One or the Other (17 page)

“Not in Montreal or Longueuil.”

“Okay, I'll make a request with the provincial police and the RCMP. See if they have any information.”

Legault let out a sigh and nodded her head slowly. She said, “Sure.”

Dougherty said, “Look,” and he paused, but Legault didn't look at him, so he said, “not just anyone could do something like this. If we're right about this.”

“We are.”

“If we are, and there's a guy out there who strangled these kids and threw them off the bridge, if he doesn't get caught he'll do it again.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, he was probably all broken up about it when he did it, when he realized what happened, how . . . final it was, that shocked him, sure, but the longer it goes on, the longer nothing happens to him and life just goes on, he'll just go with it. And, yeah, I believe he'll do it again, or something like it.”

Legault was nodding, but she didn't say anything.

“As long as we have someone to check out, something to look at, we keep looking.”

It was quiet in the car.

Then Legault said, “Okay. We keep trying the glass slipper.”

She looked at Dougherty, and he had an urge to hold up his hand to shake on it, but they just nodded at each other, and she opened the car door and got out.

Dougherty drove back downtown, thinking every day this went on the chances of catching the guy got smaller and smaller.

Which just made him more determined.

When Dougherty walked into Joe's Steak House Judy was already at a table with her father and already looking like she wanted to get away.

Dougherty said, “Sorry I'm late.”

“Don't worry about it,” Judy's father said, “just order a couple of these Harvey Wallbangers and catch up.”

The waiter was at the table then, and Dougherty said, “I'll have a rum and Coke. Just one, thanks.”

After the waiter left, Judy's father looked at Dougherty and said, “You out catching murderers all day?”

“Something like that.”

“You're a detective now, right?”

Dougherty had never had much conversation with Judy's father. On their Sunday visits, Dougherty usually stayed out of it, letting Judy and her father argue politics or some world event until her father went into the basement with a drink in his hand and a defeated scowl on his face.

Now Judy's dad was a lot more upbeat, a lot more positive looking, as if nothing could get him down. He also looked like a guy who was trying to score in a bar, and they hadn't even had dinner yet.

“I'm doing Olympic security,” Dougherty said. “Spent the day at the Queen E showing people how to lock doors and use the phone.”

“That's where the dignitaries are staying, right? There must be some kind of party there tonight for the Americans, big fourth of July thing, the bicentennial?”

Dougherty said, “I don't know, Tom,” using Judy's dad's name for maybe the third or fourth time since he'd known him, “probably.”

“Maybe we should check it out,” Tom said. “Wish them a happy birthday.”

Judy said, “Why should we be happy about it?”

“They're our neighbours.”

“Nothing we can do about that.”

The waiter came to the table with Dougherty's drink, and Tom said, “So, how does everyone want their steaks?”

After they ordered, Caesar salads and steaks medium-rare all around, Tom said, “What better way to celebrate America's birthday than with a steak?”

“I didn't realize we were celebrating it,” Judy said.

“Sure, we'll celebrate freedom.”

Judy said, “Do you know what
Pravda
said today? The Declaration of Independence has been subverted by American capitalism.”

Tom said, “Capitalism is paying for these steaks.”

“Yeah,” Dougherty said, “but the baked potato is communist.”

Judy said, “Lots of places are not cheering for America today.”

“Lots of places should take a closer look at the world,” Tom said. “Get out of the classroom a little and really look around.”

Dougherty could see this was heading straight into the perpetual-student line Tom used to get to Judy. He was going to say something, but the waiter arrived with the salads and that gave them a moment of silence.

Then Tom said, “Look at these hijackers, taking the plane to Uganda, is
Pravda
cheering Idi Amin today, is that the kind of world they want?”

“They let some hostages go,” Judy said.

“Yeah, and they kept all the Jews.”

Dougherty was a little surprised to hear Tom say that, thinking about how often Tom had been casually anti-Semitic out on the West Island, but then he figured maybe the move downtown was opening him up a little.

“Well, let's hope this ends with everybody safe,” Dougherty said.

They ate their salads, and then the steaks arrived on wooden plates.

“Hijackers and terrorists,” Tom said, “they should hang them all.”

“We're finally getting rid of capital punishment,” Judy said.

“Yeah, that'll show them,” Tom said. “Look at these guys now, these hijackers, they won't even negotiate.”

Judy said, “It's complicated.”

“It's not complicated. The Israelis said they'd negotiate, a big change for them. Even Yasser Arafat sent his top guy, and these terrorists wouldn't talk to him. There's nothing to negotiate — they're just going to keep hijacking planes and killing innocent people.”

“They're desperate.”

“Who's desperate? The main hijackers are German, what do you think this is really about? And Carlos, some South American playboy, they're making him a hero. And you see who they want released? Some Japanese guy killed a bunch of people at the airport in Tel Aviv and some Germans, some Baader-Meinhof gang members who want to kill more people in department stores.”

Dougherty saw Judy start to say something and then stop. She was determined not to let her father get to her. Dougherty knew it was really hard, even he wanted to tell Tom to shut up.

Then Tom looked at Dougherty and said, “Must be making things interesting for you guys.”

“It's keeping us busy.”

“You don't sound too happy about it.”

“There are things I'd rather be doing.”

“Yeah, well, shit rolls downhill, son,” Tom said, all of his boozy cheeriness gone. “You better figure out how to get out of the way.”

Dougherty didn't say anything, and he stole a glance at Judy. She wasn't angry anymore, he could see that, but he couldn't really tell what she was thinking. He thought maybe she felt sorry for her father. Or maybe that was just Dougherty projecting, as Judy called it, his own feelings onto her. He was definitely having trouble taking Tom seriously with his turtleneck and sports coat and moustache and his tough talk, thinking, Really, he's just a guy who was too young for the war but old enough to be in a perfect place to get in on the ground floor with some big company while guys like Dougherty's father were busy getting shot at in Europe. Now he was fifty-something trying to look thirty-something and make up for lost time. Dougherty hadn't seen it but he was willing to bet the guy had on a white belt.

When she finished her steak, Judy lit a cigarette and said, “We're getting an apartment in LaSalle.”

“The two of you?” Her father was smiling then, smirking.

“Yeah.”

“But LaSalle?” Tom said. “Why not downtown? I'm on St. Marc, it's close to everything.”

“This is close to the school I'll be teaching at.”

“You sure you want to settle down, way out there?”

Talking about living downtown seemed to revitalize Tom. That or it made him feel superior again. Dougherty thought the smirk turned into a gloat.

“Don't settle down too early,” Tom said. “Makes it very hard later.”

Judy said, “We know what we're doing.”

“Yeah, what are we doing? We walking over to Crescent Street for a drink?”

Judy said, “One drink.”

Of course, one turned into three in the first bar they went to, and then three more in the next, and then they lost count.

Judy also lost count of the number of times she told her father to stop leering at the girls who were younger than she was, and he kept on winking and buying them drinks.

Two in the morning, Dougherty got Tom into a cab for the four-block ride, and then he got himself and Judy into a cab to head back to her apartment in the McGill ghetto.

The cabbie turned the big handle on the metre and said, “What an amazing rescue.”

“What rescue?”

“You didn't hear? Israeli commandos went to Uganda and rescued all the hostages, flew them all back to Israel. It's all over the radio.”

Dougherty said, “Well, this is going to change things at work.”

Judy said, “How?”

“I don't know, but it can only be bad.”

Detective Carpentier looked over everything Dougherty had given him, and then said, “Yes, he is a good suspect.”

“Sergeant Legault did good work,” Dougherty said. “She suggested rape as the main motive, not robbery.”

“But you can't find this guy?”

“I spoke to his mother in Sherbrooke, she hasn't seen him since Christmas.”

“Did you tell her why you were calling?”

“No, I just said he might be a witness to something. I got the feeling she didn't like policemen very much.”

“Hard to believe,” Carpentier said, “but not everyone likes us. He has no record?”

“No. He's twenty-five years old, has no job I can find and never signed a lease.”

“Can you find anyone else in his gang?”

Dougherty said, “I don't know that we can really call it a gang, it seems like it was mostly kids. The guy we talked to only knew them for a couple of weeks, says he's never seen them since.”

“You believe him?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Carpentier was sitting at his desk, and he nodded slowly. “So you want more time to work on this?”

“I'm on the Olympic security now,” Dougherty said. “They've got so many guys on it, they won't notice if I'm not there.”

“Olympic security is important.”

“You think someone's really going to hijack a plane here or kidnap some athletes?”

Carpentier shrugged a little and said, “I think it's possible, don't you?”

“Possible, I guess.”

“It could happen,” Carpentier said. “And if something does happen during the Olympics and there's even a hint that our security wasn't top rate it will be a huge problem.”

“But if this guy kills a couple more kids on their way home from a concert, that can get buried in the press,” Dougherty said, “and no one will care.”

“Ça suffit.”

It was quiet for a moment. Dougherty knew he should apologize, but he also knew he was right so he didn't want to.

Then Carpentier said, “I can make sure you have access to the records department and to ident and to the labs. The support staff here will process your requests as if you work here. That's the best I can do.”

“That's more than I'm asking for,” Dougherty said.

“No, it's not,” Carpentier said. “But it's the best I can do now.”

“Well, thanks.”

“How is it going over there? Have you seen Vachon and his squad?”

“Alpha Team,” Dougherty said. “That's one I didn't apply for.”

“A lot of guys did,” Carpentier said, “more than two hundred. They only picked eighty and then only forty-eight made it through the training.”

“They showed us around their truck, their Mobile Command Unit. They've been running a lot of simulations, hostage situations, that kind of thing.”

Carpentier said, “They have no budget problems.”

“I guess not.”

“Especially after what happened in Africa,” Carpentier said. “You know a few of the hostages were from Montreal.”

“I saw that, a woman from Côte Saint-Luc and a priest, I think.”

“And a couple of others.”

“People keep saying it could happen here,” Dougherty said, “and sometimes it sounds like they hope something will.”

“We need to be prepared.”

Dougherty said, “At the briefing they explained to us that a terrorist attack that includes hijacking and kidnapping is called ‘a leverage situation,' because there is a chance for negotiation. But a lone madman with a gun is a ‘revenge situation.'”

“So what was Entebbe,” Carpentier said, “a hijacking and kidnapping but they didn't want to negotiate?”

“I'm sure there are many strategy meetings going on right now,” Dougherty said.

“Yes, that's for sure. I guess it's something new, the rescue situation. What would we do if Israeli commandos came to Montreal?”

“Take them to Schwartz's for smoked meat?”

Carpentier nodded but he didn't smile. Then he said, “But really, they rescue a hundred hostages and lose only one? It's a big deal.”

Dougherty said, “Yeah, I get that.”

“So,” Carpentier said, moving on, “you can still work with Legault?”

“Yeah, working together isn't the problem.”

“Sometimes it happens,” Carpentier said, “people can't work together.”

“No, we can, we just have to find the time.”

“Captain Allard will leave her alone as long as the case is open,” Carpentier said.

“Legault is worried they'll rule it a murder-suicide and close it.”

“That could happen.”

“Could we keep it open because the boy, Mathieu Simard, was found in Montreal?”

“It would be difficult,” Carpentier said, “if Longueuil has closed the case. There would be a lot of politics. If you feel you're close to something, that would be different.”

“I'll know better when I talk to this Martin Comptois. He's a little hard to find.”

“Do the best you can,” Carpentier said, and Dougherty felt it was a dismissal. He thanked Carpentier again and walked out of the homicide office.

Dougherty wasn't disappointed, he got as much as he was hoping for if he was honest with himself. Which he was, sometimes.

At the Queen Elizabeth Hotel loading dock, Dougherty watched a uniform cop he thought was about twelve years old direct traffic so the trucks could pull in off Belmont Street across from Central Station. There was a lineup of about five trucks.

LeBlanc was sitting on a folding chair beside the shipping office reading the paper, telling Dougherty that the peace talks in Lebanon had been postponed and the civil war continued but he wasn't sure who exactly was fighting, “Christians and Moslems, I think, but it might be communists.”

Dougherty said, “On which side,” and LeBlanc said, “I don't know.”

Then LeBlanc said, “This China thing with Taiwan won't go away.”

“The Olympics aren't getting cancelled.”

“The IOC says Taiwan is China.”

“And a billion Chinese say otherwise.”

LeBlanc laughed. “And Trudeau says otherwise — he won't back down.”

A truck honked its horn, and then another joined in. Dougherty walked over to the big garage doors that had been open all morning and said to the uniform cop, “What's the problem?”

“No problem, it's just slow going.”

The driver hung out the window of the laundry truck and said, “I've got four more hotels to get to today.”

“They'll all be like this,” Dougherty said. “What can you do?”

“I can lose my job if I don't make the deliveries.”

“Sorry, boss, nothing we can do.”

The guy threw up his arms and shook his head.

Dougherty said, “You want a cup of coffee?”

“Then I'll have to piss, where'm I gonna go?”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Dougherty walked to the next couple trucks in line and spoke to the drivers, then he pulled over the uniform cop and said, “Four coffees, two cream and sugar and two black.”

“I'm not a gofer.”

“Come on, not today,” Dougherty said. “We're in this together, right?”

The uniform cop stared at Dougherty for a moment then nodded a little and said, “Don't make a habit of this.”

“For sure. They've got a coffee machine in the hotel.”

The kid said, “Okay.”

Dougherty walked back to the shipping office and sat down on another folding chair beside LeBlanc.

“Hospital strike still going.”

“Nurses?”

“Fifty-five hundred of them. And x-ray technicians. Says here Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont won't be able to take Olympic athletes, they'll have to go somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“English hospitals, the General and the Jewish General, I guess.”

“Until they go on strike.”

“The airline strike is settled,” LeBlanc said. “But people are still mad, some cabinet minister resigned, said the settlement was —” he squinted at the newspaper “— a betrayal of the cause of bilingualism and a blow to federalism in Quebec.”

“Who's next to go on strike?” Dougherty said.

He was only joking, but LeBlanc said, “Liquor store workers, might start tomorrow.”

Dougherty stood up and said, “I've got to find a pay phone.”

He walked into the hotel through the loading doors and passed the uniform cop coming out carrying Styrofoam cups on a plastic tray, and he said, “Cookies, that's a good idea, I didn't think of that.” There were a half-dozen packets of chocolate chip cookies on the tray.

“It was the girl at the desk,” the cop said.

“Hospitality is her business.”

Dougherty walked into the lobby of the hotel, which was very quiet. It was still a week away from the Olimpic opening ceremony and the big shots weren't in town yet. He saw a row of three pay phone booths across the lobby and went into one of them, closing the door. The whole place, the Queen E, felt like something out of the '50s to Dougherty, all the old wood and polished marble.

He dropped a dime and dialled and when the receptionist answered he said, “
Puis-je parler avec le sergent Legault, s'il vous plaît?
”

“Un moment.”

Dougherty was sitting on the little seat in the booth, and he looked out into the lobby, watching the two women behind the counter chatting. One of them lit a cigarette and tilted her head back to blow smoke at the ceiling and she laughed at something the other woman said.

Legault came on the phone then and said, “
Ici Sergent Legault.
”

Dougherty spoke French, saying, “Hey, it's me, how's it going?”

“Well, I'm in the office.”

“Is that good?”

“I've been given another assignment, I'm writing a report about the youth centre downtown.”

“Downtown Montreal?”

“No,” Legault said, sounding a little impatient, “downtown Longueuil.”

Dougherty was about to say he didn't realize Longueuil had a downtown, but he let that go and said, “They didn't take you off the homicide?”

There was a pause and then Legault said, “It's still open. I think Detective Carpentier spoke to Captain Allard.”

Dougherty was surprised to hear that. “Can you still get away when we need to?”

“I think so. Have you got an address on Martin Comptois?”

“Not yet. You still have a Louise Tremblay to see, right?”

“Yes. Maybe later today.”

At the hotel desk a couple of men were checking in and one of them was starting to get upset, waving his arms and raising his voice. Even from behind, from across the lobby, Dougherty had a very good idea what the guy looked like and what he was upset about.

“Okay, will you be back in the office around five? I'll call you then.”

“Okay.”

Dougherty hung up and walked across the lobby towards the front desk. By the time he got there, a man had come out of the office and was talking to the guy who was upset. Dougherty hung back a little and then took a few steps to the side of the counter, just beside the second guy, who wasn't as upset as his friend but who Dougherty figured would certainly jump in if they didn't get everything they wanted.

The man from the office was saying, “As Mlle. Daoust has said, there is no problem for the first two days but after that there are no rooms available.”

“I have stayed at this hotel for years.”

As the guy went on about how important he was, Dougherty looked at the other woman behind the counter, a little older than Mlle. Daoust, maybe thirty, and she looked back and said, “May I help you, sir?”

Dougherty said, a little too loudly, “I'm Detective Dougherty. We're doing the hotel security prep, one of the other cops said there was coffee around here?”

“Oh yes,” the woman said, “this way.” Her name tag said
Amalia
.

Dougherty said, “Thanks.” He walked slowly around the front desk and figured that just announcing his presence would be enough to settle these guys down. They looked like businessmen in their forties, both of them wearing suits and carrying briefcases. Dougherty didn't see any luggage, and he wondered about that, but he kept following Amalia into the coffee room.

She was ahead of him, saying, “Cream and sugar?”

“Just black, thanks.”

She poured the coffee into a Styrofoam cup and handed it to him. “It's really just beginning.”

“I guess so. Are you ready for it?”

“Oh yes.” She smiled. “I started working here during Expo. We were full every day for months.”

“At least this'll only be a couple of weeks.”

“Yes,” Amalia said. “But to tell you the truth, it's different.”

“Yeah,” Dougherty said. “It's more tense, isn't it?”

Amalia nodded. She was leaning back against the table and she said, “Would you like a cookie?”

Dougherty felt the flirting and he said, “No, thanks.” He didn't feel like a married man, he didn't think, but he had lost interest in flirting. He said, “I better get back to work.”

Amalia said, “Me, too. I'm working until six o'clock,” giving it one more try.

They walked out of the break room together and saw that the two men at the front desk had left. The younger woman came over to Amalia, and they were deep in conversation immediately.

When Dougherty finished his shift at the hotel, he phoned the Longueuil police station for Legault and was told she was at the hospital.

“Why?”

“I can't say.”

He was in the phone booth in the lobby of the hotel, and he closed the door and said, “I'm Detective Dougherty from Montreal, I'm working with her on an investigation. What's going on?”