Miss Montreal (7 page)

“I knew
of
him before I ever met him. I first noticed his byline in the Concordia student paper. I always skim it looking for budding young writers who might work cheap. Sammy was covering the faculty meetings and already skewering people with their own words. When he got out of school, he interned at the
Gazette
and stayed on maybe three years, then left to go on his own. He freelanced pretty much everywhere in English Montreal, including here. Then our urban affairs writer quit—what is it now, five years ago—and I offered Sammy the gig. Did you know his work?”

“Not well. I read his last few columns online last night.”

“Read more,” she said. “Everyone should. They should be required reading at journalism schools. The way he combined humour with a social conscience, moral fury with wit and compassion. We didn’t call him Slammin’ Sammy for nothing.” Her eyes glazed over with a film of tears. I thought of telling her the nickname story, make her smile, but that’s not in my job description. It’s when people are in tears that most truth is told.

“Who did he slam?” Ryan asked.

“Who didn’t he? He took a lot of things personally. Hated bullies. Couldn’t stand hypocrites. People who dip into public money while voting to cut breakfast programs. People who preach family values and get caught with their foot under the bathroom stall. The small-minded bureaucrats who nickel-and-dime people out of benefits, then expense Château Petrus at lunch. City councillors and the provincial government were his favourites, I guess. The more local, the better. But he went after anyone who in his opinion was lowering the quality of life in Montreal.”

“No one person stands out?” I asked

“No. The police said he … he was beaten to death. Really viciously. I can’t imagine anything he ever wrote, not in all the years I knew him, that would provoke that kind of reaction. He got his share of crank mail, and he shared the weirdest
of the weird with me. People wrote to complain, to challenge him, God forbid correct him—because he never had his facts wrong. They tried to break him down with logic, but not threats. He was never hateful and people weren’t with him.”

“He never raked anyone’s muck? Exposed their dirty secrets?”

“To be honest, he left that to others. He wasn’t the one poring through files to uncover wrongdoing. There’s an old newspaper saying about columnists,” she said with a sad smile. “They come out on the field when the battle is over and shoot the survivors. Sammy waited for the reporters to dig the dirt, do battle, then he commented. Put it into his perspective. He did call people out. Held them to account. Dared them to justify their actions. Sometimes showed them the high road, what they could have done instead, what could have been. But he did it with such humour—you could get mad at him, but how could you stay mad?”

Now her eyes really watered and she first brushed them with one sleeve, then reached for a box of tissues. “Shit. I keep these there for the people I interview, not me.”

We waited while she blew her way through two tissues, wiped her eyes and cleared her throat.

“Anyway,” she said, “his columns weren’t all negative. People would have tuned him out the first year if they were. He also liked to find diamonds in the rough, people doing things to brighten the town in some way and celebrate them. He wrote about the good things he saw that make Montreal unique. How more Anglos than ever are bilingual, for example. How more Montrealers are intermarrying and raising kids who are fluent in both languages from birth. This one series he wrote about Franglais—the mix of English and French some people speak when they intermarry—it was so popular, it became the basis of a cabaret, which was quite the little hit.”

“I saw he also wrote feature stories,” I said. “I haven’t had time to read any yet.”

“Make time. Writing his column was very demanding. He had to work himself up to a very high pitch, his state of high dudgeon, I used to call it. And every week he did it: topical, on time, precise word count, beginning-middle-end, a personal connection, an opinion, a conviction. The features gave him time to come down, work at a different pace. They were long but still tightly written, very well thought out.”

“What kind of subjects?”

“Profiles, mostly. Or inevitably, I should say. For Sammy, it was always the person at the heart of the story. Whether it was a political leader or an ordinary person who was making a difference, it was personal with him, like I said. Christ, when he lost his dog to cancer a couple years ago, he had half the town in tears. Or at least half the Anglos.”

“Not one piece of hate mail?”

“No. The police spoke to me after it happened and I told them the same thing. Gave them access to his inbox.”

“Any chance he owed anyone money?” Ryan asked. “Beating up deadbeats is their specialty.”

“Who could he have owed? He owned his flat outright and he didn’t have a car. He biked or walked here every day. And if he spent money on anything like clothes, he kept it a big secret.”

“He ever talk about gambling?”

“He played poker once a month with some guys for twenty bucks. Same guys he’s known since college.”

“How did he get along with people here?” I asked.

“Great. He was not only good at what he did, he pitched in on other things if he was around—copy-editing, fact checking, proofing, layout even. When he didn’t have his daughter, he was basically here. And he was funny. Oh, God, he was funny. I mean we have totally different senses of humour. Mine is dry as dust—all those generations of English—and his was more … generous? Compassionate? Something like that.”

“No one was jealous?”

“Of his talent, sure. He was an award winner, and plenty of people in the English media wish they could write like him. But would that inspire enough envy in anyone to kill him that way? He wasn’t living the big life, like I said. He was a divorced single dad who got lucky he bought his flat in a down market. Which was the extent of his holdings.”

“Any women in his life that you know of?” I asked.

“No one recent. Sammy was better on paper than he was with the ladies. He used to say he was going to try a computer dating service, but he was kidding. I think.”

“You ever see him with a woman with long dark hair? Not as curly as yours but not straight either.”

“Not in the office.”

“Did you see him outside of work?”

“This is a small paper. We put in a lot of hours together. Six days a week, sometimes seven. I know far too much already about some of the people I work with and if I spend time with them outside work, I don’t get to vent about the things they do that drive me nuts. So when we finally get out of here, we tend to go our separate ways.”

“There’s a picture of you on his fridge,” Ryan said.

“You’re kidding. From what?”

“An award presentation.”

“Oh, the night he won the Nicky.”

“What’s that?”

“Best writing on city life in an English Montreal publication. Named after Nick Auf der Maur. A local hero, man about town, long-time city columnist.”

“Who was he profiling now?” I asked.

“He was working on two. Which wound up connecting even though they didn’t start out that way. The first was an Afghan family and how they and other Muslims are adjusting to life in Quebec.”

She probably didn’t notice Ryan shift slightly in his seat.

“What drew Sammy to that story? What was his take on it?”

“His great-grandparents came to Montreal exactly one hundred years ago. They had to adapt to life here like the Muslims do today. They endured a lot of anti-Semitism, especially in the thirties and forties, when fascism was rampant in Quebec. Some pretty shameful things happened. But his family went on to thrive in the city. His grandfather got rich, at any rate. Sammy wanted to write something that brought the two experiences together: the Muslim struggle to assimilate while remaining true to Islam, as written by a descendant of Jews who had to do it before. He also wanted to show not all Afghans are like the Habib family. You know who I mean?”

“The guy who burned his house with the daughters in it because they wouldn’t wear that fucking scarf,” Ryan said.

“That’s the one.”

“The whole world heard about him,” I said. “The Canadian honour killer.”

“If he isn’t killed in prison,” Ryan muttered, “there’s something wrong with the system.”

“They actually did want to wear the hijab,” Holly said quietly. “Both girls.” Her voice was soft, but there was no mistaking she was just as angry as Ryan—and me. “But their soccer league wouldn’t let them play if they did. That’s partly what Sammy was writing about.”

“And making enemies?”

“He wasn’t focusing on Marcel Habib. He was profiling a very different Afghan family, to show this asshole didn’t represent the entire community.”

“What family?”

“Their name is Aziz. A father who came here with his son and daughter when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. An educated man, a physician and diplomat in Kabul before it fell. He brought his children to Montreal alone after his wife was killed
in a bombing. He had a cousin here. Raised them both to do whatever they wanted, son and daughter. They run his rug business now.”

“I thought the father was a physician.”

“In Kabul, yes. His credentials weren’t recognized here and he had to feed two small kids, so he went into his cousin’s rug business, and when the cousin passed away he took it over. Now he’s retired and the kids run it.”

“You have their contact info?”

“I’ll link you up.”

“What’s the other profile?”

“Laurent Lortie.”

Neither Ryan nor I reacted.

“Sure, you hear of the honour killer but not the aspiring politician. Lortie is the leader of a new party in Quebec.
Another
new party, I should say. There’s been a lot of splintering on the provincial scene.”

“What’s his called?”

“Québec aux Québécois. Also known as the QAQ. Either he didn’t realize the English pronunciation would be
cack
or
quack
, or he didn’t care. He does speak English fluently. He studied at the London School of Economics and can put on quite the mid-Atlantic accent when he deigns to speak it.”

“Which way does the party lean?”

“Right,” she said. “As right as you’d ever see in Quebec. We only ever elect social democrats; it’s usually just a question of whether they’re also sovereigntist. But Lortie is convinced the people are ready for a change. He says real Québécois don’t need a nanny state. They need to rediscover some of that pioneer swing of theirs. I’m paraphrasing but that’s the message. He’s not big on immigration, which is where this one intersects with the Aziz profile. His daughter Lucienne, who is his second-in-command, is also very vocal on this issue. I wouldn’t walk into a Muslim neighbourhood if I were her.”

Someone should have told that to Sammy. If he had walked into that neighbourhood on his own.

“How far along on that story was he?”

“He interviewed both Laurent and Lucienne,” Holly said. “There’s also a son, Luc, by the way, but he isn’t part of the political dynasty.”

“Not interested?”

“Not capable. Sammy said he seemed slow. I don’t know if he meant developmentally delayed—”

“You can say retarded,” Ryan muttered.

“Sammy wouldn’t have, so I won’t either. Anyway, if he ever interviewed Luc, he left no notes.”

“Who else did he interview?” I asked.

“Pundits, pollsters, observers who had something to say about the Lorties’ policies and electability. The head of the local Muslim congress, who was suitably outraged. One thing I know, Sammy was going to see Laurent again the day he was found. They were supposed to meet at four o’clock that afternoon.”

“I don’t like it when meetings don’t happen,” I said. “Any other stories?”

“There was one other folder he created right before he died, but it was empty. No documents in it at all. So if it was a new story, he must have just been starting. He never mentioned it to me.”

“Did it have a name?”

“ ‘Miss Montreal.’ ”

“That mean anything to you?”

“The only thing anyone could tell me was there used to be a restaurant by that name on Décarie near Ruby Foo’s. But it’s been gone for years.”

“Did he ever cover construction?” Ryan asked. “There’s a business where people get hurt a lot. And not on the job.”

“If you mean corruption, you’re in the right place. It’s a national sport here. The Charbonneau Commission hearings
were the most fun we’d had in months. But it’s been over and on to the next thing for ages. The only other thing that came up recently …”.

“What?”

“Was Sammy adopted?” she asked.

“Not to my knowledge. Why?”

“He asked me a little while ago if I knew any social workers who handled adoption reconciliations.”

“Did you find someone?”

“Yes,” she said. “One of my girlfriends has a friend who works in that field. I called her and asked if it was okay to pass on her name to Sammy. She told me she wouldn’t be able to tell him anything more than general procedures, unless it had to do with him personally. I passed on her name and email to Sammy, but whatever he did with it he kept private.”

“Would she speak to us?” I asked.

“She might,” she said. “But she won’t be able to tell you any more than she could tell Sammy. Maybe less.”

B
obby Ducharme told us he’d meet us at six o’clock at a deli called the Main, right across the street from Schwartz’s. The Main was the overflow place, Bobby explained. “You get the same food there as across the street, more or less,” he said. “But there won’t be a lineup and we can get some privacy at the back.”

“Tell you one thing,” Ryan said as we drove up St-Laurent. “The women alone are a reason to love it here. Check that out.”

He pointed at a tall slender woman in a tight gold dress, bare legs tanned, hips swinging side to side. “You walk in downtown Toronto, King and Yonge, say, all the women are in business suits with sneakers, they got a purse, briefcase and gym bag, looking like if you stuck a dime in the crack of their ass, it would still be there when they die. These women here—they’re alive, man. They put some effort in.”