One or the Other

by John McFetridge

  “What are you doing with it?”

  “Selling it,” Rozovsky said. “The tabloid, the Globe. ‘Hughes Holes Up in Hotel Harem.’ Part of a retrospective.”

  “It’s not the Midnight anymore.”

  “I miss it,” Rozovsky said. “But the Globe’s money is just as good.”

  “How much shit will you get in for selling a surveillance picture?”

  “To give me shit someone would have to admit that they had Howard Hughes under surveillance.” Rozovsky slid a couple of photos into a plain manila envelope and said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for Carpentier.”

  “Still trying for the transfer?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  A loud beeping sounded and Rozovsky said, “Oh man, they got you?”

  Dougherty took the pager from the clip on his belt and turned it off. “I gotta go, see you around.”

  “Not if I see you first.”

  Dougherty took a quick look around the homicide offices but didn’t see Carpentier.

  * * *

  Caron was in the lobby and he said, “Come on, we got a tip.”

  “Number seven hundred.”

  “But this one is worth checking out,” Caron said.

  Outside on Bonsecours, Dougherty headed for the parking lot across the street but Caron stood on the sidewalk and said, “We can walk from here.” Then he changed his mind and said, “No, let’s take the car.”

  They drove about six blocks farther into Old Montreal, to Rue LeRoyer, and Caron said, “There, with the neon sign.”

  “The strip joint?”

  “Yeah,” Caron said. “See what I mean, a good tip.”

  Dougherty parked in front of the hydrant near the corner of St. Laurent. “Danseuses nues, not exactly burlesque.”

  “You’ve never seen Lili St. Cyr,” Caron said. “You’re too young.”

  “So are you.”

  They got out of the car and Caron said, “Yeah, but I remember when this went all the way up,” motioning to St. Laurent Boulevard, “before they did that,” looking at the Ville-Marie Expressway that was like a six-lane wall separating Old Montreal from the eastern end of downtown.

  “My father told me about the old days,” Dougherty said, trying to get in a dig at Caron, “he was in the navy during the war, said the sailors all walked up the hill for the hookers that cost an extra buck.”

  “Made a big difference, that buck. Down here, well,” Caron looked at the building they were standing in front of, the cheap neon sign that said Disco-Salon Louis XIV and said, “It might look different but it really hasn’t changed much.”

  Dougherty was still looking towards the hill and when he turned to walk the half block to the strip joint he saw the building on the corner had a stone carving on the wall, a nun and a young child holding a book. The inscription was in French and English: Close to this site stood the first school in Montreal established in 1637 by Marguerite Bourgeoys. Founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame.

  Dougherty said, “It’s not a school anymore.”

  “But we can still learn a lot inside,” Caron said. “Come on.”

  Dougherty followed him down the concrete steps.

  Inside the music was loud, a heavy disco beat and Caron said, “Is this ‘Mon Pays’?”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “but in English it’s ‘From New York to L.A.,’ Patsy Gallant.”

  “Mon Dieu.”

  A big guy stopped them at the door and started to lead them into the club, saying, “Bienvenue, juste les deux?”

  Caron said, “We can find our own table,” and walked past the guy.

  Dougherty followed but the guy stepped in the way with his hand out looking for a tip and Dougherty said, “Police business.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Dougherty said, “Neither do I,” and kept walking.

  There was a woman onstage, swaying from side to side, no pasties on her small breasts and her denim shorts cut and torn so much she might as well have been bottomless, too. Dougherty thought she looked stoned. There were a few guys sitting on chairs right up against the stage, as if it were a bar.

  Caron led the way through the room. It had been a restaurant, though not a fancy one, but still the coloured lights and mirrors and the disco ball looked garish and out of place. Across from the stage was the bar, no one sitting on the stools there, and there were a few small tables scattered around the rest of the smoke-filled room.

  The song ended and another started with no break between them. “Love Is Alive” — Dougherty recognized the synthesizer opening from every disco and strip club he’d been in the last month. The woman onstage turned around, and with her back to the few guys sitting by the stage she bent over at the waist and slid the denim shorts down her long legs. She stood back up, still with her back to the men, and was swaying to the music, moving her hips a lot more now and stepping away from the shorts, barely lifting her stilettos off the stage.

  Caron had stopped by the bar and was talking to a waitress who was wearing a see-through nightie and nothing underneath. She was carrying a round tray with a highball glass on it and motioning to a table in the back corner of the bar and saying, “Peut-être une heure.”

  Caron said, “Tout seul?” He was looking at a piece of paper the waitress had handed him, turning it over, looking at both sides.

  “Juste lui et Melodi et Tom Collins.” She looked up at Dougherty and winked and said, “Je ne suis pas occupée.”

  “Tant pis pour moi,” Dougherty said. “I’m working.”

  “You don’t work all night, come back.”

  “You’ll still be here?”

  “Si tu reviens.” Then as Dougherty followed Caron she said, “See you later.”

  As Caron led the way into the back corner of the room, even darker than the area by the stage, he handed the piece of paper to Dougherty. It was the band from a pile of bills, the words Royal Bank printed on it in blue.

  In the corner a man was sitting with his back to the wall staring up at a young woman who was dancing — or at least moving a little — her naked crotch inches from his face.

  “Okay,” Caron said, “la danse est finie.”

  Dougherty put his hand on Melodi’s arm and they were eye to eye. She said, “No touching.”

  “Time for a break.”

  She got off the little stand and picked it up, grabbing a folded-over bundle of bills from under one of the legs and her high-heeled shoes and shrugged at the guy as she walked away saying, “See you later.”

  Caron said, “Come with us.”

  The guy hadn’t moved. Dougherty figured he was drunk and expected him to come up swinging, but the guy just said, “Come back, Melodi,” and smiled a dopey smile.

  The bouncer was beside them then, with another guy, a little shorter but wearing a nicer suit, who said, “Okay, boys, take it outside.”

  Dougherty got himself between the bouncer and Caron, looking at the bouncer and hoping that would be all it took but ready to go if he had to.

  Caron said, “Yeah, Maurice, we’re going.” He had a hand on the drunk’s shoulder and said to him, “Come on, buddy, let’s go.”

  The guy in the nice suit, Maurice, said, “Let go of him and get out of my club.”

  “Didn’t you call us,” Caron said. “You don’t want the reward?”

  Then Dougherty recognized Maurice: he’d been a detective at Station Four a few years before, when Dougherty was working there.

  “No one called you.”

  “Then I’ll keep the reward.” Caron had the drunk on his feet and Dougherty cleared the path for them to get out.

  Outside on the sidewalk, the drunk started to come around and get pissed off, saying, “Hands off me,” waving his arms around, but Caron shoved him up ag
ainst the wall of the building.

  “You know what this is?” Holding the Royal Bank band in his face.

  The drunk started patting the pockets in his sports coat and he said, “That’s mine.”

  “No, it’s the bank’s,” Caron said. “You stole it out of the truck. Come on,” he shoved him towards the car, “you’re going to tell us who else was with you.”

  Dougherty opened the back door of the car and Caron shoved the guy inside and said, “Don’t puke.” He slammed the door shut and said to Dougherty, “You know him?”

  “No, you?”

  “No. I’m surprised, I thought I would.” Caron leaned against the car and got his smokes out of his pocket and lit one.

  Dougherty said, “He might have sold them something.”

  “Can you see the guys who pulled this job paying someone with a stack of bills, the band still on it?” He was holding the paper band in his hand.

  “No.”

  Caron took a deep drag and blew out smoke. “Okay, let’s get his story before we take him in.”

  Dougherty looked past Caron into the car and said, “You want to let him sleep it off?”

  The guy was spread out over the back seat asleep.

  “Let’s wake him up,” Caron said. “But not here.”

  They drove to the waterfront, along Mill Street until they were in the parking lot under the Bonaventure Expressway by the Lachine Canal. Dougherty pulled the drunk out of the back seat and propped him up against the hood of the car.

  The guy was awake and trying to focus. He said, “What the hell?”

  Caron stood beside the open passenger door and said, “We’re going to give you a chance to walk away from this.”

  “Where the hell am I?”

  “Deep shit,” Caron said. “You’re in deep shit.”

  He walked around the car and stood beside Dougherty, the two of them staring at the drunk, and Caron said, “But we can get you out. All you have to do is tell us who else was in it with you.”

  The guy said, “Who else?” like he really had no idea what they were talking about.

  Caron said, “Just one name.”

  He wasn’t getting it and he started to look scared.

  Caron spoke softly, like he was talking to a friend, saying, “It’s not too late for you, we know it wasn’t your idea, we know you’re just a small part of it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Caron leaned back and Dougherty leaned in and slapped the hood of the car hard.

  The guy jumped and closed his eyes, ready to get hit.

  Dougherty said, “Tell him what he wants to know.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  Dougherty slapped him. He grabbed the guy’s face in one hand and shook it till he opened his eyes and then Dougherty showed his other hand now in a fist. “Tell him.”

  “It was me, it was just me.”

  Dougherty pulled his fist back to punch but Caron grabbed his arm.

  “Just one name, that’s all we need. One other guy who was in this with you.”

  The guy was crying, now, shaking all over. He managed to say, “J-just me,” with Dougherty’s big hand squeezing his face.

  “I can only help you if you help me,” Caron said. “I can’t hold him back forever.”

  “It was just me, Jesus Murphy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Dougherty slammed the guy’s head onto the hood of the car and held it there, pressing his face into the still-warm steel.

  Caron leaned down close to the guy and said, “Was it Peaky Boyle? We don’t have to tell him we got it from you.”

  “N-no.”

  “Big Jim Sadowski?”

  “Who?”

  Dougherty’s hand was on the guy’s neck then, and he lifted it up a little and then pressed down harder. “Come on.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, it was just me, I swear.” He closed his eyes tight, scrunched up his whole face like he was trying to be a turtle and pull it into his shoulders.

  Dougherty looked at Caron for direction.

  “Look, no one thinks you did it by yourself.”

  “I did, ask the old lady, I always work alone, I swear, if there was someone else, I’d tell you.”

  Caron motioned for Dougherty to let the guy up and he did.

  “Here.” Caron held out his smokes and the guy looked at Dougherty before he took one in a shaking hand.

  Holding the match Caron said, “What’s your name?”

  “Billy,” the guy said, taking a drag and coughing as he let it out. He was still shaking. “Bill. William Greaves.”

  “All right, Bill,” Caron said. He held up the paper band. “You did not hold up a Brink’s truck by yourself. Tell me who you work with.”

  Greaves laughed. He was taking another drag on the smoke and he laughed and coughed and laughed some more and said, “Holy shit, is that what you think I did?”

  “Where did you get the money?” Caron said.

  Greaves was settling down. He put the cigarette in his mouth and inhaled and tilted his head back, letting out a long stream of smoke towards the traffic going by on the Bonaventure above them.

  “I got that from a nice old lady in Westmount. Told her I was a bank inspector.”

  “Shit,” Caron said, “that still works?”

  Greaves shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  They put him back in the car and drove to HQ on Bonsecours Street. Caron told Dougherty to take Greaves into the detectives’ office on the third floor and process him, making it sound like a big deal, like real detective work, and Dougherty tried to let him know he wasn’t buying it except he was.

  It felt good, sitting at the desk, taking the statement, walking Greaves through and making sure he got everything: how Greaves phoned the old lady and told her he was working for the bank, checking into what might be a crooked teller, how she could help by withdrawing two thousand dollars. Greaves met her in Place d’Armes, two blocks from the bank and took the money, thanking her, telling her there was a problem all right, the teller had slipped her counterfeit bills and he’d have to continue his investigation.

  “And then you just walked straight to the strip joint?” Dougherty said.

  “It was the guilt. It was weighing on me, I had to get rid of the money.”

  “Yeah, two bucks a dance, it would take a while.”

  Greaves said, “Two bucks? Didn’t you see her, it was five, and another three dances and she was coming back to my room at the hotel.”

  Dougherty finished up the paperwork, checking it three times to make sure he had everything and then he called dispatch to send a uniform to take Greaves to Parthenais and process him.

  When that was done, when the uniform had taken Greaves away, the detective office was quiet. Dougherty felt good, he felt like he could do this job and be good at it and now he was feeling that he really didn’t want to go back to uniform. Nothing against it, it was good work, useful work, sometimes it felt like he was doing something really worthwhile breaking up a fight before some drunk killed his own wife or helping people at the scene of a car accident, lots of things like that, but detective work — it just felt better to Dougherty.

  He was getting ready to leave when Caron came back into the office, already a couple of drinks in him, and said, “All right, you finished? Let’s go give the girls the reward.”

  “The reward’s for information on the Brink’s job, nothing for this small-time fraud.”

  “We can still show our appreciation,” Caron said.

  Dougherty didn’t want to go back to the strip club but he didn’t want to go home either, so he said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  They were still there around ten when Dougherty realized his beeper was going off.

  He was sitt
ing at the bar with his back to the stage, though he could see the dancer in the mirror, and listening to the song, a girl’s name, something like Lorelei, though Dougherty had never heard that name before, and the words, “Let’s live together,” over and over. He was thinking maybe that’s what he and Judy should do, just live together, not get married at all. Judy might go for that. He’d just have to keep it a secret from his mother. And his father.

  In the back by the washrooms, Dougherty found a pay phone and called in.

  Ste. Marie answered, “Where the hell is Caron? I called him three times.”

  “I can find him.”

  “Can you find him in the next five minutes?”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “he’s here with me now. You want us to come in?”

  “No, we’ll pick him up, where are you?”

  “You know the Disco-Salon, on LeRoyer?”

  “Should have known you’d be in a strip club. Sober him up and wait out front, we’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Dougherty pulled Caron out from under a dancer and dragged him out to the sidewalk in front of the club. He was thinking along the way how Ste. Marie had said to sober “him” up and that they’d pick “him” up but it didn’t really register until the unmarked car pulled up and Ste. Marie, in the passenger seat, said to Caron, “Let’s go.”

  Caron climbed in the back and as Dougherty leaned in he saw Paquette in the driver’s seat. Dougherty said, “Where to?” but he had a feeling what was coming.

  “It’s not the whole squad,” Ste. Marie said. “We got a tip on the shooter from Peg’s, we don’t want to spook him.”

  “Just you three going?”

  “A couple others, they’re watching his place now.”

  “Whose place?”

  Ste. Marie said, “We’ll bring him in tonight, let him sweat, talk to him tomorrow. Be at the office by ten.”

  Then Paquette pulled a U and Dougherty watched the car turn onto St. Laurent and gun it. He was pissed off and feeling like he was being pushed out of the special squad but he didn’t know what to do about it.