by Ian Truman
“CTL ring a bell?”
He looked at me. I had six hundred dollars left in my hand, and I was willing to spend it.
“I know CTL,” he said, no hesitation. I handed him the rest of my bills.
“Sorry, guys,” I said to the crew. “Foreman always makes more.”
They seemed to agree.
He gave me the name and address of a construction company up around Pie-IX and Jarry. “Ventilation systems, I think,” he said. The company was on my list, and warranted a trip across the city.
The info seemed expensive, but I may just have saved myself a few days’ worth of running around. If I hadn’t been so pissed and under pressure, I might have made it out cheap or even free.
Sometimes you have to speed things up a little, don’t you? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, Money was good, all right. If only I could manage to hold on to any of it.
Chapter 24
CTL was up on Jarry Street, on that stretch that crossed beyond the Metropolitan. It was in the industrial part of St-Michel district, which was mostly notorious for a gigantic electronics parts store known as Addison’s.
The entire neighbourhood was everything you’d expect an urban industrial lot to be: big warehouses, half-closed metal shops, parts resellers and the odd duplex there between fenced-off parking lots for company trucks. It made my shabby office in Anjou seem like a cozy place.
I pulled to the curb a couple streets away and walked over, the noise of trucks mixing with the chants of a daycare group heading to a new park in a half-closed shopping mall’s parking lot.
This was the kind of place that made me appreciate the old brick house I grew up in.
I looked at the massive grey building where the company was registered. Made my way through the empty lobby. The security desk looked like it hadn’t seen a guard in a decade. A few cameras in the corners dated to the eighties, with newer ones screwed in below them. Nothing seemed to be working, and did I really care at this point?
I looked up the registry. It was an old board, the kind you snapped white letters into. Half the letters lay at the bottom of the windowed box. “CT” was all that remained next to the office number I had for the company. The rest of the companies looked like sweatshops, textile firms with names you wouldn’t remember. I saw shipping and shipping and shipping and a few other companies that looked like telecom/wiring and not much else worth mentioning.
I tried to get into the elevators beyond a second set of doors. The inner door was locked. So was the staircase. I used my phone flashlight to peer into the mailboxes, but they were empty. No letters. No junk, no ads, no leaflets. Someone must come in now and then to check for mail. There was nothing else to learn, so I walked back to the lobby.
Building this big, I figured someone was bound to come in and out at some point. I leaned against the wall, trying to look busy, wasting time on my cell phone. Ten minutes went by, twenty minutes went by. When I’d checked all my feeds for the fifth time, I realized it was getting boring, and decided to call it quits. No one was walking out of there.
Some CTL vans were out in the lot against the chain-link fence. I made my way down the cement stairs and across the yard.
The vans were Econoline’s, probably 2000, 2001, maybe. A quick flip on Wikipedia confirmed this was in the ballpark. Sixteen-year-old vans, but they didn’t look all that used.
A few bumps here and there, but that was it. A truck you’d use on a job for six or seven years would’ve been beaten up dead and bruised and scratched.
That pointed to a front, but I felt I knew that much from the start.
I looked at the vans again, took a snap of the plates just in case, then left the parking lot.
The sun was high and the air was as humid as Montreal could get. Thick sweat drops ran down my face, and not a single tree to hide under for as far as I could see. The heat cooked the asphalt, and it was strangely silent between the passing of trucks. I wiped the sweat off my eyebrows and looked around for some AC and a place to think this through. My car would be cooked just the same by now.
Then I spotted it to my left: a used auto vendor called ATL. The similarity of the name was not striking per se, but they had the same lettering, the same kind of logo. The sign said, “Spécialitées Européennes: Volvo, BMW, Audi.” Ducas was driving an S8 from a few years ago. There had to be something there.
I walked up the small lot. They had maybe fifteen cars on display, and a small cabin that was really nothing more than an old construction office with a wooden deck slapped onto the side.
I walked around, looking at the cars. They had a few Volvos and Audis all right, four or five, maybe. I saw one BMW in there but the rest went from cheap Hyundais to Nissans. Most of them were in bad shape; you could see they had polished the paint jobs, but there was rust at the bottom of the doors and they were asking good money, too.
I stopped by a Cavalier. It looked like a car a guy like me would buy, a cheap, white working-class kind of car. That’s when I heard the salesman.
“Est-ce que je peux vous aider?” he said as he was walking out. He was black, sounded Haitian, dressed amazingly well for a dump like this. He wore a purple shirt against a light grey suit, trimmed beard, tie bar and golden rings on his fingers. The TAG Heuer could have been fake, but it was hard to tell.
“I might be in the market for a car.”
“Come on in,” he said. He looked more like he was gonna size me than sell me a car. You had to respect the guy’s professionalism.
So I walked into his office. There was a desk, a laptop and two chairs, nothing fancy, but nothing trashy either. Everything was forgettable, down to the old muscle car posters and the bland coffee machine making bland coffee for nonexistent customers.
The only thing that got my attention was the ATM next to the door. It was one of those shitty ATMs you saw in dead-end stores all over the city. Same model everywhere. This one had a “TTL” sticker on it, and it wasn’t hard to connect the dots.
“Antoine Lorient,” the guy said as he extended a hand.
“Nice to meet you,” I replied.
“Sit down.”
“You the owner?”
“I’m the manager.”
I picked up a business card. It read Auto Thierry Lorient under the circular ATL logo. I had just nailed the motherfuckers. Ducas was out a snitch, and now he was gonna be out a business partner. I put the card in my pocket, leaned back, looked out the window at the Cavalier.
“Work or leisure?” he asked.
“Work,” I replied. “Just need it to get to work and back, not much else to it. I got about four thousand dollars I can spend on it.”
“You need financing for four thousand, or you have it right now?”
“I have the four grand.”
“You willing to add some financing to that? It’s a pretty good sum to put down as a deposit. Add a little something, and I can find you something really good.”
He was good. A credit check, and he’d have my name, address, history, and way more information than I would be willing to hand over. I found a way out of it, and I wish I could say I had it planned that good to start with, but I was just pulling things out of my ass at this point.
“I’m not sure I would do well with credit,” I said.
“I see.”
“Had a bankruptcy a few years ago, still carrying it with me.” I paused. “Ex-wife got the best of me.”
He smiled. “But you have four thousand dollars?”
“I have the money, yeah. Everything I’ve got. Taxes included.”
“All right. I understand that. I mean. We deal with people in your situation.”
“I’ve been up and around the used lots. Seems it’s not that simple.”
“If you have the money, then that’s all fine with me.”
“See, that’s not the only problem,” I said. Oh, I was a shitty customer now. You could see the attitude change on
his face. “I need a car. I need to get to work so I need a car.” I sat straighter. Almost believed myself, too. “But I don’t have a licence.”
“Oh.”
“That’s what they all said.” I leaned back.
“That complicates things.”
“Any way you could help me?”
“Nah, man, I’m sorry. We need to register everything with the government. Licence plates, permit numbers, everything.”
“Any way we could work something out? There’s got to be a loophole somewhere.”
He looked at me and cut to the chase. I was glad he did because I was running out of bullshit.
“Not for four thousand dollars. Be serious.”
“All right,” I said, resigned. I got up and added, “I feel ya. I mean, it was worth a shot.”
“Yeah.” He stood and shook my hand. “You take care now.” He was done with me. I was just another piece of white trash looking for a handout. I stepped out onto the deck, looking at the small lot. Maybe he bought my bullshit; maybe he was seeing through me. It didn’t matter; we had the motherfucker’s money in sight.
I took the card out of my pocked, flipped it back and forth, looked at the letters, looked at the logo, felt the paper. CTL, ATL, TTL. Three companies, one guy behind them, and he was my target’s partner.
If that didn’t make for a good day’s work, I didn’t know what would.
Chapter 25
If CTL was Construction Thierry Loriant and ATL was Auto Thierry Lorient, it was safe to assume the TTL ATM machine at the used dealership was also Thierry Loriant. TTL Google search didn’t give me much to work on. Transistor-Transistor Logic, Time to Live computer protocols, technical stuff like that. For a minute, I thought I had it wrong, and maybe TTL was just the processor chip in the machine. TTL ATM didn’t give me anything I could work with, either.
I called the guys. The four of us squeezed into my shabby office. Each had a massive bag of the chips I had told them not to steal from downstairs.
Then Phil flipped open his laptop, the one he had stolen from the boneheads eighteen months earlier, and looked for TTL ATM.
“Found it,” he said.
“What the fuck did you do?” we asked as he flipped his laptop around.
He was using Bing rather than Google. Who the fuck used Bing instead of Google? I didn’t know. But I would try all the search engines in the world from now on if that would help.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just typed it, and it popped up.”
We had the motherfuckers. TTL, CTL, ATL, all of them. TTL stood for “Transactions Thierry Lorient.” They had a simple, shitty webpage that had a contact sheet for potential customers and complaints. They had a list of ATMs, not even images, just a shitty list with addresses. The guy seemed to have a string of customers from Lachenaie City up the 125 into in the boondock towns and small villages of Launaudiere. The string went all the way to Lac-Taureau at the edge of the Canadian Shield. Corner stores, small shops, ice-cream parlours, tackle and bait cabins, all of them shitty little joints. We were gonna grab the money from all the ATM’s. That was the plan.
“Are we sure it’s all the same company, though?” I asked.
“Why do you care?” Ryan said.
“I care. It should be enough.”
“Check the public registry,” Karl said.
“What the fuck is that?”
“You don’t know what the public registry is?”
“Should I?”
“It’s the official list of who owns or runs every company,” he said. “And you’re in charge here?” It was still hard to tell if Karl was pissed, kidding, or about to cut me open just because he was moody. I would never be able to get a read on that guy.
“I happen to have very good people skills,” I said. He half-smiled, and that settled things for now.
“Just Google it,” Karl said to Phil.
Navigating the listings of corporate heads turned out to be a bit of a pain, but a couple minutes fucking around the government website, cursing every fucking page, and we managed to find a few clues.
The three companies we were looking for were run by fiduciaries, which was, according to Karl, a simple way to lose the paper trail. The three of them had nondescript names, but even fiduciaries had to be publicly registered.
Karl took over the computer. A few clicks more, and he was saying, “Ah!”
“What’s up?” Phil asked.
“You see that all three fiduciaries have addresses within the same postal code. The postal code is up in Villeray,” Karl said. That search didn’t narrow it down any further than that but it did fit everything else I had so that was great fucking news.
“Yes!” I said. We had the motherfucker’s money. If Boulay was telling the truth, Ducas had lined up his money with businesses in Villeray, and we were looking straight at it.
A few more clicks, and Karl laughed. “The three of them have the same secretary.”
“The website lists secretaries?”
“They list controllers. This one’s a fucking glorified secretary,” Karl said.
“What does that mean?” Ryan asked, his mouth full of chips. Ryan was here just for the fucking snack.
“That means,” Karl said, “that three companies which appear to do very little business in real life are connected to three fiduciaries that happen to have only one secretary and that the three companies are involved in trying to get our bosses out of business in the newly legalized weed market.”
“Is that good enough though?” I asked. I was right there with him, but I wanted to be sure.
“Probably not good enough for court, but definitely good enough for us.”
“We go to the boss with this?”
“We definitely go to the boss with this.”
I flipped on my phone and called him.
“We have the guy’s money,” I said. “Some of it, anyways.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guy runs a string of ATMs.”
“What?”
“The guy runs a string of shitty ATMs. From the northern suburbs all the way up to Lac-Taureau.”
“Fuck off a minute, will ya?” He shouted to someone at his end, then, to me, “I’m sorry. Are you fuckin’ kidding?”
“Dead serious. Those shitty ones like the ones you see in pizza parlours and depanneurs.”
“How the hell did you connect that?” He sounded really happy. I was starting to smile myself.
“CTL, ATL, TTL. Ducas teamed up with some guy named Thierry Lorient and used his name on every single one of his fronts.”
“Nah!”
“I’m dead serious. Found some generic webpage for them, too.”
“Where are you now?”
“Office. With the guys.”
“Send me the link.”
I did. Ten seconds later I heard him shout and laugh.
“Jesus Christ. This is good! Jesus Christ, I’d fuckin’ kiss you if it wasn’t gay!”
“He’s happy,” I whispered to the guys.
“Get everyone to your place. Right now,” the boss told me.
“Everyone?”
“You four, you guys, whatever you’re callin’ yourselves.”
“All right.”
“Be there as quick as you can. I’m calling Sean. He’ll meet you there in an hour.”
“What’s going on?”
“You’re going all the way to Lac-Taureau,” the boss told me.
“We’re going all the way to Lac-Taureau,” I told the guys.
They seemed happy about that.
“Should we bring beer?” Ryan said.
“I heard that,” the boss said.
“So, should we bring beer?”
“Why the hell not?”
“We’re making it a road trip?”
“I guess you are.”
“All right!” I said.
�
��In an hour.”
I was ready to pack up when Phil asked, “Is she hot?”
“What?” Karl said.
“Is she hot? The secretary.”
“Were you gonna try and fuck her?” Karl asked.
“I mean. If she’s hot, maybe three companies would hire her,” Phil said.
“Oh! If her tits are big enough, I’d totally buy that,” Ryan added from his couch.
“Are you fucking serious?” I sighed.
“Hey, guys are shit, man,” Ryan replied. “Don’t get me wrong. We’re shit! We totally are. I am, you are, we all are. This guy Ducas and that fiducia-whatever behind them just the same and whoever the fuck Thierry Lorient is, too. Three assholes from different companies would absolutely hire the hot chick just to have her sexy ass around.”
Ryan and Phil were at it again. Me and Karl looked at each other, couldn’t believe a fucking word of it.
“And we could have checked this angle before I called the boss?” I said.
“Maybe she’s a white chick with a big ass,” Phil added, spewing chips.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed.
“A white chick with a big ass can definitely land a job in Villeray.”
Of course there was no solid logic behind Phil’s and Ryan’s fucked-up ideas. We weren’t gonna get started on the very idea of feminism and one hundred years of women’s rights history here.
Then again, what they were saying didn’t feel entirely far-fetched and we were itching to scratch off the possibility.
Karl Googled the secretary and found some article in a shitty paper from the West Island that had a picture of some desperately boring office. She was cute, all right. Next-door brunette with a pair of double-Ds in a tight red sweater, big ass, bit thighs, long nails and a fucking hairdo. She was cute enough, sure, but still.
Me and Karl couldn’t believe we even looked into it. We looked up from the screen. Ryan and Phil were smiling like two little fuckers.
“Can’t believe we actually looked,” I said. “Can’t fucking believe it.” And that was that.
Forty minutes later we were waiting in front of my house. Sean Cullens showed at the wheel of an armoured truck, wide smile on his happy fucking face. I had never seen Sean happy in my life. Sometimes you saw him satisfied, other times you saw him content, but happy was something new. He barely braked, almost ran into a post as he lowered his window.