by Mario Bolduc
At breakfast Max sat at a rear table in a greasy spoon, his back against a window but still able to see the front door in the reflection of a mirror. He got the house special: toast, bacon, hash browns, and a couple of fried eggs. Max had located the washroom as soon as he’d entered, as well as the emergency exit, which led to the parking lot. This was no time to be careless.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin and his family. The blessed period in New York when he’d used to pop by the Dandurand house, arms laden with gifts. He feared Gabrielle’s reaction when she learned his true identity. The venerated uncle now a notorious criminal. Max felt naked all of a sudden. His past revealed to everyone, his secrets bared to all. For a thief, a con man whose fuel was illusions and lies, this was the worst possible sentence. Max, who’d wanted to help this family, had only managed to slowly tear it apart.
And to destroy Caroline.
Back in New York, he couldn’t remember ever seeing her without a pen in her hand, scribbling down notes or concentrating in front of a computer screen. After the rivière Saqawigan tragedy, Caroline had lost all interest in what used to be her driving passion. Journalism became meaningless to her; what used to be a pleasure became a chore. She worked on fewer and fewer contracts. And soon enough, the phone stopped ringing. What would be the point, anyway? Caroline seemed to be thinking. She no longer turned her computer on, no longer took notes about everything and nothing. She had stopped looking at the world through the eyes of a journalist. She had become completely disinterested in other human beings and circled the wagons around her grief. She had then begun to drink immoderately.
While Caroline drew back into herself, Kevin had begun training again. Through running he tried to exorcise his demons, free himself from guilt. The feeling that he’d ruined everything, his athletic career, his perfect family, his wife, his daughter, his son, whom he had so adored.
His father.
From far away, a broken-hearted Max had seen his two friends felled by grief and felt completely powerless to help.
The loss of Raymond and Sacha caused much collateral damage. To the silences were added absences. Two strangers who now rarely shared a meal and almost never a bed. Separation, divorce? It seemed like the simplest solution. But Kevin and Caroline had held on to their marriage as if it were the last life preserver in an endless shipwreck. Of Sacha, all that was left were pictures on every wall of that sky-blue room neither of them had the courage to repaint. It became an altar, a mausoleum, where Kevin and Caroline went to gather themselves.
Another victim of the tragedy was Gabrielle. Over one day to the next, the girl had simply ceased to exist. Sacha’s memory was all that mattered to her parents, and they had no more room for Gabrielle. When she’d become a teenager, things could have gone from bad to worse, but surprisingly, she kept control over her life. She was the one to convince Kevin to leave Caroline, since the couple couldn’t seem to come to a decision. Gabrielle and her father settled in a condominium in Old Montreal. After Nordopak was bought out, Kevin had started searching for a job. His Olympic past gave him a shred of notoriety, enough to get a job as a physical education teacher at a local high school. The life he’d lived with Caroline he continued with his daughter; they sought each other for comfort and reassurance.
After breakfast, Max wandered through the city. He saw nothing at all of Grand Forks; his sight was turned inward, centred on his solitude. Being a fugitive was making him realize, once again but perhaps more cruelly than at other times, the futility of his life. For years he’d had the impression of leaving in his wake only sadness and desolation, though all the while he’d tried to convince himself of the opposite. He’d fallen back on a very peculiar type of morality that allowed him to justify all the pain he had caused, not to mention all the people he’d exploited to suit his own ends, all the Susans, the Isabels he’d lied to over the years.
Max dropped heavily onto a bench outside a pharmacy. He was pathetic, insignificant. He always had been, would always be.
Under another counterfeit identity, Max rented a Pontiac from Hertz before heading for Manitoba. A few kilometres from the Canadian border, he abandoned the car in a mall parking lot, where another vehicle was waiting for him, this one left by his friend, Ted Duvall, with whom he’d gotten in touch from Brussels. Under the front seat were a new passport and a driver’s licence. In the trunk, hockey jerseys. Max, a businessman returning from a fruitless sales trip to an American wholesaler.
At the Emerson crossing, named for a small village near the Canadian border, the officer examined Max’s unsold stock more intently than his fake passport. He looked through the shirts and seemed sincerely sorry for the salesman’s poor results.
“The NHL strike’s been over for a while, so I thought people would be back into hockey,” Max explained.
The officer held a shirt in his hands and smiled. “The Blackhawks. My favourite team.”
Max tried to give him the shirt, but the officer refused, saying he’d be accused of taking a bribe.
A few questions, and Max was waved through.
Perhaps the Roma’s greatest problem was literacy. Most Roma couldn’t read or write, a contributing factor to marginalization. Romani families hesitated to send their children to gadjo schools, which they saw as tools of assimilation, often rightly so. And thus children weren’t educated, or only occasionally, when laws in place forced them to. Little Romani children sat at the back of the class, ignored by teachers who preferred to concentrate on other students. Flexibility was the solution. And so, across Europe, several initiatives saw the light of day, funded by patrons or organizations intent on the development of Romani autonomy. In some cases, the classroom — teacher, blackboard, and all — would go to the Roma instead of the Roma going to the classroom. Ioan Costinar had crossed the Atlantic to fund these initiatives. The trip that had cost him his life wasn’t his first journey, far from it, but perhaps it was his most important. Romania was mounting its dossier for admission into the European Union. The select club would soon open its doors, a golden opportunity for the Roma. Education would give them a chance to pull themselves out of their endemic misery and take advantage of the opportunities offered by a politically unified Europe.
Before Max had left Romania, Toma Boerescu had told him how Costinar first met Romanichals just outside Chicago. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Roma from Great Britain had settled in villages in Illinois. Some of them even still lived a nomadic lifestyle, travelling across the border to Canada and back, enormous aluminum caravans hitched to their 4x4s. They were a prosperous community — one of the largest casinos in Atlantic City was owned by Romanichals — who hadn’t lost their language or their culture, unlike many other European migrant communities. Spared from Hitler’s atrocities — called the porajmos in Romani, the “devouring” — and from the subsequent Eastern European dictatorships, American Roma did not suffer from an acculturation similar to that of their overseas compatriots. Ironically, the country known for being a melting pot had given North American Roma an opportunity for wealth while still protecting their culture. It remained relatively intact, so much so that a nineteenth-century Rom wouldn’t have considered his future compatriots alien in their behaviour.
After fundraising and giving a few speeches, Ioan Costinar had flown to Winnipeg, where a representative of the Vlach-Roma, a clan distinct from the American Romanichals, was waiting for him. They were originally from Romania and had been in Canada since the early twentieth century. Former slaves emancipated by the Romanian government, they’d travelled through Europe and across the Atlantic before settling all over North America. Contrary to the Romanichals, the Vlach-Roma had lived sedentary lives since the Second World War, which didn’t stop them from hitting the road from time to time.
Costinar had also met with representatives of the Romungere community, Roma who’d found refuge in Canada after 1956, following the Soviet invasion of
Hungary.
Three prosperous clans, all well integrated into North American society, all receptive to Costinar’s plea to help Romanian Roma.
And yet in Manitoba, death was waiting for him.
Why kill him? What was the purpose of the assassins? Max had no idea. But he understood why the killers had acted in Canada instead of Romania. Laura, Micula, and the Roma dead in the Zăbrăuţi Street fire had all been easy hits to orchestrate. However, in Europe, a man like Costinar, a high-profile political player, would be under a constant protective detail. In Canada, though, the security measures would be relaxed, since Costinar was touring in relative anonymity. He wasn’t an internationally renowned political figure, not yet, and he was travelling mostly to meet private philanthropists. The Roma Committee was looking to extended its support base outside Europe, most particularly in countries where helping Roma wasn’t as controversial a subject as it was in Eastern Europe, France, and Germany.
One thing was certain, however. This wasn’t some random act of violence. The killers hadn’t tried to hide their crime by pinning it on the back of a deranged loner. No, Costinar’s murder had been the result of a coordinated operation, carefully planned, implicating many people. The crime felt more like an organized terrorist act than an isolated gesture by a man made mad by his demons or manipulated by obscure forces.
Max still needed to figure out Kevin’s role in this whole story. His relationship with Costinar’s killers, or with those who were trying to reveal the truth.
“And we’re practically cousins, he and I,” Cosmin Micula had told Max. “His mother was Romanian, did you know?”
21
Winnipeg, December 8, 2006
Max arranged to meet with Sergeant Phil Garrison of the RCMP in front of a Saint Boniface liquor store. Garrison had volunteered for the force’s Christmas decoration party and was on refreshments duty. Arms filled with bottles, he placed his bags on the hood of his car and turned to shake Max’s hand.
“Mark Callaghan? Nice to meet you.”
Garrison was open to lunch on Main Street. The sergeant had an hour to chat but not a minute more. He laughed. “My colleagues are anxiously waiting for me.”
A ruddy-faced man whose belly had grown along with the stripes on his shoulders, though he was still physically strong. An archetypal RCMP officer. Max could imagine him on a brochure. Did he know Marilyn Burgess? Probably not. While Max was sure pictures of him had circulated in every local RCMP office in Canada, the rank and file rarely paid attention to wanted posters. In Winnipeg, Garrison had other fish to fry — that much was clear. He wasn’t focused on catching international criminals still believed to be in Romania.
Max claimed he was a journalist on sabbatical, researching a book on the Canadian Romani community. He was currently working on a chapter about Ioan Costinar. Garrison had been part of the team who’d investigated the murder.
“It was a spectacular crime. To me it looked like someone wanted to settle a score. Two men stopped their car alongside Costinar’s at a red light. A single shot from a man in the back seat. Costinar was struck in the head. They used a Walther P99, a professional’s weapon. There was blood everywhere …”
Costinar’s driver hadn’t panicked; he’d peeled off straight for the hospital. But by the time he got there, Costinar was already dead.
“We found his ears next to his body on the back seat. Covered in blood.”
“His ears?”
Prosthetics, Garrison explained. Synthetic material made to imitate skin. He’d lost his ears as a young man in a torture room at Rahova Prison. Costinar, another one of Ceauşescu’s victims.
“The poor man took them off before going to bed at night, like dentures or a pair of glasses. Awful, right?”
“And the killers?”
“Not a trace.”
Garrison knew Costinar had been in Winnipeg to raise funds. He had interrogated everyone the Romani leader had spoken with before meeting his untimely end. He’d even gone to Chicago to talk with Romani community leaders there, but no dice. They were all shocked, saddened, revolted. And they all had iron-clad alibis. It had been a real professional job.
“A hit, then? Sponsored by someone?”
“That was our conclusion. A perfectly executed hit.”
Of course, they’d gone over every inch of the crime scene and interrogated the few witnesses. The bullet found in Costinar’s body was sent to the United States for analysis: no previous crime had been committed with the same weapon. Another dead end.
“And you spoke to his widow?”
“Laura. Yes, I called her. She was terribly distraught.” His face darkened. “And they got her, too, in the end.”
Garrison knew about the killing in Bucharest, of course. Thankfully, he wasn’t drawing a line between Max O’Brien, the number one suspect, and this journalist come to ask him questions …
“Do you think the crimes are connected?”
Garrison shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. He looked at his watch. He was anxious to get back to the office.
Max hesitated, then asked, “Do you think all the Roma you spoke to told you the truth?”
“The truth?”
“I’ve been told they like taking care of their own problems internally.”
“The Roma collaborated with our investigation in an absolutely impeccable manner. The murder revolted them. They wanted to find those responsible as much as we did.”
“I was referring to their reputation of hiding things from the gadje. A way of protecting themselves. Do you see what I mean?”
Garrison smiled. “No, they didn’t lie to me, let me assure you.”
“Lying is an art.”
“I know how to recognize a liar when I see one.”
“Still …”
“I come from a Vlach-Roma family. I speak Romani fluently. That’s why I was put on the case.” Garrison smiled at Max’s surprised air. He glanced at his watch and sighed. “Fine, fine. I’ll let them decorate the tree without me. Come.”
Max left his Subaru behind and climbed into Garrison’s patrol car. Soon Winnipeg and its large avenues gave way to seemingly endless fields covered in snow. Garrison told how his grandfather and his family had used to live in a mobile home and how they had followed carnivals and amusement parks across Canada and the United States. Garrison still travelled a little. Every summer he and his family drove all the way to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré near Quebec City. It was a Romani pilgrimage as important for North American Roma as the one in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer was for Europeans.
“Which doesn’t mean we don’t practise our own religion,” he added.
Romaníya, inspired by Hinduism.
“Or respect Kris romani, the traditional Romani tribunals. Of course, participating in a kris doesn’t mean you believe it has precedence over an actual gadjo tribunal.”
From the Greek krisis, meaning “judgment,” it was more of a mediation instrument than a tribunal. The Kris romani also played the role of a proto-parliament, a place for the Roma to hash out issues of concern.
The two men drove for a time, then Max asked, “Who do you think had it in for him? Ioan Costinar, I mean.”
“Skinheads, neo-Nazis, anti-Roma radicals — in other words, Romanian extreme right-wing groups. They’re probably behind Laura’s murder, as well.”
“Do you really think they’re sufficiently organized to carry out such a complicated operation?”
Max had his doubts. Garrison shared them. So who could it have been?
Garrison finally answered. “Perhaps the Romanian government itself.”
Max had had the same thought. To many, including Toma Boerescu, the fall of the Ceauşescu regime was little more than a palace coup. The pretenders to the throne had harnessed popular anger to get rid of the old dictator. Romania was the only country in Eastern
Europe whose transition out of communism had been so violent. Since Ceauşescu’s execution, the situation of the Roma had worsened. And probably that of mainstream Romanians, as well. Max remembered reading somewhere that in 1999 two-thirds of Romanians were at least a little wistful about life under Ceauşescu, despite the Securitate and the absence of freedom. After all, their democracy was no more than an exercise in the redistribution of power to former apparatchiks. Boerescu had spoken the truth plainly. The country had replaced the benefits of communism with the drawbacks of capitalism.
Phil Garrison’s coming in with a stranger raised a few eyebrows in the village. They were sedentary Romani here, the policeman explained. Six generations since the Vlach-Roma first came. Three individuals walked out of a bungalow to greet Garrison and Max. Their hard eyes half hidden behind their hats, all three of them with thick moustaches. To their right, another man washed an enormous Chrysler by hand. He stopped, looked at them, hose in hand. Everyone watched the newcomers without saying a word.
In Romani, Garrison asked to see Jennifer. One of the men gestured toward the field behind them, and a troop of children ran in that direction. A brick home became visible behind a bouquet of trees. A young woman came out of it, chalk in hand.
“Jennifer works for the Woodlands School Board,” Garrison explained. “She’s responsible for the integration of recently immigrated Roma. She teaches them how to read and write.”
The newcomers were refugees from persecution in the Czech Republic. They had come to Canada in 1997, under intense scrutiny after a number of Canadian media types had repeated tired old Romani clichés. While other waves of immigration had taken place in relative anonymity, the arrival of the Roma occurred in the public eye. Their integration thus became a priority for politicians, who sought to make sure they quickly joined the ranks of the eighty thousand or so Roma already well integrated into Canadian society. Jennifer was one of the people called upon to help this process along.