Vigilante Season

by Peter Kirby

  “What happened?”

  “They ran out of money in the depression at the end of World War I.”

  “The end of a dream,” said Vanier.

  “The end of many dreams. Things went downhill from there.”

  Standing between La Fermière and City Hall, Vanier could imagine the ambition and pride that went into building the place. Nothing projects a city’s pride like decorative public spaces and monumental buildings meant to last for hundreds of years. The city fathers had tried for immortality and had lost.

  “The decline took decades. First the bosses left to live in the smarter parts of Montreal, and then, over the years, the factories closed, work went overseas or just dried up, the shipbuilding yards closed, the Angus yards that used to build locomotives closed down. The engineers left, there was no work for the skilled guys, families fell into poverty. Eventually, there wasn’t a good job to be had. The place spiralled into decay.

  “Hochelaga never got its fair shake of anything, except bad breaks. And it got more than it needed of those. With the City of Montreal in charge, nobody gave a shit, and the place was left to rot. But things are getting better, Inspector. You wanted to know if any other dealers have gone missing. Truth is, they’ve been bailing out, like rats off a sinking ship. But the ship’s not sinking. The opposite. It’s just the rats can’t take the improvements.”

  They got back in the car, and Wallach started cruising up and down residential streets, stopping every now and then to point out an apartment or a small house that looked just like the others, except it used to be a crack house or a brothel.

  “In the last couple of years we’re getting new people coming in. The old landlords are selling out, and then the pressure is on us to clean up. It’s bizarre, people buy a house cheap because it’s next to a dump, and then they start calling City Hall, screaming that someone should close down the dump. The poor bastards who owned the place before had probably been doing the same thing for years, and nobody listened to them. I guess it’s who you know.”

  “So the complaints worked?” Vanier asked.

  “We haven’t been doing any more raids, but the bad guys are leaving. Either down to the zone or just disappearing.”

  “The zone?”

  “Yeah, the zone. The great experiment.”

  Wallach took Davidson down to Sainte-Catherine and drove slowly west. “It starts here. It’s not official, but south of Sainte-Catherine to the river, from Moreau west to the train tracks, it’s a no-go zone for us. A zone of tolerance. We don’t arrest anybody for anything. We don’t even go in there unless we’re called.”

  Vanier counted six prostitutes working the street in three blocks, and it was only 11 a.m. “Can we do a drive-through?”

  “Like I said, Inspector, we don’t go in there unless we’re called.”

  Vanier made a mental note to visit. He’d ask Saint-Jacques if she wanted to go.

  Three

  It was Sunday. Vanier had hoped to spend the day with Alex, but that hadn’t worked out. Alex didn’t get up until one o’clock, and he left at two. He had things to do, he said, and wouldn’t be back till late. So Vanier called Anjili.

  Dr. Anjili Segal was one of Montreal’s six coroners, and she and Vanier had been dating for over two years, each of them giving up bits and pieces of their lives to the other, growing inevitably closer. They were wandering cautiously to the moment when they might consider living together, but neither of them was hurried.

  Anjili got lost in her work as much as Vanier did. That was part of how well they got along together. They each understood hastily arranged dates and last-minute cancellations, and each lived with the erratic schedules and last minute crises that doom most relationships. They had found a way to make the relationship work, despite the obstacles. When he thought about it, he liked to think that she understood Rilke’s definition of love: Two solitudes that protect and touch and greet each other.

  But Alex’s return had changed things; Vanier was no longer just distracted with work. He had a sick son who occupied his time and his mind. Anjili hadn’t said anything, but she didn’t need to. He could feel the strain in the innumerable other ways that people communicate. With anyone else, he would have pulled back and let the relationship slow down and die, but he didn’t want to lose her. So he found himself apologizing more often than ever and making promises that he didn’t know if he could keep. He kept telling her it was just a matter of time before things would be back to normal. And she kept wanting to believe him.

  He punched the speed dial number on his phone, and she picked up on the third ring.

  “Hey, stranger,” she said.

  “Ah, don’t say that.”

  “I haven’t heard from you in so long.” There was a smile in her voice. She was glad he called.

  “Three days, Anjili. That’s all.”

  “That’s all? It seems like so long. I forget what you look like.”

  “Funny. Are you up for dinner tonight?”

  “Dinner? With a handsome stranger? Did you get the night off?”

  Vanier let out a sigh. “Yes, I’ve got the night off.”

  “School night or weekend?”

  “What?”

  “You staying over?”

  “I can’t, Anjili. Just dinner.”

  “So a school night. I suppose a girl’s got to take what she can get. What time?”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven. Okay?”

  “Wonderful. I’ll waiting downstairs, my love. Maybe you should wear a rose so I’ll recognize you.”

  “Sure. I’ll wear a rose.”

  The waiter in the Maisonneuve Tavern placed another quart bottle of Export in front of Desportes. Desportes handed him a twenty.

  “And, Jacques, give me a bacon cheeseburger to go, with some fries… and beans. Lots of protein.”

  The waiter looked at Desportes. “You leaving? You’re still hungry?”

  It was 10:30, and the kitchen was about to close.

  “Maybe I’ll get hungry later on. Who knows?”

  Desportes went back to reading. It was Sunday night, and the tavern was quiet. The Canadians were on another losing streak. They wouldn’t make the Playoffs again, and people had given up caring. It was raining outside, and only the die-hard lonely drinkers were out.

  By the time Desportes got up to go, he had enough beer in him to ensure that he would sleep for five hours. The styrofoam container of food in a white plastic bag dangled from his hand. He walked along Ontario Street until he reached Bennett, then he turned, walked half a block north, and disappeared into an alley. He felt more comfortable in the alleys that crisscrossed Hochelaga than on its main streets.

  The previous night, he had seen her pretending to sleep behind a dumpster as she watched his footsteps pass by. He pretended he hadn’t seen her. Now, when he approached the same spot, he saw that she was there again, motionless, curled up in some kind of blanket under a torn cardboard box. He bent down and dropped the bag of food near her head. She didn’t move, but he could see she was holding her breath. She was young, but he couldn’t tell how young. He looked at her for a few seconds and then walked slowly away.

  Twenty minutes later he was trolling through emails received over the last few days by Leon Kaufman, a partner in one of Montreal’s largest accounting firms. Desportes had unrestricted access to Kaufman’s emails because a woman he had helped out returned the favour. She supervised the overnight cleaning staff in Kaufman’s office building and let Desportes in one night. She had turned her back while he installed a small program onto Kaufman’s computer. She turned her back a bunch of other times that night, too, while Desportes did the same on a half dozen other computers. Now, going through the emails was a bit like fishing and, given it was close to the end of the first quarter, Desportes was fishing for information on upcoming quarterly report
s from listed companies.

  Quarterly earnings move the market. If a company beats expectations, the stock will rise. Disappoint, and it will fall. The market is predictable if you have more information than the average Joe, and Desportes worked hard to have more information than the average Joe.

  It didn’t take him long to find an email chain discussing the surprisingly bad results from Emphram Corp., a technology company that went public three years before, buoyed by glowing reports from analysts and a multi-million-dollar contract from National Defence. It was now trading at fifteen dollars a share. But it had oversold the technology and underbid the Defence contract, and, as Kaufman delicately put it in his email to Emphram’s CFO, “the shit is about to hit the fan.” The quarterly report would show the company was losing millions a month on the contract, and the technology had more bugs than a rooming house mattress. Kaufman predicted the price would drop five to ten dollars as soon as the results were released.

  Desportes had no trouble buying a put option with a thirteen dollar strike price that expired two weeks after Emphram’s report hit the street. If the price fell below that any time before the option expired, he would make serious money, or rather an obscure Cayman company would make a bundle and, given the Byzantine corporate structure he had put in place, nobody would be able to trace it to him.

  Vanier lay in bed beside Anjili. Not touching. The clock radio said 1 a.m., but it was only 12:45. She kept it fifteen minutes fast, thinking it helped her in the morning.

  He knew he had to leave, but there isn’t a good way to get up and go home after lovemaking. No matter how many times she said she understood, he knew it hurt her.

  She was pretending to be asleep. He shifted his weight carefully, trying not to disturb the bed, and dressed quietly in the dark. Then he moved around to her side and bent down to kiss her. Her face was buried in the pillow, and a blanket covered her shoulders. All there was to kiss was the back of her head.

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Anjili.”

  “I don’t know how much more of this shit I can take.” Her voice was muffled by the pillow.

  “You don’t have to talk like that.”

  She turned and looked up at him. “You want me to be more polite? This shit. It’s horrible. I can’t take it.”

  “Anjili, I can’t help it. You told me you understood.”

  “You think I don’t understand?”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Of course I understand. That’s the problem. I can’t blame you, so I can only blame myself. Luc, I’m too old for this. I hate you for leaving, and I hate myself for feeling that. Maybe I should just stop caring.”

  He knew he should stay, talk it through, but they’d had the conversation too often in the last few weeks. He’d tell her it was temporary, that Alex would work his way through things, and then they could think about moving in together. And she would pretend to agree.

  “We’re like teenagers, stealing moments,” she said. “But without the fun.”

  He sat down on the bed, tired, unable to have the conversation. She rolled over to look up at him, and caught him looking at the clock.

  “Let yourself out,” she said and rolled back into the pillow.

  All he could say was, “Sorry.”

  “Luc. Go. I’m tired. We’ll talk about this another time.”

  Vanier stood up, and the cat jumped onto the bed, curled against her, and began purring. She reached an arm around it.

  “Okay. I’m off.”

  “Lock the door on your way out.”

  Four

  Vanier was reading the autopsy report on Legault. Even in Dr. Nadeau’s medical jargon, it wasn’t easy. Dr. Nadeau concluded that Legault had been restrained – there were rope marks on his wrists and ankles – and beaten over a period of several hours. The precise cause of death was unknown; each of the five blows to the head had fractured his skull, and it was impossible to tell which was the fatal one. It didn’t really matter. There were plenty of other injuries, including an inch missing from the index finger of his right hand, but none would have been fatal on their own.

  Most of Legault’s injuries were to his upper body, but there was serious bruising around his groin. He had three broken ribs. His front teeth and a large molar in the back were gone. His nose was broken in three places, and his cheekbone jutted out through torn skin. Legault’s last hours had been brutal.

  Vanier wondered what Legault had done to deserve the beating. In gang wars, people get shot, knifed, or even blown up by homemade bombs, not tortured to death over an afternoon. He couldn’t believe that Legault had information that could only be beaten out of him, Legault wouldn’t have been that brave. So why go to the trouble? It didn’t look like an accident – like they wanted to teach him a lesson, but went too far. Vanier knew people who could work you over so badly in a few minutes that you would remember it forever.

  It seemed Legault was doomed from the start. The key was finding out why. And right now, Vanier didn’t have any ideas.

  For the second time, Vanier and Saint-Jacques went down the five steps to Legault’s semi-basement apartment. The door was wide open, and you couldn’t miss the smell of fresh paint. Inside, the floors were spread with painters’ sheets. The guy rolling paint on the walls didn’t stop when the two cops walked in.

  “It’s closed. No drugs here. Fuck off.”

  “Police. What’s going on?” said Vanier.

  The man stopped painting and turned to Vanier. “I’m painting. What does it look like?”

  “Funny. Where is everything? The tenant’s stuff?”

  “Moved out. The woman went into a shelter, and we were told to clean the place up for new tenants.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. My partners. They left an hour ago. They’re driving all the shit to the Eco Centre.”

  “Who decided?”

  He put the roller down reluctantly and pulled a paper from his top pocket. “Here’s the Work Order.”

  Vanier unfolded the paper and read the instructions:

  - Clear out contents

  - Repair minor damage

  - Quote on major repairs

  - Repaint all walls

  The Work Order was from the Société des Patriotes de Montréal.

  “Who are these guys?” Vanier read the name, “Société des Patriotes de Montréal?”

  “The Patriotes. It’s a community organization. They run a lot of programs around here. Listen, you have a problem with this, you go see them. Me, I’ve got a job to do.”

  He picked up the roller, dipped it in the paint, and went back to work.

  “And if you think we robbed the place, there was nothing to rob. The woman took her clothes in a garbage bag and that was about it. The rest was crap, filthy couches, mattresses that looked like they’d been pissed on more often than a lamppost. I don’t know how people live like that. It’s a disgrace. And his customers have been coming in here all morning. Scum, they are. Filthy scum.”

  While he was talking, Saint-Jacques had done a quick tour. “It’s empty.”

  “Yeah. It is now. You should have seen it earlier. Empty beer bottles and syringes everywhere, and enough dirty ashtrays for a smokers’ convention. If you ask me, it’s a good thing. Going from a crack house to social housing.”

  “You know where the woman went?”

  “Haven’t a clue. A lady from the Patriotes was with her. She said something about a shelter.”

  Vanier turned to leave, and Saint-Jacques followed him out.

  “Where to, boss?”

  “Let’s go visit the Patriotes. Whoever they are.” The Work Order had an address on Ontario Street.

  The Patriotes operated out of a former store. You couldn’t miss it. There was a large sign over the entrance with Société des Pat
riotes de Montréal painted in blue letters, three feet high, framed at each end by small renditions of the Quebec flag.

  From the outside, it resembled a political campaign office. The store’s plate glass windows gave passersby an unobstructed view of everything inside, cheap desks and chairs, filing cabinets, posters on the wall, a coffee machine, and little else. The three women sitting at the desks all looked up when Vanier and Saint-Jacques set the bell on the door jangling.

  “Police officers,” Vanier said. “We’re here to see whoever is in charge.”

  “That would be Colonel Montpetit,” said a woman with a bright purple streak through her black hair. “I’ll call him.” The other two women continued to stare.

  There was a threadbare couch against a wall, but Vanier and Saint-Jacques remained standing. Sitting down sends the wrong message – that you’re expecting to wait. A wooden staircase at the back of the room led up to a doorway. It opened after a few minutes, and two men in vaguely matching military jackets and pants and green button-down shirts came down the stairs.

  “Shit, I hate uniforms,” Vanier whispered to Saint-Jacques.

  The first man was shaved bald. You could see the shadow where hair still sprouted, and where he was really bald. He would have looked years older if he didn’t shave his head. The second man was older and had enough hair for both of them, dyed black as a crow. At the bottom of the stairs, the bald guy did a bodyguard impression, looking around and then stepping aside for the boss.

  The hairy one made straight for the two officers, flashing a big grin and holding his hand out.

  “I’m Colonel Montpetit,” he said. “You asked to see me.”

  “You’re in charge?”

  “I am the leader of the Société des Patriotes de Montréal. So, yes, I’m in charge.”

  Vanier shook his hand. “I’m Detective Inspector Vanier, Serious Crimes. This is Detective Sergeant Saint-Jacques.”