“Twenty bucks for a blow job.” Gamache heard the male voice behind him.
Ignoring it, he continued to watch until he felt a poke in his back.
“I’m speaking to you, Grandpa. You want a blow job or not?”
Gamache turned and saw a man younger than his own son. Tattoos over his ravaged face. He must have been handsome once, thought Gamache. He must’ve been young, once.
“No thank you,” he said, and turned to watch the exchange across the street.
“Then fuck off.”
Gamache felt two fists hit his back with such force he was propelled out of the alley and across the icy sidewalk. Putting out both hands just in time, he thudded against a parked car, narrowly missing skidding onto the street. And into oncoming traffic.
A driver leaned on his horn and gave him the finger as he passed.
“You okay?”
Gamache felt a thin hand, like a skeleton’s, on his arm and turned to look into a cavernous face. The cheeks were so sunken the thin skin barely stretched across the bones. And the eyes, with dark circles, were dilated. But kind.
Gamache looked across the road. His eyes sweeping over and past the couple a block away now.
Amelia had glanced back at the sound of the horn, but Gamache had already turned away and was looking at the person who held his arm.
“Do you need help?” asked the soft voice.
“Non, non. I’m fine. Merci.”
She looked behind her, shouting into the alley. “You fucking asshole. You might’ve killed him.”
“Fucking tranny” came the reply out of the dark. “Get off my block.”
The woman turned back to Gamache. They were about the same height, and it was clear she had once been robust but was withered, whittled down. She wore a short leather skirt and a pink, frilly coat. Her makeup was carefully, skillfully, applied, but couldn’t hide the sores on her face.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asked. “It isn’t safe here, you know.”
“You’re very kind, thank you,” he said, reaching into his pocket.
“Don’t.” She laid the same skeleton hand on his arm.
Gamache brought out a notebook and pen and wrote down his personal number.
“If you ever need help.” He handed it to her, along with his gloves. “My name’s Armand.”
“Anita Facial,” she said, shaking his hand and taking what he offered.
Amelia continued walking with Marc. She’d slept in the hallway outside his tiny apartment the night before and tried not to hear what was going on inside.
And now they were off again. He to find another score. She to find David.
A car horn had blasted just behind them, and she’d turned in time to see a prostitute holding the arm of a man who’d almost wandered into traffic.
She watched for a moment as the man gave the prostitute what must have been money for services. Some things never changed.
Amelia continued trudging down rue Ste.-Catherine. She bent her head into the wind and narrowed her eyes and repeated, as she had the night before, the familiar poems and favorite phrases seared into her memory. She went through them, her personal rosary. Over and over. Round and around. Until the bitter day faded. Until the addicts and whores and trannies faded and she was left with the warmth of the words from books now ash.
Gamache walked back to the café.
He knew it was probably unwise to have come here, but he wanted to make sure Amelia was indeed on the streets and was doing what he expected.
Looking for the carfentanil.
He was under no illusion about what would happen if she failed. If he failed.
Fentanyl, he knew, was a hundred times stronger than heroin. And carfentanil was a hundred times stronger than any fentanyl.
It would be like taking a flamethrower to every kid on the streets.
As he walked slowly back, he thought about what Beauvoir had said. That no one was more brutal than him. It was said in jest, but it was also, Gamache knew, true.
Armand felt a slight pain in his back where the young male prostitute had hit him from behind. There were two spots, side by side, that throbbed. If he were sprouting wings, that’s where they’d be.
But Armand Gamache knew with certainty that he was no angel. Though he did wonder if there was ever another war in heaven, on which side he’d be placed.
After sliding back into the booth and ordering coffee and a sandwich, Armand put on his reading glasses and opened the book he’d bought that morning at Myrna’s bookshop.
Erasmus’s Adagia. His collection of proverbs and sayings.
The print was small, and Armand’s eyes were still blurry, but he knew the book well and now read the familiar entries.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer.
A necessary evil.
Between a rock and a hard place.
A rare bird.
And then he found the one he’d been looking for.
In the kingdom of the blind, Amelia recited to herself as she trudged along—
—the one-eyed man is king, Gamache read.
“Chief Inspector?”
Beauvoir turned and saw Francis Cournoyer walking down the corridor after him.
“A word, please.”
Jean-Guy had been interrogated for an hour and finally been allowed to leave. But he hadn’t made it very far down the hallway before Cournoyer caught up with him.
The Ministère de la Justice man looked around, then pulled Beauvoir into the washroom and locked the door.
“You forgot this.” He held out a manila file folder.
Beauvoir looked at it. It contained the statement.
“I didn’t forget it. I’m not signing. Ever.”
“It doesn’t say anything we don’t already know,” said Cournoyer.
“But signing it would say a lot about me, wouldn’t it?” said Beauvoir. “Drop it. Drop this whole thing. Do what’s right.”
Cournoyer smiled. “Is it so clear to you, always? What’s right? It isn’t to me. And it isn’t to Gamache.”
“That’s a lie. He did what was right.”
“Then why do so many decent people think it was wrong? Not just them”—he jerked his head toward the interview room—“but others. Good people, yourself included, disagreed with his decision.”
He looked closely at Beauvoir.
“You’re surprised I know that? By the Chief Superintendent’s own testimony, you pleaded with him to stop the shipment of opioids. Every one of the agents in the inner circle begged him to stop it. He admits that. But it didn’t stop him. He let it onto the streets, to potentially kill thousands.”
“It hasn’t hit the streets yet, and he’s gotten most of it back.”
“But not all. And it will hit the streets, any day now. Any minute now. Every young death will be laid at his feet.”
“You think he doesn’t know that? Isn’t that bad enough for him? You have to make it a public lynching? It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting. I won’t have anything to do with it.”
“You’ll change your mind. Before this’s over, you’ll sign.”
“I won’t. What’s your endgame in all of this? It can’t be just protecting politicians.”
Cournoyer unlocked the bathroom door, and then, looking back at Beauvoir, he seemed to make up his mind.
“Ask Gamache.”
“What?”
“Ask him. He knows far more than he’s telling you.”
Cournoyer tossed the file, with the statement, onto the floor and left.
Jean-Guy stared at it. Then picked it up.
CHAPTER 21
“Your Benedict … Pouliot does not live in 3G, as it turns out,” said Isabelle Lacoste, picking up the burger with both hands and taking an almighty bite.
“But he does live in the building?” asked Gamache. “With his girlfriend?”