Down with the Underdogs

by Ian Truman

  “Who’s they?” he asked. Now, that was the college kid talking.

  “Doesn’t matter. There’s always someone.”

  “What about the Yakuza?”

  “We’re definitely not as disciplined as the Japanese.”

  He had no choice but to agree there.

  “True. True,” he said. “I mean, ah!” He sighed, and then neither of us had anything else to say.

  The way the kid talked, I was convinced he could handle a significant portion of the trade in years to come, if he chose to go down this path. Maybe he’d go and get one of those tech companies running, sell it to Facebook for a billion dollars.

  The way it felt, real money was in corporations rather than crime. This guy could do anything he wanted, any job he wanted. Big data or new media, it was his pick. Felt like I’d see his face on my feed someday and say, “Hey, I met that kid once.”

  Selling dope at UQAM through his Twitter account felt miles away from his potential, so I asked, “Can I say something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re probably too smart to be a simple dealer.”

  “I know,” he said, confident as could be with his geeky eyes looking at me through his thick glasses.

  “What else you got in mind?”

  “You mean right now?”

  “I mean with your life.”

  “You want to save my poor black soul?”

  “Not my style,” I said. “The way I see it you’re good at what you’re doing.”

  “You offering me a promotion?”

  “I have very little authority to do that right now, but I am looking somewhere down the line.”

  “Trying to get ahead yourself? Hein! How high are you up the ladder?”

  “High enough to be the one they sent to talk to you.”

  “Qu’est-ce que t’a en tête?” he asked. What’s on your mind?

  “Everything’s changing. Neighbourhoods are changing, territories are becoming irrelevant. Drugs are becoming legal. ‘WEED’ is trading on the TSX. Medication is pumped by pharmaceuticals every day and dumped on the rest of us. We can make money off extortion and trade and smuggling, but the government’s looking at patterns and numbers and bank accounts now.”

  “Algorithms.”

  “Exactly. Everything’s algorithms now. Even crime.”

  “Especially crime,” he said.

  Then he started to hesitate. Felt like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk some more or not. Maybe this was a test, maybe I was here to make sure he wasn’t jumping ship. His fellow pusher had moved away, back on the shift in the middle of the twenty-somethings down the hill.

  If I had a coffee in my hand, this would be the moment I’d take a sip, let him know the floor was still his. I gave him his space. If I had said anything at all, I would’ve cut his pace and he would’ve moved to something else. This was one of those moments where you had to let the other guy come to you, and I surprised myself by reading that situation so naturally. Maybe the role of PI was suiting me for real.

  “It’s like—” he said, then sat himself straighter. “I mean, how fucking far behind are we on this technology? J’veux dire! On a même pas de APP. Come on! No app at all. On vends sur Twitter, mais on a pas de app. I could program this in a snap. And it’s not like it’s anything new. We’re probably a decade late on new technology. Algorithms, stocks, clients, availability, reseller locations through pings in the menus. We’re so fucking late to the game. They already amazoned the shit out of this thing. See who’s buying and where, get a map going, but now. It’s like we’re stuck in the nineties with pagers and pay phones.”

  “We’re above pay phones and pagers.”

  “Says you. This shit ain’t The Wire anymore.”

  He could’ve been right, so I just said, “So you want to program an Uber for dope.”

  “Oh, we need our own Uber for dope. Wouldn’t you use that?”

  “I’m too old school for that,” I said. “But I know the world would.”

  “You wouldn’t use an Uber for your dope?”

  “I don’t do drugs. It doesn’t matter if I would or not. It matters that they would,” I said, meaning the crowd down the hill.

  “J’veux dire. Si tu le fais pas, Google va le faire. Six months, man, twelve max, and we’re out of business. The minute it gets legal Google will be on top of that shit, and we’re done.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  “They said the same about video stores. We’re gonna be the fucking video stores of the drug trade.”

  I almost said there was more to crime than just selling weed, but that would’ve given him more information than I was comfortable with. From local distribution to trafficking to the states…private security firms walking hand in hand with extortionists to squeeze any dollar out of the new rich, and none of us really gave a fuck. We really didn’t. I wasn’t gonna say it that way. Not to him and especially not right now. So I just said. “All right, I’ll see if I can move this up the chain. But don’t hold your breath.”

  “Are you really gonna do that?”

  “I’ll keep you in my back pocket. Bring you up when I see something you could work on.” I got up and gave one last look to the sea of twenty-somethings chilling on the mountain. I didn’t belong there, but it sure as shit felt like I belonged exactly where I was.

  I took out a few twenties I had in my pocket, handed them to Hervé. “For any sale you might have lost to our little chat,” I said.

  “Free money?” he asked, knowing there was no such thing as free money.

  “You worked the hours, you get paid for the hours.”

  “Toi t’essaye d’avancer dans le monde, là! Hein?” he said. You’re trying to get ahead, aren’t you? I stopped myself for a second, but then I realized he was right.

  I was trying to get ahead.

  Chapter 13

  One thing I learned from finding Michael Cook was that nothing was ever lost to social media. The internet rarely ever forgot, and you could dig up shit from a decade ago now if you cared to look.

  In the end, we did find my brother’s killer thanks to an outdated Myspace page that still had a clue or two on it. I barely had anything online, never cared that much for it. People were uploading massive amounts of information that anyone could use at any given time. It was bliss to be a PI in times like these.

  A barely educated guy like me in some shabby office over a chips and snacks warehouse in Anjou could log in and use his limited computer skills to find any amount of shit on someone we needed to get rid of.

  I could only imagine what a trained person could do. That made me think about why the mob would hire me. I still didn’t know what I could bring to the game. A few weeks on the job, and I had the RCMP on my back. On paper, I could already end up in courts for assault, extortion, theft, gangsterism, money laundering plus that murder charge that was going to dangle over my head for the rest of my days.

  It was so fucking easy to end up in crime it was ridiculous. Truth be told, it didn’t feel like I was doing anything bad at all. It certainly didn’t feel wrong.

  All things considered, wasn’t there a war abroad and terrorism, Syrian villages getting gassed and millions of migrants fleeing to Europe? Weren’t there police killings in the States and security contracts, military spending going through the roof as cops were getting equipped with gear straight out of Afghanistan?

  Looking for a guy or two and trading punches every once in a while made me feel like a goddamn saint, if you asked me.

  Then I reminded myself it was time to focus. My bosses had put some money in me now, so I needed to step up my game and prove to them it was worth the investment.

  I searched all the accounts linked to “Mesrine.” A surprising number of people connected to the account. I was working on the bet that the guy had connected his real account to his fake one.

  A few minutes of skimming t
hrough bullshit, and I narrowed it down to those that looked like they came from Montreal. If I could see a landmark or if the city even remotely felt like it could be Montreal, the account went into a new tab on my screen. When I had it down to maybe fifteen fake accounts, I narrowed it down again to people that looked like they came from France. Pictures from Europe, language use that didn’t feel like French Canadian.

  This one account started to feel like the guy I was looking for. Mentions of the Front National party and lots of weed plus some love for money. As I strolled the pictures he posted, he seemed less brash. I felt like going back in time in someone’s life. Vacation pictures, visits to the botanical garden, beaches, photos at home. He seemed to be smiling more, too.

  I saw what looked like an Audi S8 in one of the pictures, so I forwarded the link to Hervé. A few minutes and a ping later I had the confirmation.

  Oh, yeah! That’s the guy, he wrote.

  So that was good. I still didn’t have a name, and skimming through the comments on photos gave surprisingly poor results. A nickname of “M” didn’t help, but it could explain the “Mesrine” nickname. I went so far as to wonder if he was connected to the real Mesrine in any way. That seemed far-fetched, to say the least, but I needed any fucking lead at this point so I scribbled “Mesrine related?” on the corner of my little pad and squared it with messy little lines.

  In one of the pictures in what I now called his “happy phase,” the guy held a woman in front of a house, and the comments said “Congratulations on the transaction” and things like that. He held her the way you held a spouse. If he had turned full asshole as his posts suggested, then maybe she’d be willing to talk.

  The house was such cookie-cutter-shit that it had to be on Nuns’ Island. Then mentions of the Bonaventure highway and traffic in some of the comments were good enough for me to look into it. The women’s name was Arianne. Couldn’t figure out if she was French or Québécois and had yet to know if it would be relevant, but it went on the pad just the same.

  About a half hour of Google Street View around the dismal architecture of Nuns’ Island, and I had narrowed it down to three of four spots that looked promising.

  I looked at my phone for the time. All of that, under an hour. I didn’t have the guy’s name yet, but that was good fucking work. That was pretty good fucking work.

  I leaned back in my comfy chair, enjoying my shabby office and satisfied with myself. I took a sip of coffee and imagined a time when all of this would have meant driving around in a car and asking random people random questions. That would have been so much fucking work. God bless the internet.

  I put everything I just found in a little folder on my desktop and then called myself some food on the way to the pisser.

  Tony came up to check on me later.

  “What’s with the smile?” he asked.

  “Just lots of good work.”

  “Good. That’s good. Let me make you some coffee. Real coffee, I mean.” He headed for the espresso machine in our kitchen. “And make sure you wash down your food before you get to this thing. I ain’t kidding around when it comes to coffee.”

  And he wasn’t joking. Tony made the most amazing coffees I had ever tasted. This stuff was made for the gods, and you couldn’t buy that. No amount of money could buy you coffee like that. You had to be in the mob and in a fucking office and have access to a wiry old guy named Tony to get coffee that good. There was no way around it.

  I took in the bliss of a job well done mixed with unhealthy food and amazing coffee, looked outside for a minute to enjoy the moment. Then I made a note of the addresses I needed to check out. It was three-fifteen, and I thought, Plenty of time.

  I took out my cell phone, texted the guys. “Found a few addresses. Nuns’ Island. Anyone want to join me?” Twenty minutes and no answer, I decided to drive there on my own. Couldn’t exactly blame the guys on this one. Who the fuck would want to go to Nuns’ Island in the first place?

  It took an entire hour to make it to the tiny island right off the South-West districts. About twenty minutes to figure out the fucking patterns of the streets there and finally down a cul-de-sac out of a one-way street that seemed to head into fucking nowhere.

  I managed to find the right townhouse or condo or whatever they are called these things. I was still appalled by the entire place, the look of it, the smell of it, the wealth, true wealth or perceived wealth. I hated it. I hated the way people jogged and the kind of stores they had and the attitude. Jesus Christ, the goddamn air of those people. The smug, satisfied grins on their botoxed faces. One look at them and you just wanted to punch their noses in. Not even a big punch, just a good jab to finally hurt them a little.

  The entire place was so far from any reality I had ever known that I couldn’t help but think these people must be insane to live there, secluded on their tiny island next to the real island of Montreal. One way in, one way out and I knew for a fact everyone in the South-West dreamed of bombing that bridge when they were kids just to see the rich running around like headless chickens in a state of absolute panic.

  And now I was knocking on the door looking for a man who was trying to put us out of business. Seemed like the kind of place for an asshole like that.

  “Est-ce que je peux vous aider?” a woman in her forties said politely to me when she opened the door. She had the Québécois accent, married a guy from France, maybe? I looked at her. Not the kind of person I usually dealt with, and it startled me a little. She seemed too nice to be involved in any of this. Good looking by any measure. A bit boring if you asked me, but it wasn’t like I was there to date her. Light white blouse, beige pants, wrinkles and aged skin. She looked like she belonged on Nuns’ Island.

  “Je m’appelle D’Arcy Kennedy,” I tried in my broken French. Then I remembered I didn’t have the guy’s name, only his online name. I wasn’t gonna ask her if she knew any Mesrine. That wasn’t gonna work, so I pressed on my accent, trying to sound like I was really trying to see if that would give me some wiggle room with her. The Québécois were like that often. You had to show you were trying.

  “Je voudrais parler à, euhhh, Mr…”

  “Emmanuel?”

  “Emmanuel, oui. Je voudrais.”

  “It’s okay,” she added. “I speak English.” She seemed a little pissed about it as “old stock Québécois” often were. Thank God, I thought.

  “I’m sorry. My French is—”

  “It’s not that. It’s Emmanuel. What has he done, again?”

  I laughed a little. “Well, I think I should deal with him in person on something like this.”

  “He’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “Are you police?” she asked.

  “Repo man,” I lied. I looked the part dressed in a suit. I had the bland car for it, too. Classy but not too much. Maybe she’d buy it. “I’m terribly sorry,” I added.

  “Just tell me,” she snapped. “Am I losing the house?”

  “No,” I tried to laugh to ease up on her. “Nothing like that.”

  “Son osti de Audi?” she asked, damning her ex’s car.

  “Yes,” I lied. “It was solely in his name, wasn’t it?”

  “Is the house in danger?” she repeated. “I only care about the house.”

  I had to push a little. Just give her the impression that it could go there. I didn’t like being an asshole, but finding this Emmanuel guy was necessary for the both of us. So I told her, “Not from my agency, it’s not. I can’t vouch for others. These contracts do go around, and it’s hard to know where they land sometimes.”

  “So it’s just the Audi.”

  “As far as my presence here is concerned, yes.”

  “Well, the Audi’s not here. He left with it.”

  “Would you allow me to ask if you two are still together? Officially, I mean.”

  “There’s a box of crap here I
’ve been meaning for him to pick up.”

  “So I take it you still are.”

  “Only on paper. It’s clearing,” she sighed. “Just not fast enough, apparently. Have you tried his cell phone?” She was getting irritated.

  “Repeatedly,” I said. “Does not seem to pick up. I mean, we’d much rather have him pay his car payments than repo the car. The resale value will account for a loss for both of us, but he still won’t answer, and I had to drive here now.”

  She reached inside somewhere, snatched a piece of paper off a board.

  “Here. This is his only friend in town. He’s from France, so he’s got no family here.”

  I took the paper. It was written on a pizzeria menu. It sounded like a place around Petite-Patrie borough in the middle of the city. It was definitely worth checking out.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Can you do me a favour?”

  “What?”

  She switched to French. Everyone always switched to French when they were about to swear. “Smash la son osti de Audi.” She wanted me to total his car. She crossed her arms over her chest. She was fed up with that guy for sure. I was smiling inside my head. I liked this girl, and the guy must’ve been a real asshole to her because she didn’t look like a bitch in any sort of way.

  “If it was up to me, I’d drive it here for you to smash it yourself.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “The value of the car is in the books.”

  “Y parlais demême lui aussi,” she said. She was done with me. Her hands flew to the sky in one of those theatrical gestures only the French-Canadian could pull off. “Vous parlez-tu toute demême dans vie?” she asked, wondering if we all had the snake tongue and double speech.

  You could see she had been hurt. I felt sorry for the woman. Maybe she loved him still, maybe she hated his guts. Maybe they met on the southern coast of France and he promised her the world. Maybe they had met here on the Plateau and she really liked him and wanted a kid and they could make a life for themselves in this house that looked like every other house around. Some people don’t want to stand out. Some people want a simple life where Irishmen don’t knock on their door in the middle of the afternoon asking to repo the family car.