City of Ice (34 page)

Wee Willie was wearing his usual attire, sports shirts that hung loosely over permanent-press slacks. He had learned to wear the clothes in Vegas, and now he hardly ever put on his biker uniform. He only did so to make someone fearful, or to demonstrate that he was just another boy with a wild heart looking to party.

He burped with fervor, laughed at himself, and nodded for his bodyguard to move so he could claw his way out of the booth. Two bikers accompanied him to the bathroom. One checked the room first, then both stood guard at the door. The restaurant had steadily emptied since the arrival of the bikers—despite their conservative dress they possessed an attitude, an air, that scared people—and only the patrons at a couple of tables had persevered to the natural end of their meals. No one went near the bathroom while Wee Willie was there.

His timing was impeccable. While he was pissing, a Jeep Cherokee came hurtling through the restaurant’s handsome glass window, plowing chairs and tables and
sending civilians for cover. The driver of the vehicle had jumped before impact and now was on the run.

“What the fuck!” Wee Willie bellowed, and he leapt out of the toilet, unzipped.

“A truck!” yelled one of the bodyguards, who had run back down the hall. “Smashed through the window!”

“Get in here!” Wee Willie commanded.

The three men locked themselves in the men’s room. Their other companions at lunch did the same in the women’s. Later the police knocked on the door.

“Is it gonna blow?” Wee Willie wanted to know before he opened up.

“Naw,” the uniform told him, “something happened with the crash. They couldn’t detonate.”

Wee Willie and his friends emerged from the toilets then. They surveyed the shambles of the restaurant. Photographers snapped pictures, and a journalist dared to ask Wee Willie for a comment. “Fuckups,” he told them. “They gotta be careful. They might’ve hurt somebody.”

“Wasn’t that the general idea?” the reporter inquired.

Wee Willie took exception to his tone. He reached out and closed his fist on the man’s topcoat, pulling him into range of his beery breath. “Fuckup,” he told him. “They might’ve killed a citizen is what I meant.”

A few witnesses took the remark to be gallant, as if he was some kind of modern Robin Hood. They didn’t understand that he was looking out for his own best interests. Killing citizens was bad for biker business. It aroused the Wolverines—that lesson they had already learned.

Run ragged, Bill Mathers interviewed the Korean manager of a gas station that had been ransacked and robbed of cigarettes and soft drinks overnight, while it
had been closed. The man called the burglars cowards, shaking his head and repeating the word until Mathers consented to utter it also. That cordial agreement satisfied him. They rehearsed it together as a mantra,
cowards
, the Korean grinning broadly. “Yes,” he persisted, “cowards, cowards,” bowing forward. Mathers was saved by his beeper. Calling the department switchboard, he learned that a message had come through from Estelle Myers, Hagop Artinian’s ex-girlfriend, whom he had interviewed earlier.

Finished with the burglary report, Mathers headed straight for the young woman’s place in the student ghetto and rang her bell. He was quickly buzzed up.

“Hey, Detective! Long time!”

“Estelle. Nice to see you again.”

He shut the door behind him. When he turned she had bounded onto the bed, bouncing there. Estelle was wearing old jeans and a loose-fitting top and she looked delectable to him. He felt an ample cross section of his heart spring from his body and leap beside her.

She had tucked her ankles under herself, rocking only slightly now. “You know what?”

“What?”

“In an uptight sort of way, you’re kinda cute for a cop.”

“Gee, thanks, Estelle. I’ll take that to the grave. Now what’s up?”

“I have some friends who have a teensy-weensy problemo that maybe you can help them with?” She bounced again and did a quick pivot, so that she was kneeling on the bed now, clapping her hands in an odd way, the fingers splayed out so that only her palms made contact one with the other. “
Plus!
I have information you’re gonna wanna hear, Mr. Policeman!” When she stopped her imitation of a small child clapping, she
put her hands on her hips, and the pose was scarcely resistible, all breasts and pelvis to his eyes.

“Are you trading information? If you know something, Estelle—”

She swung her legs around so that she was sitting on the bed again with her bare toes just touching the floor. He was beginning to wonder if she was high on something.

“Estelle—you owe it to Hagop’s memory to say what you know.”

Mentioning the reason for the investigation subdued her nubile exhibition. She twisted her torso, trying to wiggle free from obligations. “I’ll tell you. I will, I will. I’m not trading. But I have these friends, and if I can help you out then it doesn’t seem so unreasonable to me that you can give my friends a break. I don’t see what you’re so fired up about. Isn’t that fairish?”

Mathers was willing to bend. In rhythm to the young woman’s movements, the upright trunk of his ethics swayed as a tender sapling in a gale. “What did your friends do?”

“Okay, they were having a party,” Estelle told him. “Nothing drastic. Normal student stuff, and yes that means a bit too loud. That’s really their only crime. So! Neighbors complained. The cops came to the door, blah blah blah—some guys made a few remarks that maybe they shouldn’t’ve, and all of a sudden they’re busted for dope. Mere possession. I mean, bop my bottom with a banana—marijuana and hashish? Nobody’s been arrested for smoking that stuff since the
Mayflower
, or the flower children, or whatever.”

“Are you on some of it right now?”

“Nnnnoooo, I’m just happy to see you that’s all.”

He really could not resist being charmed by her and didn’t know why he bothered. What would it cost him to have a fling with a girl like this? The warring angels scolded him as he knew they would. Weird. He might
successfully conceal his guilt around Donna, although that was questionable, but he’d never manage to look Cinq-Mars in the eye again. No dice. Not this time. Probably never—a realization that saddened him.

He was a choirboy. Mathers had to admit that. He liked being mischievous, that was his big secret. Flirting was mischief. Anything more than that, he reverted to being a choirboy again, that was his way of being, why he was a cop.

“Estelle. What’s up?”

“Can you help my friends?”

“Sure, why not? Now tell me what’s up.”

“Really! You can? You mean it!” This time she bounded on the bed once off her bottom onto her knees, then onto her feet with her head scraping the ceiling. Landing back onto her bottom again, she bounced repeatedly.

“What are you on?”

“Nothing! I’m just happy! Can’t a girl be happy?”

“Do you have something for me?”

A part of him hoped that she would slander that question and propose an offer too indecent to resist.

“Last Friday night!” she said, and for the first time he grasped why she was giddy. She was high on knowledge, on information, she was high on the news she bore. “I was walking down the street—my street. I was coming up to a car that’d left its motor running. No biggee, but you know, I’m a woman, and women get raped in the ghetto, so, you know, I keep an eye out. There’s one guy in the car, but everything’s cool, but as I get close to the car I notice this name tag thingee on its tail end.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Q Forty-five! The car was an Infiniti Q Forty-five! That’s when I remembered!”

Mathers was immediately attentive. “What did you remember?”

“You asked me to call with anything that might seem important. Maybe if I remembered something peculiar, or out of place.”

“That’s right. I did.”

She bounced again. “One time, I saw Hagop, across the street from where I was standing, talking to a slick-dressed man. The man got into a green Infiniti Q Forty-five and drove away. A little while after that, somebody asked him who was the guy with the fancy car. Hagop told him it was his uncle. He didn’t know I was listening in. Why did he lie? Hagop never lies. I know Hagop’s only uncle, and he wasn’t that guy, and he doesn’t drive that kind of car.”

Mathers was taking in every word. “And this Q Forty-five that you saw the other night—”

“Was green! It was green green green! So what do I do? I see the plate and memorize it, and I keep on walking and repeat it to myself until I’ve got it and, Detective, here—it—is.”

She plucked a slip of paper from the tight front pocket of her jeans.

Bill Mathers was dumbfounded. “Estelle. God. Thank you.”

“You’ll want to know the names of my friends.”

After Mathers duly noted the information, Estelle held the door for him, and on his way out she stretched up on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss on the cheek, slightly to the left of his mouth. He hesitated. She pecked him again and smiled. “You are cute,” she said.

“Yeah, and you’re trouble.”

“Only in your mind, Detective.”

He nodded, offered a slight wave good-bye, again thanked her, and headed down the stairs. Going out the door felt as close to an escape as anything he had experienced. Bill Mathers believed that he had survived by the slimmest, the most fragile, of margins.
His heart beat at a runner’s pace. He had something to show for his turmoil—he might have the license plate number for Émile Cinq-Mars’s mysterious source in hand. Rather than present him with it, Mathers decided that first he would run it down himself.

In the intimate cabin on the Russian freighter Julia Murdick was on pins and needles throughout lunch. Fear circled underneath her skin. Gitteridge had introduced her to a tall, dark, well-groomed, well-dressed Russian, who had flinty eyes and spoke with a mangled accent. The man talked a great deal about the cleverness of Carl Bantry and studied her with a smile perpetually curling at the side of his mouth. He had wide, sensual lips. During lunch a seaman entered the cabin and whispered in the Russian’s ear. He waved him out, then explained to his guests, “A policeman. A nuisance. A flea. We will dispose of this irritation. We do this, us.” He continued to wave his hand in the air, as though brushing dust from a mantelpiece.

She and Gitteridge exchanged a glance.

The Russian stretched across the table and caressed her cheek with his thumb. “Perhaps you like for to see ship, Heather,” he suggested. “Is interest for you?”

She consented, choosing to err on the side of politeness, of compliance.

“Come.”

Gitteridge was to remain behind.

The Russian showed her the bridge, where she met the diminutive captain, a sullen, uncommunicative fellow, then brought her down into the hold, where the volume was impressive, the space cold and forbidding. The walls, ceilings, and floors were steel, the paint chipped and faded. The Russian, who had not proffered a name for himself, led her through the massive machine works and up into the ship’s complicated plumbing and hydraulics.

Down below two Hell’s Angels in full biker colors intercepted their tour. They grabbed her arms and the Russian said, “Come, this way,” leading her toward a darker area. They shoved her through a door he held open. Inside, she turned. The men came in, and then the steel door slammed shut and the echo reverberated harshly in her brain. She couldn’t breathe. She felt claustrophobic. The room was tiny, filled with pipes and valves. The bikers were huge and they regarded her with disdain and the big Russian was smiling.

She returned his look, fearing rape. Worse. Discovery.

“The police, they call me Czar. I have accepted this name. It is good, yes? You may call me by this name.”

He took her hands in one of his. She gasped. A biker put a hand on one breast, squeezing. She cried out and resisted. The Czar ran his free hand along a cluster of smaller pipes, choosing a cool one. He held her wrists down on the pipe and told her to keep them there, and she obeyed. The stray hand was off her now. The Russian had turned his back.

“Now, Heather Bantry,” he said, “we see. About you we see.”

“What’s wrong? What’d I do?”

“You not talk.”

A handcuff snapped over one wrist. He pulled her other hand under the pipe and held it in place and snapped on the other cuff, binding her to the pipe. He flicked off the overhead light.

She was alone in the dark with the three men.

“Now we see about you,” he declared, and she readied herself to scream.

She could hear them breathing.

The Russian stood behind her, breathing, lightly running his fingers up and down her spine. He moved closer. Slowly he ran the backs of his fingernails down one side of her face and throat, and his touch was like
a blade. A biker reached up and pulled on her hair. She cried out. The three men laughed lightly. “This is nothing,” the Czar scolded her. “This only to begin for you.” Then he opened the door, there was that flash of light, and they left her alone in the dark.

Her legs lost strength. She bumped her head. She hung from the pipe, unable to stand, already begging that she would not soon die a horrible death. She believed she would. Who could save her now?
Selwyn? Selwyn!

Tuesday, January 18

Yawning mightily, Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars leaned back in his swivel chair and stretched his arms and shoulders before rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. Long past being weary, he still had to hang around the station before risking the long drive home. That morning he had arrived before seven—it was now past midnight—and he allowed himself the extravagance of leaning forward, dropping his head into the crook of his elbow on his desk, and closing his eyes.
Oh, blessed sleep.

By his own evaluation, they were making progress on several fronts. He had a number for the fake Heather Bantry, from which an address had been gleaned. The woman hadn’t been home all day, which was worrisome. He hoped she hadn’t been spooked by the cop staking out her place. He’d chosen not to disturb the premises without first attempting to discern her circumstances. Hagop Artinian’s apartment had been bugged, he believed, so hers might be as well. An intrusion by cops could compromise a precariously fragile situation.