Читать книгу The Roma Plot - Mario Bolduc - Страница 11

Bucharest, November 27, 2006

The official cause had been determined: the use of portable stoves and space heaters in a confined and insalubrious environment. During an early winter cold snap, all of this ad hoc heating equipment had been cranked to maximum power. A Romanian winter under a heavy grey sky. Bucharest’s citizens stooped their shoulders as they quickly went about their affairs. Those on Zăbrăuţi Street in Ferentari, well, they wouldn’t be going anywhere anymore. Twenty-three bodies last time they counted, including eight children who didn’t even have the strength to leave their parents’ squat. The fire caught them as they were sleeping; they didn’t stand a chance. Bodies found in the trash-lined staircases, right in front of back exits on the ground floor. They’d been boarded up for years. Desperate men and women clawing at the doors, trying in vain to escape. Within five minutes it was all over, the smoke had taken them before any of the firemen had time to reach the building through the neighbourhood’s mazelike streets. Six storeys in flames as gawkers and neighbours, most of them Roma living in similarly squalid conditions, stood by and watched until late in the night. Fellow Roma crying in the streets, guessing the fate of their brethren in the burning building.

“The preliminary investigation yielded traces of accelerants, which leads us to believe the fire was deliberately lit,” Adrian Pavlenco declared from behind his desk at the Bucharest General Inspectorate.

Clearly, American TV detectives had guided Inspector Pavlenco’s sartorial choices. The national Romanian television station broadcast police procedurals in the afternoon, with subtitles, of course. He was going for Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, or maybe Law & Order. His clothes were a size too small, showing off his lean build. According to Toma Boerescu, Pavlenco had transformed his own basement into a gym. More gossip learned at the coffee machine.

“So what’s the link to Kevin Dandurand?”

Pavlenco raised his eyes to Josée, who’d just asked the question. He then glanced at Max O’Brien and Marilyn Burgess, standing a little off to the side. Max thought this Burgess woman was small, delicate, and surprisingly wispy for an RCMP agent. He hoped she wasn’t part of the Fraud Division. When they’d all introduced themselves to one another before the meeting started, she’d scanned Max’s face for a beat too long, as if he reminded her of a person or a picture she’d seen before. However, he’d taken a few precautions. He’d played so many characters over the years for his scams that he’d become used to changing his appearance and wearing the clothes of other men. To Josée and the others, Burgess included, Max looked like a calm, collected New York banker used to conducting business on the golf course. The favourite pastime of his alter ego, Robert Cheskin.

Be that as it may, Max had a twinge of worry over Marilyn Burgess’s insistent gaze. She might be an expert with a photographic memory, mentally riffling thought her department’s open cases.

“The fire seems to have started in a fourth-floor apartment,” Pavlenco explained. “An apartment left abandoned, in principle. A body — presumably the tenant — was found in a room that served as a kitchen.”

“A Rom?”

“We haven’t identified him yet. Always difficult with those people.”

“Once again, I don’t see the link to Kevin,” Josée declared.

“Some of his personal belongings were discovered in the squat. Clothes and a suitcase, among other things.”

That was Marilyn Burgess speaking. Her voice was confident, professional. She seemed to know her stuff, Max thought. Burgess appeared deeply connected to this whole mess, in a way Max couldn’t quite understand. Was it ambition? Perhaps she couldn’t stand the thought of letting an obscure Romanian police officer get all the credit for handling the investigation.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Josée insisted. “He could have been robbed.”

“Ms. Dandurand, please —”

“Neighbours witnessed a fight in front of the building, followed by both men going up to the apartment,” Pavlenco said, cutting off Burgess.

“The tenant was stabbed to death,” Burgess added. “Perhaps the suspect tried to hide his crime.”

“Kevin is no killer,” Max said.

The three others turned toward him.

“I wish I could be as confident as you,” Pavlenco said. “The only way to know for sure is to find him. My men have gone through the whole city with a fine-toothed comb and we’ve gotten nowhere. Kevin Dandurand has vanished.”

A silence fell.

“For now, all that we want to do is ask him a few questions. We need to know what he was doing in a building full of Roma. Know why he was in Bucharest, and in a neighbourhood like Ferentari.” Pavlenco turned toward Marilyn Burgess.

She nodded. “Kevin Dandurand has had run-ins with the law. Thanks to Interpol I’ve obtained a copy of a police report out of New York.”

Max closed his eyes. Here it came. The old stories he’ d tried to hide coming to light. The East River warehouses.

“New York? What are you talking about?” Josée didn’t have a clue. Max and Kevin had never revealed their secret to anyone.

“It is, in fact, Mr. Cheskin here who paid for his friend’s bail,” Burgess said, turning to Max.

Josée faced Max, too, waiting for an explanation.

“Ancient history,” he said. “Kevin had nothing to do with the fire. You’re wasting your time. Going down the wrong path.”

Adrian Pavlenco ignored the remark.

“That’s not all,” Burgess said. “Victims of fraud in New York, Chicago, and Atlantic City have identified him as a con man by his picture. In the 1990s, Kevin Dandurand was part of a gang of thieves led by a so-called Max O’Brien, well known by the police. Dandurand was in Bucharest for a reason, likely related to the murder of this Gypsy. Fraud perhaps.”

Max could see it now: Pavlenco and Burgess couldn’t care less about the death of the twenty-three Roma. They were solely interested in catching this high-profile criminal who’d been avoiding Interpol for years.

Josée was speechless, stunned by what she’d just heard.

“Your brother may not be guilty of this tragedy,” Burgess continued, “but he’s got something to hide. That much is clear. If we don’t get him for the murder and the fire, we’ll get him on other charges, no doubt about it.” She let silence fill the room, probably as an intimidation tactic. Then she added, “And if he gives us O’Brien, that’ll be a start.”

In the corridor, as Max headed toward the exit, Josée grabbed him by the arm. “What’s all this about? Why did you never mention the robbery? Does Caroline know?”

“A youthful mistake.”

“And what about this fraud business? You knew about that, too?”

“No, I swear I’ve never heard a word about it.”

Josée peered at Max for a long moment, as if to make sure he wasn’t lying. For Max, lying was second nature. He held her stare.

She added, “Anything else you’ve been hiding from me? Anything else I should know before I put my reputation as a lawyer at stake?”

Back at the hotel, Max finally got a hold of Caroline in Montreal. There had been dark days after Sacha’s death, but she had gradually recovered and come back to herself. In the midst of her deepest pain, she’d often ended up at Refuge Sainte-Catherine to help others. There, the director had asked her to write a newsletter, which they distributed to donors and volunteers three times a year. Caroline had thrown herself into the project, hoping it would distract her from her grief. But no, this simple act of writing reminded her too much of her career as a journalist and her old life, when she’d been happy and carefree, when her son was alive. Volunteering, yes. She was ready and able to serve warm soup to runaways and give clean syringes to drug addicts, but there was no way she’d go back to journalism, even for a newsletter.

Max had been through Montreal a year ago and had taken the time to visit her. He hadn’t seen her since the Saqawigan tragedy. Without attracting attention, he’d watched her sort through old clothes that other volunteers would give to the homeless once night fell, their hands frozen, standing shivering behind paper cups of black coffee. The beautiful, irresistible young woman he’d met in that gym in Tribeca was little more than a memory now. Caroline’s hair, which had been so magnificent before, was cut short, a dense tuft of hair framing — highlighting, really — the bones prominent under almost translucent skin. Only her eyes were the same. Those penetrating eyes.

To the runaway teenagers and the homeless, she was simply Caro, the woman who handed them a bowl of soup or a used blanket in exchange for nothing at all. The young people had watched Max suspiciously, as if he were a cop. Or a journalist looking for a story on the urban jungle. They’d scanned the space behind him for a photographer, the obligatory appendix, but Max travelled light.

A volunteer had replaced Caroline, who left her post to join Max. The cafeteria was closed; it wouldn’t open until the afternoon. Another volunteer mopped the floor, his thoughts elsewhere. The whole room smelled like industrial detergent, though it wasn’t enough to convince anyone for a second that the place was clean.

“Why don’t we go out for coffee?” Max had suggested, ill at ease.

As they trudged toward the Second Cup together, kids standing at street corners with squeegees and water bottles waved or spoke a few words to her. Even some cops, both in and out of uniform, stopped her in the street to ask her about a runaway whose parents were worried, or a john who’d turned violent on a prostitute.

Caroline, transformed into Mother Teresa. The former journalist with a promising, bright future, the elegant Caroline with the devastating smile, had become queen of Montreal’s gutters.

Once outside the slums she’d come to know so well, her confidence disappeared. It was all a show.

“You’re married, Robert? Finally hitched?”

In New York, Max had spoken of Pascale and their relationship, which had ended so abruptly. Caroline had scolded him: what was the point of staying tied to the past, to a memory, no matter how beautiful it was? You had to move forward, start fresh. Of course, that was before Sacha’s death. Today Caroline lectured no one at all.

At a nearby table a man and woman sat facing each other in silence, chain-smoking in front of a full ashtray. They weren’t exactly homeless, but they were close enough. Caroline watched them from the corner of her eye.

“I was like them,” she said. “I spent two years wandering the streets, trying to convince myself I was the only one who’d ever suffered. That my pain was unique, one of a kind.” She smiled. “Vanity. Even in my wretched state.”

Over the phone from Bucharest, Caroline’s voice seemed thin, used, as if she hadn’t slept since the news broke about the accusations against Kevin.

“Everything they’re saying about him, Caroline, it’s all a lie.”

At the other end of the world, radio silence.

Max asked, “Do you know what Kevin was doing in Romania? Did he talk to you before he left?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “He was acting strange, like restless, you know? We talked about all sorts of things, but I felt like he was hiding something from me.”

Kevin might have been working an angle, as the cops were saying. Max could remember the mood he’d get in before an operation: like an actor about to walk onstage. A mix of nervousness and excitement.

Stage fright.

“Do you remember anything out of the ordinary?”

Caroline hesitated again, then said, “He just hugged me hard, that’s all. Like he hadn’t done in a long time. I felt all … strange.” She muffled a sob. “I felt like he was saying goodbye.”