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| Good old Fritz. |
Louis Shalako
Now that Pelletier and
the car belonged officially to the Unit, it was a short walk down to the
street. It was also something of a relief to get out of that stinking little
room—as Gilles had come to think of it.
“Gilles. I’ve been
thinking about the restaurant case.”
“Okay. What’s on your
mind?”
“I was thinking about
those time sheets. All those people, all those names. There must be a schedule,
posted…I don’t know, probably the week before, as soon as possible, and about
the same time every week. That way everyone involved gets a look at it and they
can sort of jot that down for their own reference. Or talk to the boss. I mean,
with some of them it probably is a kind of nine-to-five job, and then there’s
that afternoon shift. Right up until closing time. They might be pretty regular,
in terms of who gets what and who shows up, and when.” They were also open
seven days a week, and there might be some form of shift rotation. “People do
have doctor’s and dentist appointments, things like that.”
It was either that, or
a bunch of part-timers. You could only do so much with part-timers, and the
weekend would bring their biggest crowds. The trouble with full-timers, was
that they’d want a weekend off once in a while…hence some kind of rotation—and
some kind of a schedule.
“Okay.”
“Okay. The people punch
time-cards, coming and going. Those time cards are the basis for payday…” He chewed
on it for a bit, still thinking, and fired up the vehicle.
He carefully studied
the rear-view mirror and then took a proper look over the shoulder.
“Ah, here we go.” He
eased her out into traffic.
“All right. So what is
your premise, Édouard?”
“It’s just this.
Assuming they check the cards against the schedule, (people call in sick and
things like that, and absenteeism is going to cause a problem after a while),
er, they may still have copies of all those schedules, going back months or
years—that one doesn’t seem so critical to them, but the time cards will be
kept. They keep that for internal accounting and tax purposes. Just in case
they get audited. Payday is not based on the schedule, but hours worked. But. I would like to know if there had
been any great or sudden changes to the roster. That might include new people
coming in or other folks leaving their employment…” Or even transferring a
bunch of people from one shift to the other. “But. This alleged crime. This was
no spontaneous thing, this thing, was
premeditated all the way.”
Gilles nodded. It was
one more idea, at the very least, in a case where everybody else had run out of
such ideas and apparently in very short order.
“If the crime really
happened, all of those guys are cooperating…you’d have to be pretty sure of
their loyalty. Their reliability.” He gave his head a little shake. “They all
knew about it, and ahead of time. You would not want to pull that stunt and
then have to explain it to a bunch of dummies afterwards. I figure that holds
true if the crime didn’t happen,
either. Everyone has to swear to the fact that Joachim and Carlo were on shift
when they really weren’t. This is where it comes down to the why, Inspector. Then there’s Faubert,
who does much of the hiring, at least the lesser fry.”
Pelletier grunted.
“Otherwise, we are left
with accepting the crime at face value…”
He might have had a
little more, but that much was enough. They’d barely spoken to Faubert, mostly
because he was up front and not out back in the kitchen…where the knives and the
blood had been found. He was on the
list for follow-up.
“Ah. The problem with
that, is that if we ask nicely, and if they refuse the request, then we have to
ask for a warrant. And, by the time we get back with our warrant, someone has
accidentally dumped a cup of coffee over their little stack of time-cards.”
Assuming any kind of evidence, or perhaps just the fear of it…the suddenness of
the request and a guilty conscience sort of thing. “You might be surprised at what
a well-placed cup of hot coffee can do to a pile of incriminating documents…”
“True.” Pelletier
flipped the turn-signal lever for a right turn at the next block. “There is
also the fact that so far, no bodies
have turned up. We have the question of how seriously to take, what is, on the
face of it—a ludicrous crime.”
This may have been a
factor in the original investigation. They had been waiting for the bodies to
turn up, as he put it. And when they didn’t, what in the hell were you supposed
to do then. Missing persons, or just plain mischief cases, had a much lower
priority, and the homicide boys not too interested…they already had enough
bodies on their plate.
“Where are we going,
anyways?” Gilles was the Boss, but he
was letting Édouard take the lead as much as possible.
Give the man as much
rope as he could handle, and see where he took that rope…off on some kind of a
tangent, hopefully.
“I want to see if we
can catch Monsieur Lalonde at home. It has been a few days, but he may not have
a new job yet.” He turned to Gilles. “We have no idea if he’s married, or
whatever. Maybe the neighbours know something about him—who knows. He’s a—he’s
a loose thread or something. We’ll pick at him first.”
“That makes sense.”
Maintenon settled further into the seat and reached into a pocket for one of
his little black cigars.
Another warm and sunny
day, the windows were down, and Lalonde lived halfway across town. Sooner or
later, he’d have to pee, the both of them most likely.
It was the usual
story—there were never going to be enough hours in the day. Everyone had to pee, after all.
The few hours they had
should be spent as wisely as possible; and Pelletier nodded sagely at this
advice, and focusing on the road ahead.
“The other thing is, we
could ask for a warrant. A nice, open-ended warrant. No time-limit. We could
hold that in reserve…use it if all else fails…” His jaw dropped at the audacity
of it all—
He turned again.
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| Lalonde: working on the railroad. |
“We ask nicely, and if they
refuse, we drop the warrant on the desk and screw their feelings, right,
Inspector?”
“Well. It’s up to you,
Édouard.”
There was a long pause
as he thought that one through. There was a funny little twitch of the mouth,
and then.
“Yes, sir.”
Why don’t we just fucking do that.
Right?
***
Frederic Lalonde lived a
few blocks off the Rue des Vignoles in the 20th Arrondissement. His little
street was purely residential, but there were small artisans and various
industrial workshops, all small stuff, and just on the next block over. The
neighbourhood was a mix of the new and the old, a familiar story in this
growing city.
They found the
gentleman at home. The door had been answered by a tiny, grandmotherly figure,
as Lalonde had been working nights. With a couple of small children staring
wide-eyed at the two strangers, and with their mother working days, this was
understandable enough.
“Frederic. Frederic!” The lady rapped on a bedroom door, and after
some audible noises, including one long, sad groan, the door opened and here
was Monsieur Lalonde in the flesh.
Barefoot, he pulled the
belt on the shabby housecoat and tied that off.
There was another noise
upon seeing them, not quite a sigh and not quite a grunt…the shoulders slumped,
but then the chin came up and he gave them a quick nod.
“Gentlemen. And how are
things down at the good old Sûreté?” He beckoned to the couch and a chair, as
the old woman bundled the kids into the back room, either the kitchen or
possibly their bedroom for nappy-time or maybe just to read them a story. A
door closed and the voices faded.
Maintenon took the end
of the couch, and Pelletier stood beside the chair until Lalonde had picked his
spot on the other end…
“So, you are working,
Monsieur.”
Maintenon sat there
looking friendly as Pelletier took the lead, at which he seemed more and more
comfortable.
“Ah, yes. I’ve been
working on the railroad—all the live-long, er…night.”
“I see, sir, and good
for you. How do you find that after Fritz and the Hemingway Room?”
He snorted.
“Oh, I don’t know. I
got the call Monday, and went in that night at fucking eleven. I tried to get
some sleep, you know, but the fuckers called me in the late afternoon. The kids
are too young to understand, and the wife…not much better sometimes. Naturally,
it will take me a while to catch up.”
“Uh, huh. And what exactly
are you doing there?”
“I’m a yard man. I have
a form, a list, and I hook up cars and make up trains. I check off six box
cars, with individual numbers, then five flat cars. That sort of thing. We
signal back and forth, that’s so the engineer knows when to pull forward, and
to back up while I switch them to another track.” He had a work partner while
he was training, but it was fairly simple. “It pays about three times as much.
And no fucking Fritz—”
“Ah.”
That, and the money,
might make up for a lot, assuming he could just hang in there long enough to
get used to it. According to Lalonde, he’d been thinking of quitting for some
time, but the time just never seemed right. It all came down to money,
with a wife, two little ones and the mother-in-law as well.
“And then there was the
morning…the morning good old Fritz rubbed my nose in the shit for the third
fucking time…and I just walked. Right then and there.”
Gilles finally spoke
up.
“What was the problem?”
“Ah. Well. First, the
fucking carrots were not boiled enough. Then, it was the peas—not green enough
for fuck’s sakes, as if I have any control over that.”
“And then?”
Lalonde snorted in pure
disgust.
“Punishment duty. He
stuck me over on the salads table. Huh. And then the fucking lettuce wasn’t
crispy enough. Honestly, it was the same old lettuce, just like the day before,
and the day before that. That’s about the time I took off the apron and walked,
gentlemen…”
“I see. All right, sir.
We will try not to keep you any long than necessary, Monsieur.”
Naturally, there were a few more questions.
END
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