River City (52 page)

“What?”

“You seem nervous.”

“Fuck you.”

“So who do you work for?”

“Slow the fuck down, I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me first.”

“De Bernonville!”

Trudeau downshifted the Jag to a manageable, albeit still fast, speed. Three blocks later, they were again stopped at a red.

“You know him?” the passenger asked.

“That Nazi,” Trudeau scoffed.

“That’s what a union guy would say.”

“He’s in town?”

“He’s around.”

“He needs money?”

“Word on the street says so.”

“You don’t know him yourself?”

“I said hello once. Look. The word is, after last night, he’s desperate.”

“Last night?”

“You don’t listen to the news?”

Trudeau had. The night before, a bank heist had been interrupted by a number of drunken off-duty police officers who happened to be walking by. The thieves had broken in through the basement and blasted through to the
vault. They were apprehended going out the front door of a building next to a bank when one of the cops recognized a man he had once put in jail, and realized simultaneously that it was night, the weekend, that offices were closed. What clinched it, a cop told a reporter, was that each man carried an overcoat slung over a forearm except that one guy carried two overcoats, one over each arm. He had snitched an extra coat from the manager’s office to conceal his extra load of money bags.

“All right,” Trudeau said. As the light turned green, he drove on with the relaxed ease of a Sunday driver. “Let’s get this deal done.”

A novice to this level of intrigue, Pierre Elliott Trudeau compensated for his lack of experience not only with wild antics, but also by hatching a scheme with careful attention to detail, in tandem with his considerable resources. Even his accomplice in this crime was impressed when he drove a long way across town and pulled up next to an amusement park. Belmont Park had been owned by Trudeau’s deceased father, and the family still maintained a substantial share. He produced a set of keys to a side entrance.

“We’re going in here?”

“Don’t you like having fun?”

Children screaming on the roller coaster and shouting from the top of the Ferris wheel pierced the evening air.

“What’s your name?” he asked the thug.

“I won’t tell you that.” The man looked at him as if to say he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

“I need to call you something. If I want to know your identity I’ll look up pictures of former Golden Gloves heavyweights. That’ll tell me who you are.”

“It’s Barry,” the man conceded, trapped.

“Doesn’t sound too French to me.”

“English mom,” the man acknowledged.

“We have something in common, Barry.”

They walked from the side gate to a kind of bunker. Inside, they were met by a security guard who had obviously been napping, his head down on a desk, his rump comfortably ensconced in a swivel chair. He stood up quickly, trying to get the sleep out of his eyes. He addressed Trudeau as “sir.”

“We’re going straight through to the vault, Henri,” Trudeau informed him, and the security guard, in his white and navy blue uniform, a pistol in his belt’s holster, led the way.

Trudeau dialled the combination, pulled the heavy door open, flicked on a light switch and admitted Barry ahead of himself. The vault was a closet for critical paperwork now—contracts, leases on real estate holdings. These days, the money went elsewhere, but in a pinch this spot would do for a covert transaction. He advised the guard how to shut the door once they were inside.

“Turn the small handle only,” Trudeau told him.

“What does that do?” Barry asked.

“Closes the door. We won’t be able to open it from the inside. We’ll need the guard for that.”

“Wait a minute. How do we tell him to open up?”

“Phone him. I have the number. And there,” Trudeau nodded to a spot behind Barry’s back, “is the phone. Employees used to count receipts in here, all locked up. In the old days, we didn’t want thieves walking in, and we didn’t want employees walking out with their trousers or bras stuffed with cash.”

Barry looked around nervously. He clearly had a problem with the confined quarters. “I don’t want to suffocate in here. Is there air? How do we breathe?”

“I’m sure we can last twenty minutes or so, Barry. You’re right, though. Maybe less. You’re a big man. Big lungs. At least there’s a light. Let’s do this quickly. Shall I show you the money?”

The suitcase was cheap, with small metal clasps. He had found it in a pawnshop. The bills inside were crisp and neatly bundled, the denominations large, to lighten the load.

Barry whistled. All those thousand-dollar bills.

“One point five million. Take it or leave it.”

“That’s the deal. I’ll take it.”

Trudeau closed the suitcase and snapped the clasps in place. “First, we wait. I need the Cartier Dagger before you take this out of here.”

Barry shrugged his big shoulders. “I’ll phone it in. That’s the deal, right? I’ll tell my people we got the money.”

“That won’t be necessary. We changed the deal.”

“I didn’t change nothing.” Barry’s natural antagonism was subdued in the confined quarters.

“Not you,” Trudeau let him know. “My partner did. He’s coming here. We’re going to make the exchange right here in this vault.”

“This stinks. It was supposed to be separate places.”

“Too many ways to screw that up, to take advantage. The two venues shall be made one. It’s no skin off your nose, is it?”

“No, but—” the thug protested.

“What?”

“Can’t we wait outside?”

“Barry, relax. Shallow breathing, that’ll get us through this. Don’t excite yourself. I’m sitting down. I suggest you do the same. We’ll consume less air.”

Barry joined him on the floor. Telltale perspiration leaked from his brow. He waited quietly for ten minutes, carefully monitoring his breathing. Finally, he loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, moving his fingers slowly, so as not to exert himself unduly. Then he asked, “What if nobody shows?”

“Good question.”

The response worried the pugilist. “How so?”

“If my contact can’t convince your people to come in here, you’ll be out of luck. They’ll fear a trap, of course—we expect that. But they’re carrying the Cartier Dagger. Pretty incriminating. So your people have two things on their side. One, our phone number—they can call you, find out from you that the money’s here, no cops are around, only one security guard. Two, my contact can walk in carrying the dagger—there’s nothing to incriminate your people except being in the pleasure of his company. That should put them at ease. We’ll see. If they don’t call soon …”

“We’ll have to get out of here.”

“I’ll leave first.”

“Excuse me?”

“To make sure my contact’s safe. Until I find that out, you’ll stay behind.”

“I’m not staying in here alone.”

“I won’t be keeping you company, Barry. When I leave, while the door’s open, you’ll get a burst of fresh air. In here by yourself, you can probably last a half an hour or so.”

“You shithead.”

“Don’t excite yourself. You breathe more air that way. I can’t emphasize it enough.”

Barry held his head in his hands, trying to calm himself, then thunked his scalp on the shelf above him as the phone rang and his body jerked involuntary.

“That’ll be for me,” Trudeau said, standing. He answered on the third ring.

Pelletier informed him that everything had gone as expected, that his party was outside, waiting to be admitted. Trudeau confirmed that, inside, everything was going according to plan. They exchanged password phrases to secretly indicate that all was well.

“French toast” was Pelletier’s phrase.

“Buddha’s smile,” Trudeau replied. “There’s been a change.”

Pelletier asked what that meant.

“Le Blanc
tried to hold up a bank last night. It didn’t go over so well. If they had succeeded, they would have cancelled on me and kept the knife for themselves.”

“But we had a deal.”

“You see? I don’t like doing business that way.” “So what’s changed?” Pelletier asked.

“Tell them what I just told you, about the bank. Then tell them that the price is down to one million even. I’m holding half a million back.” “What?” Barry exclaimed. “You can’t do that!”

“Just watch me. I don’t need the silly thing.
Le Blanc
needs the million.”

He waited awhile, then spoke into the phone. “Gérard, how’s it going?”

“We have a few excited people out here. Calls are being made. Three lines busy and I hear a lot of shouting. Good thing you’re locked in a safe or you’d have a bloody nose by now.”

“You’re okay?”

“So far.”

The word came back five minutes later: a million and a quarter, or
le Blanc
walked. Trudeau consented to the compromise. He depleted the suitcase by $250,000 while Barry checked his math.

“Okay?” Trudeau asked.

“Adds up right to me,” Barry said. “For an intellectual, you’re a bastard, hey?”

Trudeau phoned the security guard inside the office, telling him to open the exterior door to admit Pelletier and one other person. Then he was to lead them to the vault and shut the door on all four of them while the transaction was processed.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau believed in the bold stroke, the decisive action. His father had imprinted the benefits of action on his young mind. Charles-Émile Trudeau had worked long hours and put together a chain of automobile service stations, selling them for a fortune prior to the crash of 1929 that plunged the world into the Great Depression. With his money he had purchased a gold mine, the Montreal Royals baseball team and the amusement park where Trudeau was conducting business. His purchases proved to be excellent shelters through the Depression, for people still found a way to watch baseball and still wanted to buy candy apples and take a thrilling ride to alleviate the misery of their days. And gold never lost its lustre. Camillien Houde visited the Trudeaus’ city house and mountain cottage, and while he was bankrupting the city to keep men working, the men who had those jobs visited the Trudeau family enterprises to spend their wages on a few hours of happiness. His father’s timing had been impeccable. His own was proving to be equally savvy. He knew he was waiting for something to happen that would give him something to do with his life, and he was willing to wait—not through any native patience, which he did not possess, but through a conviction that he was blessed by a mysterious quality of good timing, as if bred in the bones, a part of his nature. Sometimes he chose those words, and sometimes he admitted to himself that what he really meant was that God was guiding him. So what if it wasn’t logical? He believed it to be true.

“We get locked in here again?” Barry protested. Panic resided close to the surface of his skin.

“I hope you’re well paid for your services.” “Not enough for this,” the thug admitted. “Yeah? Are you ever paid well enough?” “Probably not. I’d say no,” Barry agreed.

“There, you see, Barr? You’re a union man at heart. You just didn’t know it.” The men entered the vault—Pelletier and the second thug representing
le Blanc.
The latter had a cat-like face and a nervous disposition. Pierre Elliott Trudeau demanded to see the Cartier Dagger. The thug had in mind to be shown the money first and to chew out this upper-crust phoney for beating down his boss on price, but he relented, surprising himself, and agreed to show the relic.

He opened the case.

Before Trudeau’s eyes, seemingly rather frail and homely, lay the stone-bladed dagger, the bone handle studded with diamonds and gold. He stretched out his hand to pick it up and the man stopped him, placing a thick restraining paw on his wrist, but Trudeau looked him in the eye, saying nothing, and the hand relaxed.

He picked up the dagger. He held it at arm’s length, then brought it close to his eyes. This was indeed an artifact, embedded with the power of Iroquois art and Quebec history, or so his senses told him. Gently, he returned it to the velvet-lined case—the thieves had taken good care of their prize—and shut it quietly.

“Take your money and go,” Trudeau said. “I have to count it first.”

“Don’t be an idiot. You know who I am and where to find me. Take the money and get out. Your friend Barry’s on the verge of fainting. Guide him to fresh air.”

The thieves took their money and quickly departed. Pelletier and Trudeau remained behind, first in the vault, then in the office. They didn’t speak, although from time to time they exchanged smiles. When it seemed safe, in the company of the security guard they crossed to the amusement park’s
new vault, where they deposited the small box and the extra quarter-million. Trudeau taped the box to make sure no employee could secretly tamper with it, left it in a locked case and made certain that the vault was secured behind them. Then the two departed Belmont Park in the Jag.

“So,” Gérard Pelletier asked his friend, “do you feel different, now that you have the dagger?”

He took the question to heart, digesting it. Then he replied, “I can do anything.”

“Then let’s do it. Don’t forget to bring me along for the ride, Pierre.” Pierre Trudeau drove recklessly, earning the ire of other drivers, and turned the radio up full blast to diminish the angry honking of horns.

All this commotion could not be a good thing. Fear turned in her tummy. Anik wanted to flee, cry, shout out, be comforted. Everyone was too busy to notice her.

Outside, the usual slew of reporters appeared to be in a depressed mood. “Bored out of our tree,” as one scribe had lamented a day earlier. She could only guess what the English phrase might mean, and she found it funny. The reporters tried to befriend her, hoping that she might give them a tip on what was happening inside the old mayor’s house. Anik told them a few snippets, but usually she repeated whatever the nurse had said. “He’s resting comfortably.”

She sounded so sweet to them. She made their day.

Inside, she was immediately stricken. Older women were weeping. Nurses, generally younger, ran past her, searching for things—fresh water, fresh linen, a fresh pan. Nuns conferred with a doctor, and the doctor made a motion to the priest. Father François, who had himself just arrived—she’d seen him ahead of her—joined a closed, hushed circle. More nurses hurried by. A few older women wept.