TWO MEN WATCHED the port gate from their white cube van on Avenue Pierre-Dupuy, across from the cubist architectural curiosity of Habitat 67. With the engine off, the February cold started to seep through the cracks until they could see their breath. The driver rolled his window down now that there was no real difference in temperature inside and out.
“So?” Zeke said and then puffed after a brief bright glow lit the tip of his cigarette.
“We’ll wait another fifteen minutes.” Each syllable condensed into a small cloud. Gus leaned his elbow through the open window and stared toward the gate. He was tired of talking. It was better if only the bare essentials were said after the last screw-up.
“I just wanted a fuckin’ Big Mac.” Zeke couldn’t shut up.
“The Papa Burger not good enough for you, kid?”
“I like the special sauce.”
“You know, it’s just mayonnaise and stuff. Nothing special about it.”
“The cop didn’t spot us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But we were almost at the drive-thru —”
“That would have boxed us in. No escape if they made us.”
“They were just going in to get a coffee or something.”
“You don’t take chances with the cops, kid.”
Zeke looked at his boots. He tried and failed to say nothing for a moment. He smiled faintly. “Then we’ll call it in?”
Gus sighed, weary of life and its complications. He had longed for a simpler life when he joined the Alberta Independence Movement, punching out of a career dead end in the army. You did what you were told, you got rewarded. Money. Girls. A car. Even a house. What he liked most, of course, was power. He soon discovered, however, that with power came complications. At first, he tried to will away his problems using his new-found power to get others to clean up his messes. But he learned something only a more experienced person would know: Even the boss has a boss. And Gus’s voracious appetite for young prostitutes resulted in one emaciated redhead dying in a dank, plywood-walled motel outside Red Deer. Even the other white power affiliates noticed. The leader sent two enforcers. They used two-by-fours to express his disapproval. They took his girls and his house away. He knew what they would take away next. He had followed the rules since, and he was following them now.
Call when the package arrives. Call if the package does not arrive. Do not open the package.
“Yes, we’ll call it in,” he said.
Zeke’s face twisted into what normally would be called a smile for the first time since they had parked. “Then can we get a Big Mac?”
Gus looked at the younger man sitting in the passenger seat. It was like gazing at himself a decade ago. Zeke was looking for purpose, wanting to make a difference to their noble cause. And keen to follow orders, with the expectation that someday it would be his orders that others would follow. Then he saw himself in the rear-view mirror. Only half of his face showed. He still looked handsome for a thirty-five-year-old. Brown eyes, hair neatly shaved. A bit of stubble hardened his face, the effect he wanted. He kept in shape and he could still bench press three hundred pounds. But he knew his days of high status within AIM were numbered. In a few years he would be unable to stand up to the young pups like Zeke.
“Fuck, sure,” he said.
Across the street, a steel fence held a scuffed sign: “Port de Montréal. Entrée Interdite.” The sight of another French sign made Gus spit through the van’s open window. The spit froze before it hit the ground. Why couldn’t Quebec speak English like everyone else? Passing the border from Ontario, the sudden change of language complicated navigating in ways that his handler had forgotten or chose not to mention. He got that Sud meant South, and Nord, North. But he would have saved at least an hour in gridlock if he had understood Voies fermées on the Trans-Canada coming into the city.
He accepted that this assignment, which had taken him and a junior member from their homes north of Calgary to the far east of the country, was but another test of his loyalty. He was one of the older members of the group, and his loyalty was occasionally questioned. Maybe he was just too old to stay with the group. Maybe he was having thoughts of going out on his own. Better to keep him busy and far away, the leadership probably concluded.
So he and the new recruit were waiting for a shipment three thousand kilometres from home, surrounded by those goddamned frog signs that he barely understood. Like being in a foreign country. He knew biker gangs at the top of the unwritten hierarchy, several notches above AIM, controlled the Montreal port. It made smuggling a bit easier than trying to move across a guarded land border. But he didn’t know what lurked in the container they waited for. Only that it was in several large boxes, was very heavy, required a cube van to transport back, and had to be at the chapter house outside of Airdrie by Sunday afternoon at four.
He sighed as he scanned the scene on the other side of the port fence once again. Beyond the sign stood row upon row of stacked rectangular metal boxes. Long black, brown, and white ones, each with mysterious contents that someone valued. A lone forklift puttered between the rows, searching for the right container to bring down.
“Do you see it?” said Zeke.
“No. We’re looking for a quarter container. A small one that fits in the van. Delivered to the gate.”
Gus pulled his cellphone from his front pocket and dialed. He waited until it rang twice and a familiar voice answered, “Yes?”
“No package. Should have been here an hour ago.”
The line was quiet.
“What do we do?”
Gus waited a few more seconds for an answer. “Get out of there. I’ll call with instructions.”
“Okay.” He ended the call and glanced ahead, then at the rear-view mirror. The road was empty of traffic in both directions. “We’re done.”
He twisted the ignition key and the van sputtered back to life, lights weakly highlighting the empty road ahead. He drove back into the city, just another commuter about to get stuck in pre-lunch traffic. Gus turned right to access the Bonaventure Expressway. With a sickening metal-on-metal screech, the van spun right, popped its hood, and banged to a stop. Steam gushed from somewhere in the engine. A grey sedan had slammed into Gus’s door. Stunned, Gus didn’t react, but Zeke did. He jumped out of the passenger door, pulled out his pistol, and walked calmly to the car. Gus just watched. It was something he would have done ten years ago, acting without thinking about the consequences. To show they weren’t intimidated. He leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and removed the rental agreement as he heard three loud pops, glass shattering, and a muffled scream from inside the car.
Idiot.