Montreal Noir Read online

  Albertson abandons the car and heads for the garage door, but it is weighted down, far too heavy for him to lift. He’s only one man, alone and under assault, and he’s entered some crazy alternate reality. And for what? Because he saw some horses on the street? More than some, sure, a lot, that was a lot of horses, but what does it matter? Who cares about these horses and what he saw? Where is this garage? Why are these people doing this?

  Why haven’t they killed me? he wonders.

  Albertson stumbles over to the worktable and peers underneath it. He sees a key. He takes the key and studies the garage door, the chain, the concrete weight. The chain and weight are held together with a lock. Not even a large one at that. He puts the key into the lock and the tension of the chain is released. It whips out, and the garage door flies open.

  It is day. Albertson looks around and is running as soon as he is on the street, in a part of town he doesn’t quite know. It’s suburban; the street signs are different. He figures he’s far from home. He runs. He runs past closed office buildings, warehouses, and derelict garages, much like the one he was just in. He turns onto a busy street with buildings inhabited by commerce. There’s traffic on the street, and Albertson hails a cab. When he gets inside, he asks to go home.

  * * *

  He steps into the apartment and of course Mrs. Sen is sitting there, in the dark, on his love seat, waiting for him. At her feet is the bag with the shit-covered shoe.

  “I should probably laugh,” Albertson says. He goes to his fridge and grabs a beer, joining Mrs. Sen in the living room. “I should, shouldn’t I?”

  Mrs. Sen nudges the bag toward him with her foot. “Tell me about this,” she says.

  Albertson takes a pull of his beer. It feels like liquid gold going down his throat. He thinks he should probably eat, except he’s not hungry. “Tell me what’s going on,” he says.

  Mrs. Sen sighs. She lets out a lot of air and sits back on the love seat. “Mr. Albertson . . .” she says, like she’s apologizing.

  “You invite me to your place, and before that, you say something about the horses. So you got my attention. And then your husband, the judge—he’s a judge!—has his goon attack me. So I wake up in a dark room. And then I wake up in a motel. His goon is there, and attacks me again. So I wake up in the back of a cab in a disco garage . . .” Albertson pauses to see if Mrs. Sen has anything to say, but she just stares at him with a kind of maternal blankness, as if she were expecting disappointment. “What the fuck, Mrs. Sen?”

  “Louis is my second husband.”

  Albertson knows this. He finds it odd that she would make this point now, after all he’s confronted her with. This is not a response. This is nothing. A non sequitur. Why is Mrs. Sen in my apartment? he asks himself, knowing an answer is impossible.

  “My first husband was a cardiologist. Dr. Sen. A very accomplished man. But he died, as you know.” She lets the information sink in. Again. She knows he knows all of this. “I’ve been married to a cardiologist, and now a judge.”

  Albertson thinks back to when he’s sold Mrs. Sen shoes. He thinks of the ungodly amount of shoes she has bought from him. The Imelda Marcos amount of shoes. Her lingerie shop is always empty; she’s married to a judge.

  He thinks that a normal person would go to the cops, but he doesn’t trust the cops. Not in this city. Not if a judge has old guys ready to punch him and stuff him in cabs and take him to disco garages. For the first time, Albertson is thinking of a conspiracy. Something vast. An ocean. The kind of conspiracy that doesn’t seem like anything until the anvil of it falls in front of you. Those horses were real but he’s not supposed to know about them. Bertrand told him that this went far and wide.

  “Why is your husband’s friend punching me in the mouth?” he asks Mrs. Sen.

  “My husband wanted to stick to law. He was an excellent lawyer. He’s told me that so many times.”

  “Mrs. Sen!”

  “Once, I lost my nail clippers. I found them two weeks later in a bottle of Tums.”

  She’s lost her mind. Albertson can see that now. What she’s doing here is another matter. He’s not even sure how she knows where he lives. The judge has placed her here. To scare him? What has he done to his wife? She’s a shell, empty, discarded. A void.

  He reaches over and takes the bag with the shit-covered shoe. It’s been out awhile now, apparently, and it’s starting to smell. The horse shit never dried; he put it in the freezer still fresh, and now it’s thawing out. He stands and takes it to the fridge. Except his bag is still in there. He opens the bag in his hand and it’s one of Mrs. Sen’s shoes—a shoe he once sold to her—and it is also covered in horse shit.

  “My husband hates those shoes,” she says.

  He turns and she is standing at the door to the kitchen.

  “He says the color doesn’t suit the shape, or something. He’s a very intellectual man. But he doesn’t really have good taste in shoes.”

  Is she crazy or speaking in code? Albertson’s head feels like it’s being struck by boulders.

  “Are you even old enough to remember cassette tapes?” she asks him.

  The light in the apartment changes. Night is coming. Albertson realizes he doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t even know if he should be tired or not.

  “I cannot patronize your store any longer,” she says. “I am forbidden.”

  Albertson imagines the moment before a jumper gives in to the physics of their reality. The feeling of utter loss, and freedom.

  “Keep my shoe,” she says. “You might need it. I’m almost sure you will.”

  She turns to leave. Albertson can’t even bring himself to call out, to ask her to wait, to ask even a single question.

  * * *

  Albertson wants to call someone, but he doesn’t trust his landline or his cell phone. He is likely being monitored, likely at this very moment. He paces. And then he thinks of his neighbors. What if they report him? All this pacing. It must be driving them mad. He lies on his bed. He tries to sleep. But he can only think of Bertrand and his gray suit. He keeps imagining Bertrand punching him, in slow motion, over and over. With this image, he finally falls asleep.

  * * *

  The phone rings. Albertson is startled and sleepily reaches for the phone.

  “Don’t speak,” he hears. He thinks it’s Mrs. Sen but he can’t be sure. “Just listen. Hold on.” Albertson pinches his arm to make sure he’s awake. “The granola is in the pantry behind the cornflakes! Sorry,” she says. “Louis can’t find anything in this house. He’s useless.”

  “Mrs. Sen?”

  “Yes.”

  Albertson doesn’t trust the phone.

  “There’s a horse festival happening, up in Little Italy. Have you heard of this?”

  “What?”

  “I said behind the cornflakes! On the third shelf! Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Le Festival des Chevaliers, or something. My god, there’s a festival for everything in this city.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You know why,” Mrs. Sen says.

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “It’s new. It’s a horse festival. It’s in Little Italy. It has some government money from the city, and a lot of business money. Mostly construction companies.”

  Albertson wishes he’d never seen the horses. He wishes he’d never stepped in horse shit. “When?” he asks.

  “It starts tonight.”

  “I haven’t heard about it.”

  “Me neither,” Mrs. Sen whispers. “Louis told me.”

  She hangs up. Albertson puts his phone down and closes his eyes. The sleep never comes. He knows what he must do.

  * * *

  Albertson heads up Saint-Laurent toward Little Italy. Mile End’s not far, but Little Italy is on the other side of the tracks and the crumbling underpass. The city is always claiming to fix the underpass, but then pleads poverty, makes
the next neighborhood over seem farther than it is—Little Italy, and Mile Ex, a made-up neighborhood next to Little Italy where you can find beer gardens and restaurants serving foraged food, where bands consist of Casio keyboards, laptops, and two people smoking e-cigs. A neighborhood not really made by hipsters, but one created for them—both of these places are psychologically far from Mile End, even though they are nothing more than a twenty-minute walk, at most.

  Before Albertson can notice the new faux diners, kitchen design stores, and dépanneurs serving artisanal toast, he’s in Little Italy, past the marble gates and into the neighborhood. There’s a sign for the horse festival, and in the park he finds people milling about, looking handsome, sipping wine. In the grandstand, Albertson sees Louis, surrounded by important- looking people; some of them are wearing top hats and fedoras. They are the only ones in the grandstand, above everyone else, and they have access to a microphone. Everyone in the park is listening to Louis. He’s the one speaking. The important- looking people are standing behind him, looking important. Albertson doesn’t see any horses.

  The crowd claps. Louis has finished speaking.

  Banners snap in the breeze. There are hundreds of people in the park—families, well-dressed couples, small children wearing designer clothing. Italian music plays over loudspeakers. Albertson makes his way toward the grandstand. He shouldn’t be here, he realizes. Louis might kill him. But he wants to see the horses, wants to confront Louis when the horses come out. Nothing can happen to him here. He’s safe. There are cameras and microphones. The park is well lit. Albertson smells grilled meat, and at one end of the park he sees smoke. A balloon flies above his head, toward space, free from the pull of gravity.

  Albertson walks in Louis’s direction. Why are judges such big shots? he wonders.

  Louis sees him and smiles. Albertson stops. He has to confront the man. The breeze shifts, the smoke from the grills swirling around him, and he finally realizes that this festival is serving horse meat.

  The people are here to eat horses.

  Albertson thinks: So what? You can find horse meat all over this city. You can find the stuff in the grocery store. On menus in not-particularly-ambitious restaurants. People eat horses here. People eat everything here because people like to eat. There are no foie gras protests in Montreal.

  “It’s quite something,” Louis says, surveying the park with a father’s pride.

  “Those horses I saw . . .” Albertson says.

  “You did not see horses.”

  “Let’s not play that game anymore.”

  “You saw a run for freedom, perhaps.” Louis is still smiling. He’s won.

  Albertson doesn’t know what Louis thinks he’s won, but the smile is the smile of a winner. Albertson feels hands on each of his arms, and he is slowly being led away. Two very large men in black T-shirts and dark sunglasses lead him behind the grandstand. “What is going on?” he asks.

  Louis, who has followed them, stops smiling and sighs. “My wife visited you?”

  Albertson sees Bertrand. He is walking toward them, a glass of red wine in hand. He puts the wine down and extends his hand. Albertson shakes it. “Your wife visited me, yes. But you knew that.”

  Frank Sinatra plays over the loudspeakers, “My Way.” Albertson wants to laugh. At this touch. “No media,” he says. “Nothing. How are all these people here with no publicity?”

  “Look at all the television cameras,” Louis says.

  “Why didn’t the television networks cover the horses, then?”

  “The horses you didn’t see?”

  “I have proof I saw them.”

  “And how is it that no one else saw these horses? How is it that no one in your entire neighborhood saw these galloping horses that you claim to have seen, Mr. Albertson?”

  Albertson doesn’t know. He can’t even pretend to know. “My question is why you’ve gone through all this trouble.”

  “Did you read the papers this morning?” Louis asks. He knows Albertson hasn’t. He’s asking rhetorical questions to prove he’s in charge.

  Bertrand takes a page from that morning’s La Presse from his back pocket and unfolds it. Right there on the front, the headline reads: “The Police Cavalry Has Gone Missing.”

  “We had a problem with a supplier,” Louis says. Bertrand refolds the page and puts it back in his pocket. “Not a major problem, but enough of one. And one of our sponsors said he could fix it. He had storage space too. One of his projects.”

  Albertson wants to go back to sleep. “Your wife has a shit-covered shoe as well.”

  “I never liked those shoes,” Louis says.

  Bertrand cracks his knuckles. Albertson does his best not to flinch.

  “I have discussed your situation with many people, obviously.” Louis’s tone has changed. Now it’s business. Now Albertson thinks that perhaps he will die. Right here. Surrounded by well-dressed families eating horse burgers, steaks, and sausages. “We have made some decisions.”

  Albertson knows he can’t run.

  “We have wondered how best to purchase your silence.”

  “Who would believe me?”

  “This is true. But still. We are fair people. I am, after all, a judge of the Superior Court.”

  Albertson waits for laughter.

  “You have been the manager of that store for . . . how long?”

  “Almost ten years,” Albertson says.

  “You know shoes. Ladies’ shoes. My wife is very fond of you, of your expertise.”

  Albertson wonders what has happened to Mrs. Sen, or if she has always been off. He can’t recall now.

  “We don’t want trouble.”

  Albertson expects to die any second now.

  “You will get your own store,” Louis says. “A boutique. Whatever you want to call it.”

  “Montreal doesn’t need another store selling ladies’ shoes,” Albertson says.

  “We have picked out a spot. It’s very well located. Near all the new construction in Griffintown. Or, if you would prefer, there is a spot on Laurier, on the Outremont side. But that’s a tricky street, and it’s not so good for your customers.”

  “I don’t even have a store.”

  “No, but you already have clientele.”

  Albertson understands. It has all been fixed. Not only is he going to live, he’s going to own a business. It’s going to be patronized by some wealthy women. Louis has secured everyone’s freedom. Except Albertson does not feel free.

  “All the paperwork is done and awaiting the relevant signatures. All the legalities and financials. All the construction permits.”

  Albertson feels like he’s about to shit his pants.

  “You will combine your contacts, your skills, with certain contacts that my people bring to the table. It will be a massive success. The media will be tremendous. We will make sure of it.”

  Albertson just wants to faint. He wants to be tough and he wants to yell for help. To scream. “All that for horse sausages?” he asks.

  Louis smiles again. Bertrand steps forward and punches Albertson in the face for the final time. Or maybe not. One never knows in the shoe business.

  PART II

  BLOODLINES

  Driftwood

  by Ian Truman

  Hochelaga

  “He started saying shit like he knew Bloods or something.”

  I was in my brother’s kitchen. It was a Hochelaga kitchen, which meant the counters hadn’t been changed since they were built in the thirties; the old windows let cold air in throughout the winter, and the wood walls were about to crumble under the weight of chipped paint. I couldn’t even imagine how many people were dealt with, how many deals were brokered, and how many problems were fixed in a kitchen just like this one.

  That’s why I was here: to fix things.

  My brother and I were in trouble. Not that we were the ones who caused it, but growing up where we did, you often ended up with friends who dragged you down on their wa
y to hell. There’s that saying, You don’t choose your family. Well, sometimes you didn’t choose your friends, either. Sometimes an idiot sticks with you whether you want him around or not. Julien was that kind of friend: too useless to make it and too stupid to get rid of.

  “How the fuck does Julien know any Bloods?” I asked my brother.

  “He doesn’t. At least not really. He said he knew a full-patch one, though.”

  “Bloods don’t have patches.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  “Well, even if Julien does have connection with the Bloods, why is that bad for us?” I asked.

  “Because he ran his mouth off to the wrong people. He was bragging about how he knew us, how he could sell drugs out of our bar, and how he could use his Blood friend to provide him with the dope.”

  “But why would the Hells forfeit their power in Hochelaga?”

  “That’s the thing: they didn’t. I got a visit from the Hells today. They wanted to know what the fuck was going on and why they were hearing these rumors. They asked if I knew the guy yapping his mouth, and I had to say yes, because I do.”

  “So now we’re fucked.”

  “Well, now they want a meeting.”

  “Fuck!” I paced the kitchen and picked at my nails. “And Julien’s Blood—is he legitimate?”

  “I’d be surprised if he was. He’s probably just some fucking wigger from Laval.”

  “A wigger from Laval?”

  “I mean, he may have access to some weed, but I’d be surprised about anything else,” my brother said, staring through the cracked kitchen window. “Legitimate or not, the Hells now think we’re willing to go behind their back to try and get a sideline going.”

  “So what, now you’d like me to fix this?”