Chapter 2
Clara Morrow brought the mug of tepid coffee to her mouth, forgetting that she had a paintbrush clasped between her teeth, like some gunslinger preparing to have a bullet removed.
The analogy wasn’t that far off. This stage in her creations was always painful, wracked as she was with insecurities. The bleeding was internal. The wound worse than it appeared.
Survival was not guaranteed.
Through the window of her small home in the Québec village of Three Pines she could see a light at the rambling white clapboard house across the village green, and smoke rising from the chimney.
Someone was up and functioning at the Gamache home. And so early.
Then she noticed a soft glow over the forests and hills that surrounded the village. The sun was rising.
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 S?reté’s Arson division.
Then the reprisals, swift, relentless, merciless, had begun.
And when it was over, Joe Moretti the younger emerged as the new capo di tutti capi. The head of the Sixth Family. The most powerful mob boss in Canada and one of the most powerful in North America, behind the five New York–based mafia families.
On this bright Saturday in early October, while Don Moretti strolled the aisles of the Marché Jean-Talon, collecting gifts and signs of respect, “Bonjour, Don Moretti,” enjoying the fruits of others’ labors, the former arson investigator sat looking at her reflection in the window of the Métro car as it careered through another tunnel.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir stood just inside the church and looked around for his father-in-law.
He’d woken early to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and a cold breeze scraping his face. He opened his eyes and stared with rancor at the curtains puffing out at the open window.
Fuck. Fuckity, fuck, fuck.
He snuggled deeper into the bed, spooning Annie and feeling her body heat combined with his own warming the duvet around them. He pulled it tighter and pretended the cold air wasn’t rushing into the room.
He nudged Annie gently, hoping she’d wake up and shut the window. But she didn’t move.
Getting up, he ran to the window with every intention of shutting it, then hopping back into bed.
But as he reached it, he saw his father-in-law walking through the soft predawn light along the dirt road that led out of the village.
Followed, Dr. Dolittle–like, by the small parade of animals.
Henri, the ears that walked like a dog; old Fred; and little Gracie.
Jean-Guy looked back at his warm bed, where Annie was snoring, then returned to the window, but Armand had disappeared.
Closing the window, he kissed Annie and whispered, “I know you’re awake, awful woman.”
Her snoring grew slightly louder.
After checking on Honoré and Idola, he quickly showered, shaved, put on his heavy fall sweater that smelled of the cedar closet, and his cords. Following the scent of fresh-brewed coffee to the kitchen, he poured two mugs; then he too left the quiet house.
The sun was barely visible through the forest. There was a hint of light, rather than light itself. A promise of things to come. It was a few minutes past seven and the day glistened, bright and fresh and filled with promise. Anything might happen.
A mist hung over the village nestled in the valley as the cooler autumn air mingled with the warm earth. The vapor rose thicker over the Rivière Bella Bella, creating a sinewy ribbon over the forest as it followed the freshwater spring through Three Pines and out the other side.
All this gave a village already steeped in mystery an almost mystical feel, heightened even further by the near impossible fall colors of the surrounding forest.
The vapor from the mugs joined the mist, adding coffee to the fragrance of fresh grass and mud and the musky fallen leaves. Jean-Guy took a big breath and inhaled a deep sense of peace.
He knew it was temporary, perhaps even illusionary, but he welcomed it as he followed in Armand’s footsteps up the hill to St. Thomas’s.
Once at the church, he climbed the stairs and paused to look back at the fieldstone and rose brick and white clapboard homes that circled the village green.
Three immense pines stood in the middle of the Québec village, towering over the homes and shops, as though sentinels.
In fact, as Jean-Guy had learned, three pines planted in formation was an old code, meant to tell those fleeing for their lives that they were finally safe. They had found sanctuary.