A Little More Free Page 13

  Leary nodded but didn’t look convinced. He didn’t say anything for a moment and then he said, “Hey, you remember Alice Bedard?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Dougherty said. “You’re not going out with her? She’s out of your league.”

  “No,” Leary said, smiling a little but then getting serious. “She was at the Blue Bird. She died in the fire.”

  Dougherty said, “Shit.” He remembered Alice Bedard as another one of the French kids, or half-French kids, from the neighbourhood. Unlike Dougherty, she didn’t go to a French elementary school, though. He said, “They had the funeral I guess?”

  “Last week.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “They’re still looking for those guys,” Leary said. “You’re still looking, I guess.”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah. We got one of them — he gave up the others. We just haven’t found them yet.”

  “I hope you do.”

  “We will,” Dougherty said.

  “Okay, good, well, I gotta go.”

  “It was good to see you,” Dougherty said and Leary said, “Yeah,” as he crossed Verdun Avenue. “Good luck.”

  Dougherty was thinking, Yeah, of all the things I should be working on, and he looked back at Mullins in the window booth of the New Verdun listening to his mother talk. Dougherty thought he probably knew what she was saying, telling Mullins about all the ­people who were still in the neighbourhood, telling him about the people who had moved away. He figured Mullins probably didn’t even know half of the people his mother was talking about.

  A half hour later, Mullins walked his mother back home, got back on the bus and went to his own apartment. He never noticed Dougherty following him, even though by the time they got to Côte-des-Neiges, Dougherty wasn’t doing much to stay out of sight.

  It was still early, barely ten o’clock, so Dougherty decided to hit a couple of bars downtown and see if he could find Danny Buckley.

  He didn’t find him, but he found Kevin “Two Fingers” Smith.

  * * *

  Dougherty checked out George’s again and a couple other bars near Place Ville Marie but they were all dead on Monday night, even the after-work office crowd gone back home to the suburbs. Same with the Rymark and the Peel Pub, even the workingmen home early. Things were a little more lively on Crescent, a bit of a crowd in the Winston Churchill and the Cock ’n’ Bull, but no sign of Danny Buckley.

  Just before midnight Dougherty thought maybe he’d take a run down the hill to the Point and see what was doing at the Arawana or the One and Two, but first he stopped in at the Royal on Guy. As he was walking to the bar, he saw a couple guys at a table in the corner and something about them made him take a closer look. One of them had only two fingers on his right hand, but it was the other guy at the table Dougherty recognized as he walked up and said, “Tucks, what are you doing on this side of the river?”

  “Free country.”

  “You guys on the South Shore are sure behind the times.”

  There was a bit of a crowd in the Royal, students from Sir George from what Dougherty could tell, taking up a couple of tables on the other side of the room. They were talking loud and laughing and didn’t seem to care if there was anyone else in the place.

  Tucker said, “What do you want, Dougherty?”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Sorry, can’t help you, he’s not a fag.”

  Dougherty took his beer from the bartender and sat down across the table from Matty Tucker and the guy with the bent fingers.

  “Kevin Smith, right?”

  The guy shrugged an admission — what was the big deal? He said, “What’s it to you?”

  Dougherty was feeling comfortable now, easing into the conversation. These two guys could just get up and walk away but Dougherty knew they wouldn’t, he knew they were all comfortable with the way it worked — he was the cop and he asked the questions and they were the perps and they put up a fight but then they gave the answers.

  “You from the Park, too, Kevin?”

  “So?”

  “I lived in Greenfield Park, for a while.”

  “You want a fucking medal?”

  “My little brother has those patches they give out for playing on the hockey teams and the football team, shaped like a tree, you know them? League champs, playoff champs? They’re like medals.”

  Yeah, Dougherty was comfortable as the cop now, screwing with these guys, taking his time. He drank from the beer bottle, leaned in a little closer and said, “You selling nickel bags to the smart kids?”

  They were tense, Tucker and Two Fingers, but they were trying not to show it. Then Dougherty thought maybe Two Fingers wasn’t that tense. The guy didn’t look worried. Dougherty said, “Oh, I get it, you don’t sell on the island, you’re not my problem.”

  “We’re not anybody’s problem,” Tucker said.

  Dougherty was looking at the other guy while Tucker was talking, though, and now he was sure the guy wasn’t worried. It could mean he had nothing to hide, but Dougherty figured it was more likely because he had some connections.

  “I need to ask you about a guy,” Dougherty said, and Tucker said, “Shit, I told you, you want to suck a dick, go to Bud’s.”

  Dougherty said, “The grown-ups are talking here, Tucker,” never taking his eyes off Two Fingers, saying, “American guy named David Murray,” and he could see the recognition right away.

  But Two Fingers shrugged and said, “Never heard of him,” and Dougherty knew the game so he said, “I’m only going to give you one chance,” and Two Fingers said, “Give me as many chances as you want, pig, I don’t know the man.”

  Dougherty looked around the Royal, saw the students still deep in some important argument, life-changing no doubt, and the bartender watching a little black-and-white TV on a wall mount and then back to Tucker and Two Fingers.

  But before Dougherty said anything, a man came into the bar and started towards the table. He saw Dougherty and walked to the bar, pretending that was where he was headed all along.

  Two Fingers glanced down at a canvas bag on the floor by his feet, and Dougherty saw a brown paper bag the size of a record album sticking out of it.

  “Okay,” Dougherty said, “if that’s the way you want it to be.” He stood up and finished off his beer and put the empty bottle on the table. “Stay clean.”

  He walked out feeling good. Inside the paper bag was a record album and in the corner was a small square sticker with the words Cheap Thrills stenciled on it. Two Fingers had made sure he’d seen it.

  The next day, Dougherty clocked out early, changed out of his uniform and walked a few blocks from Station Ten to Bishop Street and up the stairs of an old three-storey building to a store called Cheap Thrills.

  The place was smaller than Dougherty expected, really only what would have been the living room and dining room when the building had been a home. A couple of people were browsing through the bins of records and there were a couple of bookshelves of used paperbacks and some textbooks.

  A girl was working the cash, putting the square stickers on the corners of album covers.

  Dougherty flipped through a few bins, flicking the albums and looking at the covers but he barely recognized anything, all skinny bare-chested guys with long hair and weird-looking paintings. He wandered over to the bookshelves and saw a few copies of Immigration for Draft-Age Americans and something called Handbook for Conscientious Objectors.

  A man’s voice said, “That’s a good one,” and Dougherty turned to see Two Fingers standing beside him pointing at the handbook. “It’ll blow your mind.”

  “Really, I’m looking for a record,” Dougherty said. “For my kid brother.”

  “Oh yeah, what’s he like?”

  “I’m not sure. He was disappointed he didn’t get to the Alice Cooper concert.�
�

  “He like Jethro Tull?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Get him a bootleg.”

  Two Fingers walked to a bin and pulled out an album with a couple of black-and-white pictures on the cover that looked like a cheap photostat. “It’s got both of them.”

  Dougherty took the record. Across the top it said Alice & Ian 9-71, so he figured the guy on the left under the word Alice must be Alice Cooper. In the picture he was bare chested, of course, and holding a beer, a stubby. Dougherty said, “Is this from Montreal?”

  “Recorded at Hofstra University in New York. The Tull side has ‘Aqualung,’ the Cooper has ‘School’s Out’ and ‘I’m Eighteen.’ He’ll love it. You can be the cool brother for once.”

  Dougherty said okay and they went to the cash, and Two Fingers rang it up and then said to the girl, “I’m taking a break.”

  Outside on the sidewalk, Dougherty said, “You want a coffee?”

  “Let’s get away from here.” He motioned along de Maisonneuve and said, “And from there.” The big Sir George building.

  They walked a block up Bishop to Sherbrooke, and Two Fingers said, “I hope you do a better job than he does when you go undercover.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “The cop on the corner there, see him, pretending to be reading the newspaper. He’s watching the museum.”

  “You think so?”

  Two Fingers got a pack of smokes out of his pocket. “Because of the robbery. Please tell me you know about that.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “I was on that call.”

  “You guys are so stupid, looking at janitors and art students.”

  “Oh yeah?” Dougherty got out a cigarette himself and lit it. Then he handed his lighter to Two Fingers and said, “Who should we be looking at?”

  Two Fingers blew smoke in Dougherty’s face and said, “Gee, I don’t know, Officer, but maybe Montreal isn’t big enough for two mobsters.”

  “Mobsters?”

  “You heard of Cotroni, right? And Rizutto?”

  “I’ve heard of them,” Dougherty said, but he didn’t think he could come up with either guy’s first name.

  “Well, maybe they’re stepping on each other’s toes and maybe the guys in New York don’t want a war here.”

  “What do they care?”

  “Are you a rookie?”

  “Mobsters aren’t my department.”

  Two Fingers shrugged and said, “Okay, so, maybe one of the guys here was asked about getting out of town and maybe he said he’d think about it if the price was right.”

  “The price?”

  “Maybe a couple of million dollars’ worth of paintings.”

  Dougherty said, “How many times have you seen The Godfather?”

  “Fine, don’t believe me.”

  Sherbrooke Street was lined with office buildings on the south side where they were standing and the wide sidewalk was filling up with people leaving work for the day.

  Dougherty said, “I want to know about David Murray.”

  Two Fingers slipped a book out of his pocket. Choosing Peace. Dougherty hadn’t even noticed him take it from the shelf in Cheap Thrills.

  “How much is it worth to you?”

  Dougherty looked at him and Two Fingers said, “The museum stuff was a free sample. This you have to pay for.”

  “I had a date this weekend,” Dougherty said, getting out his wallet. He handed Two Fingers a couple of fives, and the guy waved his odd fingers and said, “I hope you got laid.” Dougherty gave him his last five and said, “You want the deuce, too?”

  “We’ll call this a down payment.”

  “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

  Dougherty noticed the money was gone as smoothly as Two Fingers had picked up the paperback.

  “David Murray had some friends up the hill.” He motioned towards the side of Mount Royal. Westmount.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Who loves these draft dodgers the most? Who invites them to parties to talk about how evil America is?”

  “But Murray wasn’t a dodger, he was a deserter.”

  Dougherty saw Two Fingers react and then try to pretend he hadn’t. He didn’t know.

  “Same dif.”

  “Not to everybody.”

  “Well, he had friends. And he did favours for them.”

  “Drug smuggling?”

  “He knew his way across the border.”

  “I need a name.”

  “Richard Burnside.”

  Dougherty said, “You think I’m going to believe that? One of the richest guys in the city?”

  “I don’t care what you believe.”

  Dougherty was thinking it was a waste of time, working informants not as easy as he thought, and then Two Fingers said, “You’ve got nothing else.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Two Fingers started walking back down the hill and said, “You’re talking to me, aren’t you?”

  Dougherty watched him go thinking, Yeah. He already felt like the last guy interested in David Murray’s murder and his interest was slipping away, too.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Dougherty was getting a coffee in the break room when Delisle yelled, “Hey, Dog-eh-dee, phone call,” and when Dougherty got to the desk he held the receiver and said, “No personal calls, you know that.”

  Dougherty said, “How do you know it’s personal?” thinking it might be a woman, but maybe it was work. He said, “Hello,” and his brother, Tommy, said, “Hey, Eddie.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Yeah, we’re at the hospital. It’s Dad.”

  “What? Are you at the General? What happened?”

  “The Butcher Shop, the Charlie. He had a heart attack or something.”

  Dougherty said, “Shit, okay, I’ll be right there,” and handed the receiver back to Delisle saying, “My dad’s in the hospital, I gotta go,” and for a second he thought about taking a cop car, but he ran the couple of blocks to where his Mustang was parked and took off in that, over the Champlain Bridge and along Taschereau, swearing at every red light until he saw the ten-storey Charles Lemoyne Hospital rising up above every other building around it.

  In the crowded waiting room, Dougherty took a minute to find Tommy sitting by himself and then he rushed over to him, saying, “Tommy, hi.”

  The kid stood up looking stunned. “Hey, Eddie.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  Tommy pointed. “In there.” Dougherty followed his look and then said, “Is Mom with him?”

  “No, she’s …” Tommy looked down and Dougherty realized the woman sitting there was his mother.

  “Ma, hi.”

  She turned her head slowly and looked up at Dougherty and didn’t recognize him for a moment, and then she stood up and said, “Oh, Édouard, il était comme un fantôme.”

  Dougherty hadn’t recognized her, she looked a hundred years old. And scared.

  “Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé?”

  “Il était un fantôme.”

  “Yeah, Ma, I heard — a ghost, he looked like a ghost. But how is he now?”

  “Je ne sais pas, ils l’ont …”

  Dougherty said, “Okay,” and then looked at Tommy and said, “I’m going to talk to someone,” and went to the admissions desk and found a nurse who told him to talk to a different nurse and eventually he found that his father was in the ICU, but he was going to be moved to a room in a little while, and the doctor would talk to them there.

  Dougherty said, “When will that be?” and the nurse said, “Soon.”

  “How many minutes is soon?”

  The nurse motioned at Dougherty’s uniform and said, “C’est comme ça,” and Dougherty sa
id, “Yeah, I know how it is.”

  He went back and sat down beside his mother, still having trouble believing it was her — he’d never seen her look so frail. “They said they’d be moving him into a room soon and we can see him then.”

  She nodded, or Dougherty thought he saw her nod. The adrenalin pump of driving across the bridge and bursting into the hospital was wearing off and Dougherty was starting to feel anxious. He fumbled in his pocket for his smokes and got one out and got it lit. He let out a long breath and then took another quick drag and tried to settle back in the chair, but he was still fidgety and tense.

  There was an ashtray on a stand across the room, so Dougherty got up and went over to it and stood there flicking his cigarette until he finished it and butted it out.

  Tommy and his mother hadn’t moved. The seat beside his mother was still empty but Dougherty couldn’t go back to it.

  Shit, he was thinking, his father was only fifty-three, too young for a heart attack, but then he thought of Detective Marcotte at Station Four a few years ­earlier, dropped dead in the break room. Marcotte wasn’t much over fifty at the time.

  But Dougherty’s father hadn’t dropped dead. He was going to be moved to a regular room; he was going to be fine.

  The nurse Dougherty had spoken to came into the waiting room then and said, “Madame Doe-er-dee?”

  Dougherty stepped up to her and said, “Can we see him now?”

  “He has been moved,” she said, “but he is resting. Peut-être juste madame pour l’instant?”

  “I better go with her.”

  Dougherty crossed the room to where his mother was sitting and said, “Ma, come on.” He helped her up and Tommy stood up, too, and Dougherty said, “Why don’t you wait here.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “Wait here for now.”

  Dougherty took his mother’s arm and led her, as if he was leading his grandmother, down the hall, past the nursing station and to a big room with half a dozen beds.

  His father was in the far bed by the window.

  Dougherty’s mother stopped as soon as they got into the room.

  “Come on, Ma, viens avec moi.”

  He had to pull her a little.