Page 6

What time was it? Last time she looked, it was 2:17 in the morning, when That Familiar Voice had screamed that she was a fraud. That she was fucked.

It had propelled her out of bed, down the narrow stairs, and into her studio to stare at the canvas and the merde that someone, surely not her, had put there.

This was to be the centerpiece of her solo show at Montréal’s Musée d’art contemporain.

Fuck. Fuckity, fuck, fuck!

The only comfort was that the bistro would open soon and she could escape into the company of toasted cinnamon buns, dripping butter. And maple-smoked bacon. And, and …

Myrna.

The two women would drink strong café au lait in front of the muttering fire, and for those few minutes Clara could forget the six-shooter pointed at her heart. The trigger being pulled. Pulled …

Putting down the mug and spitting out her brush, Clara Morrow turned her back on the easel and the series she’d been working on for two years.

It was called Just before something happens …

“Mario!” Joseph Moretti put his hand on the elderly man’s shoulder. “How’re your plums?”

“As juicy as ever, Don Moretti.”

Both men laughed.

This was an old joke started decades ago when Mario had been a virile young man, and Joseph a child trailing his grandfather around the Marché Jean-Talon. At the time, the boy had thought his grandfather’s question was literal, which confused him since Mario was a butcher and did not sell plums.

The joke had been passed down to son and now grandson, who’d finally understood it about the time his own plums appeared. It was clear that the old joke, never clever or even funny, was now distressing to the dignified older man. And always had been. Which was why Moretti, like his father and grandfather, repeated it. Each and every weekend.

Joe Moretti had been coming, man and boy, to this farmers’ market in Little Italy every Saturday morning since he was younger than his daughter. Before the market opened, he’d hold his father’s hand and walk the aisles a few steps behind his grandfather, amid the hubbub of farmers unloading their produce. Setting up their stalls of bright gourds and multicolored peppers, of fragrant apples and earthy potatoes and assorted onions.

The men and women called to each other. Some singing, some arguing over a football match. A miscalled penalty. Groaning over a free kick that hit the crossbar.

It was good-natured, and young Joe had envied them. Their comradery. The ease with which they laughed and even argued. The apparent simplicity of their lives. The certainty and predictability. What to do. How to do it. While crops might sometimes fail, it was through no fault of their own. They were blameless.

Even as a child, he’d envied that and understood the difference between them.

Young Joseph had also noticed that as his grandfather approached, as his father and even he approached, the farmers fell silent, the laughter stopped. The jocularity dying on their lips, they touched their caps and nodded. Each hoping Don Moretti would stop. Would admire their produce and give them a chance to offer the family the best they had.

And now, decades later, the place looked, sounded, even smelled the same. It was still buzzing. Still fragrant with the scent of fresh-picked autumn fruits and vegetables. Even the blood from the slaughtered animals smelled good to Moretti. Or at least familiar. Now.

As a child, as a teen, as a young man, he’d taken it all in, just as his daughter did now. The young Joe had noted, subconsciously, the respect, the reverence, in which his grandfather and father, his entire family was held. It was their due, his birthright.

Or so it seemed.

A decade later, in his late teens, he’d watched it seep away when the old man had been arrested for running guns into the States and the leadership had passed to Joe Jr.’s father. A man ill-suited to the job. He was too nice, too willing to forgive, too ready to compromise and collaborate with other Québec crime families. To make alliances with the biker gangs, the East End gang. The Irish and Jewish crime families. Too willing to give up territory to preserve peace.

He was weak.

Joe Jr. knew it. And had known from a young age what would have to be done to guarantee survival.

The signs of disrespect when the grandfather had been arrested and the son took over were subtle but immediate and unmistakable. The pies held out to Joe Sr. were charred on the edges. They were ones that could only be given away. To the poor, or the Morettis.

Produce was still offered, but perhaps not the best cuts of meat. Not the choicest of fruit or vegetable. Bruises were evident. As was the message.

But still Joe Sr., the new Don, took the offerings and even thanked the farmers, while Joe Jr.’s lips curled and his emotions curdled, and he took note of names as the Moretti empire crumbled.

But the satisfaction, bordering on glee, of those who enjoyed the downfall was short-lived. As were they.

With the death in prison of the grandfather, the grandson had moved swiftly to establish himself, leapfrogging over his own father. A bold, some said foolish move that threatened all-out war. Until Joseph Moretti Sr. had been killed in Sainte-Émiline, north of Montréal, in a fire at the country home of his mistress. A fire ruled accidental by a young investigator in the Sûreté’s Arson division.