One or the Other (16 page)

Judy shook her head and said, “The worst part is you're probably right.”

“Happens all the time.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

Dougherty said, “What?”

“Well, it's just, you know, all these temporary assignments and they keep sending you back to uniform.”

Dougherty said, “I can't believe I didn't even think of that.” He was thinking about it now, but he said, “Can't be, I never made Carpentier look bad. No, I just do what I'm told.”

“Yeah, are you going to stop working this investigation?”

“No one told me to stop.”

Judy said, “Right.”

“There's not really much we can do,” Dougherty said. “We're talking to every guy who was ever picked up near the Jacques Cartier Bridge or on
Île Sainte-Hélène
.”

“It's like Cinderella,” Judy said. “But you don't even have a glass slipper for them to try on.”

Dougherty said, “That's right.” He was thinking they had a partial print on a piece of rope they didn't even know was connected at all.

But he knew when they found the guy who did it, he'd know.

They walked through the mall. It was Thursday evening and fairly crowded. The mall was only open past six on Thursdays and Fridays and then only until nine. Judy took Dougherty's arm and he liked that. It felt odd to feel good about it, so suburban.

Dougherty wondered if this was what settling down felt like.

“Look at him,” Judy said. “The World's Most Wanted Man.”

“I guess he is.”

“Looks like they're trying to make him the world's sexiest man, too.”

On the cover of
Maclean's
magazine was the drawing of a man who looked to be in his thirties, stylish hair, sunglasses, moustache, turtleneck and a leather jacket. The headline read,
The World's Most Wanted Man, Carlos the Jackal
.

Dougherty said, “Like central casting sent over a bad guy we're supposed to root for.”

Judy stepped past the magazine rack and picked up a copy of the newspaper, the
Montreal Star
, and said, “I'm going to check the ads for apartments.”

While she was paying, Dougherty looked across the mall to the poster shop, the teenagers flipping through the racks, passing images of rock stars, bare-chested Robert Plant and Jimi Hendrix and Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Carlos didn't look out of place on the cover of the magazine.

“Looks like he did in that TV movie,” Judy said, “about the OPEC kidnapping.”

“He's a star.”

“Think he'll be here for the Olympics?”

“I think the Mounties are hoping he is.”

They were walking back through the mall towards the parking lot, and Judy said, “That's not funny.”

“No, you're right. But the place is locked up tight.”

“I hope so.”

Dougherty had just got into bed when the phone rang. It was Legault, she said, “I've got one.”

“Where?”

She said, in English, “It was reported to us, in Longueuil, he rape a woman on our side of the bridge.”

Dougherty was standing up then, pulling his shirt back on. “He raped her on the bridge?”

“She walked across from Montreal, he grab her by the building use to be there for the tolls.”

“She reported it?”

“Yes, I'm reading the report now.”

Dougherty looked at the clock radio beside his bed. It was eleven fifteen. “You're in the office now?”

“I've been going through old reports,” Legault said. “This is from three years ago. He served twenty-two month in all, he's out.”

“Okay, let's talk to him.”

“
Bien
.
You want to meet here tomorrow?”

“No,” Dougherty said, “let's talk to him now. Where is he?”

“Um,” there was a pause and then Legault said, “Brossard.”

“All right, I'll come out to the station and pick you up, we'll drive to Brossard.”

“Should I call the Brossard police?”

“And get them out of bed? No, let's just go talk to the guy.”

“C'est pas l'une des nos juridictions.”

“Don't worry about jurisdiction,” Dougherty said. “By the time they get through the rest of the rules we're breaking, who's going to notice that?”

Legault said, “
Okay, bon, je te revois bientôt.
”

“Twenty minutes,” Dougherty said.

Legault got into Dougherty's car and said, “I talked to his probation officer, and he's supposed to be at work now.”

“You are breaking all the rules.”

“It's someone I know,” Legault said. “Used to be a cop, he was on the force when I joined.” She looked at her notepad and said, “The rapist is André Marcotte and he's working at the Motel du Fleuve, you know it?”

“No.”

“Le Boulevard Marie-Victorin, almost under the Champlain Bridge.”

“Guy likes bridges.”

They passed the Motel des Nations, the Motel l'Oiseau Bleu, the Motel Rideau, the Motel Washington and a few others along the divided boulevard, just a block from the river. More leftovers from Expo 67 getting another run out for the Olympics, Dougherty figured. He pulled into the empty lot of the Motel du Fleuve.

“Is he the night clerk?”

“Yes. He's twenty-two years old, single and was arrested only once.”

“And someone gave him this job?”

“I guess so.”

They walked into the office, a bell tied to a chain above the door ringing as they did. A man was sitting behind the counter, watching a movie on a small black-and-white TV.

Dougherty said, “André Marcotte?”

The guy said, “
Ouin.
”

Dougherty continued in French, “This is Sergeant Legault, I'm Detective Dougherty. We want to ask you some questions.”

He didn't say which police forces they were with, and Marcotte didn't ask. He just said, “Nothing to say.”

“You don't even know the questions.”

“Doesn't matter, I don't have to speak to you without my lawyer.”

Dougherty was walking around the counter then, flipping up the little divider at the end and grabbing Marcotte by the neck. He turned him around fast, twisted his arm behind his back with one hand and slammed his face into the counter with the other.

“Answer Sergeant Legault's questions.”

Legault said, “When was the last time you were on the Jacques Cartier Bridge?”

Marcotte said, “Suck my dick.”

Dougherty lifted his head up off the counter and slammed it back down.

Legault said, “When was the last time?”

“I don't know.”

“How about two weeks ago? Thursday?”

“I was here. I work every night.”

Legault leaned down so her face was very close to Marcotte's, and she said, “When you raped Lisette Desjardins you followed her from
Île Sainte-Hélène
.”

“I didn't rape her.”

Dougherty shoved his face harder onto the desk.

“It wasn't like that, it wasn't a rape.”

Legault said, “What was it?”

“She wanted to.”

Dougherty lifted Marcotte's head, but Legault held up her hand and he stopped.

Legault said, “Why did you follow her all the way across the bridge. Why didn't you do it there in the pavilion?”

“I didn't follow her. We walked together.”

“You followed her,” Legault said, “and then you raped her.”

Dougherty was still holding Marcotte's arm behind his back and still had a fistful of his hair, ready to slam his head back into the desk, but Legault glanced up and nodded a little, letting him know she wanted to keep talking.

“Just you two?”

“Yes.”

“There was no one else?”

“No.”

“No?”

Dougherty started to push his head, and Marcotte said, “Okay, okay.”

Legault waited a moment and then said, “Okay, what really happened?”

Dougherty let go of Marcotte's hair but kept hold of his arm.

“We were a gang, some guys, we met some girls. We partied.”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah, some. And then Lisette wanted to go home and Martin, he told me to go with her.”

“He was the leader of the gang,” Legault said.

“It wasn't like that,” Marcotte said, “not official like that. I didn't know him that much, a few weeks maybe.”

“You wanted to be in the gang.”

Marcotte nodded a little and looked at his shoes. “He told me to go with Lisette.”

“And to rape her.”

His head came up quick. “No.”

Dougherty gave his arm one more twist and then let go.

Marcotte started rubbing his wrist where Dougherty had been holding it. He said, “It wasn't like that, I just knew, you know, that when I saw him again I had to tell him we did it, we screwed, you know.”

“To be in his gang?”

“I was a kid.” Head down again.

“You were nineteen.”

“I was in CEGEP.”

“Martin still hang out at La Ronde?”

“I haven't seen him since I got arrested and went to jail,” Marcotte said. “I've never been back to
Île Sainte-Hélène
.”

“What's Martin's last name?”

“Comptois.”

Dougherty walked back out from behind the counter and went to the front door.

Legault said to Marcotte, “How did you get this job?”

“My uncle, he's a plumber, he knows the owner.”

“Okay,” Legault said. “We won't tell anyone we were here. I haven't spoken to your parole officer. You keep your nose clean.”

Marcotte nodded.

Outside in the parking lot, Dougherty lit a cigarette and said, “How did you know it went down like that?”

He held out his pack of smokes, and Legault took one and said, “I didn't. But I felt that the report was,
maigre
, you know, didn't have all the information. There wasn't anything about what happened before, and it didn't seem like a good plan, to stand out in the open on the bridge waiting for a single woman? How long would you have to wait for one to come by?”

“Good point,” Dougherty said. “I wouldn't have thought of that.”

“So, I just guessed.”

“See,” Dougherty said, “you are a detective. Got us another name to add to our list.”

“What are you going to do if we come across one of these people and you can't just beat the information out of them?”

Dougherty said, “I don't know, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

He didn't have to worry about it for a while. First there was the four-day celebration of St. Jean Baptiste, now la F
ête
Nationale, a couple hundred thousand people partying on Mount Royal and dozens of other parties around the city that kept the cops busy, and then on Sunday a plane on its way from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked and taken to Uganda, and suddenly the Olympic security became a lot more serious.

Monday morning, Dougherty was back in the conference room at the hotel listening to Captain Manseau talk about airport security. Dozens of flights a day coming and going throughout the Olympics plus the regularly scheduled flights, dignitaries, charter flights, everything.

“The airport will be busy every minute of the day,” Manseau said. “And so will we.”

Dougherty was thinking, Yeah, busy watching planes take off and land.

“The military airport in St. Hubert will also be busy,” Manseau said, “and we will co-ordinate with them.”

Dougherty shook his head, and beside him LeBlanc said, “More bureaucracy, great.”

The plane, an Air France flight, had been hijacked the night before and there was very little information. Captain Manseau said that the plane had been taken to Benghazi, in Libya, and that was all the information they had.

One of the guys near the front of the room said, “If the Olympics still happen.”

Manseau said, “You might as well stop reading the papers, nothing they say is true.”

“Come on,” the guy said. “The IOC said they'd shut down the games over the China thing.”

“The games will still go on.”

Dougherty leaned over to LeBlanc and said, “What's he talking about?”

“The IOC recognizes Taiwan as China, but Canada recognizes Red China.”

“So?”

“Athletes from both countries are coming and they both want to be called China,” LeBlanc said.

Dougherty nodded and shared a look with LeBlanc. More politics, politics everywhere.

Manseau was saying that the IOC would be headquartered at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, and there would be a lot of extra security. “Pinkertons will supply the guards and also a new metal detector, similar to the ones at airports.”

“They're going to walk the big shots through a metal detector?”

“It's mostly for the baggage,” Manseau said. “And some of the staff. There will also be dogs sniffing for explosives.”

“What if he sniffs out their drugs, do they get to keep it?”

Most of the guys in the room laughed.

A little after ten, they took a coffee break, and Dougherty went straight to the pay phones.

“How's it going?”

Legault said, “Not bad, I found two more Louise Tremblays and a Sidney Gupta in NDG.”

“What about Comptois?”

“He's not living at the address we have on file, and they don't know where he moved to.”

Dougherty lit a cigarette and exhaled. Then he said, “How's it going in Longueuil?”

“They haven't closed the case yet,” Legault said. “That's something.”

“Yeah, that is good. Are they giving you much to do?”

“No, they're leaving me alone. How are you doing?”

“If the Chinese invade, we're ready,” Dougherty said.

Legault said, “That's good to hear, I was worried.”

“I can't get away until late this afternoon, around five. You want to go talk to some of these people then?”

“I'm going to talk to one of the Louise Tremblays this afternoon. I can meet you later, we can talk to Gupta in NDG.”

“Okay,” Dougherty said. “We can meet in the west end, do you know Chalet Bar-B-Q?”

“Yes, by Decarie, around six?”

“See you there.”

Dougherty hung up and started walking back to the conference room, but LeBlanc caught up to him before he went inside and said, “They took the plane to Kampala.”

“Where's that?”

“Africa. Uganda.”

Dougherty said, “What for?”

“Idi Amin is welcoming them with open arms.”

“Great.”

“And look at them.” LeBlanc nodded towards the crew-cut Mounties who were in a tight circle with the senior Montreal cops and a couple of guys who might as well have worn their air force uniforms. “Orgasm time.”

“Maybe it'll keep them busy.”

“At least it will keep them awake,” LeBlanc said.

Dougherty said, “Yeah,” and then they sat in the conference room for hours listening to guys drone on about procedure and emergency tactics and traffic movement until Dougherty wished someone would burst in with guns or bombs.

He was starting to understand these Mounties.

Dougherty got to Chalet Bar-B-Q at about six thirty, and Legault was already in a booth with a cup of coffee.

He said, “Did you eat yet?”

“No, I didn't even order. What's good here?”

“I've never heard of anyone order anything but the chicken dinner,” Dougherty said. “Is there anything else on the menu?”

The waitress, an older woman with a beehive hairdo and an apron, came to the table, and Dougherty and Legault both ordered a quarter chicken dinner with fries, coleslaw and Pepsi.

“So, how was Louise Tremblay?”

Legault finished off what was left of her coffee and said, “She was the right one, she knew Marc-André Daigneault.”

“She know where he is?”

“She said California, but she's not sure. He wants to be a biker.”

“What do you think, is she telling the truth?”

“I think so,” Legault said.

Dougherty said, “Okay,” and settled into the booth. The place was busy, as it always seemed to be at any time of the day or night. It had been operating the same menu in the same place for over thirty years, and it looked like nothing had changed in that time. The main business was still take-out from a counter in the back where you could see the rotisseries cooking the whole chickens on skewers and the guys cutting them into four pieces with a few whacks from their cleavers.

The waitress brought them two cans of Pepsi and two glasses full of ice and left without saying anything, moving quickly to the next table.

Dougherty said, “Did you hear about the robbery here?”

“No.”

“It was late, just before closing, a guy came to the take-out counter, held up a gun, some kind of pistol, said it was a hold-up. One of those guys cutting up the chickens cut the guy's hand off.” Dougherty made a motion with his own hand. “Sliced it off clean like he was cutting off a chicken leg.”

Legault said, “Did he just go back and continue cutting up the chickens?”

“I don't know,” Dougherty said, “that's a good question.”

Legault left her car parked half a block down on Girouard. One side of the street was lined with old stone houses. Where the other side used to be was now the Décarie Expressway, twenty feet below. Across the gaping hole of the expressway was one side of another street so the houses still faced each other.

In Dougherty's car, Legault said, “Gupta lives on Melrose Avenue.”

“Below the tracks?”

“Is that an expression?”

“Yeah, it is,” Dougherty said, “but in this case there are also real tracks.” He drove along Sherbrooke and down Regent, checking address numbers until they got to the dead end at the railroad tracks, and Dougherty said, “See, below the tracks.” There was a pedestrian walkway through a tunnel, the concrete steps and walls covered in graffiti, and a couple blocks away there was a pedestrian overpass but they had to drive to Girouard to get to the other side.

The Guptas were from India but Sid was born in Montreal and looked to Dougherty like every other pot-smoking student he saw downtown. When they'd parked in front of the two-storey duplex, Dougherty said, “That'll be Sidney,” pointing at the guy in the t-shirt and jeans sitting on the front steps with a couple of white guys. Sid was a little darker-skinned and his hair was black but otherwise they all looked alike.

Dougherty got out of the car and said, “Hey Sid, how's it going?”

Sid played it cool, smiling, acting like it was no big deal, saying, “It's the fuzz,” and laughing along with the other guys on the steps.

Dougherty said, “You want to talk here or go for a ride?”

“I like it here.”

Dougherty looked at the two white guys and then back to Gupta and said, “You'll want it to be private, too.”

“I don't think so.”

“Yeah, you do,” Dougherty said. “That way after you cave and tell us everything we need to know you can still tell these guys you were the man and you didn't say a word.”

Gupta laughed and said, “Far out, you're cool, man.”

“I'm in a hurry.”

Dougherty looked back at the two guys and one of them said, “I was going anyway, see you later.”

The other guy followed him, and when they were gone Dougherty said, “This is better, just us.”

Gupta said, “There will be justice.”

“You sell drugs at concerts: the Forum, Place des Arts, Place des Nations.”

“What?” Gupta was still smiling but it was starting to fade.

“We're interested in Place des Nations. You remember the Gentle Giant concert?”

“Oh man, yeah,” he tilted his head back and said, “the power and the glory.”

Dougherty had no idea what he was talking about. He said, “You met two kids on the bridge, they were walking back to the south shore.”

“What?”

“At the pavilion, the stairs up to the bridge.”

“That old building?” He was starting to focus.

“A boy and a girl, but in the dark they might have both looked like girls.”

“No, man,” Gupta said. “I take the Métro, man, I don't go near the bridge.”

Dougherty glanced at Legault. He got the feeling that Gupta was scared. And not of the cops. He said, “Why not, Sid, what's on the bridge?”

“Heights? I'm afraid of heights?”

“No you're not,” Dougherty said, answering the question. “But I believe you, that you're afraid of the bridge. It's not your territory, is it?”

“I don't go near the bridge.”

“Who's there?”

“Nobody.”

“Just give me his name.”

Gupta looked to Legault and said, “Why you gotta hassle me?”

Dougherty leaned in closer and put his hand on Sid's shoulder. He squeezed it hard and said, “Last chance.” His free hand curled into a fist.

“There's some guys, I don't know their names.”

“Just one.”

They were almost nose to nose.

Gupta said, “Comptois. I don't know his first name.”

“It's Martin,” Dougherty said, standing up. “See, that wasn't hard.”

Driving back downtown, Legault said, “You think it was Comptois?”

“We'll find out when we talk to him.”

Legault shook her head and said, “This is crazy.”

“What is?”

“Do you ever get tired of beating information out of people?”

“Not as long as I keep getting the information.”

“And then we just go from one to another. They're all the same.”

“Not all of them,” Dougherty said. “The glass slipper will fit only one of them.”

“What?”

“You know, Cinderella? We keep making them put on the glass slipper till it fits.”

Legault said, “You come up with that?”

Dougherty said, “No, it was my,” and he paused, not sure of the word to describe Judy. He said, “Girlfriend.” But then he said, “We're going to get an apartment together. I think we're going to get married.”

“You think?”

“Her parents just separated,” Dougherty said. “It doesn't seem like a good time to talk about getting married.”

“How long have you been together?”

“A few years,” Dougherty said.

“How long have you known each other?”

“Well, let's see, the first time I arrested her was in 1970.”

“How many times since?”

“Almost again a couple of years later, that's really when we started going together. She was a political radical.”

“She hijack any planes?”

“You remember Milton Park,” Dougherty said, “people getting kicked out of their houses? She was protesting that development, stuff like that.”

“But not anymore? You set her straight?”

Dougherty laughed a little, thinking about what Judy would say to that. “Oh, she hasn't given up, she's still involved. She's a teacher now.” He realized that was the first time he'd said she was a teacher, not going to be a teacher. It felt good.

“Would it surprise you to know I was involved in protests?”

Dougherty shrugged and said, “No,” even though it did surprise him a little.

“For an independent Quebec?”

“Oh,” Dougherty said, “you're a separatist.”

“Does it shock you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“It's just politics,” Dougherty said. “I don't really care.”

“You don't care if we tear apart your country?”

“You won't tear up the roads will you? I'll still be able to drive to the east coast?”

“If you can get through customs. But you would stay?”

“It's my home,” Dougherty said. “I was born here. Why wouldn't I stay?”

“People talk about moving, so they can stay part of Canada.”

“I haven't thought about it.”

“Because you don't think it will happen?”

“Because I don't think it will change anything.”

Legault looked surprised. She said, “But don't you think it will be better if we can run our own affairs?”

“
Maîtres chez nous,
” Dougherty said, using the expression that was everywhere.

“That's right. Don't you think that would be better?”

Dougherty shrugged and said, “I don't know, I've never known politicians to make anything better.”

“We've never tried this.”

“No,” Dougherty said, “that's true.”

He turned onto Girouard and parked behind Legault's car.

She said, “So we have to find this Martin Comptois.”

“Yeah, he doesn't have a record?”