by Kathy Reichs
“Tabarnac!” shrieked a voice directly in my ear. The piercing Québecois expletive sent my heart leaping into my throat.
I turned and saw that the voice came from a first-floor window eight inches to my left. A face scowled through the screen in undisguised annoyance.
“What do you think you’re doing? You break that door, trou de cul, and you’re going to pay for it.”
“Police,” said Claudel, ignoring the asshole reference.
“Yeah? You show me something.”
Claudel held his shield close to the screen. The face leaned forward and I could see it was that of a woman. It was flushed and porcine, its perimeter bordered by a diaphanous lime scarf, knotted with exuberance on the top of her head. The ends sprouted upward, bobbing on the air like chiffon ears. Save for the absence of armaments and ninety extra pounds, she bore a noticeable resemblance to the goat.
“So?” The scarf tips floated as she looked from Claudel to Charbonneau to me. Deciding I was the least threatening, she pointed them in my direction.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” I said, feeling instantly as if I’d done a Jack Webb imitation. It sounded as clichéd in French as it would have in English. At least I hadn’t added “ma’am” at the end.
“Is this about Jean-Marc?”
“We really shouldn’t do this in the street,” I said, wondering who Jean-Marc was.
The face hesitated then disappeared. In a moment we heard the rattle of locks being turned, and the door was opened by an enormous woman in a yellow polyester housedress. Her underarms and midsection were dark with perspiration, and I could see sweat mixed with grime in the folds that circled her neck. She held the door for us, then turned and waddled down a narrow hall, disappearing through a door on the left. We followed in single file, Claudel leading, me bringing up the rear. The corridor smelled of cabbage and old grease. The temperature inside was at least ninety-five degrees.
Her tiny apartment was rank with the stench of overused cat litter, and was crammed with the dark, heavy furniture mass-produced in the twenties and thirties. I doubted the fabric had been changed from the original. A clear vinyl runner cut diagonally across the living room carpet, which was a threadbare imitation of a Persian original. There wasn’t an uncluttered surface in sight.
The woman lumbered to an overstuffed chair by the window and dropped heavily into it. A metal TV table to her right teetered, and a can of diet Pepsi wobbled with the tremor. She settled in and glanced nervously out the window. I wondered if she was expecting someone, or if she simply hated to have her surveillance interrupted.
I handed her the photo. She looked at it, and her eyes took on the shape of larvae, burrowing between their well-padded lids. She raised them to the three of us and realized, too late, that she had placed herself at a disadvantage. Standing, we had the benefit of height. She craned up at us, shifting the larvae from one of us to the other. Her mood seemed to change from belligerent to cautious.
“You are. . .?” began Claudel.
“Marie-Eve Rochon. What is this all about? Is Jean-Marc in trouble?”
“You are the concierge?”
“I collect the rent for the owner,” she answered. Though there wasn’t much room, she shifted in the chair. Its protest was audible.
“Know him?” asked Claudel, gesturing at the photo.
“Yes and no. He’s staying here but I don’t know him.”
“Where?”
“Number 6. First entrance, room on the ground level,” she said, making a wide gesture with her arm. The loose, lumpy flesh jiggled like tapioca.
“What’s his name?”
She thought for a moment, fidgeting absently with a scarf tip. I watched a bead of sweat reach its hydrostatic maximum, burst, and trickle down her face. “St. Jacques. Course, they don’t usually use their real names.”
Charbonneau was taking notes.
“How long has he been here?”
“Maybe a year. That’s a long time for here. Most are vagrants. Course, I don’t see him much. Maybe he comes and goes. I don’t pay attention.” She flicked her eyes down and crimped her lips at the obviousness of her lie. “I don’t ask.”
“You get any references?”
Her lips fluttered with a loud puff of air, and she shook her head slowly.
“He have any visitors?”
“I told you, I don’t see him much.” For a time she was silent. Her fidgeting had pulled the scarf to the right, and the ears were now off center on her head. “Seems like he’s always alone.”
Charbonneau looked around. “The other apartments like this?”
“Mine’s the biggest.” The corners of her mouth tightened and there was an almost imperceptible lift to her chin. Even in shabbiness there was room for pride. “The others are broken up. Some are just rooms with hot plates and toilets.”
“He here now?”
The woman shrugged.
Charbonneau closed his notebook. “We need to talk to him. Let’s go.”
She looked surprised. “Moi?”
“We may need to get into the flat.”
She leaned forward in the chair and rubbed both hands on her thighs. Her eyes widened and her nostrils seemed to dilate. “I can’t do that. That would be a violation of privacy. You need a warrant or something.”
Charbonneau fixed her with a level stare and did not answer. Claudel sighed loudly, as though bored and disappointed. I watched a rivulet of condensed water run down the Pepsi can and join a ring at its base. No one spoke or moved.
“Okay, okay, but this is your idea.”
Shifting her weight from ham to ham, she scooted forward in diagonal thrusts, like a sailboat on a series of short tacks. The housedress crept higher and higher, exposing enormous stretches of marbleized flesh. When she had maneuvered her center of gravity to the chair’s edge, she placed both hands on the arms and levered herself up.
She crossed to a desk on the far side of the room and gophered around in a drawer. Shortly, she withdrew a key and checked its tag. Satisfied, she held it out to Charbonneau.
“Thank you, madame. We will be happy to check your property for irregularities.”
As we turned to leave, her curiosity overcame her. “Hey, what’s this guy done?”
“We’ll return the key on our way out,” said Claudel. Once again, we left with eyes fixed on our backs.
• • •
The corridor inside the first entrance was identical to the one we’d just left. Doors opened to the left and right, and, at the rear, a steep staircase led to an upper floor. Number 6 was the first on the left. The building was stifling and eerily quiet.
Charbonneau stood to the left, Claudel and I to the right. Both their jackets hung loose, and Claudel rested his palm on the butt of his .357. He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked a second time. Same response.
The two detectives exchanged glances, and Claudel nodded. The corners of his mouth were tucked in tightly, beaking his face even more then usual. Charbonneau fitted the key into the lock and swung the door in. We waited, rigid, listening to dust motes settle back into place. Nothing.
“St. Jacques?”
Silence.
“Monsieur St. Jacques?”
Same answer.
Charbonneau raised a palm in my direction. I waited while the detectives entered, then followed, my heart pounding in my chest.
The room held little furniture. In the left-rear corner a pink plastic curtain hung by rusted rings from a semicircular rod, separating the area into a makeshift bathroom. Below the curtain I could see the base of a commode and a set of pipes that probably led to a sink. The pipes were badly rusted and supported a thriving colony of a soft, green life-form. To the right of the curtain, the back wall had been fitted with a Formica-topped counter. It held a hot plate, several plastic tumblers, and an unmatched collection of dishes and pans.
In front of the curtain, an unmade bed ran the length of the left wall. A table fas
hioned from a large plywood plank was placed along the right. Its base was formed by two sawhorses, each clearly stamped as property of the city of Montreal. The surface was heaped with books and papers. The wall above was covered with maps, photos, and newspaper articles, forming a cut-and-paste mosaic that extended the length of the table. A metal folding chair was tucked below. The room’s only window was to the right of the front door, identical to that used by Madame Rochon. Two bare bulbs jutted from a hole in the ceiling.
“Nice place,” said Charbonneau.
“Yeah. A thing of beauty. I’d rank it up there with herpes and Burt Reynolds’s hairpiece.”
Claudel moved to the toilet area, withdrew a pen from his pocket, and gingerly drew back the curtain.
“Defense Ministry might want to take scrapings. This stuff may have potential for biological warfare.” He dropped the curtain and moved toward the table.
“Dickhead isn’t even here,” said Charbonneau, flipping a blanket edge onto the bed with the tip of his shoe.
I was surveying the kitchenware on the Formica counter. Two Expos beer tumblers. A dented saucepan encrusted with something resembling SpaghettiOs. A half-eaten chunk of cheese congealed in the same substance in a blue china bowl. A cup from Burger King. Several cellophane packages of saltine crackers.
It hit me when I leaned over the hot plate. The lingering warmth made my blood turn to ice, and I spun toward Charbonneau.
“He’s here!”
My words hit the air at the exact moment a door exploded open in the right-hand corner of the room. It slammed into Claudel, knocking him off balance and pinning his right arm and shoulder against the wall. A figure lunged across the room, body doubled over, legs thrusting toward the open front door. I could hear breath rasping in his throat.
For just an instant in his headlong plunge across the room, the fugitive raised his head, and two flat, dark eyes met mine, peering out from under the orange brim of a cap. In that brief flash I recognized the look of a terrified animal. Nothing more. Then he was gone.
Claudel regained his balance, unsnapped his gun, and bolted out the door. Charbonneau was right behind him. Without thinking, I plunged into the chase.
WHEN I SHOT ONTO THE STREET THE SUNLIGHT BLINDED ME. I squinted up Berger trying to locate Charbonneau and Claudel. The parade was over, and large numbers of people were drifting down from Sherbrooke. I spotted Claudel shouldering his way through the crowd, his face red and contorted as he demanded passage through the sticky bodies. Charbonneau was close behind. He was holding his badge straight arm in front of him, using it like a chisel to gouge his way forward.
The throng partied on, unaware that anything unusual was taking place. A heavy blonde swayed on her boyfriend’s shoulders, her head thrown back, her arms held high, wagging a bottle of Molson’s at the sky. A drunken man wearing a Quebec flag like a Superman cape hung from a lamppost. He prompted the crowd in chanting, “Le Québec aux Québécois!” I noticed the chorus had a stridence that hadn’t been there earlier.
I veered into the vacant lot, climbed onto a cement block, and stood on tiptoe to scan the crowd. St. Jacques, if that’s who it had been, was nowhere to be seen. He had the home-court advantage, and had used it to put as much geography as possible between himself and us.
I could see one of the backup team replacing his handset and joining the chase. He’d radioed for reinforcements, but I doubted a cruiser could penetrate the mob. He and his partner were elbowing their way toward Berger and Ste. Catherine, well behind Claudel and Charbonneau.
Then I spotted the orange baseball cap. It was ahead of Charbonneau, who had turned east on Ste. Catherine, unable to see it through the mass of bodies. St. Jacques was heading west. As quickly as I saw him, he disappeared. I waved my arms for attention, but it was useless. I’d lost sight of Claudel, and neither of the patrolmen could see me.
Without thinking, I jumped from the block and plunged into the crowd. The smell of sweat, suntan lotion, and stale beer seemed to seep from the bodies around me, forming a bubble of human smog. I lowered my head and plowed through the swarm with less than my usual courtesy, bulldozing a path toward St. Jacques. I had no badge to excuse my roughness, so I pushed and shoved and avoided eye contact. Most people took the jostling with good humor, others paused to fling insults at my back. The majority were gender specific.
I tried to see St. Jacques’s baseball cap through the hundreds of heads surrounding me, but it was impossible. I set a course toward the point where I’d spotted him, driving through the bodies like an icebreaker on the St. Lawrence.
It almost worked. I was close to Ste. Catherine when I was grabbed roughly from behind. A hand the size of a Prince tennis racket wrapped itself around my throat and my ponytail was yanked sharply downward. My chin shot up, and I felt, or heard, something snap in my neck. The hand jerked me backward, and pressed me flat against the chest of a Yeti construction worker. I could feel his heat and smell his perspiration as it soaked my hair and back. A face came close to my ear, and I was enveloped in the odor of sour wine, cigarette smoke, and stale nacho chips.
“Hey, la plotte, who the fuck you shoving?”
I could not have answered were I inclined. This seemed to anger him further and he released my hair and neck, placed both hands on my back, and shoved violently. My head snapped forward like a catapult launcher, and the force of the movement propelled me into a woman in short shorts and stiletto heels. She screamed, and the people around us separated slightly. I threw my hands out in an attempt to regain my balance, but it was too late. I went down, bouncing hard off someone’s knee.
As I hit the pavement I slid and scraped my cheek and forehead, and threw my arms over my head in a reflex of self-preservation. The blood was pounding in my ears. I could feel surface gravel grinding into my right cheek, and knew I had lost some of the skin. As I attempted to push off the pavement with my hands, a boot came down hard on my fingers, mashing them. I could see nothing but knees, legs, and feet as the crowd rolled over me, seeming not to see me until the instant of tripping over me.
I rolled onto my side and tried again to come to my hands and knees. Unintended blows from feet and legs kept me from righting myself. No one stopped to shield me or help me up.
Then I heard an angry voice, and felt the crowd recede slightly. A small pocket of space formed around me, and a hand appeared at my face, its fingers gesturing impatiently. I grasped it and pulled myself up, rising, unbelievably, to sunlight and oxygen.
The hand was attached to Claudel. He held back the crowd with his other arm as I got painfully to my feet. I saw his lips move but couldn’t understand what he was saying. As usual, he seemed to be annoyed. Nonetheless, he’d never looked so good. He finished speaking, paused, and looked me over. He took in the jagged tear in my right knee and the abrasions on my elbows. His eyes came to rest on my right cheek. It was scraped and bleeding, and the eye on that side was beginning to swell shut.
Dropping my hand, he withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and gestured at my face. When I reached for it my hand was trembling. I blotted away blood and gravel, refolded to a clean surface, and held the linen against my cheek.
Claudel leaned close and shouted in my ear, “Stay with me!”
I nodded.
He worked his way toward the west side of Berger, where the crowd was a little thinner. I followed on rubbery legs. Then he turned and began to worm his way in the direction of the car. I lunged and grabbed his arm. He stopped and looked a question at me. I shook my head vehemently, and his eyebrows went from a deep V to a Stan Laurel imitation.
“He’s over there!” I screamed, pointing in the opposite direction. “I saw him.”
A man in a Tweedledee costume brushed past me. He was eating a snow cone, and the drops from the melt-off were painting a red trail down his belly. It looked like a blood-spatter pattern.
Claudel’s brows dived in the midline. “You are going to the car,” he said.
“I
saw him on Ste. Catherine!” I repeated, thinking perhaps he hadn’t heard. “Outside Les Foufounes Électriques! He was going toward St. Laurent!” Even to me, my voice was sounding a bit hysterical.
It got his attention. He hesitated a second, assessing the damage to my cheek and limbs.
“You’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You will go to the car?”
“Yes!” He turned to go. “Wait.” One by one I lifted my trembling legs over a rusted metal cable that looped knee-high around the edge of the lot, crossed to another cement block, and stepped onto it. I scanned the sea of heads, looking for the orange baseball cap. Nothing. Claudel watched impatiently as I surveyed the crowd, shifting his eyes from me to the intersection then back again. He reminded me of a sled dog waiting for the gun.
Finally, I shook my head and raised my hands.
“Go. I’ll keep looking.”
Skirting the open lot, he began elbowing his way in the direction I’d indicated. The mob on Ste. Catherine was bigger than ever, and, in a few minutes, I watched his head disappear into it. The swarm seemed to absorb him, like an army of antibodies seeking out and surrounding a foreign protein. One moment he was an individual, the next a dot in the pattern.
I searched until my vision blurred, but hard as I tried I couldn’t locate Charbonneau or St. Jacques. Beyond St. Urbain, I could see a squad car nibbling its way into the edge of the crowd, its lights flashing red and blue. The revelers ignored its whining insistence on right of way. Once I caught a flash of orange, but it turned out to be a tiger wearing tails and high-top sneakers. Moments later she passed closer, carrying her costume head and drinking a Dr Pepper.
The sun was burning, and my head pounded. I could feel a crust hardening on my abraded cheek. I kept scanning and rescanning, sweeping the crowd. I refused to quit until Charbonneau and Claudel returned. But I knew it was farce. St. Jean and the day had smiled on our quarry, and he had escaped.
• • •
An hour later we were gathered around the car. Both detectives had removed their jackets and ties and tossed them in the backseat. Beads of sweat glistened on their faces and flowed into their collars. Their underarms and backs were saturated, and Charbonneau’s face was the color of a raspberry tart. His hair stood on end in front, reminding me of a schnauzer with a bad clip. My T-shirt hung limp, and my spandex workout pants felt as if I’d put them on straight from the washer. Our breathing had slowed to normal, and “fuck” had been said at least a dozen times, with everyone contributing.
