John Goldbach - The Devil and the Detective

‘Rick! Rick!’ I woke up feeling far from refreshed. My nose stung as I inhaled. O’Meara was standing over me, holding the cherry of a lit cigarette directly under my nose. I coughed and gagged. My eyes stung, too. ‘Rise and shine, sleepyhead,’ O’Meara said. ‘I’m going to uncuff you but you’re not free to go. Understand?’ He looked out of focus to my bleary eyes. ‘Understand?’ he said and pushed me.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said.

He released me from the handcuffs and I rubbed my wrists, like in the movies, I thought, and kept rubbing my wrists. They were red and chapped and sore and I felt generally sick. ‘Can I get something to drink?’ I said.

‘I want you staying put in this office,’ said O’Meara. ‘Is that clear?’

‘Clear as mud.’

O’Meara left and I sat rubbing my wrists. I was parched. My mouth tasted awful. I opened Gerald’s desk drawer and inside was mainly just a mess of papers — bills and receipts mainly — and some business cards. I sorted through them quickly but only recognized a lawyers’ card, Bouvert-Adamson (Bouvert was the name of the lawyer Elaine gave, I thought, when she first called), and I slipped it into my wallet. I looked around at the books and stood up and tilted my head and read the spines on the shelves. I pulled down a copy of The Art of War and opened it to a bookmarked page: ‘18. All war is based on deception,’ it said at the top of the page.

O’Meara’s voice and footsteps were approaching. I shelved the book and slid back behind the desk. O’Meara entered the office.

‘Did you fuck her, Rick?’ he said. I didn’t answer. Again, he said, ‘Did you fuck her?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘If her body turns up and we find any of your DNA, even a hair, a single pube, I’ll make sure you’re locked up for eternity.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘This is serious, Rick. You don’t sleep with your client when you’re on a case. It’s these kinds of stunts that kept you from becoming a detective.’

‘I am a detective.’

‘A real detective.’

‘I am a real detective.’

‘Right. Keep telling yourself that, Rick.’

After a few more minutes of O’Meara’s bullshit he said I was free to go for the time being, stressing the point, for the time being , over and over again, and I said whatever you say, then searched my wallet for Darren’s card.

I used Gerald’s desk phone. Darren picked up after three rings. I asked if he wouldn’t mind grabbing me — said I’d explain in person — and he said he’d be there in fifteen minutes. O’Meara watched me the whole time but I didn’t give a shit. He didn’t intimidate me. He never does, I thought, though he thinks he does. He thinks going to the academy and rising up through the ranks of the force to become a detective like him is what I wanted, but that’s where he’s wrong, I thought. I never wanted to be that kind of detective.

I sat on the front porch waiting for Darren. The police officers weren’t so friendly and I was anxious to leave the scene of the crimes. Light pink clouds drifted westward in the sunset. Parts of the sky were a deep clear blue. Darren pulled up to the house in his flower-filled hatchback and lightly beeped the horn twice. He waved.

Right away I thanked him for picking me up and said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ He nodded and drove off. I told him everything, for some reason, that is to say, I told him about Gerald’s murder and Elaine calling, O’Meara, the narrowish bar, the surfeit of whiskies, waking up on my couch, receiving a call from Elaine, O’Meara again, dinner, drinking, sleeping with Elaine, waking up alone, the interrogations, the handcuffs and so on and so forth. Darren listened. I told him about what an asshole O’Meara is, about how we’ve never gotten along, even when we first met, though then we were civil.

‘It sounds like you two are competitive,’ said Darren, ‘like your jobs are too similar for you to be friends — odium figulinum , trade jealousy.’

‘Perhaps, though I’ve always felt that our methods and motivations — our modi operandi ,’ I said, showing him I knew a few words in Latin, too, ‘are so different that it cancels out what our trades have in common. I don’t even feel like we’re playing the same game. Ours are different trades, in many ways.’

I still agreed with him, though. There was no denying that we didn’t get along, without a doubt.

‘Do you think Elaine’s all right?’ said Darren. I said that I wasn’t sure. ‘What’s your next move?’ Darren said.

I opened my wallet and read the address on the Bouvert-Adamson business card. ‘I figure someone will still be at the office if we get there soon.’ Although the sun was setting, it wasn’t yet six o’clock. Darren said he could get me to their law offices in ten minutes. He said he knew the old building well because he’d photographed its gargoyles for an architecture forum.

‘Actually, technically they’re not gargoyles — they’re chimeras,’ he said. ‘They don’t spout water.’

I said, ‘Cool,’ and nothing else. We drove on in silence. Darren respected my privacy; he let me think, uninterrupted. I watched the city go by, anonymous buildings housing anonymous people, some of whom were up to no good. I didn’t care, though. It was a Montreal that didn’t concern me. I wondered, however, if Elaine was hiding out in any of those buildings or homes, holed up with a lover, one she never mentioned, not Gerald or Adam or me but someone secret, or at least kept secret from me — or perhaps she was being held in an apartment against her will, tied up, blindfolded, hungry, tired, scared, hurt, bloody or worse. We drove on to the lawyers’.

Adorned with menacing-looking gargoyles, or chimeras rather, as Darren had explained, sat the stout old building. It looked like a less dilapidated, though less benign, version of the old building I inhabit. Dark clouds gathered above it and its chimeras. I was going to meet the lawyers, not knowing what to expect, not knowing what they knew, if anything, for Elaine only mentioned her lawyer, Bouvert, once, saying that he’d recommended me specifically, giving her my telephone number, though I’d never met the man in my life. I recognized the name but I’d never met the man. Darren pulled up to the curbside and said he’d wait.

‘You don’t have to. I can get a cab from here. I appreciate you grabbing me from the Andrewses’ in the first place, but you don’t have to wait.’

‘It’s no problem really,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait. And if you don’t come out in half an hour I’ll come in and get you.’

‘I think I’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘It’s just her lawyer.’

The elevator never came, so I climbed six flights of stairs to the Bouvert-Adamson offices. The reception area was large, with an empty waiting area to the side, with leather chairs and a table covered in current magazines. An attractive woman sat behind a sparse, tidy work station. Right away she asked if she could help me. I said yes and told her my name and that I’m a private detective, a private detective representing Mrs. Elaine Andrews in the case of her murdered husband, Mr. Gerald Andrews.

‘Mr. Bouvert will want to see you right away,’ she said, standing, and I said I figured he would.

Bouvert’s office was large, too, with large windows behind his desk that looked out on the street. Everything was black leather. I sat in a large black leather chair in front of his desk. The walls were book-lined and there was a black leather couch and to its side a small locked metal cabinet in which I imagined he stored liquor and cash and possibly a gun. Bouvert was a large man, well dressed, wearing a dark grey suit, with a dark tie and what looked like black pearl cufflinks, though it was difficult to tell. He was bald and kept the few hairs he had close cropped. He wore a heavy watch that I imagined was platinum with a pearl face. His teeth were bad. He didn’t say much after introducing himself and shaking my hand. He motioned for me to sit down and then he sat down behind his desk. Leaning back in his chair, he stared at me in silence.