He was twenty-five at most but looked ancient. Like something dug up at some primitive burial site. They all did. A mass grave, under micrograms of fentanyl, on the streets of Montréal.
His breath on her face smelled of rotten eggs. Of sulfur. Of hellfire.
“You know why I’m here,” she snarled, not bothering to push him away. “You know what I want. What I can’t get in Vancouver.”
He thrust his body against her.
“You came for this, did you?” Grinding his pelvis into her. “I remember you, little girl. Amelia.”
He said her name in a drawl, dragging it through the mud.
“You have one thing I want.” She reached between his legs. “And it isn’t this.”
She squeezed. Though what she felt was soft. Like a mitten in his pants.
“That’s it, little girl. Squeeze harder.”
She brought her hand up from his crotch to his throat and gripped it in exactly the way the martial-arts instructor at the academy had taught her.
Then she squeezed.
“Like this?” she asked.
His eyes widened. And she tightened her grip on his throat.
His eyes bulged. And still she squeezed.
“Amelia,” said Marc. “Stop. You’ll kill him.”
“Nothing to lose,” she snarled. And squeezed until she felt his larynx begin to collapse. “I want the new stuff. I came all the way back for it. And if I can’t get it, I’ll take something else. Just.” She squeezed. “For.” Tighter. “Fun.” Still.
And saw terror in his eyes.
Everyone stepped away, including Marc, while the dealer made a gurgling noise.
“I beg your pardon. What did you say?” she asked. And went through his pockets with her free hand as his eyes began rolling to the back of his head.
She found packets of pills. Packets of powder.
None of it was what she was looking for. She put the packets in her pocket.
Then released him.
He coughed and sputtered, then lunged at her. Amelia stepped aside, pushing him face-first into the wall and pinning him there.
“I’m not a little girl, shithead. I’m a fucking bitch,” she hissed into his filthy ear. “But you know what else I am, you pathetic piece of merde?”
She twisted his head so that he could see her.
“I’m the one-eyed man. Tell that to your supplier. Tell him to watch out.”
She gave him one last shove, turned around, and left. Marc scurrying behind her.
“What was that supposed to mean?” he asked. “What did you just do? They’ll kill you.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t actually care.” She handed him most of the packets. “One for you. Sell the rest.”
“What about you?” He slipped through the snowy street, trying to catch up with her. His arms wrapped around his chest, his coat too thin to keep him warm on this bitter night.
“I have better things to find,” she said.
The next morning she woke up in Marc’s room, in Marc’s bed. With Marc staring at her.
“Jesus, girl, what did you get up to last night? When I left you, you were looking for the new shit. Did you find it?”
She shook her head. “How’d I get here?”
“I carried you. Found you in an alley. I thought for sure you were dead. But you were just passed out. What did you take?”
She rubbed her hand over her face, feeling the grit of dried sleep, or tears, down her cheeks.
“I don’t know.”
Amelia had been stoned before. Lots of times. But never like this. Her head felt like it was splitting open, and she struggled for breath.
She tried to remember what had happened the night before. But all she saw were flashes that twisted and tilted in her memory. Turning her stomach until she thought she’d puke.
There was one that kept repeating.
A little girl. She was six or seven years old. Bright red Canadiens tuque on her head. She was wearing moose mittens and holding out a baggie of dope.
The child was swaying on her feet. Staring ahead of her.
But Amelia knew it wasn’t so much a memory as a hallucination. Brought on by the shitface dealer calling her a little girl.
“You made quite an impression,” Marc said, getting into bed beside her and pulling up the covers. “Everyone wants to know who you are.”
“What did you tell them?”
Putting his arm around her, Marc hugged her to his bony chest. Speaking into her dirty hair, his voice muffled, he said, “I told them, Sweet Pea, that you’re the one-eyed man.”
CHAPTER 17
Armand strained to reach the hand. And the body attached to it.
“What is it?” shouted Myrna.
Pinned behind him, she couldn’t see what he was doing, or why. But she could feel his almost frantic movements.
She tried to open her eyes, but the filth in the air kept forcing them closed. Billy, facing her, also had his eyes screwed shut. And his hands tightly clasped hers.
But Armand kept his eyes open, focused on the hand. Hoping, hoping to see movement as he stretched his arm out toward it.
He leaned as far forward as he could. But couldn’t. Quite. Reach.
“What?” asked Benedict. “What’s happening?”
“There’s someone buried with us. I see a hand.”
Benedict started to cough, and Armand eased up. Realizing he was pressing himself too hard against Benedict. Hurting the living to get to someone who was almost certainly dead.
They heard shouting and digging above them.
Still Armand reached out. In an unconscious imitation of The Creation of Adam. Two fingers, almost touching. But where Michelangelo had depicted the beginning of life, Armand knew this was the end. For someone.
“Who is it?” Armand asked.
Jean-Guy closed the door behind him and sat on the bench of the ambulance.
Armand was the last, by his choice, to be looked at by the medics. Benedict had been taken to the hospital for scans, given the injury to his head. After being checked out, Myrna and Billy were told it would be best to also go to the BMP Hospital, but both refused.
“All I want is to go home,” said Myrna. “Have a bath. See my friends.”
Jean-Guy sat across from Armand, who, despite having his eyes rinsed out several times by the paramedics, blinked against the irritation of the tiny bits of grit still in them.
His face was smeared with grime and sweat and water from the rinsing. But no blood.
Jean-Guy barely dared believe it. Not only was Gamache alive. They all were. Saved by a sturdy doorway.
“And Benedict,” said Armand, coughing a little and using a Kleenex to wipe the filthy saliva from his mouth. “He pulled us into that doorway. And then protected me.”
He could still feel the rubble hitting his arms, his legs. Crushing into him, into them, from all sides. His chest constricting, his breathing difficult.
What he could also feel, though not see, was Benedict. Using his own body to protect Armand.
And he could hear sobbing that died to whimpering.
The boy was terrified. Knowing he was about to die. And yet he’d chosen, as what might have been his last act, to try to save a near stranger, almost certainly at the cost of his own life.
Jean-Guy was nodding, agreeing.
He’d been just about the first one to them. Breaking free of the hands holding him back, he’d scrambled up the pile, slipping and stumbling on the snow and loose debris.
And then he heard them. Calling, crying out for help. Billy, Myrna, Benedict. But the one voice he was frantic to hear was silent. Panic had set in, and he began to dig with his hands. Throwing aside rubble he normally would never be able to shift.
Until the leather of his gloves was ripped away. Until he’d found them.
First Billy, then Myrna, then Benedict. And finally another face turned to him, squinting in the sunlight.