Montreal Noir

by John McFetridge

  Suddenly the buckles give way and the lid of the suitcase opens, sending its contents flying through the air before falling silently on the snow, near the front of the headstone. Struggling against his fatigue, the old man crawls forward and retrieves a small, blood-soaked corpse. He hugs it to his chest, murmuring words of comfort.

  * * *

  As they continued to search the apartment, the policemen discovered another room, meticulously clean. A little girl’s room frozen in the 1950s. They’d also found, near the pool of blood, a photo album with a warped cover.

  After donning latex gloves, Victor examined the photos. The album contained carefully organized newspaper clippings spanning four decades. The oldest one was from 1951, the most recent from December 1992. Victor skimmed through the clippings and quickly found a common theme: they were all related to the disappearances and murders of children in Montreal.

  A stack of utility bills and invoices landed on the table. Victor looked up at his partner.

  “I found those on the corkboard. Apparently, the tenant’s name is Arthur Zourek.”

  “You checked with Central to see if he has a record?”

  Robitaille nodded. “No record, but he was interrogated in relation to a murder in 1959. No charges made, though.”

  Victor frowned. “You have any more details?”

  “Files from before 1980 haven’t been computerized. They’re digging through the archives.”

  Robitaille came up behind his partner and started to read over his shoulder.

  The most recent newspaper clipping cited the disappearance of an eight-year-old girl in a park in Côte-des-Neiges.

  “The last disappearance happened three weeks ago,” Victor said softly. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That we’re just around the corner from Jean-Brillant Park?”

  The two policemen looked at each other.

  “We should call major crimes,” said Robitaille.

  Even though his partner had more seniority, Victor had gained a kind of authority over him. So Robitaille did not take offense when Victor said, “Call Ted Rutherford. Tell him you’re my partner and that we need his help.”

  “You know Ted Rutherford? He’s a legend.”

  Victor almost explained that Rutherford was the first officer to arrive at the scene of his family’s massacre, that the star investigator had been his inspiration to pursue police work. But instead, he bit his lip.

  As Robitaille headed for the wall phone, Victor continued examining the newspaper clippings. He found the oldest ones and read them carefully, wondering what it all meant. Then his gaze fell on one of the bills that Robitaille had left on the table. An idea crossed his mind. And then it clicked.

  Victor shot out of his chair and headed for the door. Robitaille, who’d been on hold the past few minutes, asked where he was going.

  “Hang up. We’re leaving.”

  Robitaille cupped his hand over the phone. “Why? Where are we going?”

  Moving quickly, Victor answered without turning around: “Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery.”

  * * *

  The old man cradles the body against his coat, and screams over the roar of the wind. Flurries of snow swirl around the headstone. “You see what you’ve done, you little bastard? Leave us, now!”

  Jérôme opens his mouth to reply, then thinks better of it. The two stare at each other for a long moment. The young man eventually winces, turns on his heels, and walks away. Before he vanishes into the snowdrift, the old man notices that the back of Jérôme’s head is covered in blood. And through his shattered cranium, brain matter glistens.

  Arthur Zourek closes his eyes.

  * * *

  Bathed in the glare of revolving headlights, the policemen sat motionless in a contemplative silence. They’d easily found the spot and parked the patrol car a block away.

  When they arrived at the cemetery, the snow on the ground was perfectly smooth; the wind had swept away any footprints around the headstone. An open suitcase lay a few meters from the grave. An empty bottle of pills, a girl’s clothing, and toys stained with blood were scattered in the snow like bizarre offerings.

  Robitaille spoke after a long moment: “How’d you know about the cemetery?”

  Lost in his thoughts, Victor took a moment to reply. “One of the bills you found was a statement from the cemetery, for the maintenance of Florence and Rosalie Zourek’s graves.”

  Robitaille shook his head. “I mean, how’d you know he would come here?”

  “I read the oldest newspaper clippings, the ones about the unsolved murder of little Rosalie Zourek, six years old.”

  “The daughter of Arthur and Florence Zourek . . .”

  Staring into the distance, Victor nodded. “Then I remembered the words together for eternity written next to the pool of blood. It made sense when I saw the bill. It was intuition, really.”

  “And the pedophile who had his skull bashed in by a hammer in 1959? You think the old man killed him? Zourek was the only witness interrogated by the investigators.”

  On their way to the cemetery, Central had given them the information from the archives about the murder of Jérôme Gaudreau, a thirty-five-year-old repeat offender convicted of sexual violence against minors. At the beginning of 1953, Gaudreau had been suspected of committing a series of child abductions. But he’d been released a few days later, after he was cleared due to insufficient evidence.

  Victor shrugged his shoulders. “The abductions apparently continued after Gaudreau’s death.”

  “Poor old man. To end like that . . .”

  Victor nodded, choked up with emotion. His head was full of grisly images, disfigured by time, and he stared at Arthur Zourek’s frozen body, partially covering the headstone.

  In his arms, the old man clutched a disemboweled cat. He held it as one holds a child. As he would have held his little Rosalie more than forty years earlier.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Samuel Archibald is the author of the short story collection Arvida, which was short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. He lives, writes, and teaches genre fiction and creative writing in Montreal. He is also a playwright, screenwriter, baseball coach, and avid fly fisherman.

  Katie Shireen Assef is a writer and translator of French. Her first book-length translation was Akashic’s Brussels Noir, and her translation of Valérie Mréjen’s novel Black Forest is forthcoming from Phoneme Media. Her work has been featured in journals such as Drunken Boat, FENCE, Epiphany, Joyland, PANK, and Sakura Review. She lives in Los Angeles.

  Michel Basilières was born and raised in Montreal’s Milton Park neighborhood. His first novel, Black Bird, won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was short-listed for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. His second novel is A Free Man, and he currently teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.

  Arjun Basu is the author of Squishy, a collection of short stories short-listed for Canada’s ReLit Award. Waiting for the Man, a novel, was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2014. Born and raised in Montreal, he lives in the Mile End neighborhood, where he has never seen a single horse. He is currently at work on his next novel, and the one after that.

  Jacques Filippi started his career as a journalist and has now been a bookseller, translator, sales representative, and editor for almost twenty years. He started his blog, The House of Crime and Mystery, in 2011, and cofounded the QuébeCrime Writers Festival a few years later. His blog is now a website where you can read his reviews, interviews, and other views. He is also hard at work on a trilogy of crime novels.

  Tess Fragoulis’s first book, Stories to Hide from Your Mother, was nominated for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Best First Book Award. In 2003, her novel Ariadne’s Dream was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and received an honorable mention for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First No
vel Award. Her latest novel, The Goodtime Girl, was published in 2012. Fragoulis lives, writes, and teaches in Montreal.

  Peter Kirby was born in Ireland, grew up in Brixton, and spent years as an itinerant cook in the US before settling down to study law in Montreal. He is the author of the Inspector Luc Vanier series, and his latest novel, Open Season, won the 2016 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. He practices international law and has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a star in international arbitration; the magazine American Lawyer has named him as one of Canada’s leading 500 lawyers.

  Geneviève Lefebvre is a scriptwriter, translator of plays, novelist, speechwriter, columnist, and regular contributor to online and print publications like Châtelaine, Elle Québec, Clin d’oeil, and the Journal de Montréal. Her most recent novel, All the Times I Never Died, was published in early 2017. When she’s not writing, Lefebvre runs with Maggie, her canine sprinter.

  John McFetridge was born and raised in Greenfield Park (now part of Longueuil) on the South Shore of Montreal. He is a graduate of Concordia University, and the author of the Eddie Dougherty series (Black Rock, A Little More Free, One or the Other, Another Brick in the Wall). McFetridge has also written for film and television, and is the coeditor of the anthology 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush.

  Catherine McKenzie is the best-selling author of six novels, the latest of which is Fractured, named one of the 25 Big Books of Fall 2016 by Goodreads. She is also the author of the legal thriller The Murder Game, written under her pen name, Julie Apple. She writes and lives in Montreal, where she attended McGill Law School, and works as a lawyer.

  Martin Michaud has been hailed by critics as the “thriller master of Quebec.” His seven crime novels are best sellers in Quebec and Europe, and he has received the Arthur Ellis Award, the Prix Saint-Pacôme, and the Tenebris Prize. His Victor Lessard series is now adapted for television, and the movie rights for his stand-alone thriller Beneath the Surface have been optioned in the US.

  Robert Pobi is a best-selling novelist whose work has been published in more than fifteen countries. He divides his time between Montreal, Florida, Northern California, and a cabin on a lake in the mountains somewhere. His first short story (written when he was twelve) earned him an expulsion from school. He has given up collecting speeding tickets and spends his spare time avoiding social media.

  Patrick Senécal was born in Drummondville and published his first novel in 1994. Four years later he published the best-selling novel On the Threshold. His books have been translated into many languages, and a few have been adapted into successful movies. Well known for his horror novels, he nonetheless lives a quiet life with his wife and two kids.

  Johanne Seymour worked as a screenwriter and a TV director before she started writing the Kate McDougall novels in 2015. The five volumes are now published in Europe and The Scream of the Deer, the first in the series, has been adapted for TV. Seymour was also the founder of Les Printemps meurtriers, which was a popular crime festival in her town of Knowlton, Quebec.

  Howard Shrier is a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award. His acclaimed novels include Buffalo Jump, High Chicago, Boston Cream, and Miss Montreal. Born and raised in Montreal, Shrier started out as a crime reporter at the Montreal Star, and has since worked in theater, television, sketch comedy, improv, and corporate and government communications. He lives in Toronto with his wife and sons, and teaches writing at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.

  Brad Smith is a novelist and screenwriter who was born and raised in the hamlet of Canfield, in southern Ontario. He has lived in South Africa, Alberta, British Columbia, Texas, and has worked a variety of jobs—farmer, signalman, insulator, truck driver, bartender, schoolteacher, maintenance mechanic, roofer, and carpenter. Smith has published nine novels and adapted his 2003 book All Hat for the screen. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007.

  Ian Truman is a novelist, poet, and visual artist from the East End of Montreal. He is a fan of dirty realism, noir, satire, punk, and hardcore, and hopes to mix these genres in all of his work. A graduate of Concordia University’s creative writing program, he won the 2013 Expozine Alternative Press Award for Best English Book.

  Donald Winkler is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation (French to English).

  Melissa Yi is an emergency physician who writes mystery novels. CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter selected Stockholm Syndrome, her medical thriller about a Montreal hostage situation, as one of the best crime novels of summer 2016. Yi’s short fiction has appeared in Sleuth Magazine, Indian Country Noir, and Fiction River Special Edition: Crime, which was nominated for the Derringer Award. In her spare time, she chases after two small children and one large rottweiler.

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Excerpt from USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series

  Also available in the Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  INTRODUCTION

  WRITERS ON THE RUN

  From USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple

  In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments later, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.

  It may not have been appropriate, but it sure was noir.

  From the start, the heart and soul of Akashic Books has been dark, provocative, well-crafted tales from the disenfranchised. I learned early on that writings from outside the mainstream almost necessarily coincide with a mood and spirit of noir, and are composed by authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime.

  My own interest in noir fiction grew from my early exposure to urban crime, which I absorbed from various perspectives. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and have lived in Brooklyn since 1990. In the 1970s and ’80s, when violent, drug-fueled crime in DC was rampant, my mother hung out with cops she’d befriended through her work as a nearly unbeatable public defender. She also grew close to some of her clients, most notably legendary DC bank robber Lester “LT” Irby (a contributor to DC Noir), who has been one of my closest friends since I was fifteen, though he was incarcerated from the early 1970s until just recently. Complicating my family’s relationship with the criminal justice system, my dad sued the police stridently in his work as legal director of DC’s American Civil Liberties Union.

  Both of my parents worked overtime. By the time my sister Kathy was nine and I was seven, we were latchkey kids prone to roam, explore, and occasionally break laws. Though an arrest for shoplifting helped curb my delinquent tendencies, the interest in crime remained. After college I worked with adolescents and completed a master’s degree in social work; my focus was on teen delinquency.

  Throughout the 1990s, my relationship with the urban underbelly expanded as I spent a great deal of time in dank nightclubs populated by degenerates and outcasts. I played bass guitar in Girls Against Boys, a rock and roll group that toured extensively in the US and Europe. The long hours on the road not spent on stage gave way to book publishing, which began as a hobby in 1996 with my friends Bobby and Mark Sullivan.

  The first book we published was The Fuck-Up, by Arthur Nersesian—a dark, provocative, well-crafted tale from the disenfranchised. A few years later Heart of the Old Coun
try by Tim McLoughlin became one of our early commercial successes. The book was widely praised both for its classic noir voice and its homage to the people of South Brooklyn. While Brooklyn is chock-full of published authors these days, Tim is one of the few who was actually born and bred here. In his five decades, Tim has never left the borough for more than five weeks at a stretch and he knows the place, through and through, better than anyone I’ve met.

  In 2003, inspired by Brooklyn’s unique and glorious mix of cultures, Tim and I set out to explore New York City’s largest borough in book form, in a way that would ring true to local residents. Tim loves his home borough despite its flagrant flaws, and was easily seduced by the concept of working with Akashic to try and portray its full human breadth.

  He first proposed a series of books, each one set in a different neighborhood, whether it be Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, or Canarsie. It was an exciting idea, but it’s hard enough to publish a single book, let alone commit to a full series. After we considered various other possibilities, Tim came upon the idea of a fiction anthology organized by neighborhood, each one represented by a different author. We were looking for stylistic diversity, so we focused on “noir,” and defined it in the broadest sense: we wanted stories of tragic, soulful struggle against all odds, characters slipping, no redemption in sight.

  Conventional wisdom dictates that literary anthologies don’t sell well, but this idea was too good to resist—it seemed the perfect form for exploring the whole borough, and we got to work soliciting stories. We batted around book titles, including Under the Hood, before settling on Brooklyn Noir. The volume came together beautifully and was a surprise hit for Akashic, quickly selling through multiple printings and winning awards. (See pages 548–550 for a full list of prizes garnered by stories originally published in the Noir Series.)