Miss Montreal

by Howard Shrier

  His dark eyes sparked with anger. “She would do no such thing. Not ever.”

  “She was getting pretty damn close.”

  “Liar!”

  I reached the counter. He turned and threw open the door and took three steps into the back room. I vaulted the counter and followed him through into an area filled with hundreds of rugs rolled up in pigeonholes, like those in the front showroom. His two helpers were lying on the floor on their stomachs, their hands behind their heads. Ryan had his foot on the big one’s back, his Glock pointed at the man’s neck. A suppressor was screwed onto the barrel.

  “If you were expecting help from these fuck-ups, it ain’t forthcoming,” he said to Mehrdad.

  Mehrdad turned back to me and said, “Only with guns are you tough.”

  I slapped his face hard, a quick left backhand that turned his head and left a bright red mark on his cheek. Then I dropped my hands to my side. “No guns on me. Take your best shot.”

  “Why? So your friend can shoot me in the back?”

  “The only people I’m shooting in the back are these two,” Ryan said. “If they’re dumb enough to move.”

  Mehrdad untucked his shirt, rolled his shoulders, stepped forward and threw a right-handed punch that I could have blocked while reading a menu. Then I slapped him again, dropped my hands by my sides and waited for his next try. He faked a punch and tried to kick me in the groin. I swept his foot aside and he fell to the floor, almost landing on the beefier of his friends.

  “I can do this all day, Mehrdad. Tell me what you and Mohammed are up to.”

  “We are rug sellers, that’s all,” he said, standing up slowly, head down, resting his palms on his knees. I knew from his body language he was going to rush me, go for a takedown. When he did, I sidestepped him easily. When he turned back, I hit him hard with an open hand on the right ear.

  He cried out in pain, but I hadn’t hit him hard enough to do any permanent damage, just set it ringing. While he was wondering which telephone to pick up, I dug my right hand into the base of his neck and squeezed. He yelped like a Yorkie.

  “You and Mohammed,” I said. “What’re you doing?”

  “Fuck you. Fuck your mother.”

  I squeezed harder.

  “May your mother spend eternity in hell! Fucking the devil, you bastard.”

  I squeezed harder still and he sank to his knees. “I can do this all day.”

  “We don’t have all day,” Ryan said. “Why don’t I shoot one of these idiots? See if that speeds things up.”

  “He’ll do it,” I told Mehrdad.

  “You are bluffing.”

  “Me, maybe. Him, never.”

  Ryan knelt down with his knee in the big man’s back and put the barrel of the suppressor at the base of his spine. “I can start by putting this one in a wheelchair.” Then he drew the gun barrel down a few inches. “Or put a round up his ass and see if it comes out his mouth.”

  “It’s heroin, isn’t it?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Heroin,” I said. “The pride of Afghanistan growers. Goes for fifty thousand a kilo. A lot more when you break it into ounces and grams.”

  “You are crazy. I have nothing to do with this.”

  “Why not? You’re bringing in carpets already. How hard can it be to throw in a few bricks?” I winked at Ryan, acknowledging I was stealing his line.

  “All right,” Mehrdad said. “Don’t hit me again. You are right. I bring heroin into the country and Mohammed knows how to distribute it.”

  The smaller of the two men on the ground said something and Ryan stepped over and kicked him in the ribs.

  “Did Sammy find out?”

  “Why do you always ask me about him? I tell you over and over, I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Maybe Mohammed did.”

  “He couldn’t have!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that night,” Mehrdad said, “he was with me.”

  “Your sister said you were at home.”

  “She lied. To protect me. So I won’t go to jail for drugs. But I was with Mohammed, right here. Getting heroin out from the rug shipments and transferring it to him.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  He looked away from me, kept his eyes on the floor. “Fifty kilos. Okay? Enough to go to prison for a long time.”

  A very long time, I thought. So why was he admitting to it if it weren’t true?

  ——

  “Everything in his voice, his body, said he was lying,” I said. “The shift in his eyes, the change of pitch.”

  “So he’d rather admit to trafficking in heroin than what?” Ryan asked.

  “Killing Sammy.”

  “You still think it was him or the Syrians?”

  “Him or. Him and. Some combination thereof.”

  We were parked a block away from Les Tapis Kabul, waiting to see if Mehrdad left and if so, in which car. That would give us something to follow, or at the least, a car on which to slap a transponder if the opportunity presented itself.

  Nothing so far.

  I had also left my small sphere cam in the back room of the store, tucked in a long cardboard tube inside a rolled-up rug. Its viewing range would be limited but the audio feed would pick up any conversation within those walls. If it was in Dari or Pashto, we’d be out of luck. But if Mehrdad called Mohammed al-Haddad, they’d have to speak a language they both knew, which I hoped would be English. If it was French, I could get Bobby Ducharme to translate.

  We waited thirty minutes, ready to receive and record any conversations Mehrdad had. But he wasn’t speaking to anyone, not yet. Maybe he was seething inside, plotting my demise. Or leaning forward in a chair, his head in his hands, wondering how his plans had degenerated so badly.

  Cars drove up to the plaza. People got out and entered the travel agency, the bank, the halal market. One woman went into the carpet store and came out fifteen minutes later with a brochure. If Mehrdad came out of the laneway behind the store, we’d see him feed out onto Côte-Vertu.

  Nothing.

  “Too bad you couldn’t tap his phone,” Ryan said. “Or hack into his email.”

  “I’d need my guy Karl in Toronto for that,” I said. “Or Jenn, if it wasn’t too heavily encrypted. She’s a lot better at that than I am.”

  “You gonna call her, see if she spoke to the old man?”

  “I don’t want to push her,” I said. “I’m just thankful she’s involved at all. If I haven’t heard anything by tonight, then maybe.”

  “So what now? I’m getting overheated here.”

  We had the windows halfway down but the engine was off and without air conditioning, it was stale and humid inside the car. I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty.

  At ten-thirty-three, the sphere cam picked up Mehrdad’s voice. He was speaking English, as I’d hoped.

  “Let me speak to Mohammed,” we heard him say. Then a pause of about thirty seconds. “It is me,” he said. “Mehrdad. He was here. The one you saw at the market. Him and his gunman.” Pause. “No, I didn’t, not a word. I swear to you. No, he thinks it is something else.” Pause. “Drugs is what he thinks. Heroin, the idiot.” Pause. “I didn’t say it, he did. He said it was easy to bring in drugs with our carpets and I didn’t tell him differently.” Pause. “I just told you, they had guns. Or one did. What was I supposed to do? Let him shoot me?” Pause. “Yes, he would have, believe me. He wanted to. You have to do something about them. Geller said the RCMP is interested in you. And maybe me.” Pause. “Whatever you decide. Otherwise I cannot meet you tomorrow night. If he finds out the truth, we will have very big problems.” Pause. “I don’t know which hotel. I will try to find out.”

  Pause. Long pause. End of conversation.

  We waited another fifteen minutes to see if Mehrdad made another phone call or left the store. He did neither.

  “Let’s drive by Mohammed’s place,” I said. “See what it looks like in daylight.”

>   It was a two-storey building of white brick, part of a small industrial strip on L’Acadie Boulevard north of the elevated highway. We parked in the lot of a large market called Adonis, whose windows advertised a large selection of products from the Middle East, along with posters for upcoming concerts by performers from Lebanon.

  Ryan took the Baby Eagle out of his ankle holster and said, “Do me a favour. Stick this in your pocket just in case.”

  “Does it have a safety?”

  “On the slide, not the frame, which is the only thing I don’t like about it. But it’s a good piece otherwise.”

  “The safety on now?”

  “Pull the trigger and tell me.”

  “Ryan …”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s on.”

  I stuck the gun in the small of my back and pulled my shirttail over it. We got out and walked past the front of Les Importations Homs, the name of the company in gold lettering on the front door. No phone number to go with it. No web address. There was no point in walking in the front door. They knew our faces. Probably our names as well, and whether we liked our hotel bedspreads tucked in or not.

  We kept walking past the building, past the next one and the one after that, all three built at the same time: same height, same white brick, same windows in dark brown frames. Same rusty discoloration where eavestroughs had leaked. At the far end of the third building, we turned down a driveway that led to a wide rear lane. We stayed close to the wall in case anyone was at an upper window.

  We walked single file past the first building, which housed a clothing manufacturer. Its rear doors were open and two young men were rolling racks of raincoats directly from a loading dock into the back of a half-ton truck. The next building was closed up; nothing going in or out. I looked across the lane at the buildings backing onto the other side. There were fire escapes at their rears. As long as they didn’t belong to businesses that sold guard dogs, we might be able to scale one for a better look.

  “Hey,” Ryan said.

  “What?”

  “There’s his car.” He pointed to a silver Lexus parked nose in at the rear door of the building. “Got your tracker with you?”

  “Yes.” I’d pocketed it, hoping to stick it on Mehrdad’s car. But Mohammed’s seemed just as good a bet.

  I did a Groucho walk alongside the building, then crouched beside the rear door on the left side and stuck the transponder onto the chassis, away from the muffler. I turned to give Ryan the thumbs-up.

  Saw him pulling his gun.

  I peered through the windows of the car and saw the back door of Homs swinging open; saw Mohammed exiting with his broken nose taped down and behind him his brother Faisal, wearing a neck brace. If he got to the driver’s side door, he’d stumble over me.

  Ryan’s gun spat a bullet that hit the bricks right above Mohammed’s head. He jerked back in surprise, swivelling his head around to see where the shot had come from. A second bullet hit the glass of the open door and it shattered, crashing to the pavement in sheets and shards. Both men stumbled backwards into the building. A hand reached out and pulled the door shut. I yanked the Baby Eagle out of my waistband, thumbed off the safety and started backing up away from the car close to the wall, as low as I could get. I saw a hand come through the door where the glass had been, the hand gripping a gun. The muzzle flashed and the sound roared through the empty space around us; no suppressor on it. Ryan fired again. So did I, not trying to hit anyone, just letting them know we had more than one angle on them. The hand withdrew, giving me a chance to sprint for the alcove where Ryan stood.

  I heard a door open in the building behind us, then heard it slam shut just as fast. I guess the sight of two men with guns convinced the person to stay out of whatever was going on.

  “Time to go,” Ryan said.

  “Right behind you.”

  We backed out of the laneway, jogged around to the street and walked quickly up L’Acadie, watching the front of Homs to see if anyone came out that way. No one did. Two minutes later, we were in the car, driving south toward downtown. No one followed us this time. No cop pulled us over.

  “When you fired,” Ryan said, “you weren’t trying to hit anyone, right?”

  “No.”

  “In which case you did good. Now we can follow this douchebag wherever he goes.”

  “The beauty of it is we don’t have to,” I said. “We can keep our distance and the tracker will do it for us.”

  “And take us to the meeting with the rug seller tomorrow.”

  “Assuming that’s still on.”

  “And that Mohammed takes his own car.”

  “True.”

  “So you really don’t think it’s heroin?”

  “No.”

  “Any other ideas what it might be?”

  “I might have one.”

  “You gonna share?”

  “The intelligence officer I spoke to this morning told me something interesting about the Haddad family.”

  “What?”

  “Why they had to leave Syria.”

  CHAPTER 15

  We had a late lunch at a Chinese noodle joint on St-Laurent, just north of Ste-Catherine. I had a large soup with barbecued duck and greens; Ryan went for Singapore noodles. Funny dishes to order with the day growing hotter and more humid, but we both inhaled them like we hadn’t eaten in days.

  I guess browbeating people and threatening their lives is harder work than it seems.

  In between slurps and lip-smacks, I told Ryan what I’d learned from Aubrey Hamilton about the Haddad family, how they’d left their home country to come to Montreal once the Alawite regime had taken hold. “After 1970, they didn’t like their chances,” I said.

  “But Sunnis were still the majority, you said.”

  “I guess it didn’t count for much.”

  “And you think the situation there now, this uprising or whatever—they’re trying to get involved somehow?”

  “I’m not sure what I think. Maybe I’m overthinking it, not believing what Mehrdad said about heroin.”

  “For the record, I didn’t believe him either.”

  “No?”

  “It’s like, the second you mentioned it, he jumped at it like you’d thrown him a lifeline.”

  “So I come back to my original question. What else are they hiding? What brings an Afghan and a Syrian together?”

  “If it ain’t dope, gambling or girls,” he said, “my money is on guns. Big ones.”

  “Which might be why the RCMP is watching them.”

  “The Afghan could be bringing them in. That fucking country, there’s definitely no shortage. I know a guy who served over there, he said guns went missing from the Canadian army bases by the dozens. And not side arms neither. Assault rifles, I’m talking.”

  “Mehrdad could be importing them with his rugs and selling them to Mohammed, who turns them around and sends them home.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to send them direct from Afghanistan to Syria? My geography isn’t shit hot, but they’re kind of in the same part of the world, no?”

  “You’d have to go through Iran,” I said. “Which doesn’t necessarily support a regime change. And then Iraq, where the Americans would probably intercept them. It might actually be easier for one established company in good old Canada to bring them in and for another to ship them out.”

  “I don’t think they were at the store,” Ryan said. “Gun oil has a particular smell.”

  “Sharing a hotel room with you made that clear.”

  “So this other warehouse Mehrdad talked about—where is it again?”

  “Brossard.”

  “Which is where?”

  “The South Shore. Over the Champlain Bridge.”

  We were walking back to the car when Holly Napier called. “I was wondering …,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “If you wanted to meet tomorrow night.”

  I thought about the meeting that Mehrdad and Mohammed might be
keeping, that Ryan and I would be watching. Listening to. Maybe breaking in on.

  “I might be working pretty late,” I said.

  “So will I. I’m covering the concert at Parc Maisonneuve and I’ll be there at least until eleven.”

  It sounded good, assuming I was still in one piece at night’s end.

  “Did you have somewhere in mind?” I asked.

  “My place.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “You know Westmount at all?”

  “I was at RCMP headquarters today.”

  “That’s what we’d call lower Westmount. Where I am is lowest Westmount, just above the expressway.”

  “What street?”

  “Stayner.”

  I said, “Shit.”

  “What?”

  Stayner was a name I’d grown to hate in Boston: a world-class surgeon who turned out to be a no-class citizen.

  “Nothing. Just a negative association.”

  “Tell me about it when I see you. Maybe I can turn it positive. Say midnight if it’s not too late? Unless you want to find me at the concert.”

  “Among a hundred thousand people?”

  “I’ll be near the stage,” she said. “There’s a holding pen there for journalists. I can put your name on the accredited list.”

  “That would be great.”

  “The Fête always is.”

  More than ever, I wished Jenn were with us. She’d have teased me the minute I hung up, noodged me, provoked me about making a date in the middle of a case. “Someone’s getting some tonight,” she’d have cooed with a crooked grin. She’d have rhymed Jonah with boner or something equally juvenile because that’s what brothers and sisters do, and she is and always will be the sister I never had.

  Ryan just looked at me when I got off the phone and said, “What now? Back to the hotel?”

  “Let’s try Sammy’s again,” I said. “Ask if anyone saw a silver Lexus that night.”

  It took us most of the late afternoon and evening to determine that none of Sammy’s neighbours whose windows faced onto the laneway at the rear had seen a Lexus the night he was killed, silver or otherwise. Most hadn’t seen anything at all; they’d been sleeping at that ungodly hour. His upstairs neighbours had been out of town that night and had nothing to add.