Montreal Noir

by John McFetridge

  “The mother says she was a good kid, good head on her shoulders,” Dagenais said. “Swears she wouldn’t have run away.”

  “And the father?” Max asked.

  Dagenais shrugged. “Doesn’t speak a word of English or French. Been here since the end of the war and can’t be bothered, the dumb hunky.”

  “He strike you as off?”

  “A perv, you mean? Christ, I don’t know. He seemed broken up enough.”

  “They always do,” Max said. “Even after they confess.”

  “Talk to him yourself.”

  “I’ll do that. What about the neighbors?”

  “Not much help. One of them told us the guy upstairs from her had a thing for young girls but he had the best alibi money can buy.”

  “He was in the can?”

  “Yup. Drunk tank. Turns out the lady just doesn’t like the guy. He plays his radio loud at night.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “We got a call from a woman who said she saw a girl matching Irene’s description walking on Rue Rachel with a boy around the time she disappeared. Five fifteen or five thirty.”

  “Rachel where?”

  “Around Saint-Christophe.”

  “That’s only two blocks from Mentana. Any description of the boy?”

  “About Irene’s age, maybe a little younger. Shorter, anyway. Wore a brown-and-white checked cap. Curly brown hair poking out.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s all she could see.”

  “You ask the mother about boys?”

  “Of course. She said Irene didn’t play with the boys on the street. They mostly play hockey and stickball in the lane. She couldn’t think of anyone who matched that description.”

  “I don’t think a kid her age could have hurt her like that. You got anything else?”

  “Another neighbor said she saw a guy out on the street the morning Irene disappeared. Thin, pale, thirties. Gave her the creeps.”

  “Why?”

  “She wasn’t sure. Said he stood across the street doing nothing.”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s what bothered her, she said. He was doing nothing.”

  “But this was in the morning and she didn’t go missing until the afternoon.”

  “Right.”

  “Probably no connection.”

  “That’s what we thought.”

  “She’d never seen him before?”

  “No.”

  “You have her name?”

  Dagenais thumbed through a spiral notebook and gave Max the woman’s name and address.

  “All right. Ask your constables if they know anyone matching that description in the quarter.”

  “Already did. Nothing.”

  * * *

  Sonja Czerny sat at her kitchen table, covering her eyes as if a bright light were searching her out—only her hands could keep her from being blinded. Her husband sat next to her, elbows on the table, head in his hands. Every few seconds, Sonja would take in a sharp breath and make a barking sound. Max wondered why the husband didn’t get up and comfort his wife. Put his hands on her shoulders, rub them when they shook.

  He started with a few questions about Irene’s routine on summer days, the friends she hung around with, the places she went. All things he already knew from reading statements at Station 4.

  Sonja answered all the questions. Her brown eyes reminded Max of Stella’s. They had the same sad, searching look. A few times she hesitated and looked at her husband, Tibor. He wore a white undershirt and green pants that were the bottom half of a workman’s uniform.

  “Ask him if he saw her when he left for work Tuesday morning,” Max said. He didn’t care what the answer was. He just wanted Tibor to lift his head. He wanted to watch the man’s eyes move, hear the timbre of his voice as he spoke about his daughter.

  “He says no, he did not see her,” Sonja said. “He must leave before seven.”

  Max wanted to hear more. “Ask him if they spoke the night before.”

  She put the question to her husband; his answer came back in a rasp. Tears ran from his eyes and choked his voice. Her own eyes welled up as she translated: “He says yes, they spoke about Nadja. She is the younger daughter and she and Irene had a fight on Monday and Irene slapped her. He told her she must not to do this, even when Nadja is starting the fight, because she is older and stronger.”

  Max had seen and heard enough. In his mind the father was clean. “Please show me where she sleeps.” He’d almost said where she slept, but had caught himself just in time.

  The two girls, Irene and Nadja, shared a small room at the rear of the flat, behind the kitchen. “This is maybe why they fighting sometimes,” Sonja said. “Our boy Paul gets a room for himself, but the girls must share.”

  He stood in the room between two narrow beds, both with white chenille spreads, his hands in his pockets. On the wall above the beds was a cross to which Christ was nailed, his back arched in pain.

  “Our other children were born here in Montreal,” Sonja said. “But my husband and Irene and me, we lived in Budapest during the war. Irene is maybe too young to remember how hard this was, but I remember. I remember how small she was, how little food we had, how much she cried. Before the war we lived with my parents, but my father was against collaborating with the Nazis, against withdrawing from the League of Nations. His contrary positions, they cost us everything. And when the Soviets invaded, were we rewarded? Of course not. We lost even more.”

  She put a hand on her chest and shuddered. “Why I am telling you this, Mr. Handler, is because my little girl had a hard beginning to her life. I just didn’t want the end to be hard too.”

  * * *

  “Tell me about the man you saw,” Max said. “Where exactly was he?”

  “Across the street, in front of 4120,” said Mrs. Peletz, the neighbor two buildings to the north, who spoke in a thick Yiddish accent. She was about fifty, with thick legs and gray hair pulled into a bun.

  “Was he coming or going?”

  “Just standing with his back against the telephone pole, smoking.”

  “How long was he there?”

  “I don’t know. I went to get the mail and he was there. That was maybe eleven. I went out again ten, fifteen minutes later to shake out a rug, and he was still there, still against the pole, smoking.”

  “Looking at your side of the street or the houses behind him?”

  “My side.”

  “What made you notice him?” Max asked.

  “Who just stands there? He doesn’t live on the street, he’s not talking to no one, there’s no bus that comes. Not even looking at a watch. Just smoking. Who does such a thing?”

  “And that’s why you noticed him?”

  “That, and because he was so pale. Most people, it’s summer, they have a little color. But not him. Like a ghost he was. I said to my husband, maybe he’s been someplace where there’s no sun. Maybe he just came from jail.”

  Max made a mental note to check with Bordeaux Prison and Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary, see if they had released anyone in the last month or two with a record of offenses against children.

  “How old a man was he, Mrs. Peletz?”

  “Younger than you,” she said, “but not a boy. Maybe thirty?”

  “You get a good look at his face? The color of his hair?”

  “A hat he wore, with the brim pulled down,” she said. “I just know his face and arms were white.”

  “He didn’t wear a jacket?”

  “If he wore a jacket, would I have seen his arms?”

  Max smiled. “I guess not.”

  “Like china they were,” Mrs. Peletz said. “The kind they make from bone.”

  * * *

  Max squatted at the base of the light pole in front of 4120 Hôtel de Ville, which was the ground-floor flat in a brick building with silver-coated staircases winding up to the second and third floors. There were half a dozen cigarette butts on the
ground, Player’s Plain and du Mauriers with filter tips.

  He had just started up the walk to ring the bell when he saw a man in a second-floor window. Tall enough to fill the entire frame, gaunt looking, his neck and head bent at an odd angle. An unmistakable figure.

  Max rang the bell to the flat. The lock disengaged and he went up a dark staircase that curved to the right. Waiting there was Jan Albrecht, better known to a generation of Montreal wrestling fans as Baron von Bismarck, the Killer Kraut. In a city that adored its hockey players, boxers, strippers, and singers, wrestlers were among the biggest stars. Even though the Baron was the most hated villain in town—a character who would cut, choke, stomp, and gouge his opponents, brushing aside referees to inflict maximum damage—Jan Albrecht was known as a gentleman outside the ring.

  “Hello, sergeant,” Albrecht said, extending a massive hand. He was half a foot taller than Max, who stood six feet. His head was huge, with a jutting chin that ended in a bulb split by a cleft. “How are you?”

  “I’m good, Jan. How about you?”

  “I suppose I could complain,” the big man said, pointing at his bent neck with his left hand, “but I will spare you.”

  “How long you been living here?”

  “Since the accident. Rents downtown are high and my earnings are not what they used to be. It’s all right. I’m content here. What about you, sergeant? Do you still moonlight at the Forum? You were good security.”

  “Too busy these days.”

  To Max’s eyes, Albrecht didn’t look like he got much sun. But his skin was more gray than white, the color of a dead mouse. And his height and crooked figure would make him familiar to a neighbor.

  “You’re here about the little girl?” Albrecht said.

  “Yes.”

  “She is dead then?”

  “Yes.”

  “A terrible thing.” Albrecht moved stiffly to one side and waved Max into a dim parlor. There was a faded chesterfield with gold and brown stripes and white antimacassars over the rear. A couple of wooden chairs on either side of a chipped wooden table. “You will take a coffee?”

  “No thanks. I saw you in the window and wanted to ask if you noticed anyone hanging around the street the day the girl disappeared.”

  “A constable already came by to ask. Regrettably, I saw no one.” Albrecht rubbed the side of his neck, pushing it even farther off center before releasing it with a snapping sound. He had broken it two years back in a bout against the great wrestler Yvon Robert. Albrecht had knocked Robert down, stunned him with a forearm to the throat, and then climbed onto the top rope for his signature finish, a thunderous elbow smash known as the Hammer of Hell. But as he jumped, the toe of his boot had gotten caught under the top rope and he landed on his head, shivered in a violent spasm, and didn’t move again for weeks.

  “One of the neighbors saw a guy hanging out front that morning, smoking. Very pale,” Max said.

  “I’m sorry, sergeant, I don’t think I saw any such fellow.”

  “Well, if you remember anything, give me a call.”

  “Of course. You sure you will not take a coffee?”

  “No, thanks anyway.”

  He heard a door slam at the rear of the flat. Then footsteps, and another door opening and closing.

  “Someone else here I can ask?”

  “Oh,” Albrecht said, “that’s just Billy.”

  “Wild Billy?”

  “Yes.”

  “He lives with you?”

  “We have both recently endured somewhat hard times,” Albrecht said.

  “Call him out here,” Max said. “Maybe he saw something.”

  Albrecht smiled. “Billy hardly looks out the window, as you might imagine.”

  “Call him out anyway.”

  “Of course.” He walked through the parlor to the corridor that led to the back of the flat and called, “Billy?”

  He got no answer. He called again, louder.

  A door opened and a voice that was both high-pitched and raspy shouted: “What! I’m drying myself off, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We have company, Billy. Come out here a moment.”

  “I’m bare-assed.”

  “Put a robe on and come out. It’s Max Handler.”

  “Who?”

  “Sergeant Handler. He used to work security at the Forum.”

  There was a pause and then Billy said, “Gimme a sec.”

  Wild Billy Weaver emerged a moment later, all three and a half feet of him, waddling down the hall in a white satin robe with his name stitched over the breast in royal blue. He was rubbing his dark hair dry with a towel.

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember you now. How’s it hanging, sarge?” Billy reached a hand up to where Max could shake it and squeezed harder than he needed to.

  “Okay, Billy. You?”

  “Just perfect, only I can’t get a decent payday and I can’t get laid unless I pay for it, even though I’m hung like a normal guy. Bigger, even. Plus I gotta live with this sad sack.” Billy stuck his head to one side, at the same sick angle as Albrecht’s, and gave Max a big grin. Max didn’t return it.

  “I thought midget wrestling was catching on,” Max said.

  “It’s starting to. But Sky Low Low and Little Beaver get the headline fights. I’m stuck on the undercards with Tiny Roe and Pee Wee James. If things don’t get better, I’ll have to take a job at the Midgets Palace, showing the tourists how us little-halves live.”

  “At least you can still fight,” Albrecht said.

  “Yeah, I still got that. So what brings you here, sarge? Who got killed?”

  “Shush,” Albrecht said. “It’s about the little girl across the street.”

  Billy put the towel down on the sofa. “They found her?”

  Albrecht picked up the towel and shook his head at the dark wet spot it had left.

  “This morning,” Max said. “We’re trying to pin down a guy seen around here the day she went missing. Pale guy standing out in the street smoking.”

  Billy rubbed his chin like he was thinking deep. “Real pale? Like almost pink?”

  “The neighbor said white.”

  “’Cause I saw this one guy who’s beyond pale. He’s one of those guys that’s got no color at all. What do you call them, with the pink eyes and white hair?”

  “Albino?”

  “Right. Albino.”

  “You never told me this,” Albrecht said.

  “Do I tell you every damn thing? Anyway, that’s what this guy is. Albino. You see him in a club at night, he looks like a goddamn vampire.”

  “What do you mean, club?” Max said. “You know him?”

  “Sure, I know him. He’s a drummer, plays with Kenny Piper’s quintet.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Eddie. Eddie Whelan.”

  “You sure it was him?”

  “I saw him, didn’t I?”

  “The neighbor said he had a hat. She couldn’t see his face. How is it you saw him?”

  “I just did. Maybe the hat was off for a minute.”

  “When did you see him?”

  “The day she disappeared, like you said.”

  “What time?”

  “In the morning.”

  “What time in the morning?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t have my watch on.”

  “What was he doing?” Max asked.

  “Nothing. Just hanging around.”

  “Why would he just hang around here?”

  “The hell should I know? Maybe he was looking to buy a little tea.”

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know, I never touch the stuff.”

  “Then why did you say—”

  “’Cause he’s a smoke hound.”

  “Someone around here sells it?”

  “I don’t know. I only been staying here a few weeks. Right, Baron?”

  “Yes,” Albrecht said. “A few weeks.”

  “You sure it was Eddie Whelan you saw?
”

  “I guess so. He’s the only albino I know.”

  “Guessing isn’t good enough, Billy,” Max said harshly. “Snatching and killing a nine-year-old girl is the most serious charge there is.”

  “Then I’m sure, okay? It was Eddie Whelan, 110 percent.”

  “He ever had this kind of trouble before?”

  “How would I know? I never talk to the guy. I just know him because he looks so different.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Albrecht said.

  * * *

  The Albatross Club was on Sainte-Catherine, the great glittering strip that cut across the heart of downtown Montreal. It wasn’t in the top rank of clubs; Sammy Davis Jr. and Oscar Peterson were never going to play there. But it was no dive. Kenny Piper’s quintet pumped out quality tunes, and if the drinks were watered down, it wasn’t with a hose.

  A clutch of uniformed constables went around back and huddled by the door that opened onto the laneway. Max went in the front with Marois and two other plainclothes detectives. The band was on a raised stage in the back, playing “Cool Breeze,” Kenny Piper doing his best to imitate Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet part. Max brushed aside the maître d’, and walked past the long bar and through the tables on the dance floor, focusing in on the drummer, whose pallor was pronounced, even by nightclub standards. Marois was at his heels, the other detectives right behind him.

  The albino, Eddie Whelan, looked like he had his eyes closed as he worked his snare and high hat. But as the four men approached the bandstand with their hats still on, no drinks in their hands, he leaped from his stool and ran through a slit in the black curtains behind him. Kenny Piper kept playing his horn a few measures but gave it up as the cops jumped onto the stage and followed the drummer through the dark passage.

  They ran through a kitchen where pots steamed on gas burners and men in white aprons turned chops and steaks on a flame grill. Whelan knew his way better than they did and had a good ten steps on them when he hit the back door. Max lost sight of him, and then heard shouts from the alley.

  Then a gunshot. Then another. Max pulled his Cobra .38 and had it up by his ear as he got to the door. He stopped, not wanting to run out into the middle of a firefight. He leaned slowly out and saw a trash can overturned outside the door. Just beyond the trash can lay Eddie Whelan, blood staining his bright yellow shirt. One round had hit him in the chest, the other in the throat. He had something in his outstretched hand.