A Little More Free

by John McFetridge

  “Yes.” Vachon stood back with Dougherty and watched the technicians work.

  Logan came up beside them and said, “Were the stamps Dutch?”

  Vachon said, “You know we can’t comment,” and Logan looked past him to Dougherty who shrugged.

  “All right,” Logan said, “the police do not deny that the envelope was mailed from Amsterdam.”

  One of the technicians by the x-ray machine waved Vachon over, and as he walked away he looked back at Dougherty and said, “Don’t tell him anything.”

  Dougherty nodded, and Logan waited a moment and said, “Was it addressed to the consulate or to a man personally?”

  “Didn’t you hear what Vachon just said?”

  “Police do not deny that the envelope was addressed to the consul-general personally.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be a full statement this afternoon,” Dougherty said, “if it is a bomb.”

  “Oh, it’s a bomb,” Logan said. “They’ve been delivered all over the world.”

  “What?”

  “At least twenty,” Logan said. “The one in London is the only one to have gone off.”

  A couple more cop cars had arrived in the park, and the small crowd was keeping back on their own.

  Dougherty said to Logan, “They have a portable x-ray machine.”

  “It’s the first time they’ve used it.”

  A minute later, Vachon was walking back towards them with a piece of paper in his hand saying, “Plastic explosive.”

  “That’s it?” Dougherty said.

  “No, the technicians are taking it,” Vachon said. “It was moulded to be flat in the envelope and there was a small detonator. Quite sophisticated.”

  “So what’s that?”

  “I can’t read it,” Vachon said, “I don’t know.”

  Logan said, “‘Remember Black September.’”

  “You can read Arabic?”

  “It’s what all the others said.”

  Vachon looked surprised and said, “Others? Here?”

  “No,” Dougherty said, “all around the world, at least twenty of them.”

  Vachon looked impressed that Dougherty knew this, and Dougherty shrugged a little and said, “Or so I heard.”

  “Good, Constable, that’s good,” Vachon said. Then, “Bien, we’ll take this back, start the investigation, see if it’s the same as the others.”

  As Vachon was getting in his station wagon and driving away Dougherty said, “That’ll keep him busy for weeks. Maybe he’ll get a trip to London out of it.”

  “If there’s no more here,” Logan said. “We got a letter at the Gazette, from the other side I guess, someone calling themselves the International Anti-Terrorist Organization, said they’re planning on bombing Arab airlines and embassies around the world.”

  “So they’re not totally anti-terrorist,” Dougherty said.

  “They say after the deaths at the Tel Aviv airport, the murders in Munich and more attacks on airplanes flying into Israel, they have no option.”

  “These Remember Black September guys,” Dougherty said, “they have no options either.”

  “No one does, they say.”

  The other cop cars were pulling out and the small crowd was dispersing but Dougherty leaned back against his car and watched.

  Logan said, “Hey, they arrested an IRA leader in Belfast yesterday and found a rocket launcher.”

  “Great,” Dougherty said.

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “No,” Logan said, “I guess not. The newsroom always gets excited, it sounds like a good story, but it never ends well.”

  “For anybody.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it seem like a coincidence to you,” Dougherty said, “that all these guys have no other choice but to act like James Bond? I wonder if they’d work so hard at it if it was boring work and didn’t make the papers but helped people.”

  Logan did a little double-take looking at Dougherty and said, “Where did that come from?”

  “Someone said it to me yesterday.”

  “Woman?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because it sounds like you actually listened to it. Watch it,” Logan said. “If we’re going to play cops and robbers we need the cops in the game.”

  “Oh, we’re in the game,” Dougherty said, “don’t worry.”

  Logan was walking back to his car then, saying, “You better be.”

  Dougherty didn’t move for a moment, and then he got out his pack of smokes and lit one, still leaning back against his car. Of course it was a woman who’d talked to him about all these guys acting like James Bond instead of doing the boring work — it was Judy MacIntyre. After they’d got back to Dougherty’s apartment and made out and were lying in bed, they talked. And talked and talked.

  Judy asked him how he knew about the gay bar, and Dougherty said he worked downtown, he had to know all the bars. But she was easy to talk to and waited for more and then he got serious and said of all the bars downtown they were the least of his problems, almost never called the cops, but he was being asked to check them out a lot more often. “There’s a rumour,” he said, “that the mayor wants to clean up downtown for the Olympics.”

  “But you said those bars aren’t a problem.”

  “Remember what happened before Expo,” Dougherty said, “they bulldozed Goose Village so you wouldn’t see it coming in off the bridge. The mayor has his own ideas about what’s a problem.”

  That got them talking about all the neighbourhoods being knocked down, people kicked out so shiny new buildings could go in, and Judy had quite a bit to say about Milton Park, how much was going on behind the scenes, who was getting paid off, who could be trusted, who couldn’t, and Dougherty said, “You mean there are spies?”

  “It’s just word travels fast, people always seem to know exactly what we’re going to do.”

  “And this is a big development?”

  “Huge, haven’t you seen the plans?”

  “No.”

  Judy was looking up at the ceiling then, taking a drag on her cigarette and blowing out a stream of smoke, and she said, “It’ll completely change downtown — the whole area from McGill past Park Avenue, from Pine to Sherbrooke. They’re planning half a dozen forty-storey apartment towers, shopping malls, hotels. It’s huge.”

  “But you guys are fighting it?”

  “Every step of the way.”

  “And there are spies?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s dangerous?”

  She turned her head on the pillow then and looked at Dougherty and smiled a little and said, “Do you think I need police protection?” and he said, “Oh, I’m sure of that, but that’s not what I was thinking.”

  “What were you … oh no, couldn’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “You think someone killed David Murray because of this development?”

  “All I know for sure,” Dougherty said, “is that someone killed David Murray.”

  “But it couldn’t have been because of this.”

  “What could it have been because of?”

  “Well, I don’t know, but …” and that’s what got Judy talking about the boring work that needed to be done for change. Whether it was anti-war movements in the U.S. or pro-democracy in South America, or Middle East peace, or housing issues in Montreal, the real work was always slow and boring and was all about meetings and talking to people and finding common ground and making compromises and baby steps. She said that a few times, how the progress was in the small steps, but then she said, “But boys will be boys — they love to hijack airplanes and kidnap people and set off bombs.”

  Dougherty said, “There are usual
ly women with them.”

  “I know, I know. I just hate it, all the violence. It just leads to more.”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything for a minute and then Judy said, “They always say they have no choice but they always seem to enjoy it sooo much, all the sneaking around, the secret codes, everything’s sooo dramatic, like a big game of cops and robbers.”

  “Except people really get hurt.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  Dougherty said, “They really don’t want to put on the workboots.”

  “No fun in that.”

  Dougherty wanted to say the workboots were what he’d remembered about her, what he liked about her, but he didn’t think that was what she wanted to hear.

  Then she said, “Democracy’s hard and it’s boring. And slow. These guys are all in a hurry.”

  “Our democracy is a terribly flawed system,” Dougherty said. “It’s just the best one we’ve come up with so far.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I don’t know — I heard it from my father.”

  Then they talked about their fathers a little. Dougherty didn’t want to, but Judy asked and he couldn’t see a way to avoid it, so he told her about the heart attack and his father going in for surgery, and she told him it wouldn’t be so bad, saying, “My father had a double bypass last year.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Old,” Judy said. “Really old, fifties.” Then she smiled a little and said, “Anyone over thirty …” and Dougherty said yeah.

  “Can you talk to him?” Judy said. “To your father?”

  “More now.”

  “I can’t talk to mine. He doesn’t want to listen.”

  Dougherty said, “Do you listen to him?”

  “I guess not. All my talk about finding common ground, and I can’t find any with him. Or with my mother.”

  “Baby steps,” Dougherty said.

  “Yeah, baby steps.” She curled up to him then and closed her eyes.

  Now Dougherty was looking around Jeanne-Mance Park, he could see the McGill athletic building on Pine and some old apartment buildings beyond that and he wondered if they were part of the development, if they were going to be demolished, and he thought he could understand why people would fight that.

  But he didn’t have any idea how far anyone would take it. The longer he was a cop the more he realized he had no idea what people were capable of.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  That night Dougherty caught a break.

  But he couldn’t help but wonder who really arranged it.

  He got an overtime shift with the Morality Squad raiding a couple of bars. Captain Boisvert had forgiven Dougherty for his testimony in the strippers’ indecency trial, even though the women were acquitted. The squad hit two bars just before closing, one in the Iroquois Hotel on Place Jacques-Cartier in Old Montreal and the one Dougherty was in on, Le Chat Noir on Sherbrooke East, at the corner of Ste. Famille — between Jeanne-Mance and St. Urbain.

  They arrested thirteen people in all, taking them to Bonsecours Street to process them and Dougherty figured they probably brought him along to the Chat because the seven people they picked up there were English, students mostly.

  But when he’d filled out the arrest reports and started processing them, Detective Carpentier showed up and told Dougherty to pull three guys out and put them in a separate cell while the others were sent to Parthenais.

  It was almost four in the morning by then and Dougherty said, “They only had a few joints.”

  “A few each?”

  “Yes,” Dougherty said, “but it was one of the other guys who had the LSD, forty-four capsules. And some hash, almost a dozen grams, I think, each one rolled up in tin foil.”

  Carpentier was looking at the arrest reports and he said, “These three are deserters. They’re wanted by the U.S. Army. We should talk to them.”

  “That was lucky,” Dougherty said, “that they happened to be in Le Chat Noir.”

  Carpentier said, “Yes, lucky.” And then he said, “Why don’t you talk to this one, Brian Lindenmuth.” Carpentier handed the arrest report to Dougherty and said, “He’s the youngest — was he the most nervous?”

  “None of them were very nervous,” Dougherty said. Now he was nervous himself.

  “C’est bon,” Carpentier said, getting it right away. “You’re already dressed like a detective, he won’t know. Treat him like a drug dealer. Try and find out who he buys from or if he smuggles it himself.”

  “He probably won’t say.”

  “But you can lean on him,” Carpentier said. “You can threaten to turn him over to the American army.”

  “I thought we didn’t do that.”

  “We can if we want to. And then when he gets ­nervous,” Carpentier said, “and don’t worry, he’ll get nervous, ask him about David Murray.”

  “Will you be interrogating him, too?”

  “Not yet, let him think he has a friend in you. But not too much of a friend.”

  Dougherty said okay and took the report, a single piece of paper, and went down to the cells, wondering how Carpentier knew the three men were deserters and how he’d known they’d been in the bar that was picked to be raided.

  Walking down the stairs of police headquarters Dougherty figured there was a lot going on in the building he didn’t know about. Probably a lot of stuff he’d never know about.

  The three men were all in the same cell, and Dougherty told the constable on duty he was taking one of them upstairs to Interrogation. Then he said, “Lindenmuth, let’s go.”

  None of the men moved. Dougherty looked them over. They all looked the same to him: unshaven, hair too long, jeans, jean jackets, workboots — but unlike Judy MacIntyre they didn’t look like they’d ever done much work — and that smug look that was getting to be more than just annoying.

  He said it again, “Lindenmuth.”

  One of the guys said, “We haven’t called our lawyer yet.”

  “Gardiner?”

  The guy looked surprised and Dougherty said, “If you want we can just give you to the army, they have an office in the consulate here.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “They might even send someone over to pick you up, take you straight to Fort Drum.”

  Now all three were looking surprised, and Dougherty said, “Or you can talk to me for a few minutes. Who knows, maybe there won’t even be any charges and the army will never know you were here. Which one’s Lindenmuth?”

  In the interrogation room, Lindenmuth took a cigarette from Dougherty and lit and said, “Playing good cop won’t help.”

  Dougherty said, “I’m not the one who needs help.”

  Lindenmuth shrugged and tapped his cigarette on the ashtray.

  Dougherty could see how nervous the guy was — his hand was shaking and he was looking anywhere but at Dougherty.

  “So, you don’t have landed immigrant status, and you can’t get a job here. What do you do for money?”

  Another shrug.

  “You sell drugs, of course. The question is, who do you get them from? Do you get them here in Montreal or do you smuggle them in?”

  “A couple of joints,” Lindenmuth said. “I’m not a dealer.”

  “Whichever one of you three talks first will get the best deal,” Dougherty said. “And the other two will get handed over to the army.”

  Lindenmuth was starting to look worried. “Why aren’t you talking to the real dealers? The guys who had real drugs?”

  “Who do you buy from?”

  “You think I’m going to tell you anything? You think I’m afraid to go back to the army?”

  “Yes.”

  The guy was squirming, and Dougherty was thinking this being a detective was good. But then he realized that
most of the drug dealers they were picking up these days were connected to something — bikers or mobsters or the Point Boys — and it was probably a lot tougher to get them squirming.

  “Well, I’m not afraid,” Lindenmuth said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Dougherty said okay and stood up.

  But Lindenmuth stayed sitting on the wooden chair.

  Dougherty said, “I’ll help you out. When was the last time you saw David Murray?”

  “Murray?” It caught him off guard. “I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

  “How long before he was killed?”

  Lindenmuth shrugged, took a drag on his smoke and said, “Couple weeks at least.”

  “When you were slipping across the border with the drugs?”

  “I told you, I’m not a dealer.”

  “But David Murray was.”

  Another shrug.

  Dougherty sat back down and said, “Maybe you would prefer to go back to the army. Who are you scared of here?”

  “I’m not scared of anyone.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dougherty said, “it’s okay. You’re a pacifist, right? You chose peace. But you’re backed into a corner: you need money to live but you can’t get a job.” He watched Lindenmuth thinking, and he felt the guy wanted to talk. A more experienced detective could probably make the right move and get everything out of this guy, but Dougherty wasn’t sure what to say.

  “And these guys,” Dougherty said, “these guys are criminals, real criminals. You deal with the bikers or the Point Boys? Either way, they don’t choose peace, do they?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “No one needs to know where I found out. I just need to know who David Murray was working with.”

  Lindenmuth made a slight, dismissive snort and tapped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. “No one needs to, but they could.”

  Dougherty was thinking the guy was really in a bind: he could tell Dougherty the names of the dealers and they probably would find out and go after him or he could get sent back to the army. Exactly the position Dougherty wanted him in, but he wasn’t sure how to play it and the guy, this Lindenmuth, didn’t look smug now, he looked like a scared kid. And Dougherty felt a little like a bully.