Open Season (Luc Vanier)

by Peter Kirby

  “Think about it. Go up to your room and know you’re dead inside, and all that’s left to do is wait for your body to give up. Or call me.”

  Vanier walked away before Angus could say anything.

  The Guatemalan consulate was on the fifth floor of an old commercial building on Saint-François. Once upon a time, when doing business in Montreal meant being close to the port, the building would have housed traders, transport companies, and customs brokers in a hundred small offices. Now the warren was occupied by the kind of businesses that needed some minimal physical presence to prove they existed. The large wooden board in the entrance hallway said it all—a long list of the ABC Limiteds and Acme Internationals that nobody had ever heard of.

  The single elevator was out of service, and Vanier and Saint Jacques took the stairs to the third floor, where a plaque on one of a dozen identical doors announced the Consulate of Guatemala, with office hours from 9 a.m. to noon, Monday to Friday.

  Saint Jacques knocked on the door and listened for movement inside. Vanier punched numbers into his cellphone and listened while the message asked for his preferred language. Then the recording began listing options: For information on Guatemala, press one…Vanier pushed zero to override the list. I’m sorry. You have made an invalid selection. Goodbye.

  “Fuck.” He knocked on the door, a lot harder than Saint Jacques had done. He got the same silence.

  “Let’s go,” said Saint Jacques. “Don’t we have a consular section? Maybe someone can give us the home address for the Consul General.”

  “Some hope,” said Vanier.

  They started back for the staircase. When Vanier pulled the stairwell door open, a young dark-skinned girl with a coffee in one hand and a stuffed briefcase in the other stumbled forward into the hallway, trying not to spill the coffee.

  “Guatemalan?” said Saint Jacques.

  She looked up, unsure. “We’re police,” Saint Jacques continued. “We’re looking for someone at the consulate.”

  The girl hesitated. “Me too. The office is just over here.”

  “It’s closed,” said Vanier.

  “Ah. Maybe I come back tomorrow.” The girl turned to the staircase.

  “Why don’t you open the door instead?” said Vanier.

  “What?”

  “With the keys.” He nodded to the bunch of keys she was clutching in the same fist that held the briefcase.

  She smiled, gave a shrug. “Can I see some identification?”

  They pulled out their cards and held them for her inspection.

  “You can’t be too careful,” she said. “I was alone.”

  “It’s all right. Here,” Vanier said, handing her his cellphone and relieving her of the coffee. “Call your boss and tell him I need to speak to him urgently.”

  “My boss? The ambassador? He’s in Ottawa.”

  “No, I mean the Consul. Where’s the Consul?”

  “That’s me.”

  Vanier almost blushed. “I’m sorry, I …”

  “Don’t be. People make that mistake all the time.” She handed the phone back to Vanier, put the bag on the ground, and opened the door. She went in and turned on the lights.

  Saint Jacques followed her in and Vanier leaned forward. “You lead,” he told Saint Jacques. “I think I’ve pissed her off.”

  “Show her we’re not sexist?”

  “Something like that.”

  The room was little more than a wide hallway, with a window at one end and a door at the other. The furniture was lined up along one wall, leaving a pathway from one end to the other. The furniture consisted of two chairs in front of a desk, one chair behind the desk, and two filing cabinets. The consulate was a one-woman operation. The consul dropped her bag and took a seat behind the desk, motioning to the two empty chairs.

  “Sorry about that, but I’m nervous about unannounced visitors. I’m on my own here.” She pushed two business cards across the desk.

  Saint Jacques picked up a card and studied it. “I understand, Ms. Valencia. I would have done the same thing in your position. We’d like to talk to you about a Guatemalan citizen living in Montreal, Sophia Luna.”

  Valencia stiffened.

  “I know Ms. Luna. Well, not personally. We’ve never met. But I am familiar with her.”

  “You knew she was in Montreal?”

  “Of course. Everyone in the community knows that. She has made quite a name for herself.”

  “In what way?”

  “Let’s start with basics. Sophia Luna is a criminal. She is wanted on a number of criminal charges in Guatemala, and is using your refugee process to avoid having to face those charges. She is also doing her best to destabilize the government by spreading malicious lies. She appears to be popular among the more radical members of the opposition movement.”

  “When you said she’s facing criminal charges, could you be specific?”

  Valencia got up and went to the second filing cabinet. She came back to the desk with a thick folder. When she sat down again, she pushed her chair back so she could balance the folder on her legs and against the desk. All Vanier and Saint Jacques could see was the manila folder.

  “Here we are.” She ran her finger down a list. “Fraud, conspiracy, drug trafficking, money laundering, and theft.”

  “She’s been busy,” said Vanier.

  The Consul gave Vanier a practised diplomatic look: Exactly what hole did you just crawl out of?

  “The government of Guatemala takes her case very seriously, even if you don’t. In fact, the Ambassador has lodged several complaints with your government about the delays in the Canadian system. We want her back in Guatemala to stand trial on these charges.”

  “She says the charges were fabricated, politically motivated. That was part of her refugee claim,” Saint Jacques said.

  “And if I am not mistaken, those claims were rejected.” Valencia closed the folder and put it on the desk.

  “You said that most people in the community knew her,” Vanier said. “Do you have the names of any of her contacts?”

  “I’m sorry. I knew she was in Montreal, but that’s all. As I said, we never met. She never attended any community function I attended. I know she kept in contact with people in Guatemala, but I have no idea who she mixed with in Montreal. Her stories still appear from time to time in certain newspapers, and she sometimes did radio interviews from Montreal. That’s all I know.”

  “Is there anything you can tell us about her that might help us find her?” Saint Jacques asked.

  “Is she wanted here, too?”

  “She was kidnapped and we’re trying to find out who did that.”

  Valencia raised her eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry. I assumed you knew. It was in the newspapers.”

  “I’ve been out of town. No. I didn’t know. You think it was someone from the community?”

  “Did she have enemies in the community?”

  “Enemies? Probably. I mean, this woman was a criminal. I would think it more likely her kidnapping was the result of her criminal activities. That would make sense, no?”

  Vanier was already on his feet. Saint Jacques kept trying.

  “So there’s nothing specific you can give us?”

  “Nothing at all. I can email you a list of the charges she faced in Guatemala, but that’s it.”

  “That’s a thick file for nothing,” Vanier said, nodding in the direction of the folder.

  She looked up at him, another practised look. “Surely, Inspector, in your job you know how paper accumulates.” She placed her hand on the folder like she was swearing on a bible. “All that’s in here is the usual banal stuff. Records from the refugee process, copies of articles she wrote, that sort of thing.”

  “Could I look through it?” Vanier reached forward.


  “Absolutely not, Inspector. This is the property of the Guatemalan government. I couldn’t possibly release it to Canadian police officials. But rest assured,” she turned to Saint Jacques, “there is nothing in here that would help you with your investigation.”

  As they were leaving, Valencia called after them. “Inspector, you will keep me informed of the progress of your investigation, won’t you?”

  Vanier was holding the door for Saint Jacques. He turned and smiled. “Why don’t you make that request through official channels?”

  Vanier was staring across a desk at Denis Tremblay, a sergeant with the vice squad. Vanier wondered if dressing like a C-list celebrity was part of the job description. Tremblay looked like a Justin Bieber wannabe, his peroxide hair cropped close at the bottom and longer at the top, with an extra-long piece in the front like a backwards ponytail. The ponytail kept falling into his face, and Tremblay never tired of flicking it back into place.

  “So, man, if the issue is trafficking, that’s me. If it’s smuggling, you’re in the wrong place. We do trafficking, not smuggling.”

  “And the difference?” Vanier asked.

  “Free will. Consent. People want to be smuggled into Canada and smugglers help them get in. Truth is, most people start out thinking they’re dealing with smugglers and things change. Border Services deals with smuggling. All we see in vice is trafficking. It’s a fine line. Truth is, most of the cargo never sees it coming.”

  “Sees what coming?”

  “The shit.”

  “What shit?”

  “The shit that happens after they book their ticket. Recruiters. They entice people with job offers. Canada is the dream destination, man. Then when they get here, there’s no real job, and they’re forced to work off the debt. They have no choice. They owe the money, they’re in a strange country illegally, and the traffickers have their passports. They’re fucked. Lots of times the gangs threaten the family back home. So you’ve got someone who has to do whatever the hell they’re told to do.”

  “And there’s a lot of this?”

  “More than you think.”

  “And they all go into the sex trade?”

  “Some do. I’m only looking at vice, that’s my area, but any shit job you can’t outsource to India, you can in-source. You bring the cheap labour here. Construction, restaurants, cleaning companies, agricultural work. Go into some of these fancy restaurants downtown and half of the staff is from Bangladesh or some other shit hole. They do the work nobody else wants to do, cleaning dishes, peeling vegetables, washing toilets. There’s always a team of them, with a team leader. The whole group comes from an employment agency. The team leader keeps them in line, and the restaurant pays the agency and doesn’t give a shit if the workers don’t get paid. But I don’t do that stuff. Like I said, I’m in vice.”

  Tremblay sat back in his seat and swept strands of hair out of his eyes. He’d given enough. He wanted to listen.

  “I’m investigating a kidnapping, a failed refugee claimant lifted off the street. She was a journalist back in Guatemala. We think she was working on a piece about trafficking in the sex trade. Eastern European girls being used as prostitutes in Montreal.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “It’s not exactly news. Montreal is the United Nations of prostitution. As if we didn’t have enough homegrown, we get them from all over. Yeah, we’ve got lots of Eastern Europeans.”

  “Who organizes this stuff?”

  “You think I’ve got the resources to find out? All I’m doing is busting the street-level transactions. I stake out a rub-and-tug for a few hours to understand the traffic. Someone’ll go in and see what’s on offer. Then we do a raid and arrest everyone on the premises. They get bail, don’t show up for trial, and that’s the end of it. We keep going.”

  “Sounds like all you’re doing is mopping the floor.”

  “Hey, man, I could take that as an insult. But you’re right. I’m mopping the goddamn floor. I don’t have the resources or energy to find where the water is coming from.”

  “But you said you had jurisdiction over trafficking. Remember? Trafficking is yours and smuggling is the CBSA.”

  “True. That’s true. But there’s only so much we can do. I can’t launch any international investigation. So, if I find a girl who’s been trafficked, I call the RCMP.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “If she’s illegal? No papers.”

  “Then you turn her over to the RCMP?”

  Tremblay cracked a smile. Vanier wondered why. “Yeah. The politicians decided sex trafficking was a major problem, so they set up this national task force run out of RCMP Headquarters in Ottawa. And you know how it is with the boys in red: nothing better than a task force. They’ll be busy for years, until finally someone tells them to get off their asses and charge some poor fucker. And they’ll say they’re not ready. The team is headed by some dickhead that helped screw up the Air India investigation. You want his number?”

  Vanier knew the Mounties specialized in big investigations that took years to get anywhere, and usually got bogged down at trial. Their greatest value was giving federal politicians a chance to say that something was being done. He took the number anyway.

  “So you can’t help?”

  Tremblay looked at him like it was an accusation.

  “Like I said, I’m busy. So are the other guys. Every month we charge twenty or thirty girls and a couple of boys, and close three or four shops. Sometimes we even throw a couple of johns into the mix. You know what that means for the court appearances and the interviews with the prosecutors? I get maybe twenty, thirty hours of overtime every month.” He leaned across the desk. “I am a garbage collector. I collect it and send it for processing. That’s it, day after day. Every morning I start again, and there’s always more garbage. You think I should be trying to stop prostitution?”

  “No. Just shovel shit from one day to the next and wait for retirement.”

  Vanier got up to leave.

  “Fuck you, Inspector. You think you could do better, put in for a transfer.”

  Vanier shrugged. He understood the frustration. Tremblay might have been ambitious once but the system had worn him down, or maybe he had let it wear him down. People weren’t going to stop paying for sex anytime soon. He grabbed the door and turned back to Tremblay. “I think I’ll stay where I am.”

  Tremblay had started writing on a notepad. “Not so fast, Inspector. You want to talk to somebody who has foreign girls, go see these guys.” He passed the sheet of paper to Vanier. It said Whole World Entertainment. “They started out importing films. They specialized in really nasty stuff. I heard that they’ve started making their own stuff here in town.”

  “What kind of films?”

  “The kind that wake you up at night crying. Violent shit.”

  Passing through the heavy velvet curtains, Vanier’s first impression was of an inky black lake with islands of light. The small stage was lit up like Broadway, and each table had its own red lamp. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, furniture came into view, tables with chairs and velveteen-lined booths along walls lined with dark red textured wallpaper. Vanier glided across the thick carpet like he was wearing slippers. He sat at a table in an alcove where he could see the whole club. Within seconds a young girl approached, balancing a tray on one hand, her other hand decorated with folded notes between her fingers, twenties, tens, and fives. She was wearing more tattoos than clothes and flashed a smile that dazzled white in the black lights, the kind that made some people look like toothpaste advertisements, and others like commercials for out-of-control dandruff.

  She bent down close to Vanier’s face. “What can I get you?”

  “Export.”

  “And a dance?”

  “Maybe later.”

  Sh
e filed it away for reference and turned back to the bar. Mid-stride she looked back over her shoulder and caught him watching. She flashed him another smile.

  The club was half empty. Most of the tables were occupied by lonely hearts, guys on their own in the only place pretty women would even look at them. One raucous table had a bunch of college kids out for the night, trying to act cool around more naked flesh than they’d seen in a lifetime. In front of the stage, six Chinese guys were nursing beers, grinning like they had taken a rare night off from their convenience stores and wives, absorbed in the contortions of a naked girl on a throw rug.

  Vanier was on his second beer when he saw what he was looking for. She was carrying beers to the Chinese guys. When she bent down to unload the beers, they started to search their pockets. Their body language said they were lousy tippers, counting out change as though it mattered and forcing her to shame them into leaving a little extra. She gave one old guy a deep bow and kissed the top of his head to distract him while she picked coins out of his outstretched hand. It didn’t take long for her to notice Vanier.

  She made a point of giving him plenty to look at as she slowly approached the table. She was wearing a Little Red Riding Hood costume that did nothing to hide what was available to any wolf. She would have stopped a fire truck.

  “If it isn’t my favourite policeman,” she said.

  “Marie-Anne. It’s been a long time.”

  She reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. “So you finally decided to relax. You want a dance?”

  “You’re still hustling?”

  “I’m a dancer. I don’t hustle. It’s art.”

  “No dance. Just some questions. Think of it as repaying your debt. Remember?”

  “I remember, Inspector. But business is business. I need a reason to hang around, and the only reason that works is that you buy a dance.”