Forty Words for Sorrow

by Giles Blunt

  "What are you doing here?"

  Lise Delorme was on his doorstep, rain sparkling in her hair, her cheeks pink. Her voice was full of excitement. "It's a ridiculous hour, I know, but I drove past on my way home and saw your light was on and I have to tell you what just happened."

  "You drove by on your way home?" Madonna Road was three miles out of her way. Cardinal held the door open for her.

  "Cardinal, you aren't going to believe this. You know the Corbett case?"

  DELORME sat on the edge of the couch, hands flying every which way as she told Cardinal everything, from Musgrave's first appearance to Dyson's laying his head on the bar like a man about to be guillotined.

  Cardinal leaned back in his chair by the woodstove, countercurrents of dread and relief flowing across his belly. He listened as she outlined Musgrave's suspicions, Dyson's ambivalence, her own moments of doubt when she discovered the Florida condo, the boat receipt.

  "You searched my place without a warrant," Cardinal said with as little inflection as possible.

  She ignored him, small hands moving in the light, her accent stronger than he'd ever heard it. "For me, the worst moment." Hand on heart, small round breast momentarily emphasized. "Worst moment absolutely was finding that boat receipt."

  "Which boat receipt was that?" Cardinal placed the question between them with a coolness he did not feel. Brazen as a professional thief, Delorme went straight to his file cabinet. She half knelt to open the drawer, and then her pale fingers were riffling through his papers. Cardinal was citizen enough to feel outrage at the invasion, cop enough to feel admiration, and man enough, he noted with annoyance, to find it slightly erotic. Delorme pulled out the receipt: One Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, fifty-thousand dollars. "When I saw that date, my heart went like the Titanic. Boom. Straight down."

  "It's right after we raided Corbett." Cardinal held the thing to the firelight, looking for- well, he wasn't sure what for. "It's not mine."

  "You know what saved you? The three Fs saved you." She proceeded to explain about Florida and French Canadians and how that peculiar combination had allowed her, from her location nearly a thousand miles north, to run down the purchase of that cabin cruiser. "I fax Sergeant Langois the receipt number, he goes over there, and this guy, he's very good-looking, okay? This poor Florida girl working in the back office she'll do anything for him. I mean, his accent, everything about the guy is charming."

  The willing Florida girl, it turned out, had dug up the records of the sale. And because the boat was going to be delivered out of state (as much to avoid sales tax as anything else), they had required a photo ID. "Sergeant Langois sent me the fax this afternoon- not downtown, of course- a fax with a picture of Detective Sergeant Adonis Dyson."

  "So until this afternoon you thought I was working for Kyle Corbett."

  "No, John. I didn't know what to think. This setup, it was really because I wanted to rule you out as a suspect. I didn't know it would bring down Dyson. I didn't have that fax when I set it up."

  "He must've known we'd be able to trace the receipt. What was he thinking?"

  "There was no name on it. And he didn't know they had photocopied the ID in the back office and kept it on file. Anyway, these past couple of weeks, he's probably not been able to think. He's trapped between Kyle Corbett and Malcolm Musgrave, and he's scared. He probably just panicked."

  "But you're saying he placed that receipt in my personal files, in my home. I can't believe he'd try to frame me. I mean, we weren't exactly friends, but… What about the condo? That must've looked pretty bad."

  "I tried not to jump to conclusions. I know your wife is American. Her parents must be retirement age. A condo in Florida is not out of the question. I had my vacation friend check that out, too. By then, I of course have your wife's maiden name. She gets a condo from her parents, it's supposed to make you a criminal? I don't think so."

  Cardinal could not begin to sort out the tangle of his emotions. "So does this mean you're finished investigating me?"

  "Yes. It's over. Me, I'm out of Special, and you, you're in the clear."

  Cardinal didn't feel ready to believe, either. And there were things he wanted to know: "Why'd Dyson do it? I mean, Corbett was a disaster from beginning to end. Absolute disaster. It was obvious someone was tipping the guy off, but I always assumed it was one of Musgrave's crew. When I ran that by Dyson all he said was, 'If you want to start investigating Mounties, do it on your own time.' Then Katie Pine disappeared, and Corbett was off my radar. Why'd Dyson do it? I don't love the guy, but I never pegged him for anything like this."

  "Few years ago, he's feeling his retirement fund isn't everything it should be. He takes most of it and puts it into mining stocks. One of my finance teachers used to say, 'A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar.' In this case, he turned out to be right."

  "Dyson sunk his money into Bre-X?"

  "A lot of people did, John. Just not so much of it."

  "Jesus." He gave it the briefest of pauses, then: "You searched my place, Lise. I wasn't sure you'd actually do that."

  "Sorry, John. You have to see what position I was in: either search your place or get a warrant. When you told me to stay that night you had to go back to the office, I took it as your permission. I'm sorry if I was wrong." Those brown eyes, bright with flecks of firelight, searching his face. "Was I wrong?"

  Cardinal waited a long time before answering. It was after four o'clock, and suddenly exhaustion hung about his shoulders like a leaden cape. Delorme was still wired from her triumph; she'd be running on the high octane of victory for hours to come. Finally, he said, "It may have been permission. I'm not really sure. That doesn't mean you had to take advantage of it."

  "Okay, look, it wasn't nice. Every once in a while, I remember that a good cop- like a good lawyer or a good doctor- is not necessarily a nice person, or pleasant to be around. So, you and me, we don't have to work together if you don't want. You can take me off Pine-Curry and I'll understand. But me, I think we should finish out this case together." Togedder, she pronounced it, and Cardinal was so tired it made him smile.

  "What?" she asked him. "What are you smiling about?"

  Cardinal got up stiffly and handed Delorme her coat. She did up the snaps, looking at him the whole time. "You're not going to tell me, are you."

  "Be careful driving home," he said softly. "That slush could freeze again anytime."

  46

  ERIC was getting on Edie's nerves. For several days he'd been completely serene, cheerful even. But now he was bossing her around all the time. First he wants her to make his dinner. Where the hell did that come from? Usually he couldn't stand to have her watch him eat. Suddenly he wants sausages and mashed potatoes, and she has to hustle out to the supermarket through a sea of slush to get them, soaking her feet. Then he eats in the living room by himself while she and Gram eat in the kitchen. Two days previously she had written in her diary: I love Eric with a terrible passion, but I don't like him. He's mean and selfish and cruel and a bully. And I love him.

  Now they were in the basement with Keith tied to that chair with the hole in it and the pot underneath. First thing she'd had to do was empty his damn pot. She hated coming down here now, it was like changing a litter box. Eric would never do it, he just complained until Edie took care of it. And she was feeling horrible to begin with, hollowed out inside, the way she did when the eczema came back. It was crawling over her face up from underneath her jawline, her skin was cracked and red and weeping. When she had come out of the supermarket some louts driving by had rolled down their windows to make barking noises at her.

  She came back from the little bathroom just as Eric was explaining his reasoning to Keith. Eric seemed to take pleasure in this talking in front of the prisoner, but it was making her edgy.

  "See, prisoner, we don't want to worry about bloodstains anymore. You reach a certain point, you start to feel like you shouldn't have to clean up after yourself, know what I mean?"


  The prisoner, taped into immobility and silence, did not reply; he'd even given up making pleading eyes at them.

  "I've found the perfect place to kill you, prisoner. It's a locked-up, bricked-up, fucked-up former pump house. How often do you think people go there? Once, twice every five years, maybe?" Eric put his face six inches away from the prisoner, as if he would kiss him. "I'm talking to you, honey."

  The red-rimmed eyes shifted away, and Eric grabbed the prisoner's chin, forcing him to look.

  Edie held up the pad of paper. "You wanted to do the list, Eric." Thinking, he'll kill him right here, if I don't get us upstairs pretty quick.

  "We were considering going back to the mineshaft, weren't we, Edie. They'd never expect us to show up at the mineshaft again."

  "You're not getting me on that ice," Edie said. "It's been above freezing three days in a row." She pointed to the pad. "What about a tub of some sort? Catch the blood."

  "I'm not gonna lug a tub around, Edie. The whole point of going out to the fucking pump house is that we don't have to worry about the mess. A table would be nice, though. Something a comfortable height. Right, prisoner? Right. Prisoner number zero-zero-zero agrees." Eric unfolded The Algonquin Lode and spread it out on the bed where the prisoner couldn't help but see his own high-school graduation picture along with the subhead: SEARCH FOR TORONTO YOUTH AT A STANDSTILL.

  "Maybe a bag of lime," Edie offered. "To obliterate his features after we kill him. Maybe even before we kill him."

  "Edie, you have such an interesting take on things. Don't you just love that about her, prisoner? The youth of Toronto agrees, Edie: You have a very interesting take on things."

  47

  CANDLE wax, wood polish, and old incense. The smells in the cathedral never changed. Cardinal sat in a pew near the back and let the memories come: There was the altar where he had served Mass as a boy in surplice and soutane, there the confessionals where he had owned up to some but by no means all of his first sexual adventures, there the rail where his mother had lain in her coffin, there the font where Kelly had been baptized, a doll-faced banshee whose shrieks had unnerved everybody, especially the young priest who had anointed her.

  Cardinal's faith had left him sometime in his early twenties and it had never come back. He had attended Mass regularly throughout Kelly's girlhood only because Catherine had wanted it and unlike, say, McLeod, who had nothing but contempt for Rome and all her works, Cardinal had no strong feelings against the Church. Or in favor of it. So he wasn't sure why he had stopped by the cathedral this Thursday afternoon. One minute he had been in D'Anunzio's eating a ham and Swiss, next minute he's in the back row of the church.

  Gratitude? Certainly, he was glad Delorme's investigation was over. And, as for Dyson, he felt terribly sad, almost a kind of heartbreak. McLeod had heaped scorn on their fallen boss all morning. "Good riddance,"- barking across the squad room to anyone available. "It's not enough he's an arrogant fuck? He also has to be dirty? Some people don't know when to stop." But Cardinal felt no moral superiority; it could just as easily have been him hauled off to the district jail in cuffs.

  A gigantic gold-fringed medallion of Mary being assumed into heaven hung above the altar. As a boy, Cardinal had often prayed to her to help him be a better student, a better hockey player, a better person, but he didn't pray now. Sitting in the fragrant expanse of the cathedral was enough to evoke that sense of wholeness he had known as a boy, and as a young man. He knew to the hour when he had lost that wholeness. Just because Delorme had stopped investigating him didn't mean his own conscience was going to grant him a reprieve.

  "Excuse me."

  A bulky man edged his way past Cardinal into the pew- pretty annoying with the place utterly empty, but people had their favorite pews, and Cardinal was, after all, an interloper, not a regular.

  "Nice little church you got here."

  The man was almost exactly square. He perched beside Cardinal like a perfect cube of meat, a solid mass devoid of neck or waist or hips. He pointed to the medallion of the Assumption. "Cool medal. I like churches, don't you?" He turned to Cardinal and smiled, if you could call that sort of mirthless display of teeth smiling. Two gold incisors gleaming for an instant, then gone. The man's face, flat and round as an Eskimo's, was harrowed by four symmetrical scars, vivid white grooves that ran across the forehead and chin, and vertically down each cheek. The nose had the misshapen, imploded look of a pepper. The man had to turn a full ninety degrees to face Cardinal, because his right eye was covered by a black leather patch. On this, some wit had stenciled the word Closed.

  Was he someone Cardinal had put in jail? Surely he would have remembered this creature molded from the clay of pure thug.

  "Warm for February." The man slid a black watch cap from his skull, revealing a perfectly shaved scalp. Then, with surprising delicacy, he removed first one leather glove and then the other, resting his hands on his knees. The knuckles of one hand were tattooed with the word fuck, the knuckles of the other said you.

  "Kiki," Cardinal said.

  The gold incisors flashed again. "I thought you'd never remember. Long time no see, huh?"

  "Sorry I didn't visit you in Kingston, but you know how it is. You get busy…"

  "Ten years busy, right. I been busy, too."

  "I see that. Been doing some decorating. I love what you've done with the patch."

  "No, I been working out. I can bench-press three hundred, now. What about you?"

  "I don't know. Around one seventy last time I checked." It was closer to one fifty, but he was talking to a Visigoth; ruthless honesty was not called for.

  "Doesn't that make you a little nervous?"

  "Why should it? Unless you're threatening me. I hope you are- given that you're a paroled felon and all."

  The gold incisors shone wetly. Kiki Baldassaro, better known to his circle of intimates as Kiki B., or Kiki Babe. His father was a mid-level Mafioso who had been stoutly protecting the Toronto construction industry from labor problems for decades. One of the ways he did this was to insert his rhomboidal son into a company's payroll as a "welder." And welding paid very well indeed, especially when you considered that Kiki B. was not expected to actually show up at the site. God forbid.

  Despite the guaranteed income, Kiki B. was not one to sit at home idle. He liked to work with his hands, and when the indebted needed encouragement, or the forgetful needed reminding, he was happy to help out with a bit of pressure in the right place. In fact, Cardinal was recalling now, that was how Kiki B. had met his boss and spiritual adviser, Rick Bouchard. On a routine assignment for Baldassaro pиre, he had put a Bouchard henchman in traction. Bouchard showed up at Kiki's door and explained his position to him with a crowbar. They had been friends ever since.

  "Musta taken a crane to get that thing up there." Kiki had returned his attention to Our Lady of the Assumption, aloft on her medallion.

  "You didn't hear about that?" Cardinal unbuttoned his coat. It may have been fear or it may have been the church's heating system, but sweat was running down his rib cage in cold rivulets. "Night before they were supposed to hoist Our Lady in place, the crane operator skids off the highway down at Burke's Falls and breaks his arm. This is the day before Easter, thirty years ago or so. They're in despair because the next day's Easter and the Bishop is coming all the way from the Soo to say Mass. Big occasion, and it looks for sure like Our Lady's gonna sit it out in a crate. So they rush around calling for crane operators- they don't exactly grow on trees up here the way they do in Toronto- and finally they get one. He agrees to come in at five A.M. to hang the medallion."

  "Sure he does. Five A.M., that's triple time."

  "The point, Kiki, is he never got to do it."

  "Okay. 'Nother accident, right?"

  "No accident. Next day he comes into the church, five A.M. Rest of the crew is already here. He finds them all kneeling in the front row, and these are not Catholics, you understand, not all of them. But they
're all kneeling in the front row and their mouths are hanging open. And then the new crane operator looks up and sees the reason why they're all so ga-ga." Cardinal pointed.

  "She was already up there."

  Cardinal nodded. "She was already up there. How? When? Nobody knows. Clearly several natural laws were broken- gravity, for a start."

  "So somebody came in at night and hoisted her up there."

  "Well, yeah, that's what everybody figured. But they never figured out who. Place was locked up tight. Crane's sitting outside, no keys in it. Foreman had the keys. It was spooky. They kept it really quiet and everything, but- maybe I shouldn't tell you…"

  "Tell me what? Go on, tell me. You can't start a story and then quit halfway."

  "It's a long time ago, I guess I can tell you. The Vatican sent one of their investigators over here. A priest who was also a scientist. Only reason I know, they had to tell us. It was a professional courtesy."

  "The Vatican. They find anything?"

  "Nope. It's a mystery. They do call her Our Lady of Mysteries."

  "That's right. I forgot that. That's a good story, Cardinal. I think you made it up, though."

  "Why would I do a thing like that? I'm sitting in a church, I'm not about to start blaspheming. Who knows what could happen?"

  "It's a good story. You could tell it to Peter Gzowsky. He's a good listener. That's what got him on the air."

  "That show's not on anymore, Kiki. You miss things like that in prison. Are you aware of the legal concept of menacing?"

  "It hurts me that you could even think something like that. I'd never threaten you. I always liked you. I liked you right up till you slapped the cuffs on me. All I'm saying is I'd be nervous sitting beside a guy who could remove my arms and legs and lay them out in front of me."

  "You're forgetting you're a lot stupider than me, Kiki."

  Air whistled in the flattened nostrils. Over the one eye, the eyelid lowered to half-mast. "Rick Bouchard got fifteen years 'cause of you. Ten of those years are up. He could be out any day now."