The Marble Mask (32 page)

At last, we came to a shuddering, clanking stop, the sudden silence feeling louder than the noise just preceding it. Across from me, Willy briefly laid his gun down before him and gave me a thumbs up.

I quietly checked to make sure I had a round chambered, slipped off the safety, and waited.

When it finally came, that first sound made me think of a rodent—slight, stealthy, and evasive. There was a delicate scratching at the hasp, followed by a small click, and then a low moaning as someone pushed gently against the heavy door. A fresh current of cold air swirled into our dark enclave as a pale slit appeared in the wall between us, gradually growing to about five feet wide, or a little larger than the width of my erstwhile box.

We’d resealed that earlier, and left it parked front and center. Now, the dark shape of a man crossed from the opening to the crate and lit up the corner of one of its sides with a flashlight.

After a moment’s scrutiny, he let out a low command in
Joual,
prompting another shadow with a dolly to join him from outside.

This was our moment, since as soon as these two tilted the crate on its side, they’d realize it was too light for its presumed contents. Looking across at Willy, I pointed first to him and then at the door, at me and then at the two near the box. He nodded once and we moved as a single unit.

I took five fast steps to the man closest to me, pushed the back of his head so he fell forward with both hands braced against the box, shoved my gun against his temple so his buddy could see what I was doing, and said, “Don’t move—police.”

Simultaneously, Willy had swung around to the open door, stuck his head out quickly, found a third man standing guard, and silently gestured to him with his gun barrel to join us.

We stripped them of their weapons, had them lie on their stomachs, and used the wire and duct tape that had once bound me to tie their hands and feet. Their mouths I left free.

“Who’s in charge here?” I asked them.

One of them said something fast in French, presumably not a compliment.

“No one going to fess up?” I turned to Willy and winked at him as I spoke. “Drag the big one over to the far side of the car, interrogate him any way you want. I’ll work on these two. We’ll see who comes up with the best story.”

Willy laughed. “All right. This ought to be fun.”

He holstered his gun, grabbed the man in question by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him away into the shadows.

I squatted down between the remaining two and rolled them both onto their backs so they could see me. “I hope the guy Willy’s talking to has a low pain threshold—might speed things up.”

Behind us, the sounds of Willy’s retreat faded into the distance, accompanied by several dull thumps and a few guttural outbursts from his guest.

“Okay,” I resumed. “I don’t speak French and you’re pretending not to speak English, but let me tell you how this plays out just in case one of you is a quick learner. I’m a kidnapped American police officer, in mortal fear for his life, rescued in the nick of time by a heroic fellow officer. Through a trick of fate I haven’t invented yet, we managed to get hold of at least one of your guns.” I held up the largest of the confiscated weapons. The more intelligent-looking of the two narrowed his eyes slightly, obviously confused about where I was headed.

“All the Sûreté’ll know is that we had to fight it out, killing you one by one. It’ll be a hell of a story—make me look like a hero. And the local cops’ll eat it up ’cause that’s the way they wish a lot of these things would turn out.”

I slowly pulled back the gun’s hammer.

“You’re full of shit,” the one I’d focused on said, his words straight from some American action movie and his accent sounding as if the dialogue had been dubbed into French and back again.

“You think so?”

We were interrupted by a loud noise and a sharp cry from far down the boxcar.

I leaned into the man’s face. “What’s your name?”

“Didier.”

“Well, let me tell you, Didier, I’ve been shot at, punched, drugged, and half frozen to death by you flamers, all of which has given birth to a giant case of the don’t-give-a-shits. I’m home free here—the helpless victim fighting to save his life. Even if the Sûreté does smell a rat, they’ll cut me some slack because we’re all brothers and you’re not. Face it—you’re out of luck.”

There was another yell from the gloom. Didier tried to raise his head. “What’s he doin’?”

“Willy doesn’t talk as much as I do,” I explained. “Gets right down to business. Guarantees him more fun that way.”

“This is a crock. I watch TV. I know the ‘good cop-bad cop’ routine.”

I believed him about the TV. “You want to risk your friend’s health on that?” I asked.

He closed his eyes briefly. The man next to him said something, which Didier answered tiredly.

He then looked at me again. “We got you pegged. Your sidekick ain’t much, but he’s no torturer. Besides, the guy he grabbed don’t speak English.”

“So you say.” But I was as impressed by his insight as I’d been by his John Wayne imitation. This was a step above the average thug.

Didier sighed heavily. “It don’t matter anyway. You already won without knowin’ it. I’ll talk, but not because of this little comedy.”

“Why, then?”

He hesitated, as if taking one last measure of a final step forward. “Marcel Deschamps is in a car near here, waiting for us.”

That caught me unawares. “I thought he was almost dead.”

“He is—this deal was a gamble, to buy his son time.”

“Michel?”

Didier made a sour expression. “It’s complicated. He better tell you himself.”

“Who says he’ll want to talk to me?”

“I do. The three of us are about all he has left.”

“What about the three who grabbed me?”

“Goons—bought and paid for. They had no idea.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “We’ve been studying the Deschamps organization pretty closely,” I said. “I don’t remember anyone high up named Didier.”

His voice sounded tired. “We’re not on the inside. We’re hired guns—worked for Marcel for years, and now Michel. Marcel didn’t trust his own people no more, so he used us behind the scenes.”

I thought about that for a moment. Marcel’s having private operatives didn’t surprise me, but given Michel’s reputation, I hadn’t expected him in the same context. Then again, little of anything we’d guessed about this bunch had turned out to be true. “You kill Guidry?”

That brought a defensive reaction. “No way. We get things done, find things out. But we’re not triggermen. That was Michel all by his lonesome.”

“The way we heard it, Michel can barely wipe his own ass.”

“Old news. He’s a snot nose, and Picard and Guidry helped keep him in the dark so they could make the grab after his father croaked. But Marcel tumbled and faked being sicker than he was. He’s the one who put Michel and us together and then trained Michel so their power play would blow up in their face.” He paused and then added, “Of course, that was Plan A, before Michel turned into a magic act and came out of the top hat as full-fledged wacko.”

My headache had faded over time. It now caught its second wind. “Did he kill Sawyer?”

“Guidry did that and put a contract on you before. He was paranoid you’d pin Jean’s death on him.”

“We already had.”

Didier smiled and shook his head, by now totally free of any inhibitions about talking. “In your dreams. You’ve been wrong from the start. Guidry didn’t kill Jean Deschamps. He was just in the right place at the right time.”

“What do you mean?”

But this time he didn’t play along. “Enough. We got to get back to Marcel. The motor’s off—he’ll start getting cold. You want to take me to him and leave the other two with the gimp, fine, but I’m done talking till I make sure Marcel’s okay.”

“Willy?” I shouted over my shoulder. “Bring the other guy back.”

He did so, still dragging his prize like a sack along the floor. The man’s mouth had been taped shut, and there wasn’t a mark on him. Willy was looking satisfied with his playacting as a torturer. “You get what you wanted?” he asked.

I pointed at Didier. “He nailed you from the start, not that it matters. He’s spilling his guts anyhow. Marcel Deschamps is in a car near here, waiting for these three. I’m going to have a talk with him, if you don’t mind babysitting the other two.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, “but I’d like to scope the scene before you stick your head into another trap.”

I conceded the point. We bundled Didier’s companions together, back-to-back, left them temporarily in the boxcar, and escorted Didier, still bound and now gagged, out of the rail yard, across a service road, and to a row of trees lining a parking lot behind a dark, empty-looking warehouse. Alone in the lot was a white delivery van. Didier pointed his chin toward it.

“He in there?” I asked.

He nodded.

Willy left our side and disappeared into the shadows hemming us in, as quietly as the gentle breeze that occasionally wafted in off the ice-solid water beyond the tracks.

Fifteen minutes later, Willy reappeared. “It’s clear. I’ll keep watch for a while after you get in, then go back to the others. How long’s the train staying put?”

I removed the duct tape from Didier’s mouth. He gasped with the pain, compressed his lips several times, and finally said, “Seven tomorrow morning.”

He and I crossed the parking lot. I walked up to the sliding side door of the van, placed Didier before me as a shield, and pulled it open. Before us in the feeble light from the overhead dome lay Marcel Deschamps, propped up on a camp cot, swathed like a baby in layers of blankets. He didn’t look startled at the sudden intrusion. I even half wondered if he was still alive.

Until his eyes moved.

“Deschamps?” I asked. “You okay?”

He said something in French to Didier.

“English,” I ordered.

Didier answered first in French and then turned to me. “I only told him we’d screwed up, and that I’d been shooting straight with you. Can I start the engine and get the heater going?”

I unwrapped the wire from around his hands and let him climb up between the front seats to get behind the steering wheel. “You touch the gear lever and I’ll blow your head off,” I cautioned him, as I quickly patted down Marcel’s blankets for weapons.

I needn’t have been so cautious. Didier kept his word, clambering back to Deschamps to tuck him in more comfortably. Throughout, Marcel’s gloved hands lay still on his lap and his eyes remained at half mast.

“You feel well enough to speak?” I asked him, at last climbing in myself and slamming the door shut behind me.

“A little,” was the whispered reply.

I decided not to waste time. “I need to know about your father’s death.”

If possible, the face before me paled even further, and Marcel moved the fingers of one hand in Didier’s direction. “Tell him.”

“Jean Deschamps was sort of nutty about finding Antoine’s killer,” Didier began. “He tracked down Roger Scott because he thought Scott and his son had been tight during the war. According to what Jean had been told, Scott was a schoolteacher before the war, and maybe a good judge of human character. Jean wanted to pick his brains about Antoine. Turns out Scott was actually Charlie Webber, and that him and Antoine had found a treasure just outside Rome—a buried trunk in a fancy villa, jammed with jewelry, rare art, and gold. But one of ’em got greedy, Webber killed Antoine, making it look like a combat death, and then changed his name after he got shot and paralyzed later. I have no clue how Jean knew Antoine had been whacked in the first place, but he sure didn’t know Scott and Webber were the same. What happened when Jean and Webber met is a mystery—Guidry was the only other one there and being the swift bodyguard he was, he was outside the room. But for some reason Webber ended up sticking Jean with an ice pick. Didn’t do him much good, ’course. He might’ve been strong enough to knock somebody off, but he still couldn’t get out of that wheelchair. Guidry came running in, put two and two together, and saw the chance of a lifetime.”

“He’s not that clever,” I said flatly.

Marcel gave a pale imitation of a laugh.

“Picard sure is,” Didier answered for him. “Guidry called him that night in a panic. Picard drove down and they set it up together.”

It was like hearing a tune that had lingered too long just outside memory’s grasp. In that single moment, all the disconnected bits and pieces of this case began falling together.

“How did Sawyer fit in?”

“He was a money launderer Jean had authorized the year before. Stowe was nothin’ then, but it was a coming thing and it was nearby. The U.S. dollar was lookin’ good. Picard being the legal eagle sent Sawyer down from Canada to open a restaurant, which is a great way to wash money. Picard came up with the angle of keeping Jean’s body on ice—typical lawyer move—but he needed a freezer. Enter Sawyer.”

“And they had to move fast,” I suggested. “Before the snow melted and Jean’s body thawed.”

“Right on. After that, all they had to do was con Marcel with fake loyalty, be rewarded with top jobs, and cruise through the years on what Jean had created by busting his ass—knowing all the time they had a big-time secret tucked away for future use.”

“But Marcel’s fingerprints were on the ice pick,” I protested.

Marcel looked disgusted.

“Piece of cake,” Didier explained. “Ice picks were used all the time back then. All Guidry had to do was hand Marcel this one a couple of times to chop ice. The only joke was that DNA came out of nowhere to help ’em out even more. That was pure dumb luck. Anyhow, once the ice pick was squared away, they planted the other clues you found and made sure they had a small gang in their pocket to back them if things got tough, which of course they were hoping would be never.”

“Like Marie Chenin and Lucien Pelletier,” I guessed.

“And their inside man, Jacques Chauvin,” Didier agreed. “Not counting some hired muscle. All of ’em either pointed you where they wanted you to go, or told Picard and Guidry what you were telling the Sûreté. Like when they leaked Jean’s name to the U.S. papers as the frozen stiff, just so Chenin could pretend the publicity reminded her that she had that old hotel bill.”