October 1970

by Louis Hamelin

  From surprise we passed on to fear, and from fear to panic, and from panic to paranoia. Events accelerated:

  October 11, Little Albert makes the bizarre decision to place his entire cabinet under high security in a hotel in downtown Montreal. The provincial government was, de facto, under siege;

  Sunday night, a little before ten o’clock, Vézina reads a solemn declaration on television containing his dramatic response to the kidnappers’ demands. Half of his listeners believe he has just opened the door to negotiations with the FLQ, the other half are convinced they heard him categorically refuse to give in to demands from terrorists. As usual, Little Albert has managed to cross the Rubicon without getting his feet wet;

  October 12, in a new communiqué, the Chevalier Cell designates Maître Brien as its negotiator. Only one small problem: the lawyer is in prison;

  October 13, Maître Brien is released from prison;

  October 13, evening, negotiations break down over the question of preliminary guarantees, all talks broken off, a stalemate, etc.;

  October 14, a group of Paul Lavoie’s golfing buddies publicly call for an acceleration in the process of liberating the hostages;

  October 14, evening, rumours of war … ;

  October 15, the first troop movements are ordered.

  I resolved to do everything in my power to save my friend and boss. I went to find Maître Brien in Old Montreal. It was late in the evening, sometime around nine o’clock. The Ministerial Council had just issued a communiqué in which the government rejected every condition of the FLQ except one: it offered the kidnappers an airplane that would take them to a country of their choice, and gave them six hours to decide. Yes, you read right: six hours.

  I found Maître Brien downstairs at the Brown Hotel, in the old quarter, where he was giving a particularly well attended and fiery press conference. Amid a forest of microphones and bottles of Labatt 50s, he stood above the heads of two dangerous ideologues who had no business being at large: Vallières and Gagnon.

  While I listened from the doorway, an anglophone journalist who was being physically thrown out of the hotel practically toppled over me. Then Maître Brien swept past and jumped onto his motorcycle. I ran out into the street.

  “I’m Jean-Claude Marcel, Lavoie’s political attaché. We need to talk …”

  He motioned for me to get on. As though it was the most natural thing in the world!

  “I don’t have a helmet …”

  “Neither do I. Hop on!”

  I sat astride the machine without thinking, he revved up his metal courser, and we charged off into the night. When we turned east on Notre-Dame, he showed me the street name, Gosford, on the sign.

  “If we take the bull by the horns, we’ll win the day! Ah ah!” I heard him shout above the roar of the machine.

  The cold air of an autumn night hit upon us, paf, full in the face. I had the impression of being in flight. We tore down a street at high speed, the river occasionally visible between the buildings of the Old Port on our right, the ancient silos, the water, like tar lit up at night.

  He ran every red light. I was frozen as a rat and shaking uncontrollably. We roared under the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, turned onto Pie-IX and headed north. At a certain point we passed a military convoy, a half-dozen canvas-covered trucks moving in a convoy. Maître Brien passed them all with his horn honking and giving them the finger, arm raised, full throttle.

  He stopped farther on in front of a telephone booth and told me to wait for him. Then I saw him signalling me to join him.

  I found him in the process of making a line of white powder disappear up one nostril, as though he had suddenly been transformed into an Electrolux, with the aid of a tightly rolled twenty-dollar bill. I knew such things went on, but it was the first time I’d seen anyone do it. He offered me a line. I shook my head and retreated a step. My back was against the side of the booth. He began whimpering into the telephone. I tried not to think too much about the fact that I was there to help save my boss, Paul Lavoie, who was a hostage of the FLQ.

  “I was wondering, my dear, if you would be free for a friend of mine here … I see him making huge ‘no’ signs, but he’s a gallant fellow, I’m sure he likes women.”

  I went out to wait for him beside the Harley. And as happens only in bad police serials, a patrol car chose that minute to pull up beside the sidewalk. I saw the passenger-side window go down and I heard:

  “Hey, fuck-head … Where’s your helmet?”

  I couldn’t find my voice. Neither could the officer, apparently. Because he’d just seen Maître Brien behind me, running out of the phone booth with his fists raised in the air.

  “This is Paul Lavoie’s assistant! Let him pass!” he yelled, then jumped in the saddle and started the engine without even looking their way. The two officers stared at him round-eyed, jaws hanging open. The FLQ’s designated negotiator was a true celebrity, someone they’d seen on television. I had only enough time to jump on behind him and hang on, and we were off.

  If I didn’t sleep that night, it wasn’t because I stayed with Maître Brien. No, because when he jumped off his motorbike and ran into the Paul-Sauvé Arena to whip up a pre-revolutionary crowd, I jumped into a taxi and returned to the downtown hotel where the government had been hiding out for three days, and where the Lavoie clan (wife, children, parents, friends, political colleagues, and fellow collaborators) occupied an entire floor. And it was from the bed in my hotel suite, a glass of good scotch in my hand, that I watched El Maestro stir up chaos.

  Seeing all the young people gathered at his feet, raising their fists and chanting FLQ! FLQ!, I thought of my boss as a prisoner of these zealots, and of the canvas-covered trucks on the boulevard, and could hardly make myself believe in the fearful destiny that was happening before my eyes. It was impossible to fall asleep …

  I had no idea what time of night it was when, prey to a sudden inspiration, I leapt out of bed and hurried to my photocopy of the first letter from Lavoie to Little Albert. Armed with a pen, I placed the bottle of single malt on the coffee table, so it was close at hand, and reread the text carefully. Then I read it again. And again.

  I had just remembered our conversation of the sixth of October, at the Aigle Fin. In the flurry of events, I had hardly had time to think about it. And now it was as though every word written by Paul Lavoie was taking me back to it.

  My very dear Albert, what follows is very, very important: you must order the immediate cessation of all police raids. Their continuance will be my death warrant. On the other hand, if the release and departure of the political prisoners are brought to a good end, I am certain that my personal safety will be guaranteed. We are very close to a solution, I can feel it, since there is no real animosity between my kidnappers and I. My fate now collates with theirs. It is up to you to insure my swift return to Parliament Hill in support of you, like the faithful right arm that I promised you I would be. Your decision: my life or my death. I am counting on you, and thank you.

  Warm regards,

  Paul Lavoie

  Of course. Good God Almighty, of course.

  “Paul never makes grammatical mistakes,” I say. “I want to emphasize the importance of this. His mastery of the rules of language is perfect.”

  I was in another suite in the hotel, talking to a high-ranking QPP official graced with a fine moustache and a head like that of an electrical repairman. He already seemed to regret having agreed to meet me at such an early hour. While I was wasting his time, his friends, under the provisions of the special law, were busy throwing everyone in prison who leaned even ever so slightly to the left.

  I pushed the sheet of paper under his eyes and pointed to the words with the tip of my pen.

  The misuse of the word “collates.” The use of “insure” instead of “ensure.” He was deliberately trying to direct our attention to these two words. He’d already alerted us by doubling the adverb (“very, very important”) at the beginning of th
e paragraph. I wondered if the two errors were somehow connected? “Collates” could mean a copy centre. “Insure” could mean “insurance.” A building housing a copy centre and an insurance company?

  The police officer looked at me with boredom written on his face.

  But back in my room, I couldn’t help feeling I was getting somewhere. So I looked again at the words themselves. The first was the clearest. His use of the word “collates” had to be intentional: the proper word would have been “collides.” About the second, “insure,” I was less certain. It could have been a simple error, except that Lavoie didn’t make simple errors. What if I took the offending syllables from each word and switched them? Then the first word becomes … Collins.

  I took out a map of Greater Montreal and spread it out on my coffee table.

  There was a rue Collins in Côte-Saint-Luc. It hadn’t been around for very long, since it was named after one of the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission. I also took into account that there were rumours that Lavoie was being held somewhere on the South Shore, because, it was thought, the kidnappers would never risk crossing a bridge with a hostage in the car. So I looked on the map again … and found another rue Collins in Saint-Hubert, very close to the military base.

  “That’s all you can come up with? A street name?” asked the officer this time.

  I looked him in the eye.

  “No. I did some more research. In his first letter to his wife, Lavoie got the date wrong. He wrote October 12 instead of October 11. And as if by chance, the number twelve shows up again in his letter to Vézina: ‘After me, there will be a third, then a fourth, and a twelfth.’ Why a twelfth instead of a fifth, or a twentieth? It might just be coincidence, and the mistaken date might just be a case of inattention, but let’s suppose it isn’t. Is there a 12 rue Collins? Don’t you think it’s at least worth checking?”

  He seemed to think about it. Then he reached out his huge hand and held it poised above my photocopy of the letter like a mechanical goose’s beak.

  “Can I take this with me?”

  I said yes. We shook hands at the door. And I never heard from him again.

  Paul Lavoie died the next day. His body was found in the trunk of a car parked near Hangar 12 of the military airport in Saint-Hubert, several hundred feet from rue Collins and the house in which he’d been held hostage and assassinated.

  I’d spent Friday and Saturday trying, between two short naps, to speak with the officer I’d shown the letter to. When I realized it was useless, I tried to find Colonel Lapierre. The special adviser was perhaps the only one left with the authority to save my boss. But the War Measures Act was keeping everyone in his world busy. Uncle Bob couldn’t be found …

  Three years later, the time finally arrived.

  At the Aigle Fin, on the back wall, there’s a large canvas representing a three-master in pursuit of a whale; we see the whale’s tail rising above the waves as it dives a cable’s length in front of the ship. The whale is white. Beneath the painting is a fireplace in which, from October on, a good maple fire is always burning. And near the fireplace is the table preferred by Uncle Bob, at which he is probably already waiting for me, his eye on the door, his back to the wall (of course), our own Papa Boss, the man who has a horror of surprises, the workhorse, the war wounded. I feel a little as though I am meeting with the Grand Inquisitor in person.

  I complete my walk on the plains by coming up George-VI, emerging onto Grande-Allée by way of Wolfe and Montcalm streets. I’m a bit late, and so I step up my pace. Before going into the restaurant I slip my tape recorder into my pocket and leave it on, just in case.

  (What follows is a cleaned-up, slightly edited version of our conversation. Background noise has been reduced, the clinking of glasses and utensils, and the inevitable banalities. We hear the Colonel …)

  “You see that painting up there?”

  “That one?”

  “Yes. La Quebrada … Acapulco. Have you ever been there?”

  “No, never.”

  “You should go. Ah, la Quebrada … You know it, it’s the cliff from which divers jump into the ocean. They have to wait for the right moment, when a wave comes in … Timing is everything. If they wait too long, the wave is already on its way out when they jump, and when they hit the shallow water they break their necks. Not unlike politics, I find.”

  (Here the Colonel smiles, and a brief silence ensues and I wonder how long he’s going to beat about the bush. It isn’t his style, and I don’t have to wait long to find out why he’s summoned me.)

  “My dear Jean-Claude, I’m going to be frank with you … First, my congratulations. Vautrin was a long way from an easy win at the start of the campaign. In retrospect it’s easy to say that a caribou painted red could have shown up and been elected. But the PQ is to be watched up there in the North. A good thing they have those big camps. Without the boys working on construction, I don’t know where we’d be. It must be said, my dear J.-C., you were dropped in with one hell of a fine parachute.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not at all. Jean-Claude, recently I’ve been wondering where all the stories appearing in the Toronto papers could be coming from, the dirt, you know, which suggests, roughly, that the government didn’t do all it could have in 1970 to save poor Paul Lavoie.”

  (This was it.)

  “And that even suggest that Lavoie could have been a victim of a settling of accounts within the Liberal Party. That’s a bit strong, don’t you think?”

  (What do I say? What do I do?)

  “It would seem,” he went on, “that there are those who find it easier to go snivelling to Toronto when they know how their bits of gossip will be greeted by the timorous little mice around here …”

  “I really don’t see who that could be. But if you ask me what I think …”

  “Let’s say I’m asking you what you think, Jean-Claude.”

  “ … I think that it might be a kind of reaction to the dirt-diggers who are ruining Paul Lavoie’s reputation by dragging his name through the mud in the papers.”

  “You’re speaking of those at the Devoir who keep sifting through the garbage heap? You don’t think, though, that Vézina and his government have something to do with it?”

  “I only say that Lavoie makes an ideal scapegoat, that’s all. He was in the government and he had contacts with the Mafia. Lavoie is dead now, so the government has no more contact with the Mafia. It’s what is called …”

  “A sophism?”

  “Yes, exactly. You see, I know what’s going on, Colonel. I see you digging your firebreak around the second Lavoie affair. At the worst, now that connections with the Scarpino family have come to the attention of the public, it wouldn’t be so bad if people learned that you let him be conveniently killed at the time. That would be a lot less damaging for the Liberal government than if these revelations continue, yes, if the stain keeps getting bigger, like concentric circles in a pond, which never stop expanding. Until …”

  “You. And me. We’re in the same boat, Jean-Claude …”

  “I don’t know about that. Three years ago, he would have been a martyr for national unity. Now, it’s a Liberal scapegoat you need. But there are goddamned limits to killing a corpse! How long is it going to go on, Colonel?”

  (There is a silence and I can’t believe I have just addressed Uncle Bob in such tones … But he doesn’t react, it’s as though nothing living moves in his face, the coldness in his look could come from Resolute Bay or the Andromeda Galaxy. My back is shivering, just thinking about it.)

  “Until the next elections.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s going to go on until the next elections. And the next elections, my friend, are going to take place no later than this year. Keep that to yourself, by the way. Parliament is going to be dissolved tomorrow. The campaigning will begin …”

  “But how can that be? It’s only been three years …”

  “It’s a good time. T
he dirt-diggers, as you call them, are busy. There’s a wave coming. Everyone is going to be engulfed by it. Might as well ride it out right away. Listen to what I’m saying: the election is going to be held against the goddamned separatists and I’m going to find you a hundred seats, minimum. In six months, no one will be talking about the Mafia.”

  “And the dissolution …”

  “Tomorrow. That gives you plenty of time to decide if you’re going to run or not.”

  “If I …”

  “Deep down, Jean-Claude, you know as well as I do that a caribou painted red can win Vautrin. But we’re not going to give ammunition to the PQ. We’re not going to dig up any rubbish and serve it to them on a silver platter …”

  “Rubbish? What kind of rubbish?”

  “Let’s say, to take an example, a political attaché meets with the lieutenant of the Montreal Mafia in the Vegas Palace, a joint on the South Shore. And to make things worse, let’s say this meeting took place on a Saturday night, at the same moment, or just about, that the boss of said political attaché was liquidated by a gang of separatist piss artists. But maybe it was just a coincidence …”

  “You know I met with Temperio … How?”

  (Talk about a stupid question. Fucking idiot!)

  “I have a tape of the meeting. The walls of the Vegas have more microphones in them than the newsroom at the CBC. Temperio and the Scarpinos couldn’t say a four-letter word or fart in the washroom without it ending up in the QPP archives. And then, when the chattering of the good Liberals turns up in the dossiers of organized crime, the boys at the Parthenais are accustomed to warning me about it. Any other questions?”

  “I … discovered a message. In Lavoie’s letter. But I got zero collaboration from the QPP. So I took my courage in both hands and went knocking at the Vegas …”

  (He had me by the short and curlies. Ouch …)

  “But you have a problem: Scarpino wanted something in exchange. He wanted $300,000, or else fewer cops in the cabarets, or a permit to open a casino. It was give, give, give. And you, you were just a little political attaché who had nothing to offer him, a huge zero. Otherwise, he would have gone and got your Lavoie out for you. He would have sent in three or four of his henchmen and no one would have heard another word about those assholes in the FLQ. Good, let’s be serious: the county of Vautrin, do you want it or not?”