eyes met mine, peering out from under the orange brim of a cap. In that brief flash I recognized the look of a terrified animal. Nothing more. Then he was gone.
Claudel regained his balance, unsnapped his gun, and bolted out the door. Charbonneau was right behind him. Without thinking, I plunged into the chase.
11
WHEN I SHOT ONTO THE STREET THE SUNLIGHT BLINDED ME. I squinted up Berger trying to locate Charbonneau and Claudel. The parade was over, and large numbers of people were drifting down from Sherbrooke. I spotted Claudel shouldering his way through the crowd, his face red and contorted as he demanded passage through the sticky bodies. Charbonneau was close behind. He was holding his badge straight arm in front of him, using it like a chisel to gouge his way forward.
The throng partied on, unaware that anything unusual was taking place. A heavy blonde swayed on her boyfriend?s shoulders, her head thrown back, her arms held high, wagging a bottle of Molson?s at the sky. A drunken man wearing a Quebec flag like a Superman cape hung from a lamppost. He prompted the crowd in chanting, ?
I veered into the vacant lot, climbed onto a cement block, and stood on tiptoe to scan the crowd. St. Jacques, if that?s who it had been, was nowhere to be seen. He had the home-court advantage, and had used it to put as much geography as possible between himself and us.
I could see one of the backup team replacing his handset and joining the chase. He?d radioed for reinforcements, but I doubted a cruiser could penetrate the mob. He and his partner were elbowing their way toward Berger and Ste. Catherine, well behind Claudel and Charbonneau.
Then I spotted the orange baseball cap. It was ahead of Charbonneau, who had turned east on Ste. Catherine, unable to see it through the mass of bodies. St. Jacques was heading west. As quickly as I saw him, he disappeared. I waved my arms for attention, but it was useless. I?d lost sight of Claudel, and neither of the patrolmen could see me.
Without thinking, I jumped from the block and plunged into the crowd. The smell of sweat, suntan lotion, and stale beer seemed to seep from the bodies around me, forming a bubble of human smog. I lowered my head and plowed through the swarm with less than my usual courtesy, bulldozing a path toward St. Jacques. I had no badge to excuse my roughness, so I pushed and shoved and avoided eye contact. Most people took the jostling with good humor, others paused to fling insults at my back. The majority were gender specific.
I tried to see St. Jacques?s baseball cap through the hundreds of heads surrounding me, but it was impossible. I set a course toward the point where I?d spotted him, driving through the bodies like an icebreaker on the St. Lawrence.
It almost worked. I was close to Ste. Catherine when I was grabbed roughly from behind. A hand the size of a Prince tennis racket wrapped itself around my throat and my ponytail was yanked sharply downward. My chin shot up, and I felt, or heard, something snap in my neck. The hand jerked me backward, and pressed me flat against the chest of a Yeti construction worker. I could feel his heat and smell his perspiration as it soaked my hair and back. A face came close to my ear, and I was enveloped in the odor of sour wine, cigarette smoke, and stale nacho chips.
?Hey,
I could not have answered were I inclined. This seemed to anger him further and he released my hair and neck, placed both hands on my back, and shoved violently. My head snapped forward like a catapult launcher, and the force of the movement propelled me into a woman in short shorts and stiletto heels. She screamed, and the people around us separated slightly. I threw my hands out in an attempt to regain my balance, but it was too late. I went down, bouncing hard off someone?s knee.
As I hit the pavement I slid and scraped my cheek and forehead, and threw my arms over my head in a reflex of self-preservation. The blood was pounding in my ears. I could feel surface gravel grinding into my right cheek, and knew I had lost some of the skin. As I attempted to push off the pavement with my hands, a boot came down hard on my fingers, mashing them. I could see nothing but knees, legs, and feet as the crowd rolled over me, seeming not to see me until the instant of tripping over me.
I rolled onto my side and tried again to come to my hands and knees. Unintended blows from feet and legs kept me from righting myself. No one stopped to shield me or help me up.
Then I heard an angry voice, and felt the crowd recede slightly. A small pocket of space formed around me, and a hand appeared at my face, its fingers gesturing impatiently. I grasped it and pulled myself up, rising, unbelievably, to sunlight and oxygen.
The hand was attached to Claudel. He held back the crowd with his other arm as I got painfully to my feet. I saw his lips move but couldn?t understand what he was saying. As usual, he seemed to be annoyed. Nonetheless, he?d never looked so good. He finished speaking, paused, and looked me over. He took in the jagged tear in my right knee and the abrasions on my elbows. His eyes came to rest on my right cheek. It was scraped and bleeding, and the eye on that side was beginning to swell shut.
Dropping my hand, he withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and gestured at my face. When I reached for it my hand was trembling. I blotted away blood and gravel, refolded to a clean surface, and held the linen against my cheek.
Claudel leaned close and shouted in my ear, ?Stay with me!?
I nodded.
He worked his way toward the west side of Berger, where the crowd was a little thinner. I followed on rubbery legs. Then he turned and began to worm his way in the direction of the car. I lunged and grabbed his arm. He stopped and looked a question at me. I shook my head vehemently, and his eyebrows went from a deep V to a Stan Laurel imitation.
?He?s over there!? I screamed, pointing in the opposite direction. ?I saw him.?
A man in a Tweedledee costume brushed past me. He was eating a snow cone, and the drops from the melt-off were painting a red trail down his belly. It looked like a blood-spatter pattern.
Claudel?s brows dived in the midline. ?You are going to the car,? he said.
?I saw him on Ste. Catherine!? I repeated, thinking perhaps he hadn?t heard. ?Outside Les Foufounes #201;lectriques! He was going toward St. Laurent!? Even to me, my voice was sounding a bit hysterical.
It got his attention. He hesitated a second, assessing the damage to my cheek and limbs.
?You?re okay??
?Yeah.?
?You will go to the car??
?Yes!? He turned to go. ?Wait.? One by one I lifted my trembling legs over a rusted metal cable that looped knee-high around the edge of the lot, crossed to another cement block, and stepped onto it. I scanned the sea of heads, looking for the orange baseball cap. Nothing. Claudel watched impatiently as I surveyed the crowd, shifting his eyes from me to the intersection then back again. He reminded me of a sled dog waiting for the gun.
Finally, I shook my head and raised my hands.
?Go. I?ll keep looking.?
Skirting the open lot, he began elbowing his way in the direction I?d indicated. The mob on Ste. Catherine was bigger than ever, and, in a few minutes, I watched his head disappear into it. The swarm seemed to absorb him, like an army of antibodies seeking out and surrounding a foreign protein. One moment he was an individual, the next a dot in the pattern.
I searched until my vision blurred, but hard as I tried I couldn?t locate Charbonneau or St. Jacques. Beyond St. Urbain, I could see a squad car nibbling its way into the edge of the crowd, its lights flashing red and blue. The revelers ignored its whining insistence on right of way. Once I caught a flash of orange, but it turned out to be a tiger wearing tails and high-top sneakers. Moments later she passed closer, carrying her costume head and drinking a Dr Pepper.
The sun was burning, and my head pounded. I could feel a crust hardening on my abraded cheek. I kept
