A Little More Free Page 19

  Dougherty stood up and said, “Thanks for your time,” and as he walked out of the office looked back over his shoulder and said, “I’ll let you know about those Elton John tickets.” He really just wanted to get another look at Burnside to see if he was still flustered but he wasn’t.

  He was scared.

  * * *

  Outside on Greene Avenue Dougherty decided to stop at one of the cafés. When he walked in the young waitress said, “What’s so funny, Officer?” and he realized he’d been thinking about it like a detective movie where Burnside would rush out of his office and meet an accomplice.

  Dougherty said, “It’s just such a nice day,” and the waitress said, “It’s about time, after the crappy summer we had.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Dougherty ordered a coffee and took a seat on the patio, thinking he should enjoy these few days between the wet summer and the coming winter. There was a newspaper on the table, opened to an inside page, and he saw an article with Keith Logan’s byline. The story was about what it described as the “thirty-seventh murder of the year,” an unemployed longshoreman killed by a shotgun blast. The guy, thirty-four years old, had just stepped out of his gold Cadillac on St. Catherine Street East. Dougherty thought it was funny the way Logan wrote it was “gangland style,” but he didn’t smile.

  And he figured the real murder total was seventy-four, counting the victims at the Blue Bird.

  The waitress brought the coffee and went back inside.

  So, Burnside and Murray did know each other but now Dougherty was thinking why would Burnside be so scared if it wasn’t drugs? He imagined explaining it to Carpentier, saying something about he could tell by the way Burnside reacted — or didn’t really react — so he knew it wasn’t drugs.

  Carpentier would say, “That’s not evidence,” and Dougherty would say, “But I’m sure.”

  And Carpentier would say, “But it’s not evidence.”

  Or he might say, “You’re becoming a detective.”

  And then he might say, “Find the evidence.”

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Friday night Dougherty checked a few of the Irish bars, the Cock ’n’ Bull and the Old Dublin and the Black Bull, and then he had a look in a couple of the topless places, Danny’s Villa and the Copacabana on St. Catherine, but didn’t find anyone he was looking for so he walked down the hill to St. Antoine and Rockhead’s. It was a cool, clear night, summer becoming fall.

  Jones said, “No uniform?”

  “No,” Dougherty said. “I like yours, though, looks like a lawyer.”

  Jones put his thumbs under his lapels and pushed his chest out. “Dress smart, be smart.”

  “No more doorman tassels?”

  “Low key.” He winked.

  “All the fire exits clear?”

  Jones said, “You know it.”

  Both men stood silent for a moment, nothing else to say about that.

  Blues music pumped out of Rockhead’s, a live band, guitar, bass and drums. Dougherty said, “Nice night.”

  “After such a shitty summer, we deserve a good long fall.”

  “My favourite time of year.”

  Jones smiled. “What my daddy said smelled like football.”

  “He played?”

  “In the army.”

  “My father was a boxer in the navy.”

  “We miss all the fun.”

  “Yeah, and we’re glad about that.”

  Jones laughed. “You know it.”

  Dougherty got out his smokes and held the pack for Jones. “Your father was in the American army, right?”

  Jones leaned in to get a light, and then tilted his head way back and blew smoke at the night sky. “Joined up in Brownsville, Texas, where my grandmother lives to this day.”

  “But you were born here?”

  “Yeah. What’s it to you?”

  “I’ve been talking to a lot of Americans lately.”

  “Plenty inside,” Jones said. “Up from the air force base in Plattsburgh.”

  “The ones I’ve been talking to decided not to join up.”

  “Draft dodgers?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jones nodded. “We got those, too.”

  “I haven’t met any black draft dodgers.”

  “Whatever you got, we got.”

  Dougherty took a drag on his cigarette and said, “You know a guy named Goose?”

  “White boy?”

  “From the Point, yeah.”

  “You think he’s here?”

  “Is he?”

  “You’re not wearing your uniform,” Jones said, “but you’re still a cop.”

  “Hey, it’s me, Eddie. We’re just talking.”

  “I know,” Jones said, “but the city’s getting tense, you know?”

  “I know. I don’t like it, either.”

  “The way it is.”

  Dougherty said, “I’m not a detective yet. I don’t have an expense account.”

  “You’ve got a telephone.”

  Dougherty nodded, and Jones said, “You know how to use it when you have to?” and Dougherty said, “Yeah.”

  “All right.” Jones thought about it and then said, “Goose is inside, he’s with Manny.”

  “Manny O’Ree?”

  “That’s the one. He was stationed at Plattsburgh once, long time ago.”

  Dougherty took a drag and tossed the smoke in the street and said, “You wouldn’t bring him out, would you?”

  “Now’s the time,” Jones said, “that you’re supposed to say something to me about how I don’t want the place getting raided every night, how I don’t want the health inspectors coming by every day finding rat shit in the kitchen.”

  “Is that what I’m supposed to say?”

  “If you could make any of that happen.”

  “The telephone’s all I’ve got.”

  Jones looked him up and down, and Dougherty was thinking that being able to warn him of a raid wouldn’t be enough, but then Jones nodded a little and said, “Okay, wait over there.”

  A few minutes later, Jones came out of the club with a long-necked, skinny white guy who saw Dougherty and said, “Shit, what do you want?”

  Dougherty nodded at Jones and the big bouncer stepped back into the doorway.

  “Talk about old times.”

  “Screw you.”

  “So, you’re working for Buck-Buck now.”

  “I don’t work for him,” Goose said.

  “He’s ambitious, though,” Dougherty said. “He’s going to go far in the organization.”

  “Yeah? Me, too.”

  Dougherty wasn’t sure what to say then — it wasn’t going at all like he’d expected. He thought Goose would deny working with Buck-Buck and the Point Boys or deny there even was an organization, but he was talking about it like he’d got a job at customs and was hoping for a promotion.

  Now Dougherty was thinking he could really use Carpentier.

  “Well, I really want to know about David Murray.”

  “What about him?”

  Just like that, no pretending he didn’t know him or pretending not to remember the name or anything. Dougherty was the one thrown off in this conversation.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t keep a diary, shit.”

  “He got killed the day of the first hockey game against the Russians, you remember it?”

  “Manny won a lot of money that night. Nobody else in town was taking any action on the commies.”

  “Did you see David Murray that day?”

  “No.” Goose relaxed a little then, and Dougherty was thinking, It’s like the guy has no idea this is a murder investigation.

 
“The day before was the fire,” Dougherty said, and Goose was nodding.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Andy Millington died there, you know that?”

  “No. I heard about Alice Bedard.”

  “Fucking shit. Those guys going to fry?”

  “I don’t know,” Dougherty said. He wanted to say they haven’t even been charged yet, the coroner was still having his inquest, but he didn’t want to get too sidetracked, and he said, “You see David that day?”

  “No, it was the day of the game.” Then Goose seemed to snap out of it a little and he said, “How do you know Murray?”

  “I don’t,” Dougherty said. “I’m trying to find out who killed him.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me.”

  And Dougherty was thinking, Finally this guy gets it.

  “Murray was taking dope into the States, right?”

  “Jesus Murphy, Eddie, you’re stupid.”

  “You guys get it off the boats in the port and he took it across the border?”

  “I’ve never been on a boat in my life.”

  “But that’s the way it works: the Higginses still have the port, right? Italians haven’t taken that from you?”

  “They have enough trouble of their own,” Goose said. “You sure you’re a cop?”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah.” Now he was thinking about the museum robbery and how that crazy idea might be true, that the stolen paintings were being used to buy off one of the Italian guys so there wouldn’t be a street war in Montreal.

  “So, Murray was supposed to pick up a delivery?”

  “He was a funny guy,” Goose said. “He was in and out, you know? And you can’t be in and out in this business.”

  Dougherty was still surprised this guy was talking about it like it was any other business, but then to him it probably was.

  “You saw him that day, Saturday. Maybe you were the last person to see him alive.”

  “Couldn’t’ve been,” Goose said. “He was going to see someone else after me.” He paused and then said, “And then there was the guy who killed him. He saw him, too.”

  “And you were telling him he had to be in or be out?”

  “We were talking about the weather,” Goose said.

  “Was this in the ghetto,” Dougherty said, “by McGill?”

  “St. Henri.”

  “Is that where he was living?”

  “Shit, you don’t know anything, do you?”

  Dougherty said, “I guess not,” but now he was convincing himself he was only playing dumb to get Goose talking.

  “I think his girlfriend killed him.”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, the guy was always sneaking around — he had something on the side for sure. And then somebody hit him with a rock, right? And beat him after he was dead?”

  “You know a lot about this,” Dougherty said.

  “More than you. But come on, if I did it, I would have killed him and walked away. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Unless you wanted to make it look like someone else.”

  Goose laughed. “You watch too much TV — you’re like Mannix.” Then he turned and started back towards Rockhead’s and said, “Watch out, you’ll be that fat guy, Cannon.”

  Dougherty stood on the sidewalk for a moment then nodded at Jones and walked back towards Peel, feeling like there were things going on all the time he had no idea about, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to try to find out or just drive around in a squad car, break up fights between drunks and someday inherit Delisle’s desk.

  Too close to call right now.

  * * *

  Tommy said, “What’s a fag?”

  Dougherty said, “What?” but Tommy was looking at him, so he said, “Well, you know how when you like a girl you want to hold her hand and kiss her and stuff like that,” and Tommy was nodding and Dougherty said, “but your stomach feels really funny and you can’t talk?”

  Tommy said, “Yeah,” with too much enthusiasm.

  “Well, a fag is when a boy feels like that about another boy.”

  “That’s weird.”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  It was Sunday afternoon, and Dougherty had crossed the bridge to Greenfield Park to watch the game with Tommy and have dinner with the family. Trying to make it as normal as possible but everything was strange with his father still in the hospital. The surgery had gone well, so the doctors said, but they couldn’t really be sure until they saw how the recovery went. Triple bypass: there was a lot of artery to heal and then there were all the ribs they had to crack to get in there and dig around.

  “Why,” Dougherty said, “do you feel that way about another boy?”

  “No. Why would I do that?”

  “If it’s how you feel, it’s how you feel,” Dougherty said. “You can’t pick which girls you like, can you?”

  Tommy said, “No, I guess not.”

  Dougherty was feeling strange. Usually he would have made more jokes about it, maybe picked on Tommy a little, teased him till he got upset, but he was thinking about Judy, wondering if he would pick her as the girl he liked if he had a choice. And maybe thinking about Judy had something to do with why Dougherty actually tried to answer Tommy’s question.

  The second period was just starting and there was no score. Dougherty was surprised Tommy wasn’t watching the game with his friends, but when he’d asked him Tommy said they weren’t really interested.

  “No one wants to see them lose again.”

  The series not going at all like anyone had expected.

  “At least they’re not playing dump-and-chase anymore,” Dougherty said. “They’re trying to keep the puck.”

  Tommy said, “Like the Russians.”

  Dougherty was thinking that was funny, how everybody expected Canada to win eight games easy and now it was us learning from them.

  Tommy said, “Damn.”

  “Who scored that, was it Kharlamov?”

  “No, somebody else.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “they’re really leaning on Kharlamov.”

  “Dryden’s playing good,” Tommy said.

  “Yeah, too bad about that goal, otherwise the defence is really coming together. Hey look, the Russians finally got a penalty.”

  “The refs are crap.”

  Dougherty said, “Don’t blame the refs — that’ll never get you anywhere and thinking about it just throws you off your game.”

  “But they are crap.”

  Dougherty said yeah, but he was thinking about Judy again. He was thinking about her all the time now, was seeing her face smiling and laughing in bars they’d gone to, out-of-the-way places, knowing no one would ever recognize them. Dougherty liked the way she was so relaxed and could talk to anybody. Just as much as the way he liked how she got so upset talking about the Milton Park stuff or anything else she was involved with.

  And he liked the way she knew exactly what he was going through with his father because she’d gone through the same thing.

  “Woo hoo, yay!”

  “Nice goal,” Dougherty said. “Dennis Hull.”

  Tommy said, “I wish Bobby Hull was playing,” and when Dougherty didn’t say anything Tommy said, “And Bobby Orr.”

  “Look at that, another one.”

  “Wow, two goals in a minute.”

  Dougherty said, “This is a rough game, though, they’re really taking it to them.” It was the kind of play the Canadian announcers were going to call grinding and tough and relentless pressure and old-time hockey and all kinds of things but they’d never say the word dirty. They’d never say the words cheap shots or anything like that.

  “Yes!”

  “Wow,” Dougherty said, “Paul Henderson, I didn’t even think he’d get picked for thi
s team.”

  “This is more like it,” Tommy said, “3–1.”

  “Yeah, let’s see if they can hold it this time.”

  “Wow, look at that,” Tommy said.

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, little face-wash there.”

  Bobby Clarke got knocked down and when he got up he shoved his hand into Kharlamov’s face and then the two of them were taking punches at each other, but neither one dropped their gloves.

  “Come on,” Tommy said, “fight.”

  Dougherty was thinking any idea that this was an exhibition tournament or that it was about bringing people together was long gone. The game was hard fought but chippy — every time two players came close to each other there was shoving and slashing.

  “If this was the NHL,” Dougherty said, “there would be some fights,” and he was thinking it was what this game could use, a couple guys dropping the gloves and going at it, let the rest get back to playing hockey.

  Tommy said, “Oh, wow!”

  “That’s gotta hurt.”

  Kharlamov was limping then, Clarke had slashed him, a two-hander across the ankle. The Russian skated on one leg towards the bench but slowed down as he passed the Canadian bench and yapped at them.

  Every guy was standing up yelling back; the whole arena was going crazy.

  Clarke got a two-minute slashing penalty and a ten-minute misconduct.

  Tommy said, “Are we going to be short-handed for twelve minutes?”

  “No, just the two. Clarke will be in the box for ten more but we’ll be at full strength.”

  The game was still chippy. After Clarke’s penalty was over but while he was still in the box serving the misconduct, Dennis Hull got a slashing penalty — Dougherty figured they could call slashing every time two guys came close to each other — and the Russians scored on the power play.

  “Oh crap,” Tommy said, “3–2.”

  Near the end of the period Kharlamov, still dragging one leg, almost scored on a power play.

  But there were no more goals and the game ended 3–2.

  “Look at that,” Tommy said, “they’re shaking hands with the refs.”

  “I guess they do that in Europe,” Dougherty said. But he was thinking that would be as crazy as a drunk in a bar fight shaking hands with him after he broke it up.