One or the Other (14 page)

“I don't know, NDG I think.”

Dougherty started walking across the living room and said, “See, that was easy.”

Garner said, “This won't come back to me?”

At the door Dougherty said, “You better hope not.”

Outside, Legault said, “How did you know he was supplying someone?”

“I didn't, I just guessed. I didn't think he retired from the business after he got busted, and the way he looks now, what else could he be doing, making the kind of money he needs for the rent here and his fancy fucking suits.”

The elevator door opened and they got on.

Legault said, “Now we have Sid Gupta and Louise Tremblay. There's always another name, eh?”

“Till we get the one we need.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Legault said as they reached the car.

“About what?”

“Whatever set you off.”

“No,” Dougherty said. “I told you, it was nothing.”

Legault didn't say anything for a moment and then, “Okay, if you say so.”

“I say so.”

They got in the car and drove, and as they were stuck in traffic on Dorchester, Dougherty said, “I have to report back to my station house tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?”

“They broke up the Brink's squad. They're sending us all back to our regular assignments.”

“What does that mean for our investigation?”

Dougherty banged the steering wheel and said, “Come on, move.” The car ahead of him stopped at the yellow instead of going through and Dougherty had to slam on the brakes. He kept looking straight ahead at the car stopped at the lights and said, “It just means I have to go back in uniform and work this when I can.”

“You just give it up?”

“No, I said I work it when I can.”

“Well, when can you work it if you have to work a regular shift?”

“Whenever I can. Look, I've done this before.”

The light changed, and the car ahead finally moved. Dougherty pulled out around it, passing on the right and cutting off the car in that lane. There was a lot of honking.

Then Dougherty said, “Murder cases are never closed.”

“What if they say Mathieu did it, killed Manon and then himself. That's what Captain Allard wants. And the detectives.”

“They might do that anyway,” Dougherty said. “We wouldn't stop working it then, either, would we?”

Legault nodded slowly and said, “No, we wouldn't stop.”

Rozovsky said, “Now Dubois says there isn't even a Dubois gang, just him and his brother and they don't control anything.”

“I heard.” Dougherty was sitting on the other side of the booth, picking at his sweet and sour chicken, honey garlic spare ribs and fried rice.

“Years ago Dubois worked for a loan shark, Harry Schiff, called himself Harry Smith, you heard of him?”

“No.”

“He was killed,” Rozovsky said, “about ten years ago.”

“Before I joined the force.”

“Me too, but just barely. So, Dubois and his brothers worked for Harry Schiff, they were the muscle. The word is Dubois took over the business: there was about seventy grand outstanding, and Dubois collected it and went from there.”

The waiter came by, a Chinese guy who could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty-five years old. He said, “You want coffee?”

Rozovsky said, “Yeah, thanks,” and looked at Dougherty and said, “It's your dime.”

“Sure, I'll have a coffee.”

The waiter picked up their plates and left, and Rozovsky said, “And like all good loan sharks, Dubois branched out, he started fronting guys money for drugs and a lot of them repaid him and bought more.”

“Now it's bikers,” Dougherty said.

“Yeah, they're the muscle, and they're buying the drugs from Dubois and he buys it from someone else.”

“Italians?”

“They have all the contacts in South America. Rizzuto still lives in Venezuela, right?”

“So I've heard.”

“It's a business built on relationships, right? Well, that and money.”

“What about your guys?”

“The day of the Jewish gangster in Montreal is coming to an end,” Rozovsky said. “It did its job, now all the kids go to McGill and get into legit businesses. Well, not all, of course, but the smart ones. Now your guys are moving up the hill and all over downtown.”

“Moved up from the port and put on suits,” Dougherty said. “They're into a lot of it. And Dubois being in court all this time has helped.”

“And all that money they got from the bank robberies bought a lot of drugs.”

“That's the theory with the Brink's truck, that money went straight to Colombia for cocaine.”

“More likely it went straight to St. Leonard and from there to Colombia, but there's no doubt the Point Boys are selling the product downtown.”

“No doubt,” Dougherty said.

“So, why do you want to know all this ancient history?”

The waiter brought the coffee cups and left without saying anything.

Dougherty picked up his cup and took a sip while Rozovsky poured milk and sugar into his. Then Dougherty said, “I don't want to go back to uniform at Station Ten.”

“The chicks don't dig a man in uniform anymore?”

“So, I figure I've got to get into narcotics or something.”

“I thought you were working homicide with Carpentier?”

“I can't seem to get a permanent assignment.”

“So, what do you care? There's no more money in it, is there? You don't get a bonus if you solve a murder. Doesn't affect seniority or pension.”

Dougherty laughed and said, “Pension?”

“It sounds like it's a hundred years away, but it isn't.”

“It's not my biggest concern right now.”

“Okay,” Rozovsky shrugged. “So the Point Boys are moving a lot of coke downtown, you know them, you should be able to get into narco, it could be fun.”

“I hate all this political bullshit.”

Rozovsky drank his coffee. “What're you gonna do, this is Quebec — politics is the national sport.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Look, you've been hanging around homicide for years, and you've worked some big cases — you should be able to get in easy.”

“Should be.”

Rozovsky leaned back in the booth and said, “Anyway, the Olympics are going to keep everybody busy for a couple of months. Who knows, you might meet a sexy Russian gymnast, have to do a little personal security, you know what I mean?”

“The waiter knows what you mean and he doesn't even speak English.”

“Don't believe that, he hears everything that gets said in here.” Rozovsky drank more coffee and said, “For what it's worth, I say your best bet is talk to Carpentier, tell him what you want and then forget it. At least with the uniform you don't have to worry about what to wear to work every day.”

“I've been wearing the same suit every day as a detective, no one's noticed.”

Rozovsky drank a little coffee and said, “Well, they're not going to fire you, the rest is just details.”

Dougherty said, “I guess.” Then he stood up and dropped ten bucks on the table. “You're right.” Walking out, he waved at the waiter who was standing beside the cash with another Chinese guy and said, “
Merci
, boss.”

Outside on De la Gauchetière Street, there were quite a few people still looking for restaurants and bars, it was only a little after nine.

Rozovsky said, “Look, between you and me, the Dubois trial is going to mean the inquiry into organized crime is going to get extended. Cotroni can't pretend to be sick forever, but he's got enough money to pay his lawyers to drag it out for years. Meanwhile the whole narco squad is going to spend the whole time in court reading old reports. I can talk to Marcel for you, but it's not going to be much fun.”

“I appreciate it,” Dougherty said. “Nothing seems much fun these days.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This city,” Dougherty said. “It feels different. A few weeks from the Olympics and all we hear about are the problems. You remember a few weeks before Expo? The excitement?”

“That was ten years ago. A lot has changed.”

“And a lot hasn't. But it wasn't just Expo, the whole city feels different.”

Rozovsky said, “Yeah, all over downtown, there was so much going on, so much building. Place Ville Marie, Place Victoria.”

“The Métro.”

“Métro's getting extended now.”

“Over budget and behind schedule. We didn't hear that every day about Expo.”

“We were too young,” Rozovsky said.

“I was working construction then,” Dougherty said. “On the American pavilion.”

“And now it's burned down.”

Dougherty said, “This just feels like a cash grab, people lining up to the trough. And everybody so, I don't know, tense all the time. Pissed off. You feel it?”

“It's not just here,” Rozovsky said. “Look at the riots in Boston, that busing stuff, look at New York, it's going bankrupt. ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead,' you saw the headline.”

“Yeah,” Dougherty said, “everybody did.”

“I was just in Brooklyn, I've got cousins there. That
Welcome Back, Kotter
is funny but it's not a joke, that place is a dump.”

“I hope that doesn't happen here.”

“Don't worry,” Rozovsky said. “By the time the Olympics start it'll be a party.”

“Yeah,” Dougherty said, “there's always another party.”

He almost believed it.

When Dougherty got to his apartment the phone was ringing. He picked up the receiver and said, “Yeah?”

“Where've you been, I've been calling.”

“Working.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and started taking off his tie.

On the phone, Judy said, “Well, I've got news. I got a job.”

“Good for you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Dougherty said, “just, that's good.”

“Why are you so pissy?”

“I don't know, I had a bad day.”

“Well, do you think you're going to have a good day soon?”

“I don't know, I guess it depends on the city.”

“All right, when the city is more to your liking, give me a call.”

She hung up, and Dougherty waited a moment then dropped the receiver into the cradle on the phone.

He looked around his one-room apartment, same place he'd been living since he was first assigned to Station Ten, six years ago now, and that made him feel even shittier. He flopped back on the bed but he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. Judy was right, he couldn't let it get to him, couldn't let it run his life.

But he could feel something slipping away, coming apart at the seams. There'd always be another party, that was true. St. Jean Baptiste was coming up, that would bring two or three hundred thousand people out to Mount Royal. There would always be work for cops. Especially cops in uniform doing crowd control.

Around four in the morning, Dougherty fell asleep, and when his alarm went off at seven his head was throbbing as if he had a hangover. He was thinking, Great, now I don't even have to get drunk.

He found a wrinkled blue uniform shirt and a pair of pants on the floor of his closet and a plain blue tie hanging over the door. He got dressed and drove to Station Ten.

All the way he was thinking about Judy, thinking how that should be the one thing he didn't let slip away.

At the station, the desk sergeant, Delisle, was hanging up the phone when Dougherty walked in and he said, “You got out just in time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The robbery squad made arrests in the Brink's trunk heist.”

Dougherty said, “Shit.”

“No, they screwed it up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was on the radio, you didn't hear? Laperrière gave a press conference, said it was solved, they arrested three guys.”

“Boyle?”

“R
é
jean Duff.”

Dougherty said, “Never heard of him.”

“Roger Proven
ç
al and Michel Pilon.”

“Who the hell are they?”

Dougherty was starting to pace in front of the desk.

Delisle said, “It wasn't supposed to go public. The detectives, Caron and the others, they couldn't believe it. They were still going on raids, they heard it on the radio that arrests had been made. By the time they got to the west end there were lawyers waiting at every door.”

“They get any of the money?”

“Seventy-five grand.”

“That's all? Out of almost three million?”

“Now they're saying the gang was both, east end
and
west end.”

“But they didn't charge anybody in the west end, did they?” Dougherty said. “And what have they got that'll stick to these three?”

“You're better off out of it.”

Dougherty wasn't buying that, but he said, “Look, I'm working something for Carpentier, something with the Longueuil department. Can you sign off on that?”

Delisle laughed and said, “You think
I
got promoted all of a sudden? Talk to the captain.”

“What's going on here?”

“A good assignment for you: we're starting hotel security training. Plainclothes, you meet with hotel staff and explain security measures for the Olympics.”

Dougherty said, “That's it?”

Delisle said, “You get to talk to some sexy chicks working the front desks of the best hotels in town.”

A few years earlier, Dougherty would have jumped at it. That was almost the main reason he'd joined the police, meeting chicks and driving fast. And not sitting at a desk or going into the same warehouse every day for the rest of his life.

“Anything else?”

“This is it. You work a regular shift for a few days, then go for training yourself, then start meeting with hotel staff.” Delisle was picking up the phone then, and he said, “Ride with Gagnon for a few days. The security training will be at a hotel out by the airport. They're bringing in experts.”

Dougherty said, “I bet they are.”

Gagnon was behind the wheel, driving slowly through downtown, a beautiful day in early June. He spoke French, saying, “It's not St. Jean Baptiste Day this year.”

Dougherty was slouched in the passenger seat. He didn't say anything.

“No, this year it is officially la Fête Nationale du Québec.”

Nothing from Dougherty.

“Might be fun this year, there might be trouble. Action. More, more, more.”

“No more than usual.” Dougherty was thinking about the first St. Jean Baptiste parade he worked, almost ten years ago now, turned into a riot. People throwing bottles and bricks at the reviewing stand, Prime Minister Trudeau refusing to leave, dozens of arrests, probably what Gagnon meant by fun. After that, the parade was cancelled and the celebrations spread out over the city. Over the eastern half of the city, anyway.

“It's a song,” Gagnon said. “On the radio all the time. Did you hear about the concerts?”

“On the mountain?”

“Three days, lots of bands, dozens.”

Dougherty said, “So, it'll be a party, some people will get drunk and some will get stoned. The usual.”

“But all those bands and they didn't invite even one English.”

“So?”

“You don't think that will cause some trouble?”

Dougherty said, “You mean with Anglos?”

“Come on,” Gagnon said, “they invited bands from all over, from the Maritimes, from France, from Louisiana, all over, but all French. No English acts at all.”

“What about Pagliaro?”

Gagnon laughed. “I don't know, maybe if he only sings ‘J'entends frapper,' but not ‘Rainshowers.'”

“That's his best one.”

“I like ‘Some Sing, Some Dance,'” Gagnon said. “Anyway, there could be some action.”

“Anglos don't riot,” Dougherty said. “Haven't you ever met a WASP? Stiff upper lip and all that. They ignore.”

“What about on St. Patrick's Day in the Point?”

“That's the Irish.”

“Same thing, no? Irish are English.”