Free The Marble Mask by Archer Mayor Page A

responsibility.”
    “Which is why you got Mike to safety instead of risking all three of us looking for me,” I said. “I know what those kinds of situations are like, Gary. I wish I didn’t, but they tend to crop up.”
    “How long you been a cop?” he asked unexpectedly.
    “Over thirty-five years.”
    He nodded, as if coming to terms with the argument in his head. “You have a good reputation. I’m sorry I was a jerk before.”
    “You didn’t know what I was up to.”
    He smiled then. “I still don’t—not really. This VBI thing doesn’t make much sense to me.”
    “It will,” I said, sympathizing with his confusion. “And I’ll try to make you like the end result.”
    Gail reappeared at the door, a Styrofoam cup in her hand. “Too early?” she asked.
    Gary looked back at me, responding to my last comment.
    “Well, so far, so good. Thanks again.” He then turned to Gail and gestured in my direction. “He’s all yours.”
    She shook her head, smiling. “Not hardly, but I’ll take what I can get.”
    · · ·
    There were three of us in the car, heading northeast on Route 100 toward Newport and Derby Line, Vermont, and Canada beyond, to meet with Gilles Lacombe of the Sûreté du Québec in Sherbrooke—known in cop shorthand as the “SQ”—Gary Smith, Paul Spraiger, and myself. Sammie Martens had lobbied to join us, but the meeting was to be an icebreaker only, and I didn’t want to load the deck with VBI personnel. Also, Spraiger spoke French, although I’d asked him not to advertise the fact until it proved absolutely necessary.
    “What did Lacombe sound like on the phone?” I asked Smith, who’d made the arrangements.
    He slowed to a stop to let a small herd of cows cross from a barn to the pasture on the other side, their nostrils enveloped in periodic bursts of vapor as they plodded along. We waited until the farmer had latched the gate behind the last of them before resuming our trip. Route 100 meandered up the spine of Vermont, broad-shouldered and well maintained—a pleasure to travel at any time of year, but particularly right after a fresh snow had made everything from mountaintops to old trailers look like pictures from an art book.
    “Real friendly,” Smith answered. “And he spoke decent English, too. I think we hit a nerve with Deschamps. Our Popsicle’s first name—Jean—that didn’t mean much to him, but he said the family was well known. To use his words,” and here Smith affected a thick accent, “‘We ’ave a very big file on dem.’”
    “A criminal file?” Spraiger asked from in back.
    I’d already been briefed on that when Smith had updated Frank Auerbach and me earlier. “Apparently,” I said. “It sounds like the Deschamps have been in business for a while.”
    Spraiger looked out the side window reflectively, “Huh.”
    “What?” I asked him. “That mean something to you?”
    “Maybe not. Sherbrooke’s a pretty interesting town, though—a little lost between Montreal and Québec City. Magog is nearby, and a hangout for the mega-rich, but people drive by Sherbrooke barely looking out the window. It’s actually pretty big. Seventy-five thousand in the city itself, maybe double that if you throw in the suburbs. A lot of industry.”
    His voice trailed off. I’d come to appreciate Paul Spraiger over the short time I’d known him. He mulled things over before shooting his mouth off, and was generally worth listening to.
    “Which ties into Deschamps how?” I prodded him.
    He took his eyes off the scenery and looked at me from the back seat. “Oh, I don’t know—not in any specific way. But I’d heard Sherbrooke was a Hell’s Angels stronghold—one of their biggest and most secure. I was just surprised another group was working the same turf.”
    “Hell’s Angels?” Smith asked, surprised. “I thought they were mostly in Montreal.”
    “They’re there, too,” Spraiger explained, “and a bunch more places. But so are a lot of