The Marble Mask by Archer Mayor Page B

playing ‘what if,’ I was struck by the fact that Marcel reached the top over two conveniently dead people.”
    Lacombe looked startled. “You mean he had his brother killed in the war?”
    Gary merely shrugged, but I was impressed. It upped the ante on my own ruminations.
    “Chauvin said the two brothers got along—were slated to share the business,” Paul protested.
    “Maybe,” I said, “maybe not. Gary might have something—not necessarily that Antoine was murdered, but that his death changed what the Old Man had in mind. If something happened between Marcel and Jean after Antoine’s death that Marcel felt threatened his ascension, he might have had his father killed. It wouldn’t be the first time ambition was thicker than blood.”
    Paul voiced the obvious next step, easing away from too much hypothesizing: “Sounds like we ought to have a little walk down memory lane with Lucien Pelletier.”

Chapter 9
    WE WERE BACK IN GILLES LACOMBE’S MINIVAN, joined this time by Rick Labatt—one of his intelligence officers. The Deschamps family’s current activities were one of Labatt’s pet projects, so while he couldn’t add much to Jacques Chauvin’s history lesson, he was eager to be part of Lacombe’s new task force and heading off to visit an old Deschamps associate like Lucien Pelletier.
    His English syntax was better and less accented than his boss’s. “I wish I could tell you that finding Jean Deschamps fits a change in the family’s operations,” he said from the back seat. “But as far as we can tell, everything is running as usual.”
    “How good is your information?” I asked him.
    Labatt was young, wiry, and energetic, very expressive with his hands, but to that question, he gave but a rueful look. “You are right, of course,” he admitted. “It is not very good. The Deschamps are careful that way. We have never put anyone inside their organization. We watch, we listen when we can, we look at surveillance photos, but we don’t know very much. It is why I am excited about this happening with Jean.”
    “Do the Deschamps compete head-on with the Angels?” Paul asked.
    Labatt shook his head. “No, no. Well, maybe a little in the places where there is more room, like smuggling drugs. But locally, the Deschamps, for example, control all the auto theft. The Angels don’t do that. Also, there are bars that are run by one, where the members of the other do not go. It is very strictly followed.”
    “And you’ve never gotten close to nailing Marcel,” Gary stated.
    “That is correct. He is very protected. We nibble at the edges. We take down a chop shop here or there, capture a runner along the border, arrest a few prostitutes. But we can only go so far up the line. Then we run out of what the judge wants to see. We know who’s responsible, but we cannot prove it.”
    We had driven in the same general direction of the restaurant but then veered off into a neighborhood of upscale, tastefully appointed modern homes, each planted in the middle of a three-quarter acre lot, facing a sinewy street and looking new and artificial enough to have been made of plastic parts. Even the snow resembled powdered sugar.
    “There it is.” Lacombe pointed ahead to a house on a corner. “Chauvin told me Pelletier lives with his daughter, who doesn’t know his history. I will make up a story for her.”
    We got out of the van after Lacombe parked it on the street, looking like a hit squad ourselves, but I left it to Lacombe to spin his tall tale to the sixty-something woman who answered the door, and tried to appear as innocent as I could.
    Eventually, after some fussing from the daughter about coffee and cookies, and a bit of chicanery from Lacombe about the need for privacy, we found ourselves in an upstairs bedroom with a large old man who sat in his oversized chair like a walrus in a cave opening.
    He spoke no English, so we repeated the routine we’d followed in Lacombe’s office. But no