Coldwater Revenge by James Ross (e novels to read online TXT) 📗

once been a frequent patron of Le Main’s neighborhood shops and eateries, ripe with exotic smells, vibrant with primary colors, jammed with boxes covered with unfamiliar writing and wallpapered with posters and calendars of dark pretty faces in modest attire. But nothing like that met him here. A few dusty boxes covered with squiggly writing lined the painted wooden shelves, and the simpering face on the Bollywood calendar behind the counter had been there for months.

“Allez! Ferme!” The shout came from a doorway that lead to a lower level. The shouter wore a salt and pepper beard and mouth full of crooked teeth. Behind him came another man waving a short piece of pointed metal. Both wore flip flops and stained off-white garments which covered them from neck to ankle. Tom focused on the one waving the piece of pointed metal. That it had an electric cord dangling from the handle didn’t make it less threatening.

“Nous sommes ferme!”

“Hello to you too,” said Tom, his voice deliberately calm and nonthreatening. “I’m looking for Dr. Hassad.”

“Closed,” said the other, switching to a thick, guttural English.

Tom shrugged. “He gave this as his address. Also something called U-Labs. I have a message for him.”

The shopkeeper’s thick, dark eyebrows compressed into one. For several seconds his flat brown eyes held Tom’s. “Nous sommes ferme,” he repeated.

Joe might have dragged the pajama-boys into the back room and taught them some manners. But Tom had already achieved what he came for-–the address, the layout and a couple of warm bodies to go with it. What more was he going to get by getting into the mine is bigger than yours confrontation?

Taking a card from his wallet, he scribbled his cell phone number on the back and held it toward the one whose hands were free. “Dr. Hassad is going to want this.”

The two men looked at the card, but neither moved to take it.

“Suit yourself.” Tom laid the card on the counter with the NEUROGENE logo and the name of the company’s owner, Dave Willow, face up. Then he backed slowly out of the store.

* * *

Once outside, Tom paused to get his bearings before heading back toward the street of patisseries and internet cafés he’d passed earlier. As he got closer to l’Village, the scenery began to change from scarves to halter tops and his mood lightened with the couture. At an internet café near the Berri-UQAM metro, he passed a half-hour sipping latte and Googling variations on the names Hassad and U-Labs. The computer spat out the same address that Joe had found, plus a short list of other Hasads and Hassads with Montreal addresses. The one at L’Université de Québec a Montréal seemed a logical place to start.

Tom knew that UQAM did not have a central campus in the Anglo/American model. Like the urban universities of Europe, its buildings cluster in connected neighborhoods, with maps mounted outside the principle buildings to guide disoriented visitors and new matriculates. He stuffed the Hassad addresses in his pocket and went in search of an outdoor map that would show him where to find L’Académie Biochimique.

Joe’s instruction was simple: find out if there’s a connection between Dr. Hassad and Billy Pearce. But Tom wondered about Joe’s assumption that his lawyer brother could conduct a meaningful investigation. Tom knew how to examine a witnesses under oath, prepared and represented by competent counsel. That was a bloodless chess game where the moves are known in advance and the outcome is a matter of who uses them more skillfully under pressure. But the cop game could be the antithesis of bloodless, which Tom well knew from having grown up around it. Sometimes preparation wasn’t possible and trouble could come from any quarter. The minor standoff in the grocery store was a reminder of the difference between a corporate game and a genuine blood sport. The skills needed to excel in one might overlap the other, but they were not identical. Then, as if in response to these directionless musings, came the memory of one of MadDog’s early hunting pointers. You don’t sneak up on rabbits, Tommy. You stomp on the brush pile until they run.

L’Académie Biochimique turned out to be a four story, white brick office building on the south side of boulevard de Maisonneuve about five blocks from the St-Laurent metro. Tom positioned himself across the street and observed several groups of students enter the building past a lone security guard sitting behind a desk with his head buried in a newspaper. When the guard didn’t look up, even to observe a trio of UQAM hotties, Tom crossed the street and entered the building, feeling like the proverbial dog who had chased a car and caught it. Now what?

He gave the third floor receptionist’s one of Willow’s business cards and announced that he had a package for hand delivery to U-Labs. She picked up the phone and punched a few buttons. “Il-y-a quelqu’un ici a vous voir professer.” She read from the card. “Monsieur Willow de NUROGENE.”

She looked Tom up and down. “2 mètre. 85 kilo. Cheveux brun.

“Black,” Tom muttered to himself.

She gestured toward a corner office at the end of the hall where an unsmiling man stood behind a desk just inside in the doorway. Hassad stood about six feet tall, hollow cheeked with jet-black hair combed back from a high forehead, and was wearing a pressed, charcoal gray suit and Hermes tie that looked absurdly out of place in a cramped academic office. He did not hold out his hand for a package and did not ask Tom to sit. “Qui est vous?” he demanded.

“My apologies for the subterfuge,” said Tom. “I’m here in connection with a police matter in the United States.”

Hassad switched to a crisp British-accented English. “Do you have any identification?”

“None that would mean anything to you.”

Hassad lifted the receiver from the desk phone and murmured into it.

“You’re going to want to talk to me, Professor.”

Hassad held the phone to his ear and waited for