Miss Montreal (28 page)

“I meant you too,” Jenn said.

I pulled her close and kissed her hair. “Go. I’ll see you soon.”

“No you won’t, you dumb shit.” She tried to blink back tears but they fell anyway.

I turned to Ryan and said, “Take them out of here.”

“I’m with you,” he said.

“You don’t have to.”

“This is what you brought me here for, right? To have your back? Let’s find this punk and get his shit over with.”

Behind us I heard a wave of applause as the singer on stage finished his number. Then a man with a voice made for radio took the mike and called out to the crowd and they roared as one.

“Et maintenant
,” I heard him say, followed by something that echoed through the park. I couldn’t catch the meaning. I strained to hear it but all I heard was disembodied words.

And then the name Johnny Rivard.

A
bass drum started thumping a four-four beat. A guitar joined in charged with treble, a full-on country twang, followed by honky-tonk piano and bass. A rockabilly quartet, old-time, led by a singer old enough to believe in Laurent Lortie’s message and want to bring him up to speak to the great mass of people still packing the grounds.

I was hoping like hell Lucienne had found her father and convinced him to stay off the stage.

Ryan and I were on Boulevard Rosemont on the north side of the park, panting a little from a fast run up the long paved path bordering the gardens. We stayed at a jog, checking both sides of the street for Luc’s van. And what if we found it? I knew nothing about bombs. Certainly not how to disarm one. I didn’t think Ryan knew any more than I did. Guns were his thing.

“There!” Ryan said, pointing at a white van parked on the north side. We jogged toward it but halfway could see it was a well-kept recent Sienna. We kept going, staying at a trot. I noticed the Sienna and most of the other cars had blue permit parking stickers in their windshields.

“Bonsoir
,” a man yelled onstage.
“Bonne Fête tout le monde.”

The crowd roared back at him as one.

And then he launched into a song. Okay. He was doing at
least one number before he called Laurent up to join him. Make it a long one, I thought. Make it “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” or “Whipping Post”—give us seventeen or eighteen minutes more to find the misfit boy and his bomb.

I didn’t hear my phone ring but I felt it vibrate in my pocket.

It was Reynald Paquette.

“Where are you?” he shouted. I could hear the same music that was playing around us over the phone, so he was somewhere on the scene.

“On Rosemont, going east. You?”

“Approaching backstage. Waiting for the bomb technicians. If you see anything, don’t touch it. Don’t even approach it. Call me direct.”

“Fine. Have you circulated Luc’s picture?”

“As widely as I can. But the patrol officers, they have to stay at their posts, keep the crowd under control.”

“There won’t be a crowd if a bomb goes off.”

“Just remember what I said. You find something, don’t touch it. I’d rather see a robot camera blow up than a person.”

“Even me?”

“Don’t ask Chênevert that.”

The first song ended and the crowd erupted in applause. I heard a chant go up: “Joh-nee! Joh-nee!” I looked right and saw people waving their flags, pumping their fists, lighting lighters. One man was bouncing a child on his shoulders, a boy no more than three or four, blond curls spilling out of a blue ball cap with a fleur-de-lys on the front. The father was holding the boy’s legs so he wouldn’t fall. The boy gripped his father’s shirt tightly with one hand and with the other held his hat firmly on his head.

I waited to hear what was coming next. Play it again, Johnny. Fast or slow, sad or not, it doesn’t fucking matter. Play something so the crowd keeps on cheering, the boy keeps bouncing, his hat stays on his head.

We were getting close to the back of the crowd. Still no white vans. The only van of any colour was a panel truck, the kind a baker or florist would use, and it was blue. It also had two parking tickets under the front right wiper. No resident permit. And a lot more interior space than a van: more than enough for a load of sacks and cylinders.

“Hang on,” I said.

We walked over to the truck and peered through the windows, Ryan on the street side, me on the sidewalk. The space to the rear had been covered over with a tarp. There was nothing personal of note in the front, other than a coffee cup. A pink rental agreement.

I jumped a foot back when the truck’s parking lights flashed and its horn chirped and Luc Lortie laughed behind me.

“Imagine if I had pressed the wrong button,” he said.

He came out into view from beyond a tangled hedge about four car lengths east, a cellphone in one hand, his car fob in the other. Ryan took out his Glock but wisely didn’t extend it at Luc, not with so many people who might see it and run. Or try to.

Luc smiled and said, “Point it, go ahead. I showed you already, your gun doesn’t scare me.”

“I didn’t have this clear a shot last time,” Ryan said. “And you were trying to take my leg off.”

“I can take more than that off now,” he said. “I can take it all, debone you both like chickens.”

He held up the cellphone, his thumb obscuring one of the top buttons. “This activates the detonator. I’ve already dialled the number, all I have to do is press send. This truck will be gone, along with everyone within two hundred metres.”

“Including you,” I said.

He shrugged. “Do I look like I love my life so much? You presumably searched my cabin. Is it the home of a contented man?”

“You don’t want to live to see your father succeed? And your sister?”

“I’ll still know, even if I die.”

“And what if Lucienne dies?” I said.

“Why would she?”

“Because she’s here. In the crowd, looking for you.”

For the first time, he lost his cocky grin. “You’re lying. She is at Radio-Canada. It’s miles away.”

“She’s here,” I said, holding up my phone. “And I can prove it.” Jesus, a war fought with cellphones, mine and his. One a detonator, one a reminder.

“You call anyone and we die.”

“I’m not calling, okay?” I brought up the photo I’d taken of Lucienne moments ago, and held it out in front of me.

“I can’t see that,” he said. “It could be anything.”

“Here.” I started walking toward him.

“Stop!”

“No tricks,” I said. I took one step at a time, as if the pavement beneath my feet were mined. When I got close enough to slide the phone in a straight line along the sidewalk, I knelt and did it. It skittered to within a few feet.

“Pick it up. Look at it.”

He stared at the phone without moving.

“Look at it. I won’t move.”

He pocketed his keys, crouched down and picked up the phone and stared at the image of his beloved sister, lit from behind by blue strobes. Could he see the tears streaking her makeup, the agony straining her face?

“You detonate the bomb, you’ll kill her too,” I said.

“Why? Why did she come?”

“To stop you. I told her about it and she wants you to stop.”

“I can’t stop. I am what this family needs. Can’t she see that? For my father to lead this province, and for her to take over when he retires, it is up to me to act.”

“She doesn’t want it to happen this way,” I said.

“It won’t happen any other way! The sheep will keep on
voting for the same stupid people. They need me to provide the spark.”

“That’s not what Lucienne believes. She knows your father can succeed without this kind of violence.”

“He can’t, I’m telling you. Without me, at best he’ll place third and be the swing player in a minority government. I’m the only one who can take him to the top.”

“Not without killing your sister.”

“Call her,” he said. “Tell her to get away. Do it now, or I swear I’ll—”

“She won’t go. I already asked her and she stayed. And even if she left, everyone would know it was you who set off the bomb. The people would shun your family forever. The party would be destroyed. Think of Anders Breivik. You think his father could get elected in Norway? Ever?”

“No one will know,” he said. “Not if you die with me.”

“The police know,” I said. “They’re here looking for you.”

“I don’t see them.”

“You never do. But they’re here. I told them about the bomb. And about Sammy Adler. They know you killed him.”

“For all the good it did,” he said. “There was supposed to be outrage. A beloved Jew writer killed by vicious Muslims. But the police never came out and said that’s how it happened. There wasn’t the outcry there should have been.”

“There will be now,” I said. “But not the one you hoped for. Now do the right thing. For Lucienne.”

“There is no right thing anymore.”

He was standing completely still. Maybe here in body but his mind miles away. Maybe in a cold home where love was conditional, the bar always set too high for him.

“Give me your phone,” I said.

“To spend twenty-five years in prison?” he whispered. “See my sister once a year? My father, I bet he wouldn’t come at all.”

“She’d come more often,” I said.

“Suppose she did.” His body shivered as though a dust devil had blown up around him, swirled into him and moved on. “Nobody ever cared for me like Lucienne. No one protected me like her. When my father would make me feel so small, so dark, like a little stranger in my own house, it was always Lucienne who made him stop. Who said, ‘Be nice to Luc. He needs love,’ she’d say. ‘Encouragement and love, that’s all …’ ”

He reached into the pocket of his pants. I felt Ryan tense in his shooting stance. But Luc was just getting his keys. “This way, she’ll never forget me.”

“What way is that?”

“What do I do?” Ryan hissed.

“Hold on.”

Luc started walking toward the driver’s-side door, holding the detonator cellphone up by his head. The keys jangled as he wiped his cheek with the back of his other hand.

“Luc?” I said. “I can’t let you drive away in this.”

“Then come for the ride,” he said. “It’s going to be a short one.” He looked behind him, across the end of the park and Rue Viau. On its far side was a small municipal golf course, dark, empty.

He shook the dark hair out of his eyes. “Why go out with a whimper? Come on, get in, Geller,” he said. “Get in or go home.”

I stepped back and let him get in.

He opened the door, got in and turned the key. The door locks engaged. The engine roared and the tires screeched as he pulled away from the curb and barrelled along Rosemont toward Viau. He ran the red light there and almost hit a small white Fiat going north, regained control and jumped the curb into the golf course. I hopped up onto the hood of a parked Subaru wagon, then onto its roof, and watched as the van kept going for another ten or fifteen seconds, then stopped.

The explosion came a few seconds later.

T
he blast blew out every window in every house bordering the golf course. We found out later that many suffered structural damage as well but mercifully no one was killed—except Luc Lortie, who was incinerated. Somehow only one person was seriously injured in the stampede that followed, a woman whose head was stomped after she was knocked to the ground by people rushing toward the stage, perhaps fearing another explosion would follow. They also ran toward Boulevard Rosemont, pushing each other, dropping their signs, blankets, water bottles and other belongings, leaving the field littered with fallen flags, as if an army had retreated in sullen defeat. Ryan and I kept to the north side of the street, braced against the tide of people moving toward us, running past us, some holding their children. I wanted to tell them it was okay, the danger was past, but why would they believe me?

Only now did I feel exhaustion in my limbs from our earlier push through the crowd. The adrenalin that had kept me going all day was draining fast. I wanted to call Jenn, tell her we were okay, then remembered Luc had dropped my phone on the sidewalk. A thousand running feet had probably reduced it to chips and shards of plastic. I borrowed Ryan’s phone and called her.

“Ryan!” she shouted. “Are you okay? Where’s Jonah? Why isn’t he calling?”

“He is,” I said. “It’s me.”

“What about Ryan? Did—”

“He’s fine. We both are.”

“Thank God,” she said. “When I saw the explosion, I—”

“What do you mean, saw? You’re not still here, are you? You were supposed to get the hell out of here!”

“What are you, mad at me? I couldn’t just leave.”

“Where are you now?”

“Behind the stage. In the Botanical Garden. Now get over here. If you’re going to yell at me, please do it in person. I need to see you’re okay.”

It took fifteen minutes to make our way past the stage and into the gardens where Jenn and Holly Napier were waiting. Dozens of other people stood in knots, their faces wrung with disbelief at what had just happened. Some of them were nursing scrapes or brushing off grass stains, anxiously scanning the crowd for missing friends or family. Others just wept or trembled as if seized by chills.

Jenn hugged me fiercely, then gave Ryan the same treatment.

“The man of the hour,” Holly said and hugged me too. There was a charge there I couldn’t ever feel with Jenn. It surprised me with its strength and then her mouth was on mine. Not for long but long enough.

“Definitely not your average bear,” she whispered.

“I’d say get a room but I know there’s none to be had,” Jenn said.

“Quiet, you. Listen,” I said. “Can you guys hang here a minute? I need to find Lucienne and Laurent.”

“We’ll wait,” Jenn said.

I turned and made my way against the crowd toward the back of the stage.

——

Laurent Lortie was sitting on the ground, his back against the rear wall of the stage, his knees up, his head buried in his hands. Lucienne was standing nearby, but looking away, holding herself as she cried.

Why the hell wasn’t her father holding her now? This, I thought, was the man who had driven Luc to commit his crime. Sorry for himself, unavailable to everyone else.