One or the Other

by John McFetridge

  “Years ago Dubois worked for a loan shark, Harry Schiff, called himself Harry Smith, you heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “He was killed,” Rozovsky said, “about ten years ago.”

  “Before I joined the force.”

  “Me too, but just barely. So, Dubois and his brothers worked for Harry Schiff, they were the muscle. The word is Dubois took over the business: there was about seventy grand outstanding, and Dubois collected it and went from there.”

  The waiter came by, a Chinese guy who could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty-five years old. He said, “You want coffee?”

  Rozovsky said, “Yeah, thanks,” and looked at Dougherty and said, “It’s your dime.”

  “Sure, I’ll have a coffee.”

  The waiter picked up their plates and left, and Rozovsky said, “And like all good loan sharks, Dubois branched out, he started fronting guys money for drugs and a lot of them repaid him and bought more.”

  “Now it’s bikers,” Dougherty said.

  “Yeah, they’re the muscle, and they’re buying the drugs from Dubois and he buys it from someone else.”

  “Italians?”

  “They have all the contacts in South America. Rizzuto still lives in Venezuela, right?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “It’s a business built on relationships, right? Well, that and money.”

  “What about your guys?”

  “The day of the Jewish gangster in Montreal is coming to an end,” Rozovsky said. “It did its job, now all the kids go to McGill and get into legit businesses. Well, not all, of course, but the smart ones. Now your guys are moving up the hill and all over downtown.”

  “Moved up from the port and put on suits,” Dougherty said. “They’re into a lot of it. And Dubois being in court all this time has helped.”

  “And all that money they got from the bank robberies bought a lot of drugs.”

  “That’s the theory with the Brink’s truck, that money went straight to Colombia for cocaine.”

  “More likely it went straight to St. Leonard and from there to Colombia, but there’s no doubt the Point Boys are selling the product downtown.”

  “No doubt,” Dougherty said.

  “So, why do you want to know all this ancient history?”

  The waiter brought the coffee cups and left without saying anything.

  Dougherty picked up his cup and took a sip while Rozovsky poured milk and sugar into his. Then Dougherty said, “I don’t want to go back to uniform at Station Ten.”

  “The chicks don’t dig a man in uniform anymore?”

  “So, I figure I’ve got to get into narcotics or something.”

  “I thought you were working homicide with Carpentier?”

  “I can’t seem to get a permanent assignment.”

  “So, what do you care? There’s no more money in it, is there? You don’t get a bonus if you solve a murder. Doesn’t affect seniority or pension.”

  Dougherty laughed and said, “Pension?”

  “It sounds like it’s a hundred years away, but it isn’t.”

  “It’s not my biggest concern right now.”

  “Okay,” Rozovsky shrugged. “So the Point Boys are moving a lot of coke downtown, you know them, you should be able to get into narco, it could be fun.”

  “I hate all this political bullshit.”

  Rozovsky drank his coffee. “What’re you gonna do, this is Quebec — politics is the national sport.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Look, you’ve been hanging around homicide for years, and you’ve worked some big cases — you should be able to get in easy.”

  “Should be.”

  Rozovsky leaned back in the booth and said, “Anyway, the Olympics are going to keep everybody busy for a couple of months. Who knows, you might meet a sexy Russian gymnast, have to do a little personal security, you know what I mean?”

  “The waiter knows what you mean and he doesn’t even speak English.”

  “Don’t believe that, he hears everything that gets said in here.” Rozovsky drank more coffee and said, “For what it’s worth, I say your best bet is talk to Carpentier, tell him what you want and then forget it. At least with the uniform you don’t have to worry about what to wear to work every day.”

  “I’ve been wearing the same suit every day as a detective, no one’s noticed.”

  Rozovsky drank a little coffee and said, “Well, they’re not going to fire you, the rest is just details.”

  Dougherty said, “I guess.” Then he stood up and dropped ten bucks on the table. “You’re right.” Walking out, he waved at the waiter who was standing beside the cash with another Chinese guy and said, “Merci, boss.”

  Outside on De la Gauchetière Street, there were quite a few people still looking for restaurants and bars, it was only a little after nine.

  Rozovsky said, “Look, between you and me, the Dubois trial is going to mean the inquiry into organized crime is going to get extended. Cotroni can’t pretend to be sick forever, but he’s got enough money to pay his lawyers to drag it out for years. Meanwhile the whole narco squad is going to spend the whole time in court reading old reports. I can talk to Marcel for you, but it’s not going to be much fun.”

  “I appreciate it,” Dougherty said. “Nothing seems much fun these days.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This city,” Dougherty said. “It feels different. A few weeks from the Olympics and all we hear about are the problems. You remember a few weeks before Expo? The excitement?”

  “That was ten years ago. A lot has changed.”

  “And a lot hasn’t. But it wasn’t just Expo, the whole city feels different.”

  Rozovsky said, “Yeah, all over downtown, there was so much going on, so much building. Place Ville Marie, Place Victoria.”

  “The Métro.”

  “Métro’s getting extended now.”

  “Over budget and behind schedule. We didn’t hear that every day about Expo.”

  “We were too young,” Rozovsky said.

  “I was working construction then,” Dougherty said. “On the American pavilion.”

  “And now it’s burned down.”

  Dougherty said, “This just feels like a cash grab, people lining up to the trough. And everybody so, I don’t know, tense all the time. Pissed off. You feel it?”

  “It’s not just here,” Rozovsky said. “Look at the riots in Boston, that busing stuff, look at New York, it’s going bankrupt. ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead,’ you saw the headline.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “everybody did.”

  “I was just in Brooklyn, I’ve got cousins there. That Welcome Back, Kotter is funny but it’s not a joke, that place is a dump.”

  “I hope that doesn’t happen here.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rozovsky said. “By the time the Olympics start it’ll be a party.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “there’s always another party.”

  He almost believed it.

  * * *

  When Dougherty got to his apartment the phone was ringing. He picked up the receiver and said, “Yeah?”

  “Where’ve you been, I’ve been calling.”

  “Working.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and started taking off his tie.

  On the phone, Judy said, “Well, I’ve got news. I got a job.”

  “Good for you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” Dougherty said, “just, that’s good.”

  “Why are you so pissy?”

  “I don’t know, I had a bad day.”

  “Well, do you think you’re going to have a good day soon?”

  “I don’t know, I gu
ess it depends on the city.”

  “All right, when the city is more to your liking, give me a call.”

  She hung up, and Dougherty waited a moment then dropped the receiver into the cradle on the phone.

  He looked around his one-room apartment, same place he’d been living since he was first assigned to Station Ten, six years ago now, and that made him feel even shittier. He flopped back on the bed but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Judy was right, he couldn’t let it get to him, couldn’t let it run his life.

  But he could feel something slipping away, coming apart at the seams. There’d always be another party, that was true. St. Jean Baptiste was coming up, that would bring two or three hundred thousand people out to Mount Royal. There would always be work for cops. Especially cops in uniform doing crowd control.

  Around four in the morning, Dougherty fell asleep, and when his alarm went off at seven his head was throbbing as if he had a hangover. He was thinking, Great, now I don’t even have to get drunk.

  He found a wrinkled blue uniform shirt and a pair of pants on the floor of his closet and a plain blue tie hanging over the door. He got dressed and drove to Station Ten.

  All the way he was thinking about Judy, thinking how that should be the one thing he didn’t let slip away.

  * * *

  At the station, the desk sergeant, Delisle, was hanging up the phone when Dougherty walked in and he said, “You got out just in time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The robbery squad made arrests in the Brink’s trunk heist.”

  Dougherty said, “Shit.”

  “No, they screwed it up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It was on the radio, you didn’t hear? Laperrière gave a press conference, said it was solved, they arrested three guys.”

  “Boyle?”

  “Réjean Duff.”

  Dougherty said, “Never heard of him.”

  “Roger Provençal and Michel Pilon.”

  “Who the hell are they?”

  Dougherty was starting to pace in front of the desk.

  Delisle said, “It wasn’t supposed to go public. The detectives, Caron and the others, they couldn’t believe it. They were still going on raids, they heard it on the radio that arrests had been made. By the time they got to the west end there were lawyers waiting at every door.”

  “They get any of the money?”

  “Seventy-five grand.”

  “That’s all? Out of almost three million?”

  “Now they’re saying the gang was both, east end and west end.”

  “But they didn’t charge anybody in the west end, did they?” Dougherty said. “And what have they got that’ll stick to these three?”

  “You’re better off out of it.”

  Dougherty wasn’t buying that, but he said, “Look, I’m working something for Carpentier, something with the Longueuil department. Can you sign off on that?”

  Delisle laughed and said, “You think I got promoted all of a sudden? Talk to the captain.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “A good assignment for you: we’re starting hotel security training. Plainclothes, you meet with hotel staff and explain security measures for the Olympics.”

  Dougherty said, “That’s it?”

  Delisle said, “You get to talk to some sexy chicks working the front desks of the best hotels in town.”

  A few years earlier, Dougherty would have jumped at it. That was almost the main reason he’d joined the police, meeting chicks and driving fast. And not sitting at a desk or going into the same warehouse every day for the rest of his life.

  “Anything else?”

  “This is it. You work a regular shift for a few days, then go for training yourself, then start meeting with hotel staff.” Delisle was picking up the phone then, and he said, “Ride with Gagnon for a few days. The security training will be at a hotel out by the airport. They’re bringing in experts.”

  Dougherty said, “I bet they are.”

  * * *

  Gagnon was behind the wheel, driving slowly through downtown, a beautiful day in early June. He spoke French, saying, “It’s not St. Jean Baptiste Day this year.”

  Dougherty was slouched in the passenger seat. He didn’t say anything.

  “No, this year it is officially la Fête Nationale du Québec.”

  Nothing from Dougherty.

  “Might be fun this year, there might be trouble. Action. More, more, more.”

  “No more than usual.” Dougherty was thinking about the first St. Jean Baptiste parade he worked, almost ten years ago now, turned into a riot. People throwing bottles and bricks at the reviewing stand, Prime Minister Trudeau refusing to leave, dozens of arrests, probably what Gagnon meant by fun. After that, the parade was cancelled and the celebrations spread out over the city. Over the eastern half of the city, anyway.

  “It’s a song,” Gagnon said. “On the radio all the time. Did you hear about the concerts?”

  “On the mountain?”

  “Three days, lots of bands, dozens.”

  Dougherty said, “So, it’ll be a party, some people will get drunk and some will get stoned. The usual.”

  “But all those bands and they didn’t invite even one English.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t think that will cause some trouble?”

  Dougherty said, “You mean with Anglos?”

  “Come on,” Gagnon said, “they invited bands from all over, from the Maritimes, from France, from Louisiana, all over, but all French. No English acts at all.”

  “What about Pagliaro?”

  Gagnon laughed. “I don’t know, maybe if he only sings ‘J’entends frapper,’ but not ‘Rainshowers.’”

  “That’s his best one.”

  “I like ‘Some Sing, Some Dance,’” Gagnon said. “Anyway, there could be some action.”

  “Anglos don’t riot,” Dougherty said. “Haven’t you ever met a WASP? Stiff upper lip and all that. They ignore.”

  “What about on St. Patrick’s Day in the Point?”

  “That’s the Irish.”

  “Same thing, no? Irish are English.”

  “Irish speak English,” Dougherty said. “We’re not English.”

  “I don’t get that.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  Gagnon pulled back a bit, surprised, and then said, “Fuck you.”

  Dougherty said, “Don’t worry about it, doesn’t matter.”

  Gagnon shrugged and said, “Not to me it doesn’t.” He kept driving, the silence bearing down on the car, and then said, “Look, just because you’re having a shitty day don’t take it out on me.”

  Dougherty said, “Why don’t you let me off right here.”

  Gagnon pulled over and stopped and as Dougherty was getting out of the car said, “What you want me to tell Delisle?”

  “Tell him anything you want.”

  Gagnon shrugged and drove off.

  Dougherty stood on the sidewalk wondering why everyone passing by looked so happy. He thought maybe it was true, what people said, that because of the long harsh winters in Montreal people appreciate and even celebrate the summers so much. Whatever the reason, a beautiful, sunny day in June brought out the best in people.

  The only cloud was the one Dougherty was carrying around himself. He walked among the office workers out for lunch, the shoppers and the delivery guys whistling at the beautiful women and didn’t lighten up at all. He was determined to be in a bad mood.

  He ate lunch at the Rymark Tavern, a smoked meat sandwich and four glasses of draught. The waiter told him if he was going undercover as a drunk he’d want to take off the uniform.

  In Dominion Square, Dougherty stopped to read the inscription on
the statue of Robbie Burns and was thinking he couldn’t explain the difference between the Scots and the English to Gagnon, either, when he heard a man yelling, “Eille, toâ là, la police, viens ’citte,” in an accent he didn’t recognize.

  Dougherty turned and saw an older man, probably in his sixties, coming across Peel Street.

  “What is it?”

  The man switched to accented English and said, “It’s them, right there,” turning and pointing back across Peel.

  Dougherty was already moving, holding up a hand to stop traffic as he crossed the four-lane street. Cars honked and swerved but didn’t slow down. Dougherty rounded the corner of the Windsor Hotel and caught up to the three men as they were running into the parking lot behind the buildings that faced Peel.

  Dougherty yelled, “Stop,” but kept running towards the parking lot as the men were opening the doors and jumping into a delivery van. He got to the van as it was backing out of the parking space, the passenger side door still open, and he managed to get a hand on the man still climbing in. He pulled and the guy fell out, knocking Dougherty over and landing on top of him.

  The van stopped then, surprising Dougherty, and the other two guys jumped out swinging baseball bats, landing hard blows on Dougherty and the guy he’d pulled from the van.

  Dougherty managed to get his nightstick off his belt as he rolled away from the guy who’d landed on top of him, and he rolled again, a bat slamming into his shoulder, but he got a good shot in on the guy’s knee, enough to buckle him over, and Dougherty swung the nightstick into the guy’s jaw.

  Then he didn’t see the other bat coming, and it landed hard on the side of his face and cracked his nose. Blood poured out.

  The three guys were on their feet then and rushing to get back into the van.

  Dougherty tried to stand up, but he was dizzy from the beers and the blows to the head, and he fell back down.

  The van took off but stopped before it left the parking lot and backed up fast, coming right at Dougherty. He rolled out of the way — barely — and then was almost hit by the cop car coming into the lot.

  Doors flung open, there were shouts, punches thrown, and in less than a minute the three guys Dougherty was fighting were face down on the pavement with their hands cuffed behind their backs.