Down with the Underdogs

by Ian Truman

  He looked at me, dumbfounded and said, “What do you mean?”

  I simply looked at him. Don’t ask.

  “Oh, that,” he said. “No. Not yet at least. I need to know who he works for, how they work, how much they’re worth and all of that for before I can do that. I need to know if it’s worth, how should I say this, investing some resources into it. Police have been focused on Montreal-Nord, RDP, the East. My backyard’s not considered that important just now.”

  “No need to bring the spotlight back to the South-West.”

  “My enemy’s enemy is my friend only as long as he’s not looking my way.”

  “So this guy I’m looking for. Where’s he from?”

  “Either France or Quebec, I don’t know yet.”

  “Feels like French from France.”

  “I agree, but we just don’t know yet,” he repeated.

  “Seems like a legitimate assumption though?”

  He picked up a piece of paper with some notes written on it. “I’ve been told. He’s white, about five-foot-eleven. Skinny. Very skinny. Wears really good clothes, my student mentions a bunch of brand names I know nothing about, designer glasses, skinny ties, four-in-hand knots. Apparently, that means something now. Fucking kids these days.” He shrugged and handed me the piece of paper. “See this kid, Hervé. He’s on loan at Tam-Tams on Mont-Royal next Sunday.”

  “He’s on loan?” I asked.

  “Someone called in sick” was the only explanation I was going to get on that one. “I’ll get someone to let him know you’re coming,” he added.

  A name and some of his tastes. This is what I had to find out this guy who was piggyback riding Mesrine’s name while stepping in Irish mob business. That was plenty of information to get going. He hung out in wealthy places. Fashionable stores, probably new and expensive bars.

  It could get complicated for me. I was more used to looking for people in ditches and alleyways and in places like Hamilton. This was going to take me out of my comfort zone for sure, but you don’t say no to a job like this. You never say no to a job like this. He took another piece of paper and started writing on it.

  “Here.” He wrote down an address. “We’re gonna need to normalize your situation. Give you a legitimate income. Someplace for you to work from. You’re officially assistant manager for some food distribution centre. Clears some of the money coming your way and will keep Revenue Quebec off your back.”

  I said, “Anjou,” with a mild disgust for the place.

  “I know, I know.”

  “You own property in Anjou.”

  “I don’t own it. We send you there, they charge me some money for your lodgings and administration fees. The accountant’s just amazing, really, and it frees me up to do whatever I do best. I’m a people person, not a numbers’ guy. I like meetings, places things, deals, negotiations…accounting, not so much.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “You’ve outsourced your money laundering?” I said.

  “They’re really good at what they do,” he stated simply. I couldn’t help but finding it funny. Corporations, governments, criminals…everyone was looking to pass the buck to some other guy to cut costs somewhere.”

  “You’ve outsourced your fucking money-laundering.” I laughed.

  I could see he thought it was funny. “I guess I did. I’ve outsourced my money-laundering. Some of it anyways.”

  “Sound management,” I joked.

  “Yeah, fucking management.” He leaned back and said, “It’s gonna be the death of us.”

  Chapter 10

  Forty-seven bucks in taxi fare and I found myself in the middle of some industrial complex three times the size of the Pointe where every single building looked the same. Endless streets of industrial buildings from the seventies onwards. Half of them were empty with for lease panels in front of them. Up to eight hundred thousand square feet one mentioned. I thought, You couldn’t fucking redevelop this shit instead of my home?

  It made me realize that if I had lived just five kilometres further away from downtown, maybe my job wouldn’t have been razed to make room for condos. The taxes on my building wouldn’t have gone up. I wouldn’t have had a hard time finding work and I wouldn’t be the mob’s newest PI without much of a clue as to what he was doing. “You could do a lot worse?” I recalled my boss saying. I could also fuck up royally and end up in a world of shit. The jury was still out on where I’d land, that was for sure.

  I knew the kind of building I was looking for from a few runs I’d done with the drivers at my old job. It was one of those long, twenty-five-foot-high buildings with all the same address up front with letters up to K next to them. I walked to the side where an asphalt alley led to the loading docks. Parking spots for the cars were set against a chain-link fence that had grass five feet high coming through it from sheer neglect at the neighbouring place.

  There was a metallic platform with a door that read réception/expedition. It felt like walking home to me. Fifteen years of shipping doesn’t just go away in a snap. I looked left and right. There were three doors assigned to that “letter” in the lot, one semi coming in as another one was leaving, and a container left permanently against the edge of some other door. At least the building was seeing some business.

  A small, wiry old man greeted me. He had a shirt from the Euro Cup of 2000 that looked like a torn bootlegged version of a copy of an original.

  “Good, it’s you,” he said. “I’m Tony.” He had the most positive vibe I had ever encountered from anyone. Not just among bums and criminals. Anyone. “I got the call an hour ago, said to find you some work and a desk.”

  He welcomed me in and showed me around. The place looked like my old job, only a lot cleaner. They sold chips and peanuts instead of ink and paper, but the principle was the same. Thick metal shelves stacked with skids loaded with boxes.

  Tony saw me looking around and said, “Twelve bags per box, ten boxes per skid, three skids per shelf. All of it coming in and out every day. This is just for the East end. We have another warehouse out in Kirkland. And we’re not even the biggest supplier in the region. That is way too many chips if you ask me. No wonder people are overweight.”

  “And this is my job now?”

  “It’ll be good for you, keep Revenue Quebec off your back. You rarely ever hear of a guy like you and me going to prison for long,” he said. “But, man, they always manage to get you on the taxes. Always the taxes. It’s the one thing we can’t seem to get rid of.”

  I nodded and smiled. I liked the guy. No bullshit, no high horse. Didn’t seem to make a big case out of being a criminal neither.

  “Don’t like the government much?”

  “As much as warts on my testicles,” he added. No class as well. I laughed. Hard. That one big chug that just gets out of you.

  He guided me to the back, which in reality must have been the front, to a cinder block wall that was clearly split into two floors. Ground floor was likely the kitchen and the lockers and bathrooms with a stairway in the middle of it to what I assumed were the offices.

  He took out a set of keys as we made our way up there. “Don’t talk too much to the floor,” he said. “They don’t all know what’s going on in here. A few of them will talk like they know but trust me, they don’t know the first thing about this place, all right? If somebody asks, you’re a foreman and that’s all. Call me for help. It’s part of my job.”

  “I made foreman?”

  He looked straight at me and said, “Congratulations,” with a smirk.

  We walked into a small lobby with an empty receptionist desk. The place looked like it was last renovated in the eighties with grey counters, ivory-white edges and turquoise paintings of shapes and flowers with a hundred little triangles on the edges of it. There was a small kitchen after that.

  “Coffee machine, microwave, sink and fridge. The guys downstairs, they have their own space so don’t worry about them.”


  I looked inside. The place had a small table with two plastic chairs, the same grey and ivory with the turquoise decorations. I could imagine the lives of office workers in places like these, sitting on one of those plastic chairs with a fuckin’ turkey sandwich as they considered taking a shotgun to their chins in one last ungodly attempt to beat life at its own twisted game.

  “Lots of people come here?” I simply asked.

  “If they’re up here, they have a good reason to be. Don’t worry about that. This here is Michel’s office. I’m telling you because you need to know. He’s the actual foreman of the warehouse downstairs, but he’s got his own workstation near the door, so you shouldn’t see much of him.”

  “Place needs to run like a business?”

  “The place is a business. Made good money last year, too. It’s good work. Some of these guys, they ain’t too bright, but everyone needs to work. This is good work for them. Guys like you and me, we’re just a scheme.”

  He pointed to some of the other offices, all of them with the same door, frosted glass on the outside so you couldn’t see in. “This is me,” he said. “This you don’t need to know, this one either. Yours is over there.”

  He opened the door and handed me the key. “Got a desk, a phone and a computer. It’s brand new, never been opened. Screen, mouse and all of that, supposed to be in the box.”

  I stepped in and got a feel for the place. The eighties really hadn’t been kind to home decorating but I had a fucking desk to call my own again. I was a PI for the mob with a shabby office in a shitty part of town. I smiled at the idea. I couldn’t help but imagine it like the movies, old brick building, femme fatale walking in, I’m sitting on the desk smoking a cigar, reading the race track results.

  My shabby office wasn’t like that at all.

  My office had a window that had a view to another eighties’ warehouse that looked like a tin box with some white front instead of a grey front. The one next to that had a red front and the one after that a blue front and so on, so forth down to yellow and green and pink. This place was so bland and lifeless, it made the million cracks in the pavement back home seem like a fucking blessing.

  No wonder the rich were buying us out of it. You couldn’t put a price of the soul of a place, and for better or worse, the old places had it.

  I looked down across the asphalt. There was a picnic table there, in the sun, against the metallic wall. The sun bounced off it, and it must’ve been twice as hot just because of its shitty placement. I looked at this one guy, wiping off the sweat from his forehead with his dirty blue shirt, whipping off the dirt off his hands against his dirty blue pants.

  The guy to his left lit up a smoke real slowly. The one next to him bummed one and lit it with little purpose in the gesture.

  Tony looked out from the doorway. Then he looked at me and said, “I’ve been told you might need a suit on that one. Sounds like you’re gonna be looking into some really nice places on this job.”

  “That’s the way it seems. Griffintown.”

  “What a shithole. Haven’t been in years.”

  “A shithole’s the easiest place to raze and rebuild. They’re pretty much done with the razing part.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya. Hanging around, though?”

  “For as long as I can,” I said. That felt heavier than I wished it did. “Just pray your neighbourhood never becomes cool.”

  “I’m from Saint-Leonard.”

  “Nice place.”

  “Nice enough. Now, here are a few gift cards. The Bay’s not far, they’ll have what you need.”

  “The Bay?” The Bay was fancier than I was. Couldn’t ever imagine myself shopping there. You always hear the old English ladies talk about it. It wasn’t a place for the rest of us. Westmount went to Ogilvy, NDG could afford The Bay, guys like me went to Zellers, and they closed Zellers years ago.

  “You got six hundred bucks in there. If you want something more expensive, pay it yourself. There’s a company car outside, the grey Chevrolet. Pretty boring, pretty unnoticeable, but that’s the whole point, right? So why state the obvious?” he asked himself. “I don’t know; I’m chatty today. The car and the insurances are in the company’s name, but you pay your own gas. It’s only fair.”

  “I don’t have a licence.”

  “Then don’t get arrested.”

  “That’s a convenient way to put it.”

  “Everything’s convenient. You’re on the top of the food chain here,” he said. He dangled the office keys in my face. “These keys, they’re powerful keys. Not just anyone gets to walk up in here. You must’ve done something good.”

  “Or something very bad.”

  “Maybe you’re really good at it.”

  I laughed. That sounded so goddamn cheesy but so true all the same. I said, “You know what? I like you.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  He was about to leave. “Hey, Tony?”

  “What?”

  “Do you run the place for real?”

  “You mean the chips and the peanuts downstairs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “But why?”

  “I like it. Keeps me busy.”

  “Keeps you busy?”

  “Yeah, you know? There was this guy once, Chartrand, the union guy. I never cared much for the Québécois, but this guy I liked. He said, ‘If you want to kill a man, pay him to do nothing all day.’”

  That rang true. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Job pays well?”

  “Taking care of the warehouse downstairs or the scheme here with the likes of you?”

  “The likes of me.”

  “More than you could ever imagine.”

  “Then why the twenty-year-old T-shirt?”

  He looked at his T-shirt.

  “We made the finals.”

  “You made the finals? Did you at least win?”

  He scorned and waved me away. Don’t go there! “This place is yours now,” he said. Then he walked back out and locked the door.

  I stood in the absolute silence of my new office. Sometimes you heard the forklift beeping back, but that was it. Absolute silence. It was nice for a change.

  I looked outside to the guys having their break. They looked like me. They felt like me. These guys down there were me. But I was up here now. I was halfway on a road to somewhere else. I had six cards in my hand. Six simple gift cards worth a total of six hundred dollars. I don’t think I ever spent that much on clothing in my entire life.

  Still, I stood and stared. The mobile canteen was driving away, the guys were lining up slowly to get back inside, pacing themselves to get to the punch at the right second and not a moment sooner. I knew the feeling very well.

  My office was boring all right, but I had a fucking office. I could change it, make it my own. The desk was bland but I could change that just the same. I had raggedy old clothes that I liked to wear, but I wasn’t stuck in a corner anymore. I could be anything I wanted now. Real money could afford a man some change in his life.

  I had an office, all right. An office and a car and expensive clothes on the way. Not so long ago, I was right down there with the rest of them and that was something to think about. Right down there with the rest of them, burning in the sun and looking for a way out of this place.

  Chapter 11

  I took the cash and the car. I had a vague idea of how to drive from watching people and that one time with dad back at the turn of the millennium. A few circles around the lot, and I felt strangely confident enough to head out to the store.

  I walked up to the men’s section on the second floor. I looked for an older guy who seemed to dress well.

  “I know nothing about any of this,” I told him. “And I’ve been told I need to look good on this one.”

  “What look are you going for?

&nb
sp; “I need to look like I’m about to kill a man,” I said. First he took it as a joke, asked me what was my budget. When I replied that a thousand was no issue, he started taking it seriously.

  “We have a relooking service if you’d be up for that. Clothes, hair, beard?” he asked.

  I figured, “Might as well.”

  He gave me the tour of the brands. Michael Kors looked like business casual; I wasn’t looking for that. Shit like Nautica or Tommy Hilfiger wasn’t fucking happening. I wasn’t going full Irish neither. Wool coat and the poor boy hat were out.

  I felt serious all of a sudden. I wanted something timeless and sharp. I never wanted to be looked down upon ever again. I wanted the old ladies in Westmount to be afraid of me. I wanted the cops to hold the door and say, “Good morning, sir.” No more being a bum or a blue collar or just some kid from the Pointe. The Pointe was dead, so why would I still want to look like it?

  I realized I liked some of the stuff he was showing me. I also realized I had expensive tastes. Shirts I liked were over a hundred bucks. That was over a full week’s worth of food in my head. The poor counted things that way: can I eat this week, or buy this thing?

  The guilty part of me decided I was going to let my girlfriend have that tour herself one day. Another guilty part of me warned against what every other guy in my situation was doing. Every blue collar I had known that came across some money would go out of their way to spend it faster than we made it. I knew I was going the same way, but I still did it anyways.

  We settled on a few pieces that had what he called French cuffs. We looked at cufflinks and tie bars, sunglasses and shoes.

  The guy gave me the entire tour of the store before walking me to some salon and into the care of a gorgeous twenty-something in a tight black dress. She was half-Latina, maybe, dark hair down to the middle of her back, nails, curves and a no-bullshit kind of bullshit attitude.

  Fuck the world, I was thinking. I was gonna enjoy this thing. The lady came around with a fancy water bottle, asking me what I was looking for, and said, “We can take away an entire decade with some skin care and a clean haircut.”