The Delicate Storm

7

“LISTEN,” MUSGRAVE SAID. “I’ve gone over it with my regional commander. I’m not working with that laptop-toting twerp from CSIS. What we do is, I deal with you, you deal with him.”

“Squier didn’t seem all that bad to me,” Cardinal said.

“You haven’t worked with CSIS before, have you.”

“No.”

“You poor bastard. Anyway,” Musgrave said, looking at his watch, “this is forty-five minutes of my life we’ve wasted. Tell me again what we’re doing here.”

They were parked in an unmarked on Main East. The fog had finally condensed into actual rain that was drumming on the roof.

The moment Cardinal had hung up with his father, the cellphone had rung in his hand and Arsenault was on the line telling him they’d matched a print at the trapper’s shack to a name: Paul Bressard. Cardinal had driven straight out to the house. Bressard’s wife, who was already reeking of scotch at one-thirty in the afternoon, told him Paul would probably be at Duane’s Billiard Emporium. Cardinal didn’t mention that he was a cop, and she wasn’t sober enough to tell.

Which was how he and Musgrave came to be sitting in the unmarked on Main East watching the decayed entrance to Duane’s Billiard Emporium.

“Duane’s is a hangout for the guys who can’t quite make it to big-time crime,” Cardinal said. “Bikers that failed the entrance exam to Satan’s Choice, Italian guys too dumb for the mob.”

“And the wife just handed you this information? Why’d she take a shine to you?”

“In Cutty Sark veritas.”

“In Cutty Sark bullshit, it looks like.”

“Tell me something, Musgrave. Does your wife know your every move?”

“You could fill a mountain of CD-ROM with what my wife doesn’t know. It’s a point of pride with her.”

“Fine. So let’s give it another half-hour.”

They listened to the rain hammering down for another ten minutes, and then the Explorer came into view.

“That’s him with the moustache?”

“That’s him. The guy with him is Thierry Ferand, another trapper.”

Bressard parked half a block away, then he and Ferand came slouching back toward the pool hall through the rain. Ferand was half the other man’s size and had to scuttle along beside him like a dachshund.

“Bressard’s a dresser,” Musgrave said. “Get a load of the coat.”

“He better hope the anti-fur movement never hits Algonquin Bay.”

Bressard and Ferand entered the building. Cardinal and Musgrave left the unmarked and went to examine the Explorer. A jagged line ran across two doors on the passenger side. “We’ll have to get our ident guys on it,” Cardinal said, “but for now I’d say that looks fresh, wouldn’t you?”

“I would. Is this guy going to be a problem?”

“Bressard? No way. Bressard will come along voluntarily.”

Musgrave laughed. “Christ, Cardinal. I’d never have pegged you for an optimist.”

As they stepped into the dark stairwell that led down to Duane’s, Cardinal said, “Watch out for Ferand. He’s little, but he’s got a mean streak a mile wide, and he’s fond of brass knuckles.”

“Let me handle him.” Musgrave hitched up his belt. “It’s always the small guys.”

When Cardinal was a teenager, the poolroom had been like a secret society. Cardinal and his friends would play endless games of Boston, High-Low or snooker, chain-smoking their Player’s and du Mauriers like thirties gangsters. Smoke used to hang like storm clouds over a landscape of green felt. So he was a little surprised to step into Duane’s and find that the air was not even visible. Even pool players had become more health-conscious.

Duane himself was behind the counter from which he served easily the worst hamburger in town, for twice the going price. He was a great fat stoat of a man who, without ever having been convicted of anything more than the odd traffic offence, radiated an air of sleaze.

Most of the clientele were in their late teens or early twenties, all male, all trying with varying degrees of success to look tough. With a single glance around the room, Cardinal recognized two drug dealers and one car thief. Bressard and Ferand had started up a game at a corner table. Bressard was bent, lining up a shot. Without straightening, he looked along the cue at Cardinal as they approached. Ferand was drinking a Dr Pepper and spilled a good deal of it over his shirt when he caught sight of them. Cardinal had arrested him twice for assault, though only one charge had stuck. Ferand cursed, placed his cue in the wall rack and grabbed his coat.

“Relax, Thierry,” Cardinal said, flashing his badge. “We just need to talk to your buddy here.”

“Don’t tell me,” Bressard said. “You’ve come to make sure I’m not dead.”

“Oh no, I can see you’re not dead, Paul. I just need some help clearing up a few things with that story I mentioned to you yesterday.”

Ferand said, “What are you looking at?”

Musgrave was standing in front of the rear exit, arms folded across his massive chest, and staring at Ferand with a funny little grin, a barely perceptible uptilt in the corner of his mouth.

“See, we still have this story about a murder in the woods,” Cardinal said to Bressard. “We’ve even got a body now—not yours, obviously—but maybe you heard about it on the news.”

“What if I have?”

“Well, you’re the only person whose name’s come up in this whole deal. So I was hoping you’d come down to the station and help us clear it up.”

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Ferand said again. “You a faggot or something?”

Musgrave was still planted like a sphinx in the doorway, still doing that funny little Mona Lisa thing at Ferand.

“Tell him to stop looking at me.”

“Shut up, Thierry,” Bressard said. “He’s just trying to psych you out. And you’re letting him do it.”

“So, what do you say, Paul? Come on downtown with us, we’ll have a chat about how your name got mixed up in this. I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t—”

A small blur launched itself past Cardinal in Musgrave’s direction. Before he could even turn to look, the small blur came flying back and landed on the pool table. Balls went flying, the overhead lamp swung crazily back and forth. Something gold or brass glittered in Ferand’s hand as he lay groaning on the table, and then it slid to the floor with a clang.

“Assaulting a police officer,” Musgrave said. “He’s even dumber than he looks.”