Montreal Noir Read online

  He starts to moan involuntarily, racking his memory as he drives on autopilot, not registering when he turns west onto René-Lévesque, barely seeing the road or the cars in front of him. Crash in New York . . . Two airplanes . . . What airline was it, again? He’d read it earlier . . . Delta, yes . . . Shit, there’s no Rue Delta in Montreal.

  But there is Hôtel Delta—downtown.

  The buzzing in his brain stops all of a sudden. Could the bomb be planted there? Létourneau said it was on a street. Where is the hotel, exactly? On Avenue du Président-Kennedy . . . and the airport in New York was John F. Kennedy Airport!

  This revelation arrives with such intensity that for a moment he sees nothing but a blinding white light. A shock brings him back to reality, propelling him forward with such force that his nose collides violently with the steering wheel. Dazed, he realizes he’s hit the car in front of him. The driver leaps out of his Lexus, curses, marches up to Hugues’s vehicle, and starts kicking the passenger door.

  Hugues jumps out to calm the guy who, seeing the reporter’s bloody nose, stops kicking, but remains furious.

  “Jesus Christ, learn to drive!” the guy says as he eyes the logo on Hugues’s car. “And you’re a traffic reporter? Bravo, genius!”

  Hugues apologizes, says that the damage seems minor, and manages to remain polite even if he wants to tell the guy to fuck off; but the latter insists they call the police. Other drivers pass by slowly and cast jeering looks at the two of them.

  With shaky hands, Hugues holds out the station’s business card to the man. “Call them, they’ll . . . It’s one of the largest radio stations in Montreal, they’ll take care of it!”

  The guy stares at him skeptically and, grumbling, finally agrees to leave.

  Hugues hurries back to his car, gets behind the wheel, starts driving again, checks the time: 4:20! He missed his 4:18 update! All because of that fucking imbecile.

  A cell phone rings. He answers, sure that it’s Létourneau.

  Damnit, it’s Diane. “Well, Hugues, I should have stopped at Rockland after all, my girlfriend just called to tell me there was a sale on—”

  He disconnects, cursing. Then he dials a number and the voice of his program director comes on.

  “Where’d you go, Hugues?”

  “Technical problem, but I’m back! You can put me on the air now.”

  “That’s okay. We can put you back on at 4:33,” the director says.

  “No! Listen, Simon, it’s a circus downtown, I have to . . . I have to go on!”

  “Come on, it can wait.”

  The reporter glances at the clock on his dashboard: 4:21 p.m. Four minutes before the explosion. “No, it can’t! I need to go on right away!”

  “Hugues, listen, you—”

  “Simon, it’s the first time I’ve ever asked you this and I swear it’ll be the last, come on, just put me on the air!”

  Simon sighs, baffled. “Okay, in thirty seconds, after Gaétan’s sports brief.”

  Hugues disconnects, puts on his headset, wipes the blood flowing from his nose, stops at a red light. Chest heaving, he stares at the clock as if looking into the eyes of a dangerous beast. 4:23.

  Valérie’s voice finally comes on: “And now, back to our friend Hugues with his traffic update—”

  “I’ve just been informed that Avenue du Président-Kennedy is closed near Hôtel Delta! Completely closed!” the reporter interrupts in a jumpy voice. “I suggest taking Maisonneuve, via City Councillors or de Bleury. It’ll be much faster! Okay? Is that clear? Président-Kennedy closed near Delta!”

  “Very well, thanks, Hugues . . . And for the rest of the traffic?”

  “Eh? Ah, well . . . let me . . .” He grabs his notepad, disoriented, and turns north on Peel. “It’s . . . There’s still heavy traffic on the 15 and the 640; Lafontaine Tunnel is backed up from Anjou; for the other South Shore bridges, expect half-hour delays, except for Victoria, which isn’t too bad for now.”

  Valérie thanks him again and he tosses his headset onto the passenger seat. He parks on the side of the road and keeps his eyes on the clock, his heartbeat pulsating in his head like a death knell. 4:24 p.m. . . . My God, please tell me I didn’t guess wrong, I beg you . . . 4:25! He holds his breath.

  Hugues hears nothing but the reassuring hum of traffic. No explosion, no loud or unusual sounds. He turns his head in the direction of Président-Kennedy, at least a kilometer away: no black cloud on the horizon. He keeps studying the sky for a moment, then looks back at the clock: 4:26 p.m.

  He starts to chuckle, a nervous, ambiguous chuckle, punctuated by convulsive sobs.

  A cell phone rings: Unknown Number. Hugues switches the speaker on.

  “You were late with your update,” says Létourneau.

  Hugues wants to tell him he can shove his bomb up his ass, but he knows that the lunatic could reactivate it. “I did it! It’s 4:27 and the bomb hasn’t gone off!” he crows.

  “When people realize that Avenue du Président-Kennedy wasn’t closed, they won’t be happy . . . You’ll lose your luster, my poor Hugues.” Létourneau laughs. “I was sure you’d tell them to take Maisonneuve via City Councellors or de Bleury. I’ve been listening to you for a year, Hugues, I can predict every piece of advice you give.”

  “I figured it out, damnit, that’s all that matters!”

  A long silence, then Létourneau calmly murmurs, “Drive to Rue Sherbrooke, just east of Saint-Marc. I think it’ll interest you.”

  Hugues winces. “Why? You . . . you aren’t gonna cheat me, are you?”

  “I don’t cheat, Hugues. Come on, hurry.” And he hangs up.

  Hugues hesitates, then gets back on the road, torn between curiosity and anguish. While he drives toward Sherbrooke, three different calls come in, but reading the regulars’ names on the dash screen, he doesn’t answer. He turns right on Sherbrooke and weaves through the slow traffic; confused, angry, and intrigued, all at the same time. Does Létourneau want to meet him? To convince him not to warn the cops? Is he really that insane? His cell phone rings: Unknown Number. It must be him. “Traffic?” he says.

  “You’re on your way?”

  “I just crossed Lambert-Closse, I’ll be there in a minute. What do you want, Létourneau?”

  “The point was for you to live through every stage of what I experienced.”

  “And I did, so?”

  “No, you didn’t. You didn’t feel guilt. I did, Hugues. I sent more than a hundred people to their death.”

  “Goddamnit, Létourneau! The deal was I had to guess where you hid the bomb!”

  “Yes, that was the deal.”

  Hugues passes Saint-Marc when out of nowhere a pedestrian steps off the sidewalk and plants himself in the middle of the street, in front of the vehicle. Hugues slams on the brakes, but the stranger, who must be around forty, long-haired and shabbily dressed, doesn’t move. A cell phone against his ear, the stranger stares at the reporter with an unsettling intensity. In a second, Hugues realizes who it is and a shiver runs through him. He calls out in a voice both victorious and enraged, “I did what you asked me to do, Létourneau! Admit it!”

  The man smiles, then moves his lips close to his phone. Hugues hears Létourneau’s voice in his ear: “Well, if you say you succeeded, then it’s all over.” As he says this, the ex-controller takes a pistol out from under his belt, points the barrel to his temple, and pulls the trigger. Hugues’s scream is muffled by the sound of the explosion.

  Cars stop in the middle of the street and cries of shock erupt. While a crowd gathers around the body, Hugues remains frozen, gripping the steering wheel. He gets out of his vehicle slowly, but stays close to it. The crowd blocks his view of Létourneau’s body. Almost all the cars on the street have stopped, and curious bystanders arrive from all sides: Sherbrooke is in total chaos.

  You didn’t feel guilt. I did, Hugues. I sent more than a hundred people to their death.

  Is that why he killed himself? To make Hugues
feel responsible? Well, his plan failed. All the reporter feels is a great sadness. And yet, he can’t help but sense another meaning behind Létourneau’s words, though he doesn’t know what.

  His console alarm tells him he’ll be on the air again soon. Shaken, he gets back in the car and puts his headset on. Then, at 4:33, he starts the update in his normal, professional voice, but a bit more restrained than usual: “Valérie, a terrible event has just taken place on Sherbrooke, at the corner of Saint-Marc—a man has killed himself, in the middle of the street.” The host exclaims in surprise while Hugues continues: “Obviously the street will be closed for a while. Since the Collège de Montréal campus is just north of Sherbrooke, drivers will have to take a detour to the south. Those heading east on Sherbrooke can take Lincoln to Guy, those heading west can take Maisonneuve.”

  He gives two or three directions for the other bridges, then disconnects. He rubs his eyes and lets out a long sigh, his body drained of strength, more tired than he’s ever been.

  Policemen start to appear from all over, and one of them approaches Hugues’s vehicle. He gets out again, introduces himself, and rambles off the whole story in a minute. Stunned, the officer listens, then says he’ll send a team to Delta immediately to remove the bomb, even if it is deactivated.

  “You stay here, all right?” the cop shouts as he walks away. “We’ll have to question you further on this whole affair.”

  Hugues sits back behind the steering wheel, his eyes closed, indifferent to the chaos that reigns on the street. A cell phone rings. He wants to ignore it, but he glances at the dash screen and sees that it’s Muriel, the fact checker. He answers.

  “Sorry it took me so long to find what you asked for, Hugues, but like I told you, I’m swamped.”

  “That’s okay, Muriel.” Hugues sighs weakly, closing his eyes again. “I don’t need it anymore.”

  “You sure? I have all the information right here: the controller was named Létourneau, the crash took place at 4:40 . . .”

  Hugues opens his eyes. “You mean 4:25.”

  “Eh? No, no. Oh, I understand: 4:25 was when Létourneau told the pilot he could land on the runway.”

  Hugues sits up straight. Then he remembers the beginning of the article he’d read earlier: Yesterday, at 4:25 p.m., Philippe Létourneau, an air-traffic controller at John F. Kennedy Airport, changed the course of this city’s history . . . Shit, if only he’d read the rest of the article, he would’ve realized that it was Létourneau’s call, and not the crash, that had changed the course of history. The accident had happened fifteen minutes later. Hugues checks the time: 4:38. Panic threatens to overwhelm him again, but he forces himself to stay calm: even if he got the time wrong, he still found the right spot. Létourneau must have deactivated the bomb before killing himself. He’d promised him he wouldn’t cheat, after all. But why hadn’t he told him he’d guessed correctly? Hugues starts sweating again.

  “What else did you find?” he asks Muriel.

  “Well, both planes belonged to Delta Air Lines, the one on the runway had arrived from Miami twenty minutes before, and the other was coming from Lincoln, Nebraska.”

  The word Lincoln echoes in the reporter’s mind. He’d said the name of this street on the air a few minutes ago . . . And what had Létourneau told him earlier? I’ve been listening to you for a year, Hugues, I can predict every piece of advice you give . . .

  In his last update, he’d told drivers to take Lincoln. Suddenly he understands: Létourneau hadn’t wanted him to feel responsible for his suicide, but for something much worse. The reporter swallows the scream that rises in his throat and spits into the cell phone: “Tell Valérie to put me back on the air, right away!”

  “Oh come on, not again! You pulled this on us earlier and it wasn’t even urgent!”

  “Damnit, Muriel, it’s . . .” But what’s the point? Létourneau is dead, he can’t deactivate the bomb. He’d killed himself before the reporter could deliver his last update, the one that would’ve warned people of the explosion. He’d killed himself because Hugues was sure he’d succeeded.

  If you say you succeeded, then it’s all over.

  He lets out a gasp so disturbing that Muriel starts to ask, “Hugues, are you . . .”

  The sound of the explosion is distant, but loud enough to drown out the voice of the fact checker. Hugues’s cell phone slips out of his hand and flies to the back of the vehicle; the earth shakes for a moment as he watches the hysteria rising around him. And he sees, from two hundred meters away, the immense black cloud rising and spreading across the sky, all the way to Rue Sherbrooke, toward him, filling his nostrils, invading his soul, where it will remain for as long as he lives.

  Such a Pretty Little Girl

  by Geneviève Lefebvre

  Ville-Marie

  Translated from French by Katie Shireen Assef

  The Girl

  The kid had been easy.

  The heavy door of the former convent creaked open at dusk. Amid the swarm of novice ballerinas rushing down the stone steps, the little one emerged, bareheaded, coat unbuttoned, into the biting February wind.

  Beautiful like her mother, she was. Vain like her mother too. A doll who would rather freeze to death than pull a stocking cap over her silky blond bun. How stupid they were, little girls, always wanting to please, to entertain, begging to be watched. Didn’t they know they were headed for a massacre? That in a few short years they’d end up on the scrap heap?

  The blond child scanned the crowd of silicone-breasted mothers and exhausted Filipina nannies, and seeing the hand that waved at her, she ran cheerfully toward it. All that was left was to pluck her like a little spring crocus.

  “Marisa’s not coming to get me today?”

  No, not Marisa. Marisa had been neutralized with vermouth and a handful of sleeping pills—and out went the nanny. It had sufficed to let the pills dissolve in the bottle she nipped at all day; Marisa had slumped in her chair like a wheel of Camembert left out in the heat. When she woke up—if she woke up—she’d be out of a job. Too bad. What mattered was to get everything done before the parents reported the girl’s disappearance.

  “Marisa’s busy with your brother.”

  An incredulous look from the girl. “My brother’s at his friend’s house.”

  “Your brother threw one of his tantrums. Marisa had to go pick him up.”

  Impromptu lies were always the best.

  “What a moron,” the kid retorted, jumping at the chance to insult the brat who plagued her seven-year-old existence. She had a viper’s tongue, which she got from her father. She knew how to smile in your face and stab you in the back. Cute as she was, her shitty genetic baggage was showing.

  The door of the SUV slid open and the kid held out her arms, letting herself be pulled in, already comforted by the warm breath of the machine. Ten minutes later she was asleep, her frail body wiped out by the same cocktail as her nanny. When she woke up the next morning, it would be easy to distract her until the plan was fully executed. A plan whose success hinged on one simple fact: there was no escape route.

  Géraldine

  Géraldine Mukasonga wakes in the freezing dawn to the sound of her phone ringing. A moment later, David Catelli’s voice is in her ear.

  “Gérald, it’s Dave. I’m coming to get you. We have a body.”

  No hello or how are you—David didn’t bother with niceties. They’d catch up later, in the Dodge, if there was time between the briefing and the crime scene.

  Géraldine takes a shower and dabs her neck with a few drops of a Serge Lutens perfume, which she wears as a courtesy to offset the smell of death. She pulls a merino wool sweater on over her head, enveloping her soft skin in a cocoon of warmth. She fastens her duty belt around her waist, reassured by the weight of the Glock against her hip, and turns on the alarm system that now protects only her bed, coffeemaker, and books. Her apartment has been bare since the breakup, as unsettling as a blank page when no words will come.r />
  Anne-Sophie had left with all she could fit into her truck, everything down to the bottle opener. Nothing remained of their untimely love affair, only an unfortunate truth: Géraldine’s promotion to sergeant detective had gotten the better of their relationship. It wasn’t just men who struggled with a woman’s independence.

  Géraldine rushes down the stairs and climbs into David’s Dodge Caravan with a quick grunt of relief, as if coming home at the end of an exhausting workday. Putting the van in gear, David casts a sidelong glance at her.

  “That bad?” she asks.

  “That bad.”

  He doesn’t ask her about the breakup. Not yet. For the thousandth time, David tries to tell himself that he’s used to her beauty, to the glow of her skin, the delicate curve of her neck, the fluidity of her movements. But when Géraldine smiles at him, he wants to die.

  “What do we have on our hands this morning?”

  “A body full of bullets, found in a restaurant parking lot on Rue Ontario.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “A couple of swimmers training at the pool nearby, stopped at the Palace for lunch.”

  “The Palace?”

  “It’s the name of the restaurant.”

  Géraldine glances at her watch. The truck’s dirty windows block out the already weak light of dawn struggling through clouds.

  “Hell of a time for a swim,” she says.

  Yes, Géraldine, people are crazy. They wear swimsuits in the dead of winter, and they have passionate feelings for inaccessible, forbidden women. If one day I had nothing left to lose and I stopped being afraid of hurting innocent people, I’d tell you what I feel when I see the light reflected in your dark-brown eyes. That would be a day of darkness, a day of despair.

  David steps on the accelerator, defying the traffic light that changes to burnt orange.

  Krazynski

  It’s barely daylight and the first one, that dirty pig, has already been wiped off the map, executed point-blank in a parking lot. Who’d have thought that revenge could be so easy?