by Mario Bolduc
Max tried to put himself in Samuel’s shoes. He wasn’t looking for coke or heroin, but a once-legal medication that would help him control his allergies.
Where would he start?
Max and Roselyn wandered across Chinatown. Around a corner, the Sun Yat-Sen Hotel, a baroque construction halfway between a rice cake and a fortune cookie. The concierge was taking care of a customer’s car. Before Roselyn could stop him, Max asked the man where he could find ephedra in large quantities. The man had no idea. But clearly ephedra wasn’t unknown to him.
“It’s for my mother,” Max said, gesturing toward Roselyn.
The concierge peered at him.
“She can’t sleep at night,” Max added.
The man suggested a souvenir shop on Pender Street that also imported natural products. While Roselyn returned to the Wedgewood Hotel, Max walked deeper into Chinatown. The shop on Pender looked like any other, a red-and-gold-striped storefront filled with knick-knacks. Multicoloured plaster Buddhas stood guard over the shop, casting greedy looks at passersby. Customers could walk into the shop and get lost in a shamble of various Chinese-looking objects: waving cats, fans, music boxes, incense, and plastic flowers. Here and there, glass cases filled with DVDs, likely pirated, featuring stars of Chinese cinema. Traditional garb and a pile of straw sandals completed the decor. It wasn’t like being in China as much as being in a cheap souvenir shop at the Shanghai airport. A mix of garbage-in-waiting and shady business.
The owner had the body for the job. A square-shouldered Chinese man, not very tall but strong. He wore Gucci glasses with all the indifference of a triad boss.
Max didn’t think a subtle approach was called for with that sort of man. He went straight to the point. “I’m looking for ephedra.”
“Never heard of it.”
The man didn’t have time to turn his back. Max grabbed him by the collar and threw him against a glass counter. The glass shattered, and as the man collapsed against it, the entire counter fell apart.
Max crouched over his victim, ripped his glasses off, and threw them across the shop. “Actually, I’m looking for a man who buys ephedra for his personal use. Large quantities. An African.”
The man was breathing heavily, blinking. Without his glasses, he suddenly lost all his cool.
“An African. From Tanzania.”
The man said nothing.
Max stretched out a hand and pushed a faux Ming vase that shattered on the floor. “I’ve got all the time in the world. And all this stuff to break.”
Suddenly, the alarm went off. Max glanced up. In the street, passersby had stopped to gawk. Max ran out of the store, cursing his impulsiveness.
Back at the hotel, Roselyn was waiting for him with a message from Teresa Mwandenga. The accountant had gone through Sophie’s papers and discovered that Valéria’s daughter had travelled to Vancouver, as well, in August 2003. A few weeks after Samuel’s faked execution.
So she’d accompanied him in his escape. Since she had nothing to hide, Sophie had been able to travel with her own passport and name, unlike Samuel.
Pretending to be an employee of Revenue Canada, Max contacted a number of hotels near the Vancouver airport, looking for information concerning Sophie Stroner.
His intuition was right. On the fifth call, a receptionist at the Fairmont informed him that the young woman had spent a night there in August 2003. The hotel had a deal with a car rental company, and Sophie’s name was in its records. The day after she landed in Vancouver, she rented a Toyota, which she left a few days later at another location eight hundred kilometres away in Prince George.
30
The next morning Max and Roselyn hit the road. If Valéria’s son had wanted to fade into a crowd, he was doing it rather strangely, choosing a sparsely populated area in northern British Columbia with almost no black residents. Sooner or later someone would notice him, or at least ask questions about how he’d ended up in that part of the world.
“Do you think Albert knows where he’s hiding?” Roselyn asked.
Max had no idea. The night before they left Chicago he’d called the five companies that had scheduled flights between Chicago and Vancouver, pretending to be Kerensky and claiming he’d lost his ticket. No one had a record of Albert’s name.
Roselyn was right. If her husband had come to Canada, he’d driven, just as they had.
“What about the other killer?” Roselyn asked, worried.
Max had no idea about that, either.
On the other side of Cache Creek, RVs became rarer; most of them had taken the road for Banff or Jasper in Alberta. The highway was now mostly occupied by eighteen-wheelers. Campgrounds had been replaced by truck stops. Restaurants with large parking lots with big rigs, their owners sleeping in their cabs, or inside having a quick burger before returning to the road.
Max and Roselyn stopped at one such place a few kilometres outside Quesnel. After their meal, while Roselyn was finishing her coffee, Max went outside to gas up. That was when he noticed the Subaru with the tinted windows he’d first spotted outside Cache Creek three hundred kilometres to the south. The vehicle had stayed a fair distance behind his Lincoln, though always keeping Max in sight. When they’d reached Williams Lake, construction had forced Max to take a dirt road heading west. He’d gotten lost and been forced to make a U-turn and return to the beginning of the detour. The Subaru had been waiting for him on the shoulder.
He wasn’t surprised to see the vehicle choose the same gas station. The Subaru drove off a little, then stopped near the exit ramp, ready to follow Max and Roselyn when they returned to the highway.
After paying for the gas, Max motioned Roselyn to join him.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“We’ve got a tail.”
The Subaru drove off toward the highway, preceding the Lincoln. Max started the car, pretending he was heading for the highway, as well, then at the last minute made a sudden U-turn just before leaving the parking area. The Subaru had gone too far on the ramp and couldn’t reverse. Max saw the vehicle accelerate, likely in order to reach the next exit and turn around as quickly as possible.
Max had a few minutes to execute his plan. He abandoned the Lincoln in the parking lot, taking care first to disconnect the battery, then called the car rental agency to say the car wouldn’t start. The agent answered that a tow truck was on its way from Prince George, but it would take a while, at least two hours. Max told the man he didn’t have that kind of time.
“I’ll leave the keys with the gas station attendant.”
Which he did, as Roselyn looked on, astonished. She didn’t understand what Max was trying to accomplish but could tell it wasn’t the right moment to ask.
“Let’s go,” he told her.
“What about our bags?”
“We’ll get them later. Now let’s go.”
Max led Roselyn among the parked trucks. He saw one of the truckers leave the restaurant, baseball cap on his head, plodding toward his vehicle.
Max approached him. “My car broke down and I don’t have time to wait for the tow truck. Could you take us to Prince George? Her doctor is waiting for her at the hospital.”
“Sorry, man, I can’t, company rules …”
Max pulled out three one hundred dollar bills.
“You know how difficult it is to get an appointment.”
The trucker looked Roselyn over — maybe she reminded him of his own mother — then scanned the lot. No one was watching them. “Come on then,” he answered, sticking the money in his coat pocket.
The truck left the station, Roselyn seated between the driver and Max. Just as they exited the parking lot, Max noticed the Subaru coming their way, searching for the Lincoln. The driver seemed relieved to see the Lincoln still there, bags in the back seat. He parked his car farther off.
“So where are you coming from?” the driver asked.
“Kamloops,” Roselyn lied.
The driver whistled
through his teeth, as if to say it was quite a way to go to see a doctor.
“An excellent rheumatologist,” Roselyn added quickly. “The best, really, though he chose to settle in Prince George.”
Max glanced at her, and Roselyn smiled.
Clearly, this woman had a few tricks up her sleeve.
Prince George wasn’t a tiny trading post anymore. There was a time when it, along with Fort St. James, had been the main meeting point with Indigenous people who came to sell their furs to representatives of the North West Company. The small city had changed vocation with the development of the railway and the pulp-and-paper industry, with train and factory workers replacing trappers and fur traders. Prince George and its surrounding region had built itself on the backs of Indigenous workers. First serving adventurers — offering canoes, guides, and staff — then later forest workers. At this time of year the place was filled with tourists from Vancouver who were being picked up in small planes like Roosevelt Okambo’s. The local airport was the busiest in the region.
Max asked the truck driver to drop them off at the Prince George Regional Hospital.
Once the man had gone on his way toward Dawson Creek, Roselyn turned to Max. “Now what do we do?”
“Follow me.”
Max led Roselyn through the parking lot, then offered her his arm to help her cross the street. In Hudson’s Bay, they filled two sports bags with new clothes. After their purchases, they took a cab to the Ramada downtown. Several cars and recreational vehicles were parked in front. A busy place.
Under a fake name, Max rented two rooms he paid for in cash, then asked the receptionist about flights out of the Prince George airport later that day. One to Edmonton, another to Calgary, Seattle later in the evening.
Roselyn stared at him, confused. “What’s this all about?”
Max motioned her to say nothing.
In the elevator, he called the car rental company and told them he was at the airport and would be taking a flight out soon, without giving his destination. All the fees incurred by the tow truck could be charged to his credit card. The agent apologized for the inconvenience, and Max told him not to worry. He would have fond memories of Prince George.
“Do you prefer the room with the view of the parking lot?” he asked Roselyn in the corridor.
“I don’t care. All I want is for you to tell me what’s going on.”
“It would be best if we ate here tonight.”
Roselyn’s room was larger, and calmer, too. Max ordered two hot meals and grabbed a beer from the mini-bar. Roselyn preferred mineral water. The Subaru’s mystery driver had likely questioned the agent at the car rental place. By now he was probably patrolling the airport waiting room, hunting for them.
“Do you think it was Albert?” Roselyn asked.
“I’d say someone else.”
Having been followed all the way from Vancouver worried Max a little, but it also reassured him. It meant that someone thought they were on the right track. Which meant that whoever was following them was ignoring where Musindo was. The man in the Subaru must have thought Max knew something.
He’d been tempted to stay at the gas station to get a good look at the man, but it had been safer to just disappear.
All that meant that Musindo hadn’t been unmasked.
But Kerensky might have gotten further than them. Clements and Arceneaux, the two men he’d killed, might have spilled the beans. Though it was unlikely they’d have known anything about Musindo’s location. His fake death had occurred in Tanzania, and the two kidnappers had simply executed a minor mission.
Max couldn’t help but think that Valéria had had some help, besides Mitch Arceneaux. That person was lying low since his life was likely now in danger.
The fact they were being followed forced Max to change his approach. This mystery man wouldn’t just give up so easily. He would not believe that Max had taken a flight for Edmonton, Calgary, or even Seattle. He’d stay in Prince George, looking for them and Musindo. Max and Roselyn would need to be discreet if they wanted to stay under the radar. They couldn’t simply criss-cross the city with a picture of Musindo in hand, hoping to bump into someone who might know him. Too dangerous.
Since they’d reached Prince George, Max had noticed the Indigenous people in the city, easily recognizable. They occupied low-level jobs, like their fathers and grandfathers before them. Taxi drivers, sales assistants at Hudson’s Bay, their hotel’s maintenance staff. They’d come from surrounding villages looking for work. Many seemed to cause trouble with the local authorities. In the middle of the night, Max was woken by shouts and the sound of fighting from under his window. In the morning, he was told that a bar around the corner was frequented by “Natives.” At closing time things sometimes heated up.
Max turned his thoughts to Samuel Musindo.
Though a nurse, the young man wouldn’t have taken the risk of working in a hospital. But he might have offered to help organizations that provided services to the poor and needy. In Prince George, those establishments catered mostly to Indigenous people.
A thin lead, but somewhere to start. Max and Roselyn grabbed a cab that dropped them off just outside town in front of a mission. The basement of a Presbyterian church that had been transformed into a dormitory and a resource centre by the pastor. With the help of other volunteers, he welcomed drug addicts and drunks without asking questions, offering them a roof and some food but also hand-me-down clothes given by Prince George do-gooders.
His name was Brendon Wilson. He welcomed Max and Roselyn into his office behind the small kitchen. Max showed him a picture.
“A nurse, you say? Who worked with Indigenous people?”
“Possibly.”
Wilson scanned the picture. Shook his head. Hadn’t seen the guy.
“If he’s a nurse, he might be at the hospital,” Wilson suggested.
“I doubt it.”
Max told him a vague story about a family member searching for his son. Wilson was skeptical, though he tried to hide it. And Roselyn’s incongruous presence made him wary.
“Why don’t you go to the police?”
Yes, why not?
That evening, after wishing Roselyn good night, Max found himself leaning against the Ramada bar, breaking his own security rules. This search was going nowhere.
He was about to return to his room when he felt the eyes of the Indigenous busboy on him. The kid had been hovering around him all night. When Max left the place, he followed him outside.
“The man you’re talking about. I’ve seen him.”
Max stopped in his tracks. Checked the busboy over. “Do you know where he might be?”
“Why are you looking for him?”
For a moment, Max stared at the young man. He might be trying to get a few bucks out of him. Pretending to know something to get a little business, promising information he didn’t have. Max had been around this block before.
“You met him?”
“Yes. An African.”
Max hadn’t told Wilson that Samuel was from Africa.
The busboy added, “I’m off at eleven. We could talk after.”
“Here?”
“There’s a Tim Hortons near the mission you went to before. I’ll wait for you there.”
An hour later Max was seated in a booth with a view of the Tim Hortons tables where a few souls were blowing on hot coffee. The busboy arrived shortly after, scanned the room for Max, then sat in front of him.
“He treated my father,” he said. “My family lives fifty kilometres away from the reserve at Duncan Lake. My father’s a fishing guide.”
One day he’d injured his arm while cleaning the day’s catch. The cut had become infected. They had to act quickly. The hospital in Burns Lake was too far. His mother sent a message on the short-range radio, asking for a doctor. But it was too late in the evening and no one came. At dawn they saw a Land Rover drive down the path to their camp. A black man walked out.
Max sho
wed Musindo’s picture to the busboy.
“Yes, that’s him.”
The nurse had cleaned the wound with makeshift equipment at the camp. Only after his father had fallen asleep and was beginning the healing process did the busboy start to wonder why this stranger had arrived at their doorstep with no first-aid gear. Usually, doctors didn’t travel without at least a small bag with the essentials, especially in the woods. And here was this man, who clearly had some medical knowledge, arriving empty-handed.
Of course, the nurse didn’t want to be paid.
“We asked him who he was, where he was from, and how he’d gotten our call. He said he’d gotten our message on the radio, driving to Prince George.”
“He lives here?”
“He didn’t say. Didn’t even give his name. He was very secretive.”
When the stranger left, the busboy noticed the name of the car dealer on the trunk of his car. The car had been purchased in Prince Rupert on the coast, seven hundred kilometres west of Prince George.
That was good news. Musindo lived farther away in British Columbia. His sudden appearance in the life of this family hadn’t gone unnoticed. Years later the young man remembered it.
“He saved my father’s life.”
“How did you know he came from Africa?”
Two days later his father had driven with a customer to Burns Lake. At the hospital they inspected the injury and the treatment given by the stranger. Professional care, but done with limited means.
The doctor had shown his father how Samuel had stitched him up with fishing wire. Classic bush medicine, he declared. And in Africa especially. He’d worked in Mali for years before being hired at Burns Lake. He’d sewn up his share of injuries with fishing wire in times of need.