A Little More Free

by John McFetridge

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

  But it gave Dougherty a few more people to look at.

  And then he wondered if Carpentier had already looked at some of them and if some new information or connections might show up out of nowhere, but he didn’t say anything about that to Judy.

  * * *

  Just after lunch Dougherty walked into HQ on Bonsecours and found Constable Carocchia on the second floor and said, “Hey Tony, I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Last week of August, what was going on?”

  “Are you making a joke, Dog-eh-dee?”

  Carocchia wrote the press releases for the police PR department and spoke English, French and Italian. Dougherty didn’t think he had a sense of humour.

  “I don’t remember what the big stories were.”

  Carocchia said, “Fuck you,” and walked away.

  Dougherty went up to the third floor and found Rozovsky making notes in the evidence room.

  “Any idea why Carocchia would fly off the handle because I asked him about the last week in August?”

  Rozovsky looked up from the big leather ledger he was writing in and said, “You’re funny, you know that. I don’t mean Lenny Bruce funny, I mean … yeah, maybe I do.”

  “What the hell?”

  Rozovsky looked at Dougherty and said, “The Mafia release.”

  Dougherty shrugged.

  “Carocchia put out the press release about Saputo.”

  “So?”

  “He put right in the press release that it was well known that members of American organized crime, I think he even used the word Mafia, are often seen at Saputo Cheese.”

  Dougherty said, “Oh yeah, now I think I remember. That wasn’t August, though.”

  “No, it was back in the spring some time when the release went out but it was August when Saputo was on trial and he wanted Carocchia held in contempt. Guy had to get up and testify.”

  Now Dougherty was laughing a little and said, “Poor Tony. Well, I guess to him it is well known.”

  “I’m surprised he’s still in PR.”

  Dougherty said, “You don’t make a few mistakes, how’re you going to learn?”

  “And learn to make the right mistakes.”

  “So,” Dougherty said, “what else was going on in August?”

  Rozovsky closed the ledger. “Aren’t you all down in Maine, what’s it called, Old Orchard?”

  “You all?”

  “They’re calling you Anglos these days.”

  “What are you?”

  “Jews will always be Jews. We’re in the Laurentians with Duddy Kravitz.”

  Dougherty said, “Right. Okay, so were there any demonstrations or anything?”

  “Why?”

  “This guy, David Murray, he’s in with the draft dodgers, he’s on the committees, he’s organizing stuff, but then a few months ago, I guess around the start of the summer, he drops out. Or he stops showing up at meetings, no one sees him, and then we find him dead on Mount Royal.”

  “I thought he was smuggling drugs.”

  “He was, but they said they didn’t kill him.”

  “Oh well, if they say so …” Rozovsky’s eyebrows were raised.

  “I’ve got some contacts,” Dougherty said. “Told me that Murray smuggled drugs from here to the U.S.”

  “So maybe he screwed somebody on the other side of the border.”

  “And they came up here and killed him?”

  “I’m sure they can find Montreal, it’s on all the maps.”

  “And then find Murray? I can’t find anyone who knew where he was, and I know the city.”

  “Somebody’s lying to you.”

  Dougherty said, “For sure,” but he had no idea who it was. He had a feeling it was everyone.

  Rozovsky said, “Are you working now?”

  “Four to midnight.”

  “So you’ve got a couple of hours, go look at newspapers from August, see if there were any demonstrations.”

  “What kind of pictures did you take then?”

  Rozovsky shook his head and said, “I can’t do all your work for you,” but he was opening up the big leather ledger and flipping pages.

  “What’s the next step for you?” Dougherty said. “Do you want to be a detective?”

  “All those headaches? Working twenty-four hours a day, what for?”

  “Don’t all cops want to be detectives?”

  “Heroes,” Rozovsky said. “When you signed up you told them you wanted to help people, right?”

  “I guess, yeah, that’s what everybody says.”

  Rozovsky held up an eight-by-ten colour photo and said, “Do you know how much I got for this?”

  “Some guys standing around in a parking garage, that what it is?”

  “It’s Mick Jagger at the Forum, looking at the truck where the bomb went off.”

  Dougherty squinted and said, “Oh yeah, maybe that’s him. Maybe not.”

  “It’s him. This picture went out on the wire, got picked up all over.” He put the picture away and held up another. “Guy from the Who, the drummer, I think. Didn’t get as much for this one, but it’s a better picture.”

  “It’s a guy taking a leak against a wall.”

  “Got a good one of Alice Cooper — that’s a guy, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I knew that,” Dougherty said. He pushed aside some photos on the table and said, “Who’s that?”

  “That’s evidence.”

  “You mean an actual photo you took for your job?”

  Rozovsky picked up the picture, a man’s face covered in bruises. “That’s a good shot, isn’t it? The look on his face — I really captured it, didn’t I?”

  “Can you sell that one?”

  “He’s a fruit, got beat up outside a fruit bar on the Main.”

  “Usually those guys don’t want the police involved, they don’t want to go to court,” Dougherty said. But looking at the picture he saw the defiant look in the guy’s eyes. Rozovsky really did capture it, the guy staring at the camera, looking for a fight.

  “This guy did,” Rozovsky said. “There was one other witness, too, said a few guys followed them, calling them names, shoving them and then this guy,” he looked at the white sticker at the bottom of the photo, “Pierre Lafontaine, he turned around, apparently, and said something back to them.”

  “I hope he got a few shots in before this happened,” Dougherty said.

  “Says he did, but the other guys took off.”

  “The other guys weren’t in the bar? Nothing happened inside?”

  “I don’t know,” Rozovsky said. “I just take the pictures, but there must be a report somewhere — the guy was pretty insistent.”

  “So they didn’t know each other at all? It wasn’t anything personal?”

  “Well, it was personal to Pierre, here.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “I guess it was. Thanks.” He turned and started out of the office.

  “Hey,” Rozovsky said, “don’t mention it. Whatever it is.”

  It was personal, Dougherty was thinking. Personal for him.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  It was dark in the lane, no streetlights, just the flash from Rozovsky’s camera. “Yeah, I recognize him,” Dougherty said, “his name’s Greg Herridge, called him Goose.”

  “Because of his long neck?” Carpentier said. “That’s broken?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Was he with the Point Boys?”

  “He sure wanted to be,” Dougherty said. “I talked to him a few days ago about David Murray.”

  Carpentier stepped back to let a couple of guys bring the stretcher through and said, “Oh
yes, the draft dodger.”

  “Herridge knew him, said they smuggled drugs together.”

  “He told you that?” Carpentier took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled smoke. “So, it’s not a complete surprise someone killed him, a mouth like that.”

  Dougherty could see Goose’s neck was broken but he wasn’t sure if the black and blue marks all over his face were something that came with a broken neck or if he’d been beaten, too. Carpentier said, “Probably the same killer.”

  “You think so?”

  “Close enough,” Carpentier said, “it’s a war starting.”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything and then Carpentier said, “You know a lot of these guys, the Irish ones. Maybe you should talk to Ste. Marie.”

  “I’ve talked to him.”

  Carpentier blew out smoke and said, “About working in his squad. Kennedy retired, you know.”

  “No,” Dougherty said, “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, he’s still in the hospital, cancer, but he won’t be coming back to work. They’ll need an Irish.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  “I’ll talk to Paul-Emile,” Carpentier said. “So much drug now. Lot of hash and heroin and mescaline, you know what is that?”

  “No.”

  Rozovsky said, “Horse tranquilizer.” He stepped out of the shadows and said, “Kids are snorting it.”

  “Sounds like a party,” Dougherty said.

  “There’s nothing on the ground around here,” Rozovsky said, “no bricks or rocks or anything, looks like he was dumped here.”

  “Why here?” Dougherty said. “What’s the message here?”

  “Who knows, maybe you’ll have to talk to them.”

  “I’m sure they’ll tell me everything.”

  Carpentier turned to walk away then stopped and said, “Connais-tu sa famille?”

  “I know his sister, Imelda. His father died when we were kids — an accident at the CN yards, I think. Mother still lives in the Point.”

  “Bon, I’ll talk to her.”

  When Carpentier was out of earshot, Rozovsky said, “Look at that, talking about a promotion.”

  “You think?”

  “He’s going to talk to the assistant director.”

  “He is?”

  “Paul-Emile Olivier. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Right now he’s going to talk to Greg Herridge’s mother, tell her some other drug dealer beat her son to death.”

  “That may not be the best part of the job,” Rozovsky said. “But you won’t have to wear that uniform —” the flash lit up the lane as he snapped a picture “ and look so official all the time.”

  * * *

  “Is this guy a fag, is that what you want to know?”

  “Have you seen him in here?”

  The bartender pushed the picture back towards Dougherty and said, “Don’t recognize him. What did he do?”

  “He got killed.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Dougherty was pretty sure the bartender had recognized David Murray’s picture, the high school ­graduation picture Murray’s mother had given Carpentier.

  “And you never saw him in here? Did you see him anywhere?”

  It was just after lunch and the place, the Mystique Cocktail Bar on Stanley, across the street from the Stanley Court apartment building where Dougherty had thought about getting a place when he was first assigned to Station Ten, was filling up fast. He hadn’t even noticed the Mystique the day he came by to look at the apartments, half a block up from St. Catherine, and he wouldn’t have seen the place now if he wasn’t looking for it, the plain brown wooden door crammed in between a stationery store and a dry cleaner.

  The bartender said, “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Dougherty picked up the picture and said, “He was an American going to McGill.” He put the picture back in the pocket of his sports coat and got out his smokes. “Maybe he came in here,” Dougherty said. “Maybe somebody followed him when he left, started a fight.”

  “Does that happen? Do guys follow men coming out of places like this and start fights with them?”

  “I’ve heard it does,” Dougherty said.

  “You’d think the police would do something about that.”

  Dougherty turned away from the bartender and looked out at a couple dozen men moving chairs around. There was a small stage against the back wall and on his way in Dougherty had noticed pictures of the performers, drag queens dressed up like Tina Turner and Mae West, but the chairs all seemed to be facing the end of the bar.

  “Is there going to be a show?”

  The bartender rolled his eyes and said, “Aren’t you going to watch the game?” Then he motioned to the barstool Dougherty was standing beside and said, “You’re welcome to join us, but there’s a two-drink minimum.”

  Dougherty lit his cigarette and said, “This series was over when we lost the first game.”

  “Come on, we win today and we win on Thursday, that’s the series.”

  “We were supposed to win all eight games. Win them easy.”

  “We have to take what victory we can,” the bartender said.

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, I guess we do.”

  Walking out the of the Mystique, Dougherty looked at the bar upstairs, a dance bar called Truxx, and thought about going in, but it looked like it wasn’t open in the afternoon. And he didn’t think David Murray was really the dance bar type, but this whole wild goose chase Dougherty was on was because he really had no idea what kind of a guy David Murray was. Everyone seemed to agree the guy wasn’t the same as he was when he left Wisconsin but no one seemed to know who he was by the time he got killed.

  A couple blocks over on Peel, Dougherty went into a bar called the Tropical Lounge. It was older than the brand-new Mystique, probably twenty, twenty-five years in the same location. The first bar in Montreal where men could dance together. Dougherty had been in the place a couple of times on duty, usually because of tourists, drunk, away from home being crazy, getting in fights.

  The dance floor of the Tropical was filled with chairs, and men here were getting ready to watch the game, too. Dougherty thought it was funny, if he just looked at the guys and not the decor of the bar it could be the Rymark or Magnan’s — bunch of men watching a hockey game. Maybe there were a few more cocktails and fewer pitchers of draught but otherwise it was just the same.

  Dougherty walked to the end of the bar and put down the picture of David Murray.

  There were two bartenders working, and neither one made a move to come over to where Dougherty was standing. He waited.

  The game started on TV.

  Dougherty waited.

  Two minutes in Esposito took a penalty.

  After Canada killed the power play, one of the bartenders, the older one, walked slowly to Dougherty and said, “What’ll it be, Officer?”

  Dougherty tapped the photo on the bar and said, “Do you know this guy?”

  “Just like that? You don’t want chit-chat, pretend to be my friend?”

  “Have you seen him in here?”

  The bartender shook his head a little and said, “Why are you by yourself, where’s your partner? How long have you been a detective?”

  A huge cheer rang out in the bar, guys standing up and clapping.

  The bartender said, “Espo scored.”

  Dougherty clenched his fists. He wanted to bang on the bar and grab this guy and tell him to answer the damned question, but he also wanted to be calm and cool about it. He didn’t know how to play it. He wished he had a partner. He wished he was a detective.

  Dougherty said, “You do know him, don’t you?”

  “I’ll get you an O’Keefe,” the bartender said. “Tha
t seems like you.”

  Dougherty leaned on the bar and turned around a little and looked at the TV. And he looked at the crowd of men looking at the TV.

  One of the older guys said, “This is more like it,” and the guy sitting beside him said, “We have our legs, finally.”

  “If we’d had a training camp, or if this series had been in the middle of the season, the whole thing would have been like this.”

  “Just took a few games to get into shape.”

  “I don’t know,” another older guy said, “these Russians are good. They’d put up a good fight no matter when we played these games.”

  The bartender came back and put a beer in front of Dougherty. “You want to run a tab, Officer?”

  Dougherty was thinking he just wanted this guy to tell him about David Murray and then he’d leave, he didn’t want to spend the afternoon watching a hockey game in a fruit bar — no matter how much these guys knew about the game.

  But he said, “Sure.” Then he said, “My name’s Dougherty. Constable Dougherty.”

  The bartender was probably in his fifties, his short hair mostly grey, his clean-shaven face lined. He said, “Steve Whitmer,” and held out his hand, and when Dougherty shook it he said, “The last rank I had was chief petty officer.”

  “World War II?”

  “The one that was in all the papers, yeah.”

  Before Dougherty could say anything, Whitmer went off to serve some more guys and the Russians scored.

  A few minutes later the Russians scored again to take the lead, 2–1, and the place got tense.

  Whitmer brought Dougherty another beer and said, “Why are you looking for this man, Constable?”

  “He was killed.”

  “So why are you the one asking questions?”

  The bar exploded with cheers.

  “Espo again,” Whitmer said. “He’s having a game.”

  Dougherty took a drink and said, “We don’t know very much about him. I’m trying to find out.”

  Whitmer nodded. “So they just sent you.”

  “No one sent me,” Dougherty said. “I’m looking everywhere.”

  “This your first time in here without your riot helmet and billy club?”

  “I’ve never been here on a raid,” Dougherty said. “I’ve only been here when someone called — breaking up a fight, calming people down.”