Black Rock

by John McFetridge

  “The driver was already in it?”

  “I think so — I didn’t really notice it until it was moving — there are always taxis on this street.”

  Carpentier said okay and then turned to Dougherty. “Get his name and information, bring it to me,” and he headed back to the house, now swarming with cops.

  “So, what’s your name?”

  “Fred Davidson, I’m the gardener.” He gave Dougherty his address in Verdun and the name of his employer on Redpath. Then he said, “Running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “that’s what we do.”

  He started back across the street, looking at the house, cops going in and out, everyone a little panicky. He didn’t see the older woman or the woman in her twenties.

  Gagnon was coming towards him then, motioning to the squad car. “We have to go; they’re closing all the bridges.”

  “What?”

  “We got the Victoria.”

  Dougherty started the car. “And we’re looking for a taxi?”

  “All they say to me was close the bridge.”

  “So who is it? What happened?”

  “A British guy. Something with the British government, he live there,” Gagnon said, motioning back to the house as they turned off Redpath onto Pine, heading for Atwater.

  “And he was kidnapped?”

  “Yeah, they say three men come into the house with guns; he was getting dressed.”

  “It’s going to be a long day,” Dougherty said.

  They got to the Victoria Bridge a few minutes later, and Dougherty stopped at Mill Street and parked the squad car across the two lanes. He got out and started waving the approaching cars onto Mill Street.

  A couple of cars made the turn, but then one stopped and a man leaned out the window and said, “What’s going on?”

  “Bridge is closed.”

  “A bomb?”

  Dougherty said, “I don’t know,” and the guy waved, dismissing him, and drove down Mill.

  Gagnon stepped up beside Dougherty. “It’s going to get ugly,” and Dougherty said, “Yeah, wait till they find out all the bridges are closed.”

  The Jacques Cartier a few miles east, the Champlain and then the Mercier — all of them had steady lines of traffic crossing all day.

  But not today.

  “And the tunnel,” Gagnon said.

  “Yeah, if somebody remembered.” The Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine Tunnel in the east end. “And the bridges to Laval,” Dougherty said, “and the 2-20 off the west island.”

  “Should we stop the taxis?”

  “Yeah, if we see one with four guys with guns, we’ll stop it.”

  “How long do we stay here?”

  “Till they tell us to go somewhere else.”

  Dougherty leaned against the squad car and crossed his arms over his chest. All the drivers in the cars inching their way around the corner onto Mill Street, under the shadow of the Autostade, glared at him. A few gave him the finger and some swore at him. A couple asked if he knew what was going on.

  In the early afternoon, a police motorcycle came along the sidewalk on Bridge Street and pulled up to Dougherty’s squad car. The cop took off his goggles and said, “Okay, ouvrez le pont.”

  Dougherty said, “Finally,” and started to open the squad car door.

  Gagnon came over and said, “Did we get them?”

  The motorcycle cop said, “Who?” and Gagnon said, “The kidnappers.”

  “No, we got a communiqué.”

  “The manifesto?” Dougherty said.

  “I don’t know. They phoned in a bomb threat to the radio station, and when the bomb squad got there, it was only an envelope.”

  Gagnon said, “Where was it?”

  “Pavilion Lafontaine, the Université du Québec.”

  “What do they want?”

  Dougherty said, “Get in the car or I’ll leave you here,” and Gagnon made a face at him, but Dougherty already had the car started and was pulling away.

  A guy in one of the cars stuck in traffic yelled, “Merci, tabarnak,” out the window as he almost jumped the curb and raced past Dougherty towards the bridge.

  Back at Station Ten, Dougherty had to park on de Maisonneuve because there were cop cars all over the place. The station was full of cops, and Dougherty squeezed his way to Delisle at the desk.

  “What the hell?”

  Delisle came over, shaking his head. “They called in every cop in the city. We’re pulling over every taxi and then they get the note and it says to stop all police activities.”

  “So we stopped?”

  “We pulled the uniforms in. We’re going out in plainclothes.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  Delisle shrugged. “We’ve had three more bombs called in, all false alarms.”

  Dougherty looked around the crowded station house at all the cops and didn’t recognize anybody — they all looked mostly like guys from the suburbs.

  “So, who was it?”

  “Who was what?”

  “Who was it they kidnapped?”

  “Where have you been?” Delisle said.

  “Pissing people off at the Victoria Bridge,” and for a second he thought he saw Delisle smile.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t run you over. It was some British government guy, something Cross.”

  One of the cops nearby said, “James Cross, the trade commissioner.”

  Delisle looked at Dougherty and nodded. “That’s him.”

  “I saw a couple of women at the house.”

  “The wife and the maid,” Delisle said. “The maid has a daughter in the house, too.”

  “Four men with guns?”

  “Three with guns went into the house,” Delisle said. “One waited in the cab. He probably had a gun, too.”

  “So now we’re pulling over taxis?”

  “It’s all we have.”

  “What happened with that domestic?”

  “What domestic?”

  “In St. Henri,” Dougherty said. “I was headed there this morning before I got sent on this.”

  Delisle shrugged. “I don’t know, nothing, I guess.”

  “Damn.”

  “Go get changed,” Delisle said. “Start looking for taxis.”

  Not liking it at all, Dougherty started pushing his way through the crowd towards the locker room.

  As he was squeezed between a couple of cops he caught a piece of a sentence, “pull her into his car, but she …” and he turned and grabbed the guy by the shirt collar. “Where!”

  The cop pulled Dougherty’s hands off him. “Hey, watch it!”

  Dougherty let go but kept staring at the guy, “What happened? You said a guy tried to pull a girl into his car?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “It’s important,” Dougherty said. Everybody was looking at him then. The crowd had parted a little to give them room if they were going to start throwing punches and Dougherty, calmer now, said, “It could be important, where was it?”

  “In NDG.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Sunday. “Did you take the report?”

  “There was no report.”

  It was too crowded in the station house, so Dougherty said, “Come here,” and led the way out into the parking lot. There were a lot of cops there, too, but they had more room.

  Dougherty said, “Look, I’m sorry. I’m working on something, and it could be connected.”

  “I don’t see how,” the cop said. Out in the sunlight Dougherty realized the cop was older than he’d thought, probably in his fifties, and he looked like he could be used in one of those cops-talking-to-kids ads, smiling and being their friend.

&n
bsp; “I’d like to check,” Dougherty said. “I’d like to talk to the girl — what’s her name?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Dougherty was having trouble keeping calm. “You didn’t write it down?”

  “I was talking to the mother, she told me about it.”

  “Okay,” Dougherty said, “who’s the mother?”

  “You don’t walk a beat, do you?” the older cop said.

  “No.” He didn’t even know they still had cops walking beats. Now he was realizing that this cop was English and he was thinking the guy would probably just like to be left alone out in NDG till he retired.

  “Okay, when you walk a beat you get to know people. Do you know Westhaven Village?”

  “No.”

  “Upper Lachine Road and Elmhurst, by the dairy?”

  Dougherty said no.

  “All right, there are apartment buildings there. The mother was on a balcony, we got to chatting. It’s what you do when you walk a beat.”

  “And she told you a guy tried to pull her daughter into a car.”

  “And the girl got away, yeah.”

  “The apartment is on Elmhurst?”

  “First floor.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay, thanks.”

  He pushed his way back through the station, and as he passed the desk Delisle said, “You’re not changed,” and Dougherty said, “I’ve got something I need to do,” and walked out the front door.

  Every cop in the city was working this kidnapping: they wouldn’t miss one person.

  chapter

  twenty-six

  St. James West, what the old beat cop called Upper Lachine Road, was lined with motels thrown up for Expo 67, the Rose Bowl alleys, a lot of small bars, gas stations and garden centres.

  Dougherty didn’t know the area: his image of Notre Dame de Grâce was stores lining Sherbrooke Street and old brick houses getting bigger and bigger as they blended into neighbouring Westmount. He’d worked a Sunday in the Park festival the year before but nothing happened from a cop’s point of view: bands played, kids danced and people sold homemade jewellery and muffins.

  But this part of NDG was literally below the tracks — the commuter train from Windsor Station ­downtown ran a block south of Sherbrooke here — and the houses south of that were duplexes and fourplexes and small apartment buildings.

  Now he saw the dairy the old guy mentioned and remembered coming to it as a kid with his father, the two big plaster cows’ heads above the window where they bought ice cream cones and bottles of milk. Seeing the area as an adult, Dougherty realized the rows of apartment buildings across the street were probably some kind of housing project.

  He turned onto Elmhurst Street and pulled over and parked.

  Kids were just getting home from school and the neighbourhood was filling up. Dougherty walked along the sidewalk, looking at the apartment buildings, thinking he should have brought the beat cop with him, had him point out the apartment.

  There were hundreds of apartments — it could be any one of them.

  No, he remembered, it could only be the first floor. Dougherty walked up and down Elmhurst and at the corner of Trenholme, which was also lined with apartment buildings, and he saw a woman sitting on a balcony on the first floor.

  “Hey.”

  The woman looked down at him, and Dougherty said, “Did you talk to the police about a man trying to pull your daughter into his car?”

  “I don’t have a daughter.”

  “Do you know anyone this happened to?”

  “No.”

  Dougherty moved on, thinking it was a lot like the Point here, another neighbourhood where no one wants to talk to the cops.

  And then he realized that it was another low-rent English neighbourhood.

  He kept walking and asking people if they knew anything about a girl being pulled into a man’s car, and no one knew anything until he talked to a guy who looked like he was walking home from working a shift at the dairy. “Yeah, Karen Barber’s girl.”

  “Where does she live?”

  The guy pointed across the street to an apartment building almost on the corner of St. James, and said, “Right there, first floor. On the left.”

  Dougherty realized the guy meant the apartment to the left of the front doors, the balcony crammed with wooden chairs and a stand for drying clothes.

  The lock on the front door was busted so he didn’t have to buzz to get let in. He went up the few steps and down the hall to the left and knocked on the first door.

  “What now, why don’t you …” and she stopped as she opened the door and saw Dougherty. “What do you want?”

  She was younger than he expected. “Are you Karen Barber?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Did a man try to pull your daughter into a car?”

  Karen Barber, in jeans, a t-shirt and slippers, looked Dougherty up and down. “I already told Officer Gravenor.”

  “I’m doing some follow-up.”

  She had one hand on the door and the other on her hip. “Why?”

  “Because it’s my job.”

  Dougherty said, “I’d like to talk to your daughter.”

  “You got a line on this creep?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  She moved aside from the door a little, and Dougherty stepped into the apartment.

  “Nancy’ll be home any minute.”

  They walked past the small kitchen and into the living room. The TV was on, a soap opera, and past that was the balcony looking out on Elmhurst and St. James. The Elmhurst Dairy was across the street.

  Now Dougherty was thinking this probably wasn’t the same guy, this woman’s daughter was probably five or six years old, nothing like Brenda Webber.

  Dougherty said, “Did it happen out front here, on the street?”

  Karen Barber stepped up beside Dougherty, looking out on the street. “No, it was there, across St. James.”

  “By the dairy?”

  “That’s right.”

  Karen picked up a cigarette that was burning in an ashtray and took a drag. “Do you want a cup of coffee or something?”

  Before Dougherty could say no, the apartment door opened and a teenage girl came in and dropped a bag on the floor. Then seeing him she said, “What’s he doing here?”

  Karen said, “He just came by. He was asking about the man.”

  The girl went into the kitchen, saying, “I told you, nothing happened.”

  Dougherty was looking at Karen then, realizing that the teenage girl was the daughter and that the mother could only have had her when she was a teenager herself.

  “I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

  The girl came out of the kitchen and walked across the living room to the TV.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?” Not looking at her mother, the girl changed the channel on the TV, clicking the dial halfway around to a different soap opera. This channel didn’t come in nearly as clearly, the screen covered with snow.

  “I’d like to hear it from you.”

  She flopped down on the couch and put her feet up on the edge of the coffee table. “Nothing happened.”

  “It was Friday night,” Karen said, looking at her daughter, “but I didn’t find out about it till Sunday.”

  “There’s nothing to find out.”

  Karen looked at Dougherty and said, “I heard her telling one of her friends on the phone.”

  “Listening in on my calls.”

  “You were standing in the kitchen.”

  “I need a phone in my room.”

  “You wanna pay for it?”

  “Okay,” Dougherty said, “I just want to know what happened. And don’t tell me nothing.” He step
ped between the couch and the TV and looked down at Nancy. “Start with where you were.”

  The girl looked up at him, a little scared, but then she shrugged and said, “I was coming home, on St. James.”

  “Right across the street?”

  “A couple blocks away, on the other side, by the motel.”

  The mom jumped in with “What were you doing there?” but Dougherty quieted her and said, “Were you by yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the car slowed down, offered you a ride?”

  “I told him I didn’t need one.”

  The mom broke in again, saying, “I told you not to talk to strangers,” and the daughter yelled back, “I’m not a baby.”

  Dougherty held up his hands. “Quiet.”

  Then he looked at Nancy. “I need to know exactly what happened. Okay, he tried to pull you into the car?”

  Now she was looking past him at the TV. The soap opera had a vampire. Dougherty moved to block her view and said, “You got away?”

  “He stopped the car,” Nancy said, “and he got out but I kept walking.”

  “Did he offer you anything?”

  “Like what?” Karen said.

  Dougherty was looking at Nancy, waiting for an answer, and she shook her head no, but he had a feeling he would get a different answer if her mother wasn’t here.

  “You must have been scared.”

  “No.”

  “Was he creepy?”

  A shrug. “I guess.”

  “Did he chase you?”

  “When I kept walking he got back in the car and I ran across St. James.”

  “Through traffic?”

  Another shrug. “A little, I guess.”

  “So he couldn’t follow.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Okay,” Dougherty said, “what did the guy look like?”

  “I don’t know, it was dark.”

  “Young or old?”

  She looked up at Dougherty and said, “Young, I guess.”

  “Short hair, long hair?”

  “Short. He looked like that guy on Ironside.”

  “The guy in the wheelchair?”

  She looked at Dougherty like he was an idiot. “The other one.”

  “So … clean-cut.”