“A big loss to Marcel,” I murmured.
“On top of others, yes,” Lacombe agreed.
I turned to both Labatt and Rousseau. “You two read tea leaves for a living. Who’d be putting this kind of pressure on Marcel?”
“It might not be so simple,” Labatt answered. “We were just discussing that before you came.”
Rousseau added, “It’s likely Jean Deschamps’s reappearance and this murder were orchestrated by the same people, but with Marcel near death and the Rock Machine gearing up against the Angels, Jean-Luc Tessier would have been a perfect target for either one of them-the Angels so they can solidify their grip on Sherbrooke before war breaks out; the Rock Machine so they can attack the Angels through the back-door by destroying the Deschamps and grabbing their territory.”
“Are the Rock Machine that subtle?” I asked. “I would’ve thought if that was their plan, they’d have knocked off five guys like Tessier tonight. Not just one.”
Lacombe laughed softly, escorting us back into the hallway to get out of the way of the crew carrying a stretcher. “It is very American. It would be not so messy to kill just one and then suggest a meeting to avoid more bloodshed. Monsieur Tessier may be something like a calling card. Right now, somewhere, maybe Marcel and Picard and Guidry and the others are negotiating with the people who did this.”
“Can’t we get wiretaps to find out?” I asked.
The Canadians all shook their heads. “The good old days,” Lacombe said. “We could have, twenty years ago. Now, it is very difficult. Taps are for after everything else has been tried and has failed. We are far from that right now.”
“We’ll have to use the old-fashioned tools first,” Rousseau suggested. “Informants, surveillance, intelligence, and patience. If this is leading somewhere, we’ll find out about it sooner or later. In the meantime, if they want to kill each other and break down the walls that have kept us out, maybe that’s not so bad.”
It was an interesting take, and not surprising from a federal man who had no investment in maintaining an unofficial compromise with the local crooks to keep the peace. But if Rousseau was going to mention selfishly practical matters, then I had one of my own. VBI was supposed to be a fast and efficient way to cut red tape and get results-waiting around for crooks to take action wasn’t part of the sales pitch. And I had politicians watching me like bookies timing a fledgling racehorse.
I therefore cast my vote for a more energized option-as diplomatically as possible. “Assuming whoever did this wants us to act on it, though,” I said, “then they’ve probably left us some bread crumbs to follow.”
Lacombe glanced around at the people streaming in and out of the apartment. “You are probably right. By tomorrow, we should know that.”
In Lacombe’s office the following morning, however, the killing of Jean-Luc Tessier was not the first topic of discussion. As the task force members gathered around his conference table, we found several newspapers spread out, all sporting a photograph of Jean Deschamps, alive and well sometime in the late 1930s, wearing a snap-brim fedora and smoking a cigarette. I didn’t need a translator to read the headlines.
I remained standing and asked, “I take it this didn’t come from any of your people?”
Lacombe shook his head, looking unhappy.
“May I use your phone?”
I called Sammie from Lacombe’s desk. “You seen the morning papers?” I asked her.
“Yeah. The leak come from up there?”
“Not that we know of. Phone around and see if you can find out-Stowe Mountain Rescue, Frank Auerbach’s crew… I know there was some buzz about who the stiff was when they found him. Maybe a reporter got lucky somewhere. But if it was a leak, I’d like to talk to whoever’s behind it. There was a murder here last night that suggests a major move in the making. Call my pager if you hit pay dirt.”
I hung up and joined the others at the table. “Had to come out sooner or later,” I said philosophically. “Be interesting to know if our visit to Marcel was the stimulus.”
André Rousseau, the Mountie, looked at me carefully. “How’s that?”
“When we spoke to Pelletier, he had no idea why we were there. Marcel and company might’ve spilled the beans to the press to guarantee we wouldn’t have that kind of anonymity again.”
“Does sound like a lawyer’s move,” Gary Smith grumbled.
“Then again,” I said, “it might’ve been leaked to show there was something rotten in the house of Deschamps.”
“Which brings us back to Jean-Luc Tessier,” Rick Labatt stated, laying a pile of crime scene photographs on the table. “I spent several hours last night with André and Etienne,” Labatt indicated the quietest member of our small group, the Sherbrooke police liaison, “digging through everything we had on Tessier and the Deschamps. It turns out Tessier was more than just the chief enforcer for Marcel, he was Marcel’s private man-used not only to take care of business outside the family, but inside also.”
“Marcel must be feeling pretty isolated around now,” Paul Spraiger commented.
“Why is it nobody talks about Michel Deschamps?” I asked. “According to Lucien Pelletier, he’s the heir apparent on the verge of taking over. He must be knee-deep in all this-or he better be.”
Rick raised his eyebrows and tapped a folder he’d placed next to the photographs. “That is something I also wondered.” He flipped open the folder to a full-face photograph of a young, soft-featured man sporting an immature mustache. “Michel Deschamps, twenty-eight, economics graduate of McGill with barely passing grades, employed by his father ever since as a quote-unquote bookkeeper, and making a salary any real bookkeeper would kill for. He drives a BMW sports car, several motorcycles, has many girlfriends, and is not thought by our sources to be of much use to his father’s organization.”
Rousseau added, “We have a file on him, too. Seems to be a classic case of generational dissipation.”
“So was Pelletier wrong?” I wondered aloud. “Given what we know of Marcel’s character, it seems he shouldn’t trust his son farther than he can spit him.”
Rick shook his head. “I don’t know about Pelletier, but I have heard Marcel is crazy about Michel. Father and mother were divorced many years ago, and Marcel has spoiled the boy rotten. André may be right from our view but not from Marcel’s. Michel can do no wrong.”
“What do Picard and Guidry think about that?” I asked, wondering privately how they had viewed Tessier’s elite role within the organization.
Lacombe, whom I’d come to see as a bit of a philosopher, merely suggested, “How would you feel, knowing the heir would be totally dependent on you for running the kingdom? It sounds not so bad.”
There was a knock at the door, and a uniformed policewoman entered, handed Rick a slip of paper, and retired without a word. Labatt read the message’s contents quickly and said, “Good thing we put tails on everybody yesterday. A man watching Tessier’s place last night just filed this report-he saw someone enter the apartment, stay about five minutes, and then leave rapidly, putting something into his pocket as he went. He followed this man around town for several hours until he entered the Hell’s Angels headquarters at almost dawn.
Surveillance photos matched him with somebody named Christophe Bossard.”
“We know him,” Etienne said softly. “He is… un apprenti.”
“An apprentice,” Paul translated.
“A Hell’s Angels wannabe,” Rousseau explained further. “They use them a lot for their dirty work-usually it’s carrying drugs, though. Not for a hit job.”
“And we know where Monsieur Bossard resides?” Lacombe asked Labatt.
“Oh, yes.”
A couple of hours later, I was sitting on the transparent side of a one-way mirror, watching a fat, hairy man in stained biker clothes sitting at a table next door, before a video camera and two police officers, one of them Rick Labatt.