The only good thing that happened to him in Deep River was that a fellow inmate named Tony taught him how to play guitar. When they got out of St. Bart's, they moved down to Toronto and formed a grunge band, but the rest of the members were more talented than Eric, and it was only a matter of weeks before they got rid of him. After a succession of progressively less interesting jobs, and a succession of smaller and smaller rooms, he began to feel that he was drowning in Toronto. Oh, that suffocating sensation, as if his lungs were closing down. He made no friends. He spent his evenings alone, with magazines that arrived in plain packaging, his fantasies turning darker and darker.

Toronto was killing him, he decided. He would move to someplace with lots of fresh air, where you wouldn't feel like you were choking all the time. In his methodical way, he made lists of small cities and their various amenities, finally narrowing his choices down to Peterborough and Algonquin Bay. He decided to visit them both, but the day he arrived in Algonquin Bay he had seen the help-wanted ad for Troy Music, and that had made up his mind. When he met Edie in the drugstore a week later, some inner part of him had suddenly felt stronger. Those first flickers of utter devotion in her eyes gave him the sense that this was someone he could share his destiny with. Whatever it might be.

But Eric Fraser did not like to think of the past. Those terrible, suffocating years in Toronto, the hostility of St. Bart's. It was as if there had been a bureaucratic mix-up and he had been assigned a cramped little life that had been meant for someone else. His own life, his real life, had been stolen.

And all of it could have been prevented, he thought, as he drove past the old CN station on the way to Edie's. The whole damn mess need never have happened, if only he'd been smart enough to tape Jane's mouth shut.

44

LISE Delorme had not spent a lot of time on stakeouts. She was discovering on Wednesday night that she was not much good at standing around waiting, especially in the middle of the night in an unheated storefront next door to the New York Restaurant. Luckily, the warm snap- assisted by a space heater- made it just about bearable.

The New York Restaurant has been a favorite with Algonquin Bay's criminal element for as long as anyone can remember, certainly stretching back well before Delorme's time. No one quite knows why, but they know it isn't because of the food, which must give pause to even the most hardened ex-con. McLeod claimed the steaks were Aylmer-issue policewear. Perhaps the big-city name lends it- to the mind of a small-city thug- a certain glamour. It is doubtful in the extreme that any of Algonquin Bay's casual assortment of lawbreakers has been anywhere near New York City; they're no more keen on high-crime cities than anyone else.

Musgrave thought it was the two entrances. The New York is the only Algonquin Bay eating establishment that you can enter from the bright lights of Main Street at one end and exit into the darkness of Oak Street at the other. Delorme thought it might be the gigantic gaudy mirrors on one wall that made the place seem twice its actual size, or the red vinyl, gold-flake banquettes that must have dated from the fifties. Delorme had a theory that bad guys were in many ways like children and shared the toddler's taste for bright colors and shiny objects, in which case the New York Restaurant, from its gold-tasseled menus to its dusty chandeliers, is a felon's natural playpen.

And of course the New York is open round the clock, the only restaurant in Algonquin Bay that can make that claim, which it does boldly, in a flashing crimson neon invitation- or warning: 'The New York Never Sleeps.'

Whatever the reason for its popularity, the New York is as a result of great interest to the various law enforcement agencies as well. Cops are encouraged to eat there, and often do, smack in the midst of people they have put in jail. Sometimes they chat with each other, sometimes merely nod, sometimes exchange cold stares. Unquestionably, it is a place where a smart cop might overhear useful information.

'Couldn't have picked a better location,' Musgrave said. 'Anyone spots you, it's easy to explain how you happen to be in the company of a creep like Corbett. Not that anyone's going to see them at two A.M. on a cold Wednesday morning.'

The former linen shop next to the New York Restaurant had been empty for six months, and the landlord, a bank, had happily provided the Mounties with a key. To cover their activities, they had boarded up the window with an OPENING SOON sign. The only lights in the place came from clip-ons above the electronic gear. Delorme was waiting in the shadows, along with Musgrave and two Mounties dressed in workman's coveralls who- probably on orders- said not a single word to her. The 'contractors' had been in place since noon; Delorme had come at nine P.M., entering through a back hall shared with a candle shop. Pleasant smells of sawdust and bayberry hung in the air.

A black-and-white video monitor showed a wide angle that took in most of the bar. Delorme pointed to the screen: 'The camera's movable?'

'Corbett said he'd be at the bar. Be very hard for Cardinal to explain how he happens to be at a table, actually sitting down with Canada's number-one counterfeiter. Being at the bar's a little different. You don't control who your neighbors are.'

'Yes, but what if-'

'The camera's on a turret; we can move it with a joystick from in here. We have done this before, you know.'

Touchy bastard, Delorme almost said. Instead she walked over to the boarded-up window and watched the street through a small hole carefully drilled in the dot over the I in OPENING SOON. She knew he would enter through the back, the Oak Street entrance, if he came at all, but she wanted to be looking at something other than that vacant bar or the backs of her unfriendly colleagues. The peephole didn't afford much of a view. The slush on Main Street was ankle-high. The sidewalks, thanks to their shopper-friendly heaters, were dry. Across the street an arts center that had once been a movie theater advertised an exhibition, called True North, of watercolors by new Canadian artists and an evening of Mozart courtesy of the Algonquin Bay Symphony Orchestra. The snow that had been forecast was coming down now as a light drizzle.

There were no pedestrians. A quarter to two in the morning, why would there be? Don't come, Delorme was thinking. Change your mind, stay home. Sergeant Langois had called from Florida, confirming her worst suspicions, less than three hours before. From that moment on, her feelings had been all over the place. All very well to talk about putting the cuffs on a man who sold out the department and the taxpayers to a criminal; another thing to destroy the life of someone you work with every day, the actual person, not the abstract prey. Even when she had bagged the mayor- now there was a man who had betrayed the city and had every reason to expect a stretch in jail- Delorme had gone through the same regret-in-advance process. When it came time to lock him up all she could think about were the unintended victims of her expertise, the mayor's wife and daughter. Collateral damage, she thought. I'm some true-believing pilot on a mission, following orders no matter what the cost: I should have joined the Air Force, I should have been American.

A red-and-white Eldorado came gliding into view, fishtailed a little in the slush, and stopped in front of the restaurant. Bright lights, shiny metal, like something you'd hang in miniature over an infant's crib. Here we go, Delorme thought, too late for regrets now. It's probably just stage fright, anyway. The car had pulled too far forward for her to see who got out.

A radio crackled, and a male voice said, 'Elvis is here,' and Musgrave tersely acknowledged. Delorme hadn't even realized they had men positioned elsewhere. She hoped they were indoors somewhere.

She joined Musgrave in front of the video monitor. On-screen, Kyle Corbett was handing his coat to someone out of view. Then he sat at the bar, well within the camera angle. Corbett looked mid-forties but styled himself like a much younger man, perhaps a rock star. He had long hair, cut all one length and swept back from a knobby brow, and an artistic goatee. His sports jacket was suede, with wide lapels, and he wore a crew-neck sweater underneath. He leaned forward to adjust his hair and mustache in the mirror, then swiveled on his stool to greet the bartender. He flashed a billboard-size smile. 'Rollie, how's it going?'

'How you doing, Mr. Corbett?'

'How'm I doing?' Corbett gazed up at the ceiling for a moment as if pondering deeply. 'Prospering. Yeah, I think you could say I'm prospering.'

'Pilsner?'

'Too cold. Gimme an Irish coffee. Decaf. I wanna sleep sometime this century.'

'Decaf Irish coffee. Coming up.'

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