Black Rock Page 5

  Carpentier said, “Perhaps we could speak alone, Mrs. Webber?”

  The back door was open and Dougherty saw a couple more people standing outside in the lane, all men it looked like, and again he was surprised to see so many.

  The bedroom door off the kitchen opened, and Joe Webber came out saying, “Whatever you’ve got to say, say it.”

  Dougherty watched Carpentier move a little further into the kitchen and speak quietly to Millie, drawing Joe in closer as he spoke, and Dougherty was impressed by the detective and thinking, How do you get good at something as hard as talking to parents whose child has been killed? He heard Millie Webber start to cry softly, and Dougherty felt if he stood there another second he was going to bust open himself, so he backed away down the hall and out onto the front stoop.

  Arlene was there then, sitting on the stoop, smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. Most of the crowd was gone, and Dougherty looked up and down the street but all he saw was Arlene’s boy a few houses down in front of another house with a few other kids playing with Dinky cars.

  Dougherty said, “They finally go to work?” and Arlene said, “No, they’re on strike.”

  “Who is?”

  “The port.”

  “Since when?”

  “Last night, I guess. It’s a wildcat.”

  “Longshoremen or checkers and coopers?”

  Arlene looked up at Dougherty and said, “I don’t know, Eddie — what fucking difference does it make?” and Dougherty said, “Yeah, I guess.” He really had no idea what he was doing, what help he could be on a homicide investigation.

  After a few minutes of silence, Carpentier came out of the house and nodded to Arlene and then to Dougherty and then started back to the car. Dougherty caught up to him and Carpentier said, “Why don’t you drive?” and tossed him the keys.

  “Where are we going?”

  “That store, what did you call it, Boss?”

  In the car Dougherty said, “Most of these guys work at the port but they’re on strike today, some kind of wildcat walkout.”

  “Not them,” Carpentier said, “it’s the locks, St. Lambert and Côte St. Catherine. The ships are not getting through.”

  It was only a few blocks and Dougherty stopped the car in front of Boss’s on Fortune Street. Before he opened the door Carpentier said, “I forgot to ask which funeral home they’ll be using,”

  “It’ll be McGillivray’s,” Dougherty said.

  “Are you sure? Could you find out?”

  Dougherty said he would and they both got out of the car.

  Carpentier walked ahead into the store, and as Dougherty started to follow him Danny Buckley came out and stopped and said, “You back again, Eddie?”

  Dougherty said yeah and stood in the way so Buckley would have to walk around him, thinking, Yeah, I’m back, but it’s different now, not just the uniform and the gun — everything. Then he watched Buckley pretend he had nowhere to go and open up the pack of smokes he’d just bought and take one out and light it and then finally say, “It’s a shame about Brenda Webber.” Dougherty said yeah, and just kept staring.

  Dougherty saw Buckley looking past him towards the street, and he glanced around and saw a car and looked back at Buckley and said, “Cadillac?”

  Buckley shrugged, and Dougherty said, “You working for the Higginses now?” and Buckley didn’t say anything.

  “Okay,” Dougherty said, “that’s good, Buck-Buck,” and he stepped forward so Buckley had to move to get out of the way.

  Then Dougherty stopped by the door and watched Buckley rush to the Caddy and get into the back seat without looking back, and Dougherty had to admit he was enjoying himself.

  In the store, Carpentier was standing by the cash, smoking a cigarette and talking to Herbie, saying, “Are you sure?” and Herbie, a guy who’d owned the store as long as anyone could remember and never seemed to change, was saying, “I guess.”

  “Don’t guess,” Carpentier said, “think. When she came in, what did she buy?”

  Herbie shrugged.

  Dougherty said, “I got Brenda mixed up with Arlene, you ever do that?” and the two men at the cash both turned and looked at Dougherty. “They look so much alike.”

  Herbie said no, he didn’t get them mixed up, and Dougherty said, “Not even when they come in here and buy a case of beer?” and he motioned to the walk-in cooler at the back of the small, cramped store.

  “No.”

  “Brenda Webber never bought any beer? What about cigarettes?”

  “There’s no age limit on smokes.”

  “But you do need to be eighteen to buy beer, right?”

  Herbie looked at Carpentier and then back to Dougherty and said, “Okay, a six-pack, Eddie, big deal. You used to come in here for a two-four when you were twelve.”

  “Yeah, for my father.”

  “So,” Carpentier said, “Brenda Webber bought six bottles of beer?”

  Herbie said, “Yeah, Black Label.”

  Dougherty said, “And?”

  Herbie shrugged and Dougherty said, “This is important. Stop fucking around and tell the man everything Brenda Webber bought.”

  Carpentier never took his eyes off Herbie, who shook his head a little. “They ram the nightstick up your ass when they give you the uniform, Eddie?”

  Then Herbie jumped back and knocked over a rack of chips as Dougherty made a move like he was going to start swinging that nightstick.

  “A pack of Export ‘A’ and rolling papers — you happy?”

  “No one’s happy,” Dougherty said, “a girl’s dead. But that wasn’t too hard, was it?” and he turned and walked out.

  Outside the store, Dougherty realized he was shaking. He walked to Carpentier’s car and took a deep breath and tried to relax. He hadn’t been taught anything about intimidating people in his training, now he was thinking maybe it came more naturally for most recruits. And then he was thinking maybe it would’ve come more naturally for him in some other neighbourhood, maybe a little further away from where he’d been terrorized as a kid.

  Carpentier came out of the store then and said, “You would think they’d want to help us.”

  “Goes against everything around here, helping cops.”

  “So,” Carpentier said, “what do we know now?”

  “She had bad taste in beer?”

  “Anything else?”

  “She bought cigarettes and rolling papers,” Dougherty said, “to smoke hashish with her friends, but she never made it to the park.”

  “So they said. We’ll have to talk to her friends again.”

  “Do you have any names?”

  Carpentier got out his notebook and said, “Donna Fergus and Gail Murphy; do you know them?”

  “I know a couple of Gail Murphy’s brothers.”

  “Do you know where the Murphys live?”

  Dougherty pointed right across the street from where they were standing and said, “Second floor.”

  “It’s like a small town,” Carpentier said, “everybody know everybody.”

  “Is that good?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  He started across the street and Dougherty said, “But she’ll be in school now,” and Carpentier looked at his watch and said, “Yes.” Then he said, “We might as well have lunch.”

  Dougherty said, “There’s a steamie place on Wellington, Nick’s.”

  “Hot dogs? You’re in CIB now — let’s go to Magnan’s.”

  Patrolmen might go to Magnan’s on payday or some special occasion, take over a couple of tables and order pitchers of beer and the roast beef, but Dougherty would never have just stopped in for lunch on a workday. It might be a Point St. Charles tavern, but it was on St. Patrick at Charlevoix by the bridge and attracted businessmen from across the c
anal, as far into the Point as most of them had ever been.

  Carpentier sat down at a corner table and ordered roast beef and a Labatt 50 from the waiter in the black vest, white shirt and bow tie, and Dougherty wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t on duty but he was working, so he didn’t think he should have a beer but Carpentier was, so he just ordered the same thing.

  When the beers came Carpentier lit a cigarette and said, “So, un maudit anglais, une tête carrée, why would you join the police force?”

  Dougherty took a drink of Fifty while he thought about what to say to that, and Carpentier said, “Actually, you do have a square head.”

  “So, I’ve heard.”

  Carpentier laughed and Dougherty said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “All your friends growing their hair long and marching in protests and it looked like a good idea to become a cop?”

  “Not my friends.”

  “In the Point?”

  “We moved out of the Point,” Dougherty said. “My parents bought a house on the South Shore, Greenfield Park, but I didn’t make many friends there. I only had one year of school left and I finished it at Verdun High and then I wasn’t sure what to do.”

  “Where does your father work?”

  Dougherty looked at Carpentier and thought the detective and his father were about the same age, close to fifty. “He works for the phone company, so does my mom. The Bell, they call it.”

  “You didn’t want to do that?”

  “My dad went to work there after the war. Well, a little before the war and then he went back after. It seemed like a good thing to do after the war, but now …”

  “If we were in America you’d be in Vietnam.”

  “I guess.”

  He felt Carpentier looking at him and he didn’t know what to say.

  The waiter, a fussy little guy of course, arrived with two plates of roast beef and mashed potatoes covered in gravy and a pile of peas. He put the plates down without really stopping and was gone.

  Then Carpentier said, “Well, that’s a different war, isn’t it, not the same at all.”

  “Were you in?”

  “The air force,” he said, taking a bite of roast beef. “But the war was almost over when I turned eighteen; I never went overseas.”

  Dougherty nodded and took a bite himself, surprised at how good it was. Then he said, “My dad joined the Legion but said it was full of guys who never got any further than Longueil, and he stopped going.”

  Carpentier nodded and said, “Your father went?”

  “Served on corvettes, spent the whole war in the North Atlantic.”

  “Does he tell you much about it?”

  Dougherty had a mouth full of mashed potatoes and he swallowed and said, “No, not really.”

  Carpentier picked up his beer. “You ever have a few of these with him?” He looked around the tavern and said, “In a place like this?”

  “He might be here tomorrow,” Dougherty said, “if he’s working in the area.”

  Carpentier took a long drink, finished off the beer and said, “Okay, so Brenda Webber was probably meeting her friends to drink beer and smoke dope. Where do you think she got the dope?”

  “If she bought the beer,” Dougherty said, “maybe one of the other girls bought the dope.”

  “Yes, maybe.” Carpentier motioned a little for the waiter. Dougherty barely noticed it and a minute later the little guy was at the table with two more beers and then gone again.

  Carpentier said, “Maybe the man at the store knows who’s selling the dope.”

  “Or maybe Buck-Buck knows.”

  “Who?”

  “Danny Buckley. He was at Nap’s the other day and he was coming out of Boss’s when we went in. He got in a car with Frank Higgins.”

  “One of the Higgins brothers?”

  “Yeah. I’m not surprised Buck-Buck’s working for him, was just a matter of time.”

  “I remember the father, Michael Higgins,” Carpentier said, setting down his almost-empty glass, “when he worked at the port. A lot of things fell off the backs of trucks.”

  “I’m sure a lot of things are still falling off. I think all five of the Higgins brothers work at the port, or did sometimes when they weren’t in jail. We could talk to them.”

  Carpentier put a little horseradish on top of a piece of roast beef and ate it, chewing slowly, and then said, “We’ll start with the girls, see what they say.” Then he looked at Dougherty and said, “You liked it in the store when he was afraid of you.”

  “I liked that he told us what we wanted to know.”

  “Be careful not to like that too much.”

  And then Carpentier waved at the waiter and ordered one more round.

  When they got back to Boss’s there were a lot of kids on the street and Dougherty asked around until one of the younger kids, maybe ten years old, pointed out Gail Murphy walking by herself towards the store.

  Carpentier stepped in front of her. “Gail?”

  She said yeah and looked at Carpentier and then at Dougherty. “Are you Eddie Dougherty?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gail Murphy nodded, crossed her arms under her breasts, showing a fair amount of cleavage in her plaid shirt. She kept staring at Dougherty until he said, “You know we want to talk about Brenda.”

  “Now you do.”

  “She stopped here to buy the beer and the rolling papers for the dope and then you were going to meet in the park, is that right?”

  “What dope?”

  “She bought cigarettes and rolling papers, you must have had some hash.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  Dougherty looked around at the crowd of kids who were gathering just out of earshot, in front of the store and in front of the houses on either side of it, and he leaned in a little closer. “We don’t care about the dope, Gail, or the beer, We’re just trying to find out where Brenda was going when she left here. Were you going to meet at the park, at the bandshell in Marguerite Bourgeoys?”

  Gail shrugged a little, barely moving her shoulders, and looked up at Dougherty. She didn’t say anything for a moment but he was sure she would. He waited.

  “Okay, not the park, we were going to meet behind Jeanne-LeBer first.”

  Dougherty nodded, recognizing his old elementary school. “To smoke dope?”

  “I told you, we weren’t smoking up.”

  Carpentier spoke then. “What about Brenda?”

  Gail shrugged and Dougherty looked from her to Carpentier, surprised he’d asked the question but also surprised by the answer. He’d figured teenage girls did everything together, the way his sister did with her friends, but now Gail looked like she was telling the truth. The other girls hadn’t smoked dope, but she didn’t know about Brenda.

  Carpentier said, “How long did you wait for Brenda?”

  “I don’t know, half an hour? Some guys came by and we went with them.”

  “Who?”

  “Just guys from school.”

  “Not older guys?”

  “No, what do you think? Just … guys we know.”

  “And when did you go home?”

  Gail shrugged, said, “I don’t know,” and then thought about it some more, “Maybe eleven thirty?”

  Dougherty said, “You didn’t find it strange, that Brenda just didn’t show up?”

  “Lately, no.”

  “She did that a lot?”

  “Not a lot, but sometimes.”

  Dougherty said okay, and Carpentier said, “Who did Brenda buy the hash from?”

  Gail said, “I don’t know,” and Dougherty said, “Did she buy it from your brother?”

  “Timmy?”

  “Did she?

  “No.”

  Dougherty
said, “What about Mike?”

  Gail shook her head and said, “Mike’s in Parthenais — in jail.”

  “I know what it is. He in for dope?”

  “He didn’t do anything, got in some stupid fight — he didn’t even start it.”

  Dougherty said, “No, of course not,” and then he said, “You were never with Brenda when she bought it?”

  “No. She just started …”

  “Started what?”

  Gail looked at him the way his sister did when she was about to ask him how dumb he was. “Playing with Barbies?”

  Carpentier said, “Okay, that’s enough.”

  They stood there for a moment, no one saying anything, and then Gail said, “Can I go now?” and Dougherty looked at Carpentier, who nodded.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She went into the store, and Carpentier started walking down Fortune Street towards Jeanne-LeBer school.

  Dougherty followed, saying, “Do you want to talk to her friend, Donna Fergus?”

  Carpentier looked at his watch and said, “I don’t think we need to today.”

  “Does that seem odd, that Brenda would be smoking dope but not her friends?”

  “Not necessarily. They’re at the age where they start to try new things and make new friends, drift apart.”

  “Maybe not so much here.”

  “But they’re leaving here more,” Carpentier said, “going to high school in Verdun, going downtown to clubs, concerts.”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, maybe,” and looked around and said, “Usually people in the Point stay in the Point.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “And things are different now,” Carpentier said. He pointed to a couple of teenage boys coming out of Boss’s. “From behind they look like girls, the long hair and the jeans. The whole world is upside down.”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything but he was thinking, That’s for sure, the whole world is upside down. He was only a few years older than those boys, but he felt like he was from another generation.

  Carpentier said, “I wonder who she buy the hash from?”

  “If someone’s selling it around here,” Dougherty said, “then one of the Higgins will be in on it.”