Cape Diamond

by Ron Corbett

  “Working a homicide case? I’m more than okay with that. That’s why you needed to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  Griffin looked momentarily confused. She had blond hair and a full, round face, what was probably called cherub when she was a child, maybe something less kind when she was a teenager. She wore little makeup and had rose-tinged cheeks, not from blush but from being outdoors. Yakabuski imagined her slopping around in Welly boots as a teenager, in some overpriced riding academy outside Toronto. The look of confusion on her face gradually drifted away and was replaced with one of concern.

  “I’m beginning to think you don’t trust me, Detective Yakabuski,” she said. “Are you doing this just to keep an eye on me? Just how badly did I screw up yesterday?”

  “You’re here, Constable Griffin, because I think I can use you. If I thought differently, you wouldn’t be here. If I thought you were a complete disaster, you wouldn’t be here. So ask yourself: does the answer to your question matter that much?”

  Griffin was silent a few seconds, then she stood more erect and said, “What can I help you with?”

  “Have you heard about the diamond?”

  “What diamond?”

  And so Yakabuski told her about the diamond found in Augustus Morrissey’s mouth. Despite her best attempt to act professional in front of the man who ran the Major Crimes section of the police force that employed her, she couldn’t help but mutter “holy shit” when Yakabuski told her the diamond’s value. Then he told her about the Shiners and the Travellers, some basic biographic material on Sean Morrissey and Gabriel Dumont, and the theories he and O’Toole had discussed in the hallway.

  “We figure a diamond of that value, shoved in the throat of a man that has just been killed, has a limited number of possible explanations,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” said Griffin.

  “That would be one. Show everyone Augustus wasn’t killed for money, that it was something personal. What else could it mean?”

  Griffin was now sitting in the wooden Henderson chair in front of Yakabuski’s desk. She gave it some thought. Eventually, she said, “I apologize for my language, but — fuck off.”

  “That would be number two. In that scenario, shoving that diamond down Augustus’s throat isn’t like pissing on his body. It’s a warning of some sort, to the Shiners. You better back off.”

  “Why a diamond?”

  “That’s where you come in, Constable Griffin. I read in your file that you’re good with computers. I need you to find some sort of connection between the De Kirk mining operation in Cape Diamond, the North Shore Travellers, and the Shiners. Go through land registry documents, business licences, court records, whatever you can think of that might show a connection.”

  “Is there a workstation I can use?”

  “The chief has cleared you a desk in general pool in Major Crimes. You know where that is?”

  “I do.”

  “Phone me right away if you find anything.”

  . . .

  The phone on Yakabuski’s desk rang thirty-five minutes later. He saw the extension number, and when he picked up he said, “You can’t be that fast.”

  “Well, they’re not exactly trying to hide it.”

  Griffin’s voice was breathless and hurried and Yakabuski imagined her leaning into the phone to speak. He was not at all surprised when she started to whisper.

  “I ran Gabriel Dumont’s name through land registry records for the townships around Cape Diamond, like you suggested,” she said. “I got a hit right away. He owns a house ten miles from Cape Diamond.”

  Yakabuski leaned back in his chair. He hadn’t expected it to be this easy. “How long has he been living up there?”

  “According to the land registry, he’s owned the house since 2004. But there’s more. Once I had an address, I ran Dumont’s name and home address through some government data banks. His home address is the same address as a Métis group up there: The Upper Divide Métis Assembly. They’re not recognized by the federal government, the Cree, or any other Métis group, but their incorporation papers list three hundred members and Gabriel Dumont as president.”

  “You got all this in thirty-five minutes?”

  “I stopped to buy a coffee in the cafeteria on my way here,” said Griffin, and her voice sounded smug. “The group filed a land claim last year. It’s for most of the Francis River and all of Cape Diamond.”

  . . .

  Yakabuski’s father was still in bed when his phone rang at 10:30 a.m. Yakabuski didn’t bother with any pleasantries or any patient attempt to prod him into alertness.

  “Ident found a diamond in Augustus’s mouth,” he said. “It was put there after he was killed. It comes from the De Kirk mine at Cape Diamond.”

  “A diamond? Why the fuck would . . .”

  “It’s worth more than a million dollars.”

  George Yakabuski stopped talking. He pushed a button on a remote lying on his side table and the top half of his bed began to rise. When he was in a sitting position, he said, “Shit, Frank, whatever is happening on the North Shore, it’s about money. The Shiners just got some sort of warning. This is going to escalate.”

  “That’s the way we read it too, Dad. So I need a name from you.”

  “Frank, those guys scared the shit out of me when I was investigating them fifteen years ago. I don’t mind telling you that. Travellers almost are boogeymen. Do you remember the old song?”

  “Of course I do: ‘Beware the Traveller in the woods; Hidden ’neath a blackened hood; Evil comes a Traveller’s way; Never light, never good . . .’”

  “Well, it’s not just a kids’ song, Frank. Travellers are weird. They’re not bikers. They’re not Shiners. They’re into this black magic shit. I wasn’t sleeping much by the end of that investigation.”

  “Dad, I’m the senior detective on this police force. What would you be doing right now?”

  George Yakabuski hesitated before answering. Then, in a voice that had lost its urgency, replaced by the cadence of weary acceptance, the sort of sound parents have been making since the start of time, he said, “You need to see Tete Fontaine. He runs the brasserie on Tache, in front of Building C.”

  “He’s a Traveller.”

  “Yes. He’s also a cousin to Gabriel Dumont. Be careful around that son of a bitch, Frank. When I say don’t turn your back on him, it’s not just an expression.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Fontaine’s Brasserie was built in 1937, the year after the Springfield police arrived on the North Shore and evicted everyone. It was one of the few buildings allowed to stand when the city came back thirty years later and did it again. It survived because the construction workers building the high-rise apartments needed a place to drink, and because the four exterior walls of the brasserie had been built with squared timber salvaged from the bottom of the Springfield River. Fontaine’s Brasserie could have withstood a cannon blast.

  It was another warm afternoon, and Yakabuski drove his Jeep with the windows down, thinking it was not right to turn on a vehicle’s air conditioning in mid-December. Not that the air conditioning or heating worked all that well on his vehicle, which was one of the six original prototypes for the Jeep Rubicon, sent for testing to the Springfield Police’s search and rescue department, and bought by Yakabuski at a police auction eleven years ago. He didn’t care that the Rubicon was interior-climate impaired. He loved that it could climb a tree.

  He slowed again at the apex of the North Shore Bridge to look at the sky. It was the same faded-denim hue of the day before. Glancing down the south shore of the river, he had a good view of the city of Springfield: The spires of St. Bridget’s, always surrounded by smoke because of the many chimney spouts in Cork’s Town. The sawmills and factories in the bays and inlets stretching to the west. The business parks and trucking terminals to the eas
t.

  The North Shore looked barren by comparison. From any sort of distance, even the apex of the bridge, you saw nothing but the apartment towers. Once he was over the bridge, Yakabuski turned down Tache Boulevard, drove past small stores with chipped brick façades and hand-painted signs. The signs were always changing. Many businesses on the North Shore had trouble paying their rent within the first month, and so they were gone by the second.

  But there was some permanence to the street. There was Côté’s Dépanneur. Lévesque’s Hardware. The St. Jean Baptiste Society meeting hall. At the end of the street, the Church of the Redeemer, a poorly funded parish church the diocese of St. Bridget tended to forget was even there. And right in the middle of the street was Fontaine’s Brasserie, the largest building on Tache, made of so much notched and squared pine, it resembled a small fort.

  Yakabuski had no trouble finding parking on the street, and when he walked inside the restaurant he found only two old men sitting at a table near the back and a man standing behind the service counter bar to the left. The two old men were dressed in dark green factory clothes, and when they saw Yakabuski they began to take fast sips of their espresso. The man behind the service counter stared at him but didn’t make any sort of movement.

  When the two men finished their coffee, they went to the service bar and Yakabuski waited by the front door until they were finished paying. The brasserie smelled of coffee and bread and grilled meat. The floor was wide-plank pine, painted dark brown, although the paint was mostly gone now. The windows in the restaurant were all along the front, offering a view of a former nail parlour across the street, a For Lease sign hanging in the window.

  As the old men waited for their change, Yakabuski took a closer look at the man behind the counter. He was tall and lanky, with black hair he greased back, wearing a flower-patterned shirt and blue dress pants. The shirt looked to be silk, and he had it unbuttoned halfway down his rib cage, revealing a concave chest and more black hair. The chest hair was curly and knotted in tufts, not greased like his head. After the two men left, Yakabuski strode to the service bar. He saw now that the flowers on the bartender’s shirt were red roses connected by green vines that snaked and twirled and occasionally erupted into white buds. The man’s chest hair looked like mulch between the flowers.

  “Mr. Fontaine?”

  “Bien oui, my friend,” he answered, speaking in the thick French patois so common on the North Shore.

  “I’m Detective Frank Yakabuski with the Springfield Regional Police. I’d like to ask you some questions about the body we found in Filion’s Field yesterday.”

  Fontaine was smoking and he took a long, slow draw from his cigarette, eyeing Yakabuski through the curling smoke. Then he placed the cigarette carefully in a metal ashtray on the lunch counter. “Body? You mean t’at Shiner, Augustus Morrissey. You cryin’ tears ’bout t’at one, Detective?”

  “Don’t know if that matters much. My job is to investigate homicides.”

  Fontaine pressed his lips together and gave Yakabuski another long look. When he spoke he said, “You’re bigger t’an I t’augt you’d be. People told me you wuz big, but I figure it wuz bullshit. Never seen a bohunk big as you.”

  “And I’ve never seen anyone on the North Shore wearing a silk shirt. So it’s a day of wonders. Did you know Augustus Morrissey?”

  “Everybody know Augustus fuckin’ Morrissey.”

  “Did you have any business dealings with Augustus Morrissey?”

  “A Shiner?”

  “Is that a no?”

  “T’at’s a I’d go down on my mot’er ’fore I shook t’e hand of a fuckin’ Shiner.” Fontaine scratched his chest and smiled at Yakabuski.

  “So that’s a no. I appreciate your candour, Mr. Fontaine. Let me return the favour. I don’t think there’s much that comes onto the North Shore from the outside world. This place is as cloistered as a monastery. I figure a man like you would know something about what happened the other night at Filion’s Field.”

  “A man like moi? Did you jus’ insult me, Detective?”

  “Augustus had both his eyes cut out. Ever hear of something like that?”

  “Everyone know t’at old story.”

  “You’re right. Early settlers on the Divide were sometimes killed in their cabins, their eyes cut out and taken as a keepsake, by a travelling gang of cutthroats called the Travellers that didn’t want to see the land settled.”

  “Maybe t’ey had a good idea. Look what happen t’us when you guys wanted a fuckin’ bridge.”

  “That’s how I figured you’d feel. So why did Augustus have to die?”

  “I don’t know ’bout no dead Shiner. Ot’er t’an a dead Shiner be always a good t’ing.” Fontaine kept scratching his chest. From time to time he would grab a clump of black hair and pull on it.

  “Do you know where I can find Gabriel Dumont? I’d like to ask him these questions.”

  “People tol’ me you wuz big. No one tol’ me you wuz funny.”

  “You have no way of reaching Gabriel Dumont? He’s your cousin, right, Mr. Fontaine? We can continue this conversation down in the cells, if that is your preference.”

  “Your cells don’t scare me. I can do your cells standin’ on ma fuckin’ head.”

  “You probably can, Mr. Fontaine. So why don’t we avoid the drama? You tell me what you know about the North Shore Travellers and a land claim your cousin has filed up in Cape Diamond, and I go home. You stay here. We all have a good day. That work for you?”

  “You t’ink t’e Travellers kill Augustus Morrissey?” Fontaine stopped scratching. Wiped the side of his hand over his mouth. “T’ey just boogeymen.”

  “I believe in the Travellers enough today to bring you down to the cells for questioning, Mr. Fontaine. You got any plans for the next three days?”

  “You got no cause.”

  “I’ve got Augustus Morrissey hanging from a fence on the North Shore. I’ve got all the cause I’m ever going to need in this city. So what are we doing here?”

  Fontaine lit another cigarette. Blew smoke rings toward the square-timber ceiling, the wood dark and nicotine stained, oozing juice, like the hull of a once-great sailing ship lying in the darkness of an ocean bed. There was the stillness of deep sea in the room. The same sort of beyond-mute quiet. Same sort of languor. Fontaine moved his cigarette twice to the ashtray and back to his lips, his movements slow and deliberate, the smoke circles drifting around his head, his eyes shutting and closing, the hand without the cigarette scratching his chest, his groin, his lips, wiping spittle across a lecherous smile and finally he said, “I get in touch wit’ Gabriel. You gotta card?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Yakabuski called Griffin on the way back from the North Shore and was surprised to learn she had no more information than she’d had that morning. She sounded just as surprised.

  “Gabriel Dumont’s name doesn’t pop up anywhere else that I can find. Not around Cape Diamond, anyway. There’s just the deed to the house and the land claim. Some of the names from the Métis association seem bogus, by the way. I’ll know for sure in a couple hours.”

  “What about the Shiners? Any record of them being up there?”

  “Nothing so far.”

  “You’re including timber and mineral rights?”

  “I am.”

  “And known Shiner associates?”

  “If you mean the Popeyes, yes. I’ve been watching out for that.”

  “What about De Kirk?”

  “Squeaky clean. Company’s name hasn’t appeared on any civil court filings, no labour code violations, no insurance claims that I can find, which should mean no diamonds have gone missing. Can’t find any record of a De Kirk employee being arrested since they started mining up there. No incident reports with the Reserve Police at Kesagami or the RCMP detachment at Fort Francis.”

/>   “So they haven’t been acting like a company that’s getting robbed or getting scammed.”

  “No sign of it,” agreed Griffin.

  Yakabuski hung up and continued driving. It seemed to him the investigation into Augustus Morrissey’s murder was now primarily a geometry problem, a search for the angle or missing line that would connect the Shiners to the Travellers to De Kirk. Many homicide investigations were similar, and the mathematical conceit appealed to Yakabuski, who thought if you focused on the missing connection hard enough, the geometric line might actually appear, like a vision in a dream. He believed it had already happened to him. The missing link would come as cognitive thought, but it was so palpable, so wondrous and obvious, it may as well have been a physical thing, hitting him on the head and asking what took so long.

  He put his mind to the problem, rolling through the known facts and likely outcomes in the homicide investigation of Augustus Morrissey, a.k.a. “The Squire,” a.k.a. “King of the Shiners.” He was killed and his body put on display on the North Shore, after his eyes were first cut out and a million-dollar diamond was shoved down his throat. Who cuts out eyes? A Traveller. Who has access to a million-dollar diamond? Someone who owns a diamond mine. The person Yakabuski had at the top of his list of suspects was a Traveller who owned a home ten miles from a diamond mine. That didn’t give Dumont access to the diamonds, but it was hard to believe it was a coincidence.

  Those facts connected nicely, but where did the Shiners come in? They must have heard of the scam being run at Cape Diamond — whatever it was — and tried to run some sort of hustle on the Travellers. That would fit the known facts. That was a nice geometric shape. Only things missing were the actual crime that was being committed, the people who were doing it, and how they were getting away with it.

  Yep, just missing that. The shape blew away.

  Yakabuski had started the problem one more time when his cellphone rang. He looked at the number and didn’t recognize it right away. Then it came to him. Jimmy O’Driscoll. The beating victim he had interviewed yesterday morning before going to Filion’s Field.