Donatiens’ was one — had luxurious split-level atrium living rooms affording breathtaking views over the City and the St Lawrence. After thoroughly searching the apartment eight months back, the fat man had stood for a moment admiring the view, breath misting the atrium glass, contemplating ruefully just how far out of reach such an apartment was on his RCMP policeman’s salary.
The fat man by now knew everything about them, their every last move. She stayed over at Donatiens’ two or three times a week, but
The one and only apartment search all those months back had been at the request of Michel Chenouda, his immediate boss and closest RCMP confidante. They’d worked together as partners when Michel had first arrived from Toronto, but within the year the fat man left the RCMP after a bungled vice bust led to an attempted hit on one of his key drugs informants, and went into private investigation. Technically, he was still private when he’d let himself into Donatiens’ apartment; Michel had already smoothed the way for him rejoining the RCMP, and all the papers were rubber-stamped, but the break-in was ten days before he was handed his badge and gun. No doubt Michel would have loved to have the apartment searched again now, but for the risk: Michel wouldn’t involve a badged officer, and there were no other private gumshoes Michel would trust with something like that.
He’d been a keen amateur photographer in his late teens, and private work had given him the opportunity to hone his skills. The mountain of photos he’d taken of the Lacailles over the past eighteen months, Michel would rigorously scan for tell-tale signs — Simone Lacaille’s engagement ring when it first appeared, new contacts of Roman or Jean-Paul Lacaille not recognized from past file photos — and he’d meanwhile be looking at artistic merit: light, angle, composition.
Now, with Michel’s wake up call at 6.30 a.m., more photos. ‘They’ve just found Savard’s body. I’m here with forensics. Donatiens is the only one left now — we’ll need to shadow him closer than ever.’ Michel was on his mobile and sounded slightly out of breath.
The fat man was worried that it was becoming an obsession. The reason for the obsession he understood, but still it worried him. A dozen or so more photos to add to a file of hundreds, and probably now enough box files of paperwork to fill a truck.
He let out a heavy exhalation as he started up, checked his mirror, and pulled out. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the routine, or perhaps his preoccupation with getting back to the station in time to develop the photos before his meeting with Michel — but he didn’t notice the man parked fifty yards behind, who had pulled up just as he was taking his second stream of photos.
‘Chac! Chac! Good stuff. Good stuff!’ Michel hailed as he watched the fat man pin five fresh photos from his morning’s effort on the corkboard.
The C was soft, so the uninformed often made the mistake that the nickname had an English derivation, from the fact that the man was built like a shack. But it had come from his habit of saying
Eighteen photos already covered the corkboard, providing a quick-glance photo profile of the Lacailles and anyone vital connected with them.
Michel stood studying the photos from two yards back, then threw a quick eye over the others and back again, as if measuring how they slotted into the whole picture.
‘So, still very much in love,’ he said.
‘Looks that way.’
Michel leant in closer, studying finer detail in the photos. What had he been hoping for? Some small sign of cracks in their relationship, so it might be easier to get Donatiens to testify against the Lacailles. After all, she was only in her early twenties, impetuous, strong-willed, and probably wasn’t yet settled emotionally. Before Donatiens she’d had a chain of different boyfriends, seemed to change them every other month.
Michel shook his head as he studied the look on Simone’s face kissing Donatiens goodbye. Wishful thinking. Their relationship had held solid for sixteen months, and looked stronger now than ever.
But the photo he was finally drawn to most was of Donatiens just as Simone headed away. Perhaps business hadn’t gone smoothly in Mexico, but Michel doubted that was it: the expression of concern suddenly gripping Donatiens looked too heavy, severe. Donatiens knew about Savard.
‘When’s the wedding planned?’ Michel asked.
‘Early July — the eighth.’
Michel nodded thoughtfully, still scanning the photos. He already knew the date off by heart, but a changed date might hint of some cooling off. He was getting desperate.
They’d all be there, Michel reflected: slim, dapper Jean-Paul, his mid-brown hair greying heavily in sweeps at each side, but still looking younger than his fifty-one years. His mother Lillian, 74, who now spent more time at the family’s holiday residence in Martinique than in Montreal. Deeply religious, her permanent tan, designer clothes and henna-tinted grey hair at times seemed vain, superficial affectations at odds with her firm-rooted nature, with all revolving around the church and family; but she looked well, and her age showed only with her slightly matronly bulk and resultantly slowed gait. Simone’s younger brother Raphael, 15, now in 6th Grade at Montreal’s top Catholic school, St Francis, where he shone at art and literature; but to his father’s concern he was poor at math, showed little future promise for business, and spent his every spare moment rollerblading or, in the winter, snow-boarding. They looked like any other new-moneyed Montreal family, probably more upper-middle than top drawer — until you got to the photos of Roman and the Lacaille family’s key enforcer, Frank Massenat, so often in Roman’s shadow. Then the underlying menace of the Lacaille family became evident.
Roman was four years younger than Jean-Paul and, while only two inches smaller at five-eight, looked shorter still due to his broadness and bulk. While Jean-Paul had been on the tennis court or jogging, Roman had been in the gym pumping iron or pummelling a punch-bag until he was ready to drop. He was known as ‘The Bull’, not just through his build, but because of his habit of keeping his head low and looking up at people, swaying it slightly as he weighed their words; a motion that would become more pronounced if he started to doubt or didn’t like what they were saying. He reminded people of a bull measuring a matador for attack — and there had been many horror stories of Roman striking out swiftly and unpredictably, head first, ending any potential argument or fight by caving in his opponent’s face.
Head and shoulders above Roman, Frank Massenat was a giant. Seven years ago, when he first joined the Lacailles, he was at the peak of physical condition, but a diet of salami and pastrami rolls, beer and rich cream- sauce meals had steadily mounted on the pounds, so that now he looked like a big lumbering bear with a beer pot. With his eyes heavily-bagged and jowls, he looked almost ten years older than his thirty-four years.
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
