River City by John Farrow Page B

right.”
    “All right. Here’s the rest of the ammo. If the rioters come up in that elevator, you have my permission to reload and blast away.”
    “Yes, sir,” the young man said.
    Touton shook his head in dismay. Then he thought he’d better say something. “I’m kidding.”
    “Oh,” Miron said. “Okay. I got you.”
    Touton stepped over glass and tried not to touch the cracked door to the modest office. A crowbar was on the floor. The foyer was surprisingly small, with insufficient room to swing a cat—or a hockey player his stick. Players had to come here for their disciplinary hearings, and Rocket Richard would have been here only a day ago to plead his case. Touton stepped through to the corridor that led to the warren of adjoining offices, and Detective Sloan spotted him.
    “What’s up?” Touton asked.
    “This is big,” Sloan said.
    “It better be,” the senior officer let him know, but he could see the excitement in Sloan’s eyes and caught it in his tone of voice.
    “All right, from the top, there’s been a break-in.”
    “How’d they get in? We’ve got guards on every door.”
    “Through the windows,” Sloan told him. At forty-seven, he was considerably older than Touton, but having neither his war record nor his success as a cop, he had become junior to him in rank. His hair was thinning. His face was pinched, as if by adversity. His complexion was pale, as though he rarely experienced sunlight. No matter the time of night, he always had such a smooth jaw that Touton doubted he could properly grow a beard, although he could use one, as his chin was weak.
    Touton pushed the tip of his hat back, its usual angle when he was indoors, especially if he was mulling something over. “Are you telling me they flew in here? Because I’m willing to partner you up with that dumb patrolman I met downstairs. Oh … let me guess. You’re the one spreading the rumour they swooped in by helicopter.”
    “Give me a break, Armand. Come on. We don’t have everything yet, but it sure looks like they got up on the roof somehow, then lowered themselvesdown to this level by ropes. We know they broke in through the windows—that’s a fact. They committed a burglary, took what they wanted and left by the windows also, but this time a few floors down. Then they dropped themselves to the ground by ropes when our guys weren’t looking.”
    “Our guys weren’t looking. Of course not. What else did they have to do tonight to keep themselves occupied … twiddle their thumbs?”
    “Armand, they were guarding the doors. They weren’t looking up. Who would? They were watching the street. Coming down, the crooks concealed themselves behind the columns. It’s ingenious. They almost made a clean break.”
    “Almost?”
    “Let me show you this first.” He led Touton down a narrow corridor, through an office where cops were murmuring amongst themselves, then into a small antechamber that housed the vault. The heavy steel door sagged open and the wall had been blackened from a blast. Touton took a closer look.
    “They blew it open?”
    “Dynamite. That crude.”
    “Who heard this? And don’t say ‘nobody.’”
    He already knew what the man would answer. The building had been emptied for security reasons. The walls were as thick as fortress ramparts. In none of the rooms he had just walked through had there been any windows, and there were none in this one.
    “Nobody,” Sloan said.
    “What did they get?” Touton asked him.
    Rather than answer straight away, Sloan took a deep breath.
    “What?” Touton tried to imagine what the dilemma could be. “The Rocket’s stick? A Howie Morenz puck? The Stanley Cup? What?”
    “The Cartier Dagger.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You should know,” Sloan told him. “Not me.”
    “Why should I know?”
    “Because you’re French. Campbell’s coming over. He can tell you more about it.”
    “Clarence Campbell? The mob will kill him if he’s spotted.”
    “I