by Peter Kirby
“Enjoy,” she said, almost giggling. Before he realized it, Vanier was leaning down to give her a kiss on both cheeks.
“Thank you,” he said. Saint-Jacques awkwardly did the same thing and followed Vanier out the door.
As they were walking to the car Saint-Jacques asked, “Since when do you give the cheek kiss to witnesses?”
“You haven’t seen enough of my good side.”
“There’s a good side?” she said, opening the car door.
Five
This time, when Vanier and Saint-Jacques walked into the Patriotes’ storefront on Ontario Street, they didn’t wait to be escorted up to the Colonel’s office. Vanier led the way up the staircase and down the hall. He knocked and entered at the same time. The Colonel looked up from his desk, surprised for a second, and then he forced an artificial smile.
“Officers, officers. What a surprise. Come in, come in,” as though he were inviting them.
Montpetit was alone, and the three of them sat around the boardroom table. Before Vanier could say anything, the door opened, and Brasso walked in.
“I heard you had visitors, Colonel,” he said, ignoring the officers.
“Corporal Brasso. You remember Inspector Vanier and his assistant. They’re just about to tell us what they want. You haven’t missed anything.”
Brasso sat down. This time he sat at the table, completing the foursome.
“Mr. Montpetit,” said Vanier, deliberately forgetting the rank, “We met Mr. Panagopoulos.”
“Mr. Panagopoulos?”
“Legault’s landlord,” said Brasso.
“He tells me that two of your guys showed up at his home at eight o’clock in the morning of March 23rd and forced him to sign a contract giving up his apartment.”
“I’m sure he didn’t use those exact words, Mr. Vanier.”
“He said he didn’t have a choice. He had to sign.”
“Neither of us were there, were we? And I’m sure the documents will show that he signed everything of his own free will. We have a standard form. Very legal.”
“Who were the two men?”
“Corporal Brasso. Weren’t you looking after that?” He looked at Brasso, who said nothing.
“Mr. Montpetit. We’re in the middle of a murder investigation. Shall I put you down as cooperative, or non-cooperative?”
Montpetit had lost his smile, wondering where Vanier was going. He assumed it was a question of timing, when his men had shown up at the Panagopoulos’s house.
“Cooperative, of course. Anything you need, we’ll get for you.”
“So can I get the names and addresses of the two men?”
Montpetit rose slowly and walked over to his desk. He made a show of checking things on his computer, and scribbled on a piece of paper. He walked back to the boardroom table and handed the paper to Vanier.
“These are the names and phone numbers of the two gentlemen who spoke to Mr. Panagopoulos. Wonderful men, both of them. Veterans. Now, will that be all?” Vanier looked at the names, Jules Leclerc and Antoine Savard. He put the paper in his pocket.
“Émile Legault was kidnapped. Three men took him from his apartment. Took his drugs and money too.” Vanier didn’t tell them about the fingertip left behind. It was always useful to hold back something. “Know anything about that, Mr. Montpetit?”
“Kidnapped?” He seemed to think about it for a moment. “I know nothing about that. But it probably goes with the profession. You told me he was selling drugs. Maybe he forgot to pay his supplier. I’m sure it’s a very dangerous profession.”
“I thought about that. But why was he kidnapped? That’s what bothers me. If someone wanted to kill him, why didn’t they just shoot him where he was? They had the guns to do it. But they took him away. That’s what I don’t understand. Then they beat the shit out of him, killed him, and then lost the body on the way to dumping it.”
“He was the guy? I read about that,” said Montpetit.
“Émile Legault.”
“An awful business. It’s like I’ve always said, this community is being destroyed by drugs. Wait, let me get you something. It won’t take long.”
Montpetit went over to his desk again, picked up the phone and said, “Melissa? Three coffees in here when you have a chance. Thanks.” Then he turned to the computer and started typing.
Saint-Jacques stood up and stretched, walking over to the window to gaze down on Ontario Street. She watched a kid riding a bike slowly up the middle of the street like he owned the place, forcing the traffic behind him to slow down. The kid turned onto the pavement below the window, where Vanier’s car was parked, and leaned his bike against a tree. He was young, barely looked fifteen, with an oversized white quilted jacket and a white New York Yankees baseball cap worn sideways. She was only half paying attention when the kid walked back into the street and stopped in front of Vanier’s car. Then he pulled a knife out of his back pocket, flipped it open and plunged it into the rubber of the front tire.
“Shit,” said Saint-Jacques, turning for the door. “Some kid is slashing your tires, boss.”
Vanier followed her, running down the stairs, and both got outside in time to see the kid riding off on his bicycle while the car gently settled on the deflating tires.
Saint-Jacques did a circle of the car. “All four. He got all four tires.”
“Fuck,” said Vanier, contemplating running after the bastard. Instead, he watched the kid raise his cap in a kind of salute and disappear up a side street.
“That’s why they have pool cars, sir.”
Vanier gave her a long look and sighed. “The pool cars are crap. You know that. Everyone drives them, and no one looks after them.”
Vanier turned and looked up to the window. The Colonel was looking down at them with a mug of coffee in his hand. He held it up, as though reminding them he had ordered coffees for them. That’s when Vanier noticed the camera over the door. They turned and walked back into the Patriotes’ offices, while Saint-Jacques was on the phone calling in the tire slashing and trying to arrange replacement transport.
Three women at the desks were staring at him.
“Which one of you is Melissa?” he asked.
“That’s me.”
“Could you give me a copy of the images from the last half hour from the camera outside?”
“Well, I’ll have to ask the Colonel. But if he says okay, I could email the images to you.”
Vanier gave her his card. “I’ll tell the Colonel to okay it. Send it as soon as possible. I want to see everything from when I parked my car twenty minutes ago to now.”
“Sure.” She smiled at him and turned to her computer. Vanier wondered why she had chosen purple to streak her hair.
The two officers went back upstairs. The Colonel was behind at his desk looking at the screen. He looked up when they entered.
“Now you see what we’re up against. Criminal behaviour is rampant in Hochelaga.”
“Colonel, could you call down to Melissa and confirm that she can send me the images of my car’s tires being slashed?”
The Colonel hesitated for a second, then realized he didn’t have much choice. “Certainly, we’ll get those to you.”
“Just call her now and tell her it’s okay. Then Saint-Jacques can go down and make sure it’s done.”
The Colonel reluctantly picked up the phone and told Melissa she could send the images. Saint-Jacques went downstairs, and the Colonel returned to the computer, punched keys, and the printer began to spit out documents.
“Before we were interrupted, Inspector, I said that I had something to show you.” He grabbed papers off the printer, sorted them into three piles, and handed them to Vanier.
“The first document is a report of crime in Hochelaga last year. It was prepared by your people.”
Vanier took the PowerPoint. It was the same one he had sat through with Commander Lechasseur. “It shows Hochelaga four years ago as a crime-ridden sinkhole without any kind of future. And today, there’s hope.”
“The second is a study by a UQAM criminologist. He shows that if you eliminate the drugs and prostitution, and the other crimes that flow from them, Hochelaga is as safe as Westmount. With the dealers and addicts, this place is going nowhere. That’s all I’m saying. It’s drugs that are causing all the problems in this community, and nobody cares about a scumbag dealer that got himself killed.”
Vanier took the papers. “I care.”
“Perhaps you have a bigger heart than the rest of us, Inspector. But frankly, I have a lot more important things to worry about.”
“Are you saying murder for the common good is okay?”
The Colonel refused to debate.
“All I’m telling you is don’t waste your time. One less drug dealer is not worth it.”
“And I’m telling you, Mr. Montpetit, I like to hunt down murderers and put them away. Don’t care who they killed, or why. I just like to lock them away.”
“Are we finished?”
Vanier was already on his way out.
Alex pushed open the door to the dentist. The waiting room was as crowded as a bus terminal on a long weekend. All the seats were taken, and people were talking to each other like old friends catching up on gossip. They ignored him as he crossed through the room to the narrow corridor where the receptionist sat behind a high counter. Two sliced loaves of banana bread in cradles of aluminum foil sat in front of her. The receptionist looked up.
“Mr. Vanier?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “Sandra will be with you in a few minutes. Why don’t you take a seat?” gesturing towards the waiting room.
Alex looked at the banana bread, but a mouth full of crumbs probably wasn’t the best way to start a visit to the dentist. He turned back to the waiting room and wandered back and forth in what little floor space was available, trying to ignore the noise of conversation. He tried not to think about someone picking at his teeth with sharp tools. He didn’t have long to wait.
“Mr. Vanier?”
He turned. A short woman, more a girl, was smiling at him from inside an oversized white coat.
“I’m Sandra,” she said. She led him into an examination room opposite the receptionist counter. He took off his coat and lay down on long chair. The chair reclined, and his head was lower than his feet. Sandra sat out of sight, behind his head, and he grunted responding noises and half-pronounced words to her chatter of how had he been, and wasn’t it great to see winter shifting into spring. Then she got down to business.
“We’re going to start with the Florida Probe. It’s a new system for periodontal examinations. It does everything automatically. It registers the results automatically and calls out the results as you go along.
“Hm.”
“I need to do six probes on each tooth, the corner, the middle and the corner, outside and inside.
“Hm.”
“And if the numbers are high, she’ll say Warning or Danger. Warning, if you’re at 5 or 6, and Danger at 7 and up. Oh, and she’s got a strange British accent. Don’t know why.”
“Can you change the accent?”
“Apparently. But I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. And you can have male or female voices too. You can even change the language.”
“To something I don’t understand?”
“Ha. Not sure if it would do any good, Warning and Danger are recognizable in most languages.”
“Wadareya.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It means Watch Out in Pashto.”
Sandra got busy with the switches and dials of the machine, and Alex tried to relax, watching the clouds roll over the building across the street.
“It’s crowded out there,” Sandra said, bringing him back.
“Yeah. No seats.”
“It’s a study group. Dentists. They have an expert coming in this morning to talk to them about gold.”
“Gold? That’s just an excuse for someone to kick your teeth out when you’re dead.”
“What?”
“Gold fillings. They’re valuable. People will take them out of your mouth.”
She laughed. “Not gold fillings. Gold for investment. It’s a dentist investment group that Dr. Boivin belongs to.”
“They must be making too much money.”
She didn’t reply, and he drifted off to images of swollen faces with looted mouths. Enough faces that it was hard to keep them separate. She held his head with one hand and the business end of the Florida Probe with the other.
“So we’ll start at the top, in the back, and go all the way around the front. Then we’ll do the lower ones. Then we’ll do the same thing on the inside. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He twitched as he felt the needle probe between the back molar and the gum. The pain wasn’t bad, he could take it. Six times on each tooth, outside and in.
A woman’s voice said in a British accent: 3. 5 Warning. 2.
It was okay. He was expecting it. And the pain was bearable.
Three more probes: 4. 6 Warning. 7 Danger.
He tried to concentrate on the different noises, to separate them. The close noises of the vacuum tube sucking saliva out of his mouth, the water rinse, the squeaking of her chair wheels as she arched her back to manoeuvre inside his mouth.
4. 7 Danger. 5 Warning.
He could feel the blood pumping through his head as he listened to the scraping of metal on teeth that softened as she pushed the probe beneath the gum line.
He listened to the distant noises of conversation from the corridor. The gold-digging dentists must have gathered in the hallway around the banana bread. Then he thought back to the close and distant noises on patrol. The machine noises of overburdened motors, the tapping of metal on metal, and the soft, human sound of flesh stopping shrapnel. There were no boots in the small room, but he heard the fall of boots on hard ground. He heard the distant murmur of people watching a passing patrol, waiting for something to happen. The soldiers knowing they were waiting for the interesting part of the script, the one that ends in an explosion or gunfire, and then bleeding and death.
The noise outside the glass door was louder. Dozens of dentists seemed to have crammed into the narrow corridor outside the glass doors, grabbing at of the banana bread and slurping coffees like the bun eaters and tea drinkers in cafés watching passing patrols. They were the audience, watching him.
3. 2. 4.
3. 3. 4.
His teeth were in better shape at the front. He was sweating, but in control, aware of everything, even of the noise of cars passing in the street below. As she rounded the front teeth on the outside and moved towards the back of his mouth, he tried to pick out individual voices from the murmuring behind the glass door.
3. 7 Danger. 7 Danger.
5 Warning. 7 Danger. 8 Danger.
Then the watchers went quiet, and quiet was never good; the silence of breaths held, of birds deserting the street, of kids being pulled back to safety, of an audience that knows the climax is approaching. He listened hard, to the numbers, to the warning and to the danger, feeling the sweat on his back pooling above the waist of his pants. Behind his closed eyes, the dentist’s light became the blazing desert sun. He strained, listening.
Then he felt fingers rubbing gently on each side of his jaw.
“Relax. We’re almost done.”
Her fingers were softly massaging the flesh over his jawbone. No woman had touched him with tenderness in years, and it felt good. But it didn’t slow the adrenalin pumping through his system.
Her fingers left his jaw and she picked up the probe again. He drifted back to foot pat
rol, back to moments when awareness was superhuman, when everything was crystal sharp, when he could see, smell, and hear with godlike intensity.
He focused on the probe, following it down between tooth and gum. He listened to his heart, felt his muscles tight and ready and closed his eyes again to the blinding sun. Then she was scraping tartar off his teeth with a sharp pick, the metal scratching on enamel for the listeners in the hallway. Then he smelled the blood.
“There’s always a little blood.” As though she knew what he was thinking. “It’s normal.”
She pumped short jets of water around his mouth and vacuumed the bloody mixture. Rivulets of sweat ran down his back. His calves stuck to the chair through his jeans. His heart was beating too fast.
And then she scraped an exposed nerve, sending pain shooting to his brain. His eyes opened wide in terror and he was on his feet, pushing past Sandra, upsetting her tray of instruments.
“Mr. Vanier – ”
She followed him out of the small room, but he was already opening the main door.
He didn’t wait for the elevator, taking the stairs down in leaps, all the time screaming, wanting to fight back and terrified of doing it.
You could always tell when Chief Bedard was stressed. He sweated. And he was sweating profusely now. Vanier was sitting in front of the Chief’s desk, waiting for one of the old handkerchiefs to come out. The Chief had graduated to tissues for blowing his nose, or table napkins at a push, but he couldn’t break the habit of handkerchiefs for sweat.
“I know it’s a murder investigation, Luc, but you have to use some discretion when talking to citizens.”
“I treat everyone the same way, sir. It’s my job to ask questions. And there are consequences if people lie to me. It’s my job to push them.”
“You know what I’m talking about. Some citizens can make a lot more noise than others. You have to think about that.”
“And treat them differently?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. You know what I mean. Treat people with respect. That’s all I’m saying. Everyone’s entitled to respect.”
