A Little More Free

by John McFetridge

  Now Murray was nodding a little himself and Dougherty couldn’t tell if he was angry or not.

  When the silence at the table started to get awkward, Carpentier said, “When was the last time you spoke to David?”

  “A few weeks ago. There wasn’t anything unusual.”

  Carpentier said, “The lawyer we spoke to said that David became a little withdrawn after the trip to Toronto and the statement.”

  Murray looked at his wife and said, “What state­ment?”

  “About the amnesty.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  Something else they fought about, Dougherty figured.

  Carpentier said, “I don’t know about this amnesty.”

  “A few resister groups from all over Canada got together in Toronto,” Mrs. Murray said. “Back in January. They issued a statement saying they rejected the amnesty proposals that are being talked about.”

  “They don’t want amnesty?” Carpentier said.

  “I’m not sure of the details. They said something about the amnesty, the way it was worded still had them guilty.”

  “They are guilty,” Murray said.

  Mrs. Murray looked at Carpentier and said, “They claim they’re the ones who refused to commit the crime — they say the whole Vietnam War is a crime.”

  Murray was shaking his head but he didn’t say anything.

  “And they say the amnesty offered doesn’t have the same provisions for deserters as it does for draft dodgers.”

  Dougherty was looking at Murray when his wife said the word deserter and he saw him wince but it looked like it might have been more pain than anger.

  Carpentier said, “This amnesty, it is happening soon?”

  “Oh, it’s just election talk,” Mrs. Murray said.

  “And do you think David became more withdrawn after the trip to Toronto?”

  She took a moment and then said, “Maybe. It’s been very hard on him. On all of us. People think …” She stopped and took a breath and then said, “People think he was just afraid to stay in the army, to go to Vietnam, they think he just ran away. It’s not like that.”

  Dougherty watched Chuck Murray staring at his coffee mug and he really couldn’t get a read on the guy.

  Mrs. Murray said, “David is very patriotic. Was. I remember when he was in third grade he drew a big map of the United States for a project. He was so sweet, writing in all the capitals. Do you remember that, Chuck? It was on his wall for years.”

  Murray nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “I think when David first came to Canada,” Mrs. Murray said, “he thought people would understand that he wasn’t running away, he wanted to continue his work, his protesting of the war. He always hated the idea of war. I remember when they had to do that duck and cover in school, he was just a little boy but he said to me, ‘Hiding under our desks won’t save us from the bomb.’ He had nightmares about the bomb. We heard so much about it, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb.”

  She paused and Dougherty was thinking about the stuff he saw on TV when he was a kid, the explosions at the Bikini Atoll and others he couldn’t remember the names of, how powerful and huge the blasts were and, of course, the two in Japan during the war. And the bomb had only gotten more powerful.

  “But since he’s been in Canada?” Carpentier said.

  “The longer it’s gone on the harder it gets. David didn’t expect … No one expected it to go on this long, to be this … deadly.”

  Carpentier nodded and Dougherty watched him, couldn’t tell if he was considering it, thinking about it, or just waiting a moment to get back to the questions at hand. For a moment Dougherty wondered if this stuff would be taught in some detective classes but then realized this was the class. On-the-job training.

  Talking to a mother whose son has been murdered.

  “He didn’t mention anyone he was working for?” Carpentier said.

  Mrs. Murray shook her head. Then she said, “But maybe he was different lately. The last couple of times he called we didn’t talk about what he was doing. Usually he told me about an article he’d written, promised to mail it to me but he almost never did.” She smiled. “But this spring and through the summer, he didn’t talk so much about that kind of thing.” She shrugged. “He was getting nostalgic, I think.”

  Carpentier looked at Chuck Murray and said, “Did you talk to him?”

  Murray shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to him since he came to Canada.”

  Carpentier nodded and Dougherty felt he would leave it at that, but Murray said, “Even before that, we didn’t talk. We just fought.”

  “Not always,” Mrs. Murray said. She was giving her husband an out, a way to think about better times but he didn’t take it.

  He said, “Since he got mixed up with the hippies, the demonstrations and the protests, all we did was fight.” He paused and Mrs. Murray put her hand over his, held it and he said, “I thought he was throwing his life away. He was supposed to go to college and have a good life. Better one than mine.”

  Mrs. Murray said, “Chuck.”

  “Him and his dirty friends, those college kids. Ruining the country.”

  Carpentier said, “So, you haven’t spoken to David in a few years?”

  Murray shook his head and Dougherty thought it was like the guy couldn’t believe it himself. Murray didn’t look at anyone at the table, not even his wife, and he said, “The last time we talked was after the riot in New York, just after Kent State.”

  Mrs. Murray said, “Chuck,” again but her husband didn’t look like he was getting mad. He said, “David was so mad about Kent State, but then he was just crazy about what happened in New York. He had pictures, some of them had been in newspapers, the hard hats going after the students.” He looked at his wife and said, “You remember?”

  She nodded and glanced at Dougherty and at Carpentier and said, “There was a protest in New York, an anti-war rally. They were marching through the streets and some construction workers confronted them.”

  Murray smirked at the word, but his wife continued, talking to Carpentier, “They beat the students.” She paused and then she said, “The police just watched them.”

  Dougherty thought, Well, sometimes that’s riot strategy: let it run out of gas on its own.

  “David was so mad,” Chuck Murray said, “he was yelling about how they used pipes with the flag wrapped around them as clubs.”

  Carpentier said, “I don’t remember that.”

  “It was the last time we talked,” Murray said. He looked at his wife for a moment and then looked away.

  Dougherty was watching Carpentier, seeing if he’d steer the conversation back to what Mrs. Murray and David had talked about but he was thinking about all the fights he’d had with his own father and how they still fought sometimes. Dougherty’s father was still trying to get him to go to university, now talking about law school of all things, but Dougherty couldn’t imagine not talking to him for two years.

  After that it was awkward small talk till they finished their lunch and Carpentier paid the bill. Then they stood on the sidewalk on St. Jacques Street, and Carpentier asked if they needed any help making arrangements.

  Mrs. Murray said, “Oh, thank you, but that’s all right. Father Denison — he’s our priest at St. Bernard’s in Middleton, just outside Madison — he’s talking to the church here. They’re arranging to have David sent home.”

  “How long will you be staying in Montreal?”

  “Just one more night,” Mrs. Murray said.

  “In that case,” Carpentier said, shaking Murray’s hand, “I’ll phone you as soon as I have any ­information.” He shook Mrs. Murray’s hand and held out a business card saying, “And if you have any questions for me, or if you think of anything that might help, please call me.”

  Mrs. Murr
ay took the card and shrugged her shoulders. Then she looked at Dougherty and said, “Thank you, Constable.”

  Dougherty had no idea what to say so he didn’t say anything. He tried to look as earnest as he could, but he couldn’t hold it when Mrs. Murray smiled at him and gave him a quick, awkward hug.

  Then Chuck Murray said, “You know, I always thought I was right and David was wrong.”

  It was quiet for a moment and then Murray said, “I’d like to argue with him one more time.”

  Carpentier said, “Oui, of course.”

  Murray gave a quick nod and then Dougherty and Carpentier watched the American couple walk away towards the parking lot behind police headquarters.

  “Bon,” Carpentier said after a moment, “have you spoken to any of your contacts?”

  “What?”

  “Drug dealers? Did any of them know David Murray?”

  Dougherty said, “I don’t know, I haven’t talked to anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  Dougherty was going to say because he was still working a regular shift and doing the surveillance on the museum robbery and no one told him to talk to drug dealers but he just said, “I will tonight.”

  “Good. Okay, au travais.”

  Before he walked away Dougherty said, “Why did you bring me to this lunch, Detective?”

  Carpentier said, “I thought with you being the same age as the son they might see something in you, quelque chose de semblable, some similarity.”

  “Something the same between me and that kid with the long hair and the beard?”

  “Maybe, yes, for the mother. I thought maybe it would help her if she had something to say and she wasn’t sure if she should.”

  Now Dougherty was thinking that it wasn’t a terrible strategy and he said, “Too bad it didn’t work.”

  “We don’t know that,” Carpentier said. “She took the card.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  “Penalties are killing us,” Duclos said. “Two in the first ten minutes and they scored on both power plays.”

  There was a twenty-inch colour TV on the counter beside the coffee maker in the break room, a couple cops watching but most of the squad had gone back out on patrol. Friday night, it could get lively.

  Dougherty said, “Where’d you get the TV?”

  “Evidence room.”

  It was just after nine, Dougherty finally finishing his day shift, so just after six in Vancouver where the game was being played, and he was wondering how the cops there would do with crowds that had started drinking in the middle of the afternoon.

  Dougherty took a quick shower, changed into jeans and a leather jacket and was looking through some files when the second period ended with the Soviets up 4–1 and Duclos saying, “These maudits épais should go to Russia and not come back.”

  Dougherty said, “You don’t think they’ll win all four games in Moscow?”

  “Tabarnak, Dog-eh-dee, aren’t you going home already?”

  “I’m off till Monday, see you then.”

  As he was leaving, Dougherty looked at the other cops. Like Duclos, most of the other guys in the room were going from resigned to angry. Mad.

  Dougherty was in the Rymark Tavern on Peel when the game ended, 5–3 for the Soviets, and the place was silent, most of the drinkers still just stunned, but it came alive when Phil Esposito was interviewed on the ice and he told Johnny Esaw how hard they were trying, how they were giving their hundred and fifty percent, and he couldn’t believe the booing they were getting in their own buildings.

  There was booing in the Rymark then.

  On the TV, Esposito looking pissed off, kept talking, saying that he was really disappointed in the fans, and someone yelled at the TV, “You’re disappointed?” and there was a little laughter but not much. There was anger. Esposito said, “Every one of us guys, thirty-five guys who came out to play for Team Canada, we did it because we love our country and not for any other reason. They can throw the money for the pension fund out the window, they can throw anything they want out the window — we came because we love Canada.”

  Dougherty finished his beer and started for the door then. A few guys were yelling at the TV, saying, “Yeah, now you’re fucking patriotic, go back to Boston,” and someone else was saying, “Maybe if you weren’t so fucking arrogant, playing golf all summer, you wouldn’t be making a fool of yourself.”

  If he’d been on duty, Dougherty would’ve been getting ready for the fights he knew would be starting when the drunks got tired of shouting at the TV and started shouting at each other but he wasn’t, he was just looking for one guy. He’d been to a couple of bars before the Rymark, and heard the same kind of anger building, but he hadn’t seen Danny Buckley.

  Buck-Buck was a guy Dougherty had known since they were both kids in Point St. Charles. Dougherty’s parents had moved across the river into a nice duplex with a front lawn and a backyard when Dougherty was in his last year of high school but he still thought of the Point as home. A couple of years back when he first worked with Detective Carpentier and they were looking for a guy who was killing young women and a girl disappeared in the Point after buying some dope, Dougherty had looked up his old friend Danny Buckley.

  His old tormentor, really. Buck-Buck was one of the gang of English kids who beat him up because Dougherty went to the French school. Or because his mother was French. Or because he was a loner. Or because they could. Then Buck-Buck grew up and got into a real gang, the Point Boys, Irish guys who started out unloading ships in the port of Montreal, slipping heroin from Marseille and hash from the Middle East to the Mafia, and then went into business for themselves, getting dealers out onto the streets.

  And a rising tide lifts all boats. A couple years back, when Dougherty needed information he ran his own undercover operation, buying grass from him, but Buckley had moved up to wholesaler and now there was a layer or two of insulation between him and the street.

  Still, Dougherty spent the night looking in bars where Buckley was known to spend time and he got lucky in George’s across the street from the Playboy Club on Aylmer.

  “Look at you,” Dougherty said, “finally put on a jacket and a tie and you don’t need one anymore.”

  Buckley was standing at the bar, looking out over the red and black room, the low ceiling curving around the stage, the place intimate even though there were probably a hundred and fifty people looking to have a good time, and he said, “Too bad, you wouldn’t have gotten in.”

  “I would’ve,” Dougherty said. He leaned back against the bar and looked out over the room, too, and said, “They used to have a rock band in here.”

  “Still Life,” Buckley said. “They were good.”

  “They must be at the Laugh-In now.”

  Buckley took a drink from the highball glass he was holding and said, “They broke up, nobody has a house band anymore.”

  “Or an orchestra.”

  “Jesus, Dougherty, how old are you?”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything, but he was thinking that he felt old. That was funny, a guy in his twenties, but like George’s he felt in between — too old for the Laugh-In or the Yellow Door, filled with long-haired guys and rock bands that were way too loud, but too young for the Playboy Club or the Stork or Altitheque on the fiftieth floor of Place Ville Marie. He said, “The clubs are dying.”

  “What, because the Playboy Club closed?”

  “What?”

  Buckley smirked. “Last week, why do you think all these girls are here?”

  Dougherty looked at the waitresses, saw them for the first time really, in their miniskirts and boots and tight white blouses and realized they did look like bunnies without the ears and tails.

  “The Hawaiian closed, too.”

  “That dump? About time.” Buckley said, “Some­thing else will o
pen. This is Montreal — it’s all about the nightlife.” He smiled, but he looked like a shark. Then he said, “What’re you doing here, Dougherty, why aren’t you out looking for O’Brien and that other moron?”

  For a moment Dougherty didn’t recognize the name and then he said, “Boutin, Jean-Marc Boutin.” The other two guys who’d started the fire at the Wagon Wheel. “We’re looking. You know where they are? O’Brien’s from Verdun, maybe he was a customer?”

  Buckley shook his head.

  Dougherty felt out of his depth, like he was playing a game he was no good at. But Buckley, man, he looked right at home leaning against the bar, looking over the club, not worried at all about the cop.

  Screw it. He had to keep trying, so Dougherty asked Buckley about working at the port and were they on strike again and Buck-Buck told him yeah, and Thunder Bay and Sarnia, too, and they shot the shit for a while, Buck-Buck saying how they were going to get a raise, all the way from $3.50 an hour to $4.70, and Dougherty said, “Someday you’ll be up to five bucks an hour,” and Buckley said, “That what they pay you?”

  Dougherty nodded and drank some of his beer, thinking that if he got paid for this shit he was doing on his own time it’d be over two hundred a week.

  Then Buckley said, “What do you want, Dougherty? I can’t help you, I’m not in that business anymore.”

  “Sure you are, and I still don’t care,” Dougherty said. “I’m looking for someone you might know.”

  “Do I look like I know any bikers?”

  “Of course you do,” Dougherty said. “To me.” He’d almost forgotten the dead biker on Atwater, the other murder Carpentier was working on, and it drove him nuts that Buckley was on top of everything. He tried to look casual, looked around the club and said, “These people don’t know you like I do, Buck-Buck. They don’t go way back with you.”

  Using the nickname helped — Buckley was finally getting mad and that’s what Dougherty wanted. But not too mad, so he said, “I don’t care about that murder, I want to know if you know a guy named David Murray. An American, draft dodger.”