One or the Other

by John McFetridge

  Inside the building it was a giant maze of conveyor belts and big white plastic bins on wheels being pushed around by people in brown uniforms.

  Dougherty flagged down a guy in a turban who was pulling a stack of packages on a pallet jack and asked him in English where he could find the supervisor.

  “Shipping office.” He pointed.

  Dougherty tried to see what he was pointing at but there were too many boxes piled everywhere.

  The guy said, “This way,” and led them between the packages like they were rows of corn in a field. After enough turns that Dougherty was pretty sure he’d never be able to find his way back, the guy said, “There,” and pointed at a closed door.

  “Thanks.”

  Dougherty knocked on the door and a voice from inside said, “What is it?”

  Legault said, “Bon, encore un anglais.”

  Dougherty opened the door and said, in French, “Are you the supervisor in sorting?”

  A man was sitting behind a desk, looking up at them, and he said, “Oui, c’est moi, le boss.”

  Dougherty glanced at Legault and then held the door while she made her way into the office and the conversation continued in French. Legault said they were the police and she introduced herself as Sergeant but didn’t mention being from Longueuil. She added, “This is Detective Dougherty.”

  The supervisor said, “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re looking for Louise Tremblay.”

  “So am I.”

  “She works in sorting.”

  “She didn’t come in today.”

  “Did she call?”

  “Nothing,” the supervisor said.

  Legault said, “Is that unusual?”

  “Yes, she never misses a shift. I was very surprised today when she didn’t show — she’s been trying to get off the night shift onto days for quite a while, and she finally does and now she doesn’t show up. What’s going on, is she in trouble?”

  “No,” Legault said. “We just wanted to talk to her.”

  “Detectives? It must be something.”

  “It’s about a family member,” Dougherty said. “Nothing to do with Louise directly.”

  “People have to have clean records to work here,” the supervisor said. “If she’s in trouble with the police we need to know.”

  “It’s not her,” Dougherty said as forcefully as he could without making a scene. “Don’t even mention that we were here.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the supervisor said. “If she doesn’t come in tomorrow morning with a good excuse then she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  In the car driving back out past the security gate, Legault said, “That guy has too much power.”

  “He just likes to use what little he’s got,” Dougherty said. “Okay, do you have an address for Louise?”

  “You want to go now?”

  “Yeah, let’s find out what’s going on.”

  Legault got out her notebook and said, “8445 Boulevard de l’Acadie. You know where that is?”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said. “I know it, do you?”

  “Not really.” Legault shrugged. “I don’t come into the city very often.”

  “You’re going to love this.”

  * * *

  Dougherty looked sideways at Legault as he drove around the traffic circle getting off the Metropolitain Expressway and onto l’Acadie.

  Legault was looking at the apartment buildings that lined the east side of the street, most of them three storeys or more, brick buildings without any real character or anything very inviting other than being a place to live. Cheap urban sprawl.

  “There is it.”

  Dougherty pulled a U and stopped in front of 8445, a yellow-brick building with balconies, identical to the buildings on either side. He got out of the car and went around to help Legault, but she was already getting out. She stood up and got her crutch under her arm and was starting to move towards the apartment building when she looked back over the roof of the car to the west side of the street.

  She said, “Oh, I see what you mean.”

  “TMR.”

  But before the big single-family suburban homes of the Town of Mount Royal, there was a tall hedge and, Dougherty knew, behind that a fence. He was thinking there probably couldn’t be a more obvious example of the divide in Montreal than the green wall on l’Acadie: cramped apartment buildings and row houses on one side and tree-lined winding streets, big front lawns and bigger backyards on the other.

  Legault said, “So, let’s see if Louise Tremblay is home,” and started towards the front door of the apartment building.

  Dougherty followed thinking, Yeah, ignore it, what else can you do? On the way over he’d expected Legault to say something, make some kind of comment, sarcastic or biting in some way, and he realized he’d been looking forward to it. But standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building and looking at the backs of the big houses — of course it was their backs — even he didn’t find it funny.

  Legault pressed the buzzer for apartment 312 and they waited.

  After a few minutes Legault pressed the buzzer again, and Dougherty said, “Let’s talk to the super.”

  Legault pushed the buzzer marked Superintendent.

  Through the big glass front-doors they saw an apartment door on the first floor open and a middle-aged woman stick out her head and say, “Oui?”

  Legault spoke French, saying, “Can we talk to you for a moment?”

  The woman came out of the apartment and walked down the hall towards them, saying, “No vacancy.”

  Legault said, “We’re police.”

  “Ya?”

  Dougherty figured the woman’s first language was Greek or whatever they spoke in Yugoslavia, around there. She was looking at the casts on Legault’s wrist and ankle.

  Legault said, “Open the door.”

  The woman looked at Dougherty and said, “Ya?” He didn’t want to answer, make it look like he was overruling Legault, but he did want the woman to open the door.

  Then Legault was holding up a leather wallet with her badge on one side and an ID card on the other and saying, “Police, open the door.”

  Dougherty liked the wallet, the kind he planned on getting when he finally made full-time detective, though now he was thinking that would probably never happen.

  “Okay, okay,” the woman opened the door and Legault stepped into the apartment building.

  It was a lot like the building Dougherty had just moved into with Judy, but it smelled a lot different: cabbages and beets and a lot of stuff he didn’t know but recognized from these kinds of buildings filled with recent immigrants.

  Legault said, “We’re looking for Louise Tremblay, apartment 312.”

  “No, no Tremblay,” the woman said.

  “Maybe she’s not on the lease, but she lives here. Young woman, twenty, twenty-two years old. Long hair, dark blonde. Skinny.”

  The woman shook her head, nothing.

  “French,” Legault said. “She’s French, Louise Tremblay.”

  “I never seen her.”

  “All right, maybe your buzzer isn’t working, we’ll knock on the door.”

  Legault walked to the elevator and pushed the button. The door opened immediately.

  “Buzzer works,” the woman said. “Everything work, my husband fix everything.”

  In the elevator Dougherty said, “It’s a good thing her husband keeps everything working, how were you going to get up three flights of stairs?”

  “Easy,” Legault said. The elevator doors opened and she walked down the hall until she found apartment 312 and banged her crutch on the door.

  No answer.

  Legault banged again.

  Dougherty said, “Looks like she’s not home.”

>   “It’s not right.”

  “Happens all the time,” Dougherty said. “People say they’ll talk to the cops but then they change their minds.”

  Legault was still looking at the door, waiting for it to open, willing it to open. “She was scared, I had to talk her into meeting, she didn’t want to.”

  “So she didn’t.”

  “She didn’t go to work.” Legault turned slowly and looked at Dougherty. “I asked her about Marc-André, I pushed her to tell me. She didn’t know anything, she hadn’t seen him in months.”

  “So she said.”

  “I practically threatened her,” Legault said. “I made her go looking for him, she didn’t want to.”

  “It’s what we do.”

  “It’s what you do.”

  Dougherty said, “Watch it.”

  “You’re just a thug.”

  She turned and started walking down the hall to the elevator.

  Dougherty stood and watched her press the button and saw the door open right away. He watched Legault get on the elevator and the door close.

  Dougherty said, “Fuck.”

  He walked to the elevator and pushed the button. He could hear the motor start, groaning and clanging its way up. When the door opened he didn’t get on and the door closed.

  “God dammit.”

  He paced a little in the hall, thinking they should talk to the neighbours, find out the last time anyone saw Louise, get the super to let them into the apartment and have a look around.

  Then he pressed the button for the elevator, the door opened and he got on.

  In front of the building Legault was leaning against the car, and as soon as Dougherty walked up she said, “Okay, I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t slow down, walking around the car and opening the driver’s side door, saying, “Don’t be, you’re right.” He looked over the roof of the car. “I am a thug, that’s what works for me.” He got into the car.

  Legault got into the passenger seat and said, “Yes, it’s true, it works. Most of the time.”

  Dougherty started driving. He didn’t want to talk about it because he knew where it was going. He’d been avoiding it for a while himself, knowing it and not wanting to face it.

  What would he do when being a thug didn’t work? It’s what was holding him back, why he couldn’t get to the next level.

  Legault said, “It’s just sometimes maybe we need a different approach.”

  “I know.”

  She looked at him and said, “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s good.”

  They didn’t talk much the rest of the drive and when they pulled up in front of Legault’s house she said, “I’ll keep trying to find Louise Tremblay.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll call you when I find her.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay.”

  “Will you keep looking?”

  “Yeah, of course. I’ll be on this Olympic security but like today, I can get away.”

  Legault said, “Okay, good,” and got out of the car.

  Dougherty drove back into Montreal, over the Champlain Bridge, a great view of the skyline reflected in the St. Lawrence River, the searchlight on top of Place Ville Marie sweeping over the other tall buildings and behind them the mountain with its cross lit up on top. Dougherty had always loved this approach to Montreal — it was his city, his home, he was proud of it.

  Now, for the first time, he wasn’t sure about his place in it.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  The sergeant in charge, a guy Dougherty didn’t know named Latulippe, started the briefing by saying that in the first week of the Olympics they’d arrested two hundred guys for scalping and seized over three thousand tickets.

  “So, you men,” Latulippe said, “are going to put a stop to it.”

  They were crowded into a room at headquarters on Bonsecours Street, twenty guys at least, all looking pleased to be on this assignment. It was straightforward: they were going out undercover to all the Olympic venues to buy tickets and pick up scalpers. Because Dougherty had been working at the Forum, he got assigned across town at the Olympic Stadium. Other guys were sent to the Maurice Richard Arena, the Claude Robillard Centre, even Molson Stadium, though Dougherty couldn’t imagine anyone would be selling scalped tickets to a field hockey game between India and Australia — he figured they must be giving those away.

  As the meeting broke up and they all headed to their assignments, Dougherty saw Galluccio coming across the room towards him. He waited till he was close and said, “Nice shirt. You going to be looking for tickets to the disco dance final?”

  Galluccio wiped the lapels of the light blue suit jacket, even though it was shiny clean. “You should talk.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t look like you could afford a ticket to the peewee Olympics.”

  “Maybe you could lend me a gold chain, you wouldn’t notice one or two missing, how many you have there?”

  Galluccio touched the bare chest exposed by his white shirt unbuttoned halfway to his waist, and he said, “Tickets for the closing ceremony are going for five hundred bucks, gotta look like we can afford them.”

  “You sure you don’t just like dressing like that?”

  Galluccio laughed. “You got Olympic Stadium, too?”

  “Yeah, you going now?”

  “Let’s get started.”

  They left Bonsecours and headed towards the Place d’Armes Métro station. Galluccio said, “Did you ever find any of those dealers?”

  “Yeah, we did, thanks.”

  “They weren’t who you were looking for?”

  “No, we’re still looking.”

  “That’s why you took this job? Talk to the ticket scalpers?”

  They got to the Métro station and Dougherty said, “Yeah, see what’s what.”

  “They figure there are about a hundred guys working at the stadium but only about fifty are pros.”

  “Amateur athletics, amateur scalpers.”

  Galluccio said, “Funny,” in a deadpan.

  The train arrived in the station, quiet on its rubber wheels, and they got on. Standing, holding on to the pole, Dougherty said, “You still working the port, the islands?”

  “Oh yeah, but I’m doing a lot of these special assignments. I’ve been working a little narco, hanging out in the discos.”

  “You going to be a detective?”

  Galluccio said, “Yeah, maybe. But the chicks dig the uniform, you know?”

  At Berri they switched to the green line heading east towards Olympic Stadium and Dougherty said, “Maybe we should split up.”

  “Yeah,” Galluccio said, “we really don’t look like we belong together.” He looked Dougherty up and down and shook his head pityingly.

  “Hey, this is what I would wear to the Games, jeans and a t-shirt.”

  “Yeah, you probably would.”

  The train was crowded and a man pressed up against Galluccio turned awkwardly to face him and said, “Excuse me, do you know which stop is the stadium?”

  Galluccio said, “Yeah, sure, it’s Pee Neuf.”

  The guy said, “What?” and Galluccio pointed to the map above the door of the train and said, “Right there, see, Préfontaine, Joliette and then Pee Neuf.”

  “Pie IX?”

  “Pie nine,” Galluccio said. “Pee Neuf. It’s the Pope, you heard of him, right? Pope Pius the Ninth.”

  The guy was already turning away, back to his wife and saying, “It’s coming up, Pie Nine,” and she said, “Why isn’t it called Olympic Stadium?”

  Galluccio rolled his eyes. Then he said, “Hey, you were on that Brink’s truck robbery, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They shut that down?”
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  “It went back to the robbery guys. They needed the rest of us for Olympic security, for this kind of thing.”

  “You were looking in the west end?”

  “Yeah, mostly. Why?”

  Galluccio shrugged and said, “No reason, really. Just, a lot of the cocaine in the clubs, there are a lot of English guys making deals, you know.”

  “Yeah, the boss said the money was being reinvested in the local economy.”

  “So you were on the right track.”

  Dougherty shrugged. “They really wanted it to be someone from out of town. It’s hard to believe some locals pulled it off.”

  “Especially Anglos.”

  “Irish,” Dougherty said.

  Galluccio said, “Whatever.” Then, “Here we are, you coming?”

  “I’ll get off at Viau,” Dougherty said. “So we don’t look like a team.”

  The Métro stopped and the doors slid open. Galluccio waited till most of the crowd had gotten off and then started towards the door, saying, “No one would believe I hang out with a guy dressed like that.” He winked and stepped off the train as the doors closed.

  Olympic Stadium was pretty much halfway between the two Métro stops but Pie-IX was built to handle the crowds. It was the first one people would get to coming from downtown.

  There were people all over the concourse. Dougherty walked through the crowd and looked up at the unfinished tower rising above the stadium, the concrete bowl he’d seen made fun of so much, cartoonists almost always drawing it as a huge toilet bowl.

  But now, with the crowds and the athletes and the excitement of the whole thing it felt pretty good. Dougherty almost wished he was actually buying tickets to see an event.

  It was easy to find a scalper: just like a hockey game or a concert at the Forum, there were guys standing at the edges of the crowd saying, “Tickets, who needs tickets?” Dougherty thought he even recognized a couple of them. He walked up to a young guy who looked like he’d cleaned up for the occasion and said, “You got tickets?”

  “For the stadium? Track and field today, semifinals. Or the Vélodrome, it’s judo today.”