Margot was yapping and growling at the pit I?d fallen into last night. It was still empty, but her nose told me what it had held.
18
THE BEACH. ROLLING SURF. SANDPIPERS SKITTERING ON SPINDLY legs. Pelicans gliding like paper airplanes, then folding their wings to plummet into the sea. Gone to Carolina in my mind. I could smell the brackish inland marshes, the ocean?s salt spray, wet sand, beached fish, and drying seaweed. Hatteras, Ocracoke, and Bald Head to the north. Pawley?s, Sullivan?s, and Kiawah to the south. I wanted to be home, and which island didn?t matter. I wanted palmetto palms and shrimp boats, not butchered women and body parts.
I opened my eyes to pigeons on a statue of Norman Bethune. The sky was graying, yielding pink and yellow remains of a departing sunset to the advance guard of approaching darkness. Streetlights and store signs announced evening?s arrival with neon winks. Cars streamed by on three sides, a four-wheeled motorized herd grudgingly parting for the small triangle of green at Guy and De Maisonneuve.
I sat sharing a bench with a man in a Canadiens jersey. His hair flowed to his shoulders, neither blond nor white. Backlit by passing cars, it haloed his head like spun glass. His eyes were the color of denim that?s been washed a thousand times, red-rimmed, a yellow crust trickling from each corner. He picked at the crust with pasty, white fingers. From a chain around his neck hung a metal cross the size of my hand.
I?d gotten home by late afternoon, switched the phone to the answering machine, and slept. Ghosts of people I knew alternated with unrecognized figures in a parade without a theme. Ryan chased Gabby into a boarded building. Pete and Claudel dug a hole in my courtyard. Katy lay on a brown plastic bag on the deck of the beach house, burning her skin and refusing lotion. A menacing figure stalked me on St. Laurent.
I woke several times, finally rising at 8 P.M., headachy and famished. A reflection on the wall near the phone pulsed red, red, red, dim; red, red, red, dim. Three messages. I stumbled to the machine and hit play.
Pete was considering an offer with a law firm in San Diego. Terrific. Katy was thinking of dropping out of school. Wonderful. One hang up. At least that wasn?t bad news. Still no word from Gabby. Great.
Twenty minutes of talking with Katy did little to ease my mind. She was polite, but noncommital. Finally, a long silence, then, ?Talk to you later.? Dial tone. I?d closed my eyes and stood very still. An image of Katy at thirteen filled my mind. Ear to ear with her Appaloosa, her blond hair mingled with his dark mane. Pete and I had gone to visit her at camp. On seeing us her face lit up and she?d left the horse to throw her arms around me. We?d been so close then. Where had the intimacy gone? Why was she unhappy? Why did she want to leave school? Was it the separation? Were Pete and I to blame?
Burning with parental inadequacy, I tried Gabby?s apartment. No answer. I remembered a time Gabby had disappeared for ten days. I was crazy worrying about her. Turned out she?d gone on retreat to discover her inner self. Maybe I couldn?t get in touch with her because she was getting in touch with herself again.
Two Tylenol relieved my head, and a #4 special at the Singapore sated my hunger. Nothing calmed my discontent. Neither pigeons nor park bench strangers distracted me from the constant themes. Questions crashed and rebounded like bumper cars inside my head. Who was this killer? How did he choose his victims? Did they know him? Did he gain their confidence, worm his way into their homes? Adkins was killed at home. Trottier and Gagnon? Where? At a predesignated place? A place chosen for death and dismemberment? How did the killer get around? Was it St. Jacques?
I stared at the pigeons without seeing them. I imagined the victims, imagined their fear. Chantale Trottier was only sixteen. Had he forced her at knife point? When had she known she was going to die? Had she begged him not to hurt her? Begged for her life? Another image of Katy. Other people?s Katys. Empathy to the point of pain.
I focused on the present moment. In the morning, lab work on the recovered bones. Dealing with Claudel. Tending the scabs on my face. So Katy aspired to a career as an NBA groupie, and nothing I said would dissuade her. Pete might split for the Coast. I was horny as Madonna, with no relief in sight. And where the
?That?s it,? I said, startling the pigeons and the man beside me. I knew one thing I could do.
I walked home, went directly to the garage, and drove to Carr #233; St. Louis. I parked on Henri-Julien and rounded the corner to Gabby?s apartment. Sometimes her building made me think of Barbie?s Dreamhouse. Tonight it was Lewis Carroll. I almost smiled.
A single bulb lit the lavender porch, casting shadow petunias across the boards. The looking-glass windows stared at me darkly. ?Alice isn?t home,? they said.
I rang the bell to number 3. Nothing. I rang again. Silence. I tried number 1, then 2 and 4. No response. Wonderland had closed for the night.
Circling the park, I looked for Gabby?s car. Not there. Without plan, I drove south, then east toward the Main.
After twenty frustrating minutes looking for a parking place, I left the car on one of the unpaved alleys that feed St. Laurent. The alley was remarkable for flattened beer cans and the stink of stale urine. Piles of trash abounded, and I could hear jukebox noise through the brick on the left. It was a setting which called for that popularly advertised auto security device known as the Club. Lacking one, I entrusted the Mazda to the god of parking, and joined the flow on the strip.
Like a rain forest, the Main is inhabited by sympatric breeds, populations living side by side but occupying different niches. One group is active by day, the other exclusively nocturnal.
In the hours from dawn to dusk the Main is the realm of deliverymen and shopkeepers, of schoolchildren and housewives. The sounds are those of commerce and play. The smells are clean, and speak of food: fresh fish at Waldman?s, smoked meat at Schwartz?s, apples and strawberries at Warshaw?s, baked goods at La Boulangerie Polonaise.
As shadows lengthen and streetlamps and bar lights come on, as shops close and taverns and porn mills open, the day crowd surrenders the sidewalks to different creatures. Some are harmless. Tourists and college kids who come for bargain booze and cheap thrills. Others are more toxic. Pimps, dealers, hookers, and crackheads. The users and the used, the predators and prey in a food chain of human misery.
At eleven-fifteen, the night shift was in full control. The streets were thronged and the low-rent bars and bistros were packed. I walked to Ste. Catherine and stood on the corner, La Belle Province at my back. It seemed a good place to start. Entering, I walked past the pay phone where Gabby had made her panicky call.
The restaurant smelled of Pine-Sol, grease, and overfried onions. It was too late for dinner and too early for the apr #233;s booze set. Only four booths were occupied.
A couple with identical Mohawks stared glumly at each other over half-eaten bowls of chili. Their spiny hackles were an identical inky black, as if they?d split the cost of the Clairol. They wore enough studded leather to open a combination kennel and motorcycle outfitter.
A woman with arms the size of Number 2 pencils and platinum bouffant hair smoked and drank coffee in a booth at the back. She wore a red tube top and what my mother would?ve called capri pants. She?d probably had that look since she dropped out of school to join the war effort.
As I watched, she drained the last of her coffee, took a long pull on her cigarette, and stubbed the butt into the small metal disk that served as an ashtray. Her painted eyes surveyed the room listlessly, not really expecting to find a mark, but prepared to dance the dance. Her face displayed the joyless look of someone who?d been on the street a long time. No longer able to compete with the young, she probably specialized in alley quickies and backseat blow jobs. Late night bliss at bargain prices. She hiked the tube higher on her bony chest, picked up her bill, and walked to the counter. Rosie the Riveter hitting the streets again.
Three young men occupied a booth near the door. One lay sprawled across the table, an arm cradling his head, another disappearing limply into his lap. All three wore T-shirts, cutoffs, and baseball caps. Two had their bills turned backward. The third, in a defiant disregard for fashion, wore his brim planted firmly across his forehead. The upright pair downed cheeseburgers, seemingly unconcerned about their companion. They looked about sixteen.
The only other patron was a nun. No Gabby.
