THE TAIL

AS HE STEPPED OUT OF the Longueuil subway station, Jean-Paul immediately recognized the two guys shadowing him. Two plainclothes officers with the four-letter word that starts with f written on their faces. It was Tuesday, October 30, and it was ten in the morning.

The previous night he’d gone into the city, hidden communiqué number five in the pages of a phone book in a phone booth and went to sleep over at a friend’s house.

He led his two new friends around the South Shore for part of the day, taking buses and taxis, before hiding out at the house of a few sovereignist sympathizers he knew. His two tails kept guard in a Volkswagen parked on the street corner.

“Do they actually think I’ll lead them to Lavoie?” he thought, incredulous.

He shut himself in the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with a metal coat hanger, a pair of pliers, and a brick wrapped in a wet towel. Then, after repeatedly smashing the brick into his face and forehead, he did his make-up. Opening the cabinet, he found a bottle of aspirin and swallowed half a dozen with a glass of water.

Then he cut the hanger in half and bent the two pieces, which he slid into his mouth. He examined his newly reconfigured jawline in the mirror. His face was like raw steak and his jaw gave him a crooked smile. Not the subtlest facelift, maybe, but much cheaper than going under the doctor’s knife.

An umbrella makes a good cane for an old man. His metamorphosis is complete. Proof of the success of his disguise: his Montrealer girlfriend doesn’t recognize him at first. Jean-Paul tells himself it’ll do for the cops, as well.

After all that, his guardian angels seem to have flown away.