the door, a Styrofoam cup in her hand. “Too early?” she asked.

Gary looked back at me, responding to my last comment.

“Well, so far, so good. Thanks again.” He then turned to Gail and gestured in my direction. “He’s all yours.”

She shook her head, smiling. “Not hardly, but I’ll take what I can get.”

There were three of us in the car, heading northeast on Route 100 toward Newport and Derby Line, Vermont, and Canada beyond, to meet with Gilles Lacombe of the Sûreté du Québec in Sherbrooke-known in cop shorthand as the “SQ”-Gary Smith, Paul Spraiger, and myself. Sammie Martens had lobbied to join us, but the meeting was to be an icebreaker only, and I didn’t want to load the deck with VBI personnel. Also, Spraiger spoke French, although I’d asked him not to advertise the fact until it proved absolutely necessary.

“What did Lacombe sound like on the phone?” I asked Smith, who’d made the arrangements.

He slowed to a stop to let a small herd of cows cross from a barn to the pasture on the other side, their nostrils enveloped in periodic bursts of vapor as they plodded along. We waited until the farmer had latched the gate behind the last of them before resuming our trip. Route 100 meandered up the spine of Vermont, broad-shouldered and well maintained-a pleasure to travel at any time of year, but particularly right after a fresh snow had made everything from mountaintops to old trailers look like pictures from an art book.

“Real friendly,” Smith answered. “And he spoke decent English, too. I think we hit a nerve with Deschamps. Our Popsicle’s first name-Jean-that didn’t mean much to him, but he said the family was well known. To use his words,” and here Smith affected a thick accent, “‘We ’ave a very big file on dem.’”

“A criminal file?” Spraiger asked from in back.

I’d already been briefed on that when Smith had updated Frank Auerbach and me earlier. “Apparently,” I said. “It sounds like the Deschamps have been in business for a while.”

Spraiger looked out the side window reflectively, “Huh.”

“What?” I asked him. “That mean something to you?”

“Maybe not. Sherbrooke’s a pretty interesting town, though-a little lost between Montreal and Québec City. Magog is nearby, and a hangout for the mega-rich, but people drive by Sherbrooke barely looking out the window. It’s actually pretty big. Seventy-five thousand in the city itself, maybe double that if you throw in the suburbs. A lot of industry.”

His voice trailed off. I’d come to appreciate Paul Spraiger over the short time I’d known him. He mulled things over before shooting his mouth off, and was generally worth listening to.

“Which ties into Deschamps how?” I prodded him.

He took his eyes off the scenery and looked at me from the back seat. “Oh, I don’t know-not in any specific way. But I’d heard Sherbrooke was a Hell’s Angels stronghold-one of their biggest and most secure. I was just surprised another group was working the same turf.”

“Hell’s Angels?” Smith asked, surprised. “I thought they were mostly in Montreal.”

“They’re there, too,” Spraiger explained, “and a bunch more places. But so are a lot of others. Sherbrooke was like a haven-at least I thought so-a place to call their own.”

“The local cops must love that,” Smith laughed.

“They don’t complain too much,” Spraiger told him. “Sherbrooke’s got one of the lowest crime rates in Canada, in part because the Angels have done a number like the Mob in Boston’s North End-they’ve made it safer. The cops wish they weren’t there, of course, but they keep to themselves, run a tight operation, and make pretty sure everyone else stays out.”

“Doesn’t sound like the Hell’s Angels I know,” I murmured.

“They still have the guys with the Nazi helmets riding hogs,” Spraiger continued. “They’ve got an image to protect. But they’ve also got members who’re lawyers and accountants, wearing suits and driving Beemers. They’re big-time nowadays.”

“How do you know so much about them?” Smith asked.

“From my days at the Burlington PD. We used to bump into them coming down from Canada, selling drugs or moving weapons or money. They liked what Burlington had to offer. That got me started doing research-one thing led to another… I like digging into stuff like that.”

I returned to the topic at hand. “What do you make of there being a rival organization in Sherbrooke?”

Spraiger shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out, but I’d assume the word ‘rival’ doesn’t apply. If the Deschamps clan is a separate entity, then it probably means there’s a working arrangement of some kind. That’s the only thing the Angels would tolerate, especially there and especially now.”

“How so, ‘there and now’?” I asked.

“The Angels are in a squeeze. For years, they were pretty much kings of the hill. Then, several smaller competitor gangs formed an association called the Rock Machine. They’re hungry, big, and act like they’ve watched too many gangster movies. Rumors are a major power struggle is brewing, so it’s no time for the Angels to be skirmishing on their flanks. That’s what I meant about Sherbrooke-it’s behind the front lines. They’re going to be protective of that. If the Deschamps have been around awhile, like Gary was told, I’d bet their relations with the Angels are very cordial.”

As Gary worked his way through downtown Newport, there was a prolonged silence in the car while we pondered what all that might mean for us. Periodically visible between the buildings to our left, the huge, pale, frozen slab of Lake Memphremagog extended off between the mountains into Canada like a scarred cement airfield, long abandoned.

Reaching the far end of town and I-91 toward Derby Line and the border, Gary finally asked, “Why would Sherbrooke attract the Hell’s Angels?”

“Lots of reasons,” Spraiger answered him. “It’s big enough to give them something to do-strip joints, bars, discos, whatever-but not so big as to allow for much competition. It’s close to the border, but not on the priority list of the RCMP or Canadian Customs. It’s a low-profile town-working-class, industrial-not a place where too many tourists will raise a fuss about a motorcycle gang. And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that some very ritzy places, like Magog and Lake Massawipi and Mount Orford, are right nearby.

“Actually,” he added, leaning forward in his seat, his enthusiasm growing, “there’s historical precedent, too. The developers of the Sherbrooke area were American Loyalists who migrated after the Revolution turned against them-a Vermonter named Hyatt being the primary one. I suppose you could say that’s what the Angels did, too. The ones in Sherbrooke are Canadian now, but the first of them crossed the border thirty years ago or so because they thought the pickings would be easier-not to mention they wanted out of the draft during the Vietnam War.”

Gary Smith looked back over his shoulder at him. “Jesus, Paul, you’re full of bullshit, aren’t you?”

Spraiger smiled apologetically. “History major in college-made me chronically curious. Also drives my wife nuts.”

It no longer had anything to do with crime families and why we were on the road, but by now he’d caught my interest. “So if American Loyalists started Sherbrooke,” I asked, “why’s it totally French now?”

“The simple answer,” he said, “is railroads. Before eighteen-fifty, the town had a few hundred Anglos in it, running sawmills, tanneries, furniture factories, foundries-things that were largely powered by the hydro dams on the Magog River. But after the trains came in, the market exploded. Industry took off, workers were needed, and where the French had at first avoided the area, they now found themselves both crowded in their previous stomping grounds and attracted by the cash flow. They went from fifteen percent of the population to fifty in twenty years.

“Not that it is totally French now,” he added. “People think that, but there’re still small English pockets all over Québec. Lennoxville is one of them, and it’s Sherbrooke’s oldest suburb.”

“Fascinating,” Smith muttered, sounding bored. “Border’s coming up.”

The interstate ahead widened as we approached the customs check, which spanned the roadway like a line of toll booths, one of which housed a thin man with an oversized mustache.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he said in careful English. “What is your purpose in visiting Canada?”

“We’re police officers,” Gary answered for us. “Going to a meeting with the Sûreté in Sherbrooke.”

“Are any of you carrying weapons?” the man asked without further comment.

“Nope. Left ’em at home.”

He finally allowed a small smile. “Then welcome to Canada. Have a good meeting.”

Smith picked up speed, now traveling the Canadian version of I-91, Route 55. “I thought we’d have to show our badges, at least.”

“You never been over here?” I asked him.

“Nope. Never saw the need,” he said, as if to counteract Spraiger’s exuberance.

“Good place for a cheap vacation,” Paul said from the back seat, undaunted. “The U.S. dollar’s worth a bundle.”

Silence returned as we all three watched the countryside slowly change to something markedly foreign. Québec is where the Appalachians peter out in altitude, becoming a plateau that gently tilts back down toward the St. Lawrence River farther north. The sky, restricted in Vermont to whatever mountain stands nearest, here opens up, leaving the impression that you’re traveling not at the bottom of a series of geological cereal bowls, but instead across an enormous plate, bordered only in the far distance by a fringe of low hills.

And the occasional mountain.

As we drew abreast of Magog to our west and took the right fork where Route 55 hooks up with Route 10, we were struck by the enormity of Mount Orford, the area’s largest ski resort, made all the more impressive by its uniqueness amid the relatively flat terrain. Hulking like a sleeping monster, it was a reminder of the earth’s travails, and of the fire and ice that had made our planet habitable, if perhaps only briefly.

The final approach to Sherbrooke, by contrast, was subtlety itself. Apart from the snow-covered forested terrain’s being occasionally scored by high tension lines, there was no hint of the city until after Gary had turned off onto Route 410 and was just a few miles shy of downtown. Even then we saw only a vast, largely vacant industrial park to our right, with clusters of apartment buildings and shopping malls across from it. If the history lesson Paul Spraiger had given us was accurate, this introduction to Sherbrooke held true to its roots. It spoke of industry, of a worker’s town, of the interest of erstwhile pioneers to transform themselves into modern merchants.

And the final unveiling didn’t disappoint. As we topped the last hill and descended into the shallow valley that held the Magog River and the city in its crease, these values became clear. King Street Ouest, Sherbrooke’s major commercial east-west boulevard, was a string of fast-food restaurants, low-cost housing, motels, and-across the water slightly below and paralleling the road-a long, low vista of factory buildings, railroad lines, and petrochemical holding tanks, some of which loomed so large as to appear faintly menacing. As far as I could see, there was not a single building that didn’t speak of practical function. It all reminded me of what can happen after a flash flood sometimes, when the flotsam and debris is washed up on shore and then left behind by the receding water to dry, helter-skelter, in the sun.

Still, despite its lack of graceful architecture or picturesque antiquity, the city had a comfortable, lived-in feel to it. A place without pretension or misguided sense of purpose.

Gary Smith obviously didn’t agree. “Jesus-shades of New Jersey.”

Spraiger laughed. “It gets better downstream. All this is new-kind of a miracle mile. Downtown’s prettier. Twenty-five years ago, there wasn’t much here. Better pull into the right lane. Don Bosco Street is up ahead.”

“What’d you do?” Gary asked. “Memorize the map?”

“Kind of,” Paul answered without guile. “I used to live near here when I was a kid. That’s how I learned the language.”

We slowed at a traffic light just beyond a half-abandoned Days Inn parking lot.

“There it is,” Spraiger said, pointing through the windshield.

We turned into Don Bosco, which dead-ended at some railroad tracks at the bottom of a steep incline right at the river’s edge, and saw a large, flat-topped cement building surrounded by a white spiked fence, identified only by a small highway sign announcing, “Sûreté du Québec-Police.”

Gary Smith was sounding more depressed by the minute. “I thought these guys were supposed to be the Mounties of Québec. This doesn’t look like much.”

We drove through the open gates and pulled into a parking area directly opposite the building’s front door.

“You only wish we were rigged out like these guys,” I told him. “They’re provincial police, not the feds-but they damn near cover the earth. About four thousand officers. They do everything from bomb disposal to scuba work to helicopter surveillance to hostage negotiation, plus a lot more. They just don’t put on a flashy cover.”

We crossed the parking lot, climbed the stairs, and entered the lobby-a cold glass enclosure with two opposing windows revealing office workers going about their business. Before us was a locked door leading into the rest of the building.

Gary glanced around, hoping to catch the eye of one of the people behind glass. Paul crossed to a phone hanging on the wall with a sign beside it. “Here we go,” he said, picking it up and speaking with someone.

“Nice personal touch,” Gary muttered, a stranger in a strange place, feeling increasingly alienated.

Which was quickly alleviated by the rapid appearance of a small man in a dapper suit, wearing an infectious smile and the thick accent Gary had mimicked earlier. “You are the American police?” he asked, shaking hands all around. “I am Gilles Lacombe. Welcome to Québec.”

We followed him up several flights of cement stairs and down a corridor of cluttered offices. The room he ushered us into had narrow windows facing the river but didn’t actually have a view of it. Predictably in this town, I was beginning to learn, a metal warehouse stood in the way.

“Please. You should sit down. Would you like to have coffee?”

We all declined, and Lacombe joined us at a small round table across the room from what I assumed was his desk.

There was a folder before him, which he opened. He extracted a photograph from it and held it up. It was obviously old, in black and white, and it showed a man dressed as if he’d stepped out of a vintage movie. “Is this the man you call Jean Deschamps?”

I nodded. “That’s certainly the man I saw at the autopsy.”

Lacombe smiled, something he did frequently. “It is Jean Deschamps. You are right. This is the latest photograph we have of him.” He checked the back. “It says June, nineteen forty-six. Afterwards, we hear nothing more about him.”

“What did you think happened to him?” Gary Smith asked.

Lacombe’s eyes widened. “Ah. I cannot say. I was not even born then, but I have asked the questions, and we will talk soon with a man who will tell you. This,” he indicated the file, “is the first thing I did after you telephone me and say the name Deschamps. Right now, I can tell you about the Deschamps and what they are doing today, and maybe you can tell me about the body of Jean. Then later, we can talk to the retired man who knew Jean Deschamps.”

He suddenly got to his feet, looking down at us affably.

“But first, I would like to invite you to have lunch, no? You are hungry?”

I could see Gary getting ready to reject the invitation. “Wonderful,” I said quickly, grabbing Paul’s elbow and rising. “That’s very kind of you.”

Gary shut his mouth and joined us. “Yeah. Thanks.”

We all filed back downstairs to a rear door leading to a closed garage with only a few cars in it. Lacombe headed toward a new minivan.

As we followed him, I murmured to Smith, “Sorry. I figured it would help break the ice.”

He nodded several times, looking relieved. “No, no. That’s fine. Keep him happy. I’m a little out of my depth here.”

We piled into Lacombe’s van, and he backed us out into the parking area behind the building, confirming his status, to me at least, as one of the organization’s higher-ups. In fact, no formal introductions had been made, as they would’ve been back in the U.S., so I actually didn’t know our host’s rank or responsibilities.

Lacombe returned us to King Street, crossed it, and headed uphill toward the town’s modern northwest quadrant.

“You know Sherbrooke?” he asked.

I was once again riding shotgun in the front seat, watching buildings slide by that made me think they’d been collected at some American architectural lawn sale. “Paul does. He was giving us a history lesson a while ago, plus a bit about the Hell’s Angels.”

Lacombe laughed. “Yes, the Hell’s Angels. Very big. They are not actually in Sherbrooke but in Lennoxville. They have a house I should show you. It is like a fortress-cameras, barbed wire, dogs, bulletproof glass.”

“I thought things were calm around here,” Paul said, surprised.

Lacombe looked back at him. “You are right. But the Rock Machine-you know them? The Rock Machine has made them very nervous. They have been shooting and bombing the houses of the Angels in Montreal. Very bad people.”

As we topped the hill, I glanced back and got a more panoramic view than before. For the first time, I noticed, beyond the river, a tall hill with a huge, metal, Erector set-looking cross planted on top. And I could just make out to the left the tops of what seemed to be some much older buildings-the part of town Paul had mentioned earlier, and the first visible signs of a distinctly foreign influence.

I, too, had glanced at a map before we’d left. Sherbrooke was like a capital letter T lying on its right side, with the Magog River being the center leg and the cross being the north/south St. François River, connected to the Magog via a steep and narrow gorge-the source of the town’s hydroelectric power and the site of the original settlement. Unlike other communities, whose roots become less visible over time, Sherbrooke showed its origins as openly as the timeworn lines on a factory worker’s face.

Eventually, Lacombe brought us to a restaurant at the back of a sprawling, nearly empty shopping mall parking lot-a visual paradox I was to discover fit Sherbrooke like a glove. “I eat here always. Very cheap, but good.”

“Which part of town do the Angels control?” I asked him as we entered its doors.

“There is a street downtown called Wellington South. It is where are the bars, discos, cheap hotels, tattoo places, et tout le reste. That is where the Angels and the Deschamps work.”

In contrast to the outside, the restaurant was dark and friendly, with gentle piped-in music and booths and tables placed on various high and low platforms, breaking up the enormity of the place and injecting a sense of intimacy. We were shown a table high and toward the back, with fewer people, less noise, and an almost tree-house view of the floor below. The waitress and Lacombe were obviously old acquaintances.

For the next several minutes, Gilles Lacombe played host, translating our requests into a Québecois patois called Joual, which bore no resemblance I could detect to the French taught in our schools. For drinks, Paul, Gary, and I had water or Cokes. Lacombe had a beer, which I noticed caught Gary’s disapproval. Despite the short, forty-minute drive from the border to here, I was beginning to feel like we’d just landed in Europe-an unsettling but pleasant sensation.

No doubt harking back to our theorizing during the trip, Gary asked Lacombe, “Have the Deschamps and the Angels shared this area for long?”

The Sûreté man looked at him meditatively. “I would say the Angels are here about twenty-five years. The Deschamps, much longer. I don’t know about Jean, but he was a big shot already when he disappeared. At first, there was trouble. The Deschamps had everything and they didn’t like the competition. I was just a patrolman back then, but I remember. We would find bodies outside of the town. But I think that with time, like two boxers, they finally realized no one body could win, and the Angels, they are not going to go away. So there was a peace, and it has been there for many years.”

“What about you guys?” Gary asked as sandwiches arrived for the three of us-fat things made of French bread, which Gary eyed with suspicion-and soup and an odd bread, cheese, and pâté assortment for Lacombe, which looked to me like dollops of cat food. “You didn’t just watch this happen, did you?”

Lacombe shrugged away the bluntness of the question. “It was not as it is now. Sherbrooke had its police, we had a station here-only an outpost-Rock Forest and Lennoxville/Ascot had police, too. And the RCMP was there.” He hesitated, then smiled thinly. “Now, we are one big happy family. The Sûreté has a headquarters here, the Sherbrooke police joined the other two. We work well together.”

He was obviously being diplomatic. “We went through the same growing pains back home,” I said, hoping to soften Gary’s implied criticism. “Still are, here and there. People like to defend their territories, and the bad guys take advantage of it.”

The smile widened again and he relaxed. “Yes, that is it. Also, it is not so easy to fight them.” He looked at Paul Spraiger, who unlike Gary was utterly at home negotiating his food. “You study history, yes? Did you study the Algerian War in the 1950s and ’60s?”

Paul nodded enthusiastically. “Sure-what a mess.”

“Yes, yes. The French paratroopers would search the Muslim Kasbah for rebels. If they could catch one, they would torture him, but mostly they could only get two names from him. The Algerians, they keep information in triangles of three people, so that one could only betray two more. You understand?”

“And that’s what they did here?” Gary asked. “Both Angels and the Deschamps?”

Lacombe wiped his mouth on his napkin after taking another bite. “The Angels have become very big-about twenty-five people. The Deschamps, they are smaller, but they have deeper roots. They are about ten.”

“That’s all?” Gary blurted.

“No, no,” Lacombe continued, frustrated by his linguistic limitations. “That is what I was saying. Each one of them is like a capitaine, with his own people. All the capitaines know each other, but they do not know each other’s people. So for each Angel or Deschamps, maybe you have ten others working for them, maybe more. It is difficult for us to know.”

We all paused, contemplating the potential of what he’d just said. “And the Rock Machine is threatening to bust that wide open,” I finally commented.

“You see why we are interested in your old, frozen Jean Deschamps,” Gilles Lacombe said softly.