The Marble Mask by Archer Mayor Page A

values became clear. King Street Ouest, Sherbrooke’s major commercial east-west boulevard, was a string of fast-food restaurants, low-cost housing, motels, and—across the water slightly below and paralleling the road—a long, low vista of factory buildings, railroad lines, and petrochemical holding tanks, some of which loomed so large as to appear faintly menacing. As far as I could see, there was not a single building that didn’t speak of practical function. It all reminded me of what can happen after a flash flood sometimes, when the flotsam and debris is washed up on shore and then left behind by the receding water to dry, helter-skelter, in the sun.
    Still, despite its lack of graceful architecture or picturesque antiquity, the city had a comfortable, lived-in feel to it. A place without pretension or misguided sense of purpose.
    Gary Smith obviously didn’t agree. “Jesus—shades of New Jersey.”
    Spraiger laughed. “It gets better downstream. All this is new—kind of a miracle mile. Downtown’s prettier. Twenty-five years ago, there wasn’t much here. Better pull into the right lane. Don Bosco Street is up ahead.”
    “What’d you do?” Gary asked. “Memorize the map?”
    “Kind of,” Paul answered without guile. “I used to live near here when I was a kid. That’s how I learned the language.”
    We slowed at a traffic light just beyond a half-abandoned Days Inn parking lot.
    “There it is,” Spraiger said, pointing through the windshield.
    We turned into Don Bosco, which dead-ended at some railroad tracks at the bottom of a steep incline right at the river’s edge, and saw a large, flat-topped cement building surrounded by a white spiked fence, identified only by a small highway sign announcing, “Sûreté du Québec—Police.”
    Gary Smith was sounding more depressed by the minute. “I thought these guys were supposed to be the Mounties of Québec. This doesn’t look like much.”
    We drove through the open gates and pulled into a parking area directly opposite the building’s front door.
    “You only wish we were rigged out like these guys,” I told him. “They’re provincial police, not the feds—but they damn near cover the earth. About four thousand officers. They do everything from bomb disposal to scuba work to helicopter surveillance to hostage negotiation, plus a lot more. They just don’t put on a flashy cover.”
    We crossed the parking lot, climbed the stairs, and entered the lobby—a cold glass enclosure with two opposing windows revealing office workers going about their business. Before us was a locked door leading into the rest of the building.
    Gary glanced around, hoping to catch the eye of one of the people behind glass. Paul crossed to a phone hanging on the wall with a sign beside it. “Here we go,” he said, picking it up and speaking with someone.
    “Nice personal touch,” Gary muttered, a stranger in a strange place, feeling increasingly alienated.
    Which was quickly alleviated by the rapid appearance of a small man in a dapper suit, wearing an infectious smile and the thick accent Gary had mimicked earlier. “You are the American police?” he asked, shaking hands all around. “I am Gilles Lacombe. Welcome to Québec.”
    We followed him up several flights of cement stairs and down a corridor of cluttered offices. The room he ushered us into had narrow windows facing the river but didn’t actually have a view of it. Predictably in this town, I was beginning to learn, a metal warehouse stood in the way.
    “Please. You should sit down. Would you like to have coffee?”
    We all declined, and Lacombe joined us at a small round table across the room from what I assumed was his desk.
    There was a folder before him, which he opened. He extracted a photograph from it and held it up. It was obviously old, in black and white, and it showed a man dressed as if he’d stepped out of a vintage movie. “Is this the man you call Jean Deschamps?”
    I nodded.