Coldwater Revenge

by James A Ross

  “It’s a long-shot. But it starts with your telling me what U-Labs has been sending to a company called NeuroGene.”

  Tom watched the professor’s face, but it gave nothing away.

  “And how would that be helpful in a homicide investigation?”

  “Truthfully? I don’t know. It depends on what you have to say.”

  Hassad moved his head slowly from side to side. “I can’t help you, Mr. ? Your real name, please.”

  “Morgan.”

  Hassad’s head lifted slightly, as if an invisible hand were tugging upward on his left ear. “I hold a position of confidence in the academic community, Mr. Morgan. What you are asking is unlikely to be of any use to you. But to answer such a question would betray confidences and jeopardize valuable scientific research. I must decline.”

  Tom ignored the little speech and handed Dr. Hassad a blown-up copy of the photo from Billy Pearce’s driving license. “Do you recognize the man in this picture?”

  Hassad studied the photo for a few seconds and then handed it back. “No.”

  “And if I told you that the owner of NeuroGene Research identified this man as having brought materials from U-Labs for repackaging and distribution in the U.S.?”

  “I still do not recognize him. Nor would I recognize the man who delivers my post here at the university.”

  “Do you know a Dave Willow?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a Mike Sharp?”

  “Also yes.”

  “In what capacity do you know them?”

  “As the owners of that company you mentioned.”

  “Do you deal with them both, or only one?”

  “Both,” said Hassad.

  “And what do you send them?”

  “As I told you, these are not matters I can discuss.”

  “Why not? Aren’t you U-Labs?”

  Hassad shook the paper on which he had written the number of the campus security, as if the ink was still wet and he wanted to accelerate the drying. “Mr. Morgan, many members of the scientific community conduct research under conditions that you might find hard to imagine: government censorship, military and religious interference, commercial and academic espionage. They are not free to simply pick up the phone or use the mail to exchange ideas with other scientists in their fields. Even in the West, which prides itself on the open exchange of ideas, there are many obstacles to free communication. Not a few of them tied to so-called government ‘support. ’ I could go on, but presumably you see the point. Like any oppressed group, the scientific community has its own, informal ways of obtaining uncensored information and basic resources.”

  Tom waited until the canned speech was finished, then asked, “So where were these basic resources that you funneled through NeuroGene supposed to end up?”

  Hassad sighed, “This isn’t going anywhere. If you’ve spoken to the NeuroGene owners, then you understand the confidential nature of our relationship. Specific scientific information can’t possibly be relevant to your investigation. Assuming you could understand it any more than the man in that photo. Or are you going to tell me he was a scientist, too?”

  Tom made a mental note of the tense before responding. “I did speak with the owners. And I put to them the same questions I’m putting to you. It’s not necessary that I fully understand their response or yours. I just need to hear it.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Sure it does, Professor. Put it this way, if Sharp and Willow say that you and NeuroGene have been doing confidential research on a new brand of Canadian chutney, and you can corroborate that story, then I can go home. I don’t need the formula for the secret sauce.”

  “And what if I can’t, or won’t?”

  “Then one of you is lying.”

  Hassad took a step toward the tall, narrow window that overlooked l’ boulevard de Maisonneuve and remained there for some minutes, arms folded in thought. Sounds of passing voices and chimes from one of Montreal’s many neighborhood churches filtered through the airless room. “It troubles me,” he said still staring out the window, “that the NeuroGene principals have violated the confidences they promised to protect. What they have done may already have caused significant harm. I wonder if they realize that.”

  “A man is dead,” said Tom.

  “I understand that,” Hassad snapped. “But you need to understand something, also. The purpose of biotechnology is to save, or at least improve, human life. Unfortunately, much of that work and the people who do it are constantly exposed to hazards you can’t possibly appreciate. Hazards that sometimes bring it and them to an abrupt end.”

  “Like what?”

  “Such as theft by greedy multinationals and their governments. Sabotage by your CIA, if the subject falls within what they consider their rightful scope of interest—which is frankly enormous. Blackmail, extortion, even murder when powerful influences feel themselves threatened.”

  “You’re being dramatic, Professor.”

  “And you, Mr. Morgan, are being naïve.”

  “Are you saying that you’re working on something that will really piss people off?”

  “I’m saying that biotechnology itself pisses some people off, as you so vulgarly put it. That it excites all of the emotions that can lead to dangerous excess: fear, envy… avarice. And that I am not willing to betray the confidence that others have placed in me and expose them to those dangers simply because some door-crasher asks me to.”

  “Is there a particular someone you’re afraid of?”

  “How can you Americans be so ignorant?” Hassad slapped a pile of papers balanced on the corner of his desk. “Not two years ago, in the basement of this very building an eminent scientist and countryman of mine was assassinated. Afterwards, not only were his research materials and notebooks missing, but also one of his graduate assistants. A female Israeli! Now who do you think was behind that, Mr. Morgan?”

  Tom was tempted to suggest the scientist’s wife, but checked himself.

  “Mossad!” the professor hissed. “No doubt with the connivance of your government.”

  “Your pal must have been working on something pretty exciting,” said Tom.

  “We’ll never know.” Hassad stepped from behind his desk, allowing his palm to trail over a small paper parcel that had been partly covered by a stack of files on the edge of the desk. Tom noted the row of brightly colored stamps as the package disappeared into the pocket of the professor’s jacket.

  “And now comes some provincial American policeman who blithely demands that I betray the identities and research of similarly vulnerable colleagues. No doubt he’ll threaten me if I don’t comply. No thank you, Mr. Morgan. I will not.”

  Tom’s reply was precise and his voice modulated. “And if there’s a connection between your dead colleague and the man whose photo I just showed you?”

  Hassad dismissed the suggestion with an impatient wave of his hand. “You’re fishing.” He moved toward the door. “Now if you will excuse me, Mr. Morgan, I must prepare a lecture.” It was a dismissal.

  “One last question, then. Humor me.”

  Hassad sighed. “If I must.”

  “When were you last in the United States?”

  Hassad hesitated. His answer, when it came, was a curt and peevish, “This morning.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “A personal matter.”

  Tom counted silently to ten, then twenty.

  “To see my dentist,” Hassad spat.

  CHAPTER 19

  Tom grabbed a handful of departmental brochures on his way out of the building, and then strolled over to l’Parc Lafontaine hoping to bring order to the jumbled impressions of the morning: an address for a company named Ulabs that turned out to be grocery store with no customers; its owner, a university professor named Hassad, who did nothing when a surprise visitor claiming to be the NeuroGene owner turned out to be an impostor, and who claimed not to recognize Billy Pearce’s photo, but appeared
to know that the man in it was dead.

  The normal response of a healthy mind, Tom knew, is to provide an answer to a direct question. It may be a lie, or even nonsense, but a clear direct question will almost always prompt an answer. He had resuscitated many a dying deposition by repeatedly triggering that mental reflex, when someone less persistent would have dropped a handful of dirt and called it a day.

  Who is Hassad?

  Someone who knew Billy Pearce, but doesn’t want to admit it. Who sends stuff to a tiny Coldwater biotechnology company, but doesn’t want to say what. Who spent enough time in England to pick up an accent, but at an age too advanced to get it pitch-perfect.

  What about the package he palmed?

  Incoming, not outgoing. Those weren’t Canadian stamps.

  And what about Father Gauss’ not so subtle hint: “It may be that I know quite a bit about Billy Pearce that our Sheriff doesn’t. But there’s little I can tell…?” Gauss wasn’t going to violate a confidence. But if he had information that could help solve a murder, didn’t another ethical obligation came into play?

  Questions continued to pop into Tom’s head almost at random. What could Billy have been carrying that might have got him killed? How can anyone characterize a Wall Street deal maker as low energy? What happens to my high-powered career if I don’t get back to New York soon to save it?

  Lost in thought, Tom almost missed the familiar profile moving fast along the sidewalk beside the park. Throwing bills at a push cart vendor selling college logo-ed sportswear, Tom grabbed a UQAM cap and broke into a jog to catch up. If Hassad looked around, maybe his tail would appear as just another fish in the school, so to speak.

  Striding briskly through the spider web of streets and alleys east of the park, the quarry never paused or looked back. Minutes of twists and turns later, he entered the same grocery store that Tom had visited earlier. Sounds of a whacking great argument poured from the store. Then the disputants came onto the street, with the grocer who claimed not to know a Professor Hassad screaming loud and long at him before abruptly breaking off and dashing down an alley. Hassad took off in the opposite direction. Tom followed.

  South across l’rue Rêne-Levesque and down a series of unmarked streets that ancient memory told Tom were near the outskirts of Chinatown. Turns and more turns, then a brief glimpse of Hassad disappearing into a storefront mosque. Tom sensed that he was back in the neighborhood of the grocery store, but he couldn’t be sure. Rabbits run in circles, Tommy, when they sense the hunter. The idlers outside the mosque stared at the man wearing a student’s sports cap. One of them glared and then disappeared inside. Tom stuffed the cap in his pocket, but the idlers continued to stare. He backed away and looked for a street sign that would identify the location of the rabbit hole. Joe would want to know.

  * * *

  The rental car remained unbooted where Tom had left it. The philosophy tome on the front seat was undisturbed as well, though Tom had forgotten to lock the passenger side door. Father Gauss’ parting gift might fall into the category of ‘read later when you feel like it’, and have nothing to do with the current dramas of their respective lives. But instinct and experience told Tom that was unlikely. He took the priest’s letter from the book and reread it, thinking it might help. It didn’t. But then he noticed the digits scrawled on the back. He reached into his pocket for the paper with the numbers he’d copied in the internet café earlier that morning. The seven digit sequences all began with the same three-digits.

  Father Gauss was in Montreal.

  Tom switched on his cell phone for the first time in days and dialed the number scribbled on the back of Gauss’ letter. A woman answered.

  “Couvent de San Gabriel.”

  “Père Gauss, s’il vous plait,” he said.

  “Attendez.”

  There was a click on the line, a long wait, and then a familiar voice on an answering machine. “Hi. Leave a message.”

  “Hi Father. It’s Tom Morgan. What are you doing in a convent? I’m in Montreal this afternoon. If you can get to LaFontaine Park, I’ll be sitting there for the next few hours, under a tree with my nose in Spinoza. If you can’t make it, call my cell.”

  * * *

  For the next few hours, Tom sat with Spinoza and waited for Father Gauss to call or Dr. Hassad to pass the park again. The afternoon waned. As the air began to chill, Tom remembered the other mission that Joe had given him, “if he was feeling ambitious:” to look up the fellow who had dropped his business card at Billy’s funeral.

  The address on the card that Joe had stapled to a copy of a Montreal drivers license, was on the south side of l’Village, along the rue Sherbrooke, past l’Musée Juste Pour Rire. Tom circled the block before parking in front of a garish storefront where he felt even more conspicuous than he had in the neighborhood surrounding Dr. Hassad’s mosque. The sign in pink bubble script read Furry Paws, and beneath it, in scarlet and black another announced Going Out Of Business. The O’s were embellished with eyelashes and teardrops.

  A disturbingly life-like mannequin posed in the storefront window, majestic in thigh-high, pink plastic boots and matching bumper-sticker sized shorts. A thin metal chain spanned her open vest, attached to anatomical piercings that made Tom wince. He stared mesmerized and slightly queasy.

  “Interested in body jewelry?” A youth in day-glow spiked hair and black everything else stepped out of the store and greeted him.

  “Is there another kind?”

  The boy willed the touché grin of an experienced salesman. “Everything you see is 50% off.” Tom cut the chit chat short, and handed the salesman a photocopy of a Montreal driver’s license. “Is he in today?”

  The salesman’s deference morphed into a smirk. “Gérard! There is a tax man here to see you!” He shouted through the open door and twirled to enter. Street lamps hummed to life.

  The interior set up of Furry Paws was similar to that of any other variety store of Tom’s experience: wide rows of brightly packaged merchandise, eye-catching displays of this week’s promotional items and security cameras strategically placed to intimidate the larcenous. Only the merchandise itself was uncomfortably unfamiliar: leather this, battery operated that, pointed metal devices whose intended effect he did not wish to contemplate—and all of it celebrated, illustrated and discounted in both English and French. The young man behind the counter gave him an elevator look and asked, “May I accommodate you?”

  “I’d like to chat with you about Billy Pearce. If you’ve got a minute.”

  “Who?” He pronounced it “oo” in a sharp Quebecois accent.

  Tom slid the Furry Paws business card across the counter. “Somebody dropped this at his funeral.”

  “Monsieur Bonnefesse does not work here anymore. The recession, you know.”

  Tom passed the photocopied driver’s license across the counter. “Same name on this license as on that card,” he noted. “Both with your picture, Monsieur Bonnefesse.”

  The counterman shrugged. “What do you wish?”

  “Like I said, to chat with you about Billy Pearce.”

  “Yes?”

  “He was murdered. I was hoping his friends might have some thoughts on who might have done it.”

  “And you are who?”

  “A friend of the family.”

  “Not a policeman?”

  “Just a friend.”

  The top of the young man’s head barely reached Tom’s collar-bone. He found himself looking down onto close cropped, multi-colored hair, plucked eyebrows and doe-y brown eyes, and tried not to stare. It was not until the boy turned his head, as if in thought, that Tom noted the faint wrinkles and patches of parchment skin that suggested he was older than he first appeared.

  “Do you like the Starbuck?”

  “I’m addicted.”

  “Come.” The boy/man led Tom down a narrow street, coming alive now that darkness had fallen. The establishments that lined it—places with names like Freak Haus and Piercing
Palace—gave Tom the feeling that he had stepped onto the set of a sailors-on-leave-and-looking-for-a good-time movie. He did not realize that he’d been squeezing his breath, until Bonnefesse pointed to the Starbucks sign at the end of the street and he heard himself exhale.

  Inside and seated in a corner away from the windows, Tom started to introduce himself. But Bonnefesse interrupted. “I saw you with that handsome policeman at the funeral. You look like him, but not so big. You are the sister’s old boyfriend, no?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Billy hated your stomach.”

  “I’m told he hated everybody.”

  “True. He was not fond of the sister, also.”

  “Still, she’d like to know who killed him… and why.”

  “Yes? I did not think that she cared so much for Billy. Only for his house.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Billy was a talker, you know? For a long time he spoke only about his big house and how his sister wanted to steal it from him. It becomes boring.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “It makes no difference.”

  “Then what about who might have killed him? Or why? Any thoughts?”

  Bonnefesse snorted. “If I knew that, I would tell your police.”

  “Or who wasn’t his friend? Who had Billy pissed-off so badly that they might have wanted to kill him?”

  Bonnefesse sighed. “Many people.”

  Tom felt himself floundering. Joe was right. He’s the pro, he should be doing this. I’m just butchering it. This guy brought me here to say something, but he’s not going to say it unless I ask the right question or give the secret handshake or whatever it is he’s waiting for that I’m not doing.

  He tried again. “Did Billy ever mention a priest by the name of Gauss?”

  “Often. He was trying to make trouble for him, I think.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, saying that the priest did things. That sort of thing.”

  “Was he telling the truth?”

  “I have no idea. Billy could be such a liar.”

  “Did he ever mention a Frankie Heller?”