I ran the shower and the washroom began to fill up with steam. I washed my face quickly at the sink. I opened the small window above the shower and tried to figure out a way of hoisting myself up and out of it to the fire escape, while steam billowed and rolled out the window. The window was small, indeed, high up. I’d leave my bag behind, I decided. If I pulled myself up, I thought, I could balance on the shower-curtain bar, which was metal and very sturdy and screwed into the wall, and roll out the window. And that was exactly what I did, leaving the shower running and the washroom filling up with steam. As quietly as I could, I took the stairs down the fire escape to the street. I took back alleys to Chez Marine.
Getting to the flower shop’s back entrance wasn’t difficult, though I heard a police siren on the way and of course suspected it was Officer McLaughlin frantically searching for me. I slipped in the back door and didn’t make a sound. I looked around at all the flowers and tools and saw a cluttered desk with, amongst other things, a glow-in-the-dark Hasbro Ouija Board with a planchette on it. It must be Julie’s, I instantly thought, and then she came in to the back of the store and put her hand on her small chest, startled.
‘You frightened me!’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but the police are after me.’
‘Oh wow.’
‘Is Darren around?’
‘No, but I’ll call his cell. I haven’t seen him since you two left earlier.’
‘I was with him but then I got taken away by the cops. He doesn’t know. He was sitting waiting for me in the car, while I was going to grab some supplies from my place.’
‘I’ll call,’ she said, and picked up a phone on the desk with the Ouija board. While Julie dialed, I thought I should contact Gerald Andrews with the board and ask him who stabbed him to death.
‘Darren,’ she said, ‘I’m with Bob. At the store. He’s in trouble … Okay, bon … Ciao … ’ She hung up the phone.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘He’s on his way, said he just stopped at his apartment.’
‘Great. Merci, Julie.’
‘De rien.’
Darren was there within minutes. Of course, his first question was what the hell happened and I filled him in on everything: the Taser, the interrogation, the phonebook, O’Meara’s Glock and splitting out the washroom window on Officer McLaughlin.
‘We’ve only got a little over an hour till O’Meara meets up with the lawyers, so we’d better get moving,’ I said.
‘I’m ready,’ said Darren, picking up a nail gun off a table.
‘Is this is a good idea?’ said Julie.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but we have to do something. I can’t just sit on my hands. We have to be there for the payoff — see what this is all about, see what O’Meara’s up to.’
‘Do you believe he’s working on the case?’ said Darren. ‘Like, undercover?’
‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither, but I’ve been fooled so many times that I’m open to the possibility that he’s on the up and up.’
‘Right … ’
‘We’ll see, I suppose.’
‘So what …?’
‘We go down to the Old Port, find this restaurant, find the pier close by, and then hide and watch. A stakeout.’
‘Do you have a plan to intervene?’
‘No. We’ll see what goes down.’
‘You two are crazy! You’ll end up in prison or dead.’
‘I really hope not, Julie.’
25
En route to the Old Port, I thought about what to do and didn’t really have many ideas. Julie said if she didn’t hear from Darren and me in a couple of hours she’d call the police.
We explained to her that the police are potentially our main problem at the moment. She seemed to understand but nevertheless said she’d contact the authorities if she hadn’t heard from us in a couple of hours. Darren promised to call, at the very least, and told her to hold tight. ‘We’ll be okay,’ he told her. I was nervous for Darren’s safety, however; after all, I thought, he was a student and a flower-delivery driver who’d done me a whole host of favours, not a law enforcement officer or a criminal (when there’s a difference) or a private detective — this really wasn’t his problem or his case, though his help had been invaluable, I thought, even though I still wasn’t sure what was going on or what was about to go down. Still, thanks to Darren, we knew about the payoff, I thought, if the payoff was still going down. Darren had brought the nail gun along and had grabbed a baseball bat and a couple of golf clubs from his apartment. Even with our armament, I thought, we were dead if things got violent, so probably best to stay out of the way, and I told Darren what I’d been thinking, emphasizing that I wanted him to stay out of harm’s way, watching but not intervening, no matter what. He just nodded.
‘I’m serious,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘It’s not worth you getting hurt or killed over a bunch of rich assholes’ bullshit.’
‘I know.’
We drove on in silence. Darren had looked up Diavolo Cucina’s address back at the boutique. He said the restaurant was right down by the water, far off from the touristy section, where you can buy fudge and watch jugglers and unicyclists and men making balloon animals, sometimes making them disappear by eating them. It was in the corner of the old city, by the waterway, near an overpass. We pulled up to the old stone building, which looked like a tiny fortress, with black steel fencing, and knew it was the restaurant, even though there wasn’t a sign.
‘We should wait near that little park but under the overpass,’ I said, pointing to a small grassy strip across from the restaurant but before the wharf, with a few benches and picnic tables.
‘I know just what to do,’ said Darren, and he pulled the car up alongside a pillar under the overpass, from which we could see the restaurant’s entrance, the small park and the pier. ‘I’ve got a camera and binoculars in my knapsack.’
I turned around and unzipped the red-and-blue knapsack and took out the binoculars. I held them up to my eyes and looked over at Diavolo Cucina. It’d been a long time since I’d looked through a pair of binoculars, I thought, no longer owning a pair myself. I used to own a pair, a while back, but they got broken on a case: I’d dropped them from the rooftop of an apartment building, on a stakeout. C’est la vie, I thought, but it was nice to use binoculars again. I pointed them toward the wharf and the pier, where a couple of container ships were moored. I pointed them toward the park — nobody was in sight. I pointed them toward the restaurant and it seemed like the only place in the area with movement. It was dark but not too dark. The area was pretty lit up, with old-style streetlamps. They looked Victorian, I thought, but I really had no idea.
A black Mercedes pulled up to the restaurant — ‘It’s him,’ said Darren and grabbed the camera — and lo and behold, Bouvert got out and was greeted by a valet, who took his keys and parked his car. Darren snapped photos nonstop, since his camera was digital.
He’s not carrying anything, I thought.
‘Okay, on schedule. What time is it?’ I said.
‘Twenty to ten.’
‘So Bouvert probably doesn’t have time to eat first.’
‘Probably not, or not a whole meal. He’ll probably have a drink or two first, a vodka martini, maybe.’
‘Probably,’ I said.