John Matthews - The Last Witness

Funicelli headed out and down the five floors in the elevator. The doorman gave him the same curt, disinterested nod as when he’d walked in; as he did with anyone who had a key and seemed to know where they were going.

From his pre-break-in briefing, the keys had come courtesy of Simone Lacaille. Donatiens was too careful with his set. But she had a spare set to let herself in for when he was working late of a night she was due to come over; she might start preparing dinner for them or, if he’d been away for a few days, often she’d re-stock the fridge. Love. But she was careless with her set, often left them laying around. She regularly spent weekends at the Lacaille family home, particularly when her father arranged get-togethers, and it had been easy for Roman to grab the keys for a few hours to have them copied.

An hour and a half till the pre-designated time for him to call, Funicelli headed downtown and killed it having coffee and window-browsing in the underground Place Ville-Marie complex. It was too cold in the city to spend any length of time above ground. He called from a phone booth there rather than on his mobile, as instructed.

‘Yeah. City Desk.’ Roman Lacaille’s voice answering had a slight echo to it. He was leaning on the bar in their Sherbrooke club, a cavernous basement thirty metres square spread before him. The bar staff had all left long before the first twilight, the bar manager, Azy, after helping him go through the night’s till receipts, and the cleaners had just twenty minutes ago shut the door behind them. He was on his own.

‘It’s done. The place is live and kicking,’ Funicelli said.

‘When? When can we listen in?’ Roman’s tone was pushy, impatient.

‘Now. It’s already rolling. The receiving monitor’s set up only a few blocks away. Anything more than ten decibels sound and it’ll kick in, the tape will start rolling.

‘Great work. Give the Indian a cigar.’ Roman smiled. His pet names for Chenouda: Sitting Bull or Last of the Mohicans. He knew the last thing Chenouda would be getting right now was a cigar, unless he was bending over to receive it. With the Savard fiasco, maybe he should rename him Sitting Duck. ‘I’d like to go see the set-up some time, listen in. Probably best one evening. More action.’ Roman chuckled.

‘Yeah, sure. When?’

They arranged it for two evening’s time when Simone was next due to stay over, and signed off.

Roman looked thoughtfully at the club ahead after hanging up. At night it would be a sea of lithe, writhing naked bodies under wildly rotating crimson and blue penlight spots, heavy male hands eagerly reaching out to slip ten and twenty dollar bills into tangas or garters.

Up-market lap-dancing club, the last bastion of the Lacaille family’s past criminal empire. Five year’s back, they’d had associations with a chain of downtown and Lavalle clip joints and massage parlours rolling in big bucks. This now was the furthest Jean-Paul had decreed they should go with the flesh trade. But it was less drastic at least than his moves away from every other area — drugs, racketeering, loan-sharking, fencing; in those, he hadn’t even kept a foot in the door.

So after a decade and a half of making sure all of that ran and ran smoothly, this is what he was left with: counting the takings in a pussy club. Oh sure, they were opening another in six months and then there were the two night clubs and the restaurant. But it hardly compensated.

This squeaky-clean crusade might suit Jean-Paul, but little thought had been given to anyone else, especially him. But then Jean-Paul never had given him much thought; a tradition no doubt passed down from their father, Jean-Pierre. Pascal and Jean-Paul had always been his favourites. Now with Jean-Paul it was always Raphael, Simone, John Larsen, roughly in that order, or, more recently, Donatiens. The new golden boy.

They all no doubt looked upon him as just a dumb ox, a muscle-headed old-school moustache Pete, and becoming more of a dinosaur by the day with Jean-Paul’s new business direction. Redundant.

Most of his life he’d spent in Jean-Paul’s shadow, but no more. He had more street-smarts than the lot of them put together, and the time to make his play couldn’t be riper. Though everything with Savard had gone well, half of it had been laid in his lap by the RCMP. The next stage with Donatiens wouldn’t be so easy.

The pressure mounted steadily through the day.

Just before lunch, Maury Legault put his head round Michel’s door with the news that they’d found the van used with Savard, left abandoned in a Saint Hubert side-street.

Maury was tentative, hesitant, as he passed on the information — even though Michel had made it clear first thing to the entire squad room that it should be the prime focus of their efforts. ‘No let up until we see a breakthrough.’

But then interruptions had been few throughout the morning, as if people were apprehensive about entering the inner sanctum of his office with its photo-montage homage to the Lacailles. And when he did venture out, the normal frantic hubbub of the squad room would noticeably subside and a few eyes would avert and look down, suddenly absorbed with desk paperwork. It was as if he’d had a close relative die, not an informant.

‘Was it the original registration?’ he asked Maury.

No, the plates had been switched. ‘The original to match the chassis number was reported stolen in the early hours yesterday morning. We pulled it up just minutes ago on the bulletin board.’

Pretty much as Michel had expected. Maury informed him that forensics and two mechanics were going over the van with a fine tooth comb, but Michel wasn’t holding his breath. One of the Lacailles past enterprises had been an auto-chop shop. They knew how to make sure a vehicle was left clean.

Three hours later Maury came back with the news that it looked like it had been steam and chemically cleaned.

Michel simply nodded and cast his eyes down, numbed more by a pervading lethargy that this would be the pattern at every turn than his lack of surprise. And partly lack of sleep. He hadn’t slept well the night before the Savard sting operation, turning over in his mind all manner of possible scenarios; now only two hours last night. He felt ragged.

Trying desperately to avoid his department head, Chief-Inspector Pelletier, hadn’t helped. He already knew what was coming. Pelletier had left him alone the first few hours of the day: respect for Savard or the dead case? But then Pelletier obviously thought sufficient mourning time had passed, so that Michel could explain, clearly and succinctly, how everything could have fallen apart so disastrously.

The calls, one just before lunch and another early afternoon, came from Maggie Laberge, Pelletier’s PA, through Christine Hebert, one of two Constables on the open squad-room message desk. Always protocol and distance with Pelletier.

Michel parried the first call by passing the message through Hebert that he knew what it was about, but he was still busy gaining vital information to be able to give Pelletier the full picture. With the second call, he spoke directly to Laberge and sold her more of the same: ‘We’re close to breakthrough on a couple of key things. Each extra second I spend close on top of everything right now is vital. Hopefully things should free up in an hour or two.’

Soon after, Chac informed him that yet again Arnaiz in Mexico hadn’t turned up anything suspicious on Donatiens; then Maury came in with the news about the steam-cleaning. Each extra hour he delayed only made the picture worse, not better. Screw-up of the year, and any hope of redemption was fast disappearing with each extra head that appeared at his door or fresh file slapped on his desk.