Montreal Noir Read online

  The black woman holds out a dry, warm hand. “Géraldine Mukasonga, major crimes. And this is my partner, David Catelli, also major crimes.” The woman pronounces the word crimes in a voice like burnt caramel, rough beneath the sweetness. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Paul Normand.”

  “What has he done?”

  Pierrot and Colombine exchange a look. They communicate well, Michelle thinks. It’s fluid, they have no need for words. Acrobats are like that, aware of the slightest quivering in their partner’s body. Their life depends on it.

  “He’s dead,” says Pierrot. “We found his body in the parking lot of a restaurant on Rue Ontario. A witness told us about you.”

  Paul is dead, Michelle thinks. She never imagined he could die before he’d paid for what he’d done. He won’t have to go to prison, he won’t be shamed, publicly humiliated. It’s not fair. “Who told you about me?”

  “A waitress at a restaurant. She remembered you as a child,” Géraldine says. “You were on a TV show he produced, and he brought you there for lunch.”

  Family Life: bitter sperm and fake maple syrup. Michelle had never eaten crêpes again, and she’d never owned a television.

  “Mademoiselle Sullivan, your first reaction when we mentioned Paul Normand’s name was to ask us what he’d done.”

  “You said you were from major crimes,” Michelle replies, holding Colombine’s gaze for a long moment. “Should I have thought otherwise?”

  “Paul Normand was murdered. Three bullets in the chest. Most likely from a hunting rifle.”

  Michelle closes her eyes, to better imagine the scene. The images are magnificent—the dirty snow, the pink dawn, the expression on Paul’s face as he turns around to meet his assassin—filmed in forty-eight frames per second, so she can truly savor the giant’s surprise as he realizes his feet are made of clay and nothing will save him.

  “He was mutilated as well.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Castrated, if you prefer.”

  Michelle starts laughing. At first it’s an incongruous sound that escapes her throat—ruined from years of making herself vomit—then her laugh becomes a clear cascade, liberated from the fat hand of Paul. Castrated, the son of a bitch. In the immense rehearsal hall, in front of her troupe, her assistant, the technicians, and the two police officers, her wild laughter echoes as if there were ten, a hundred, a thousand people laughing. She couldn’t have imagined the scene if she’d tried.

  “Would you like to tell us about it?” asks David.

  Michelle’s gaze comes to rest on Olga, scouted at a gymnastics club in Komsomolskoye, whose graceful child’s body coils and uncoils in meters of shimmering red silk, defying the implacable laws of gravity to catch the light of the projectors. Her little Olga, so proud of being able to support her family of five in Chechnya. With me, she’s safe, Michelle thinks. With me, the only risk she runs is a mortal fall. That’s better than living with the snarling snout of a bear in your face every day, better than a shitty role on a shitty TV show, better than being humiliated by a despot in search of toys to break. Now I’m the one in power. I’m at the top, and yet I didn’t become a despot. Paul Normand raped me, but he didn’t break me.

  “No,” she finally says, stunned to hear herself pronounce such a powerful word.

  “Your testimony would be confidential,” David reassures her.

  The black woman, for her part, says nothing, but her phenomenal eyes take everything in. Vigilance, thinks Michelle. She knows. We come from the same country, she and I, one that demands vigilance at every moment.

  “You know how many women are directing shows like the one I’m preparing for in Vegas? Zero. I’m the only one. If I talk to you, if I tell you my story and it goes public, everything I’ve managed to do in my life, all my struggles, all my accomplishments, everything that’s mine will be taken away from me again, and I’ll go back to being precisely what I don’t want to be.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A victim.” And Michelle turns her back on Colombine and Pierrot.

  * * *

  Géraldine and David watch Michelle walk away.

  Anorexic, David thinks, his eyes fixed on the jutting collarbone exposed by the low neckline of one of those Breton striped sweaters French actresses wear.

  So graceful, thinks Géraldine, like a Modigliani model who survived the war in a crumbling attic. She turns to David. “She told us enough to know where to look.”

  He shakes his head. They’ll have to go through all the credits of all the shows produced by Paul Normand, a laborious task that will slow them down. “It would’ve been simpler with a deposition,” he says.

  “For us, yes. Not for her.”

  The door opens onto the biting February cold. The wind has risen, blowing flurries of snow everywhere. David wonders if he’ll dare to ask the question that’s gnawing at him before they get back to the car and are overtaken by the demands of the investigation.

  “Do you understand that, Gérald?”

  “Understand what? Be clear, David.”

  “Choosing to stay silent, you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t think there’s an obligation to report?”

  “No.”

  He starts the Dodge’s motor, turning the heat to maximum.

  “There are worse things than not reporting,” adds Géraldine. “You can report and have the world turn its back on you.”

  The windshield wipers struggle to clear the snow from the glass.

  It’s true that when you think about the fact that a million men, women, and children were hacked to pieces with machetes over three months, and that no one came to help, it can really do a number on your desire to speak out.

  While they wait for the vehicle to warm up, David checks his phone one last time, hoping to find a clue in the dense jungle of web pages dedicated to Paul Normand. A quick scan tells him the entertainment industry has just held a ceremony in homage to him, that he’s working on new and ambitious projects, that his daughter Stéphanie is his greatest pride, that he poses shamelessly with his grandchildren: like here, playing hockey, or here, next to a Christmas tree. The only off note: one of his ex-protégés, who’d left the fold, had been savaged in a vitriolic newspaper article. A failed comeback for the ex–child star turned has-been who’d never really been at all.

  “It’s sickening how much has been written about him,” David says. “I mean, this guy produced quiz shows with B-list actors, cheap copies of successful variety shows, and some dumb soap operas, but to read the articles, you’d think he has a great body of work. I mean, really, he’s not Picasso!”

  “You know, David, if Picasso were alive today, he’d be the star of a reality TV show about hotshot art collectors outbidding each other for his work.”

  David shrugs. “Okay, smart-ass.”

  Géraldine’s silvery laugh fills the cabin of the truck. For an instant, David tells himself he wouldn’t mind being treated like an idiot for the rest of his days if it meant he could hear that laugh. He shifts into first, just as Géraldine’s phone rings.

  “Mukasonga,” she answers.

  From the way she goes silent, concentrating with an intensity he’s never seen in anyone else, David knows it’s important.

  “Amber Alert for a seven-year-old girl, Raphaëlle Boisclair . . . the granddaughter of Paul Normand.”

  David stares straight ahead at the road, obscured by blowing snow.

  Stéphanie & Vincent

  The gate closes behind them, prisonlike. A monstrous house, bloated with money and ostentation. On the lawn that has clearly been landscaped by a designer, snow covers the trees, shrubs, and a fountain modeled after the Trevi Fountain. David whistles faintly, impressed. His wife probably wouldn’t like the house, but confusedly, he thinks it’s what is expected of a man: that he provide a nest—the grandest of nests, the coziest, the safest—to the mother of his children.

 
“I guess that’s why I’m not in a relationship anymore,” says Géraldine, gesturing at the manor. “If I had to live here, I’d die.”

  “You think we should tell them about Paul Normand?”

  “Yes. But we won’t.”

  David nods. He doesn’t question Géraldine’s decision, and he knows she’d do the same for him. They’re smart enough to know not to get in the way of intuition by prematurely questioning it.

  And then, a shockingly good-looking couple appears in the doorway. He looks like the product of a focus group for women who are bored in their marriages, while she, athletic and glowing, could be taken for a Norwegian ski champion. Géraldine feels a sudden pang—Stéphanie Normand looks too much like Anne-Sophie. Both she and her husband are red-eyed, their bodies stiff with anguish, a vague expression of disbelief on their faces. Their nest, majestic as it may be, hasn’t protected their daughter.

  In the vast white kitchen, Stéphanie and Vincent do their best to answer questions. They were in Quebec City for Stéphanie’s class reunion at the private boarding school where she’d spent her adolescence. Marisa has worked for them since Raphaëlle was born; they’d never seen her drink before. They’ve had no contact from the kidnappers, not a word, not even a warning to not contact the police. And so they’d filed a report. Terrified at the thought that their little girl could be in danger—worried that the news outlets will get wind of the story—incapable of imagining that Raphaëlle might be suffering, they take turns speaking: her first, then him, to have the last word. Each time, Vincent tacks a phrase onto his wife’s statement, as if to assert his authority. Something isn’t right with them, David thinks. He’s not happy.

  “Was there something we should have done, besides calling you?” asks Stéphanie.

  “No, no, you did the right thing,” David says.

  “It was my first instinct to contact you,” adds Vincent. “Steph didn’t want to, she was afraid of the media attention, that it would make things worse.”

  The way Stéphanie’s face tenses is subtle, but it escapes neither David nor Géraldine.

  “She’s seven years old,” Stéphanie keeps repeating, her voice hoarse with worry. “Seven! I can’t even imagine someone would want to harm her.”

  Plenty of people are lining up to harm children, Géraldine thinks. Your father harmed them constantly. And you, his daughter, what do you know of his crimes?

  A look from David brings her out of her trance. He knows what his partner is thinking, he knows all too well, but unlike her, he still believes in the presumption of innocence.

  “Do you know anyone who might hold a grudge against you?”

  They shake their heads in unison. Vincent shrugs. “Everyone loves my wife. Even people who don’t like her at first end up loving her.”

  “And you,” asks Géraldine, “does everyone love you?”

  “Me? I’m not important enough for anyone to hate.”

  No, Vincent is not happy.

  “And your father, Mademoiselle Normand, could someone have reason to come after your daughter because of him?”

  It’s David who asks the question. Géraldine admires his composure and his grace. No trace of accusation in his question, only a concern that inspires trust. He’s good, David. Before them, Stéphanie is silent, placing her hand in her husband’s. To buy time. She knows, thinks Géraldine. She knows who her father is.

  “My father has led an impressive career for nearly forty years. He started from nothing, he’s a self-made man, and he succeeds in all he does. There will always be jealous people, people who try to blame others for their own failures.”

  The girl who failed her comeback, David says to himself, his investigative instinct on maximum alert. The one who was destroyed by the critic everyone fears. He takes his time before asking the question, very calm. “Are you thinking of someone in particular?”

  Stéphanie turns toward her husband. As if she were seeking approval she doesn’t need. “I don’t want to speak ill of anyone.”

  But you will anyway, Géraldine thinks, waiting for the rest, in perfect complicity with David.

  “Raphaëlle’s life is at stake, Steph,” her husband says, insistent. He takes a deep breath, finally seizing the occasion to play the lead role.

  He has no clue that it’s exactly what his wife wants, think Géraldine and David, neither of them buying her act. For the cruel words to come from his own lips, so as not to taint hers, full and pure.

  “A poor girl my father-in-law employed when she was young. A limited talent, you could say that, I think. But she was cute, and she was in Family Life for a while. And then . . . she let herself go, she became . . . enormous, and so he was forced to get rid of her.”

  Get rid of her. Like she’s a mangy dog.

  “She tried to make a comeback, and when she realized that she had no talent, no charisma, nothing, she started making up stories and telling lies.”

  “What sort of lies?”

  “That it was my father-in-law’s fault she hadn’t made it. That he took her out of school to make her work, that he exploited her, stole her childhood.”

  “Took her out of school?”

  “Yes, but her parents agreed to it. And it’s not like she was on her way to becoming a neurosurgeon,” says Stéphanie, contempt in her voice.

  “Nothing’s easier than blaming your mentor when the truth is that you just aren’t talented enough.”

  David nods. “You think she could resent him enough to kidnap your daughter?”

  Tears flow, unstoppable, snotty tears, down Stéphanie’s polished cheeks, a torrent that the barrier of her thin hands fails to contain, even with her husband’s arm around her shoulder.

  “I don’t know, I really don’t know. I don’t understand how anyone could want to hurt my little girl. She’s an innocent child. Please find Raphaëlle, find my daughter.”

  Her

  The day has been long. And tiring. Since the kidnapping this morning, she’s barely slept. She has an ache in her shoulder, bruised by the recoil of the rifle, a pain in her knee, which she bumped in the chase with the journalist, and a headache from driving all day. And then there’s the blood that’s seeped into her clothes; its fetid odor has nauseated her, kept her from eating, and she feels weak. Or else it’s the cancer that has spread beyond her lungs. Perhaps it’s lodged in her bones already, she doesn’t know. When the doctor told her both lungs were affected, that it was already quite advanced, she said, No, no scan, she didn’t want to know, what good would it do? She said no chemo either, and she stood up from that cursed chair, very straight, electrified by a vigor she’d never felt in her life. It puzzles her now to think that she came into being on the day she was sentenced to death.

  She’d left the rifle in her truck, emptying the remaining bullets, and parked in the alley behind the house on Rue Butternut, in the nondescript enclave of Saint-Henri. The lock on the wooden garage door is still there, intact. Perfect. Roger is still inside. In what state? She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t give a damn. Last night, she brought him into the shed with a forty-ounce bottle of vodka, and before the poor idiot realized what was happening to him, the wooden door had closed him in, padlocked. She knows he didn’t find the strength to break down the flimsy partition that would’ve allowed him to escape. She knows he chose liquor. It was what he’d always done, even if it meant selling his own daughter.

  She presses her ear against the door. Silence. She imagines Roger curled up in the arms of his great love, vodka, and realizes that in spite of her lungs, gangrenous from the tumors, she can finally breathe. They’re all dead. The father who was supposed to protect her daughter; the one who watched her husband rape children and did nothing; that bitch of a journalist who had nothing better to do than blame the victims; and him, finally him, the heavy-handed ogre who chased little girls and destroyed them, one after another.

  As for Paul’s daughter—the one whose elite private-school education had been paid for by the
work of kids he’d taken out of school to make the machine turn faster—she must know now, deep in her gut, what it meant to fear the worst for your child.

  Justice has been served.

  She enters the house by the back door. The smell of vegetable soup impregnates the walls, the wind comes in through the joints in the aluminum windows, and the paint is chipping, discolored by time and tobacco. Nothing has changed since that first day when Paul Normand, stinking of cologne and money, came in to make them an offer that would change their lives.

  She sets the keys to the truck on the kitchen table. The sound of the television drifts down from upstairs. Canned laughter. A cheerful little tune she can tell from a thousand others: the theme song of Family Life. She hears footsteps coming up the walk, and turns to see two silhouettes looming in the doorframe. A man and a woman. Police.

  Claudine is not afraid. She’s held back for so long, been silent and ashamed for so many years. She wraps a shawl around her shoulders and goes to let them in. They’re young, good-looking, especially the woman, who raises her head, hearing the sound of the television and a child’s laugh from upstairs. She exchanges a brief look of relief with her colleague.

  “Madame Claudine Lachance?”

  “Yes. Come in, come in, it’s freezing.”

  She closes the door behind them, heads toward the kitchen, busies herself putting on the kettle.

  “I only have bagged tea. Do you take it with sugar? Milk?”

  “Neither,” they respond in unison. Like me, thinks Claudine, strangely comforted by the idea that she has something in common with the officers who have come to arrest her. The man pulls out a chair and sits down, laying his pencil and papers out neatly on the kitchen table. He looks like a boy who’s just come home from school. She tells him so; he smiles.

  “I like my things in order,” he says, clicking his pen open.

  The woman, for her part, remains standing. Her long, delicate fingers graze the cookbooks, the glass poodle figurine, the photo of a girl with big brown eyes in a white porcelain frame.