“How so?” Williams said.
Young spat a chewed-up piece of gum out the window. “They get something like buyer’s remorse, in reverse.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Someone not accustomed to this line of work would put down a job and when they get the money in their hands and the reality of what they did hits them, they can start acting crazy, like they want to get out and have no part of it. Except it’s too late.”
He thrust his chin at the red pickup. “But this one seems like he’s good with it. He’s enjoying his cash.”
“Well on the way to losing it all, more like it,” Young said.
“I think our good-cop, bad-cop routine did the trick,” Quinn said. “Looked like it sure worked him over good.”
Young chortled and stroked his goatee. He had enjoyed that game.
“Where do you think he’s headed now?” he said. “That’s not the right direction if he’s headed home.”
“Probably looking for another lay,” Quinn said.
Tremblay pulled into the driveway of a rundown house on a street just off North River Road. The neighborhood consisted mostly of single-family bungalows with neat front lawns; but the yard of this two-story was overrun by weeds.
The Americans parked under a tree on the side of the road where parkland bordered the Rideau River. They watched Tremblay enter the house.
They listened.
“Hi, Perry, I came to see Jacques.”
“He’s in his room. You remember which one?”
“Up the stairs, first door on the right?”
“You’ve got it.”
As plodding footsteps sounded, Young unwrapped a fresh stick of gum and stuffed it into his mouth. “Doesn’t sound like he came here for some more action.”
“Unless he swings both ways,” Williams said.
The three sniggered.
“Allô, Jacques, c’est moi,” Tremblay said. Hello, Jacques. It’s me.
“What the hell?” Young shifted in his seat. “He’s back to that bloody pig-French again.”
Chapter 22
“Eric? Mais qu’est que tu fais la?” Eric? What are you doing here?
Tremblay and his nephew continued to speak French in their thick, Franco-Ontarian accent.
“I need to talk with you.”
“And you couldn’t just pick up the phone?”
“This is impor—” Tremblay stepped into the room and stood still; his expression hardened as he stared at the open closet. “What the devil is this?”
Jacques sprang off his chair and slid the closet door shut. “What is what?” He folded his arms and planted himself in front of the closet door.
Tremblay pushed him away and reopened the closet. He reached in and pulled a black Harley Davidson leather jacket off a hanger.
He growled, “When and how did this get here?”
The younger man bent his head.
“Look, I specifically told you not to take this,” Tremblay shouted. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
Jacques pursed his lips. He shifted his weight and stared at the floor.
Perry, the housemate who had opened the door for Tremblay, came up the stairs; he hemmed as he passed the room.
Uncle and nephew stared at each other in silence.
“Listen, Jacques,” Tremblay said, still worked up, “God knows I tried to do my best by you since your parents passed. I’ve raised you like my own son. I will literally give you the shirt off my back. But not this jacket. This is the last thing my wife gave me before she died, and you’re not having it. Understand?”
Jacques exhaled heavily and nodded.
Tremblay slipped off the coat he had been wearing and tossed it into the closet. He put on the motorcycle jacket.
“Look, allow an old man his sentimental foolishness, okay?” Tremblay said in a calmer voice.
He curved his arm around Jacques’ shoulder and shook him.
“Let’s get some fresh air.”
Chapter 23
Out in the car, the Americans were agitated.
“What the hell’s going on?” Young said.
“What was all that noise with the mike? You think they were fighting?” Williams asked.
Quinn, who had been looking in the rear-view mirror, sat up.
“Looks like we’ve lost audio,” he said as Tremblay and his nephew crossed the road some distance behind them. “He changed jackets.”
“You think he suspects he was bugged?” Young asked.
“No. I doubt it.” Quinn kept his eyes fixed on the two figures as they entered the park. “He isn’t even looking around to see if he’s being followed.”
“Who’s this guy he’s with?” Young said. “I couldn’t understand a word, but, for a minute there, it sure as hell sounded like he was mad enough to kill him.”
Quinn turned to face Williams.
“Get out there and tail them as close as you can. See how much you can pick up.”
“But I told you, I don’t spea—”
“Listen, when you work with me, you just do as I say. Understand?”
Williams blinked.
“I said get your damn ass out there.” Quinn bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes.
Williams followed the two men onto the paved path which ran alongside the river. With his head down and his hands in his pockets, he maintained what he figured was a reasonable distance. Quinn was being moron, he thought.
The only words he picked up from the two men were “ecole“ and “quitter.”
He knew for sure the first word meant school because Monique had taught him that one. He guessed the second word could probably mean what it sounded like in English, but he wasn’t sure. Monique had made fun of him, once, calling out French words like raisin, librarie, bras, and préservatif, and laughing when he tripped up by assuming they meant the same as the English words they sounded like.
The young man seemed to be pleading and Tremblay spoke angrily. They stopped and looked back at him. Williams had no choice but to pass them.
Further down the path, he sat on a bench and waited. Jacques stared him down hard as they passed. It would look too suspicious if he tried to follow them again.
He remained on the bench. He felt sure Quinn and Young would not step out of the car and risk Eric Tremblay seeing them. Williams decided to wait there, in the hope that Tremblay and the young man would come back this way to return to the house. Then he would walk back as if he’d trailed them all along.
He would report to Quinn that as far as he could tell, it was a lot of talk about nothing: Tremblay had come to try to convince the younger man not to quit school.
He just hoped he’d got it right.
Chapter 24
Eric Tremblay knew he was a dead man walking.
He had got the death sentence the first week of September, just days before he had driven his nephew to Ottawa to start his electronic engineering technician course at La Cité.
The doctor had been straightforward with him: the tests had come back positive. Stage four non-small cell lung cancer. Prognosis: four months.
His mind was a complete mess. He had come close to breaking down several times as he had helped Jacques pack to move out. But the flurry of activity had been good for him; it had helped push the morbid thoughts to the back of his mind. He was proud to see Jacques become a college man; the first one ever in the family.
When he had got back to Syron Lake and was alone in the house for the first time, it hit him like a thunderbolt that he ha
d messed up; he hadn’t lived up to his promise to his brother to do the best he could for Jacques.
For starters, the house and the fishing camp were no longer his. He’d lost both in a poker match to a neighbor, Wilfred Owens. He had transferred the deeds to Owens’ name and Owens had been generous enough to say he could continue to use both properties as long as he paid the mortgage. But it meant that when he was gone, Jacques would be left without a home.
Sure he’d leave behind some nice toys: the pickup, the Harley, the boat, the canoes, and the snowmobiles. But he had messed up big time by leaving Jacques without a roof over his head.
Secondly, there were no savings to speak of that could help with any expenses that Jacques’ student loan didn’t cover.
Tremblay had called around in a panic to see if he could take out a life-insurance policy even after being diagnosed. He got turned down by every company he’d called. Except one. They said they could sign him up and start collecting premiums, no problem; they just wouldn’t pay anything if he died before two years were up.
He had driven over to Sault St Marie that weekend, like he did most weekends, to hit the machines. And then, like a miracle, out of the blue two Americans came up to him, offering him money.
He had never seen them before; but they knew a hell of a lot about him.
They knew where he worked and exactly what he did and what his shifts were. They even knew that, several months back, he had reported seeing a small fissure in the bank of the tailings pond. Nothing serious. It could easily be plugged, and even if no repairs had been done on it, the bank would likely hold up for years.
But the Americans were persuasive. They said they were special contractors for the company; the company needed a job done that couldn’t be handled under regular, official duties.
The dam’s earthen bank had to go.
They said everything had been carefully and meticulously planned. There was an emergency response team in place that would spring into action once the tailings were released. The waste would flow right into Syron Lake, which would act as a larger holding pond. Whatever waste material that didn’t drain out of the dam would immediately be hauled into the lake. There would be no danger to anybody or to the environment, they’d said.
All that was required was for Tremblay to wait for the perfect conditions to bust up the bank and make it seem like the spill was an Act of God.
The Americans had pressed a bag of casino chips into his hands. Said it was a down payment. They said he could be holding twenty-five times that, not in chips but in cold, hard cash — US dollars — after the job was done. He carried the bag to the wicket and poured out the chips; the man behind the counter handed him $2,000 back.
Now, the deed was done and his brain felt like it was about to explode.
He had met the Americans again. They had brought the cash, just as they’d said they would. It was after he’d left them that it hit him. The men had reeked of evil; he was appalled by them, scared of them, and ashamed that he’d been seduced by them to do such an insane thing to his own community.
After the whole sordid tale had come gushing out of him, Tremblay fell silent. For a long while, he just stood still with his hands stuffed in his pockets as he stared at the river.
“So, what now, Eric?” Jacques said, finally.
“They said the company might have more jobs for me. But that’s it. I’m done with those creeps.”
He sighed.
“And there’s another thing.” He remained silent for a while, took a deep breath, and then continued. “I’m going to confess.”
“About the dam?”
“Yes. I did it. I hate myself for it, but I’ll man up to it.”
“But you’ve said some pretty harsh things about Father Andre over the years, Eric, and you made sure word of it got back to him. Do you think he’ll still agree to see you?”
“I’m not talking about the priest. I’ll never go to him.”
Tremblay turned to face Jacques.
“I’ll do it on my terms. And in a way that’s best for you. I can’t leave you with nothing, Jacques. I know I messed up for myself, and I can go the grave fine with that. But if I leave you with nothing, then I would have failed completely as a man.
“You have to do better than me. I want to go knowing I set you up in life to do better than me. That’s why you have to stay in college and get your diploma, so you can get a good job and make good money. You must never be in this position, to feel so desperate that you fall into something like this.”
Tremblay rumpled Jacques’ hair, as he used to do when his nephew was a boy. Jacques pulled away and smoothed the tuft back into place.
They looked at each other and burst into a laugh.
“So we’ll have no more talk about you quitting school, okay?” Tremblay said.
Chapter 25
The email had come long before the press release.
Dromel rapped his fingers on his desk and thought that was a good sign for his purposes.
It was nine o’clock on the Monday morning after the spill. Two hours earlier, at seven a.m., Syron Lake Resources had made its first statement to the general public.
The exceptional event had occurred during the severe weather, the previous Thursday, the company said. The damage was discovered early the following morning and the Canadian Nuclear Regulatory Authority had been immediately alerted, as required.
The spill had been entirely contained within the former mining site, the company assured.
Emergency measures had been taken to relocate all residual material from in the tailings pond to the northwest section of Syron Lake, where most of the spillage had settled.
That section of the lake had been the site of the original waste management operations when the mine was first opened. A submerged berm, a relic from the former operations, had ensured that the solids from the recent spill did not escape into the rest of the lake. That structure was now being elevated to reinforce its resumed work to contain waste material. Tests carried out the waters of Syron Lake beyond this containment area showed readings below the federal standards.
“Syron Lake Resources is confident that the environment will not be impacted as containment systems have operated as designed during this incident,” the company press release concluded. “We are focusing on clean-up efforts, and the protection of the environment and the health and safety of our people and the surrounding communities remains paramount.”
The email from a concerned resident that had been forwarded to him had arrived in the Inbox of the CNRA’s general secretary two days before the press release, on Saturday morning.
Now here was a busybody who apparently was in the know, and who had nothing better to do on a weekend than hustle off a missive to a regulatory agency, Dromel thought.
The writer stated that she was aware that millions of gallons of radioactive waste had been released into the environment by Syron Lake Resources. Not only did it raise immediate health and safety concerns, but had serious implications for the long term management of uranium waste at that site, she said.
She mentioned her background as a former journalist and environmental activist, and was quite firm in her request to be permitted to address the hearing despite the fact that the deadline for applying to participate had long passed.
She argued that her request should be accepted “in light of this significant development, and in consideration of fairness and the best interests of the public.”
Add to that, consideration of the best interests of the chair of the panel, Dromel thought.
An outspoken busybody from the local community would be perfect for putting pressure on the co
mpany.
He saw the prospects for his enhanced payday getting better and better.
Chapter 26
Mid-morning on Monday, the Americans criss-crossed the city on the tail of the red pickup. With the young man from the previous day in the passenger seat, Eric Tremblay, cruised around Ottawa’s main commercial streets in search of parking. At four stops so far, the two had got out and walked to four different banks.
They spent forty-five minutes on average at each stop.
“Looks like ol’ sonny boy here is his partner in crime,” Quinn said.
They followed Tremblay down Bank Street, with three cars in between them.
“So what’s up with all this movement?” Williams asked.
“Money laundering,” Young broke in and answered first. “Looks like the loser is being a little more responsible with the cash after all.”
“Must have exchanged the Benjamins for chips at the casino and then converted the chips into Canadian dollars,” Quinn said. “Now sonny boy here is running around town, opening accounts at different banks to hide the proceeds. I bet you not one of those accounts will have a dollar over nine thousand. Anything over ten thousand and he’d have to declare how he got the dough.”
“So you figure we’ll have a problem with this one, or what?” Young asked.
“Mostly, I figure it’s favorable,” Quinn said. “He hasn’t been acting out of the ordinary. And he seemed to not flinch when you threatened him about the Colt, as if he knew he wouldn’t have to worry about it, ’cause he wasn’t planning to be any trouble.”
“So our job here is done then?”
“I wouldn’t say so,” Quinn said. “I’m thinking I can squeeze about another two, three weeks of retainer out of the boss. Give some kind of bullcrap about the need for extended surveillance with this guy. I’m sure the boss will eat it up. We’re in no hurry. I haven’t got another job lined up yet, so we might as well ride this gravy train as far as it will run.”
Run, Girl, Run: A Thriller Page 12