Harold stepped back and looked down at his tie, as if Jimmy carried cholera. “Of course.”
After a few long moments, Poppa’s voice came back on in the controlled cadence of the computer. Jimmy knew that this probably should have come out as a yell but the software was not good at conveying emotion and, like e-mail, if you didn’t know Poppa cold it was easy to misinterpret the cadence. “What else... do you know?”
This time Jimmy let the lawyer step up to the plate. “Ten mil went into Rockatansky’s account in Freemason’s in Nassau, eleven days ago.”
Poppa’s eyes shuttered in a rapid staccato that the eye monitor translated into speech, delivering the old man’s favorite word with passionless precision: “Fuck.”
Harold moved away from the window and stood in the shadow beneath a Cape Buffalo shoulder mount. His expression, like both the buffalo and the toxin-injected faces of the local Westmount hausfraus, never gave much away other than irritation.
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. Fuck. We need to know where that money came from.”
Harold shook his head. “There’s only one person still alive who hates Poppa enough to pay twenty mil to put him down.”
“Nikolai,” Poppa’s simulated voice said.
The feud went back to the 1978 Stanley Cup Playoffs and a ticket scam that should have been shared. But wasn’t. At least the Habs won.
There had been no bloodshed for a decade and change, and breaking the peace made no sense, at least not from any practical angle. Maybe Poppa would finally get that revenge he had been talking about for all these years.
If Poppa could have shook his head, he would have. “We know... who’s responsible. There’s only one... course of action.” He paused and the only sound in the room was the gentle hum of his electronic life-support system. “Harold, could... you wait outside.” Even the software-imposed monotone could not present the statement as anything other than what it was — an order.
Harold opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it. “Sure, Poppa, whatever you say.”
Harold left the room, stepping between a pair of men who took up several yards of well-tailored menace, and into the hallway. Jimmy locked the dead bolt and went back to the window, to the blizzard-caked city. “What do I do?”
“If Rockatanksy isn’t... guaranteed the second half... of payment he... won’t complete the... job.” After a few metronomic pumps of the old man’s artificial lungs, he said, “You and I... spend a few minutes discussing... things. Then you walk out... of here and go to... war.”
Another splendid view spilled out below him, rooftops and trees, all the way to Westmount Square, St. Henri beyond, and the river in the distance.
Poppa had spent his life running this business — it had been his central obsession since inheriting the kingdom when his own father was shot down in front of the Ogilvy Christmas window all those years ago.
“You will inherit... everything. What I need—”
“Stop with—”
“Don’t interrupt... me.”
Jimmy put his hands in his pockets and listened.
Poppa’s answering-machine voice continued: “With that comes... a great responsibility... I know you have... respect in this... town. With that comes... enemies. Enemies who will... want what you... have. Now that I’m in this—” he paused for a second and his eyes shifted to Jimmy; he looked at his son and tears welled up in his eyes, “computerized prison, they... think they can get... to me. Maybe they... can. But I don’t want you... inheriting a... a flaming ball of shit.”
“Anything happens to you and I’ll burn this fucking town to the ground.”
Poppa blinked out his response. “No... you won’t.”
Jimmy was getting frustrated; he was warlord but his old man’s word was biblical. “What do you want me to do?”
“You kill Nikolai Bushinsky... and his sons. Immediate... ly.”
From the time Rockatansky had been spotted at the border, Jimmy knew the situation would get boiled down to two options — fight or flight. And the second had never really been on the table.
The old man’s ATamp;T vocal delivery went on: “Rockatansky won’t... fulfill his contract if... his employer is... dead. But... even if... he does, you’ll have no... competition when I’m gone... Take out Nikolai and those... two retards he calls his sons... and the town is yours.”
“Do we want to be subtle?”
His father paused again and for a few seconds the only sound was that of his lungs being inflated and deflated with computerized precision. He watched his son, and Jimmy was sure a smile had crept into his eyes somehow, a near-invisible flash of the man he had been.
It took a few seconds for the old man to cycle up a response with his eyes. “Fuck... subtle. Do something... massive.”
Like Guy Lafleur on the ice, his old man had that unnamable mystery sauce that you couldn’t rent, buy, learn, fake, or steal. “It’s Wednesday. Bushinsky and his two sons always eat at Joe Beef on Wednesday; Nikolai loves their pasta and lobster — there was an article about it in the Gazette.”
Poppa’s eyes shifted over to him again and that smile Jimmy hadn’t seen in a long time was back in his eyes. “Perfect.”
The blizzard had let up and the streets were haphazardly plowed in what appeared to be a paranoid schizophrenic’s version of order. Notre Dame east of Atwater was relatively plowed but most of the locals had yet to dig their rigs out and there weren’t many parking places. Antennae stuck out of snowbanks like snorkels.
The ersatz foodie crowd was thinner than usual; apparently the snow was too much of an obstacle to overcome in the search for the perfect Instagram photo. The Burgundy Lion was crammed with the usual crowd of mindless hipsters who made too much noise under the universal assumption of the uninventive that it made them more interesting. Outside the Lion, the bearded guys in rolled-up skinny jeans and Cowichan sweaters smoked imported cigarettes and drunkenly pontificated on the latest Mac product. Across the street, the heavy-hitting Joe Beef and Liverpool House had started to empty, the second-string service over and many of the diners heading home for the tail end of the Habs game.
A big guy ignoring the weather smoked a cigarette in front of Joe Beef wearing nothing but a plaid shirt, jeans, a ball cap, and three days’ worth of stubble. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing an inkwork koi and he looked like an uber-hipster, assembled in the lab out of the parts of lesser hipsters. Nikolai Bushinsky came out behind him, thanked him for a splendid meal, and stumbled toward the snowbank. Bushinksy looked like what he was, an old-school mobster who had pretty much gone straight, in that he didn’t personally kill people anymore. He was flanked by Josef and Vlad — his sons. Josef was a heavy-lidded stereotype who would always look the part of a wannabe gangster trying to stay in character. Vlad was small, lithe, and sat in at the piano at a few jazz bars around town. Even to the casual observer it was obvious that they had spent the evening celebrating. They were all a little drunk, having put away seven bottles of good Burgundy, and scaling the snowbank to the waiting Town Car proved an exercise in swearing and the near loss of one Gucci horsebit loafer. Nikolai and Vlad got in back, Josef in the front with their driver, cursing his wet sock.
At the corner of Charlevoix, the Lincoln stopped behind a rental cube van — the kind the film business has a monopoly on in town. The light was red and the three Bushinskys were trying to decide if there would be any chicks at Chez Parée worth braving the elements for. Nikolai was of the opinion that it was smarter to go home and watch the end of the Canadiens game in the screening room. They were pretty much decided on the Habs when the roll-up door on the truck ahead flew up, exposing the biggest motherfucking antiaircraft gun any of them had seen outside of a Star Wars film. To be fair, the driver’s reflexes were great. Maybe perfect. But even a big eight with the gas punched to the floor can’t back up faster than a double-snouted.75 cal can spit out death.