by Samson Weld
Bédard stared at him with dead eyes. Nick hadn’t known until this defying and accusing stare just in how much trouble he was.
Chapter 9
The assassin was named Fullerton.
It wasn’t his real name. It wasn’t even an alias he had ever used. Back home, he had a drawer filled with false identities, each backed with solid legends that could be verified.
He was good at his job and that was the only way to stay alive. He was always operating under a fake name. It was a way of life now. Hell, he wasn’t sure if he even remembered his birth name. But for this job he was going by Fullerton.
Focusing on his false ID helped him focus on the mission at hand. He had flown in from Europe, but hadn’t come directly to Montreal. First he needed weapons and the playground for that was south of the border.
Some people went to private dealers and collectors for the instruments, but Fullerton preferred to obscure his tracks even more. The way he did that was to build his own weapons. Most of the parts were available online and he had several post office boxes to muddy the trail. Receivers were trickier to get, but still extremely easy, especially in certain states.
Since many of his jobs took place in North America, he’d assembled a little arsenal which he kept in a storage locker in western Pennsylvania. This was conveniently located if he needed to travel around.
Crossing the border into Canada was child’s play. Not counting Alaska, the border between the two countries was four thousand miles long, with less than one hundred and twenty official points of entry. That literally left thousands of possibilities for Fullerton to choose from.
His personal preference was Akwesasne, a Mohawk reservation which straddled Quebec, Ontario, and the state of New York. Hopping the St. Lawrence River from one country to the other, in the middle of a jurisdictional nightmare, was almost too easy.
So now he was in Montreal for a job that paid a pretty penny.
~ ~ ~ ~
Mere seconds after the detective left, Nick locked the door and rushed to take a long shower. He needed to clean off the cold sweat off his body. It was trapping him. Hell, for some reason it made him feel guilty.
How was that possible? He figured this was the phenomenon of police interrogations. Just having cops in your presence made you ill at ease. It maybe even made you doubt yourself.
For the first twenty minutes, he couldn’t think straight. He left the shower after the water had gone cold and sat on the edge of the bed, the white towel wrapped around his waist.
The TV was on, tuned to some local French-speaking station. It was by design. He wanted noise, something he couldn’t understand, and hopefully it would drown out his thoughts. Finally, he changed into a polo shirt and the same charcoal pants he’d been wearing earlier, and stepped out at the hotel.
Once on the sidewalk, the air was cool, but he realized he was sweating again. He produced his phone and scrolled through his contacts.
“Lars Moultrup, please. This is Nick Eversull.”
As he waited, he started walking along Sherbrooke Street which was teeming with college kids. It reminded him that the McGill University campus was only a block away. It was early fall, early in the semester. Students would be everywhere and enthusiastic about the school year. They weren’t stressed with exams and term papers yet.
And this made Nick realize just how stressed he was becoming himself.
“Nick, that’s a mighty surprise,” that gravelly voice of the man said in greeting.
“Hey Lars. How’s it going? Listen, I have a question.”
If the other man was puzzled by Nick diving straight into the matter, he didn’t say anything. Lars was the company’s senior counsel and he was used to having to constantly extinguish fires everywhere.
“Shoot.”
Nick said, “Is there anything precluding you from giving me personal legal advice? I mean, you work for the company, but can you give me personal advice?”
“Depends. I can share knowledge I have, otherwise I can recommend another lawyer to you. But if it’s because you had a parking ticket, I reckon I have some connections in the NYPD, you know that.”
“It’s a little more important than a parking ticket, Lars.”
“Okay, you want to tell me what it’s about. I can’t help you if you don’t speak up, son.”
Nick opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. He even stopped walking. Part of it was that he couldn’t bring himself to mention out loud that he was considered a suspect in a homicide. This was making it far too real.
However, the other reason he didn’t say anything was that the implications were dawning on him. What if the cops had tapped his phone? What if they were listening in right now and were only waiting for him to incriminate himself? He didn’t know how the laws worked around here.
“I can’t talk about it over the phone.”
“Nick, you’re scaring me. This sounds serious.”
“It is serious. How soon can you fly over to Montreal?”
“It’s that important? You’re in some kind of trouble?”
“I need to consult with you, Lars. Can you fly up here?”
There was a pause and Nick heard clicking. The lawyer had to be checking his schedule, or perhaps flights.
“I can shift some meetings and go right now.”
Nick felt huge relief. “Great, thank you! Call me when you’re in town, okay? We’ll have dinner and I’ll tell you everything.”
He hung up, feeling hope for the first time. The notion of eating made him realize he was actually hungry despite how nervous he was. He looked around and then remembered how Montreal was peculiar in that they didn’t allow food vendors on its streets.
Food trucks were gaining popularity after having finally been allowed by the city, something restaurant owners had fought tooth and nail. Nevertheless, there weren’t any in the vicinity. He headed toward Metcalfe looking for something to eat. Maybe he’d hop in a cab and go to that delicatessen he liked on St. Laurent.
All of a sudden, his body was thrust into the wall of a building, knocking the air out of him.
“Ugh!”
Pain shot through his cheek and knees.
Chapter 10
In all his time in New York City, Nick had never been mugged once. And now it was happening here? He tried to turn around and discovered no one was holding him. Was this a random attack? Some teenage prank?
Then he saw that it wasn’t a kid. It was a man and he had in no way a sunny disposition. Nick didn’t know that his name was Xavier.
The pimp shoved him into the wall once more and brought his head only a few inches away from his. Nick could smell his foul breath.
“You think I wouldn’t notice you, did you motherfucker? You come to my town, I know about it.”
“Who are you?” Nick asked, scared to even look past the man for help. But there was no one to come to his rescue. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Oh, that’s rich. That’s Bill Gates rich. You pull that shit and then you ignore me?”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
“February twenty-four, does that ring a bell?”
“The final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery?” Nick replied cheekily in spite of himself.
Xavier ignored the comment, coming even closer, snarling. “That’s the day you published a review of Bella, one of the girls at my agency.”
Agency? They could only be talking about escort agencies. Nick relaxed for the first time. He was still terrified about this man and the aggression, but at least he wasn’t in unknown waters anymore.
He really had written a review of Bella. He wrote reviews on every girl he met with. It had become a force of habit after hanging out for so long on the discussion boards. It was expected. It made you a vital part of the community.
A year ago, he had met this young woman at a party in Brooklyn. They had hit it off and spent the night together. He had written a review about her—rati
ng her looks, attitude, and skills. He had stopped himself just before posting it on the Internet, remembering at the last moment that she hadn’t been a working girl.
“How do you know I even wrote this review?” Nick asked, perplexed at the feasibility of it all. “Everybody uses pseudonyms. You can’t possibly know who I am.”
At that, Xavier grinned. “For every appointment they go on, I tell my girls to mention something different to the john so that I know who the reviewers are. Where they grew up, their favorite drink, stuff like that. When the reviews go online, I know who the client was.”
“But how...” Nick began, his mind trying to process how Xavier had made the leap between his pseudonym and his real self.
“You mean this?” The pimp pulled up his iPhone and showed Nick the illicit photograph he’d taken of him. “I like to know about my clients.”
“You son of a bitch...”
“You know the problem I have with you? You write so goddamn well. Your flowery prose makes people read your reviews and that’s bad for business.”
He looked at Xavier. He vaguely knew about him. All the forum members knew about the agency operators. They usually shared information about them, who went out of his way to accommodate clients, who was too rigid, that sort of thing. Jesus, there was such a difference between names on a screen and being shoved into brick walls.
“You’re Xavier at Fantasy Babes?”
The younger man shoved Nick back again. Nick’s instinct was to resist, to push back, but he was savvy enough to realize this was just Xavier asserting his dominance. It was scary nevertheless.
“I knew you were a smart guy,” Xavier spat. “You trashed me and the girl in the review and since then my business fell apart. Word got around and nobody books Bella anymore. Calls to my agency fell fifty percent.”
Numbers, Nick thought. He was a numbers guy and this gave him confidence.
“You know why this is happening, Xavier? It’s because I was honest. People aren’t stupid, they want agencies who tell the truth over the phone, girls who stay the full hour, and don’t hustle you for extras. You bend the rules, you’re gonna suffer the consequences.”
“Spare me the lecture. I’m gonna make this real easy for you. I know you’re leaving on Monday.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Never mind that.”
He must have bribed one of the hotel clerks, Nick figured.
Xavier continued. “So until Monday, I’m gonna monitor the Internet boards and I want a favorable review from you before you leave.”
“You’re crazy. I can’t do that.”
“That’s bullshit!” the pimp said as he shoved Nick into the wall, the hardest push yet. The American winced. “You fucked over my business, you’re gonna fix it back up. If you don’t, you’ll really regret it.”
Right then, a police car slowly cruised by and both men spotted it. Nick considered waving so the cops would stop and help him, but he didn’t. How would that look considering a police detective was already on his case? And what if this implicated him further in the world of escort agencies. He couldn’t take that chance.
Evidently, Xavier didn’t want any trouble either. He let go of Nick and walked away.
~ ~ ~ ~
Nick returned to Hozalex Solutions almost an hour later. He was shaken to his core. So much had happened that he hadn’t been prepared for. Stanley and Anne-Marie were still there, working. They barely looked up at him as he was trying to make a stealthy entrance into the conference room.
After he’d eaten, he had simply walked around downtown, trying to clear his head. Even though the murder investigation was deeply troubling, getting roughed up on the street had felt much more personal. He sat at the end of the table and opened a file, determined to get back to work and yet not knowing how he possibly could.
“What did you have for lunch?” Stanley asked, looking up from his computer.
Still in a daze, concentration wasn’t forthcoming for Nick. He was torn between trying to get some work done and answering his colleague.
“Uh, smoked meat sandwich, Schwartz’s.”
“That any good?”
“Yeah.”
And it was. The deli was a local favorite and the dish was practically a national institution. Montreal-style smoked meat is less sweet than New York pastrami and dry-cured, contrary to corned beef. The meat is hand-sliced, piled high between two slices of rye bread, and covered with mustard. Every time he came to town, he made a point to stop there at least once.
“We just finished going over the disintermediated synergistic interfaces,” Stanley said. “I’m gonna go grab lunch myself.” He stood up and put his blazer on. He turned toward Anne-Marie. “You want to tag along?”
“No, thanks. I want to see if Nick needs any help.”
“All right, suit yourself.”
He waved goodbye and left. Anne-Marie looked at Nick and noticed his confused state.
“Are you okay?” she asked, voice low with concern.
Nick didn’t answer for long seconds, going over his options. What could he possibly respond? How much could he share with her? He decided to go on a tangent.
“Tell me, what do you think of the Canadian justice system?”
She was puzzled by this. “Is this a trick question?”
“I just want your opinion, that’s all. Do you think it’s a fair system?”
“As opposed to what, Iran?”
“Generally speaking.”
She shrugged. “Yes, I guess it’s fair. It isn’t arbitrary.”
“Are you talking about personal experience or what you believe to be the truth?”
She considered this question seriously this time, sinking into her seat and staring into the distance. She had clearly never given it much thought before. One tended to take justice for granted.
“What I believe, I guess. I don’t think it’s unfair. I mean, there are always going to be cases you think should have gone differently, but that’s normal, yes? You know, like OJ Simpson.”
“Right.”
She picked up on his uncertainty. “Do you have reasons to believe it would be unfair?”
“When I was a kid, growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, a neighbor of mine was raped. She lived on my floor. She was a pretty girl, had a reputation too. People used to say that the only thing easier than her was a Ziploc bag.”
He shifted in his seat and waited before going on as if he wasn’t sure anymore whether or not he wanted to tell the whole story. He had done his best to forget about his childhood. He had moved away from Hell’s Kitchen at the first occasion. He had no single good memory of anything that had occurred before college.
“One day,” he finally added, “she went to the cops and said Mr. Brown, our building’s manager, had taken her by force. The least kept secret in the neighborhood was that she had been having sex with him for three months.”
“I know the type.”
“Truth was he was knocking a few bucks off the rent in exchange. There was a rumor he would’ve been fired if he had continued this game.”
Anne-Marie snorted. “So she called the police even though there was no actual rape.”
Nick nodded. “That’s right. She was a pretty white girl, he… wasn’t. Got twenty years for that. Last I heard, he had been killed inside.”
“I’m sorry, Nick.”
“I didn’t know him that well, it’s all right.”
It really wasn’t all right, he decided. Otherwise he wouldn’t be thinking about this at the moment.
“Why this question anyway?” Anne-Marie asked, suddenly worried. “Why are you asking if I trust our justice system? Are you in trouble?”
“You never know if there’s gonna be justice or not. Let’s get back to work.”
He forced a smile and turned back to his documents, neither of their minds on the task at hand.
Chapter 11
Night was falling outside the hotel and Nick found him
self once more changing, this time into a powder blue dress shirt. At this point, changing clothes was becoming a ritual, and he wasn’t sure whether or not it was a positive thing. He did because he had to, sure, but also because it was like trying to change who he was.
No, it was more as if he tried to shed his problems. He mused about how wonderful it would be if life was this simple. Like a snake changing skins, starting anew. Things didn’t work this way for humans, though. He had to accept that.
As he buttoned the shirt up, Stanley came into the room from his own, using the ajar communicating door.
“You know, I was thinking.”
“About what?” Nick asked, barely looking at him.
“Sometimes I wish I could actually live my mother’s life instead. Cleaning, cooking, hanging out with the chicks at the country club. No boss, the good life.”
As he said that, Stanley went to the minibar and browsed its contents. He looked over every bottle, but didn’t touch any. It was like he was comparing the selection to the one from his own room, trying to see if he’d been shafted.
“I see a flaw in your reasoning,” Nick pointed out.
“I doubt it, but go ahead.”
“To really live your mother’s life, you’d have to screw your dad.”
Stanley froze, thought this over, and winced.
“Yeah, you might have a point. I’m pretty sure if I was a girl I wouldn’t be turned on by hairy dudes.”
He looked into the fridge this time and picked up a Toblerone chocolate bar. The sight of it made him smile. It was the kind of treat few people ever ate outside of hotel rooms.
“So, you want to go out and have some dinner?” he asked as he bit into the chocolate.
Nick shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t. I have plans already.”
“Is she curvy?”
“She has a beard, actually, and pees standing up.”
“Didn’t know you played for both teams, man.”
Nick rolled his eyes and smirked. “Sorry to be changing your plans. Got any idea what you’ll do?”
“I know I should be heading out to the casino followed by a few hours at one of those legendary strip clubs before gorging myself on that thing everyone around here is eating—what’s it called? Poot something?”
