Mary Cyr

by David Adams Richards

“Give this to Señorita Cyr.”

  But before she could do so, Mary Cyr was arrested.

  She now wanted to show Ángel what Victor had left her—she herself had listened to the tape. But she wasn’t sure what she should do, or what it was she was hearing. The idea of who she now was, was of course very strange—once her boyfriend died underground she suddenly was a hero, all the girls loved her. Now that Mary Cyr was arrested, they all clamoured about, asking what she would do—asking if she was going to the jail to protest the death of her true love.

  Yet now she realized that if she really wanted to be a hero—if she really wanted to protest—she would have to do something that seemed to be against every fibre of her being. She would have to reveal what Victor had given her before he was killed. And she herself was only fifteen years old.

  “Victor wanted me to give this to Mary Cyr,” she said, haltingly.

  “¿María Cyr?” Ángel said, startled. “¿No no, María Cyr?”

  “Sí—sí, Mary Cyr,” she said.

  And with that she turned the recorder on. She told him there was something coming from underground, and she wanted him to listen and tell her what it was.

  “Nada—I hear nothing,” he said before it even started.

  Esperar, she said.

  Wait.

  They could hear Aunt Lucretia curse out in the kitchen and say:

  “Hijo de puta.”

  “Esperar,” Gabriella said.

  Wait.

  Ángel waited, bothered by his aunt’s loud cursing. Now and again he would look to his right and listen to her curse, and then he would look back toward his sister.

  Gabriella’s eyes were pleading. He glanced away toward the statue of the Lady of Guadalupe. For some reason he had his eyes riveted on that. And then he heard something terrible.

  Tink Tink Tink Tink—sounding like a spoon hitting tin.

  It was, and Ángel knew this, someone’s unmistakable calling—TINK TINK TINK.

  And it was terrible because Ángel knew instantly where it had come from.

  He stared at the statue and felt a brief pang in his chest. As if it came from the Mother of God.

  “Sí,” he said.

  He looked at her and looked away once more.

  “Si sabía el señor DeRolfo—si sabía—¿qué vamos a hacer?” she asked.

  If Mr. DeRolfo knew—if he knew—what are we to do?

  Then she took Maxwell the truck out of her dresser drawer and placed it before him. He stared at it, unfazed, and then looked up at her. Then back at it.

  He did what he always did when he was confused. He got angry and blamed his sister for being lazy, and silly, and superstitious, and too Mexican.

  He went to his room. There was nothing in it except a poster of Juan Manuel Márquez and some old weights. He lay down on the small bed, so that it creaked.

  “No,” he said.

  But he had to do something—because important people had told him he was angry, and everyone now said that because he had been Victor’s best friend, he would do something; and if he didn’t do something, he would be a coward.

  5.

  ÁNGEL GLOTON TOOK THE BERETTA—AND WENT OUT THAT night. The trees were waving, slightly at their tops. The buildings were dark. The idea was to kill John Delano, who had helped Mary Cyr with the most terrible crime, killing Florin. He was going to do this now to prove to Gabriella that he knew who were the real criminals. Even if he was caught, they wouldn’t really blame him. With men dying in the mine, and with one boy missing and one dead—they would look at him in awe. This is what he was thinking. He would go to Delano’s villa, knock on the door and have the gun ready.

  But things did not turn out that way.

  Constable Fey pulled his police car right up on the sidewalk in front of him. He stopped and started to go around the car, when Fey opened the passenger door and told him to get in.

  When Ángel did, he didn’t look at Fey. All the exaltation and feelings of grandeur had gone, and now he suddenly felt ashamed.

  “What are you trying to pretend?” Fey said. “You have no idea what is going on. If you are thinking of confronting that Canadian policeman, think again.”

  Ángel didn’t speak. Fey reached over, took the gun from Angel’s belt and put it in the glove compartment.

  He shrugged. Fey said he would tell Ángel one thing.

  “What?”

  “No sabes lo que está pasando.”

  You don’t know what is going on.

  But Constable Fey did—much more than John thought. Constable Fey had just in the most unlikely way he could have imagined retrieved the Beretta that was used in the murder of Ángel’s father. He had been trying to find it for eight months. It had gone from Hernández to a woman named Little Boots, who gave it back to Hernández—who had given it to Carlos to get rid of. Carlos gave it to his wife, Gidgit, just after the disaster. She was supposed to dispose of it, but it was so beautiful she did not. Fey had lost sight of this gun, which had come from Erappo Pole’s locker at the police station. Suddenly he found it in Ángel’s possession. He also knew Ángel’s father was dead, but would not tell him that yet. Ángel’s father had known about Hulk Hernández and Carlos DeRolfo, and was trying to expose them, to save children like Gabriella.

  So Fey told Ángel, who seemed at this moment filled with an indignant self-righteousness, to go home.

  6.

  AS FOR AMIGO MINING, XAVIER HAD RECEIVED REQUESTS FROM Tarsco about accountability some eleven months before. He had sent them on to his friend in Mexico City, Alfonso Bara—who as yet was silently watching the rather extraordinary machinations in Oathoa and the great case being driven forward by his arch-enemy, Isabella Tallagonga.

  At first he was envious of her landing what seemed to be such a grand international case—but now he saw flaws everywhere. He knew because of the documents Xavier had sent him that the international company Tarsco had asked for an inspection of the refitting that had never happened. Bara also knew from these documents sent by Mary Cyr from the office when she went there that long-ago night that someone at Tarsco had most likely sent fourteen million dollars for upgrades to the mine’s infrastructure—and he suspected that none of this money found a home beneath the surface. Now DeRolfo was lying on two fronts. First, that the upgrades were done, which was a lie; and second, that Amigo had paid for them because Tarsco was negligent. Another lie. The first lie told because they had kept the mine open, the second because they needed Tarsco as a scapegoat because of the implosion. Yet one lie effectively cancelled out the other. That is when Bara knew Mary Cyr was innocent.

  Usually Bara wouldn’t care about someone else’s jurisdiction. But he had his own career to think of, and Tallagonga believed in her heart this case would trump Alfonso Bara’s career. That she would get what they both wanted: under attorney general. Actually, both wanted to be part of the under attorney general office—both wanted the same, soon to be newly open, position. So he waited, and said to his wife, who was born near Oathoa and hated the DeRolfo family:

  “No seas impaciente—¡no seas impaciente!”

  Do not be impatient—do not be impatient!

  So Bara said this also, in private to his allies in Mexico City:

  “I think we should excavate, maybe bit by bit, and see what upgrades Amigo did do, now that we know millions were supposedly given them—then we will know who to charge with a crime.”

  So no matter what happened in Oathoa—the truth would come out over time, and the DeRolfos were doomed.

  And Dr. DeRolfo had other things to worry about. Terribly ruthless people now knew he had lost the Beretta and it was with the police. DeRolfo had not known his wife had given this gun to Ángel, but by now Erappo Pole did, and had told Hulk Hernández this. That is, that this would implicate them both sooner or later. Hernández visited Carlos DeRolfo and told him that people expected certain things from him—that is, they wanted the investigation into everything to go away. That
it was attention none of them wanted or needed. That the longer it went on the more attention it would create. But Carlos explained, I am doing my best.

  “Yes—you are doing your best, making it an international incident—there should be no incident over this at all—there should have been no press whatsoever—people here are very angry—” Hernández laughed when he said this, as if DeRolfo’s mistakes wouldn’t result in a bullet to the head. But both knew very well that they would.

  And worse than that, Carlos was asked to go see Constable Fey. He went into the office, sat in a chair and looked at the bulletins on the board. Fey saw him looking at the forms for deep-sea fishing, and asked him if he had ever done such. Carlos shook his head.

  “No, no.”

  “Well, you should go—it’s a very good time,” Fey said.

  Fey opened the desk drawer, took out some pictures and tossed them his way.

  “What do you see there?”

  “A male child of fourteen in rigor mortis,” Carlos said. Sounding very official.

  “The male child you found in the villa of the Canadian?”

  “Yes—that would be him.”

  “And what did he die from?”

  “My deeply held opinion is that it was arsenic.”

  “Your deeply held opinion is that it was arsenic—yes—well—you are the doctor, Doctor—but my deeply held opinion is that he was choked, his throat was constricted—by someone picking him up off the ground—and then dropping him. My deeply held opinion is that he lived an hour or two longer than that person thought, and suffered greatly—but managed to struggle to Ms. Cyr’s villa.”

  Carlos looked at the pictures, perplexed, as if he was studying something he was unaware of.

  “No—” he said finally, and looking up at Fey gave a weak astonished smile.

  “Sí,” Fey said, nonchalantly picking the pictures back up, “sí, sí.” He nodded to no one in particular. “It was a chokehold by a man—that’s how he died—and—” he continued nonchalantly as well “—it happened outside—sí—outside—in the wild blue yonder (this he said in English)—out there—near the coal pit—that’s where it must have happened—arsenic—no—there is coal on his feet—and on the bedsheet too—it is quite amazing your friend, the policeman Erappo Pole, did not notice this, when that Canadian police officer John Delano noticed this in five minutes. And we both know the Canadian officer is stupido. But maybe he is not.” Then Fey went around to the doctor and put his left arm across his throat and held that arm with his right hand, until Carlos felt himself beginning to choke.

  “Like this, amigo,” Fey said.

  “Well, perhaps it is that Canadian police officer then—think of it—perhaps it was he?” DeRolfo said, still with Fey’s arm across his throat, and the memory of the sad little boy gasping for air.

  “No—I do not think so,” Fey said.

  Carlos tried to protest, but Fey said nothing more. In fact, he busied himself with other things in the office and began to speak to someone else—as if Carlos DeRolfo wasn’t even there. Fey then went back to his desk, where he put the pictures away, took the Beretta out of the same drawer and handed it gently to a female officer.

  “¿Es la pistola que desea probar?”

  Is that the pistol you want tested?

  7.

  ALL OF THIS MADE CARLOS AND HIS WIFE MORE UNPREDICTABLE, more terrified, more hysterical. And caused them to plan terrible things one moment (like shooting five or six more people, including Hulk Hernández) and give money to charities the next. Their daughter, Sharon, came back from a morning ride, and was astonished to see them huddling together near the stables behind some bales of hay as she rode up, as if they were in hiding.

  Once, she had to grab her mother by the arm and say:

  “Momma—it’s me, Sharon—it’s me. What is the matter with you?” Hulk Hernández now realized they had to be taken care of, or else he would be in trouble. He also realized that Gidgit was not above killing him. He also knew that they would be blabbing their mouths off at the slightest sign of trouble.

  So as he drove around in his big SUV, he realized things were coming to a head, and something had to be done. He hated the Canadian police officer. But he hated the attention Mary Cyr had brought to them. It was almost as if he and Erappo Pole were in a cell with her.

  “Why can’t you get the gun back?” he asked Pole, in a sly, accusing manner.

  “I tried. I tried. They have taken it out of his office, and locked it away—con el ejército.”

  With the army.

  “Well—we pay you for that not to happen,” Hernández said.

  * * *

  —

  So then soon after Carlos had visited Constable Fey, far away in another state the phone rang, and after the caller asked for someone, saying they needed to speak mujer a mujer (woman to woman), a voice hardly ever heard came to the phone:

  “¿Sí? ¿Qué pasa ahora?”

  Yes? What is it now?

  This was the voice of Little Boots Baron. And it was not at all a happy voice anymore. And who was impertinently calling her was Gidgit DeRolfo.

  The worst of it was, Little Boots hadn’t even wanted to be involved. The plan was put to her one September day a few years before by Hulk Hernández—money sitting there probably unable to be traced—and he a good friend of hers, willing to do her bidding, working right there—did she know DeRolfo and his wife, no; would she like to, no! But she could be persuaded to take some of that money—she could also, Hernández said, launder much more of her own money through the mine, and it would be held in an account for her. Hernández was already laundering some. But Little Boots would be treated much better.

  “How do you know this?”

  “Mrs. DeRolfo approached us. She needs help with the money.”

  “Well then—let us not disappoint them.”

  From that day forward no matter how dangerous it was, the mine could not stop production, for she, Little Boots Baron, said it could not because much of her money was laundered through it.

  No matter what they told her about methane, or damage to the structures after three-hundred metres, or water seeping in the walls, she always said the same thing:

  “No—tienes que siga funcionando.”

  No—you have to keep it running.

  So the DeRolfos did just that.

  Little Boots had no interest in them at all. Or in those miners who toiled underground. However, she now was a little bit interested in Mary Cyr. Now that there was press, now that there were pictures, now that there was too much attention, Baron was adamant the attention must remain where it was: on Mary Cyr herself.

  “Es importante que las estacas para ella convertirse en muy altas,” she said to this annoying caller.

  It is important that the stakes for her become very high.

  “They will, señorita,” Gidgit DeRolfo assured her, in a weak, terrified voice. “Just you wait and see.” For Gidgit had phoned begging for reassurance in a terrified voice.

  It was that weak terrified voice that signed her and her husband’s death warrant.

  “And what about Sharon?” Hernández asked later when she told him that the DeRolfos must be silenced.

  “Ah,” Baron said, hanging up. She had made too many decisions already.

  What Little Boots Baron realized that same night looking at those same pictures, taken in the past few weeks by Sharon DeRolfo (a woman whose life Little Boots had just decided to spare), was how much she and Mary Cyr looked like sisters.

  “¡Mi alma, podríamos ser gemelos! My soul, we could be twins!” she declared.

  It made her quite happy to look like someone so well known at the moment. But when she turned toward the mirror, unlike Mary Cyr’s deep and compassionate loveliness, her almost holiness, Little Boots’s own face was dead, like stone. This is what she realized: that she would never ever get any compassion back.

  8.

  “MEA CULPA—MEA CULPA—MEA MAXIMA
CULPA” WAS A caption in one of the more sensational papers in Mexico City. Der Spiegel published it as well.

  Mary Cyr did look to be praying. Which of course was completely outrageous, that a woman like her would pray. It was joked about in the common room of the English department at the University of New Brunswick by a woman she had once insulted. And the men, of course—those who believed in equality, and gender parity—all those things they were always taught to agree to and accept—being as they were in school from grade one on, and never having left the classroom, did not think that their glee at her demise was anything more than appropriate. For all of them most of their lives existed to do what they had been taught, to create and destroy scapegoats.

  So then was this line:

  “She fired her pilot, Mr. Claude Devereaux, because he didn’t manage to land a plane at the exact time she wanted—”

  There were also quotes from her past:

  “The French are racist.”

  “The Dutch are even racister.”

  OR:

  “Who in hell could like the Swedes—especially their hockey coaches—they hate the Canadians, it’s our patriotic duty to hate them back!”

  “How dare she say that about Swedish hockey coaches,” one well-known Globe and Mail hockey reporter said.

  Then there were these two short summations by former friends:

  “By the age of seventeen she had already been criminally responsible for drowning her little Acadian friend Denise Albert, and well known as a bigot. Then there was Bobby. She would never ever admit it, but Bobby had been fathered by her grandfather—and was abused.” WJ

  And:

  “It is also suggested that she seduced her own cousin—when she was seventeen.” WJ

  Sometimes the reporters would say their information came from other sources—BB or DC or LE.

  “Who the hell is LE?” Mary would say. “It’s not fair—I don’t even know any LEs and he said I slept with him—I don’t remember sleeping with any LEs—”