River City (78 page)
The fresh campaign, which he called to rally support against the federal government, began as a disaster, quickly worsening. For his inaugural speech, his diction was precise, as usual, his oratory robust, as usual, but he was uncommonly drunk. By the night’s end, the people were uncertain whether he meant to lead them towards independence or war, or against war, or into the arms of Hitler, or was inviting insurrection. His coalition of forces fell away quickly. The English business community was appalled. Cardinal Villeneuve
had recently travelled through France, treated with the élan reserved for a head of state while being educated on the impending peril posed by Germany. He could no longer support Duplessis, and so the crutch of the Church was also withdrawn.
The Liberals fought hard, taking up several positions the premier might have considered his natural ground. They dismissed conscription, declared it would never happen, and effectively vilified Duplessis. A vote for the premier was a vote for Hitler and Stalin, a vote against him a vote for civilization. Intoxicated and feeling absurdly assured of his own power,
le Chef
was losing control over his confederates, who now believed he was marching them towards disaster.
Disaster ensued. He was scorched in the election. His regime of artificial dictatorship, scandals, martinis and attendant ladies buckled.
In his home in Trois-Rivières, his sister, unaccustomed to defeat, quietly wept. He stepped up beside her and sat down. “Why cry? Do not cry,” he said. “I will be back. Next time, I will remain in power for fifteen years, or until God takes me. I promise you, never again shall we know defeat. They are saying that my government has been an aberration, but we will rise up again to show them that
this night
is the aberration.” He kissed her temple, and her weeping ceased. “I will be back.”
In the days ahead, Duplessis stayed home, not drinking so much, remaining contemplative, rearming his energy. On his desk he kept a clipping, in English, culled from
Time
magazine. He read it aloud each morning, and before lunch, and at the end of each business day, permitting the rancour of the separate readings to settle deeply inside him. He returned to his office before retiring for the night and read the clipping to himself once more, to embed the nettlesome comment into his marrow. Centred in the journalist’s assessment was an insult he could not abide—one he would correct, but, more important, one he would use to motivate his comeback. He read, “Because he used Hitler’s theories of racism, Mussolini’s system of corporatist trade-union laws, and Huey Long’s finger-wagging, roughshod political tactics, he was called a Fascist … But things went badly for pink-cheeked, Hitler-moustached, Bon Vivant M. Duplessis.”
Never again, Duplessis vowed, would anyone think to call him “pink-cheeked.” Of that, he was profoundly certain.
To the clipping, he’d say each day, “I’ll be back.”
In Ottawa, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was ecstatic with
le Chef’s
demise. “One down,” he confided to a senior advisor.
“We’ll get the other one, soon enough,” the confidant replied.
“I want Houde’s head on a platter.”
Carole and Roger Clément were awakened from their beds.
The cops went straight to the small, hand-cranked printing apparatus in the otherwise empty back bedroom, where a crumpled copy of a pamphlet was mysteriously discovered in the waste bin. They never left copies lying around.
“Get dressed, please, ma’am. You’re coming with us.”
Under the War Measures Act, some criminal trials had been disbanded.
Roger declared, “I did it. Not her.”
An officer held up the offending leaflet. “Says here a woman was raped. In a munitions plant. That’s sedition. You printed this?”
Roger said he had. To prove it, he said, the crank had been malfunctioning, stubborn and strenuous to turn.
“Go ahead. Turn the handle yourself.”
The officer tested it out, realized that a small woman could not possibly have turned the crank, and ordered that Roger be arrested in Carole’s place. She watched him go.
The man who loved her sacrificed himself. Somehow she knew that was right. What would she do in a prison camp except die? Roger would survive, and he’d return to her. She would help by making airplane wings and trust that her labours shortened the war. Each night she returned alone to her little house, as she had done for so long before she’d been married. Each night, she
gazed at a picture of herself and her husband on their wedding day, whispering to him, “Be so very brave. Come back to me, Roger.” Each day, she’d check the mail, hoping the censors had let something through from the camp.
Always, before he finished a letter by saying again that he loved her, he would write, “I’ll be back.”
The justice minister had news. The last time he was this excited, he was reporting Duplessis’s defeat. Since then, Paris had fallen. Few around Parliament Hill were feeling chipper.
“What is it?” the prime minister asked.
“Houde!” he exclaimed. “He’s come out in public against conscription. He urged the people of Quebec to defy the law.”
“Sedition?”
“Sedition,” the man proclaimed.
“Off with his head.”
“Sir, I don’t know—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s a metaphor. Arrest him. I want him interned.”
“The mayor of Montreal?”
“The mayor,” King confirmed, “of Montreal.”
“Just like that?” the man asked.
King paused. “No,” he decided, his political brain at work. “Do we know that he said these things for a certainty? Or will he claim that he was misquoted?”
The minister told him that the journalist who overheard the remark had phoned the news to his editor, a man by the name of Ludington, whom King had once met. Ludington advised the reporter to write out the remarks as he had heard them, then take them to Houde to see if he would sign them.
“He signed?”
“With some élan, apparently. You know Houde.”
“Call Ludington,” King advised. “Tell him we’re using the censors to scuttle the story.”
“It’s already been printed.”
“Doesn’t matter. He can write no more. When he complains, tell him that if the story had been mentioned in the House of Commons, he’d be free to write about it. As is, we’re free to scuttle it.”
“Then we don’t get Houde,” noted the justice minister.
“Oh but we do,” King told him. “Ludington will call the Opposition. He’ll coax them to air the story in Parliament. Once they do, I’m obliged to discharge my duty and arrest Houde. It won’t be because I want him gone, but because my arm has been twisted by the Opposition. Make the call.”
Roger Clément watched the big, jovial man arrive at the camp in New Brunswick, along the banks of the Saint John River. He’d heard that he was on his way, and arranged it so that he was among the first to greet him. “Mr. Mayor, remember me? I used to crack heads for you.”
The mayor sized him up. “Yes. Roger, isn’t it? Roger Clément.” True to his reputation, he never forgot a name or a face.
“Do you want to bunk in my cabin? It’s not so bad. We’ve fixed it up.”
“Is it amicable? A good group of guys?”
“We distill our own spirits.”
“Lead the way, young man. Take my bags, will you?”
So Camillien Houde, a poor man’s son who had become a big city’s mayor, became an inmate in a wartime interment camp while enjoying the services of his own valet. Some prisoners passed the time by plotting escape, a favourite plan being a hockey game, prisoners against the guards, on a day when the river froze before it was covered in snow. Some prisoners dreamed of outskating the guards on an endless breakaway to the sea. Houde could skate, but he had no intention of being a runaway in the wilderness, or living life on the lam. A man of his bulk and fame, where could he hide? Instead, he plotted his triumphant return. “You watch,” he told Roger, and shook a thick finger.
“I’ll be back. Hell, son. We’ll both be back.”
C
ONSTABLE ÉMILE CINQ-MARS NEEDED TO TRAVEL BACK IN TIME TO
retrace the events of the night an antique dagger was stolen from its safe. He arranged to speak to the investigating officer on the scene, Detective—now Precinct Captain—Andrew Sloan.
“Touton won’t let it go, will he?” Sloan muttered, shaking his head.
A blustery day.
Citing cabin fever, the sixty-year-old detective chose to conduct the interview outdoors. He and Cinq-Mars strolled down to the canal locks at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, where small craft could negotiate the roiling junction of two rivers. At intervals, pedestrians were permitted to cross on the locks’ gates to a small island park, and the two men traversed the walkway and gazed out at the rapids.
“Sometimes I forget that Montreal’s an island,” Cinq-Mars mentioned.
“Tell me about it,” Sloan grunted. “I used to love it. The stinking city. You wake up in the morning, sniff the night on your clothes. Puke an asshole upchucked down your cuffs. Smell a perpetrator’s garlic breath on your shirt. I craved clean air. Now I live off island, in the country. But you can’t win in this life. Mornings, I smell pig manure, or some shit like that.”
Cinq-Mars smiled, remembering those rural days himself. His own heart remained saddened. At least working a murder case gave him something more to do than mope over losing his girlfriend.
“I live close to pasture. Soon, I’ll pension off. It won’t be a big change.”
“You put in hard time downtown. You must’ve seen some things.”
“Curl your hair. I still go to the barber twice a month to straighten mine out.”
Only wisps of hair remained on top, the sides white. His skin possessed a ruddy complexion, toughened by wind and sun, as if he’d been a fisherman or farmer throughout his life. Capillaries lay visible and broken across his rosy cheeks.
Cinq-Mars appreciated the intimacy of the encounter. Sloan was no longer the hard-assed gumshoe his reputation had painted him to be. These days, he administered a small detachment. If a few young fellows came into town and drank too much, got into a brawl with knives, that would be his worst shift of the year. Better than the days when it would’ve been a typical start to any evening.
“I’ve heard stories.” The visiting cop rested his forearms upon a security bar above a steep embankment and watched the river flow. “A lot’s changed since then.”
Sloan put his hands in his trench coat and made it flap, warding off a chill. “What can I do for you, Detective? Since we’re talking about the good old days.”
“I’m not a detective, sir. I’m working for Captain Touton, and he’s got me busting my ass on my days off. That’s why I’m in civvies.”
“For Armand, being a cop is like being a priest. You never take the crucifix off your neck.”
“I’ve learned that. As I said, I’m looking into the murders of Roger Clément and the coroner, Claude Racine. Way back when.”
“Armand’s favourite hobby.” He decided to continue walking along the stone barricade that separated them from the river. Cinq-Mars ambled along after him.
“You were the first detective on the scene. How did you get called up to the hockey offices?”
“How? I don’t know. Somebody sent me a telegram.”
“Nobody was allowed in the building. So how did anybody find out there’d been a robbery?”
Sloan stopped walking, apparently lost in thought. “Detective, I’m not sure anybody has asked that question before.” He resumed his strolling.
“I’m not a detective,” Cinq-Mars reminded him again. “But it sounds good when you say it.”
“Sorry. I’ll call you Émile, since this is your day off. Jesus. How did I get called?” The captain stopped walking to pull his thoughts together. “Armand had given us sectors. He was expecting trouble. We all were. Senior detectives were each given a sector of downtown to watchdog. Not for the riot, so much. For any major crimes that occurred while the riot was going on, if one broke out. I remember now, it’s coming back to me.”
Cinq-Mars recalled listening to stories of the big city riot over the radio. The city had seemed so far away then, in flames. “So the Sun Life was empty.”
“That was our understanding. We went to the company and said, ‘Look, we can’t protect the NHL offices unless we seal the building.’ They were already shaking in their shoes, those guys, the bosses. If they could’ve
evicted
the National Hockey League at that point, they would’ve. So they cooperated.”
“This is all before the riot?”
“Yeah. We knew it was coming. The mayor’s office decided that if we planned too much, it would be like inviting the riot, in a way. Armand had a sense though. He was more worried than I’d seen him. He knew what guys were saying in the taverns. Maybe he got some orders, but mostly he made his own plans, on the quiet.”
“You admire him,” Cinq-Mars noted.
Grudgingly, the older cop nodded. “I stood up to him more than anybody. Maybe I did it at first because I was ticked off. Here’s this young guy passing me by—the first time it happens, it’s hard to take—but then I kept on doing it because I found out that he appreciated the input. He didn’t want only a squad of yes-men around him.” They had reached the tip of the small island, and now turned and began to walk back along the inner shore, towards the canal. “On some jobs, he’d cut me out of things. He wanted guys who’d do what they were told and not say a fucking word. Other jobs, he wanted me around, because he needed somebody who might make him think twice. He kept himself on the ball that way.”
Cinq-Mars was enjoying the nostalgic talk. Yet he had learned lessons that Armand Touton had imparted—convoluted conversations were fine, they
helped oil the tongue, but his job required that he maintain the thread and guide the speaker back to the main point.
“What’s your recollection on the sequence of events that night?”
“It starts at Sun Life. The vault had an alarm on it. A local alarm would’ve rung in the hallways for nobody to hear, but there was also a remote. Downstairs, security guards saw the alarm go off on their board. Then it went dead, a sign that the line had been cut.”
