menacing?'
'It hurts me that you could even think something like that. I'd never threaten you. I always liked you. I liked you right up till you slapped the cuffs on me. All I'm saying is I'd be nervous sitting beside a guy who could remove my arms and legs and lay them out in front of me.'
'You're forgetting you're a lot stupider than me, Kiki.'
Air whistled in the flattened nostrils. Over the one eye, the eyelid lowered to half-mast. 'Rick Bouchard got fifteen years 'cause of you. Ten of those years are up. He could be out any day now.'
'Think so? I don't see Rick racking up points for good behavior.'
'He could be out any day now. But the point is, when he gets out, he's going to want his money. I mean, look at it from his point of view. Here he is doing fifteen years for a few kilos and five hundred grand. He loses the fifteen, the kilos, and the five hundred grand. He doesn't even mind that.'
'Yeah, I heard that about Bouchard. Very even-tempered.'
'Really, it's not about that. You were just doing your job. But here's the thing. The thing is, Rick had seven hundred thousand, not five. Seven. So all's he wants back is the two hundred thousand. That's pretty reasonable. The way Rick sees it, taking that money wasn't part of your job.'
'Rick says, Rick thinks. That's what I admire about you, Kiki. Your independent spirit. You always go your own way. Real maverick.'
The one good eye, red-rimmed, regarded him- sadly? It was difficult to tell, one eye being harder to read than two. Kiki rubbed his nose with the letter F and sniffed. 'You told me a good story. Now I gotta tell you one.'
'Is it about how you lost your eye?'
'No. It's about this guy. There was this guy in my block. Not Rick's block, my block, you understand? They had to move him out of Rick's block 'cause- well, I guess you could say 'cause he was an independent spirit. Real maverick.
'Anyways. He moves into my block. And I guess he figures he's home free because he like immediately starts trying to run with the big boys. Which you don't do. You work your way up. See, he could've come to me, asked my advice how to patch things up with Rick. I could've helped. There wasn't that much money involved. Not like you. But, he was like you say, an independent spirit, a real maverick, so he didn't come to me. And instead of ending up friends with Rick, instead of doing his time safe and sound, guess where he ended up?'
'I don't know, Kiki. Banff?'
'Banff? Where'd you get Banff?'
'Sorry. Just tell me. Where'd he end up?'
'I guess his own conscience got to him after a while. Because he went to bed one night and spontaneously combusted.' The red-rimmed eye looked Cardinal up and down. It was like being examined by an oyster. 'I'm telling you, I never heard screams like that. There's a lot of metal in prison, you know? Acoustics are not designed for comfort. But even so. It frightened me, him screaming like that. And the smell of a human being on fire, well, it's not very nice. Total mystery, too. Like your Virgin. A miracle, maybe. Guy just spontaneously combusting like that. They never did figure out how it happened.'
Cardinal glanced up at the Virgin and, without thinking, said a little prayer. Help me do the right thing.
'So. You're just going to sit there, you're not going to say anything? What's the matter? You didn't like my story?'
'No, no, it's not that.' Cardinal leaned toward the flat round face, the one stewed eye. 'It's just kind of weird for me, Kiki. I've never talked to an actual cyclops before.'
'Huh.' Kiki shifted his weight, the pew creaking under him. Cardinal left him contemplating his knuckles. First fuck, then you. He was back at the baptismal font, when Kiki called after him, 'That's funny, Cardinal. I'm going to be laughing at that for a long time. Couple of years from now? There you'll be: dead and all. And there I'll be: laughing. You're such an independent spirit.'
Cardinal pushed open the massive oak door, squinting in the watery winter light.
48
DELORME placed a Baggie on top of the computer; something metallic gleamed dully through the plastic.
Cardinal glanced at it. 'What's that?'
'Katie Pine's bracelet. It came with her clothing from Forensic. Negative for prints except hers. You going to join us in the Museum, or what?' The Museum of Unsolved Crime was Delorme's personal term for the boardroom, which was now fully taken over by their case materials. The bracelet would join the audiotape, the fingerprint, the hair and fiber, the Ballistics and Forensic reports- the growing catalog of leads that led nowhere.
'Give me a few minutes,' Cardinal said. 'I have to finish this, now.'
'I thought you did all your sups at night.'
'It's not a sup.'
Delorme could see his computer screen from where she stood, but Cardinal was pretty sure she couldn't read it. If that was a flicker of suspicion in her eyes, fine, let her wonder. Delorme reluctantly left, and he read the last part of what he had written. I've come to realize that, because of my past, my continuing presence on the Pine- Curry case could jeopardize the outcome of any trial. I must therefore…
I must therefore get the hell out of this and all my other cases, because evidence from an admitted thief is not going to carry a lot of weight. I am the weak link in the chain; the sooner I get out, the better. For the hundredth time that day he wondered how he would tell Catherine, pictured for the hundredth time how her face would crumple in grief, not for herself, but for him.
He had outlined the facts of his guilt for the record: It had happened his last year on the Toronto force. They had raided a dealer's house, Rick Bouchard's distribution center for northern Ontario, and while the others on the squad had been reading rights to the likes of Kiki B. and Bouchard himself, Cardinal had found the cash in a hidden compartment of a bedroom closet. To his everlasting shame he had walked off with nearly two hundred grand; the other five hundred was used as evidence in court. The suspects, he added, had been convicted on all charges.
In my defense, I can only plead… But Cardinal had no defense, not in his own mind. He picked up the Baggie from the top of the computer. There is no defense, he said to himself, moving the little charms between thumb and forefinger like prayer beads: a miniature trumpet, a harp, a bass fiddle.
In my defense, I can only plead that my wife's illness had upset me so much that… No. He would not hide behind the sorrows of the person he had most wronged. He deleted the sentence and typed instead, I have no excuse.
Jesus Christ, he said to himself. Not a single extenuating circumstance? Nothing to soften the image of himself as a uniformed thug? None of the money was for myself, he typed and quickly deleted.
It had happened during Catherine's first hospitalization; Cardinal was still a junior detective on the Toronto Narcotics Squad and had been living the nightmare of watching his wife transformed by mental illness into a person he didn't recognize: dull, lifeless, depressed to the point of speechlessness. It had terrified him. Terrified him, because he knew he was not strong enough to live with this debilitated zombie who had taken the place of the bright, chipper woman he loved. Terrified him because he knew nothing at that time of mental illness, let alone the complexities of raising a ten-year-old girl by himself.
Through the Baggie, his fingers traced the form of a tiny guitar.
Catherine had spent two months in the Clarke Institute. Two months with people who were so confused they couldn't write their own names. Two months while the doctors tried various combinations of drugs that seemed only to make things worse. Two months during which she recognized her husband only intermittently. After a torment of inner debate, Cardinal took Kelly to see her mother, which was a mistake for all concerned. Catherine could not bear even to look at her daughter, and it took the little girl a long time to get over it.
Then Catherine's parents had come up from Minnesota to visit and had been horrified by the doleful, panda- eyed creature that had shuffled through the hospital corridor toward them. Although they were never less than polite to him, Cardinal could feel their stares boring into his back: Somehow he had caused her breakdown. They began to talk up American health care ('Finest in the world. Cutting edge. Brilliant psychiatrists. Who do you think writes all the books?'), and the message was plain. If Cardinal truly cared about their daughter, he would seek
