The Delicate Storm

26

IT WAS NO LATER THAN SIX-THIRTY when Cardinal left the station that night, but it was dark as midnight. Out in the parking lot he could hear the traffic honking on the bypass. Normally, Algonquin Bay drivers are silent drivers, but the ice was causing delays everywhere and that northern patience was apparently beginning to wear thin. He got into his car, but before he could put his key in the ignition, a voice from behind him said, “Looks like more rain, doesn’t it.”

“Kiki. How nice to see you.” Cardinal was amazed at how quickly his heart could double its speed. This would be it, then. No more warnings.

“Yeah. Thought I’d stop by.”

“You know, just because it’s a car doesn’t mean I can’t have you up for breaking and entering.”

“It was open. I just climbed in and fell asleep.”

“It was locked. And anyway, it’s the same as a house. Just because a house is unlocked doesn’t mean you can stop in and have a nap.”

Kiki yawned. His leather jacket creaked as he stretched. “Let’s go for a drive. I’m tired of sitting in a parking lot.”

“Kiki, have you noticed the weather? The entire planet is covered with ice. It’s not a good day for a drive. If you’re going to shoot me, you’ll have to shoot me here in the police station parking lot.”

“Not a problem. I have a silencer.”

“You must be very proud.” Cardinal was easing his right hand under his coat. It wasn’t going to be easy getting at the Beretta: it was strapped in his underarm holster on his left side.

“No. It’s just a fact. Doesn’t call for being proud or unproud. I’m just pointing out that it could be done. Pretty embarrassing for you to be killed outside the cop shop.”

“Well, it wouldn’t bother me, of course. I’d be dead.”

“True.”

The holster seemed farther away than ever. Cardinal debated whether he should just make a grab for his Beretta and be done with it. The other options were simply getting out of the car, although catching a bullet in the spine before he got the door open didn’t appeal to him one bit. Or he could flip around and grab for whatever weapon Kiki was pointing at him through the seat. At least that way he’d be a moving target.

“Do you know a person named Robert Henry Hewitt?”

Wudky. Cardinal would not have put Wudky together with Kiki B. and Rick Bouchard’s gang in a thousand years. “Yes, I know Robert,” he said. “I didn’t realize you two were friends.”

“We’re not. He’s in the same wing as Ricky. Was.”

“What do you mean, ‘was’? Has something happened to Robert?”

“See, that’s why you’re not a very good cop, Cardinal. You’re a terrible judge of character.”

“I’ve been surprised before, it’s true.”

“Can’t keep nothing secret in stir, that’s the problem. Somehow your little twerp pal hears that Bouchard is putting a contract out on you. And this upsets him deeply. He goes to Bouchard and tries to talk him out of it. I wish I’d seen that.”

Cardinal wished he’d seen it too.

“First he tells him he’s wrong about you. John Cardinal would never steal nothing—this is the gospel according to Hewitt. Another bad judge of character, obviously.”

“Yeah, Wudky’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“What’d you call him?”

“Long story.”

“Naturally, Rick begged to differ on the honest-cop part. To the tune of two hundred thousand bucks, as we know. Second point your friend made: John Cardinal is not your typical cop. He busts me, Hewitt says, and then tries to talk the Crown out of sending me away. Is that true, by the way?”

“It is, actually. I know it sounds funny.”

“You never did anything like that for me.”

“Yes, but you’re not a nice person, Kiki.”

“This Hewitt is your idea of a nice person?”

“He didn’t have your advantages. Anyway, I can imagine how all this moved Bouchard. He’s such a soft touch.”

“Right. He tells your friend to go away before he decides to skin him alive. Your friend says he has just one more argument to make on your behalf. ‘Oh?’ says Rick. ‘I can’t wait to hear it.’ And the kid says his third argument is that if Bouchard doesn’t call off this contract by tomorrow, he’s going to kill him.”

“Mm. I can see how that would have Bouchard trembling.”

“He beat the shit out of Hewitt. Put him in the infirmary for a week. Do you have any idea how sick you have to be to get into the infirmary in Kingston? You have to be like a quarter to dead. But when he gets out, all beat to hell, he goes back to work in the kitchen and—bam! goes after Bouchard with a meat cleaver. I hear it was pretty spectacular. I can’t help feeling bad for Rick, though, dying that way.”

“You’re telling me that Robert Henry Hewitt killed Rick Bouchard? That’s got to be a joke. Robert is completely harmless.”

“Call Kingston. They’ll tell you how harmless he is.”

“Wudky kills Bouchard and you’re here to make it right, is that it?”

“What do you mean? Like revenge?”

“Well, duh, Kiki.”

“Hell, no. I don’t give a shit. I didn’t even like Bouchard. Couldn’t stand him, if you want to know the truth.”

“So why’d you stay with him all those years?”

“He was a good employer. Are you in love with your boss?”

“Good point.”

“Oh, I get it!” Kiki slammed the back of the front seat. It was like being rear-ended. “You thought I was back here to kill you!”

Cardinal turned around in the front seat. Kiki was looking at him with genuine wonder and delight, a kid at the circus. He had fewer teeth than a goalie.

“You thought I was coming back to make good on what you owed Rick. That’s great! No, I’m not here for any of that. I just come to tell you what happened. To let you know it’s all over. There’s no one to put a contract out on you now, Cardinal. And no one to pay me even if I did manage to get Bouchard’s money out of you.”

“Well, of course, you could keep it yourself. Assuming you got any out of me. Which you wouldn’t.”

“No, no. It wasn’t my money in the first place. This was all Rick’s grief. Rick’s gone, grief’s gone. You’re a free man, Cardinal. That’s all I came to tell you.”

“You came all the way up here from Toronto to tell me this?”

Kiki took his woollen cap off and scratched at the pale fuzz on his head. Then he put the cap back on, reaching past Cardinal to adjust the rear-view, checking himself out in it.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking about moving up here.”

“Please don’t,” Cardinal said. “We’d see too much of each other.”

“Well, I’m tired of the rat race, you know?”

Cardinal hadn’t thought of criminals being in the rat race, but he could see where they might find Toronto as stressful as anyone. More so.

“What are you going to do—take up canoeing? Fishing?”

“Naw. Anything with a boat? No good. But I like it up here. It’s clean. It smells nice. That means a lot. Of course, this ice-storm shit is giving me second thoughts. But I wanted to ask you—would you know of any jobs up here?”

There wasn’t a trace of irony in Kiki’s broad, flat face.

“Were you thinking of loansharking or extortion?”

“Come on, Cardinal. I’m serious. I’m talking legitimate employment, you know? I’ve got a heavy-equipment operator’s licence.”

“Let me put my mind to it, Kiki. I’ll ask around.”

“Really? That’d be great. Maybe your friend wasn’t all wrong about you.”

“You never told me what happened to Robert. Did he get killed in the altercation or what?”

“You kidding? Everyone was too fucking scared.”

“Still. I imagine Rick’s pals will take him apart as soon as they get the chance.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Rick wasn’t exactly warm, you know? Loyalties to him did not run deep. And your friend just took down the toughest bastard in Kingston. So in fact I’d say he’s going to be sitting pretty. Once he gets out of solitary, of course.”

“Right.” Cardinal put the key in the ignition and started up. “Can I drop you anywhere?”

“Nah, that’s okay, I got a rental right here.” Kiki opened the back door. “I’m staying at the Birches Motel. Gimme a call if you hear of any openings, okay?”

“Minute I hear of anything suitable, I’ll be on that phone, Kiki.”

“Take care driving, now. Road’s slippery as a bitch.”

The threat was gone. There would be no more danger coming Cardinal’s way from Rick Bouchard and company. And yet he could not quite muster up a feeling of wholesale relief. As he drove home, he thought of Wudky, who, owing to his loyalty to Cardinal, would probably get another twenty years tacked on to his sentence. Others had paid for the mistake he had made so many years ago, as he had not—and probably now never would.

When Cardinal got home, Catherine was at the wood stove in the living room, stirring a huge pot of stew. The power was off, and the flames behind the stove window lit the room with a deep orange flicker. Sally and the two girls were on the couch, peeling potatoes. Old Mrs. Potipher was asleep in Catherine’s chair, her mouth hanging open. Beside her on the floor, Totsy, her miniature grey poodle, eyed Cardinal with instant dislike and started to tremble from head to tail. Two kitchen chairs had been brought out to accommodate the capacious behinds of Mr. and Mrs. Walcott, neighbours from across the road. They were sitting erect like a pair of matched dolls, each with a paperback balanced on the belly and eyeglasses secured by a length of cord.

“Power’s off all over this side of town,” Mr. Walcott said to Cardinal when he came in.

“I know. Highway’s pitch-dark. Judging by the rain, it isn’t going to get better any time soon.”

“We stuck it out for as long as we could,” Mrs. Walcott added, then turned to her husband. “I told you last year we should get a wood stove. But no, you had other ideas.”

“What I said was, they’re too expensive. You can’t take a vacation in the Dominican Republic and buy a wood stove in the same year.”

“That isn’t what you said. You said, ‘Let’s think about it. We should wait for the sales.’ Then of course you never got around to it.”

“Go ahead. Make me out to be the jerk. That’s fine. If it makes you feel better.”

Cardinal unbuttoned his coat but then thought better of it. The living room was hot, but the rest of the house was the same temperature as outdoors. “Shouldn’t we keep that open for now?” He pointed toward the front of the room where Catherine had strung up a curtain on a clothesline, separating the former porch area from the rest of the living room. “It’ll cut the heat off in front.”

“Go take a look,” Catherine said.

Cardinal picked his way past the outstretched legs of Mr. and Mrs. Walcott, ignored an exaggerated growl from Totsy and stepped beyond the curtain.

“Satisfied?” His father looked up at him from the depths of Cardinal’s La-Z-Boy chair, which was draped with a bright red sleeping bag. “You got your way now. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

Cardinal smiled. “I’m just glad to see you, Dad. I didn’t want you freezing up there all alone. This curtain’s blocking a lot of your heat, though. Maybe I should open it for a while.”

“Don’t touch it. Frankly, I don’t see why I can’t be allowed to die in my own home.”

“Dad, it’s not forever. Just stay till the ice storm is over.”

“See how you like it when you get old. I don’t even think of myself as old. I go past Leisure Home in summer and see the little old ladies sitting outside and I think, look at the little old ladies. Doesn’t occur to me that I’m the same age as them. To me I’m the same age I always was, only I have this stupid heart problem that’s not letting me do what I want.”

“Have you got everything you need? Can I bring you anything?”

“What else could I need? I got my book, sleeping bag, catheter …”

“What?”

“That was a joke, John.”

“Why don’t we put you in Kelly’s room.”

“Let someone else have it. I’m better off here. I can breathe better sitting up. Funny how history repeats itself.”

Cardinal gave him a quizzical look.

“My dad. Had the exact same problem. Didn’t have the drugs for it back then. But I remember how he used to sleep in the living room, sitting up. Now I know why.”

“All right. But let me know if you want Kelly’s room.”

Cardinal was about to leave, but his father raised a hand to stop him. “This Dr. Cates thing, John. It’s terrible. She was just starting out. You’re going to get the guy who killed her, I hope.”

“Well, we’re working on it.”

“She was a smart cookie, I think. Good doctor, too.”

“What are you talking about, Dad? You were mad as hell at Dr. Cates.”

“I know, I know. So sometimes I’m not too bright.”

Later, there was a campfire feeling to the night as they all—except for Stan Cardinal—sat around the wood stove and reminisced about strange weather experiences of the past. The Walcotts argued about a storm that had kept them socked in at O’Hare for three solid days one winter—or was it two days at LaGuardia? Mrs. Potipher remembered a hideous storm in the North Atlantic when she was crossing sometime in the fifties.

The shifting firelight lit their faces in shades of brown and amber. Catherine looked beautiful in her layers of sweaters and a long plaid scarf. As she tended to their unexpected guests, her face had a look of utter absorption, and Cardinal knew she was happy. All evening their talk was punctuated by the throaty hiss of the stove whenever Cardinal opened it to add wood. There was the drumming of freezing rain against the windows, and every so often there would be a terrific crash as a branch came down outside, and they would all jump and exclaim as if at a sporting event.

Cardinal and Catherine had to sleep with the bedroom door open to get as much warmth as possible from the living room. Even so, Cardinal was wearing long johns. Catherine fell asleep curled against him, but he lay awake for a long time, thinking about his father, and about Paul Laroche. He was now certain that Laroche was Yves Grenelle, and whether or not he had killed the minister Raoul Duquette, he had certainly killed Madeleine Ferrier to keep his past a secret. And Miles Shackley. And Winter Cates. He remembered the photograph in Laroche’s office of him and the premier in hunting gear; that might connect him to Bressard. Proving any of this in a court of law, however, would be another matter.

Sometime later he was awakened by a sound, but he didn’t know what it was he had heard. Another branch? A transformer blowing? He lay still, waiting. Someone cried out from the other room, a strange high-pitched sound—half shout, half moan. Cardinal got out of bed and threw on his dressing gown. He grabbed the flashlight from the dresser and went out to the living room.

The fire in the wood stove had burned down to coals, casting a dull red glow on the sleeping faces of Sally and her little girls sharing a gigantic sleeping bag on one side of the room, and on Mr. and Mrs. Walcott on the other. Mrs. Potipher was in Kelly’s room with the kerosene heater. It was his father who cried out—a choked call to Cardinal, who stepped swiftly around the sleeping forms and past the curtain.

His father had half fallen out of the chair, and hung draped over one side. He was drenched in sweat when Cardinal righted him, his face slick and white.

“Where are your pills?” Cardinal said, swinging the flashlight around. “Dad, where are your pills?”

His father moaned, his head lolling against the back of the chair. There was a rattling sound in his lungs.

Cardinal found the pills on a small side table. He tipped out one of the capsules into his palm. Pulling his father forward in the chair, he cradled his head in the crook of his elbow and put the capsule into his mouth. He called out for Catherine.

“It’s my leg,” his father said. “My leg hurts.” Translating from Stan Cardinal’s stoic tongue, Cardinal knew that meant he was entering previously unknown territories of pain.

“Catherine!”

Catherine appeared at the edge of the curtain, untangling her hair with one hand, holding her robe together with the other.

“Call an ambulance,” Cardinal said.

Catherine picked up the phone and dialed. Then she handed the phone to Cardinal. “They might respond quicker to a cop.” She knelt beside the chair. “How you doing, Stan? How can we help?”

He grabbed at his thigh and groaned, his face utterly white.

“John’s getting the ambulance now. They’ll be here soon.”

“My leg’s killing me,” Stan said. “Not literally, I hope.”

Cardinal spoke his address into the phone.

“Sir, we’ll get someone there as fast as we can. But the roads are impossible tonight.”

Cardinal hung up and dialed the emergency room at City Hospital. The nurse on the other end asked him to describe the symptoms carefully. “All right,” she said. “With a history of heart failure, most likely he’s thrown a clot in his leg. It’s painful but treatable with blood-thinning drugs.”

“John! I think he’s having a heart attack!”

Cardinal dropped the phone. His father sat erect, clutching as if at an arrow in his chest, then collapsed backwards, unconscious.

“Help me get him onto the floor.”

Cardinal lifted his father under the armpits; Catherine took hold of his feet. “He’s ice-cold,” she said. “Both his legs are ice-cold.”

They laid him on the floor and Cardinal started chest compressions. Every six compressions, he leaned forward and gave his father mouth-to-mouth.

“Take the phone, Catherine. Ask them what we do next.”

He continued pressing his father’s chest while Catherine asked for instructions. “They say to keep doing just what you’re doing,” she said. “Keep it up till the ambulance gets here.”

“He’s not breathing, for God’s sake. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for the ambulance. Maybe we should drive. Ask her how long it’s going to take.”

“With luck, ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Catherine, go outside and start the car.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Sally was standing by the curtain now.

“Help Catherine scrape the car off.”

Catherine and Sally went out. A few moments later Cardinal heard the raw sound of scrapers attacking hard ice.

His father groaned and opened his eyes.

Cardinal stopped the compressions and pressed one ear to his father’s chest. There was a steady thud, but the lungs sounded full of fluid.

“Dad,” he said softly. He placed a hand on his father’s cheek. “Dad, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Which one of your pills is the diuretic? We need to get some of this fluid out of your lungs.”

“Orange ones.” His voice was a whisper; his eyes seemed to look somewhere beyond the ceiling of the room.

Cardinal found the pills among several bottles on the little table. He shook two into his hand and started to raise his father’s head.

“No,” his father whispered. “No more pills.”

“Your lungs are filled with fluid. They’ll help you breathe.”

“No more pills.”

“Dad, it’s just so you can breathe.”

“No more pills.” The eyes still scanned the ceiling, the breath came in short, static-filled gulps.

Catherine came back in, soaking wet. A cloud of frigid air blew in with her and occupied the room. “The ice is impossible,” she said. “We can’t even get the car door open.”

There was a sound of a distant siren.

“It’s okay. That’ll be the ambulance. Dad won’t take his pills.”

Catherine came over and knelt on the other side of his father. “What’s this I hear? You’re not taking your pills now?”

Stan Cardinal’s slack, wet lips twitched into the slightest of smiles. “You going to give me hell?”

Catherine shook her head. Her eyes filled, but she blinked back the tears. She found the old man’s hand and took it in both of hers. Cardinal gripped his father’s forearm.

“Only thing you ever did right,” his father said. The words came out slowly, like notes so separate that all sense of melody is lost.

“What’s that?” Cardinal said. He did not want to cry in front of his father.

“Cathy.”

“I know.” Cardinal squeezed his father’s arm. “Dad, listen. I know it’s been a long time since you went to church, but—”

“No priest.”

“Are you sure? We can call Corpus Christi, if you want.”

“No priest.”

Cardinal heard the wail of the siren pass by, behind the house. They had missed the turnoff. He didn’t think there was much a paramedic could do at this point. Or a doctor, for that matter.

“John.”

“What, Dad?”

“John.”

“Go ahead, Dad. I’m here.”

“I thought we did all right, don’t you?”

Cardinal swallowed. His Adam’s apple felt three times its normal size. “We did fine.”

Cardinal wasn’t sure what his father said next. The siren was coming back toward Madonna Road.

“I’m sorry for anything I did. You know …”

“Dad, you don’t have to apologize for anything.”

“Anything, you know …”

“I know. I’m sorry too.”

“Well, what are you sorry for?” The question seemed to hang in the air between them like a mobile.

“For not making sure you got what you wanted—you know—so you could go through all this at home, instead of …”

“No, no.” His father coughed then. His hands shot out as if to catch a heavy object toppling over him, then fell back against the floor.

“Dad?” Cardinal rubbed his arm vigorously, as if stimulating circulation there might revive the entire dying body. “Dad?”

His father was struggling to say something. Cardinal and Catherine leaned forward to hear, but the words disintegrated into meagre, breathy vowels, ahs and ohs without meaning. Then the last of his breath left the body, and almost instantly his eyes greyed over. Catherine leaned forward and wept. Cardinal sat back on his heels, stunned.

Lights flashed in the windows and there was the sound of car doors and heavy boots on the ice. Then the paramedics were inside, checking for vital signs and confirming that Stan Cardinal was dead.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner,” one of them said. “Roads are a real problem tonight. There’s lines down all along Trout Lake.”

“I know,” Cardinal said.

“I gotta get on the phone. Coroner’ll have to come out and confirm death.”

“Okay.”

The medic had already flipped open his cellphone. “Yes, we’re at the Madonna Road cardiac. We got full arrest here, no vitals. Can you have the coroner out here right away? Thanks.”

Cardinal was aware of Catherine moving in the firelight. Someone must have thrown another log into the wood stove; he couldn’t remember doing it himself. Somehow she had got the kids moved into Kelly’s room without waking Mrs. Potipher. She boiled water and made tea for Sally and the ambulance men. They drifted in and out of Cardinal’s vision, faceless silhouettes in a netherworld where all distances were vast, all voices echoes. Cardinal took a sip of tea and burned his tongue.

There was a blast of cold air and much bustle as Dr. Barnhouse swept in, clutching his black bag. He knelt beside Stan Cardinal, listening for a long time with his stethoscope. Finally, he said, “There’s no heartbeat. And no respiration.” He consulted his watch. “Time of death: 2:57.”

Barnhouse packed away his stethoscope and closed his black bag with a staccato snap. Then he was standing before Cardinal with his hand out. Cardinal reached out and felt the doctor’s dry white palm squeeze his hand.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Detective Cardinal.”

There was a pleading in the doctor’s eyes, as if to say, Help me! I’m no good at this! As he saw him to the door, Cardinal almost wanted to offer comfort, tell him it was all right.

The ambulance men moved toward the body.

Cardinal said, “Can you give us a few minutes?”

Catherine was beside his father, looking limp and exhausted. Cardinal knelt once more across from her. He was amazed at the vastness of his pain. “What was he trying to say?” he said. “Just before he went. He was trying to say something, but I couldn’t make it out.”

“He was responding to what you said.”

“What did I say?”

“You said you were sorry. You were sorry that he didn’t get to die at home.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘I am home.’”