Free The Delicate Storm by Giles Blunt Page B

down on Mark’s head and for the next three years he did nothing but drool, and then he died. A good, good man.”
    The line went quiet. Cardinal heard his father sniff and knew that he was crying. His dad, who for most of his long life had displayed few emotions other than irritation, now became teary when he talked of the past. It didn’t seem to be self-pity but some deeper, long-abiding sorrow. The tears would flow for a minute, then be gone.
    “You okay, Dad?”
    There was a loud sniff from the other end of the line. “Fog’s turning to rain,” Stan said. “Maybe I’ll plant some zinnias in the spring.”

7
    “L ISTEN ,” M USGRAVE SAID . “I’ve gone over it with my regional commander. I’m not working with that laptop-toting twerp from CSIS . What we do is, I deal with you, you deal with him.”
    “Squier didn’t seem all that bad to me,” Cardinal said.
    “You haven’t worked with CSIS before, have you.”
    “No.”
    “You poor bastard. Anyway,” Musgrave said, looking at his watch, “this is forty-five minutes of my life we’ve wasted. Tell me again what we’re doing here.”
    They were parked in an unmarked on Main East. The fog had finally condensed into actual rain that was drumming on the roof.
    The moment Cardinal had hung up with his father, the cellphone had rung in his hand and Arsenault was on the line telling him they’d matched a print at the trapper’s shack to a name: Paul Bressard. Cardinal had driven straight out to the house. Bressard’s wife, who was already reeking of scotch at one-thirty in the afternoon, told him Paul would probably be at Duane’s Billiard Emporium. Cardinal didn’t mention that he was a cop, and she wasn’t sober enough to tell.
    Which was how he and Musgrave came to be sitting in the unmarked on Main East watching the decayed entrance to Duane’s Billiard Emporium.
    “Duane’s is a hangout for the guys who can’t quite make it to big-time crime,” Cardinal said. “Bikers that failed the entrance exam to Satan’s Choice, Italian guys too dumb for the mob.”
    “And the wife just handed you this information? Why’d she take a shine to you?”
    “In Cutty Sark veritas.”
    “In Cutty Sark bullshit, it looks like.”
    “Tell me something, Musgrave. Does your wife know your every move?”
    “You could fill a mountain of CD-ROM with what my wife doesn’t know. It’s a point of pride with her.”
    “Fine. So let’s give it another half-hour.”
    They listened to the rain hammering down for another ten minutes, and then the Explorer came into view.
    “That’s him with the moustache?”
    “That’s him. The guy with him is Thierry Ferand, another trapper.”
    Bressard parked half a block away, then he and Ferand came slouching back toward the pool hall through the rain. Ferand was half the other man’s size and had to scuttle along beside him like a dachshund.
    “Bressard’s a dresser,” Musgrave said. “Get a load of the coat.”
    “He better hope the anti-fur movement never hits Algonquin Bay.”
    Bressard and Ferand entered the building. Cardinal and Musgrave left the unmarked and went to examine the Explorer. A jagged line ran across two doors on the passenger side. “We’ll have to get our ident guys on it,” Cardinal said, “but for now I’d say that looks fresh, wouldn’t you?”
    “I would. Is this guy going to be a problem?”
    “Bressard? No way. Bressard will come along voluntarily.”
    Musgrave laughed. “Christ, Cardinal. I’d never have pegged you for an optimist.”
    As they stepped into the dark stairwell that led down to Duane’s, Cardinal said, “Watch out for Ferand. He’s little, but he’s got a mean streak a mile wide, and he’s fond of brass knuckles.”
    “Let me handle him.” Musgrave hitched up his belt. “It’s always the small guys.”
    When Cardinal was a teenager, the poolroom had been like a secret society. Cardinal and his friends would play endless games of Boston, High-Low or