Black Rock

by John McFetridge

  “Are they that different?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rozovsky said, “Why don’t you go to a dealer? They’ll have old brochures or they’ll be able to tell you what the differences are.”

  “Good idea. Where is there a Lincoln dealer?”

  Rozovsky said, “I don’t know — Latimer’s on St. Catherine?”

  “That’s Ford.”

  “Mid-Town Motors.”

  “Oh yeah, on Dorchester,” Dougherty said. “And Bishop, between Bishop and Crescent. No, wait, that’s a Chrysler dealer.”

  “What about a used lot?”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, maybe,” and then, “Hang on, there’s one in Verdun. Cooke-something.”

  “There’s got to be others.”

  “Cooke-Toledo Mercury-Lincoln, up where the avenues start. First Avenue, Second Avenue, near there, what’s the street on the east side?”

  “I’m from Côte Saint-Luc — what do I know about Verdun?”

  “I think it’s on Verdun Avenue.”

  “If you say so.”

  “All right, I’m going to try that.”

  Dougherty started out and Rozovsky said, “Hey, have you seen that girl again, what was her name?”

  “Ruth Garber?”

  “Yeah, you still seeing her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Well, I don’t think I will.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky, maybe there’ll be another murder.”

  “I hope not.”

  “I’m joking.”

  Dougherty said, “Oh, right,” and then, “You working nights all week?”

  “Till Friday.”

  “Okay. I’ll probably be back.”

  Riding the Métro back downtown, Dougherty was thinking about Ruth Garber, how he wanted to see her, go on another date and then back to her place again. So when the train pulled into the McGill station he got off and walked out through the 2020 Mall to de Maisonneuve Boulevard and then a couple blocks up University to the McGill campus. It was just after seven and the place was almost empty, near the end of June, not much going on. Dougherty walked through the Roddick Gates and looked around. He didn’t expect to see Ruth; he didn’t know what to expect. The big lawn spread out like a couple of football fields, but it was empty, no groups of students protesting anything.

  Dougherty stood by the gates and could hear his father’s voice, the old man talking about that “piece of paper” and how important it was. Dougherty had no doubt that that was true but it didn’t make it right for him.

  Over the past couple of years McGill had had a few protests but nothing like on an American campus. Dougherty figured with no draft to protest, no troops going to Vietnam, it just wasn’t the same. There was the McGill Français protests, but now with the construction of UQAM starting and Université du Québec campuses going up all over the province — Chicoutimi, Trois Rivières, Rimouski — it looked like making McGill more French wouldn’t be as big a deal.

  But Dougherty had no idea anymore why some things became a big deal and others didn’t. He watched a couple of girls cross the campus towards him and he realized he was still wearing his uniform. He thought for a moment they’d call him a pig and tell him to get off the campus, but by the time they got to him they were giggling and smiling and one of them was poking the other, and when they passed Dougherty one of them said, “Officer,” and then they rushed out through the gates to Sherbrooke Street.

  Flirting.

  Dougherty waited a few minutes, then walked along Sherbrooke himself. He walked all the way to Guy, passing people out on dates and store windows filled with mannequins wearing colourful summer clothes. Maybe it had something to do with the long, cold winter but to Dougherty it felt like summer in Montreal was appreciated, maybe even savoured, a little more than in other cities.

  None of these people out having a good time looked at all worried a bomb might blow up a building or guys with sawed-off shotguns might rob the bank next door or kidnap someone going to dinner at the Ritz-Carlton.

  Or that someone driving a Lincoln Continental might grab a girl off the street and rape and strangle her.

  chapter

  fifteen

  Dougherty got to Station Ten at seven thirty for his day shift and the place was already buzzing.

  Delisle hung up the phone as Dougherty walked in. “Another bomb.”

  “Where?”

  “Ottawa. Defence Department. Looks like two people killed.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “You missed ours last night.”

  “Where was it?” Dougherty said.

  “Post office in the east end, on Crémazie.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “No,” Delisle said, “it went off at one thirty, nobody there.”

  “What time did the bomb go off in Ottawa?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “It’s going to be a good parade today,” Dougherty said.

  “Fuck, I almost forgot about that, Saint-­Jean-

  Baptiste.”

  “We going over?”

  Delisle shook his head. “Nobody ask for extra men yet.”

  The phone rang and Delisle answered, listened for a minute then said thanks, and hung up and said, “Only one killed.”

  A detective came out of the office and said, “Who was killed?”

  “A civilian, a woman working in the communications centre, some kind of relay office.”

  “Tabarnak.”

  Delisle said, “Yeah, she was fifty years old — they’re checking to see if she has any kids.”

  “God dammit,” Dougherty said.

  “The Ottawa police have assigned all twenty-five detectives to it.”

  “And our task force, probably,” the detective said.

  Delisle said to Dougherty, “They want you driving around all day — they want to see the cars on the streets, show the flag.”

  “Driving around aimlessly?”

  “Like a regular shift for you.”

  Some of the other cops in the station laughed, though no one really saw any humour in the situation.

  Dougherty spent the morning driving around the Golden Mile, Sherbrooke to University, up to Pine and back down Guy. The mansions that had been built by Englishmen and Scots — the Molsons and Merediths and McIntyres and McConnells — were mostly demolished to make way for office buildings or became part of McGill University after World War I or during the Depression. But the neighbourhood was still old Anglo money all the way and as Dougherty drove around he did get waved at and nodded at by people who looked used to being protected.

  Station Ten’s territory also reached down the hill into St. Henri so Dougherty drove around there a little, too, but he didn’t get waved at quite so much — well, sometimes, usually with just one finger.

  By noon Dougherty had just about had enough and he was heading back to the station house when he saw a beat cop in uniform on Sherbrooke motion for him to pull over.

  “C’est un bon job, ça,” Dougherty said, “walk around all day.” The cop, Dougherty recognized now was Turcotte, a guy almost twenty years older than Dougherty but still a beat cop. Turcotte said, “Screw you,” opened the passenger door and got into the car. “Let’s get some lunch.”

  “Pete’s?”

  “Criss, no, let’s get away from here.”

  Dougherty said, “Magnan’s?” and Turcotte said, “No, not down the hill,” so Dougherty headed up Atwater to Côte-des-Neiges Road, which ringed the base of Mount Royal, and drove all the way to Jean Talon. “Okay, bon, là, la brasserie,” Turcotte said, and Dougherty pulled up behind the other cop car already parked in front.

  By twelve thirty there were seven cops at a table
covered with empty plates and about the fourth round of draughts. They were all complaining about bullshit assignments, waving the flag, and talking about what they’d rather be doing.

  Dougherty found a Gazette with the headline “Ulster on brink of civil war” and skimmed the article that said British troops were evacuating women and children from West Belfast which was “besieged by Protestant and Roman Catholic mobs hurling stones and gasoline bombs.” He thought, well, sounds like everybody’s getting their hits in. Dougherty knew his father’s family came from some place in Ireland called Larne, but that was about all he knew. He was a Montrealer and he never felt particularly Irish. Even reading the article he felt mostly for the cops, probably getting it from both sides, caught in the middle trying to keep the casualties to a minimum.

  Deeper in, past the sports section and the section with the headline “Abortions compete for time in operating rooms” was an article headlined “Mafia: no. 1 threat to city government.”

  Dougherty leaned further back from the table, the cops now complaining about not getting enough overtime, and read the article. It was written by a guy named Brian Stewart in a pretty sarcastic tone that usually Dougherty would have appreciated, but he was having a tough time with now.

  “This week city officials graciously let us in on a secret most of us have known for some time — the Mafia is alive, well and apparently thriving in Montreal. After years of silence, the legal department suddenly issued a ‘shock’ report which suggests up to 400 of our 1,200 bars and restaurants have been taken over by the Mafia.”

  Looking around the brasserie, Dougherty figured this one was probably one of the other 800, perhaps only because of the number of cops who stopped in every day.

  The article went on to say, “Amazing! All this time, it seems, the administration has watched helplessly while the province allowed the Cosa Nostra to infiltrate the city and suck off millions of our dollars to boost North America’s largest business: organized crime.”

  Dougherty liked the exclamation point, though, that was a nice touch, and then the next part of the article tried to get serious talking about the implications and how “all the demonstrations and bomb-throwers are puny in comparison.”

  Well, that was tough timing, the article written before the latest bomb in Ottawa killed that woman, but Dougherty agreed, there was a lot more going on in the city than demonstrations and bombs.

  Going for the big picture the article said, “There are unmistakable signs that some sectors of government are now in the hands of the Mafia. They have ceased to work for us. They are working for two New York ‘families’ now warring over the fruits of Montreal crime.”

  Dougherty finished off his beer and thought, Don’t leave out the locals. The Higgins brothers don’t work for anybody but the Higgins brothers as the New York families would find out soon enough.

  One of the older beat cops stood up and said, “Bon, d’la bière asteure,” and there was a lot of grumbling and complaining but everybody stood up and each man dropped a few bucks on the table.

  As they were walking out, the waitress was standing by the door and she smiled at Dougherty, the youngest guy in the group, and said, “Reviens, eh.” Dougherty said, “Do you ever work evenings?” to see how she’d react to English. She kept on smiling and said, “Some time,” with a heavy accent for even two words.

  Dougherty wasn’t sure if she was old enough to work in a bar, but he said, “Okay, some time.”

  Driving back down the hill, Dougherty asked Turcotte about the Mafia article and the older cop said, “They know the rule.” Dougherty was about to ask which rule, then realized it was Turcotte’s French accent and he meant rules. Yeah, they did know the rules. When that bomb went off in the car coming off the Champlain Bridge, the bomb squad knew right away it was mobsters, because they were following it and they used a remote control to set it off. Mobsters didn’t just plant a bomb and run away, let it kill some secretary who just happened to be there.

  When they got to Sherbrooke, Turcotte said, “Let me off here. I know a girl works out of an apartment on St. Mark — I’m going to take a nap,” and he looked sideways at Dougherty. “You have a nest on your beat?”

  “No.”

  Turcotte opened the car door. “You should get one.”

  “With a girl?”

  Turcotte leaned back through the open passenger window. “You arrest her for prostitution and then you let her go, make a deal.”

  Dougherty said thanks, and Turcotte banged the roof the car as it drove away.

  He couldn’t stand the idea of driving around for the whole afternoon so rich Anglos could wave at him and feel a little safer. He felt like he had to do something worthwhile.

  Cooke-Toledo Mercury-Lincoln was on the corner of Bannantyne and Willibrord, a block down from the aqueduct, across the street from a park in the middle of a neighbourhood of two-storey brick houses, a dozen blocks from where Dougherty went to school.

  The lot was small, so Dougherty parked the squad car on the street. There was one Lincoln that he could see and as he walked towards it a young guy with a moustache and hair touching his collar intercepted him. “Hey there, Constable, you looking for a car?”

  “You could be a detective,” Dougherty said, but the guy didn’t get it, so he said, “I want to talk to you about the Lincoln,” and the salesman said, “No man, young guy like you, you want to look at the Comet.”

  “When I’m not working, I drive a Mustang.”

  “Then you should look at the Cougar.”

  “I’m not looking to buy a car,” Dougherty said. “It’s for an investigation.”

  “An investigation into Lincolns?”

  Dougherty slid the picture out of the envelope and said, “This doesn’t look much like it.”

  The salesman looked at the picture and said, “No, the Lincoln got a complete redesign for 1970, that’s a ’66.”

  “How different is it from the ’65 or the ’67?”

  “A two-door hardtop? Well, it couldn’t be older than ’66 — that’s the first two-door in years. Sixty-six was also the first year for the tilt steering wheel. It have one of those?”

  Dougherty said, “I don’t know,” and the salesman said, “Okay, well, the ’67 is almost exactly the same. It doesn’t have the logos on the front fenders, but otherwise it looks the same. The thing about Lincoln drivers is that they don’t change cars as often as other people, so the design doesn’t need to change so much. The ’68 has seatbelts.”

  “Don’t know about that.”

  The salesman walked around the car. “The ’68 has different tail lights, too, wraparound. Sixty-nine was the last year for suicide doors, but you’re looking for the two-door, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, if you can find out about the tail lights you can narrow it down to either ’66 and ’67 or ’68 and ’69. Gets you two years instead of four.”

  Dougherty said, “Do you have the old brochures? Any pictures of those years?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could you check?”

  The salesman didn’t want to but Dougherty kept staring at him, and he finally said, “Okay, come on,” and Dougherty followed him into the small office. There were two desks in the room, and the salesman opened drawers and went through piles of papers and found a couple of brochures.

  “Hey, you got lucky, here’s the ’68. See the tail lights?”

  “Yeah, they wrap right around, they’re different.”

  “That’s pretty much what the ’69 looks like, too. Then the ’70 is like that,” and he pointed to a calendar on the wall that showed a blue Lincoln all by itself on a highway that looked to be in the mountains somewhere. “And you’ve got that picture of the ’66.”

  Dougherty said, “Do you sell a lot of these?”

  “A few.”

 
; “Did you ever sell a white one with a black roof?”

  “Going back to ’66?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sure we have, but I’d have to go through every sale for years.”

  Dougherty said, “How many Lincoln dealers are there in Montreal?”

  “Just Montreal or the West Island, too? And Laval and the South Shore?”

  “Well,” Dougherty said, “how many cars like this are on the road now?”

  The salesman shrugged. “I don’t know, couple thousand.”

  “Yeah?”

  “At least.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay, thanks,” and walked out of the office.

  The salesman followed, saying, “Always like to help the police. I’d really like to help you into a Cougar. Why don’t you bring your Mustang by — I can get you a good trade-in and get you into a real good car.”

  “Maybe next year.”

  “Next year? Why wait, we can finance it right here.”

  “I’ll think about it, thanks.”

  Then instead of driving back downtown he headed further west to LaSalle and found Giovani Masaracchia playing baseball with some other kids in the schoolyard. As soon as he parked the squad car the kids stopped playing and stared. When Dougherty got out Giovani recognized him and jogged over. “You’re back.”

  Dougherty said, “I’m back,” and handed him the evidence photo of the Lincoln as well as the 1968 brochure. “Is either one of these the car you saw?”

  The other kids had come up behind Giovani and were looking over his shoulder at the picture and the brochure. One of them said, “Man, what an ugly car,” and one of the other kids said, “It’s for old men.”

  Giovani held up the evidence picture and said, “This one.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “The tail lights are different, see?”

  “And you’re sure they look like this one? It can be hard to tell, in the picture in the brochure the car is brand new.”

  “This one, for sure. But the car was white. I mostly saw it driving away so I saw the tail lights. It was this one.”

  Dougherty took the picture of the 1966 Lincoln that had been in a minor accident coming out of the Ville-Marie Tunnel and said, “Thanks, Giovani, that’s good work.”