Ball Park

by John Farrow

  In.

  She stuck her head out.

  ‘Get lost,’ she whispered to Deets.

  He wasn’t supposed to get lost, only go back to his car and wait. He obeyed.

  Good boy.

  Quinn got to work.

  Something wasn’t right.

  She anticipated the hollow silence inside the home. The hum of a fridge like a locomotive barreling through her left ear, the ticking of a desk clock like a carpenter hammering her forehead. A scintillating electricity coursed through her bones. She was never so aware of a home’s scent as when she was robbing the place – here, a combination of fresh and stale cigarette smoke – yet she stopped. She strained to interpret auditory clues.

  She went back up the stairs, further this time, where danger might reside, where the lady of the house was sleeping. Except, she confirmed, the woman was not sleeping. Nor was she alone. Her husband must be back without the car. Either that, or … Quinn stifled an exclamation. The lady of the house is no lady! Not tonight! No way of knowing for sure, but Quinn decided that the husband must be elsewhere, looking after heart attacks and stab wounds. The identity of the man in bed with his wife – that was another matter.

  A thief uncovers intimacies in the lives of others.

  Positive that the woman was not alone, that she overheard the murmurings of a pair entwined, Quinn left them to their fury and crept downstairs.

  She needed to exercise greater caution. They were occupied and her soft footfalls should go undetected on the deep plush carpet. So soft, she wished she could take it home. Still, they were awake.

  The dining room cutlery was stainless, not silver. No reason to bother. No purse or wallet had been left in plain view. A side drawer offered a few bills, which she pocketed. She turned a doorknob and entered a home office. A masculine atmosphere. Street lamps, none direct, gave her sufficient light to nip a golden pen. There were three watches, which had weight and size, and possessed a luster. Again, that golden allure. She loved men who loved watches. Who would keep three if they were clunkers? Ezra would pay fair black-market value for them or advise her to scrap them.

  A photograph showed the lady of the house with her husband in marital bliss. Their hands resting on a knife to cut their wedding cake. Not quite a May–December union, but close. Well, well. If other pictures on display were recent, then the woman upstairs was in her late-twenties. Already tarting around. Quinn mentally scolded her, then accidentally knocked a small wooden vase containing pens off the desk. No soft carpet here. The contents clattered on the wood floor.

  Quinn snapped up the rolling vase and in three quick moves halted the runaway pens. She gently placed the vase back on the desk then looked for somewhere to hide. Curtains hanging to the floor on either side of the window, and on one side behind a chair, were her best option.

  In the aftermath of her racket she could tell that everyone in the house was still, straining to hear whatever might be gleaned from silence.

  The bedroom door opened aloft. A woman’s voice. ‘Is somebody there?’ Perhaps waiting to hear if her husband would respond. She became more direct. ‘Honey? That you?’ Quinn tiptoed to the office door and closed it as before, then tiptoed back and snugged herself in behind the chair and curtain.

  She tried not to breathe.

  The heaviness of the steps on the staircase indicated that the man in the tryst was coming down. She heard him wander around. He turned on a light, which she detected through the curtain and under the crack of the office door.

  The door opened.

  The overhead light flicked on.

  Quinn shut her eyes, as though that made her invisible.

  The man came into the room. Only a few steps.

  Quinn opened her eyes.

  He was naked, lumpy where it counted, and his silhouette revealed that he carried a pistol. Christ!

  She prayed that no floorboard under her squeaked. She heard footsteps. They were coming nearer, she thought. But the man flicked off the light and shut the door on his way out.

  He, too, wanted everything to be exactly as it had been before.

  Quinn tried not to gasp, or gulp for air.

  The man opened a door to the outside. Is he mad? He’s not dressed! Then he went back upstairs. He must have dressed up there because he came down again and the woman returned with him. ‘Babes, we got another hour. Two, if you want.’

  He didn’t want.

  She implored him to stay. ‘Don’t go. I’m crazy about you, babes.’

  The man left the house. Quinn believed that she heard his footsteps outside. The window beside her was closed and locked, although she could open it. She could escape that way.

  She waited instead.

  Lights in the house went off.

  The woman returned upstairs. Quinn imagined a slump to her shoulders.

  She stirred, stood up, stretched. In discomfort from her lengthy crouch.

  She hadn’t procured much for her trouble. She did a quick scan of the shelves behind the man’s desk chair. Photographs. Not interested. A small case. Inside, a collection of rings. A couple with tiny diamonds, others with semi-precious stones. Ezra had taught her, ‘Semi-precious means precious to me and you.’ The trip was suddenly worthwhile. She dropped the items into the zippered sack she carried with her. She opened drawers. Brochures. Catalogues. The man’s a clotheshorse. Files. Assorted junk. A nail clipper. Toothbrushes. Jesus. Extra combs. Three calculators. Moron can’t add. Nothing of interest. In a shallow drawer, although she was being slow and careful, something rolled from the back to the front. A baseball. She held it up. She could always use another baseball. This one appeared to be in good shape. The scrawl of a signature. Might be interesting. Impossible to decipher in the dim light. Quinn slipped the ball into her jacket pocket.

  She opened the office door. Listened.

  She quelled a momentary panic thinking that the lover might only have pretended to leave. Was he waiting for her to emerge? Pistol in hand? She tiptoed out.

  Halfway up the stairs, she slipped out the open window there. She dangled outside with one hand on the sill, the other clutching her loot bag, then shoved herself outward with a knee and let herself drop. She toppled over.

  Dusting herself off, she checked herself out, then walked off the property.

  She felt a familiar twinge: joy and also the sadness that came with a job being over.

  Boulevard l’Acadie was busy. Not a problem. Drivers whizzing by would not notice her through the hedge. She spotted Deets’s car. She strode more quickly than usual despite trying to keep her pace casual, and Quinn slid onto the passenger seat.

  ‘OK, Trucker boy, let’s fly!’

  Cars rushed past them on the other side of the l’Acadie fence. Headlights and taillights shining through the hedge. Other light was scant, although her eyes were accustomed to the dark. Deets didn’t budge. She noticed the mysterious dark patch across his chest that pooled below his belly and fell off his right hip.

  That was blood. All over him. Blood.

  She stared then at his face, as though to insist on an explanation.

  Deets was dead.

  He was sitting there dead.

  Deets.

  She whispered his name. ‘Deets?’

  Then forgot herself a moment, yelled, ‘Deets!’ Shook him by his near shoulder.

  He was not moving.

  A mass of blood on his chest. He’d been a fountain.

  Quinn sat in shock. Staring through the dark. Then leapt out of the car.

  She felt wetness on her hands.

  She didn’t know what to do. How to react.

  She slammed her door hard. Then opened it and slammed it again, hard.

  The window was open to the summer air and she put her head through. She said, ‘Deets.’ Very softly. ‘Oh, my God, Deets.’

  She had an odd, weird, out-of-nowhere sense that she was never going to steal again. Whether that thought was ludicrous or true, another impulse immed
iately took over. She unzipped her collapsible sack. Stuck it inside the car window, emptied the contents on the passenger seat, and dropped the bag. Then figured she’d better get out of there. Her brain fired conflicting commands and ultimatums. A half-block south, the Jarry Street gate led onto l’Acadie. A thousand people would see her walk through it, maybe a million. But what if ten people watched her cross the street, or just one, who after the news of the murder broke reported her? What then? A young blond woman was observed crossing the road at the time of the murder. She was the blond girlfriend, seen with the victim that evening.

  Better if she didn’t cross the road.

  Car lights at a distance shone on her. Immediately, she ducked behind Deets’s car, then wedged herself into the prickly hedge. The vehicle was on Selwood Road, the street she was on. She waited for it to pass but instead it turned onto the block where she’d been, then into the driveway of the house she robbed. The husband! She’d escaped in the nick of time. Not only her. The lover hadn’t left himself much time, either.

  She extricated herself from the bushes.

  Home cried out to her.

  She’d go north, towards Boulevard Métropolitain. A shopping mall abutted the expressway. She’d climb a fence then wait for a chance to cross back into her own community undetected.

  Only after she had successfully returned to Park Extension did she notice that she was still carrying the baseball in one pocket, the money she’d stolen in the other. Under a streetlight, she checked out the ball. An heirloom. The ball had not been signed by any of the current Expos, as she hoped, yet it amazed her. Her dad would go nuts over it. A former player for the Montreal Royals – the minor league Triple-A club that had been in town in her dad’s day – had inscribed his name.

  Jackie Robinson.

  She was not throwing it away.

  Quinn was tempted to call the cops. She wouldn’t identify herself in telling them where to find Deets. But she could do nothing for him and he’d be found come daylight, if not sooner. Better not to let anyone hear a girl’s voice. From that moment forward, she would pretend she knew nothing.

  Deets!

  She wanted to go straight to bed and weep, and that’s what she did.

  On the Job

  (At odds)

  His mentor had secretly bestowed a parting gift upon Émile Cinq-Mars. Neither a plaque nor a wristwatch nor a commendation. Instead, Touton saw to it that his protégé showed up for his first day at his new poste sleepless, ragged, stinky, and drunk. Within minutes of his arrival, Cinq-Mars deduced the wisdom of his old boss’s plan.

  ‘Heard you were like some kind of priest,’ Sergeant-Detective Yves Giroux challenged. ‘A squeaky-clean saint.’

  Giroux did not pose as a gallant figure. He wore his tie slackened. A protuberance of stomach sagged over his belt buckle, a slap of hairy belly often visible between buttons. He shaved at night, so he could arrive each morning with a five o’clock shadow intact. He had a habit of welling out his ears with his pinky, as if drilling into his brain, nor was he above intrusions into each nostril in plain view. He had a reputation for being loud, vulgar, and argumentative without cause.

  Giroux had heard that the new man came from different weather, so on first meeting he was confused. The arrival’s sloppy appearance belied his good repute. He’d been forewarned that Émile Cinq-Mars was the moral equivalent of the Pope, that he’d not only think of himself as lead detective, but as judge, jury, and prosecutor rolled into one. He was holier than any thou. Giroux was prepared to receive a new partner who had it in for cops as much as bad guys, someone who might give him a ticket for spitting on a public street. And yet the man before him could barely sit up straight, his tie missing in combat, his shirt partially untucked. Telltale scents of whisky and body odor emitted from his pores. Unshaven, his hair in tangles, bleary-eyed, his general disposition a pathetic wilt, the young detective more closely resembled a derelict dipsomaniac than the keen-bean, tight-assed detective he’d been warned would be a millstone around his neck for the next year. Giroux vastly preferred this revised representation, instead of the Boy Scout he’d anticipated.

  A windbreaker, even. Miles outside the bounds of protocol.

  As if begging for a reprimand.

  Cinq-Mars cottoned onto his advantage. He felt as poorly as he looked, and with the last quart of Glenfiddich merrily swishing through his bloodstream, he remained upright but only marginally functional. Still, Armand Touton had handed him a card to play. ‘The lights in here. Why so bright?’

  ‘Usually, it’s much brighter,’ Giroux attested. ‘And in case you’re interested, WE LIKE TO SHOUT!’

  Both hands went to his temples to subdue the clamor. Looking up, he saw Giroux’s lips moving although no words above a murmur were coming out. ‘Pardon?’ he asked.

  ‘ARE YOU DEAF? ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF, DETECTIVE?’

  Cops around the room stopped everything to look over.

  Cinq-Mars held up his palms in a plea for mercy. He deduced that this was probably the preferred head start, better than arriving as a choirboy. If he was making a favorable impression, he owed it to Touton’s treachery.

  ‘Rough night,’ he murmured.

  ‘I hope she was good,’ Giroux said. He performed a gyration with his tongue that Cinq-Mars could have done without. ‘Rubber to the road, Detective. We pulled a case. OK to drive?’

  Cinq-Mars nodded, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘Breakfast first. Bacon, sausage, eggs. Tons of ketchup.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Does someone I know care? We’re loading you with coffee. The captain hates drunks. We don’t arrest drunkards here. We go straight to punishment. Dish out hardcore abuse. Better we get you out of here fast.’

  Sergeant-Detective Yves Giroux had not been kidding about breakfast. He ordered a feast. Cinq-Mars endured the visual unpleasantness and stuck to coffee. He was hoping caffeine might pitch him through his day.

  ‘How’s the old man getting on?’ Giroux inquired.

  ‘Touton? Fine.’ He’d let news of the captain’s retirement travel the usual channels.

  ‘He sends you here to screw me? Think you have the dick for that?’

  Answer a probing question with one equally intemperate. Basic. ‘Why would he want me to screw you?’

  ‘He’s one mother of a hard-ass prickster. That could be the main reason.’

  Cinq-Mars thought as fast as his throbbing brain cells could manage. He could not agree with Giroux without belittling himself. The cop grapevine confirmed him and Touton as protégé and mentor, a connection he would not betray. But if he defended his old boss, things might quickly derail with his new one.

  ‘I agree with you there,’ he said, keeping Giroux in the dark. ‘He is who he is.’

  ‘I was on the Night Patrol myself,’ Giroux revealed. ‘Years back.’

  ‘He fired you?’ Ask a probing question.

  ‘Why think that?’ The man posed an equally intemperate question back. Giroux was also familiar with the basics, as though they’d both attended the school of Armand Touton. Both had.

  ‘Before my time. I don’t know.’

  Giroux pulled the gooey routine with his toast again, dropping a concoction of toast and yolk and ketchup into his maw. Cinq-Mars looked away.

  ‘I quit on him,’ Giroux said.

  ‘Heard that. Can’t remember where. Something about wanting to extend yourself in the department. Now I remember. Touton told me. Same time I told him almost the same thing.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Is that what?’

  ‘Why he stuck me with you?’

  ‘Did he do that?’ Cinq-Mars knew his old boss had done so. Still, he preferred the bliss of ignorance. He swigged his coffee.

  ‘Maybe he wants to pull you back. Sent you to me to change your mind about being a real cop.’

  ‘You think being in the Night Patrol isn’t being a real cop?’

  ‘Heard it’ll be
disbanded, soon as Touton goes. Ever hear that?’

  ‘That would be unconscionable.’

  ‘Un-what? Un-conscionable? Where are you from, Cinq-Mars, the Ivory Fucking Tower?’

  He tried to suppress his elevated vocabulary around cops, without much luck. Like an accent, his language trailed alongside him wherever he went, sometimes to his advantage, often not. Within police culture, which was changing too slowly for his liking, he was frequently caught out.

  ‘You might as well hear it from me,’ he told his new boss. ‘I attended university. I graduated. Not veterinarian school, although I specialized in the care of farm animals. You don’t like it, I don’t care. You want to joke about it? Be my guest. All I ask is that you be original because I’ve heard every bad joke going.’

  ‘I thought it was seminary school you went to.’

  So he’d done some research. ‘Do I look like a priest to you?’

  ‘Dog shit in hell’s kennel is what you look like to me, kid. I can barely stand the sight of you, not to mention the stink. Anybody ever tell you that you have one helluva huge honker? My God. How do you keep your head from tilting forward and getting your nose wedged in the ground? You want to watch it going through a door sideways. Always, straight on. Don’t turn your head in a gunfight, either. You’ll get that schnoz blown right off. Don’t present a target like that. In a gunfight, gently insert your nose up the crack of your ass and then shoot. Never show your silhouette. Now, pay up. We’ve got a case.’

  ‘Pay up? You had breakfast. I had coffee.’

  ‘Do the honors. Incidentally, if you blow that thing, use a towel, not Kleenex.’

  Catching up to him outside, Cinq-Mars said, ‘Silhouette’s a big word.’

  ‘Go fuck a wombat.’

  In his thirty years, Cinq-Mars had never registered exactly what a wombat might be. Some sort of Australian animal or bird or something? Intuition told him that Giroux probably didn’t know, either.