Cape Diamond

by Ron Corbett

  “Jimmy,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.”

  “You’ll be glad you did, I’m betting, Mr. Yakabuski. You’re one of the detectives investigating the murder of Augustus, right?”

  “That’s right. Know something about it?”

  “I know who can give you the name of the killer. Is that something?”

  The second figure he had been working on collapsed in a jumble of lines and busted angles, like the crash of a kid’s pick-up sticks game after someone went one move too far. Maybe this wasn’t a geometry case, thought Yakabuski.

  . . .

  O’Driscoll said they couldn’t meet at his apartment, and after they went through a list of possible meeting places (some too public, some too far) they settled on the alley behind Belfast Street, by the back door of O’Keefe’s, in two hours. It was dark by the time Yakabuski arrived, and he parked his Jeep near the river and walked up to the alley. It was framed by the backs of buildings on Belfast Street and a row of abandoned warehouses and forward-steerage buildings on the riverside. The only security cameras were on Belfast. The alley was gravel, but Yakabuski made barely a sound as he rounded one of the abandoned buildings and made his way to the back door of O’Keefe’s. When he got there, he scanned the roofline of the buildings on Belfast, then the roofline of the abandoned buildings by the river. He could see blue light coming from the rear of the Silver Dollar, a block away, and heard voices in the distance, probably by the shore of the river, young voices, drifting in and out of audio range on the gusts of warm wind that blew down the alley.

  “You can come out, Jimmy,” he said softly.

  A few seconds later, there was the rustling of cardboard, then the sound of unsteady footsteps, and Jimmy O’Driscoll peered his head around a dumpster.

  “Which way did you come in?” he asked.

  “From the river. I didn’t come down Belfast.”

  “Good. There were people here just a few minutes ago. Junkies I think.”

  “There’s nobody here now, Jimmy.”

  O’Driscoll peered up and down the alley one more time, then stood up and let a cut-open shipping box slide off his back. He was wearing the same T-shirt Yakabuski had seen him in yesterday. Same pants, the left leg of the jeans cut open to make room for the walking cast. Same blood-trickled pattern of red lines on his forearms. Had a dirty pad of gauze hockey-taped to his left eye. That was new.

  “How long have you been here, Jimmy?”

  “’Bout an hour.”

  “That’s a long time to be hiding under a box. Someone came and saw you last night, didn’t they?”

  O’Driscoll started picking one of the scabs on his forearm. Tilted his head, as though he was trying to recall something. When he spoke he didn’t answer Yakabuski’s question. He said instead, “So what can you do for me, if I help you find Augustus’s killer?”

  “That’s a pretty big if, Jimmy. Why don’t you tell me what you know, and I’ll see what it’s worth.”

  “Information like this is worth something. Trust me. You should be able to do better’n wait-and-see.”

  “If you’re looking for money, Jimmy, some sort of confidential-informant payout, I’ll see what I can do. But there’s a part of me that thinks that would be a big mistake, giving you money. I’ll find you dead in this alley in two days with a needle in your arm.”

  “I don’t want your money. I need you to keep me away from the Popeyes. Until I can clear up a few things.”

  Yakabuski looked at the boy in front of him. For maybe the first time, he took him seriously — that maybe this wasn’t a paid-informant scam being run by a strung-out, frightened junkie whose time on the planet was probably being measured in days now, if he knew the Popeyes. What Jimmy O’Driscoll was proposing made sense. If he had something Yakabuski needed, he would barter it for protection. The boy would never take help if it were freely offered, because he was from Cork’s Town and stuff like that never happened. Something like that was unnatural and not to be trusted. But quid for a quid, scratch for a scratch, eye for an eye — that was time honoured.

  “Will you testify against them?” asked Yakabuski. “Is that on the table?”

  “I don’t know, man. I don’t fuckin’ know. All I know is I gotta go deep underground for a little while. Can you help me or not, Mr. Yakabuski?”

  “I can probably help you, Jimmy. So who is this guy you know?”

  “We have a deal? You can hide me somewhere? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. So, who’s the guy?”

  “My granddad. Terry Maguire.”

  Yakabuski tried not to look surprised, although O’Driscoll was looking right into his face when he said the name, and right after that he smiled, so Yakabuski must have let something show. Terry Maguire. A name from the past, the former security chief for the Shiners, a cold-blooded executioner and one of Augustus Morrissey’s closest friends, until Terry Maguire vanished from Springfield more than twenty-five years ago. Most cops on the force, including Yakabuski, had only heard stories of the man. Everyone assumed he was dead, probably killed by Morrissey for some sort of transgression.

  Terry Maguire. This was starting to become a case with so many notes, colourings, and nuances from the past Yakabuski found himself thinking if a Hank Williams song started playing right then he wouldn’t be surprised. Might not even bother looking around to see where the sound was coming from. Terry Maguire, the crazy, homicidal “Tough Man” of Cork’s Town from two generations ago, a Shiner people used to cross the street to avoid, the Tommy Bangles of his era, supposed to be dead and lying at the bottom of the Springfield River with a Shiner necktie around his neck, a look of either surprise or pain in his eyes, although the eyes would be long gone and no expression would be registering today.

  “Your granddad was Terry Maguire? The Shiner?”

  “He is my granddad. He’s still alive, Mr. Yakabuski. I spoke to him just this morning.”

  “Christ, Jimmy, the courts ruled your granddad was dead years ago. No one has seen him in decades.”

  “He ain’t dead, Mr. Yakabuski. I talk to him every month. I’ve seen him a bunch of times too. Saw him just last Christmas. He ain’t that far away anymore. And he told me he knows who killed Augustus.”

  “Because he’s the one?”

  “No, he ain’t the one. But he knows who done it. You interested?”

  “This is what you’re trading?”

  “Yes. If you think that’s a fair trade.” O’Driscoll looked at the cut-up box he was standing on, then down the alley, and up at the night sky, where there was a waxing moon one day shy of being full, a soft, yellow light out on the water. O’Driscoll looked out at the water as well, before scanning the rear of the buildings on Belfast Street. He was avoiding eye contact. Scratching his arms and wiping away blood. He looked about as beat-up as a man could look, wondering if he still owned something in this world that someone else might want.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Far up on the Northern Divide, close to the Arctic seas, three men entered a house not far from Cape Diamond. It was a large house, the exterior walls built of notched pine, the roof of cedar shake, large bay windows in front that looked out on the Francis River and the lower reaches of the Chute de Savard rapids. Class-five rapids, so there was often a howl in the air when you approached this house. The men entered and made their way toward a back room. Two of the men wore light grey uniforms with white piping on the legs and the crest of a company from the Northern Divide on the shirt pockets. One of the uniformed men was tall and sullen. The other fat and jovial. The third man was Gabriel Dumont.

  The back room was large, running the full width of the house and occupying about a third of the floor space. Dumont fished in his coat pocket for the key that unlocked the only door. He was dressed in the hides and skins of animals: a ca
ribou-hide trench coat; black leather pants and knee-high, deerskin breeches, beaded and strung with some sort of sinew; beaver-pelt gloves and hat, the hat seeming almost unnecessary because of all the hair — matted and wild black hair that spread over his shoulders and hung down his back. When he had the key, he unlocked the door and turned on an inside ceiling light.

  The bulb was low wattage and cast a mustard-yellow light that seemed almost token in the cavernous room, just enough light to reveal shadowy objects and possible walking paths. There were wooden crates stacked against the left wall, so many crates they were in rows, and workbenches of some sort beyond that, the kind auto mechanics might have. The right half of the room was less cluttered, with tables by the open door of a kitchen, the sort of kitchen you might find atop a hockey arena, and in front of the tables were twenty chairs, fanning out like church pews, and in front of the chairs, a lectern. Behind the lectern was a gold-coloured cross the size of a man, and a black furled flag, both driven into a base of dark knotted wood. On the walls were many black-and-white photographs. Candles sat on side tables set up at the end of each row of chairs.

  “Just the three of us tonight,” said Dumont, and the men took off their winter coats and hung them from a coat tree next to the door. The men in uniform took their seats before the lectern and a girl appeared. She carried a round tray with three rock glasses, a bottle of Scotch, and a small ice bucket upon it. She stood next to the door, not entering the room any further. The fat man turned and waved at her. She did not wave back. She was a pretty girl. Looked to be no more than sixteen or seventeen.

  Dumont strode to the lectern and spoke for about ten minutes. He started in French but then switched to another language, one with slashing consonants and guttural sounding vowels that were sometimes stretched so far they sounded like a moan. It was an old language of pain and attack and the men in the chairs felt sad when they heard it, as they always did. There was no ceremony this night. No lighting of candles. No singing of old songs. After he was finished talking, Dumont strode to one of the tables and the two men got up and followed him. When they were seated, the girl came and poured drinks.

  “Nathalie,” said the fat man. “Do you understand what Gabriel has just told us?”

  “Of course I understand, Pierre,” she said, smiling and offering him the silver tongs, the fat man taking the gesture as an act of fondness, when really the young girl did not want to do more work for this man than necessary. He could get his own ice. “I was taught the old ways the same as you were taught. My mother was one of your instructors. Do you not remember?”

  “Of course I do. You used to tag along. You’re not so young anymore, are you Nathalie?”

  She smiled and took back the tongs. She left the bottle on the table and went back to standing next to the door. The fat man watched her walk away.

  “A toast then! To our success!” yelled Dumont and the three men raised their glasses, gave them a clink, and began to drink. The tall man took only a small sip of Scotch and placed his glass gently upon the table. Dumont and the fat man drained their rock glasses and slammed them down.

  “This has been a long time coming,” said the fat man. “This will avenge all the wrongs we ever suffered. Can you believe it? We are the avengers. The ones that were chosen. People will be writing songs about us forever.”

  He laughed and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. Licked the Scotch he had managed to wipe up and laughed again. He was still laughing when it occurred to him he was the only one.

  “You want the songs, don’t you?” said Dumont.

  The fat man sat a little straighter in his chair. “Of course I do. We are about to become folk heroes. Who wouldn’t want that?” He looked over at the girl by the door. Gave her a wink. Turned to Dumont and gave him a similar wink. “There are advantages to being a folk hero, Gabriel. Life becomes easier for you. You would know this.”

  He poured himself another drink. Motioned for the girl to come over with the ice. When she didn’t move right away, he raised the rock glass to his mouth, was halfway there, still staring at the girl, when he heard Gabriel say, “You act as if the songs are already written. Yet you have done nothing.”

  His hand stopped moving, the rock glass suspended halfway between the table and his mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “People tell me you have become boastful. That you are spending money you do not have and running up debt that does not worry you. People are beginning to wonder why that would be.”

  The fat man finally took a sip of his Scotch, then he put down the rock glass, ran his left hand through his hair and said, “Thank God that’s all this is. You had me worried there. I have not said anything about what we are doing, Gabriel. Not a word. I promise you there is nothing to worry about.”

  Dumont threw back his head and laughed. A loud sound that boomed and echoed in the cavernous room many times before fading away. Then he slapped his knee and said in a voice filled with humour and goodwill, “Pierre, my dear old friend, do you believe the only way people can find out something about you is when you tell them?”

  Dumont took a sip of his Scotch, slapped his knee a few more times, kept laughing. The fat man tried to laugh along with him, but stopped trying when Gabriel leaned forward in his chair, placed his right hand behind the man’s head, and with his hands tightly gripping the man’s hair, said, “I need you to think for a minute. I need you to take your time answering the question I am about to ask you, because it is a very important question. Maybe the most important question you have ever been asked, so take as much time as you need. Time does not matter. You must be sure of your answer. Pierre, in your drunken boasts, in the folk songs you have heard in your dreams — have you once mentioned Springfield?”

  Dumont released his grip and beads of sweat formed on the fat man’s forehead. His hands started to tremble, and he reached for his drink, then thought better of it and pulled his hand back. Rested it on his lap. After he had done all that, he said, “I have not.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I am. Not once have I mentioned Springfield.”

  “So that part, at least, you have managed to keep a secret.”

  “I have kept it all a secret, Gabriel. I promise you . . .”

  But Dumont raised his hand and the man stopped speaking. The third man at the table, who had yet to speak, finally reached for his rock glass, took a long sip of his Scotch, looked at the fat man, and said, “What of his family?”

  “They are Travellers and have done nothing wrong. Family is why we are doing this. We will all share the bounty of the land.”

  “We do not have much time. How can he be replaced?”

  “I will make the arrangements.”

  “What of our partners? Should they be notified?”

  “I don’t see why.”

  The tall man nodded, finished his drink, and said, “Very well.” Then he put on his winter parka, the peaked cap that went with his uniform, and left the room. The girl followed him. When they had gone, Dumont rose from his seat, a nine-inch Buckmaster hunting knife already pulled from the sheath he always had tied to his leg. He flipped the knife from hand to hand.

  “Try not to be too sad about the songs. When I sing them, many years from now, I will think of you. Maybe not the fame you had expected, but still something, yes?”

  The man sitting at the table did not speak, did not move, even as a large black stain spread across the groin area of his uniform.

  Chapter Eighteen

  That night Yakabuski had a new dream, which was rare for him, something that must come with age, he figured. Most of his dreams now were of the recurring kind, or so poorly remembered when he awoke that they were little more than vaguely recalled emotions. But that night he dreamed of Augustus Morrissey having his eyes cut out and timber rafts burning on the Springfield River, men in bowler hats diving into the river to try to escap
e the flames. Barges pulled up to the North Shore and people marched by gunpoint into the mist, the men carrying the rifles wearing oilskin trench coats and badges pinned to their collars with the same insignia he had on his badge. He saw Bernard O’Toole, looking as sad and mammoth as Atlas, blocking the sun and pointing with his rifle toward the mist.

  He saw eight apartment buildings appear on a bluff, rising as quickly as spring hay. Heard an Algonquin chant, so far away in his dream he could only make out the rhythm, none of the words. After that he saw a gypsy caravan moving down the Northern Divide, a black flag flying from the lead wagon and all the light of the known world disappearing as the caravan passed. He saw a rocky peninsula jutting far into a great river, sparkling like a swath of starry sky that had fallen to earth; after that he was floating, not sure where the lines of the physical world could be found, where the planes, divides, watersheds, and dimensions had gone, drifting somewhere between all of it.

  At five in the morning he awoke, and the dream stayed with him several minutes, something else that had become rare in recent years. He knew there would be no more sleep that night. He went and made a coffee and watched the sun appear over the Springfield River, a thin red line to the east that lengthened and started to shimmer, and then broke over the treeline as a bright red ball that would soon turn white and then hang low in a cloudless sky for the rest of the day.

  . . .

  A phone ringing high on the Northern Divide has a different sound than a phone ringing in Springfield or somewhere down south. When you’re phoning up north the ring has a weak and distant sound to it, a sound muddied by audio static, by crazy changes in pitch and resonance, a sound that seems lonely and weak and always at risk of slipping away.