She was taken with Max, and she stood behind him unobtrusively. A slight glance or a word or two once in a while, nothing more. She was cautious as if she were afraid he’d panic.
One morning, she found out what he was up to — a gas-station holdup, just one more dumb move — and she took him out to a restaurant to explain a few hard realities, as she called them. Not just any restaurant … the Château Champlain, swarming with waiters decked out in formalwear. Max had never eaten in a place like this before. He had trouble believing Mimi could manage such luxury. Okay, she had money, but not that much.
“What’s the matter, Max? I’ve never been here before either.”
She’d chosen a table at the far end near two businessmen in suits and ties whose discussion involved airy sweeps of their pens. Mimi at once struck up a conversation with them. They were only too glad of a pretext for getting off business matters, and she was especially charming: a smile here, a burst of laughter there, and her timing was perfect. Max twiddled his thumbs until they ordered … the same thing as the two business types, who were now back in the thick of their number-columns. After dessert, and feeling stuffed, Max was still wondering what this life lesson was that she wanted to teach him. Till now, they’d just talked about trivial stuff, as though intimidated by their surroundings, nothing heart-to-heart. Max was confused. Mimi had brought him here to talk him out of a burglary, but they were surrounded by things only money could buy — lots of money. Max figured after the burglary he’d invite her out for a life lesson, too.
When they’d finished eating, Mimi caught the attention of the businessmen once more. On the ground was a leather wallet one of them had probably dropped.
“Is that yours?”
Intrigued, one of the men scooped it toward him with his foot, but it wasn’t his or his colleague’s. Mimi took it from him and said, “I’ll give it to the waiter. He’ll want to know which table it was under. If he looks this way, signal him, would you?”
Baffled, Max followed her to the counter where the overworked waiter was trying to juggle three different orders.
“Our boss is getting the bill, so just give it to him.”
“Your boss, where?”
Mimi pointed to the two businessmen, and one of them, as expected, waved to them. The waiter nodded and went on about his task.
Once out on the sidewalk, Mimi walked Max away, but not too quickly. Bewildered by what he’d just seen, Max didn’t dare ask any questions, though he was dying to.
Then she said, “There’s more than one way into a life of crime, Max. Some ways are smarter than others.”
Over the following months, there was a change in the program — a new career, new things to learn under a new teacher. Mimi taught him the ABCs of the con game with great patience. Gradually, he gained confidence, inventing his own swindles and updating the old ones. He threw himself into the pigeon hunt with the energy and enthusiasm of a neophyte. Soon, the world of grifters kept no secrets from him. He joined a network of fraud artists and plunged himself into all kinds of schemes, playing more and more key parts as his experience grew and his talents gained recognition. He stole smart, without violence or intimidation. Mostly from businesses or those they profited, and that set his conscience at rest. Max didn’t lead just one life, but ten, twenty, fifty … lives that overlapped constantly, so he had to look in the mirror to remember who he was.
Now he was coming home to Mimi for the first time in years. She’d started renting rooms to students from the Université du Québec nearby, the area a little more respectable than the hoods of the old days. Noisier too, though. As soon as they hugged and took a good look at one another, and told one another they hadn’t aged a day — actually, she had, but he didn’t mention it — students came running down the stairs. Mimi rolled her eyes in exasperation, then smiled, a dimple in her right cheek. Despite the wrinkles, really nothing had changed. Some women can retain that “little girl” look forever, and she was living proof.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you! They told me you were in New York.”
“New York and other places.”
She smiled. Again the dimple. He stroked her cheek. He was happy to see her as happy and steady on her feet as always. Antoine, too. A little stooped maybe, and wearing slippers, but still with his head full of projects that worried Mimi. She’d moved on, but not Antoine. He’d turned the basement into a print shop. He still worked at Dorval Airport, but on weekends he made fake documents: passports, social insurance cards, travellers’ cheques, the way other people had fun with stamp collections or building the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks. Who for? Illegal immigrants “fresh off the boat,” sort of, who needed that kind of thing. The middle of the room was occupied by a Xerox 3275, HoloText 283 that even embedded holograms right in the photo, and a TypoFlair 2220 — the very latest in plastic lamination — plus other machines whose purpose Max didn’t know.
“See, this is where I come to unwind,” Antoine said with all the pride of a weekend artist. He and Max had been partners a long time. Under contract for Air France in the 1970s, Antoine had developed European contacts in Montreal and all over Canada. Some worked for French companies, and he let them in on unbelievable investment opportunities, blue-chip stocks in corporations that didn’t exist — especially in Asia — or bold and inventive ways to keep the French tax authorities from getting their hands on hard-won travel allowances. Max and Antoine’s victims weren’t really victims, strictly speaking, since their losses were handed on to their employers, who probably profited from similar schemes in the peace and quiet of their Paris offices. Later on, Pascale had joined in with her own special roles to play: the Monaco socialite who would do anything to protect her husband, Count Whatever, from financial ruin; the elegant Brazilian with a fortune from South African diamond mines; or the young charity-fund manager hounded by the Austrian government and ready to entrust her holdings to someone reliable but enterprising who, naturally, had the welfare of the tropical rainforest at heart, especially at a return of 28 percent.
Pascale, Pascale, Pascale.
Mimi’s brother raised his head from the HoloText machine, his face bathed in pale blue light. “Is David going to make it?”
Max had no way of knowing. All he could do was repeat what it said in the papers.
Antoine placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. That was his way, and it was worth all the condolences on earth. In a voice close to a whisper, he asked, “Do you still think about her?”
Max pretended not to hear so he could keep up a front. But he couldn’t pull it off with Antoine. “Pascale? Sure, all the time. You?”
“Always.”
The love of Max’s life, Pascale and he had married in 1974 on a whim. Or was it love at first sight? They adored each other and couldn’t imagine living apart. They couldn’t even go twenty-four hours without seeing, touching each other and leaping into bed. Then suddenly she was gone, just like that. Then dead in India. Max never got over it. Ever.
8
Doctor Dohmann was a frail man, an ex-smoker, and it showed. His hand was forever sliding into his right jacket pocket searching for that phantom pack. Highly respected, but a victim like all of us, thought Juliette, with his little tics left over from the past. With his pen, he pointed to a detail on the MRI on the computer screen: dark, amorphous stains that Juliette refused to connect with David’s brain.
“See here? A subdural hematoma from violent trauma. The explosion probably blew him against the door. There are other lesions from the shockwave, but the first is more serious. That accounts for his present condition.”
She wondered if the Indian police would receive this information. The RCMP would insist on seeing it first, of course. Still, what did it change? David was in a coma just the same.
“Will he survive?”
The doctor’s hand returned to the jacket