My suspicions were surprisingly addressed by Frazier’s very next statement, delivered with obvious discomfort. “Actually, this brings up a point that I don’t want to overemphasize-it’s a kind of last-ditch loophole, in a way, but I think I ought to get it out in the open, just so you all know…”
“An escape clause?” Maggie asked incredulously. Spinney lifted a single eyebrow and gave me a tired smile. Walter shifted restlessly in his seat. “That’s not its intention…”
“Oh, come on, Walter,” Maggie interrupted again, drawing out his name, “that’s exactly its intention.” She turned to us. “They’ve written themselves an out if this whole thing gets sticky. They’ve done it before-they’ve all done it before. In exchange for footing the bill and giving you locals a little extra clout, they reserve the right to either close down or kidnap the case, whichever suits them best.”
There was an embarrassed silence. Frazier cleared his throat, caught between the policy makers behind him and the people he’d committed to in this room. It was palpably obvious now why he’d been called down to Washington to fine-tune this deal. I could also tell from his expression that he’d been victimized as much as we.
“There’s a snowball’s chance in hell it’ll be invoked,” he said stiffly. “And given that, it’s not such a bad deal, considering the risk the Bureau’s taking.”
“I agree,” I said quickly and was relieved to see Spinney nodding his head next to me. “We knew going in this probably wouldn’t fly. That it has-even with a few strings attached-doesn’t bother me. I’d be nervous in their shoes, too.”
Maggie merely smiled and shook her head. Dan Flynn remained perfectly circumspect. Maggie wrapped up her pitch. “Read through those folders, call me if you have any questions, and now that I’ve dumped all over Walter, I probably ought to ’fess up that my boss is having kittens, too. He’d appreciate it if you kept in touch.”
Spinney looked at me and raised both eyebrows. “Makes you wonder why we don’t do this sort of thing more often, doesn’t it?”
20
The border between Vermont and Québec is one of the few demarcations where a politically drawn line on a map has taken on a distinct and dramatic identity. From forests to farmland, near-wilderness to cluttered civilization, and from rolling countryside to flat plains, the contrasts extend beyond mere differences in language, culture, and architecture-they announce a separateness more pronounced than anywhere else along the American-Canadian boundary.
Part of this is helped by the fact that the vast majority of Canada’s population lives along a hundred-mile-wide corridor paralleling the border. Another is that the greatest density of that population is divided between Toronto and Montreal, which is the largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris. Looking at a road map that includes both Québec and Vermont, one is struck by the disparity between a Canadian crazy quilt of highways, interstates, back roads, and towns, and the vast tracts of uninhabited, road-free timberland to its south.
Smugglers of both people and products, of course, made the same eye-catching and profitable discovery a few hundred years earlier.
Spinney and I were driving north in one of the cars Maggie had mentioned, a bland Caprice, neutral color, regular plates, no radio or air conditioning, but with a state-of-the-art mobile phone with a scrambler, tucked away under the dash. The kind of car that, for all its demure subtlety, could have had Undercover stenciled on its sides.
On the seat between us was a blowup of the sales receipt that J.P. Tyler had found in the Trans Am in Brattleboro, marking the date, time, and place of purchase. Slim as it was, this was the nominal reason for the trip-to interview whichever clerk had produced that receipt, maybe get a description of his customers, and scope out the general neighborhood in the hope it might yield something. The futility of such a quest was virtually guaranteed, so the other incentive-less definable but more important-was to finally make the connection between what we had and whatever it was the Montreal police might be willing to share with us.
Despite an hour’s worth of travel amid this foreign, crowded environment of villages, silos, gas stations, and a sudden explosion of churches, seeing Montreal finally thrust up into view on the far side of the Champlain Bridge-its massive bulk lording over the flat, vast expanse of the Saint Lawrence River at its feet-was a startling and intimidating surprise. Its shoreline cluttered with piers, breweries, warehouses, and ocean-going tankers, its horizon dominated by the seven-hundred-foot Mt. Royal, itself crowned with a five-story-tall Catholic cross, and with a towering downtown reminiscent of Chicago in between, Montreal presents itself as a huge, muscular, and oddly disjointed metropolis.
“Jesus Christ,” Spinney murmured, “this place must keep ’em busy.” I swung left off Autoroute 10 and caught Notre Dame heading east, the river to my right screened by a drab succession of industrial buildings. I kept my eyes glued to the thick flow of fast-moving traffic, while Spinney rubbernecked beside me with an endless string of awestruck comments.
“Keep a lookout for something huge,” I told him. “Lacoste’s office is right near it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He said it looks like the world’s biggest harp, anchored to the world’s biggest shower cap. It’s a leaning tower over six-hundred feet tall.” I shoved the map I had draped across my lap toward him and tapped my finger in the vague proximity of where I was headed.
But his eyes were glued to the window again. “Sure is ugly.”
I took a quick glance at where he was staring and saw an enormous, thrusting, sharp-pointed object angling up above the low buildings nearby-so huge and overpowering and out of character with everything around it as to look faintly threatening, like something left over from an over budget science-fiction movie. Simulating the harp image, a row of taut steel cables fanned out from its peak to a bulbous, lumpy, awkward dome, all of which reminded me of the physical restraints they strap to straining madmen. I took a left up a side street and headed toward it.
“What the hell is it?” Spinney asked.
“The ’76 Olympic stadium-where the Expos play now. That tower holds up the roof. Supposedly, it cost ’em a billion dollars, doesn’t work worth a damn, is starting to fall apart, and is still being paid off. Lacoste was pretty eloquent about it.”
I came up to Hochelaga-Montreal’s original Indian name, according to the homework I’d done-and turned right, feeling more than seeing the looming presence of the tower a mere block farther north. I then did a U-turn in front of the building we were after-an unprepossessing, two-story glass-and-steel shoe box with the MUC symbol outside its front door-the Montreal Urban Community Police substation Lacoste called home base.
Spinney and I got out, stretched, locked the car, and headed up the broad cement stairs, to be met at the wide, double glass doors by a tall, thin, fashionably dressed man with a shiny bald head and a flowing mustache. “You are Joe Gunther?” he asked, a wide smile spreading across his face.
I recognized the slightly singsong Gallic accent and the clipped English. “Jean-Paul Lacoste?”
He spread his arms, the gesture reminding me of some black-and-white European movie. “It is me. Welcome to Montreal.”
I introduced Spinney while Lacoste swept around behind us and herded us across the sterile entryway to a side door and a set of stairs leading up. “I saw you from the window,” he explained. “The green license plate. Not too many of them in this city.”
We all three climbed to the second floor and a long, low room strewn with modular desk units and banks of filing cabinets. Most of the desks had computers, about half of which were being operated by a varied assortment of men and women in plainclothes. Lining the walls were a string of fishbowl offices with windows looking onto the central squad room, and windows facing outside. Bigger, more modern, more populated, and with more fancy equipment than I’d ever had to play with, it was nevertheless as familiar to me as my own office. The one glaring exception was that everyone was speaking French-not the kind I’d been taught in school, and which my mother had further helped me to conquer with home tutoring, but an oddly guttural, chopped-up version that I couldn’t grasp at all.