The Devil and the Detective by John Goldbach Page B

Parts of the sky were a deep clear blue. Darren pulled up to the house in his flower-filled hatchback and lightly beeped the horn twice. He waved.
    Right away I thanked him for picking me up and said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ He nodded and drove off. I told him everything, for some reason, that is to say, I told him about Gerald’s murder and Elaine calling, O’Meara, the narrowish bar, the surfeit of whiskies, waking up on my couch, receiving a call from Elaine, O’Meara again, dinner, drinking, sleeping with Elaine, waking up alone, the interrogations, the handcuffs and so on and so forth. Darren listened. I told him about what an asshole O’Meara is, about how we’ve never gotten along, even when we first met, though then we were civil.
    â€˜It sounds like you two are competitive,’ said Darren, ‘like your jobs are too similar for you to be friends – odium figulinum , trade jealousy.’
    â€˜Perhaps, though I’ve always felt that our methods and motivations – our modi operandi ,’ I said, showing him I knew a few words in Latin, too, ‘are so different that it cancels out what our trades have in common. I don’t even feel like we’re playing the same game. Ours are different trades, in many ways.’
    I still agreed with him, though. There was no denying that we didn’t get along, without a doubt.
    â€˜Do you think Elaine’s all right?’ said Darren. I said that I wasn’t sure. ‘What’s your next move?’ Darren said.
    I opened my wallet and read the address on the Bouvert-Adamson business card. ‘I figure someone will still be at the office if we get there soon.’ Although the sun was setting, it wasn’t yet six o’clock. Darren said he could get me to their law offices in ten minutes. He said he knew the old building well because he’d photographed its gargoyles for an architecture forum.
    â€˜Actually, technically they’re not gargoyles – they’re chimeras,’ he said. ‘They don’t spout water.’
    I said, ‘Cool,’ and nothing else. We drove on in silence. Darren respected my privacy; he let me think, uninterrupted. I watched the city go by, anonymous buildings housing anonymous people, some of whom were up to no good. I didn’t care, though. It was a Montreal that didn’t concern me. I wondered, however, if Elaine was hiding out in any of those buildings or homes, holed up with a lover, one she never mentioned, not Gerald or Adam or me but someone secret, or at least kept secret from me – or perhaps she was being held in an apartment against her will, tied up, blindfolded, hungry, tired, scared, hurt, bloody or worse. We drove on to the lawyers’.
    Adorned with menacing-looking gargoyles, or chimeras rather, as Darren had explained, sat the stout old building. It looked like a less dilapidated, though less benign, version of the old building I inhabit. Dark clouds gathered above it and its chimeras. I was going to meet the lawyers, not knowing what to expect, not knowing what they knew, if anything, for Elaine only mentioned her lawyer, Bouvert, once, saying that he’d recommended me specifically, giving her my telephone number, though I’d never met the man in my life. I recognized the name but I’d never met the man. Darren pulled up to the curbside and said he’d wait.
    â€˜You don’t have to. I can get a cab from here. I appreciate you grabbing me from the Andrewses’ in the first place, but you don’t have to wait.’
    â€˜It’s no problem really,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait. And if you don’t come out in half an hour I’ll come in and get you.’
    â€˜I think I’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘It’s just her lawyer.’
    The elevator never came, so I climbed six flights of stairs to the Bouvert-Adamson offices. The reception area was large, with an