One or the Other (12 page)

“Not always,” Legault said.

In the car on the way back towards the bridge, Dougherty said, “So now we have two versions.”

“Do we?”

Dougherty took the on-ramp but at the top where it merged with the bridge traffic he pulled over and stopped. To one side was the skyline of Montreal, the old stone buildings by the port, Notre Dame and the Bonsecours Market and then the skyscrapers, the all-black Place Victoria and Place Ville Marie with the searchlight on top, circling the city. Past the buildings Mount Royal and the bright lights of the cross, taller than anything else.

On the other side, across the river, was the south shore, the ever-expanding suburbs, thousands and thousands of houses disappearing into the darkness beyond.

“You talked to Manon's friends, they said she and Mathieu left the concert before it ended,” Dougherty said. “This guy says she stayed till the end and went backstage. They can't both be right.”

“So, her friends were trying to protect her. They didn't want anyone to know she went backstage.”

“Then what happened? She left after the party and was walking back and Mathieu was waiting for her here?”

“Or he was waiting at Place des Nations. They had a fight,” Legault said. “By the time they got here it was out of hand.”

“Her friends just left at the end of the concert, left Manon here, and she went backstage by herself, does that sound right?”

“It sounds possible,” Legault said.

“But you believed them when you spoke to them. You thought they were telling you the truth.”

“I guess I was wrong.”

“Maybe,” Dougherty said. “Maybe not. Do you want to talk to them again?”

“Now that the detectives have talked to them?”

“Yeah, that does make it difficult.”

“Difficult?” Legault turned on the seat and looked at him. “And when Captain Allard finds this out,” she motioned back towards Place des Nations, “and finds out that someone is lying to me, that everyone is lying to me, what's he going to do?”

“All we can do is follow the evidence.”

Legault turned back and faced the windshield, looking out at the south shore. “What evidence?”

“We'll find some,” Dougherty said.

He put the car in gear and headed towards Longueuil.

Rozovsky was right, the newspaper used the aerial picture of the biosphere on fire on the front page. It wasn't very artistic, but it showed the whole thing, a giant black plume of smoke rising from the giant golf-ball-like structure.

Dougherty folded the paper in half and put it down on the lunch counter. He picked up his coffee cup but it was empty.

Legault came into the restaurant and sat down on the stool next to Dougherty.
“Un bon déjeuner?”

“
Oui
,” Dougherty said.
“Ça fait quelques heures.”
He was holding up his mug, looking for the waitress, and he said, “It's almost lunchtime now. You want a coffee?”

The waitress came by with the coffee pot and filled Dougherty's mug. Legault asked for a cup. Then she looked at the newspaper and said, “He was right, your friend.”

“He usually is.”

“But what would he say about this?” Legault pointed to the other story on the front page, the headline beside the picture of the burning biosphere that read, “Air language war ‘racism': Lalonde.”

“I don't know, you'd have to ask him,” Dougherty said. He'd read the article while he was waiting for Legault, the continuing story of the air traffic controllers in Quebec wanting to speak French instead of English on the job. There was a lot of resistance from the federal government, and now Fernand Lalonde, the Solicitor General of Quebec, was speaking about it for the first time, saying, as the headline screamed, that the issue was really racism.

“What do you think?” Legault said.

“As long as the planes land, I don't really think about it.”

The waitress put a mug of coffee in front of Legault, who said, “
Merci
,” and then to Dougherty, “But why should we be forced to speak English in a French province?”

He was thinking, So now we're not “us” anymore, us cops, that didn't last long, but he said, “Morissette got a partial off the rope, but there was something else.”

“What?”

“Traces of cocaine.”

Legault said, “Mathieu did not have any cocaine in his system. There was none in the autopsy report.”

“I bet Manon didn't, either.”

“No,” Legault said. “Their friends said sometimes they smoked hash, but that was it.”

“So, we're looking for a guy who does cocaine, hangs around the bridge.”

“There's really no connection between the rope and Mathieu and Manon. You're just guessing.”

“I'm not guessing,” Dougherty said. “I feel it. So do you.”

“I want to,” Legault said. “That doesn't make it real.”

Dougherty finished off his coffee and put the mug down on the counter. He got a dollar bill out of his wallet and put it beside the mug. “When we get someone who looks good for it, the partial print'll help, give us some leverage.”

“It won't be admissible in court, will it?”

“We'll leave that for the lawyers,” Dougherty said, starting out of the restaurant, thinking, They're never part of “us.” “First we've got to find someone.”

In the car, Dougherty said, “Galloosh got us a couple of names.”

“You were up early today.”

“Who says I went to bed?”

They drove out of Old Montreal and headed west on Wellington, under the Bonaventure Expressway and past the warehouses and factories, past Canada Packers and the smell and through the Wellington Tunnel into Point St. Charles.

Dougherty said, “Might as well start with familiar territory. You ever been to the Point?”

“No,” Legault said, “why would I?”

There were a few stores and a couple of banks on Wellington, and churches: English, French and Ukrainian Catholic, Anglican, United and even a Baptist church on the corner of Liverpool Street. And a lot of bars: taverns, brasseries, pubs and blind pigs hidden upstairs through back doors in the lanes.

“Come on,” Dougherty said, “it's a tourist attraction, isn't it? Canada's oldest slum.”

“It's not a slum,” Legault said. “It's working class.”

“I guess you're right — since they bulldozed Goose Village to make way for Expo, the place has really gone upscale.”

“The Olympics are only bulldozing neighbourhoods in the east end,” Legault said.

“I guess that's called progress.”

Dougherty turned onto Hibernia and stopped in front of a two-storey red-brick row house, half a dozen apartments on each floor, the front doors right up against the sidewalk. He got out of the car and walked around it, saying, “Maybe you should go around back, and if a guy in his underwear comes running out, you tackle him.”

At the front door, he turned the knob and said, “Or maybe he's expecting us,” and walked in and up the stairs.

Legault followed closely, and at the top of the stairs they came into the living room that was being used as a bedroom. There was a mattress on the floor and clothes all over the place; it looked like the room had been tossed.

Dougherty stuck out his foot and poked the lump under the sheet on the mattress.

“Hey, Kenny, wakey-wakey.”

The lump didn't move, so Dougherty poked it harder.

Legault said, “
C'est ton chum, ç
à
?”

“Oh oui, on est des vieux amis, nous autres.”
He kicked the lump again. “Aren't we, Kenny?”

“What are you talking about, asshole?”

The sheet moved and a man sat up. His long hair was a mess, and his beard was scraggly. He held the sheet against his scrawny chest and looked from Dougherty to Legault and back to Dougherty.

“Don't you speak French, Kenny? Come on,” Dougherty said, “what happens, you try to mug somebody and they don't speak English?”

“I didn't mug anybody.”

“I bet you can count in French. How much is a gram of hash these days, Kenny,
cinq dollars? Dix dollars?
”

“Jesus, Dougherty, what the fuck do you want?”

“I haven't seen you in a long time, Kenny. It's been months since I picked you up, where was that, Atwater Park?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know much, do you? I just want to see how you're doing now, how's business at La Ronde.”

“What?”

“You scalping tickets at Place des Nations? Dealing dope at the concerts?”

Kenny dropped his head back down on the mattress and said, “I'm not a dealer.”

Dougherty reached down and grabbed him by the hair with one hand, yanking him up onto his feet. Kenny dropped both hands to try to cover his dick, and Dougherty slapped him hard across the face.

“Last week, you working the concerts?”

“No!” He raised both hands to cover his face and Dougherty made a sharp move like he was going to punch him in the balls and Kenny dropped his hands.

Dougherty slapped his face again, harder. “Selling hash and coke.”

“I wasn't, I swear.”

Dougherty let go of his hair and Kenny fell back onto the mattress. He wrapped himself in the sheet and sat there looking dazed for a moment and then he said, “What do you care about some hash at the concert, I thought you were a big-time detective now, shaking down the big boys out in the suburbs.”

He looked up and flinched a little, but Dougherty had turned away and was walking towards the kitchen, saying, “Don't worry about me, worry about yourself. Those big boys in the suburbs don't give a shit about you, Kenny. They left you far behind.”

The kitchen was as big a mess as the rest of the place, the counter and table covered with dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes and beer bottles. Dougherty found half a pack of Export A's on top of the fridge, and he took it back into the living room. Legault hadn't moved from her spot by the door. Dougherty dropped the smokes beside Kenny on the mattress and said, “You remember the concert, it was Gentle Giant.”

“Not my style,” Kenny said. He got out a cigarette and reached back to get a lighter off the coffee table. “I don't like that prog rock shit.”

“Where were you the night of the concert?”

Kenny lit his smoke and dropped the lighter back on the coffee table. He blew smoke at the ceiling and said, “I got no idea.”

“So, if I tell you that someone saw you on
 Île Sainte-Hélène
that night, and saw you on the Jacques Cartier Bridge, what would you say?”

“Who?”

Dougherty was walking around the small living room, stepping over piles of dirty clothes and album covers and newspapers.

“And if they say they bought some coke from you?”

“That's bullshit, I don't have any coke.”

“Yeah, you the only dealer in town who doesn't?”

“I'm not a dealer,” Kenny said.

“What are you?”

“I got laid off, I'm on pogey.”

“You expect me to believe you had a job long enough to get pogey?”

Kenny took a drag and blew smoke at the ceiling and said, “I don't give a shit what you believe.”

Dougherty was surprised Kenny was sticking to his story so much, he was almost starting to believe him. He said, “Okay, who is working the concerts?”

“I don't know.” Kenny shrugged, took another drag. “Fudge is out of jail again. I thought he was going to Alberta, but maybe he hasn't left yet.”

“Maybe?”

“I don't know.”

“Okay, Kenny, if that's the best you've got.”

Dougherty walked back across the living room, and when he was at the top of the stairs Kenny said, “I'm an upholsterer now, an apprentice. That's what I was doing when I got laid off.”

“Good for you,” Dougherty said. “But I still want to know who's working those concerts.”

Outside on the sidewalk, Dougherty leaned against the car and lit a cigarette.

Legault said, “Sounds like he doesn't know anything.”

“He better find out.”

She got out her smokes and lit one herself. She took a deep drag and then motioned back towards the second floor of the row house. “Won't he tell you anything to get rid of you?”

“He'll never get rid of me,” Dougherty said.

“Do you believe him, that he lost his job?”

“I don't know,” Dougherty said. “I'm worried about my job. Okay, next up is a little farther west, Verdun.” He opened the car door and looked over the roof at Legault. “You must've picked up some guys on your side of the bridge.”

“We must have,” Legault said, getting into the car, “but nobody tells me.”

Dougherty pulled a U and headed back to Wellington. He said, “Have you always worked the youth squad?”

“I was a matron,” Legault said. “When a woman was arrested I would search her and escort her to jail.”

“Real police work.”

“Not glamorous like this,” Legault said, “but we do what we have to do.”

“That's the truth.”

Wellington continued into Verdun and got a little more upscale, if still working class. There were some bigger storefronts and nicer restaurants and no bars or brasseries or taverns.

Legault said, “Who was that Fudge he talked about?”

“Barry Fudge, another guy from the neighbourhood. Another dealer. These are all small-time guys,” Dougherty said.

“We have to talk to all of them?”

“Just till we find the one we're looking for.” Dougherty turned off Wellington and parked on Galt in front of more row houses, these ones three storeys with wrought-iron stairs and railings winding up to the second floor on the outside. “I don't know this one,” Dougherty said. He pulled a small notebook from his pocket and flipped pages. “Masoud Rahmani. What is that, Pakistani?”

“I don't know.”

Dougherty opened the door and got out of the car. He looked up and down the street and said, “There, 142, ground floor.”

There was a small patch of grass, maybe five feet long, between the sidewalk and the building and a few flowers under the window of the first-floor apartment. Dougherty knocked on the door and heard footsteps inside and a woman's voice say, “It's about time,” as the door opened, then she was quiet.

Dougherty said, “Hey, there, how's it going?”

“What do you want?”

“We want to talk to Masoud Rahmani.”

The woman was white, with long brown hair tied in a loose ponytail. Dougherty put her in her mid-twenties but figured a lot of those years were hard living. He looked past her down the hall of the apartment and saw a baby stroller and toys on the floor.

The woman said, “Masi's not here.”

“He go back to Pakistan?”

“He's from Iran.”

“So, he go back to Iran?”

“What do you want?”

Dougherty stepped back a bit and motioned to Legault, who said, “Are you his wife?”

The woman said, “Yes. Who are you?”

“I'm Sergeant Legault. This is Detective Dougherty. Can you tell us when Mr. Rahmani will be home?”

“You should know, he's in your jail.”

Dougherty asked, “How long has he been in?” and the woman started to close the door. Dougherty moved forward and blocked it, saying, “Not yet. Answer the question.”

Legault said, “Mrs. Rahmani, we're investigating a serious crime.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Was your husband in jail a week ago?”

“Yes, it's been almost three weeks.”

Legault said, “All right, thank you.”

The woman glared at Dougherty and started to close the door. He stepped back just enough to let it pass. He stood on the stoop for a moment, looking back at the street, and then walked the few steps back to the car.

Legault said, “Who's next?”

Dougherty took a last look at the closed door and then checked his notebook. “Marc-André Daigneault.” He closed the notebook and opened the car door. “Ville-Émard, other side of the aqueduct.”