Miss Montreal

by Howard Shrier

  “Not in the office.”

  “Did you see him outside of work?”

  “This is a small paper. We put in a lot of hours together. Six days a week, sometimes seven. I know far too much already about some of the people I work with and if I spend time with them outside work, I don’t get to vent about the things they do that drive me nuts. So when we finally get out of here, we tend to go our separate ways.”

  “There’s a picture of you on his fridge,” Ryan said.

  “You’re kidding. From what?”

  “An award presentation.”

  “Oh, the night he won the Nicky.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Best writing on city life in an English Montreal publication. Named after Nick Auf der Maur. A local hero, man about town, long-time city columnist.”

  “Who was he profiling now?” I asked.

  “He was working on two. Which wound up connecting even though they didn’t start out that way. The first was an Afghan family and how they and other Muslims are adjusting to life in Quebec.”

  She probably didn’t notice Ryan shift slightly in his seat.

  “What drew Sammy to that story? What was his take on it?”

  “His great-grandparents came to Montreal exactly one hundred years ago. They had to adapt to life here like the Muslims do today. They endured a lot of anti-Semitism, especially in the thirties and forties, when fascism was rampant in Quebec. Some pretty shameful things happened. But his family went on to thrive in the city. His grandfather got rich, at any rate. Sammy wanted to write something that brought the two experiences together: the Muslim struggle to assimilate while remaining true to Islam, as written by a descendant of Jews who had to do it before. He also wanted to show not all Afghans are like the Habib family. You know who I mean?”

  “The guy who burned his house with the daughters in it because they wouldn’t wear that fucking scarf,” Ryan said.

  “That’s the one.”

  “The whole world heard about him,” I said. “The Canadian honour killer.”

  “If he isn’t killed in prison,” Ryan muttered, “there’s something wrong with the system.”

  “They actually did want to wear the hijab,” Holly said quietly. “Both girls.” Her voice was soft, but there was no mistaking she was just as angry as Ryan—and me. “But their soccer league wouldn’t let them play if they did. That’s partly what Sammy was writing about.”

  “And making enemies?”

  “He wasn’t focusing on Marcel Habib. He was profiling a very different Afghan family, to show this asshole didn’t represent the entire community.”

  “What family?”

  “Their name is Aziz. A father who came here with his son and daughter when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. An educated man, a physician and diplomat in Kabul before it fell. He brought his children to Montreal alone after his wife was killed in a bombing. He had a cousin here. Raised them both to do whatever they wanted, son and daughter. They run his rug business now.”

  “I thought the father was a physician.”

  “In Kabul, yes. His credentials weren’t recognized here and he had to feed two small kids, so he went into his cousin’s rug business, and when the cousin passed away he took it over. Now he’s retired and the kids run it.”

  “You have their contact info?”

  “I’ll link you up.”

  “What’s the other profile?”

  “Laurent Lortie.”

  Neither Ryan nor I reacted.

  “Sure, you hear of the honour killer but not the aspiring politician. Lortie is the leader of a new party in Quebec. Another new party, I should say. There’s been a lot of splintering on the provincial scene.”

  “What’s his called?”

  “Québec aux Québécois. Also known as the QAQ. Either he didn’t realize the English pronunciation would be cack or quack, or he didn’t care. He does speak English fluently. He studied at the London School of Economics and can put on quite the mid-Atlantic accent when he deigns to speak it.”

  “Which way does the party lean?”

  “Right,” she said. “As right as you’d ever see in Quebec. We only ever elect social democrats; it’s usually just a question of whether they’re also sovereigntist. But Lortie is convinced the people are ready for a change. He says real Québécois don’t need a nanny state. They need to rediscover some of that pioneer swing of theirs. I’m paraphrasing but that’s the message. He’s not big on immigration, which is where this one intersects with the Aziz profile. His daughter Lucienne, who is his second-in-command, is also very vocal on this issue. I wouldn’t walk into a Muslim neighbourhood if I were her.”

  Someone should have told that to Sammy. If he had walked into that neighbourhood on his own.

  “How far along on that story was he?”

  “He interviewed both Laurent and Lucienne,” Holly said. “There’s also a son, Luc, by the way, but he isn’t part of the political dynasty.”

  “Not interested?”

  “Not capable. Sammy said he seemed slow. I don’t know if he meant developmentally delayed—”

  “You can say retarded,” Ryan muttered.

  “Sammy wouldn’t have, so I won’t either. Anyway, if he ever interviewed Luc, he left no notes.”

  “Who else did he interview?” I asked.

  “Pundits, pollsters, observers who had something to say about the Lorties’ policies and electability. The head of the local Muslim congress, who was suitably outraged. One thing I know, Sammy was going to see Laurent again the day he was found. They were supposed to meet at four o’clock that afternoon.”

  “I don’t like it when meetings don’t happen,” I said. “Any other stories?”

  “There was one other folder he created right before he died, but it was empty. No documents in it at all. So if it was a new story, he must have just been starting. He never mentioned it to me.”

  “Did it have a name?”

  “ ‘Miss Montreal.’ ”

  “That mean anything to you?”

  “The only thing anyone could tell me was there used to be a restaurant by that name on Décarie near Ruby Foo’s. But it’s been gone for years.”

  “Did he ever cover construction?” Ryan asked. “There’s a business where people get hurt a lot. And not on the job.”

  “If you mean corruption, you’re in the right place. It’s a national sport here. The Charbonneau Commission hearings were the most fun we’d had in months. But it’s been over and on to the next thing for ages. The only other thing that came up recently …”.

  “What?”

  “Was Sammy adopted?” she asked.

  “Not to my knowledge. Why?”

  “He asked me a little while ago if I knew any social workers who handled adoption reconciliations.”

  “Did you find someone?”

  “Yes,” she said. “One of my girlfriends has a friend who works in that field. I called her and asked if it was okay to pass on her name to Sammy. She told me she wouldn’t be able to tell him anything more than general procedures, unless it had to do with him personally. I passed on her name and email to Sammy, but whatever he did with it he kept private.”

  “Would she speak to us?” I asked.

  “She might,” she said. “But she won’t be able to tell you any more than she could tell Sammy. Maybe less.”

  CHAPTER 06

  Bobby Ducharme told us he’d meet us at six o’clock at a deli called the Main, right across the street from Schwartz’s. The Main was the overflow place, Bobby explained. “You get the same food there as across the street, more or less,” he said. “But there won’t be a lineup and we can get some privacy at the back.”

  “Tell you one thing,” Ryan said as we drove up St-Laurent. “The women alone are a reason to love it here. Check that out.”

  He pointed at a tall slender woman in a tight gold dress, bare legs tanned, hips swinging side to side. “You walk in downtown Toronto, King and Yong
e, say, all the women are in business suits with sneakers, they got a purse, briefcase and gym bag, looking like if you stuck a dime in the crack of their ass, it would still be there when they die. These women here—they’re alive, man. They put some effort in.”

  “Sounds like you’re getting over Cara,” I said.

  He turned to me, scowling, the scar on his jaw a dark red line. “I’m not over her now and I never will be. I been with that girl since I was twenty years old. But I’m not dead. I can still appreciate a woman who walks down the street like she owns it.”

  There was indeed a line outside Schwartz’s when we got there, about five storefronts long—in the rain. We found parking around the corner a block north, just past a fenced yard that looked abandoned except for a stack of unmarked gravestones.

  We had no trouble finding a table at the back of the Main, next to a wall covered with caricatures of employees that looked so old half the people in them were probably dead. Ryan would normally have taken a seat facing the door, but we were close to the kitchen door too, through which people were moving quickly in both directions. I know Ryan: he doesn’t like people making sudden moves around him. So he sat across from me but turned his chair sideways, its back against the wall so he could see all traffic, and seemed satisfied.

  Bobby strode in a few minutes later, brushing rain off the sleeves of a cream linen jacket. We shook hands and I introduced him to Ryan. He hung his jacket on the chair next to Ryan and sat down facing me, wearing a short-sleeve white dress shirt that showed off his arms, which were big and well defined. He had jet-black hair cut short and gelled up in front, and his eyes were dark too, like many Québécois whose ancestors married Cree and other Natives. I could see him taking in Ryan, about whom I’d told him nothing. I could sense Ryan doing the same. Bobby pressed his palms together, which bulged his arms bigger. Ryan didn’t have to do anything like that in return. Steel was his element, not muscle.

  “So you left Beacon Security, eh?” Bobby said. “Set up your own shop?”

  “A year ago.”

  “Christ,” Bobby said, pronouncing it Kriss. “One of these days, I’ll do the same thing, start my own place. Maybe with one or two guys from Investigations Globales. It’s working out okay for you?”

  “I’m not making a fortune. But I wasn’t seeking one, so it’s a wash.”

  “What do you do, mostly?”

  “Background checks, missing persons, the kind of things a big shop would assign to a team. Only we’re the whole team.”

  “The two of you?”

  “No. My partner is a woman named Jenn. Ryan’s filling in for her on this one.”

  “Well, look for me to open up next year,” Bobby said.

  A waitress long past middle age took our order. On Bobby’s advice, we chose the combo platter, a smoked meat on rye, with fries, coleslaw, dill pickle spear and Cokes.

  When the waitress left, I asked Bobby about the homicide detectives working Sammy’s case.

  He said, “You did okay with Reynald Paquette. He’s a pretty good cop. I got that from two sources. The first is a guy I know who worked with him before he made Crimes Majeurs, when he was still a uniform in St-Léonard. Not the easiest turf to come up in.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s mostly Italian. And it’s heavily populated, or at least frequented, by the Mob. A lot of coffee shops the cops would love to put a wire in. My friend said Paquette was smart, worked hard, gave a shit and kept his nose clean, even in that environment. What more could you ask?”

  “That he be good at homicide.”

  “He is, he is. I checked that too. He has one of the best solution rates in the squad and a solid reputation. Not the fastest guy, maybe, but thorough. If there’s something to find, he’ll find it. Eventually. Unless it was a random attack, a swarming. Then all bets are off, unless someone panics, blabs or gives themselves up.”

  “Someone always blabs,” Ryan said. “Especially if they didn’t have the balls to do it alone.”

  “So what is Paquette thinking?” I asked. “Random attack or targeted?”

  “Well, you know the area where he was found. Or maybe you don’t.”

  “His grandfather told me it’s an Arab neighbourhood.”

  “Right. So it could have happened that way.”

  “Or someone dumped him there to throw people off,” Ryan said. “Marked him up with that star.”

  “You got to keep that open,” Bobby said.

  “How bad is the blood here between Jews and Muslims?”

  “I don’t know what it’s like in Toronto, but some of the Arabs here, especially the North Africans, they don’t like the Jews so much. There have been firebombings in schools, threats, beatings of kids who wear the skullcap. Our firm does executive protection and uniformed security, and all the synagogues need it on their holidays.”

  “The question would still be what he was doing there in the middle of the night. We know the police answered a call at his house at two-forty-five in the morning.”

  “About what?”

  “Supposedly a domestic disturbance. Only there wasn’t any.”

  “And a few hours later,” Bobby said, “he’s found dead in Ville St-Laurent.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “No.”

  “The call prompted him to leave his house?”

  “Could be.”

  “Maybe he knew who was behind it and went to see them.”

  “The Afghan family he was interviewing,” I said. “Their store is in that area.”

  “Yeah, but at a quarter to three in the morning?”

  “It could also have been a cry-wolf routine,” Ryan said. “Someone calls in a false alarm so a second call gets a slower response.”

  “There was no second call,” I said.

  “The old Greek lady said she heard something a few minutes later,” Ryan said.

  “Yes. But she looked out and didn’t see anyone.”

  “Not at the front. But he had a back door too. So maybe the call was meant to give someone the opportunity to snatch him.”

  “How?”

  “Cops show up at your door, you open up, right? You turn off your alarm system. Then the cops go away. There’s a knock on the back door. It’s late, he’s disoriented—three, four in the morning, that’s the magic hour, the time cops love to raid a place because you’re at your most vulnerable. He answers it without thinking—boom, he’s abducted.”

  The waitress picked that moment to arrive with three platters. The sandwiches were stacked high with steaming meat and I had to sneak a quick bite before we could continue, get that first mouthful of clove and other spices. Both of them followed suit. No one looked unhappy.

  “Paquette might be able to tell you where the call came from,” Bobby said.

  “And whether he was killed in the apartment,” Ryan said, “or where the body was found.”

  “You’ll find out tomorrow. Speaking of which,” Bobby said, “there is a little bad news. Paquette’s partner, René Chênevert. Apparently he’s a miserable pain in the ass, what we’d call in French a trou de cul.”

  “Which means?” Ryan asked.

  “Asshole. From what I heard, he’s arrogant as hell and the kind of political animal who hates everybody equally, including most of his colleagues, sees them all as rungs on the ladder to the sky. Oh, my God, this is good,” Bobby said, after finishing the first half of his sandwich and wiping his hands and the corner of his lips with a thin paper napkin. “I haven’t had one in a while. I got to keep the waistline trim.”

  There was enough fat in the sandwich to light an Inuit lamp, but I was savouring every bite too. There’s something about the marriage of brisket, smoke and spices that enthralls Montreal, thrills Jews and Gentiles alike. Finally, our plates were clean, except for balled-up greasy napkins and the last burnt fries.

  “Is this asshole any good at his job?” I asked.

&nbs
p; “If he made Homicide, he’s not stupid, and if he’s working with someone like Paquette, he has to contribute something. Maybe he’s the paperwork fiend or the background checker. The bad cop in interrogations. Just don’t expect cooperation from him. Not in English and not in your French.”

  “Sorry I’m going to miss it,” Ryan said.

  “You’re not going?” Bobby asked him.

  “He doesn’t do police,” I said.

  “I haven’t been in a police station in over twenty years,” Ryan said. “I’m not starting tomorrow, not even for him.”

  “You want me to come?” Bobby asked. “Translate or something?”

  “My French isn’t bad,” I said.

  He responded by ripping off a fast line of joual at me. I caught the word français, but that’s it.

  “Sorry?”

  He repeated it just as fast.

  “Okay, what?”

  “I asked you how your French was, more or less, the same way they’re gonna speak to you.”

  “Arthur Moscoe told me Paquette speaks good English.”

  “To Arthur Moscoe he does. Or his lawyers. That’s no guarantee he will to you. And Chênevert for sure won’t.”

  “You free tomorrow?”

  “I could be. But we’d have to go first thing, before their day in Homicide goes from bad to worse. I’ll pick you up at eight, we’ll hit them around eight-thirty. My office isn’t far from there.”

  “I don’t want to make you late.”

  The amount of time they’re likely to spare you, I won’t be.”

  “Okay. Eight o’clock, our hotel.”

  “ ’Ey, anyone want another sandwich?” he said. “Since we’re here?”

  Ryan and I just looked at him.

  “No?” Bobby said. “Nobody wants to split one?”

  “What happened to the trim waistline?” I asked.

  “It stayed outside,” Bobby said.

  We got back to the hotel around seven-thirty. With the cloud cover still heavy, it seemed darker than it should have on the longest day of the year. It was time for summer to show itself, step out from behind that heavy curtain, splash a few rays our way. But the curtain wasn’t moving. All the light did was fade.

  When we got to the room, I drew up a list of people we needed to speak to: