Miss Montreal (29 page)

I walked up to Lucienne and said, “Hey,” as softly as I could.

She looked at me, eyes red as a demon’s, fists clenched so tightly the bones looked like porcelain. “Is he dead?”

“Yes.” I moved toward her but she put up a hand to stop me.

“Wasn’t there another way?” she said.

“No. He was very determined to do what he did.”

“For us,” she said. “For me. How am I going to live with that?”

“You will. You’re strong.”

“Oh, everyone thinks so. Lucienne Lortie, so strong, so full of resolve, a will of steel. Nothing can hurt her, nothing pierces her shield. That’s what they think, but I am just like everyone else. I feel pain, and not just my own. I always felt Luc’s too. He had so much, he couldn’t handle it all. And now everyone will think of him as a criminal, a maniac. A terrorist.”

“Because that’s what he was!” Laurent cut in.

I looked at him, stunned that he would talk about his son that way, in that moment.

“Papa, please,” Lucienne said.

“We were getting so close,” he said. “If people had just had the chance to hear me speak. I worked so hard on that speech, it had everything in it. All the hope I have for this province, all the will I would bring to the position. They will never hear it now because of that wretched misfit.”

Lucienne began to sob and I said to Laurent, “Take it easy, for God’s sake.”

“I will not.” He struggled to his feet and brushed his clothes, smoothed his hair. But no smoothing could erase the tired lines in his face. “I don’t want to be associated with him anymore, not for a minute. I should have disowned him in life. I will certainly do it in death.”

“I was certain for a while that he was the adopted one,” I said. “He seemed so unlike you. Now I see he was your son, to the marrow. You helped make him exactly what he was.”

“He was nothing like me. Nothing like Lucienne.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “He was a lot like me. He just couldn’t find room in our family to grow.”

“And I suppose that’s my fault?” Laurent said.

“It’s not a matter of fault,” she said. “Just don’t blame Luc for everything. Mourn him a moment. Grieve, Papa.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Perhaps I should but I can’t. I don’t have it in me. I can’t find it there.”

“Try grieving for your nephew,” I said. “Maybe that’ll work.”

“My nephew?”

“Sammy Adler. Arthur Moscoe’s grandson. Luc killed him. Luc wanted to keep your birth father secret and throw the blame onto Muslims.”

“Nothing can surprise me about him,” Laurent said. “Nothing can lower him further in my estimation.”

“Please,” Lucienne said to me. “That is enough for tonight.” She put her arm around her father’s unyielding shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, Papa. I have enough grief for us both.”

Sitting on the back bumper of one of the rented trucks was Reynald Paquette. His jacket was off, his tie was at half-mast and his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. I looked around for Chênevert but didn’t see him.

Paquette held out his hand and we shook. “You did well for an amateur,” he said.

“Thank you. Thank you for coming out here. For believing me.”

He grinned and said, “It was too fucked-up a story to be lies.”

Wasn’t it just?

“It was Luc driving that van?”

I said, “Yes. Forensics will confirm it, if there’s enough left of him. But I saw him get in.”

“Christ,” he said. “That’s going to end his father’s campaign for sure. And stir up a lot of other pots.”

“He also killed Sammy Adler. He confessed to it before he ran. And he had help from a friend I can identify.”

“We’ll need a full statement.”

“As long as you don’t need it tonight.”

“Tomorrow will be fine. Have you seen the Lorties?”

“They’re backstage.”

“How are they taking it?”

“She is upset,” I said. “He looks like he couldn’t give a shit, the heartless prick.”

“He wanted to go up on the stage and give his speech,” Paquette said. “Show he was not afraid. She’s the one who wouldn’t let him go. Hung on to him like she was drowning.”

He was pushing his tie back into place when René Chênevert strode into view. He stopped and crossed his arms when he saw me. He wasn’t going to shake my hand unless someone put a gun to his head. Too bad Ryan had stayed behind.

“This must be bad news for you,” I said.

“Quoi, là?”

“The end of Québec aux Québécois.”

He shrugged and said, “What do I care?”

“You cared enough to follow us when Laurent told you to.”

“What I do is my business,” Chênevert said.

“And mine,” Paquette said. “Is it true?”

“Has to be,” I said. “How else did he know where I was staying? He is the one who told you, right?”

Paquette nodded.

“The minute I told Lortie what I was looking for, Chênevert was on our tail.”

Chênevert’s face turned red and he uncrossed his arms. Oh dear. His jacket fell open and I could see the butt of his pistol turned forward on his belt. “I don’t have to listen to this shit from you. Any shit,” he said.

“Then stop listening and start talking,” Paquette said. “Is it true Lortie called you? Come on, René, if it is true, I’ll find it out, you know that.”

“Puis?”
Chênevert said. “What if he did call me? So what? Maybe I support some of his ideas. Maybe I wanted to see his party succeed.”

“And then what?” I said. “A job as his chief of security? Perfect. You could quit pretending to be a detective and run around covering ass. His and hers.”

“Maudite crotte de chien,”
he said. “Get out of here before I break your neck.”

“With your gun and badge on?”

He pulled his holster off his belt and handed it to Paquette. It looked like a Glock 17.

“What about your badge?”

He took a black leather folder out of his jacket pocket and handed that over too. Then he shrugged out of the jacket, tossed it well away to one side and put up his hands in a boxer’s stance.

I laughed and started walking away.

“Where you going, piece of shit? You scared?”

“I have no intention of fighting you,” I said. “I just think you look better without the badge.”

I heard his feet pound the ground and turned to see him rushing in a crouch, going for a takedown. Maybe I had no intention of fighting him; I also wasn’t going to get tackled. I grabbed his head with both arms and bent it downward, cutting off his air, then rolled onto my back and flipped him hard onto
his. His breath went out of him as he hit the ground. I got up onto my feet, ready for more.

“Don’t tell me that’s it,” I said.

He rolled onto his side, then onto his hands and knees. He spat into the dirt and stood slowly.

I said, “That’s the way,” moved in and hit him hard twice in the chest with open palms. He staggered back but stayed on his feet. His eyes looked glassy and he was breathing hard.

I faked a shot to the head and when he raised his hands, slammed him in the solar plexus. Whatever air he had left in him rushed out and he bent over and vomited. I jumped back to avoid getting sprayed.

I brushed the dirt off my clothes, shook Paquette’s hand again and started walking toward the Botanical Garden.

“My office,” he called. “Tomorrow morning.”

“Afternoon,” I said. “I seriously need some sleep.”

The four of us went back to the hotel and proceeded to empty the mini-bar of all things alcoholic, along with most of the snacks. Arthur Moscoe was paying for it and we had earned every pricey ounce. At one o’clock, we turned on the TV. The bombing was on every channel, French and English. One French station showed a graphic of the Front de Libération des Musulmans du Québec’s poster and reported the group had claimed responsibility for the atrocity. By tomorrow, I figured, there’d be a different story. For tonight, people could sleep tight—or not—with their prejudices confirmed. At one point, Jenn remembered that she had called Sierra earlier and told her she was going to the Fête concert and went into the bathroom to call home, reassure her lover she was safe.

“I wish I had someone to call,” Ryan muttered. “Someone who gave a shit.”

“I do,” I said.

“I’m thinking of somebody else,” he said, and cracked
open another bottle of vodka. “Shit,” he said. “We need more ice.” And he went down the hall to find some.

I turned off the TV and sat next to Holly on one of the queen beds. “Did you know,” I said, feeling every one of the drinks I’d had, “Ryan and I have known each other exactly a year? This time last year was when we met.”

“I’m sure it’s quite the story.”

“It is.”

“Want to come home with me and tell it?”

“I do.”

“Jenn won’t mind?”

“She might. But I was not your average bear tonight.”

“No.”

“I saved a lot of people.”

“You did.”

She leaned over and kissed me, a longer, sweeter kiss than the one we’d had in the park. She smelled good. Her hair, her skin. Something like coconut. Maybe traces of sunscreen. For a moment, I thought of Arthur Moscoe, the young Artie, lost in the rosewater scent of Micheline Mercier in the basement of Dominion Dress.

W
e left Ryan and Jenn a note saying, “Figure it out,” and took a cab to her place. I’d like to say we spent the rest of the night making mad, passionate love. We didn’t. We did get naked together and got into her bed and kissed and pressed against each other and that is as much as I remember because I fell asleep in about three minutes. It was delicious anyway. I woke up around four-thirty, totally disoriented—then realized where I was and curled into the small of Holly’s back. She stirred and took my hand and pressed it to her breast. It felt good to be in a woman’s bed, to feel the curves of her body, smell her soap. In the grey light of the false dawn I saw a long hair on her pillow and thought of the darker one we had found in Sammy’s bed and how it had led us to Mehri Aziz. Then I fell back asleep for another two hours.

I woke to the smell of coffee. I sat up and was rubbing sleep from my eyes when Holly came in wearing a white terry-cloth robe tied loosely at the waist.

“Good morning,” she said. “Sleep okay?”

“I did.”

“I guess stopping a mad bomber tired you out.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “It was nice having you here. How do you take your coffee?”

“A little milk would be good.”

“Be right back.”

She padded out in bare feet and I looked around the room. It was a good-sized room with a south-facing window, the walls covered with black-and-white photos of famous writers: the creased, worn face of Ezra Pound; Karsh’s portrait of Hemingway in his fisherman’s sweater; a sleepy-eyed Salman Rushdie; Émile Zola, whom I wouldn’t have recognized except for his signature; Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas with a standard poodle between them, the poodle the best-looking of the three.

When Holly came back, she had a steaming mug in each hand. And no robe.

The coffee was cold when we finally got to it.

On the way back to the hotel, Holly drove us to St-Viateur Bagel, where they had been baking bagels in wood-fired ovens for decades. We picked up a mixed dozen—half with poppy seeds, half with sesame—along with cream cheese and lox, and took it all up to the room.

Ryan was in the bathroom, humming above the sound of the shower. Jenn didn’t look thrilled to see us.

“He snores,” she said. “And he sleeps with a gun under his pillow, so what am I gonna do—give him an elbow in the ribs?”

“I know. I’ve been sharing a room with him.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“Bagels, cream cheese and lox.”

“Poppy or sesame?”

“Both.”

“You’re halfway forgiven.” Then she grinned at Holly and said, “You, on the other hand, have nothing to atone for.”

Holly said, “Thank you.”

“Want to tell me about his prowess now or wait until we’re alone?”

“Alone,” I said.

“Did I ask you?”

Sister, my sister. It was great to have her back.

While Jenn spread out the food on the small round table by the window, I went down to the lobby café and got four large coffees to go. And a copy of the Montreal
Gazette
. The front-page headline read “CONCERT CHAOS” and showed a woman running with a child in her arms just ahead of a throng of people. Flames and a huge plume of black smoke boiled up against the sky behind them. I scanned the lead story in the elevator. It quoted a shaken Johnny Rivard, who’d been on stage at the time of the blast; festival organizers, who vowed next year’s party would go on without a hitch; and plenty of bystanders who’d fled the scene. A grim police commander in charge of media relations was quoted as saying all angles of investigation were being pursued but it was too soon to point fingers at any individual or group. Asked about rumours Muslim extremists were behind it, he said detectives were considering all leads at this time.

No one mentioned any member of the Lortie family, living or dead. Maybe identifying the bits and pieces left of Luc was going to take a while.

Back in the room, we went through most of the bagels, swept up the crumbs and considered what to do next. Holly said she needed to go to her office and plan how
Moment
was going to cover the story of the bombing.

“There are a few things you need to leave out,” I said.

“What things?”

“Me. Some of what I know. Most of what I did.”

“You don’t want publicity?”

“Not this kind.”

“But I need to finish Sammy’s stories. Both of them. I owe him that much. You understand that, right?”

“Yes. But first we need to know how the story ends.”

——

After Holly left, the three of us sat in the room deciding what to do next. “I’m going to have to see Paquette soon,” I said. “Which means staying one more night.”

“And I share with Ryan again?”

“No reason you can’t fly home today,” I said. “You bought a return ticket, right?”

“Of course.”

“So use it. Go home. It’s better than six hours in the car with us.”

“You don’t need me for anything?”