by Rana Bose
“What made your late husband start the business with gravestones?” I asked.
“Oh, it was in the family! My grandpa was doing it in Brooklyn, you know. Moshe’s grandfather had started one in Newark, but he gave up and started a shop on Canal Street selling Swiss watches, pens, and jewellery. Moshe’s father was an expert with marble, a stone carver. Not a bad one.” She said “bad” like a long, stretched-out word. Baaaade. I liked that. “He stuck to it. Persevered. But we figured Montreal would be good. Also, I was learning Hebrew and we came here on a visit and the school had no teachers, the old lady from Poland having died. Imagine! So my mother got that job, besides doing her needle trade business. Now I’m past seventy and Moshe’s gone! Who’d a believed it?” Her eyes watered and she looked away towards the bookshelves.
Sometimes when I had dinner with them, she’d give me a bigger piece of wild salmon than she gave Nat. He’d say, “See! That’s not ’cause you’re a guest. That’s ’cause she thinks you’re a surrogate son.” But it didn’t faze her. She’d wink at me and tell Nat my mom would do the same.
I felt this connection with her because she didn’t conceal her fondness for me. Perhaps I was too involved in what was not my business. Perhaps I should be censured for asking questions about an émigré history that wasn’t my own. Perhaps. But his mother enjoyed spending her lonely nights telling me stories that no one else would listen to. Moreover, she incited in me a reason to question everything like my grandfather did.
As far as the Myra situation went, I didn’t discuss it that night, although I had intended to. I trudged home fingering the same scraps of paper in my pocket, seventeen different clues all carefully fondled, all vying for a brief flirtation with my curious fingers. Perhaps, I thought, if I didn’t pay equal attention to each clue then the murderer would slip away, or the tango dancer would disappear.
The moon slid by the sulphated copper dome of another heritage building renovated beyond rescue. The smell of beer and pizza wafted past me and into the open mouth of the Alfred Hitchcock painted on an alley wall at the end of a cul-de-sac. Someone passing by gave me a shove and didn’t say pardon, but by the time I turned around he was gone so I mumbled a low sonofabitch. No one heard. I said sonofabitch again, but only in my head this time.
Why hadn’t he told me where he was going? There are partitions in his head. Makeshift corridors that he knows how to negotiate. I remain a coiled viper. Lying lazy and motionless. I do not react even when my anger is building up. I hiss inside.
Chapter Eight
Finally, Ms. Banks
She was there on a Wednesday afternoon, sitting on the outside stairs to my apartment, legs crossed. I was coming back from work, the sky was clear and blue. Her face was partially framed by the geraniums planted by the landlord. I could see she wore those large sunglasses graded from dark to light, top to bottom. I noticed her torn fishnet stockings. Black. The sun caressed her mourning legs while casting long shadows from the houses on the other side of the street. I walked slowly up to her and leaned against the railing. She was looking down the street and hadn’t seen me coming. She turned, a bit surprised, and then said, “So how’d you figure out it was me?”
“I guessed, but I wasn’t sure,” I said, with a cool that I was beginning to cultivate. “I knew Nat had something to do with it, so I put two and two together.”
“That Malia is Myra?” she asked coldly.
“Yeah.” I smiled pleasantly.
“Well, she isn’t!” She was dead serious. “But that’s another story.” She looked away. “How ‘bout coffee? You can treat. Your reputation won’t go down the tubes, you know what I mean? Or don’t you wanna be seen with me? Well, I’m not goin’ away from these stairs. I will sit here till you do something.”
I fidgeted a bit. Did not say anything.
“Are you incapable of reacting?”
She fired away, smug and self-contented. Skipping over the obvious and going straight for the jugular. Or, like a child in an elevator, she simply liked to press all the buttons. She hoped to set off fire alarms, stir up problems, and throw it all in the air like debris. She liked strife. I felt awkward beneath her onslaught, but my brain didn’t send any signals to my mouth. She carried on.
“Ah! I see. You want me to say sorry for gettin’ upset, is that it? But I did what I did, you know, for the right reasons, so I won’t!”
She put her hand out delicately, like she was offering it for a polite shake. I pulled her up with enough force that she stood on her heels, hobbled a bit, and then gave me a kiss on each cheek. There was no alcohol on her breath, but there were remnants of a flowery perfume mixed with sweat.
“My place or the pub?” I asked, without any trace of nervousness.
“Why would I be waiting here if we were going to go to a pub?” she shot back. We climbed the stairs to the second floor. I had cleaned up my two rooms and even the kitchen. I had actually bought a new flat panel and mounted it on the wall. My place looked good. The desk and the computer table were a mess, however, as I had been writing and printing. I asked her to make herself comfortable and then went to tidy, gathering the papers and putting a large architectural magazine on top. “No need to clean up,” she said, “I’m not here trying to pry. Do you know why I’m here?”
I sensed that she was more prepared to defend than I was prepared to attack. In a way that was good, because I wasn’t about to let myself be raked over again. Had she realized she had gone overboard?
“I figured you thought it over, after you got my email explaining the mishap, and that you believed me.” I cleared my throat to continue. “And then Nat must have given you my address, so you decided to walk over rather than send me an email. I appreciate that.”
Nat figured in every conversation, in every move I made.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Not so fast! I did have second thoughts, but I still felt that you had jerked me around by not turning up. I actually went and saw Mrs. Karamanlis two days after I got your email. She said it was all true, that she had screwed up and left the wrong room number with her dumb-ass nephew. So, yes, finally, I felt that I shouldn’t have dumped on you. In all honesty, I felt like making it up to you. I scared the shit out of her, I think, and she didn’t bring up the smashed mirror.” She crossed her legs, totally self-assured.
“But the question I have,” I said, “is how you knew it was me, the same person as at the chiropractor’s? Did Nat set it up?”
“Of course, he did! How many Chuck Bhatts are there in town? And besides, I knew your name from the office file. Nat said a lot of things about you that I liked. And I knew that I had planted a seed in your head about the plane and Trois-Pistoles. Up there! It’s true, isn’t it? And you’re a writer, right? I got you thinking!”
“I try to write, yes. I have brandy, Jameson, some Merlot and maybe a few beers. What would you like?” I felt measured and in control. I knew she was watching my every move.
“I said coffee, didn’t I?” Her testiness wasn’t going away, but I was ready to take her on. She had crossed her arms over her chest. I was tensile, stretching myself. Trying to be easy, all over. But, somewhere I felt that if there was one more provocation, I’d throw her out of my apartment. Maybe. There was an impossible sweetness in her.
“Okay! So, coffee it shall be.” I went over to the kitchen counter and started a brew. I returned and sat on the couch opposite her. I noticed, with her shades off, that she had dark patches under her eyes. She noticed as well.
“Don’t worry, I’ve been sleeping well, but I need to sleep more!” And she laughed. “Now we have two ways to start this conversation. We can talk about the tango, or we can talk about Trois-Pistoles and Myra. Which is it?”
I noticed she didn’t bring up Malia. “I’d like to know Malia better.” This seemed to annoy her, so I continued, “But I’d also like to know what you feel about Dr. Roberge and why
he took off for the Caribbean. You know there’s something about Linda St-Onge and her death that really bothers me. Something smells bad, so I checked some things out, and I discovered stuff I’d like to share with you.” She stared at me earnestly.
“Well,” she said, “I think he was planning the trip for a while. I overheard stuff. He had made a few trips while I was still working for him and the second lady he married, Jacops or something, she came by a few times. They were seeing each other long before Linda died. By the way, did Nat tell you that I was a hooker or something like that? Actually, I’m not.”
Out of the blue! She had said this with her head down, looking at her fingernails.
“No, he never said such a thing. Why would he? He said you’re serious about getting into acting, although he felt that you let people give you a reputation you didn’t deserve.”
I would have explained further, but she interrupted.
“Wait a minute! So, he brought up the issue himself—or did you—the hooker thing?”
“He said some folks in the neighbourhood saw you differently than you were and he was annoyed by it.”
“He’s a decent guy, Nat. Sometimes overconfident but . . . he’s also at a loss and doesn’t know what to do, you know what I mean?” She said this looking straight into my eyes.
“Actually, I don’t know what you mean, but are you saying that you’re at a loss and don’t know what to do?” I held her gaze.
“Of course, who isn’t? Aren’t you?”
“No. I work three or four days a week and then I write and hang around the pubs. I’m not at a loss. Did Nat tell you I was writing short stories about the Main?” I covered my lack of confidence well. The conversation was going nowhere. I returned to the kitchen to prepare the coffee for her in a large mug. I put it on a tray with a few cookies, sugar, and a little pot of milk. She looked at it and asked if I had anything savoury. I went back to my little pantry closet and found some cheese sticks. She was hungry.
“I like these! These are good. I like salty cheddar.” She settled down and ate several as she sipped her coffee. “Nat told me you’ve been a close buddy of his for a long time, since high school, that he trusted you, and that you were a serious sort of guy who worked on things until you finished them. That was meant as a compliment you know. He really feels close to you.”
“Anything else?” I asked. The compliments were beside the point.
“Well, he said you’d like to see me for some special reasons and it made me curious. So he gave me your email address but I wanted to play it safe. You never know what kind of weirdo you’re dealing with.”
I assured her that there were plenty of those around here. I told her that I had wanted to see her because after we’d met the second time she told me how the chiro was married to the heiress and that his ex-wife, the painter, had died in a plane crash. “It stirred something in me and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Go away! You couldn’t sleep?”
“There was something about it I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”
“Is that why you so desperately wanted to see me?” She asked without any mischief in her eyes. She sipped the coffee and looked up at me as a child might. This girl needed to be hugged and yet I was not ready to do it.
I walked over to a couch opposite her and sat on the arm. I slowly told her, in a low-keyed manner, what I had found out in my library searches. I explained how I thought that a woman with large shades and a Benz idling outside had handed me the bomb that blew up the plane in which Linda St. Onge was flying. She stared at me for a few seconds and I felt something volcanic building up in her and then she exploded.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Are you serious?” She jumped up, came over, and put her hands around my shoulders. I was a bit taken aback and felt awkward. I am generally awkward and don’t know what to do with my hands in such situations.
“Oh my God! What’s going to happen? You know what I mean? Oh my God! Are you going to do something? Fuck! Does Nat know? Oh my God! Cold-ass bitch! I saw her go into the doc’s office so many times! No wonder! Shit! Now, I won’t sleep tonight. That’s it. Look what you’ve done to me! How am I going to sleep tonight?”
“I’m not sure it was her. Maybe someone she set up.”
“Oh it was her! I know for sure!” Her voice went hoarse as she said it.
She went on like that, repeating “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” mechanically and pacing around the coffee table. Then she went back to the couch. I got up and stood against the kitchen counter, not knowing what to say or do next. I felt guilty about precipitating this frenzied situation, but I felt good about it, too.
I tried to present myself as calm, serious, and not at all distracted by her attractiveness, although my inherent stiffness began to bother me. I looked through the parting of the white curtain on my kitchen window towards my neighbour’s balcony. She had put a bougainvillea in a white pot and the flowers poured over the edge in a reddish pink cascade. An effusive unrestrained overflow. It calmed me.
“But you know, you can’t let this slide. I mean, she can’t . . . well, they both can’t get away with it.” There was the wild attractiveness. The sublime conviction.
I wondered if I should show her the photocopies of my findings in the library, but she was already too anxious, and I wanted her to settle down. It was at that point she stood up abruptly, went to the washroom, and didn’t return. I started to wonder what to do. I asked if she was okay. No answer. Eventually she emerged, looking tidied and refreshed. She put her arms around me and gave me a hug and said, “Don’t worry. I won’t discuss it with no one and if there’s any way you want me to help, just give me a shout.”
“I’d like your help,” I said. “Can you stay for a while?”
She looked at the black dial on her watch and said, “I have to be home.”
“Can I walk you there?”
It turned out she lived in a two-room apartment off Avenue du Mont-Royal. I accompanied her to the front door. She gave me a long hug and kissed me on both cheeks, then asked if I still needed a chiro. I told her my back was stronger. She turned to go up the stairs but then swivelled back, came down the stairs, and put her arms around me and squeezed the area at the bottom of my backbone. “Sherlock,” she quipped, “I’m with you on this one.” She laughed out loud. Her laughter resonated in that noisy street.
I had finally met Myra Banks. My spirits lifted. I hadn’t set up an appointment to meet her again, nor had I taken down her telephone number, but we knew where to find each other. It was only a question of time. The coils of tension in me were stretching out, seeking a free state. Good God! I wanted to sin right there and then. I mean I felt released, abandoned, unrestricted, unashamed, and energized. I wanted to ride out on a horse, coattails flying, hooves barely grazing the ground. I would pull out and point the tip of my sword with enormous zeal and desire at that target of evil and injustice that I was ready to pierce and knock to the ground. With the same intensity that had been missing in my life for so long.
Chapter Nine
Blown from the Inside
A week later, I reached home and found an envelope tucked under my door. In it was a cut-out from a newspaper with a picture of Corinthe Gabriel-Jacops. Myra had attached a short note: “Take a good look—that’s her without the shades—the parcel bearer. Love, M.”
M, eh?
I stared at the picture, briefly locked in fear as I looked into her eyes. I wasn’t sure if that was the face I remembered. But the picture was helpful, and ‘M’ was on board. I flipped open my laptop and continued searching the Internet, scouring the newspapers or websites dealing with the Bas-Saint-Laurent region. Whenever I found anything even vaguely connected to the issue, I’d cut and paste it into a directory file entitled Trois-Pistoles Cold Case, or TPCC for short. That evening, I found a new item on a website dedicated to local news in Rivière-du-Loup, dated almos
t a year earlier, reported by one Jacques Belanger.
Apparently, a local fisherman named Rejean Bolduc had taken his boat to tour the island of Notre-Dame-de-Sept-Douleurs and had recovered several metallic pieces he thought must have come from a sunken vessel. Both parts, however, seemed to show signs of severe burning. Bolduc had taken one of the pieces to the local pastor Charles Gagnon who had served in the Second World War as an engineer in the Ferry Command, and who also had a keen interest in local history. Reverend Gagnon had doubted the pieces were from a boat.
The next morning, I managed to reach the website by phone and asked to speak to Jacques Belanger. They told me he had left the area, having moved to Vancouver almost a year ago. When pressed, they insisted they had no contact with him. I gave them my contact information and made a quick note that I stuck on the corkboard next to my desk: Boat or plane? Charles Gagnon?
Two weeks later I was surprised to find a long email from Jacques Belanger himself. He had, of course, been contacted by the protocol-savvy paper.
Dear Mr. Bhatt,
I believe you’ve been looking for me. Unfortunately, I’m in Caracas for the next few months.
In relation to your inquiries, I did have an extensive chat with Reverend Gagnon regarding the discovered pieces and wrote a feature piece for a Montreal paper based on the recorded interview. However, the paper seemed to lose interest after requesting several edits. I am attaching the unpublished piece. However, more pertinent, are the following quotes transcribed from the original meeting with Reverend Gagnon. They form the basis of the material redacted from the article.
Transcript: “The fisherman Bolduc actually recovered two pieces. One was from the sea, entangled in his net, but the other, believe it or not, was found almost five kilometres inland, close to his house. If he had not seen the first piece, he might have ignored the second, for if you look at both pieces you’ll notice they are identical, although inverse. They are both sections of the floor of the cargo hold, one from the right, one from the left. If you look at the holes in them you will notice that they were both blown out from the inside, like the petals of a flower. And yet the investigating team declared that the plane most likely had engine failure while caught in a crosswind and plunged into the water. If it had plunged into the water the bodies would have been recoverable intact, but only body fragments were recovered.”