Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(87)

“Nothing?” she asked. “But like you said, so much of the crime in Québec stems from drugs. Not just the gang violence, but thefts, armed robberies, beatings. Murders. Sexual assaults. Domestic violence. If you can’t stop the drugs—”

“It’s not a matter of stopping,” Gamache interrupted. “We can’t even keep it stable. It’s growing. We’re past the tipping point. Doesn’t look like it, yet. People can still go about their normal lives. But—”

“What you’re saying, Chief Superintendent, is that not just drug abuse is out of control, but all crime is about to get worse.”

“And worse,” said the Chief Crown.

“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz.” She turned back to Gamache. “You said you realized there was nothing you could do. Nothing effective anyway.” She examined him more closely. “But that’s not quite true, is it? There is something you’re doing, and it has something to do with the trial.”

“The Chief Crown is right,” said Gamache. “One cartel dominates all the others. We didn’t realize it for a long time. We thought they were at war, hoped they were, and that they’d do some of our job for us. But as we looked closer, we realized it was all a sham. The other organizations were satellites, circling, protecting, decoys for the main one.”

“The biggest of the cartels,” said the judge.

“Non, that was its brilliance and our mistake,” said Gamache. “And why it took so long to identify it. It is, in fact, one of the smallest. It appeared to be just another organization, and not a very effective one. It was static, stale. Not growing or diversifying like all the others. It was so small it really wasn’t worth our effort. We were looking for just what you said”—he gestured toward her—“a great big powerful organization. I made the mistake of equating size with power.”

She took that in. “The nuclear bomb,” she finally said.

“Smaller than a car and can wipe out a city,” said Gamache.

“And did,” said the Chief Crown.

“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz.” She was smaller than both men, and could wipe them out. And might. “But you found it, right?” she said, returning to Gamache. “Eventually.”

“Oui. Took some time. We knew we were spread too thin, trying to go after all the cartels. All the crime. We had to focus, had to find the heart. But we were looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. We were looking for a huge organized crime syndicate in Montréal.”

She was nodding. It was a reasonable assumption.

“Where did you find it?”

“It seems so obvious now,” said Gamache, shaking his head. “Where do most of the drugs end up?”

“Montréal,” said Judge Corriveau, though with a slightly questioning inflection.

“The stuff for Québec, certainly,” agreed Gamache. “But this province isn’t the major consumer. The problem is big enough for us, and tragic enough, but it’s tiny by cartel standards. We’re simply a highway. Some parcels fall off the truck, and stay here. But the vast majority is bound for the border.”

“Into the States.” She thought for a moment. “A massive market.”

“Hundreds of millions of people. The amount of opioids consumed, the amount of money involved, the consequences in suffering and crime are almost incalculable.”

“But don’t most of the illegal drugs into the States go through Mexico?” she asked.

“Used to. But more and more are coming through Canada,” said Gamache. “With all the scrutiny on the Mexican border and so much of the DEA’s attention focused on Mexico, the head of the cartel here saw an opportunity.”

“Bring it in where they aren’t looking,” she said quietly. Thinking.

“The country with the longest undefended border in the world,” said Gamache. “Thousands of miles of forest, and no guards. No witnesses. The rum runners during Prohibition knew that. Fortunes were made in Canada by getting illegal booze into the States.”

It was true, Judge Corriveau knew. Many prominent families could trace their wealth, if they had the stomach for it, back to those days.

First it was the robber barons, and then came the rum runners.

Canada had a great reputation for law and order, as long as you didn’t look under the table.

“How did you discover all this?” she asked.

He opened his mouth to reply, but needed a moment to marshal his thoughts.

“The reason this one small cartel dominates all the others is because the person who runs it has made sure they’re invisible. And, if spotted, is dismissed as unimportant. As we did,” he admitted. “This is a structure that’s been years in the making. Simple. Lean. It’s carefully constructed and all but transparent.”

“A glass house, Chief Superintendent?” asked the judge, but he didn’t smile.

“Yes. It’s there, but not there. And it’s almost unassailable. It’s able, above all else, to hide. Not behind cigar smoke in some greasy dive, or in a fortress estate. But in plain view. Unrecognized for what it is.”

“The devil among us,” said Zalmanowitz.

Corriveau turned a jaundiced eye on him, dismissing this romantic and unhelpful statement. But then she remembered the photo, shown in her courtroom. Blown up to twice life-size.