Miss Montreal

by Howard Shrier

  “Haven’t had a chance.”

  He moved my laptop aside and said, “Want to spread it out here?”

  “Not now. The woman from the rug store just called. She wants to meet me in an hour at a market north of here.”

  “Which one?”

  “Jean-Talon.”

  “Hell, I know that place. There’s a lot of Italian places around there I used to eat with some of the local boys.”

  He got off the bed and slipped his jacket on, pulling it away from his shoulder holster when it snagged on the butt of his Glock.

  “You don’t have to come,” I said.

  “You afraid I’m gonna spook her?”

  “You’d spook Manny Pacquiao, why not her?”

  “I’m coming anyway. It could be a set-up. Don’t forget someone followed us from their place.”

  “All right. Let me check my email first.” I did it on my phone, thumbing through my inbox past messages that had gotten past my filters to promise cheap Alaskan cruises, to an hour-old message from Gabriel Archambault, Lortie campaign press secretary, asking which media outlet I was with. He said Monsieur Lortie was getting so many requests for interviews that he was giving priority to those based in Quebec.

  I’ve posed as a reporter before to get interviews with people who might not otherwise want to grant one, most recently in Boston. This time, I went straight to the point. I wrote back saying I was not a reporter but an investigator looking into the murder of Sam Adler, late of Montreal Moment magazine. I would need about fifteen minutes of Monsieur Lortie’s time, the sooner the better. I left my number and asked him to reply as soon as he could.

  Driving north on St-Laurent, past the east side of Mount Royal, I saw for the first time the great cross perched atop its summit. At night it’s lit up so the whole east side of the city can see it, a constant reminder of the Church that utterly dominated Quebec society—as much as if not more so than Ireland’s—from its founding to the sixties, when the people finally, and resoundingly, threw off that yoke and started down the road to secularism. But the cross remains, a hundred feet tall, telling the people that even if they have abandoned the Church, it is still there for them. For those who still believe.

  We got to the market at five-thirty. There was a large parking lot on the south side but most of it was taken up with stalls selling produce, so we had to hunt for a spot on nearby streets, finally finding one on Henri-Julien. We didn’t want to enter together so I told Ryan to wait a minute and then follow me in.

  “You hear me whistle,” he said, “look alive. It means someone’s coming up behind you.”

  Even with just fifteen minutes left before closing, the market was packed with people. It was a long, wide rectangular space with a peaked roof. Along both sides, vendors stood behind counters calling out their specials, their closing-time deals. As I scanned the different outlets looking for Mehri, I could smell coffee, spices, strong cheeses, fresh meat. Over some of the stalls hung dried chilies, sausages and strings of garlic heads. There were flats with six dozen eggs, baskets brimming with peppers of every colour, stacked cans of homegrown maple syrup, and every fruit and vegetable you could imagine; some were not yet in season in Quebec and some would never be. As I walked down the main aisle, I saw corridors leading off to the left and right with more stalls selling fancy mustards, scented candles and soaps, jam and marmalade, honey, candies—and flowers.

  And Mehri, watching as a man in a sailor’s cap wrapped bright yellow carnations in cellophane. Even though she was expecting me, she flinched when I called her name. She smiled, sort of, glanced at her watch and said, “You made it.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I didn’t give you much time and the traffic sometimes …”

  The man behind the counter handed over the flowers and we moved closer to a door that led out the east side of the building.

  “Tell me the truth about Sammy,” I said. “Was something happening between you beyond the story he was writing?”

  “You have to understand,” she replied. “This is not easy for me to talk about, especially to a man I don’t know.”

  “You said you wanted justice for him.”

  “And I do. But how do I know that telling you this will help?”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “That we were—no, I didn’t.”

  Those first three words, at least, gave me my answer. “Did they ask?”

  “No.”

  “Of course they did, they found the hair.”

  “What hair?”

  “Like the one we found in Sam’s bed. The police found some too. You can’t tell me they didn’t ask.”

  “Why would they? I was wearing hijab when I went to be interviewed. They never came to the store.”

  “But it’s true. About you and Sam.”

  She lowered her eyes. I could see the discomfort. “That we were becoming intimate? To a certain extent, yes. But we were not lovers, not in the way you think.”

  “We found a hair in his bed that matches yours.”

  “I lay in his bed with him, one time only, the night before he was killed.”

  “May twenty-eighth?”

  “Yes. But we did not have relations. We held each other and—please, I can’t give you details. I am not one of those Western women who divulge every aspect of their lives, who keep cameras going in their apartments night and day.”

  “Did your brother know about it?”

  “What does this have to do with him?”

  “He wouldn’t have approved, would he?”

  Mehri examined her flowers, the bright yellow petals peeking out through the wrap. They’d look beautiful on a dinner table, heartbreaking on a grave. She said, “Of course not. Any relations outside marriage, to him, would be difficult to accept. And because Sam was a Jew … that would have been even harder. Some things are ingrained in us at an early age and they are hard to leave aside.”

  “You did.”

  “Because I saw the person, not his faith. When he interviewed us for the story he was writing, I could feel his honesty, his warmth, his compassion for people. He had no prejudice against us because we are Muslim—which is more than I can say for many people in this city—and I felt none toward him.”

  “Did he interview you and Mehrdad together?”

  “At first, yes. But then he came to the store once or twice when Mehrdad was not there. I think he must have figured out when I would be there myself. And then he called and invited me for coffee. I knew I should not accept but I wanted to see him. I was lonely at night. I had tried to find someone in our own community but none wanted me to be what I am. They were like my brother. I think the English phrase is control freak, is that right?”

  I couldn’t help smiling at that. “Exactly right.”

  “Sam had no conceptions of how I should be. However I was, it was fine with him. He introduced me to new things, new parts of the city I did not know. New foods. And he made me laugh, so much of the time, with the things he knew, the things he saw in people and their crazy behaviour.”

  “He made a lot of people laugh.” I thought of what his ex-wife had said about him being a homebody and wondered whether a relationship between him and Mehri would have lasted had he lived.

  I said, “Mehri, do you know where your brother was when Sam was killed?”

  “He wouldn’t do that to Sam. Kill him like that.”

  “You said he would have disapproved if he knew.”

  “But he didn’t know.”

  “Can you be sure? Isn’t it possible Mehrdad saw or heard you sneaking out at night? Coming back in late? Followed you one time?”

  She broke off eye contact. When she looked back at me, her jaw was clenched, her lips curled in on themselves. “My brother was home that night. With me. We worked late counting our inventory. Making ready some deliveries. We didn’t get home until eleven and we were both exhausted. He went straight to bed. I saw with my own eyes.”

>   “How do you know he didn’t leave after you fell asleep?”

  A tear rolled down her cheek, taking with it a dark trail of mascara. “I would know if he did something so terrible. He could not keep such a secret from me. Ever.”

  “You said he doesn’t like Jews.”

  “A lot of Muslims don’t. It doesn’t mean they commit murder. My God, you are like everyone else, blaming us whatever happens.”

  There was a lot I could have said to dispute that, but I heard a sharp whistle behind me. I turned to see Ryan standing next to a dairy stand, unbuttoning his jacket. He nodded his head toward the side door, where two men in suits had just entered.

  One of them was the driver of the car that had followed us from Les Tapis Kabul.

  Mehri turned, following my gaze, and saw them, then turned back to me, a look of panic in her eyes. I pushed her to my right and started backpedalling, watching their hands. The driver, still wearing his grey suit, was reaching inside his jacket. I couldn’t tell what the man behind him was doing but assumed he was also going for a gun. I backed up past a display of cans of syrup, grabbed the top one and threw it as hard as I could. The driver sidestepped it but his partner, who didn’t see it coming until it was too late, took it in the chest and staggered backwards. I swept the bottom row of cans—the vendor shouting something raw in French—and they toppled to the floor between the driver and me. He had to stop in his tracks, trying to find a path through the cans. As soon as he looked down at the floor, I leapt at him and slammed the palm of my left hand into his nose, which shattered and spouted blood as far up as my elbow. A woman behind me screamed—not Mehri—as I followed up with a right hook to the jaw and an uppercut left that snapped his chin back. He sagged to the floor on top of the syrup cans.

  The man behind him—younger and leaner but with a strong resemblance to his partner—had his gun in his hand, bringing it up from waist level. That’s as far as it got before he dropped it and put his hands out. I turned and saw Ryan in a shooting stance, his gun aimed squarely at the man’s chest. I jumped over the cans, kicked the man’s gun aside and grabbed his lapels.

  “Who are you?” I hissed.

  He answered in a guttural language close enough to Hebrew that I assumed it was Arabic. Or Pashto. I looked at Mehri and said, “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It is not my language.”

  “Qui êtes vous?” I tried.

  I got the same thing again. I grabbed his arm below the elbow and put a hundred pounds of pressure onto the nerve. His eyes rolled and he went pale.

  “You speak English?” I said. “Parle français?”

  He groaned something in neither. The pain he was in, he must have had an incredibly high tolerance or really didn’t speak either language. I patted his jacket with my other hand and felt a wallet. I got it out and tossed it to Ryan.

  “Get the other guy’s too,” I said.

  He got both wallets into his pockets. Then said, “Shit.”

  I turned around. At least a dozen people were gathered in a semicircle staring at us. One young man wearing a bicycle helmet was holding out a cellphone, videotaping the scene. Ryan strode over to the cyclist, pointed his gun at him and grabbed the phone out of his hand. “Anyone else want to try?” he said. “The last thing you’ll tape is a bullet coming at you.” He walked backwards toward the door, keeping his Glock at waist level, making sure no one tried to film us. I didn’t want anyone following us out: I drove an elbow into the base of the partner’s neck. His head snapped back and he fell to the floor.

  I grabbed Mehri’s arm and steered her outside.

  “Who were they?” I demanded.

  “You have their wallets,” she said. “You can look at their names.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the guy in grey followed us from your store today.”

  “Move faster,” Ryan said behind me. “There are cameras over the door.”

  I kept hold of her arm. “If you don’t know them, your brother does. Should we go ask him?”

  “It won’t be nicely,” Ryan said.

  “Look,” she said. “The one in front, I have seen him at the store once or twice. Usually late, sometimes after we close. But Mehrdad never introduced us.”

  “And the other one?”

  “He never came in. One time, he was outside in a car, waiting, but that’s all.”

  “Why did you say you didn’t understand him?”

  “Because I didn’t. I speak Pashto and Dari and he spoke neither. I believe it was Arabic. Where are you taking me? I am going to be very late getting home.”

  “Tell your brother you were with me.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “I wasn’t joking. I think he killed Sam, and if he did, I want him to know I’m coming after him.”

  “He didn’t do it. I told you, I would know.”

  “Then what’s with the fucking gunmen, Mehri?”

  “There is no need to speak to me that way,” she said.

  “There fucking well is.”

  Ryan said, “In here,” pointing at the doorway of a small store for rent, its windows covered over with newspapers so old they still had hockey scores. I took out the two wallets and read out the names on their drivers’ licences.

  The grey suit was Mohammed al-Haddad; the black suit, Faisal al-Haddad.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “He said that he was done with them.”

  “Done with who?”

  “The Syrians.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Syrians?” “Ryan asked. “I thought we were dealing with Afghans. Who invited Syrians?”

  “No clue,” I said.

  “This from the so-called detective.”

  We had let Mehri go on her way, flustered, late, in tears again, mascara streaking both cheeks. Then Ryan had put the incriminating cellphone under the front wheel of the Charger, crushing it as we headed south. I didn’t think the two men at the market would be cooperating with the police, who no doubt had been called in. If they had regained consciousness, they were probably playing dumb like they had with us, pretending to speak neither English nor French.

  I called Bobby Ducharme and asked if he’d had any luck with the licence plate we’d given him to run.

  “It’s registered to a numbered company,” he said. “Which I traced to a group called Les Importations Homs. That’s H-o-m-s.”

  “Like the city in Syria.”

  “I watch the news. You dealing with Syrians, I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” Bobby said. “They have a reputation of being fairly badass, at least in Montreal.”

  “Who owns the company?”

  “Don’t know yet. There’s a lot of layers there. And I also have a day job to work at. Let me see what I can find in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Bobby.”

  “If you want to pay me in beer, I like St-Ambroise. The pale ale, not the oatmeal stout. If I want cereal, I’ll have it in a bowl.”

  When we were back in the room, I checked my email. Laurent Lortie’s press secretary had replied, asking if I were an early riser. If so, the man and his daughter could meet me at 7:30 at their campaign office on Avenue du Mont-Royal. “He has a great deal to do tomorrow but he is enthused to help you determine the circumstances behind the unfortunate passing of Mr. Samuel Adler.”

  “He actually wrote that?” Ryan snorted.

  “It’s not his first language.”

  “Sounds like bullshit is.”

  I wrote back saying 7:30 was fine, that I looked forward to meeting Monsieur and Mademoiselle Lortie.

  I looked at my watch: quarter to eight. I googled Les Importations Homs but couldn’t find anything but an e-mail address, phone number and post-office box. No street address. Nothing to search out in the night. No windows to break, no alarms to trigger, no men in suits to batter.

  Nothing more to
be done tonight but have the promised drink with Holly Napier.

  We met in the hotel’s ground floor Café Bar. She wore a light blue silk jacket over a white camisole, jeans and sandals with a modest heel. Her hair was loose, falling past her shoulders, the colour of embers.

  Like her much?

  Over glasses of wine that cost the price of a bottle each, I told her about the day we’d had, from my visit to Crimes Majeurs to the fight in the market.

  “You pack a lot into one day,” she said.

  “It’s not over yet.”

  “What else is on your agenda?”

  We were facing each other across a marble-topped table. Keeping eye contact. Things were stirring inside me, palpably, and I wanted to touch her hand. But didn’t. “There are some records of Sammy’s I need to look over. And some memorabilia I got from his ex-wife.”

  “I could help,” she said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I didn’t say I had to. I’d like to. I knew Sammy better than you. Maybe something in there will make more sense to me than it would to you.”

  I said, “Sure.” Thinking of a Willie P. Bennett song, “Lace and Pretty Flowers,” where a would-be lover uses silks and perfume to get a girl up to his room. With me, it’s records and statements and a musty cardboard box. I am smoothness but smoothness is not me.

  Up I took her anyway.

  Ryan wasn’t in the room. He’d left me a note saying he was going to Little Italy to have a drink “in a place that won’t hose me.” He signed off saying, “Back in 2 hrs. Call if I need to stay out later.”

  Suddenly the room felt smaller. Warmer. Darker. I opened Paquette’s envelope and spread the phone records on my bed—still made from the morning, the bedspread taut—and Holly and I started going through them. She put checkmarks beside all the numbers she knew: the office, her cell, the managing editor’s cell, her home number. I noticed he sometimes called her late at night, close to or after midnight.

  “Those were probably the nights Sophie stayed with him. He’d wait until she went to bed, then he’d work on that week’s column. If he had questions, he’d call. I’m a night owl,” she said. “I don’t need much sleep.”