Page 127 of The Grey Wolf
“When did he come to Canada?”
“Well, that we don’t know. There’s no record of him at Canada Customs. Looks like he snuck across the border.”
They had the longest undefended border in the world. The only surprising thing was that so many used the actual checkpoints.
“Why enter the US legally and Canada illegally? He could have come across as a tourist,non?”
“Absolutely. Nothing to stop him. Except maybe his plan to kill someone without being detected. Just a guess.”
“That could be it,” said Gamache, with some amusement. “Does his family have connections to organized crime?”
“Well, that’s where it gets particularly interesting,patron. They have very strong connections, but not what you’d think. His mother is one of the main mafia prosecutors and Signor Parisi has organized businesses to resist the payment of protection money.”
“Huh.”
The inspector was secretly pleased. She’d worked under the Chief for more than a decade and could count on one hand the number of times she’d actually stunned him.
“The son rebelling against the parents?” said Gamache, essentially asking himself. “Or maybe the anti-mob stance of the family isa front.” Or maybe, he thought to himself, he was wrong, and there was no connection in this case to the Montréal mafia. Why would the mob want to murder an environmental activist? Maybe this Parisi was freelance and had been hired by someone else.
“Has the Parisi family been told?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Contact the authorities in Palermo, find out what you can about the family. Quietly. Make sure that when they’re told, a senior official who knows them is there. I want to know their reaction. We need to know anything the family can tell us about Paolo. His job, his friends, his movements. Anyone they might know in New York and Montréal. Did they even know he was in North America?”
“Got it.”
“And contact the head of Italy’s Anti-Mafia task force. Ask them about the Parisis. If there’s something going on, they’d know.”
“I’ll forward what Interpol sent. I’m still looking for the woman at Open Da Night who signaled him and might’ve killed him.”
“Probably did.Bon. Merci.”
Gamache sat in his study and went over the autopsy report on Paolo Parisi. Twenty-four. Healthy. No reason he shouldn’t live to a ripe old age. But there he lay, eyes wide open.
Armand saw the young man staring at him through the windshield of the SUV. The moment was frozen, suspended, as they caught eyes and Gamache saw a single-minded intensity. Before Parisi looked away, to his target. To Charles Langlois.
Was the murder of Langlois a mafia hit? Was the hit man then hit? The landfill was run by the mob. It was one of many legitimate businesses. Canada was famously opaque, at least among criminals and lawmakers, when it came to providing detailed information on who owned what. It was a sort of bureaucratic cataract.
The regulations had, intentionally or not, created a haven for illegal activities and led to the remarkable rise of organized crime in Québec. This brought to mind the agreements Langlois had found to sell controlling interests of primary industries to Americans. Could this be where Langlois and the mafia intersected?
But as far as Gamache knew, while much of garbage collection, the trucking industry, construction, and, and… were controlled by the mafia, they were not into mining and forestry and huge billowing smelters.
Very few Italians in Montréal were connected to the mafia. It was a constant slur on the community. But those who were were powerful and remorseless.
Gamache tapped his pen on his notebook and stared at his laptop. He considered sending the information on Paolo Parisi to Chief Inspector Tardiff, who ran the Sûreté’s Organized Crime division.
Just then, Honoré and Florence burst into the study. Their grandfather quickly closed the computer and looked into their eyes, to make sure they hadn’t seen the autopsy photo. But the children were too intent on hiding from Zora, who found them easily a moment later.
“Too obvious,” said Zora. “They always come to you. Can we play cribbage?”
“One game, then bed.” Armand took them out of his study, then cheated his way to victory, to the screams of mock protest from the kids, who’d come to expect it.
But his mind was only partly on the game. The rest was on the report. The one he hadn’t sent to Tardiff.
While the children were bathed and put to bed, Armand was on the phone with Jean-Guy.
“Sister Joan admits that the issue was singing. But she still refuses to tell me the names of the other two monks.”
