The Last Witness Page 5

  In contrast, Jon Larsen, the family’s Consiglieri and adviser for almost twenty years, would fit in well in a family wedding snap. Close to sixty, slim, now mostly bald with only a ring of grey hair, he could easily have passed for a family uncle or perhaps Jean-Paul’s older brother.

  Michel’s gaze swung back to the photos of Jean-Paul. In the end, Jean-Paul always absorbed him most – not only because as the head of the organization that’s where his main focus should be – but because he never could quite work him out. At least with Roman and Frank, what you saw, you got.

  Michel was a keen modern jazz fan, and he remembered once being surprised at seeing Jean-Paul Lacaille at the city’s main jazz club, ‘Biddle’s’ on Rue Aylmer. He later learnt that, indeed, Jean-Paul was a strong jazz aficionado, particularly of the new Latin jazz. Michel found it hard to separate in his mind this urbane, charming persona, now also presumably with good music tastes, from what he knew to be the cold-hearted, brutal reality. That here was a man who as easily as he smiled and nodded along with his guests in the jazz club, could with the same curt nod signal that a man be brutalised or his life taken. The two just didn’t sit comfortably together – though charming, smiling, socialite Jean-Paul was the image being pushed more and more these past few years, trying to convince everyone that he’d turned his back on crime and had become ‘legit’. Michel didn’t believe it for a minute.

  Three photos Michel had purposely pinned to one side of the main spread. The three main losses of the Lacaille family: Pascal, Jean-Paul and Roman’s younger brother, shot dead five years ago at the age of thirty-eight, the tragic end result of a battle with the rival Cacchione family. Their father, Jean-Pierre, dead fourteen months later, many said of a broken rather than failed heart – Pascal had been his favourite. Then just three years ago, Jean-Paul’s second wife Stephanie after a long battle with breast cancer. The Lacailles had seen their fair share of tragedy these past years, reflected Michel; but even that Jean-Paul had sought to turn to advantage. He’d held up Pascal’s death like a banner as the main reason behind his decision to move the family away from crime. Jean-Paul was a consummate audience player, would have made a good politician.

  Michel rubbed his eyes. ‘When do you hope to hear from Arnaiz?’

  ‘Within a few hours. Certainly before lunch.’ Chac forced a tight smile. ‘Hopefully he might have something interesting this time.’

  Michel nodded, but he doubted it. Chac was just trying to lift his spirits after the calamity with Savard. On the last five trips by Donatiens to Mexico – the trips to Cuba they hadn’t monitored – Enrique Arnaiz had turned up nothing. Arnaiz was a private investigator Chac had dug up from his old card file. The Federalis wouldn’t get involved unless or until Donatiens was seen with known drug associates or other criminals – so each time Arnaiz would have Donatiens followed and those he met with photographed for comparison with Federali files. Michel wasn’t hopeful of anything turning up this time either.

  That was the other conundrum. Was Donatiens a clean-cut money-man only dealing with the Lacaille’s legitimate enterprises, or one of the sharpest and most efficient money-launderers they’d ever encountered?

  ‘What do you think, Chac? Is Donatiens what Jean-Paul keeps selling him as, the golden boy making good on his shiny new leaf as a legitimate businessman – or are his hands dirty along with the rest of them?’

  Though the question had been posed before, with Savard gone Chac knew that it was now far more significant. He weighed his answer carefully. ‘On the surface at least he looks clean, however much that goes against the grain with the Lacaille’s past form. But from our point of view, I suppose it’s best if he is clean. If he’s in with the rest of them all the way, we’ll never get him to testify.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Michel voice was flat, nonchalant. He took a fresh breath. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is get him to turn his back on the love of his life and betray her entire family.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s all,’ Chac agreed drolly. Then, after a few seconds uneasy silence: ‘One thing we never did work out was what Donatiens was doing in the car the night Leduc was shot. The only time it looked like he might be getting his hands dirty.’

  ‘No, that we never did.’ Michel stayed staring contemplatively at the spread of photos ahead, as if they might magically provide the answer, and after a moment Chac left him alone with the Lacaille family and his thoughts.

  He worked quickly and efficiently through the penthouse.

  He found a ventilation grill in the main en-suite bathroom to take one bug, the hollow base of a table lamp in the dining room, another. Then he paused, hard pushed for good places for the others: a lot of flat, smooth surfaces, minimalist furniture and décor.

  In the end he cut a tiny hole in the fabric beneath the main sofa and tucked a bug far to one side with one finger, did the same under the beds in all three bedrooms, then removed and clipped back a kitchen cabinet plinth to conceal the final room bug. The phone bugs, one in the drawing room and one in the bedroom, he put in place last.

  Carlo Funicelli stood for a moment in the middle of the apartment, looking from one extremity to the other, contemplating whether he’d left any dead sound areas. The guest bathroom and maybe the first yard of entrance corridor. Hopefully not too many vital, meaningful conversations would take place there.

  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 l
ast 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 Raphaël, 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 Hébert, 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 Hébert 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.

  Early forensic findings had been the biggest body blow. Some blood had been found under the fingernails of Savard’s right hand. The hope had been that Savard might have clawed the neck or face of one of his abductors, or even through their clothing as he frantically grappled at their arms when they swung him. But the report concluded that it was Savard’s own blood. The first shot had struck his chest, and he’d put his hand up defensively to the wound before the final two shots came: one to the neck, one to his head. The report made chilling reading, brought Savard’s screams back too vividly.

  Just before signing off, almost as a by-the-way, Laberge informed him that they had to liaise on time because Pelletier wanted Tom Maitland, Crown Attorney, to also be present at the meeting. Michel knew what that meant. While Pelletier might justifiably reach the conclusion that a potentially prosecutable case now looked out of reach, it would carry more weight with Maitland’s legal-eagle viewpoint at his right arm.

  Michel knew then why he was delaying: not so much for a fresh lead to salvage something from last night’s disaster – the past track record with the Lacailles had long ago made him cynical – but because he was desperately seeking an angle to convince them, and himself, there was still mileage left in the case. If he presented Donatiens – soon to become part of the Lacaille family – as his only remaining hope, they’d kill the case straightaway.

  He took a hasty sip of his sixth coffee of the day, trying to clear his thoughts and focus. But no ready answers came.

  The only light relief of the day came when Chac responded gruffly, ‘Well, they can suck my dick,’ when he’d explained the pending dilemma with facing Pelletier and Maitland, fearing that they’d now want to hastily close the Lacaille file.

  ‘Is that because you’ve already asked everyone else and they’ve said no?’

  Chac beamed broadly, despite the barb. And Michel realized then how impossibly intense he’d been all morning. The pall hovering over the squad room each time he opened the door was not just in respect of Savard’s death, but also for the possibly dead case and his feared reaction. Chac was simply glad to see a chink of his old self re-surface.

  But the mood died quickly as Chac reminded him that even if he convinced Pelletier to keep the case open, at best it would only give him a few months grace. ‘Once Donatiens is married, it’s game over. And Roman Lacaille knows it.’

  His desk phone started ringing. He looked through his glass screen towards the squad room. Christine Hébert was looking over at him, pointing to the receiver.

  No doubt Laberge chasing for Pelletier again. A film of sweat broke on his forehead. He couldn’t delay any more. What would he say? Maybe bluff for now, say that they had reliable inside information that Donatiens would soon about-turn and testify. That at least might give him a week or two’s grace to either make good on that claim or come up with something else.

  The seed of the idea was still only half-formed as he picked up the receiver at the end of the third ring. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s your wife Sandra,’ Hébert said.

  He was caught off guard for a second. ‘Oh… right. Put her through.’ She rarely phoned him. Hébert never termed her ex,
despite it now being four years they’d been parted.

  Then, with her first words, ‘Michel, you said four O’clock and it’s already four-twenty…’ he pushed back sharply from his chair, suddenly remembering.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, yeah… I’m right there.’ Basketball championship with a rival school with his son Benjamin, now nine years old.

  ‘If you couldn’t make it or it was somehow awkward, you should have said so earlier. He’s been looking forward so much to–’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m there, I tell you. I’ll be with you in under ten.’

  ‘It’s not often that he has things like this. What happened?’

  ‘Something came up, that’s all.’ He didn’t want to be specific or shield behind the dramatics of the past eighteen hours: the biggest case of my career has just gone down in flames. Besides, she’d heard it all before. The stake-outs that ran hours over, the last minute suspects and late night emergencies. The steady stream of late nights crawling into bed and so little quality time with her and the children that had finally led to the collapse of their marriage. She’d moved to Montreal so that she could have her mother’s help with babysitting while she went back out to work. He followed ten months later so that he could be nearer his children, but history was repeating itself. Chac had always claimed that his absorption with the Lacailles was partly to fill the void from losing his family, and perhaps he was right. He looked thoughtfully at his desk photo of Benjamin and young Angelle, only six, against the overbearing backdrop montage of the Lacailles. Certainly in the last twenty-four hours, his family hadn’t got a look-in. ‘It’s completely my fault, I’m sorry. But I’m leaving right now.’