“One collapsed house is more than enough,” said Armand, and Benedict agreed.
Gamache tucked the information away. Not about renovations he had no plans to undertake but that Benedict did indeed know how to prevent a house from falling. And would therefore, presumably, also know how to bring one down.
Benedict dropped Armand off in downtown Montréal, at the quite splendid offices of Horowitz Investments, and promised to pick him up later.
It was snowing lightly. Prettily. Covering the grime of the city. At least for a little while.
Gamache watched Benedict drive around a corner, then hailed a cab and gave an address on rue Ste.-Catherine.
“Are you sure?” the driver asked, looking Armand up and down.
His fare was nicely dressed, in a good parka, with a white shirt and a tie just visible below the scarf.
“I’m sure. Merci.”
He leaned back in the seat, and as he did, his face settled into a grim expression.
“Wait for me, please,” he said when they reached their destination.
“I won’t wait long,” the driver warned. Though he hadn’t yet been paid, he was willing to leave rather than be carjacked, or beaten and robbed by junkies.
This was, every cabbie knew, a no-go area. Or, if you had to go, it was a place you didn’t linger.
He locked the doors and kept the car in gear.
Still, he was curious and watched as his fare walked with more confidence than he should have had, then turned in to what the driver knew was an alley. Clogged with garbage cans and whores.
He waited a minute. Two. Then crept up until he was idling at the mouth of the alley.
The cabbie watched as his fare shook the hand of another tall person. But this one was emaciated. A prostitute. A transsexual.
He passed her money in a thick envelope. Oddly, the woman appeared to try to give it back, but his fare insisted. Then he turned and, on seeing the taxi, nodded.
The man walked back to the car with ease, with authority. And while the driver was tempted to leave him there, after whatever disgusting thing had just happened in the alley, he didn’t.
Armand thanked the driver, then sat back in the seat and exhaled as he looked out the window. Scanning the icy streets for a little girl. A child. In a red hat.
But he felt confident his new friend, Anita Facial, would find her. And call him. And he’d go and get her.
He knew in coming here today he’d risked blowing the whole thing. Risked being seen. But there were lines, there were limits. And Armand Gamache was tired of crossing them. Of exceeding them. He was tired of the tyranny of the greater good.
He’d found a line, in the fleeting image of a little girl, that he would not cross.
“‘It was the schooner Hesperus,’” he whispered, his breath creating a small circle of vapor on the window, “‘That sailed the wintry sea.’”
He realized everyone suspected he only knew the opening lines of the epic poem. That was part of the joke. But the truth was, he knew it all. Every word. Every line. Including, of course, how it ended.
“‘Christ save us all from a death like this,’” he quoted under his breath as he looked out the window.
Beauvoir grabbed a quick sandwich in his office as he read over reports of the Baumgartner murder. Updates on interviews. Background checks. Preliminary scene-of-crime evidence. Photographs.
He chaired the morning briefing with lead inspectors about other homicides they were investigating.
He then called Agent Cloutier into his office to get a report on her findings.
She balanced the papers on her knee, then knocked them off. Then her glasses fell off as she stooped to pick up the papers. Beauvoir went around the desk to help her.
“Let’s sit over there,” he said, taking a pile of papers to the table by the window. One he’d sat at hundreds of times, going over cases with Gamache.
“Tell me what you know,” he said to her.
And she did.
“These”—she laid her hand on the statements found in Anthony Baumgartner’s study—“are not legitimate. The numbers don’t add up. The transactions look good until you cross-check and realize the buy and sell figures are off.”
“So what are they?”
“A play.”
“A what?”
“They’re like a theater production. An illusion. Something made to look real, but isn’t. Monsieur Baumgartner must’ve known that these clients wouldn’t look too closely. Most don’t. And the fact is, you’d have to be an expert to figure it out, and even then it takes time.”
“Was he stealing from them?”
The clarity, the simplicity of the question seemed to surprise her.
She thought about it, then nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Have you found the funds?”
“That’ll take longer, sir. And a court order.”
Beauvoir went to his desk and brought over a paper. It was the court order, allowing them full access to Baumgartner’s finances. Another one granted access to the Taylor and Ogilvy client list.
He’d put that in his satchel, along with the copy of the statements Cloutier had given him.
“It would also help if we could get into his computer,” he said.
“I’m working on it, patron.”
The taxi let Armand off where it had picked him up. Outside the offices of Horowitz Investments. They were just down rue Sherbrooke from the Musée des Beaux-Arts and Holt Renfrew. On Montréal’s Golden Mile, where glass towers were fronted by old Greystone mansions.
A cab ride, and a lifetime, away from where he’d just been. What separated them, Gamache knew, wasn’t hard work but good fortune and blind luck. That picked some and not others. That introduced some to opioids and not others. Five years ago, two years, even a year ago, the futures of the ghastly figures on the street looked very different. And then someone introduced them to a painkiller. An opioid. And all the promise, all the good fortune of birth and affluence—of a loving family, of education—were no match for what came next.
Loved. Beaten. Cared for. Neglected. University graduate or dropout. All ended up in the gutter. Thanks to the great leveler that was fentanyl.
What was on the streets now was not, Gamache knew, his doing. They were opioids. Killers. Hollowing out a generation. And so far the carfentanil he’d let through hadn’t yet gone into circulation.
But it would, he knew. Soon. And if it was bad now, it was about to get incalculably worse.
He’d read a report recently that said an American state with the death penalty was considering using the drug to execute prisoners. It was swift and lethal and guaranteed to do the job.
He’d stared at that report, feeling the blood drain from his face. It wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. But it did put a word to what he’d done. What he was.
The executioner.
“Armand.”
Stephen Horowitz came out of his office, hand extended. His voice still lightly accented from his European upbringing.
All of ninety-three now, he was as vibrant as ever. And as rich as Croesus.
“You’re looking well,” said Armand, taking the firm hand and shaking it.
“As are you.”
The sharp eyes traveled over Gamache before coming to rest on his face.
“Have you been crying?”
Armand laughed. “Seeing you always makes me emotional. You know that. But non. Just some irritation.”
“That sounds more likely. Most people find me irritating.”
Armand did not disagree.
“I’ve made reservations at the Ritz. Too pretentious, but I like seeing which of my clients are there and think they can afford it.”
They walked the two blocks to the Ritz, with Horowitz taking Armand’s arm every now and then, far beyond being bashful about any frailty.
He’d been Armand’s parents’ financial adviser. In fact, Armand’s father had helped set Horowitz up in business when he’d been a young refugee after the war. One of the displaced people who never forgot how that felt. Nor, seventy years later, had Stephen Horowitz forgotten that act of kindness.