Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

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."

"That's my man."

Delorme was trying to place what it was about Corbett's manner that was so familiar: the big smile, the apparent thought expended on trivial questions. Then she realized what it was. Kyle Corbett, former drug runner and current counterfeiter, had adopted the kindly condescension of the very famous. Delorme had once seen Eric Clapton in the Toronto airport, cornered by fans, signing autographs. He chatted with them in the same easy yet distant manner that Corbett had appropriated for himself.

He had swiveled his back to the camera and spread his arms along the bar as if the place were his. "He doesn't look that dangerous," Delorme observed.

"Tell that to Nicky Bell," Musgrave said. "May he rest in peace." Then he gave a thumbs-up to his men. "Crystal clear, sound and picture both. Nice piece of work."

The radio crackled again. "Taxi on Oak."

Musgrave spoke into his radio. "Tell me it's our man of the hour."

"He's getting out now." There was a pause. "Can't see his face. It's raining and he's wearing his hood. Headed your way, though."

There was a loud clink of glassware, and the two men at the video console suddenly sat back.

"Jesus Christ," Musgrave said. "The screen's blank."

"They put something in front of it. Stacks of bar glasses." Frantic hands twiddled at dials. "It's those huge dishwasher trays they have."

"Jesus. Hit the joystick. Can't you swivel around them?"

"I'm trying, I'm trying."

"Shhh!" Delorme said. "Let's at least hear what's going on."

Corbett was greeting somebody loudly, expansively, in his best "just folks" manner, and implying for the benefit of any restaurant staff that this meeting of cop and criminal was entirely accidental. "You gonna join me for a drink? Always glad to know a fellow insomniac, even if he's playing for the wrong team."

The reply was unintelligible. The other person was somewhere out of mike range, perhaps hanging up his coat.

"You guys always dress like Nanook of the North when you're off duty?"

"Larry," Musgrave said icily, "fix the fucking camera. We're losing the main event."

Christ, Delorme prayed. Let's get it over with.

"What're you drinking?" It was Dyson who spoke. "Shirley Temple or something?"

Musgrave whirled on Delorme. "Who is that? Is that Adonis Dyson? I thought you fed this pill to Cardinal."

Delorme shrugged. A mixture of relief and sorrow was flowing into her veins as if from a hypodermic. "I fed Cardinal one date. Dyson got another."

"You have something for me?" Dyson was saying on the darkened screen.

There was a crackle of paper. "Invest it wisely. Personally, I like index funds."

"I got a cab waiting. So I'll get right to the nitty-gritty."

"What are you scared of? Didn't you hear I'm immune these days? Amazing what a court order can do. I gotta say, the law's really something when it works."

"It's late, and I've got a cab waiting."

"Sit down. Don't you haul ass on me. I told you I want a full fucking rundown. I don't pay you for chicken feed."

"The Mounties are going to hit you on the twenty-fourth. No chicken feed. The twenty-fourth. That's all you need to know."

"That's the poison pill," Delorme said quietly. "The twenty-fourth. Dyson's the only one I gave that to."

"And don't clear out this time," Dyson went on. "Leave something for them to find, and a couple of guys, too. You've got nine lives, I realize, but you're running on number ten and so am I, and if they nail me we're all going down."

Musgrave spoke into his radio. "We're in play. Close the exits." Then to Delorme: "Let's get him, Sister."

MUSGRAVE went in through the front door, Delorme through the back, each accompanied by two Mounties. Musgrave took Corbett, and Delorme dealt with Dyson. "Really," Delorme told people later. "It was smooth as a business transaction. Corbett didn't put up any struggle. Just cursed a few times."