Black Rock

by John McFetridge

  He ate at the Capri, skipped the pig knuckles and splurged on a steak. He was in a good mood, anxious but excited.

  The only other customers were sitting at the bar, older guys in their forties or fifties he didn’t recognize but was pretty sure were from the Point. They were talking about working at the port or, really, they were talking about an article that had been in the Gazette that morning, one of the guys throwing the rolled-up paper on the bar and saying, “Fucking reporters,” his buddies agreeing with him.

  Dougherty ate his steak and mashed potatoes and peas and drank his beer, a quart bottle of Fifty, and tried to listen to as much of the conversation as he could without being noticed. He heard the words, “pilfering and theft,” and figured that was a direct quote from the article and a lot of complaints about more shipments coming in steel containers instead of loose bags. One of the guys said something about the problem being that they didn’t need as many guys to unload that way, while another guy said something like, “Oh, so that’s the problem,” and Dougherty smiled to himself, thinking, Yeah, that’s right, it’s not that the real problem was stuff was harder to steal that way. Harder to pilfer.

  Then he realized the place was quiet, and Dougherty looked up to see the men at the bar looking at him and he knew he’d been caught. Shit. Only one thing to do. He had a knife in one hand and a fork in the other and squeezed them tight, hoping no one would notice his hands shaking, and said, “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  One of the guys at the bar said, “That’s Hughie Dougherty’s boy, went and joined the cops,” and another guy said, “Fucken hell.”

  “What the fuck you do that for boy?”

  Dougherty stood up then and dropped the fork on the plate. He picked up his glass and downed the rest of his Fifty and then took out his wallet and dropped a five and two on the table. He still had the steak knife in his hand so it was awkward, and it was also a bigger tip than he’d wanted to leave, but there was no way he was waiting around for change. Then he dropped the knife and started towards the door, saying, “Because I wanted to,” and walked out.

  On St. Patrick he turned quickly down Laprairie Street, got into his car and drove off without looking back.

  By the time he got to Hibernia and took the underpass at Grand Trunk, Dougherty was laughing. Still shaking and still scared, but laughing. Nervous.

  He drove a few blocks on Wellington and parked near Sébastopol Street and then walked down to Westlake’s bar, wondering how he was ever going to buy hash with everybody knowing he was a cop, and sure enough, as soon as he walked into the bar he could feel it tense up a little.

  There were a few guys at the bar who could have been brothers of the guys in the Capri — but Westlake’s also had a table full of kids, maybe eight or ten of them, all wearing t-shirts and torn jeans and all of them with long hair. Dougherty figured the boys were probably all over eighteen and old enough to be in the bar, but a couple of the girls looked underage. Not that anyone in Westlake’s cared, and it wasn’t like any cops had nothing better to do than roust bars in the Point.

  Dougherty was pretty sure he’d be the only cop who’d been in the place for a long time, and as he was standing at the bar ordering a beer, he was thinking everybody would probably agree with that. He looked at the table of kids and a couple of the boys tried to stare him down. They were only a couple of years younger than him, but a few years working as a beat cop in Montreal made a big difference.

  And everybody in Westlake’s knew it.

  None of these kids would sell Dougherty any dope — they’d all pegged him for a cop the minute he walked in — so he paid for his beer and left. As he cleared the door he could feel the place relax a little and that felt good.

  Outside on the sidewalk he thought about trying another one of the bars within walking distance but figured it would be the same thing in all of them, so he got in his car and drove around a little, looking at cars.

  The streets were lined with them, mostly old sedans and station wagons. On Fortune Street he saw a fairly new Volkswagen Beetle and a Renault sedan, looked like the R10, same as the poor bastards on the youth squad drove, and Dougherty couldn’t imagine who was driving those in the Point.

  But no big white car with a black roof.

  On Wellington, going east towards downtown, across the tracks but before heading into the tunnel under the canal, Dougherty turned right onto Bridge Street towards the Victoria Bridge and the South Shore and pulled into the parking lot by the Autostade, probably the ugliest building left over from Expo 67.

  It was supposed to have become the home of the Expos, the new baseball team, but they moved into Jarry Park instead. Now only the football team, the Alouettes, were playing in the big, concrete bowl — not even a bowl really, just a bunch of concrete slabs rising out of the ground in a large oval.

  Getting out of his car, Dougherty looked around at the empty parking lot, built for the crowds of Expo and now, like the Autostade, almost never used, the Canada Packers plant and the rail yards across Bridge Street. He remembered all the talk when Goose Village was bulldozed, almost ten years ago now, and he heard his father’s voice saying it was because Drapeau couldn’t stand the idea that the first thing American tourists would see when they got onto the island of Montreal was an Irish slum.

  Whatever, Goose Village was gone and the people moved into the Point, giving the old-timers there at least a few people they could look down on.

  Dougherty walked up to Wellington and went into the Arawana. The crowd was older here, serious drinkers getting off shift at Packers and the port and Northern Electric, and the place was quiet.

  It was only when he was inside and at the bar that it occurred to Dougherty he might run into Joe Webber, but he didn’t see him.

  He did see a couple of the Higgins brothers, though, sitting at a table in the corner with a few other guys. No one noticed Dougherty, or more likely, no one would admit to noticing him. He ordered a beer, wondering for a moment how many he’d had in the last hour, but when the bartender put the glass down Dougherty tried to make it look like his first of the night.

  The night was starting to feel like a complete waste of time, and Dougherty was ready to give up. After talking to the detectives, getting encouragement from Carpentier and Ste. Marie, and with more and more cops getting assigned to the terrorist squad every day, Dougherty was thinking this was a real chance for him to get noticed. Maybe he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life working night shifts at Station Ten.

  Then he was thinking he’d just finish his beer and go home.

  A man’s voice said, “Shit, it’s Norbert the Narc,” and there was Buck-Buck, standing at the bar with a beer in his hand and a smile on his face. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Dougherty straightened up and Buck-Buck pulled back a bit. That felt good so he moved forward a little and saw Buck-Buck glance over to the Higginses’ table. That felt good, too. Dougherty said, “Relax,” and then said, “Danny.”

  Buck-Buck didn’t relax but moved a little closer to Dougherty, looking like he was up for a private conversation.

  “I’m not a narc, I’m not even working now.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  Now it was Dougherty looking nervous, hoping he wasn’t laying it on too thick, trying to be natural but wondering if there was a difference between the real nervousness he felt and the way he was trying to look nervous for a different reason.

  “I’ve got a date,” he said, and Buck-Buck said, “So? Even ugly chicks need to get laid.”

  Dougherty let that go. “McGill student.”

  Buck-Buck smiled, almost laughed, and said, “You kill me, narc,” and then his smile disappeared as he realized that hadn’t come out the way he’d wanted it to.

  “So I was looking for a little something, you know,” Dougherty said, and Buck-Buck nodded
like oh yeah, he knew. “And you think you can find that here?”

  Dougherty shrugged.

  “Sorry, man, I don’t know anyone who can help you.”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, okay, I didn’t figure you did,” and Buck-Buck looked for a second like he wanted to challenge that but then it passed and he walked — as slowly as he could — back to the table in the corner.

  A few minutes later, Dougherty paid for his beer and left. On Wellington he looked across the street at the CN rail sheds and the long row of loading docks. He thought about walking for a while, further into the Point and trying his luck at a few other bars — the one thing the Point had plenty of — but now he figured he might as well get home and get some sleep, be ready for his day shift tomorrow.

  Then, just before he got to the parking lot on Bridge Street a brand new Camaro slowed down beside him, the passenger window down and Buck-Buck behind the wheel, saying, “Hey Norbert, get in.” Dougherty opened the door and sunk into the bucket seat.

  Buck-Buck drove and said, “Look, maybe I can help you out.”

  Dougherty said, “Oh yeah?” and Buck-Buck said, “Yeah, but this is just between you and me, right? Nobody can know I’m talking to you.”

  “Sure, yeah.” Dougherty nodded and tried to look really grateful but he knew there was no way Buck-Buck was doing this on his own, he knew that the minute he walked out of the Arawana and Buck-Buck told Ritchie Higgins what they’d talked about the brothers had sent him to sell to the cop. If Dougherty really was undercover, then Buck-Buck would take the fall on his own, the price of working for the Higginses. But if Dougherty really was just a guy trying to score some dope to impress a chick, well then, the Higginses would have something.

  So when Buck-Buck pulled over to the curb, stopping with his headlights shining on the Black Rock, and said, “I’m taking a big chance here, so you know, if I need something …” and let that hang there. Dougherty just said, “Yeah, sure, you know it, man,” hoping that sounded genuine enough.

  “Okay, you want grass or hash?”

  “Hash.”

  “You want Morrocan or Kasmiri?”

  Dougherty didn’t know what to say so he shrugged. “This is my first date with this chick.”

  “I can let you have two grams of Green Morrocan for a fin.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Dougherty got a five dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to Buck-Buck, who held up a small ball of tinfoil.

  “You need anything else, you come to me, right?”

  “Sure, Danny, of course.”

  Buck-Buck dropped the tinfoil into Dougherty’s hand and said, “Okay, good,” and nodded.

  Dougherty opened the door and got out, standing on the sidewalk and looking back into the Camaro. “Thanks, Danny.”

  Buck-Buck said, “Don’t mention it. And I really mean that,” and he laughed and pulled a U and took off in a cloud of dust.

  Dougherty stood there for a minute, trying to figure out which one of them had been the more scared and decided it was a tie. Then he smiled, thinking, It’s early in the season, nowhere near the playoffs, so they can leave it a tie, don’t need overtime yet. He looked at the little tinfoil ball he’d just paid five bucks for and thought no wonder all these guys want to sell drugs, nowhere else could they get so much for so little.

  He waited for a few cars to pass and he was trying not jump up and down but, shit, his first drug buy, his first connection. And it was somebody working directly for the Higgins brothers, the top of the Point Boys. This was good.

  He was thinking about how he was going to tell Detective Carpentier, how he was going to try to make sure Detective Ste. Marie was there, how he was going to be casual about it, say something like, oh yeah, you know that idea you had about how I should ask around some old friends in the Point? One of them is selling me dope.

  He was looking around, glad he was alone so no one could see how much he was smiling and then he looked at the Black Rock.

  He read the inscription:

  To

  preserve from desecration

  the remains of 6,000 immigrants

  who died of ship fever

  A.D. 1847–8.

  This stone

  is erected by the workmen

  of

  Messrs. Peto, Brassey & Betts

  employed in the construction

  of the

  Victoria Bridge

  A.D. 1859

  He’d passed the rock hundreds of times but never stopped to read the words. It wasn’t in much of a location for stopping, by the time you noticed it you were just about going down into the little tunnel under the railway tracks and coming up on the bridge. A few times when he was inching along in traffic, Dougherty could remember thinking it wasn’t much of a memorial — it really was just a big black rock some workmen pulled out of the ground when they were digging out the piers for the bridge.

  But now, for the first time, the number hit him — six thousand immigrants. Dead.

  He’d heard the story from his father, how during the famine in Ireland the ships were coming over steady, and by the time they got here the people were sick. Ship fever they called it. Typhus. Two huge sheds were built down here by the river and people coming off the ships were quarantined. If they didn’t have typhoid when they got to Montreal, they did after a few hours in the sheds.

  Six thousand immigrants died of ship fever and were buried right here. And forgotten.

  Then, only a dozen years later, new Irish immigrants showed up and didn’t know anything about the ones who’d come before. The new immigrants went to work digging and found the bodies.

  Dougherty stood there on Bridge Street, practically in the shadow of the Autostade, cars coming and going from the city, and tried to imagine what it was like for those Irish workmen — men and probably boys, who probably looked like he did and like his father and his little brother Tommy and every other man in his family — when their shovels hit the first bones.

  Then more bones and more, until they realized there were thousands of skeletons.

  How could they have not known? How could no one have told them, oh yeah, when you start digging there you’re going to hit a mass grave? The bodies hadn’t been buried for a hundred years or a thousand, they’d only been there twelve. If it was today, Dougherty thought, it would mean that the bodies had been buried in 1958. He would have been in Mademoiselle Gratton’s class, grade six at Jeanne-LeBer school, less than two miles from the Black Rock.

  Six thousand bodies in an unmarked grave. Well, it was marked now. Good thing the railway decided to build the bridge and good thing the workmen for Messrs. Peto., Brassy & Betts dug up the rock.

  And, Dougherty figured, good thing those workmen put up enough of a fuss to have the rock inscribed and stood up here. They probably got docked a day’s pay to get it done.

  He crossed the street then and got into his car and started it. The radio was playing a new one from The Beatles, “Let It Be,” and it was the right mood for the way Dougherty was feeling as he drove back through the Point, thinking about Brenda Webber.

  Not six thousand bodies, just one.

  One he wasn’t going to let be forgotten.

  part two

  chapter

  eleven

  “Is it true cops get all the best dope?” Ruth said, and Dougherty took out the little tinfoil ball he still had in his pocket and dropped it on the coffee table. “Oh my god, I was kidding.”

  He said, “Well, if you don’t want it,” and started to pick it up but she got to it first saying, “I didn’t say that,” and kind of danced away to the kitchenette at the end of the living room in her small apartment.

  When they’d got to the Mazurka a few hours earlier, Ruth didn’t want to talk about the Bill case, she wanted to talk about the Manson mur
ders. The trial had just started in California, nothing was happening, really, still in jury selection, but she said she’d been following the case since the arrests last year and said, “Dr. Pendleton may be called as an expert witness.”

  “Expert in what?”

  “Multiple murders, but maybe also brainwashing — he worked a little with Dr. Cameron.”

  “Brainwashing?” Dougherty said, and Ruth nodded, quite seriously. “But it looks like Dr. Singer will be the expert on that,” and before Dougherty could say anything she explained, “Dr. Margaret Singer. She’s at Berkeley and she’s done some amazing research on coercive persuasion and brainwashing.”

  “That’s what they’re going to claim, these kids?” Dougherty said. “That they were brainwashed by Charlie Manson?”

  “If that’s what happened.”

  At that moment in the date, which neither was really treating like a date, Dougherty felt it could have gone completely off the rails, but Ruth didn’t seem to notice. She’d started talking about Dr. Pendleton and she talked about him for a long time, explaining his theories about multiple murderers and Dougherty remembered something she’d said the first time they talked, so he asked her about the MacDonald Triad. Without skipping a beat she told him all about John Marshall MacDonald, a psychiatrist from New Zealand and his theory — not a theory, she’d said, “a finding” — MacDonald first proposed in a 1963 paper that showed, she said, “Three behavioural characteristics that, if presented together, will be associated with later violent tendencies.”

  Dougherty nodded and was finding himself paying a lot more attention. He’d never heard anyone talking about this kind of thing before.