River City by John Farrow

triggers. The right rear tail light popped and went dark, but the fleeing black Caddy continued off into the night.
    The echo of the shotgun blast bounced off the Sun Life Building and, across the street, off Mary Queen of the World Cathedral. Touton raced towards the van. His longtime associate, the coroner, lay dead on the pavement. His head to one side, a bullet hole in his temple. Blood streamed down the back of his neck. An assistant held his hand and panted heavily, in shock. Another sat shivering in the front seat. Touton leapt to the second man. “What happened?”
    Dazed, the man whispered, “The knife.” The glove box lay open. “I had to give it up. He’s dead?”
    Sloan came running up.
    “After them!” Touton shouted out. “Get cars! They’re in a black Caddy! Put it out on the radio!”
    “Armand, there’s no one available.”
    Touton looked at him and realized that what he said was true. Every cop on duty was fully engaged on this night. He spoke more calmly. “Get a couple of cars. Get after him. Put it on the air. Do whatever you can do. They killed Claude.”
    Now the cops who had run up were sprinting back to their vehicles. Miron stayed behind and stood beside the captain over the dead man.
    “I’ve got another family to talk to now,” Touton said. “What the hell is going on here?”
    Miron was hoping he was not expected to answer. His body trembled. He was breathing deeply, his heart thumping in his chest. He had never fired a weapon in action before and was sorry that he had missed. He knew that a shotgun had to be aimed well in front of a moving target, but in the heat of the moment, with the Caddy accelerating, he failed. He stood beside the famous captain, beating himself up, having blown his first big opportunity to impress a superior.
    Touton touched his elbow. “In a war, lots of guys, probably three-quarters, never discharge their weapon in battle. Too chickenshit. You did all right, kid. You hit the car. Took out the tail light. Good. That’ll help us trace it.”
    At that moment, an ambulance under full siren raced down Dorchester, carrying wounded from the riot’s front lines. Touton watched it go, and wondered again what the hell was going on. His city was in chaos.
    He wondered if, by morning, or in a day or two, it might not lie in ruins.

CHAPTER 4
1535 ~ 1534 ~ 1535–36
    A BREEZE CAME UP, RIPPLING THE RIVER. ON THE AIR WITH THE rise of the sun also rose the migrant birds—ducks and snow-white geese and black-backed geese larger than any fowl these strangers had seen. Cantankerous calls as cacophonous as a ship’s cannons. The rhythmic swoosh of wings louder than the flogging sails of an entire fleet. To look up, gaze upon the long-necked birds in flight, the astonishing breadth of their V-formations, row upon row southbound beyond the horizon, overtook the sensibilities of these sailors as a dread, an awe, not previously experienced.
    They sensed their trespass in an unknown realm.
    Felt their lives become infinitesimal.
    Jacques Cartier ruminated on the significance of the migration as he watched the birds embark in a noisy rush and ascend. “They fly to a destination.” Indians claimed that the great birds departed for the winter and, come spring, returned, which indicated that they travelled far enough south to reach a different climate. How great, he pondered, could this land be?
    How vast?
    He rarely awoke among the first. Cartier had remained ignorant of a ritual that had developed among his sailors. Strewn along the deck, the men greeted first light. They demonstrated no interest in chores, and instead observed the waterfowl, listened to the racket, felt the warmth of the sun on their necks and hands, and in the naked hour breathed, rapt. About to shout a command, the captain let the impulse pass. Standing above his men on the high aft deck,he felt oddly joined with them in the astonishment of this land’s mystery. He shared in their privilege.
    A cascade