One or the Other

by John McFetridge

  “Well, I guess you could order dinner. Abby’s still here, I think. I’m not sure if Gillian is coming back or not.”

  Judy held up her hands and said, “What are you talking about? Are we just going to pretend nothing’s going on?”

  “We’re not pretending anything,” Audrey said. “This is what’s going on.”

  “Dad just moved out? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Mom, something must have happened.”

  Audrey drank what was left in her glass, looked like a rye and ginger to Dougherty, and said, “I guess we both finally got tired of pretending.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, Judy, you know, you saw it, you felt it.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “We were like two strangers, just going through the motions.”

  Dougherty was thinking that what Audrey was saying sounded more like something she’d read, or something Judy might have had said to her, than something she came up with herself, but it might very well be the way she felt. He’d certainly felt it, visiting the house for Sunday dinners and birthdays and at other times, but he’d always figured it was because of the situation between him and Judy.

  Now Judy was saying, “This just came out of nowhere.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “No, Mom.”

  “How about you, Édouard?”

  Dougherty said, “Sure, I’ll have one.”

  Judy turned around and looked at him over her shoulder. He started to move into the living room, saying, “I’ll get it.”

  “It’s all right,” Audrey said. “It’s here.”

  Dougherty noticed the bottle of rye on the counter next to the toaster and wondered how long Audrey had been keeping it there instead of in the china cabinet in the dining room that Judy’s father used for his bar.

  “Mom, this is crazy.”

  Audrey opened the freezer door of the fridge and got out the ice cube tray and with her back to Judy she said, “No, this is the first sane thing we’ve done in years.”

  It was quiet in the kitchen while she made Dougherty’s drink and topped up her own, and then she turned around and said, “Actually, I thought you’d be happy about this,” as she moved past Judy and handed the glass to Dougherty.

  Judy said, “Why would I be happy?”

  Audrey kept walking into the rarely used living room and sat on the couch. Judy followed her in, saying, “Why would you say that?”

  Dougherty thought about staying in the kitchen. If it had been a normal Sunday dinner in Point Claire, then Dougherty and Judy’s dad would’ve been sitting in the rec room in the basement watching golf on TV and not talking, and right now that seemed like a better idea, but Dougherty walked into the living room just in time for Judy to turn to him and say, “Can you believe this?”

  She was standing in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. Dougherty often thought that when they came out here Judy changed a little. He never would’ve said anything to Judy but he thought when they came into this house she started to be a little more like her mother. She really did now.

  Not that he’d ever say that. What he did say was, “I don’t know.”

  Judy stared at him for a moment and kind of shook her head in disbelief and then looked at her mother. “Why would I be happy about this?”

  “I’m finally becoming myself, not just Mrs. Thomas McIntyre.”

  “Yourself? And dad had to move out?”

  “He didn’t have to, but it’s what he wanted.”

  Abby came up out of the basement then and was on her way to the kitchen when Judy said, “Abby, come here.”

  “No,” Abby said. “Don’t talk to me.”

  Judy said, “I don’t believe this.”

  “Well, I don’t believe you.” Audrey was leaning back on the couch then, getting out her cigarettes and lighting one and saying, “I guess it was crazy of me to expect a little support from you.”

  Judy said, “No, it’s just . . .”

  Dougherty walked into the kitchen then, thinking maybe Judy and her mother could use a little time alone.

  Abby was on the phone, twisting the cord around her fingers and letting it go and twisting it again. Dougherty was pretty sure she was sixteen or seventeen, about the same age as his little brother, Tommy, but sometimes he got Abby mixed up with Gillian, who was a year older. There was one more sister, Brenda, between the two girls at home and Judy, but she was out west somewhere, Calgary or Vancouver or something, Dougherty was never sure.

  “Okay, bye.” Abby uncoiled the phone cord from her fingers and hung up the receiver. “They still going at it?”

  “They’re just talking now,” Dougherty said. “I think it was just the shock — Judy wasn’t expecting it.”

  Abby went to the fridge and opened it. “Why not? Everybody else was.”

  “I guess we didn’t really know what was going on here.”

  “I’d say you should’ve come out here more often, but I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t have to.”

  “We’re not that far away.”

  “Yes you are.”

  Abby had a glass of ginger ale in her hand then and Dougherty could hear his own father complaining about the kids drinking his mix. In his father’s case, it was Pepsi he mixed with rum but he never called it Pepsi or Coke, just mix. Who drank all the mix? Dougherty almost laughed thinking about it.

  “How long has it been bad?”

  “It’s always been bad,” Abby said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “So when did he move out?”

  “I don’t know. I hardly ever see him — working late was the official story,” Abby said. “I guess he stopped coming home a while ago.”

  “Like a few days or weeks or what?”

  “Shit,” Abby said, “you’re such a cop. I don’t know, a while.”

  “Okay.” Dougherty realized he was thinking like a cop in a domestic. He wasn’t really interested in the details, they didn’t matter at all, he just wanted to get people talking, making conversation, getting people calmed down. But they were calm. He said, “You okay?”

  “Sure, what’s it to me? I don’t care what they do.”

  “Right, yeah.” Now Dougherty was thinking this was the point he usually left, everyone calmed down and talking, the husband out of the house. He never saw what happened next.

  Judy came into the kitchen and said, “So, that’s it. Crazy.” She crossed to the drawer by the sink and got out a bunch of restaurant menus and said, “You want St-Hubert or Chinese?”

  “Either one.”

  Judy looked at Abby and said, “What about you?”

  “I’m going out.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m just waiting for Mark and Ralph.”

  Judy said, “Okay.” She still had the folded menus in her hand, and she was just staring at them.

  Dougherty said, “Why don’t you get the Chinese, there’ll be leftovers.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Abby put her empty glass in the sink and walked out.

  Dougherty was trying to think of something to say to Judy but he couldn’t come up with anything, and then Audrey came into the kitchen and said, “Have you decided?” She got out the ice cubes and started making herself another drink.

  Judy said, “Chinese.”

  “Get won ton soup, too.” She turned to Dougherty. “Do you want another drink?”

  “Sure.” He drank the last of what he had and handed her the empty glass.

  While Audrey was making the drink, she said, “So how are the interviews going,
have you picked a school yet?”

  Judy was dialling the phone and she said, “I’m going to have to take whatever I can get. Oh hi, I’d like to place an order . . . Yes, dinner number four . . . for six, I guess. And two, no three, won ton soups.” She gave the address and then went over the order again.

  Audrey handed Dougherty his drink and picked up her own glass off the counter.

  Judy hung up and said, “Half an hour.”

  “Have you applied to all the school boards?”

  “All the Protestant ones: Greater Montreal, south shore, Laval.”

  “What about West Island?”

  Dougherty walked out of the kitchen. He was glad they were talking, he was glad it was just normal conversation but it still felt odd, the way they could just move on.

  Abby was coming up from the basement and heading to the front door without slowing down. Dougherty followed her and stepped out onto the balcony as she headed down the walk. A couple of boys were standing on the sidewalk waiting. They both had long hair and were trying to grow beards, and they were both wearing jean jackets and jeans and one of them had on a t-shirt that said Disco Sucks across the front. They all looked serious, Abby and both boys, no one smiled and they didn’t seem to say much to each other as they walked away.

  Dougherty looked up and down the street, and now he was starting to see what Judy meant about all the houses being the same. Still, it was quiet.

  And it was quiet inside the house. Judy and Audrey were sitting at the kitchen table talking.

  Dougherty went down into the basement and turned on the TV. There were album covers scattered on the floor in front of the stereo and the place smelled like cigarettes and pot and he wondered how long the girls had been smoking at home. Since before their dad moved out, he figured, however long that had been.

  * * *

  Monday afternoon Dougherty stopped in for a cup of coffee at the restaurant a few doors down from the bank building and saw Paquette on a stool at the counter.

  Dougherty was thinking about walking out when Paquette said, “Hey, Eddie,” looking like he wanted to talk.

  “Claude, ça va?”

  “Did you hear?” Speaking English.

  Dougherty said, “No, what?”

  “Tabarnak, Gagnon and Levine, they got jumped last night.”

  “What the hell?”

  The lunch rush was over, and there were only a few people in the restaurant. A guy behind the counter refilled Paquette’s mug and held up the coffee pot for Dougherty, who said, “I’m going to get a takeout, okay, boss?”

  “Sure thing.” The guy moved away to get a paper cup.

  Paquette said, “At Molly McGuire’s.”

  “They went there by themselves?”

  “They were looking for a guy, some guy Levine says he knows. Place was crowded.”

  “That’s the one upstairs, right?”

  Paquette drank some coffee, nodding, and said, “Yeah, that narrow stairway, so steep.”

  “Yeah.” Dougherty was thinking how much it reminded him of the staircase at the Wagon Wheel, upstairs from the Blue Bird where there’d been a fire a few years back, a lot of people died, thirty-seven. Dougherty was there that night.

  “So they don’t find the guy, but then they’re leaving, they’re by the door, and some guy says to them, ‘Leave it alone,’ you know.”

  The guy behind the counter put a paper cup with a plastic lid on it in front of Dougherty and said, “On the house, Detective.”

  “There was another guy at the table and a woman, too, and Levine says to them, ‘Leave what alone?’ you know, like he doesn’t know. And the guy says to him, ‘The Brink’s thing, leave it alone.’”

  “Are the two guys brothers?” Dougherty said.

  “Yeah, you know them?”

  “O’Donnells, I bet. The woman is Sharon McClusky.”

  “It’s O-something,” Paquette said. “A couple of other guys shoved Gagnon out the door, knocked him down the stairs, and then they jumped Levine.”

  “Shit.”

  “Busted a couple of beer bottles over his head, slashed his face with the broken pieces.”

  “Fuck.”

  “By the time the backup got there they were all gone. But Levine knew them.”

  “He’s okay?”

  “Lot of stitches on his face, fractured skull, concussion. They took him to the General.”

  “Not the Jewish General?”

  “I guess they saw he was a cop, they didn’t think.”

  Dougherty had really been kidding but, of course, it wasn’t a situation to be kidding about. “He still there?”

  “Oh yeah,” Paquette said, “he’ll be there for a while.”

  “And now we’re going to go get the O’Donnell brothers and Sharon McClusky.”

  “If that’s who it was.”

  “Well, if they didn’t do it they’ll know who did by now,” Dougherty said. He picked up his coffee and started out of the restaurant, saying, “Thanks, boss,” to the guy behind the counter.

  Outside on St. Jacques, walking past the big bank buildings with their big pillars and stone walls, Paquette said, “Hey, did you hear about the Brink’s car?”

  “What now?”

  “No, it was a couple weeks ago. Brink’s have an unmarked car they use for patrols in the neighbourhood but it was in an accident, a fender-bender.”

  “So?”

  “They never got it fixed, said it would cost too much.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said. “Would it have cost two and a half million dollars?”

  Paquette laughed.

  Dougherty was thinking if they didn’t get the money back it was another piece of evidence they’d use to try to claim it was a well-planned job pulled off by professionals brought in from out of town.

  “Anyone talk to the driver again?”

  “Ste. Marie, every day. Guy isn’t changing his story.”

  Dougherty was thinking they all thought it was a story, no one really believed the guy, and then he was thinking how much more plugged in Paquette was, how much closer he seemed to the top guys on the special squad.

  They walked without saying anything for a block, and then Dougherty said, “You married?”

  “Why,” Paquette said, “you asking me on a date?”

  Dougherty didn’t want to say, No, I’m just trying to figure out how such a useless brown-noser like you gets promoted, but then he thought he was being too hard on the guy — Paquette wasn’t doing anything wrong, he was just in the right place at the right time. And maybe he had the right kind of last name.

  “Yeah, I’m married,” Paquette said. “We have a baby on the way, another month or so.”

  “Congratulations.”

  They were in front of the bank building then and Paquette said, “It’s going to mess up my summer vacation.”

  “That’s okay,” Dougherty said, “the Olympics are going to do that anyway.”

  “Overtime, baby,” Paquette said. “I need it now.”

  He held the door for Dougherty, who walked in thinking, Yeah, and you’ll get plenty of overtime, for sure.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Rozovsky said, “Did you see that TV movie about the Brink’s robbery?”

  Dougherty said, “Already?”

  “No, it was on TV a couple days before this one, with Leslie Nielsen. It was about the Boston robbery twenty years ago.”

  Dougherty was standing in the doorway to the evidence room and he said, “No, I didn’t see it.”

  “And there was an episode of Police Story, did you see that one? They had a bazooka in the back of a van, backed up to a Brink’s truck in a lane.”

  “They get caught at the end of the episode?”

  Rozovsky said, “Yeah, they did.�
�

  “Maybe these crooks are smarter than TV writers.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  Dougherty came the rest of the way into the room and looked over the desk where Rozovsky had spread out a bunch of pictures and said, “This thing was probably being planned long before those shows were on TV.”

  “The experts coming into town from all over.”

  Dougherty said, “Are they sticking to that?”

  “I don’t know,” Rozovsky said. “But if you don’t catch somebody soon it’s hard to imagine what they’ll claim it was. Martians maybe.”

  “They don’t care who did it,” Dougherty said. “They just want the money back.” He looked at one of the pictures and said, “Who’s that?”

  “Howard Hughes. He just died, didn’t you hear?”

  “No.” Dougherty leaned closer and said, “That looks like a surveillance picture.”

  “It is.”

  In the picture a tall man wearing a hat low over his eyes, Hughes, Dougherty figured, was getting out of a limo parked in the shadows of the loading doors of a hotel. Dougherty said, “That’s a while ago, look at that Cadillac. Is that the Queen E?”

  “Ritz Carlton. Queen E wasn’t built till ’58. Hughes was here for two months in ’57, stayed the whole time at the Ritz. Even then hardly anyone saw him and no one knows why he was here.”

  “He never left the hotel?”

  “Oh yeah, there are other pictures in the file, but not much. He flew his own plane here, something called a Constellation. People figured he was here to see something special Vickers was doing with one of their planes, the Viscount.”

  Dougherty said, “Never heard of it.”

  “Hughes ordered meals in the middle of the night, always the same thing, a couple of minute steaks done medium rare, string beans and carrots and Crêpe Suzette. But not really crêpes, he wanted them thick, like pancakes.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Rozovsky held up the folder and said, “It’s all in the file.”

  “Why was he under surveillance?”

  “Who knows.” Rozovsky held up another picture, this one of Hughes at the tarmac at the airport, just about to walk up the stairs to the door of a plane. “What do you think of this one?”