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Having once been young and desperate he knew that sale would be the easiest of the tasks he must complete.

  However before he could proceed with the extensive plan, a transaction needed to be concluded. Rene grinned as he again fingered the pair of bank drafts. He replaced them in separate pockets of his shirt and considered once more the asking price of the proposed investment.

  The cash value of each of the drafts was the same, seven thousand and five hundred dollars. He carried in the right front pocket of his trousers a silver money clip holding five hundred dollars in ‘walking around’ money. Held in his left front pocket was a thick rubber band surrounding a roll containing twenty-five of the brown one-hundred dollar bills. The wallet held in the inside pocket of his jacket contained another ten crisp hundreds.

  Though not intending to use it he would also bring his check book.

  Richie told him the current owner of the restaurant asked twenty thousand dollars for the contents and the lease.

  Rene was no man to be dictated to when spending his money.

  There would be a negotiation, regardless of earlier discussions. Only when it concluded to his satisfaction, would he part with a single dollar. As in all situations in life and business, Rene would make the best deal on his own behalf and leave the well-being of his competition for God to consider.

  He looked again to the setting sun, slowly covered by the trees beyond the wide river, and smiled at the thought of the impending meeting. Rene loved to engage in the parry and thrust of business negotiations of all types. The prize awaiting the successful conclusion of the upcoming transaction was one he long desired.

  The notion he would soon have what he had waited so patiently for delighted him.

  As he retrieved the mug and turned to enter his home through the sliding patio doors behind him he heard the phone on his desk ring. He stepped with purpose across the terrace and wondered if the call was from the lady friend scheduled to join him for a late dinner or Richie reminding him of the meeting.

  Either way it excited him to discover who might be on the line.

  Rene shook his head, emitting a low chuckle of self-conscious embarrassment as he crossed the den to pick up the phone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maurice Deschampes groaned under his breath as he straightened himself to his full height of six feet and two inches.

  He leaned away from a plastic garbage pail where he deposited potato peelings. The tall man placed both hands on his narrow hips and stretched his aching lower back.

  A pair of stainless steel commercial sinks stood in front of the large container. They attached to the back wall of the restaurant kitchen where he worked and were surrounded by gleaming stainless steel countertops on either side. Each sink was three-quarters filled with cold water. The one to Maurice’s left contained unpeeled potatoes while that to his right he filled with their skinned and quartered remains.

  He did not enjoy the work and would have been happier to be seated while peeling the potatoes.

  The chef who ruled the kitchen decreed - in his infinite wisdom - there was to be no sitting on the job by anyone working in his restaurant.

  “Tabernac!” Maurice mumbled under his breath.

  He scanned the room with a glance to first make sure no one might overhear.

  The miserable fat chef took no prisoners, and cursing in any language was another activity prohibited in his kitchen.

  Maurice needed the paycheck the prep cooks’ job provided. He turned to the sink and withdrew another wet potato to begin the expert removal of its tough skin. He worked with care not to remove too much flesh.

  The chef inspected the peelings before Maurice dumped them in the garbage bin behind the building. To remove more of the potatoes’ flesh than necessary constituted grounds to be fired. Maurice had by now learned this lesson well.

  He witnessed the removal of four prep cooks for the minor offense so far.

  This in less than eight months working under the tyrannical demands made by the fat bastard of a chef!

  “Tabernac!” he repeated under his breath.

  He recalled the poor lads staring in bewilderment at the gleaming tile floor of the spotless kitchen. The great man berated their lack of knife skills before turning to the dour sous chef waiting silent at his side.

  His order to ‘get these worthless dogs out of my kitchen or join them’ was delivered in a loud voice filled with bold conviction.

  The fat chef made sure his words could be heard above the noise of the work surrounding them.

  When Maurice finished peeling and quartering the remaining potatoes they would be rinsed and placed into an enormous steel pot. It would be filled with water and brought to a boil, salted liberally, and held there until well-cooked. At which point they would be drained and deposited into a large stainless bowl. They would be joined by diced onions, minced fresh garlic, mounds of salted butter, pints of heavy cream, and whipped to soft perfection by a sous chef wielding an industrial blender.

  The pleasure of those jobs was reserved for someone else however, and Maurice felt the bile rise in the back of his throat. The hard limits of the terms of his employment again confronted him.

  For as a prep cook in this chefs’ kitchen he was forbidden to take part in activity that involved cooking the restaurants’ food.

  He was restricted to preparing the disparate elements composing side dishes and not allowed under any circumstance to touch a stove. His days were thus consumed with the peeling and slicing of a wide variety of vegetables. He also washed a never-ending supply of pots, pans, dishes, and cutlery, and cleaned every surface of the immense restaurant kitchen. This until it met the ever-increasing demands of the fat and maniacal chef.

  Not being a culinary school graduate he realized that as long as he worked in this kitchen he could never cook.

  The fat chef maintained a rigorous commitment to use only the top graduates from the local culinary institute. They worked alongside several highly recommended, though less experienced, chefs assembled from across the country.

  These talented cooks prepared a daily menu that had, justifiably, earned raves throughout the city for more than a decade.

  Maurice’s time at the college in Montreal ended in disgrace. An inability to keep away from the cooking wine led to a fall from grace. He would spend his professional life as a cook in the work camps of the north because of his failure. In turn the master chef and his fellow cooks viewed him as something less than an apprentice in this kitchen.

  More he could never be.

  Despite this he appreciated there were many things to be learned working for the great man. He so far had stolen more than a few well-guarded secrets during the agonizing months he spent prepping.

  The fresh-faced ignoramuses purporting to be chefs parading through the kitchen of the tyrannical chef he held in poorly concealed contempt.

  Maurice watched as dozens of them entered the kitchen both direct from the institute or with the fawning recommendations behind them. He laughed to himself with silent glee as they failed, confronted by the impossible standard demanded by a fat maniac in flawless whites.

  Many of the youngest shed frustrated tears as they departed the spotless kitchen. Maurice determined he would remain in the fat bastards’ employ until assured of an opportunity to cook at an establishment worthy of his talents. Despite his current station his culinary skills were not insignificant and his palette remained sound.

  If peeling potatoes was what he had to do to remain on the staff of the evil genius, he would peel them until his fingers bled.

  As he tossed a newly quartered potato into the sink, he stretched again in vain hope of easing the strain on his back. He scratched at the full head of jet black curls now restrained under the tight confines of a hair net.

  The uncomfortable headgear was another demand imposed by the great man upon those without the right to wear the toque of a chef.

  With the back of a long fingered hand he wiped at the sweat bead
ing on his unlined forehead. His widely spaced eyes were a deep blue above an aquiline nose both straight and classically formed. Though a confirmed bachelor Maurice considered himself a lover and not a man of violence and it had never been broken. With gaunt cheekbones and lips thin though well shaped, an elegant neck and proportionately wide shoulders, flat belly and narrow waist, he presented a fine portrait of a man.

  In spite of being thirty-seven years of age he appeared well-maintained though he was not.

  This he also knew well.

  He wore kitchen whites supplied by the restaurant and laundered daily. The white tennis shoes and no jewelry he affected as per the devil chef.

  Yet he stood out among his fellow kitchen staffers due to some ethereal quality of regal aloofness he affected in his bearing.

  That he knew it added to a lack of popularity among his fellow employees.

  As he held few if any of them in particular regard he was painstaking with both his manners and the polite interest he maintained when interacting with them. This he felt was appropriate to his station. Maurice believed himself a gentleman. He long ago determined to present a noble and courteous face to his fellow man whether he believed him worthy of it or not.

  That he seldom if ever believed his fellow man worthy of such treatment he tried not to reveal to even his few close friends. He would be shocked to discover most people who interacted with him knew at once.

  “MAURICE!” the voice of the fat chef bellowed above the noise of the kitchen, “Mark these words because I won’t tell you or anyone else this again – NO PHONE CALLS WHILE YOU’RE ON THE JOB!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Wayne fastened the mandarin collar of his white shirt.

  He smoothed the front of it before reaching with a thick finger to lift the black leather jacket from the brass hook. He stepped down into the basement rec room. A moment later he stood before a large mirror mounted above the television set against the west wall of the neat finished space.

  He smiled at his reflection before shrugging into the lined leather bomber. Wayne examined himself in the mirror again, this time with a critical eye.

  A hard bodied and handsome man stared back, defiant and proud in spite of his recent financial difficulty.

  The linen shirt, laundered by a cleaner on Henderson Highway only blocks from Ben Newberg’s home, displayed wide shoulders and a deep chest to good effect. He wore pleated black wool trousers, also expert pressed. Tailored to hang within an inch of the floor beneath the heel of polished black leather boots, they framed his hard buttocks as intended. The black leather belt with its polished silver buckle he wore for effect.

  His narrow waist and the six-pack of hard muscle covering his belly required no help to hold the trousers in place.

  Wayne’s blonde and naturally highlighted hair he wore in the current style cut above the ears. The loose curls above them were neatly trimmed yet long enough to fall across the unlined and gentle convex of his forehead. His perfectly spaced and almond-shaped blue eyes stared from beneath thick eyebrows a pleasing shade darker in color. He sported the beginning of tiny laugh lines at their corners. His straight nose, ideal in shape and proportion, ended above a pair of full lips. They appeared placed to enhance the preternaturally square outline of the clean-shaven jaw beneath them.

  Wayne was a man almost too well made.

  Throughout his life appearance gained him those advantages available only to handsome men in all of his dealings. He remained ignorant of this fact. Wayne felt himself hampered by his good looks.

  Many times he believed his business ideas were given short shrift by colleagues due to his looking so damned good.

  As he turned from the mirror, he retrieved a pair of calfskin driving gloves from the pockets of the leather jacket. He pulled the tight gloves onto his big hands and stepped with purpose up the tiled steps to the back door of the modest bungalow. On the landing he lifted the curtain covering the dual pane window centered in the heavy storm door. He looked into the darkening sky, high and cloudless with a dull gold patina left by the falling sun.

  It didn’t look like rain.

  “Hey Ben!” he called out, his voice loud enough to be heard on the main floor, “I’m headin’ out fer the night, want me to pick anythin’ up fer you on the way in?”

  “I’d take a two-fer-a-buck Coffee Crisp,” his landlords’ voice replied from the living room sofa, “but don’t go out of your way to get it, thanks.”

  “I’ll hit the seven on the way back,” he answered, “not sure when though, could be late so I’ll leave ‘em on the kitchen table, ok?”

  “Thanks again!” Ben replied, “And say hi to Rene for me.”

  “Will do!” Wayne called as he turned away.

  He locked the door behind him and navigated around the dark-stained single level wood deck at the rear of the stucco bungalow. On the concrete parking pad behind it sat his car, and he smiled as he looked at the black Camaro.

  He wondered again why it was Rene Lemieux might want to talk to him.

  Maurice walked at going-to-the-pub speed through the falling southern Manitoba twilight, his mind filled with conflicting emotions. Along the wide sidewalk of Lyndale Drive he traveled toward the shops lining Goulet Avenue and Marion Street and the neighborhood of St. Boniface proper. Though enjoying the still warm evening he grew concerned at what his friend and landlord Rene might have up his sleeve.

  To be asked to join him anywhere outside their shared home surprised the tall chef.

  That he would ask Maurice to join him at the restaurant of the notorious Marlene Hotel was near a shock. The place was known for strippers and the drug trade at least as much as for anything else. Long associated with the criminal element, meeting there added a hint of danger to the mysterious request. Maurice had agreed to it, without hesitation, only because he enjoyed the luxurious quality of his rental accommodations.

  He would go to great lengths to avoid a disagreement with his landlord.

  He tugged at the collar of the thick wool sailor’s coat. The wind gusted from the wide river to his left. Maurice noted with a frown the chilly evening would force him to ride the transit bus for his return home. The spring weather though sun-drenched and warm in the afternoon, turned to moonless dark and cold soon after it set. He was without transportation as he had sold his ancient Subaru while getting sober. This he was forced into by the need to pay rent and avoid living in the tiny car. With his savings now growing, he would find himself a new, if used, automobile soon enough.

  He planned to remain sober this time and now toyed with purchasing something European.

  Then he could be proud!

  As he turned onto Poulin Drive and approached the corner of St. Mary’s Road he saw the lights of the hotel only four blocks away. A short walk south on Marion Street remained, and he grinned as he felt the wind on his back, pushing him toward his destination.

  Again he wondered what would cause Rene to ask him to meet at such a disreputable place as the Marlene. He had been sensible enough to avoid the place in his drinking days due to its well-earned reputation for danger. Maurice shivered and pulling his collar still tighter he told himself the cool wind caused the chill.

  It wasn’t connected to the cold knot forming in his stomach as he drew closer to the neon sign dancing above the door of the big hotel.

  In the falling light Maurice watched a late model black sports car pull to a stop on the street in front of the Marlene Hotel. A large fellow with light hair stepped from it to knock on the door of the restaurant beside the hotel entrance. Soon enough he entered and left the tall chef’s sight.

  His curiosity now further piqued Maurice wondered why the man had been forced to knock at the door of the restaurant. Perhaps he would attend a private celebration. The thought of a party cheered Maurice, and the fear inside him melted a little. The notion he might take part; by invitation no less and despite the somewhat disreputable venue, in a private gala hosted by his wealthy landlord was
pleasant.

  He quickened his pace and grinned, forcing the nascent fear deeper into his belly and hoping the party would be a good one.

  Rene sat at a table near the back of the dining room. He faced the wall, a filtered cigarette burning bright from between his lips as he drew upon it. He stared with unhidden curiosity at the young man Wayne seated across from him. From the kitchen door to his right came the metallic ring of cookware and the sizzle of a grill in operation.

  As he took the cigarette from between his lips, the smile that spread across them lent his Gallic features a lupine cast. An abundant supply of thick and coarse-waved blonde hair rode upon his large head like an unwilling passenger. To highlight a powerful neck and shoulders it was expensively trimmed above his ears. His wide concave forehead, bearing a trio of deep wrinkles above a pair of expressive and dark eyebrows, granted an air of gravitas to the deep set blue eyes.

  It was fortunate as they appeared to laugh with perpetual glee at a joke known only to them while perched aside his prominent hawk nose. The nose meanwhile protruded above wide lips, full and still flushed with youth above the diamond point of a powerful jaw.

  Standing five feet and ten inches in stocking feet and built like a linebacker, Rene long ago accepted himself as a headstrong and handsome man.

  He used his looks and a stubborn belief in his own abilities to drag himself up by his bootstraps from humble beginnings. His opinion of himself inflated as his business success grew. At forty-seven years of age he remained reasonably fit if too well-fed. Though growing thick in the waist with his years he remained resolute in commitment to personal freedom and continued success.

  The restaurant where he now sat was the latest bauble he would develop in pursuit of continued pleasure and certain profit.

  Rene greeted Wayne’s knock upon the door of the closed restaurant almost an hour before with the commitment of a salesman. He pitched the opportunity the moment the younger man entered the dining room. His excitement was real, and he knew it would catch if delivered with appropriate enthusiasm.