A Little More Free

by John McFetridge

  “Here’s what we can do,” Dougherty said. “You tell me who David Murray was working with, and I’ll process you for the possession but it’ll get dropped before it gets to trial.”

  “You can do that?”

  Dougherty wasn’t sure if he could or not but this guy would never know.

  “I saw him with some guys, English guys from the Point.”

  “Names?”

  “I don’t know their names.”

  Dougherty could tell that was true, he was feeling it now, the difference between a lie and the truth. Lindenmuth was nowhere near the liar the real criminals were, but Dougherty was feeling like he could do this. He said, “Tell me what you do know about them.”

  “One guy was called Goose, another guy was called Ronnie.”

  “Okay,” Dougherty said, “that’s good.”

  He took Lindenmuth back to the cells, and then found Carpentier in the squad room and said, “I think I got something.”

  Carpentier said, “C’est quoi?”

  “Couple of names. Well, not full names but I can work with them.”

  “Very good,” Carpentier said. “The other two didn’t give anything up.”

  “I guess you were right, this guy was the youngest, the most nervous.”

  “Did you make him an offer?”

  “I said we’d charge him with the possession so no one would think he gave anything up but we’d drop that before it gets to court.”

  “That might not work,” Carpentier said. “The lawyers talk to each other. These bikers, they have the same lawyers as the mobsters now — they’re getting more professional. If it gets dropped for no reason word will get around.”

  “It’s not bikers,” Dougherty said, “it’s Point Boys.”

  “La même chose,” Carpentier said. “It’s the same lawyers. What we can do, there can be some problem with the evidence, you can lose it or not record it properly.”

  “It has to be my fault?”

  Carpentier smiled a little and said, “You are getting too far along for rookie mistakes.”

  “It’s okay,” Dougherty said, “I’m still making plenty.”

  “Bon, you can talk to the guys he gave up?”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “I can find them.”

  On his way back up the hill the sun was coming up and Dougherty was feeling good, feeling like he could be a detective.

  But first he had a day shift to work in uniform.

  * * *

  “We got them, we got them both, bastards.”

  Dougherty was in the break room.

  Sergeant Delisle slammed down the phone and said, “In Vancouver, les maudits pricks, in a drug raid.”

  One of the other cops asked who, but Dougherty knew. And he was seeing how useful these drug raids could be.

  “Les boys didn’t even know who they had,” Delisle said. “One of them gave a fake ID, couldn’t even spell the name on it.”

  Jimmy O’Brien and Jean-Marc Boutin. Started the fire at the Wagon Wheel. Killed thirty-seven people.

  Delisle was walking around the station, restless, full of energy. “One of them tried to kill himself — too bad he didn’t do it.”

  The other cop said, “Who?” and Delisle said, “I’d like to take him over to Phillips Square and set him on fire.”

  “Shit,” the other cop said, “from the Wagon Wheel?”

  Dougherty closed the file he was looking at, arrests from a summer rock concert at the Forum, and stood up.

  Delisle said, “We gonna go get them in Vancouver, you gonna go?”

  “I doubt it,” Dougherty said. “They’ll send detectives.”

  Delisle said, “You been playing detective.”

  “Well, I’m a patrolman now,” Dougherty said, walking towards the door. “So I should be on my beat.”

  “You should …” Delisle said and left it hanging.

  In the small parking lot behind the station house, Dougherty checked out a patrol car and drove up to Sherbrooke and headed east. He was pretty sure Goose was Greg Herridge, little brother of Imelda who’d been in some of Dougherty’s classes at Verdun High. From what he could remember, Goose wasn’t the sharpest knife the drawer, but he was always trying to hang around with Imelda and her friends. Which would have included Danny Buckley, so now Dougherty was thinking the old gang’s all here and they’re all involved in the drug business and somehow connected to David Murray. Then he wondered which one killed him.

  He pulled into the parking lot at the Royal Vic, and the guy in the booth looked annoyed when Dougherty motioned at him to raise the gate, making it clear he was going to pay the eighty cents. He parked and got out of the police car, looking up at the building, thinking it must have been a hundred years old and looked like a castle, Scottish baronial, the way it had been described to Dougherty, built by Scottish money, for sure. It was on the slope of Mount Royal, felt like it was under the brow, on the edge of the old Golden Square Mile on the McGill campus.

  Dougherty was used to bringing people to the hospital and, if they were calmed down enough, leaving them in Admitting, but this time he went to the elevators and rode up to the fifth floor.

  As he walked by the nurse’s station one of the women said, “Officer, I don’t think anyone here called the police,” and Dougherty stopped and said, “No, I’m here to see my father.”

  “Do you know which room?”

  “Yes.”

  He was still having trouble with it, with the idea of his father in the hospital, but now Dougherty felt he was ready. They could talk, make a few jokes about the hospital food and Dougherty could say he had to get back to work.

  But his father was sleeping.

  Dougherty hadn’t expected that, and he stood in the doorway. He stared at the body on the bed and didn’t see his father. He saw a pale, weak, thin body under a sheet. He saw a tube going into a nose and a needle in an arm. He saw black hair with streaks of grey.

  Weak. Fragile. Vulnerable.

  A nurse came by, and Dougherty was scared she was going to tell him to go into the room and wake up his father but she said, “He just fell asleep.”

  Dougherty said, “I shouldn’t wake him,” and then felt he’d said it too fast, sounded too anxious, but the nurse said, “If that’s okay. Maybe you could come back later?”

  “Sure,” Dougherty said, “I’m working, I can stop in anytime.”

  “Thanks.”

  And he walked away without looking back.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Judy rolled over the edge of Doughtery’s bed and lifted her purse up from the floor saying, “So, you can’t be seen with me in public?” and Dougherty said, “I thought it was you couldn’t be seen with me?”

  She got out a cigarette. “It would look bad.”

  “I could make it look like I’m arresting you,”

  “Again.”

  She lit her cigarette and held the match.

  “So, how’s your father?”

  “In good hands.” He blew smoke at the ceiling. “That’s what they tell me.”

  After he’d visited his father and finished his shift Dougherty called Judy and asked if she wanted to go out somewhere for dinner and she’d asked if he knew any out-of-the-way places. He said plenty.

  “How did the surgery go?”

  “Complete success, they say.”

  Judy stood up and walked naked to the little bathroom, the red tip of her cigarette glowing in the dark. “My father’s was a double bypass and there were some complications — he was in the hospital for months.”

  “I didn’t even ask how long he’d be in for.”

  Dougherty heard the toilet flush but he hadn’t heard Judy going so he realized the flush was to drown the sound. Sure enough after the tank filled she flus
hed again and came back to the bed.

  She said, “A few weeks, at least.”

  “Shit.”

  “They had to put him under anesthesia, cut him open, break his ribs, put him on a heart-lung machine.” She sat on the edge of the bed with her back to Dougherty. “It’s a big deal.”

  “Well, there’s no choice, right?”

  “They never mentioned one.” She slid back under the sheet. “My father wears it like a badge of honour. Did you know if an airline pilot has a heart attack he has to retire?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “My father likes to say that if everyone who had a heart attack had to retire there wouldn’t be anybody left at the top levels of government or industry or the professions.”

  “Well now it looks like it’s spreading to the lower levels,” Dougherty said.

  “Don’t tell my father. He loves his status symbols, his executive perks.”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything and then Judy said, “Anyone still at home?”

  “Little brother, but he’s fourteen, he can take care of himself.”

  “Can he?”

  Dougherty said, “Sure. And my sister, Cheryl, she’s going to Sir George, she can help out.”

  “My sisters are younger, but not much and they all had a tough time when my dad was in the hospital. And my mom, I practically had to move back home.”

  “You’re the oldest?”

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look at us,” Judy said, turning on her side and snuggling up to Dougherty, “getting to know each other and everything.”

  “Fraternizing,” Dougherty said.

  “Do they warn you against that?”

  “They don’t think they have to.”

  “Yeah,” Judy said, “it’s so unlikely.”

  She was pressed up against him and her hand was on his chest, the smoke rising from the cigarette.

  “These days,” Dougherty said, “I’m not sure who I’m supposed to fraternize with.”

  He could feel her react to that a little, tense up a bit and he wanted to ask her about that, but he didn’t want to push it. He was on his back, one arm around Judy, and he just held on and didn’t say anything.

  It was quiet for a minute and then she took a drag on her smoke and exhaled and said, “So, what’re you interested in? Politics?”

  “Not really.”

  “Big election coming up.”

  “We’re not supposed to take sides.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Good question.”

  “Well, anyway,” she said, “Nixon’s going to win big, it looks like.”

  “There’s an election here, too, isn’t there?”

  “Oh, right, well here it’s still Trudeaumania.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “He’s a politician.”

  “So, it’s all politics all the time,” Dougherty said.

  “No, it’s just … Well, I guess it is, pretty much,” Judy said. “Now, anyway. Everybody’s going crazy about the indictment, the Watergate thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Gordon Liddy and the others, indicted by the Grand Jury.” She looked at Dougherty and said, “For breaking into the Democrats’ headquarters and planting bugs?”

  “Oh right, I heard something about that.”

  “So, everybody’s going crazy: who are they working for, how high up does it go? At least all the Americans in town are going crazy.”

  Dougherty said, “It might go pretty high.”

  “Wow, I expected more resistance.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe even a little defensiveness.”

  Dougherty shrugged a little and Judy said, “What’s going on?”

  He said, “Nothing,” and Judy said, “No, it’s okay, you can tell me.”

  Dougherty pulled away from her and stood up, walked around, barely enough room to pace. “No, it’s nothing.”

  “Come on, it’s not nothing, what is it?”

  Dougherty stopped and looked at Judy and he expected her to say something, to push him to talk about it or to say, Never mind, forget it, something like that, but she was just waiting. It was giving him the feeling that she really wanted to talk about it, that she really wanted him to tell her what he was thinking.

  He said, “I don’t know, it’s just … Sometimes it’s easy, I’m just trying to keep the peace, you know? Go into a bar and people are trying to beat each other to death and all you have to do is get them separated and calmed down. It’s not complicated. They’re drunk, whatever, you just want to make sure no one gets hurt, no permanent damage.”

  Judy said, “Yeah, that’s good.”

  “But then, it’s just …” he paused and turned around and then turned back, “It’s just, you know, all I’m trying to do here is find out who killed your friend.”

  “We weren’t that close.”

  “And it feels like there’s a lot more going on.”

  She was sitting up in the bed then. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, I guess I mean that the official story, you know, is that we don’t track draft dodgers, we don’t share information with the FBI or the CIA or anything like that.”

  Judy said, “Yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t know, but it just seems like every time we need something, a little information or something, we get it.” He was going to say something about the farm, the way Carpentier just happened to know about it or the way they just happened to pick up the deserters in the drug raid but he didn’t want to go into specifics, he didn’t want to give examples.

  Or really, he didn’t want to give evidence.

  He was naked but he also felt exposed.

  Judy said, “We know there are FBI agents in town. We know half the guys who try to join the committees are RCMP.”

  “I guess I knew that, too.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and smoked and didn’t say anything.

  Judy moved a little closer and put a hand on his arm and said, “You having trouble figuring out whose side you’re on?”

  “I didn’t think I had to pick.”

  “You joined the police.”

  “I thought that was everybody’s side. I thought the police were who you called when you were in trouble.”

  “And now?”

  Dougherty turned and looked at Judy. “I don’t know.”

  Judy squeezed his arm and then slid around and sat next to him on the edge of the bed, wrapping herself in the sheet. “Okay, I’ve been thinking about this, too.”

  “About being a cop?”

  She laughed and said, “No.” She took another drag on her cigarette and looked around for an ashtray.

  Dougherty took the cigarette and stood up, saying, “Thinking about what then?” as he walked to the kitchen and stubbed out both smokes on a plate beside the sink.

  “Well, I haven’t been talking about it, just thinking about it, so it might not make sense.”

  Dougherty said, “I’m used to that.”

  She smiled and shook her head a little. “Okay, well, here’s the thing, I’ve been in a few groups.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Just listen, okay?”

  “Okay.” He sat down on the bed and waited.

  “Okay, so you know about the St. Henri Workers’ Coalition. That was part of the Company of Young Canadians, have you heard of them?”

  “Yeah, they still around?”

  “No, they splintered. There’s the Company of Young Québécois now, but they don’t really have any English members. So, then I got involved with the Milton Park Defence Committee and there were some anti-war activists there already.”

  “Draft dodgers. And desert
ers.”

  “Peace activists.”

  “Oh yeah.” Dougherty reached over to his dresser, almost pressed up against the bed, and picked up a book and said, “‘Choose Peace.’” He handed it to Judy.

  “Yes, like this.” She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. He knew it would be wrong to say how cute it looked.

  “But now that’s splintering,” she said.

  “People joining other groups?”

  “Or just dropping out.”

  “And turning on?”

  “You think you’re funny,” she said, “but you’re not.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Okay, here’s the thing, people are dropping out of these committees and these movements. Stop the development of Milton Park, stop the war in Vietnam, that kind of thing.”

  “Yeah, so what’s the next movement?”

  “That’s just it — there isn’t a next movement. People are dropping out of these but not doing anything else. I’m not sure what it is exactly, it’s more personal.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t really, either, it’s just —” she trailed off a little and then nodded and said, “Have you heard of self-actualization?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s a psychology thing, a humanistic approach.”

  “Of course it is.”

  She said, “Okay, be sarcastic,” and started to get up.

  “No, wait.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is, people are talking about themselves more, about what they want for themselves.”

  “I don’t really understand.”

  “Like I said, I don’t really, either. It’s just that … It’s that, I guess I’m not as sure about things as I used to be. I guess, you know, we went from all these big ideas, peace in the world and worker solidarity and then housing right here in Milton Park and it all seems so … I don’t know, abstract?”

  “I think I do,” Dougherty said. This was really unusual territory for him, talking about how he felt about these personal things, but after seeing his father in the hospital bed, after seeing the way higher-ups in the police force acted, after so much, he was feeling very close to Judy. He said, “I always felt in between, you know? I grew up in the Point and I’m Irish but I’m also French. I joined the police but most of the guys I grew up with are joining gangs.”