A Little More Free

by John McFetridge

  Judy nodded.

  “And all this separation stuff, it’s starting to feel so, I don’t know, us and them.”

  “Two solitudes — did you read that book?”

  “No, but I think I get it now.”

  “So that’s it,” Judy said, “things feel like they’re falling apart.”

  “And you’re still trying to hold them together?”

  She scowled at him but it turned into a kind of a smile and she said, “You’re the one breaking up the fights,” and she threw a pillow at him.

  He jumped on the bed and got his hands up under the sheet and tickled her, and she pushed him off and rolled over and got on top, one knee on each side of his chest, a hand holding each of his wrists and she said, “I can keep you in line,” and he said, “Oh yeah?”

  She said, “Yeah,” and leaned forward and kissed him.

  When she pulled her lips away from his, she kissed his cheek and then his ear and she whispered, “I think you need to do more undercover work.”

  The next morning when they were getting dressed, Dougherty said he was going back to his old neighbourhood to find a guy who might have been smuggling dope with David Murray, a guy named Greg Herridge that everybody called Goose. He said to Judy, “Have you ever heard of him?”

  She said no, and Dougherty said, “Well, it’s all I’ve got. The only other name anybody gave me was Richard Burnside, and I can’t imagine him hanging out with David Murray.”

  “He did,” Judy said. “They hung out a little.”

  “Do you know Burnside?”

  “Yeah, why?” Then she said, “Oh, come on, you don’t think he killed David?”

  “No,” Dougherty said, thinking about what Carpentier had said, about how he’d have people for that kind of thing. “But he might have some idea who else David was hanging around with.”

  “I guess he could. Do you want to meet him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know,” Judy said, “it does feel like taking sides.”

  “Yes, but we’re the good guys.”

  “Are we?”

  Dougherty said, “I don’t know about any of the big issues, the politics or anything like that. I just know that someone killed David Murray and we have to find out who it was.”

  “Okay,” Judy said. “That’s right.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  Dougherty spent Friday morning at the coroner’s inquest into the Blue Bird fire. The fire inspector said he was at the club ten days before the fire but he didn’t go upstairs to the Wagon Wheel — it was a re-inspection he said, to check three things on the ground floor and they had all been addressed. Then there was a lot of reports presented saying things like the rear fire exit was one and a half inches too narrow and that there hadn’t been a full inspection in over two years.

  By the lunch break, Dougherty had had all he could take, and he went back to Station Ten.

  A Volkswagen Beetle was parked in front. Dougherty recognized it as one of the delivery cars from King of the Pizza on St. Catherine, and he walked into the building saying, “I hope you got all dressed.”

  Delisle was paying for the four extra-large pizzas and he said, “You suppose to be at the inquest.”

  “I was.”

  The first game from Moscow, with the time difference, was starting in Montreal at one. And it started with a laugh, Phil Esposito slipped during the opening ceremonies, landed on his ass.

  Delisle said, “Tabarnak.”

  Esposito got up and took an exaggerated bow.

  Gagnon said, “Bon, c’est la vraie série qui commence maintenant.”

  Dougherty was taking a bite of pizza and thinking, Now it’s real?

  It was better, anyway, Canada scoring early and heading into the third period up 3–1. By that time Delisle had started answering the phone again and sending guys out on calls.

  “This is more like it, now we win the four games in Russia.”

  One of the cops in the room said, “Soviet Union,” and Delisle said, “What?”

  “Not Russians, Soviets.”

  Five minutes into the third period Paul Henderson scored and it was 4–1.

  Delisle said, “Bon, tu retournement à l’enquête?” and Dougherty said, “No, they’re not going to call me, they have dozens of expert witnesses to get through.”

  “Then you better get on patrol, les drunks vont célébrer.”

  Dougherty said yeah and started towards the door but then he heard the groan in the break room and stopped.

  “4–2, no big deal.”

  “Tabarnak!”

  Delisle said, “Right between the legs. Why is Esposito playing, you can drive a truck through his legs, shit. Why isn’t Dryden playing?”

  Dougherty came back into the room and picked up another slice of pizza. “Was it even ten seconds to score that one?”

  “Why are they playing defence?” Delisle said. He was whining now. “This team was built to score, why don’t they score?”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything but he watched the team running around, panicking in their own end. This whole series nothing like they’d expected.

  Gagnon said, “We could use Martin and Hadfield now.”

  Another cop asked him what he meant and Gagnon said that Vic Hadfield, Rick Martin and Jocelyn Guevremont had left the team and come back to Canada.

  “C’est vrai? Ils ont déserté?”

  “They weren’t playing,” Gagnon said.

  Dougherty was thinking the people he’d been talking to lately probably wouldn’t call a guy who left a hockey team a deserter, but it seemed strange. Still, he couldn’t blame them, take them all the way to Russia and then not play them.

  “Qu’en est-Perrault?”

  “Ne joue pas.”

  “Tabarnak.”

  And then the Soviets scored again, tied it up.

  “Why don’t they play, Perrault and Martin?” Delisle said.

  “Sinden doesn’t play the young guys,” Gagnon said.

  A young cop sitting near the TV said, “Les amis d’Eagleson,” and Delisle said, “Quoi?”

  The young guy looked back over his shoulder and started talking about how Alan Eagleson, the player agent who seemed to be running the tournament, got all his clients on the team to raise their profile so he could get more money out of their NHL teams, how they treated it like a vacation, they had forty guys at the training camp, took thirty-five to Russia. “Qu’est-ce que une équipe fait avec trente-cinq joueurs, si il y en seulement vingt qui jouent?”

  “Holy fuck!”

  Delisle was standing up then, pointing at the TV. “Fuck! C’est ca, that’s it, tabarnak.”

  The Soviets had scored, they were up 5–4 and the Canadians hadn’t touched the puck in five minutes.

  Dougherty stood by the door and watched the end of the game, the Soviets pressing the whole time, moving as a five-man unit, every one of them touching the puck as they moved it around and totally controlled the play.

  Every cop in the room, probably fifteen guys, all disgusted. There was a lot of swearing.

  And Dougherty was thinking about how the Soviets were still a group but the Canadians were all going their own way. He was hearing it in Judy’s voice and he wanted to talk to her, hear what she had to say about it, and that surprised him but then he was snapped out of it by Delisle saying, “What the fuck you smiling at?”

  “Nothing.”

  The game ended 5–4.

  “Three more games,” Delisle said. “We win them all we win the series.”

  “We were supposed to win all eight games,” Gagnon said.

  Delisle looked like he was in pain. “We weren’t ready. We’re ready now.”

  Gagnon shrugged and turned off the TV. “It’s too late no
w.”

  “We can still win the series,” Delisle said. “It’s not over.”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything, but he was feeling the same way Gagnon was, a little ashamed they’d taken the Russians so lightly and mad at the way they were scrambling all over the place.

  And again that made him think of Judy and what she was saying about the groups breaking down and people talking more and more about themselves, personally. Dougherty knew he’d never use a word like “self-actualized” but he could feel the same fraying everywhere he went these days.

  “Bon,” Delisle said and slapped his hand on his desk. “Let’s get out there, the drunks are going to be in a bad mood.”

  Yeah, Dougherty was thinking, Let’s get out there, but it was just the constables moving out of the room, heading for patrols.

  It was only three thirty in the afternoon, and Dougherty figured most of the drunks would have time to sober up before heading home and it wouldn’t be too bad, so he checked out a radio car and drove a few blocks west to Westmount.

  He parked in front of a hydrant on Greene, and as he was crossing the street he looked up at the three black towers that made up Westmount Square a block away. Dougherty’d never been inside, Westmount had their own police force, and he’d never been invited into any of the apartments. Two of the towers were offices, and he’d never been in there, either. It had only been up a few years and already the twenty-some-storey black cubes, designed by a famous architect Dougherty couldn’t remember, looked dated. They were supposed to be modern, Dougherty knew that much, but he thought they just looked out of place.

  Most of Greene Avenue was old three-storey brick buildings: banks, clothing stores, restaurants, a couple of coffee shops. Dougherty walked into the only office building on the street and stopped in the lobby.

  A couple of girls who looked like Dougherty’s sister, Cheryl, in their torn jeans and plaid shirts and leather vests were standing by the building directory and one of them was saying, “Let’s just go up to CKGM — it must be there, it used to be CKGM AM, didn’t it?”

  Dougherty found the listing for the Burnside Music Group, third floor, just as a guy who looked to be close to thirty but trying hard to look hip in his turtleneck and sports jacket stopped and said to the girls, “Are you looking for CHOM?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Moved across the street in the summer. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Dougherty watched them leave the lobby together and didn’t think the guy had a chance with either girl, but then, you never know, Dougherty was getting used to being surprised.

  * * *

  The receptionist, a young woman who looked very businesslike in her skirt and jacket, got up from behind her desk as soon as Dougherty walked in and said, “May I help you, Officer?”

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Burnside.”

  “I’ll see if he’s available.”

  She walked into the office and closed the door but a moment later she was back saying, “Right this way. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “If you need anything, just let me know.” She stood by the door, and when Dougherty walked past her into the office, she closed it behind him. Richard Burnside was in his late twenties, about the same age as Dougherty, but he had long hair and wore jeans and a t-shirt that had the image of a couple of big dice ironed on the front, looked like it came from the head shop in the Alexis Nihon plaza.

  Dougherty thought Burnside looked surprised to see a Montreal cop in uniform in his office, even if the uniform was just the short-sleeved blue shirt open at the collar, but there were still the handcuffs and the gun on the belt.

  He said, “What can I do for you, Officer?”

  Dougherty said, “It’s not official business, I’d just like to talk to you if that’s okay.”

  “Sure, you looking for tickets to Uriah Heep?”

  Dougherty wasn’t sure if his little brother would want to see that show or not, or if he’d be allowed downtown while their father was in the hospital, but just in case he said, “I might, yeah.”

  “Or Elton John, better if you have a date.”

  Didn’t sound like Judy’s idea of a night out, big glitzy concert at the Forum, but Dougherty said, “Maybe, yeah.”

  “The shows are completely sold out, of course,” Burnside said, “but for the boys in blue we could find a couple.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Burnside motioned to a chair and started to sit down himself, getting out his cigarettes and lighting one. He blew smoke at the ceiling and leaned back in his chair and waited.

  Dougherty sat down in the guest chair and said, “I just want to ask you a few questions about David Murray.”

  Burnside was about to take a drag on his smoke but he stopped for a second and then inhaled and blew the smoke out in a long stream, making Dougherty think he was buying himself some time to try and make it look like he had to think to place the name.

  “David Murray?”

  Dougherty was a little surprised that this was the way Burnside wanted to play it, trying to pretend he didn’t really know the guy. “Yeah, he was an American living in Montreal. He worked for some of the war resistance organizations, the draft dodgers and deserters. Someone killed him.”

  Burnside knew, of course, at least Dougherty really got the feeling he did and that it mattered to him, but Burnside tried to shrug it off, leaning forward and flicking his cigarette over the ashtray, saying, “I heard something.”

  “Someone beat him to death,” Dougherty said. “Caved in his skull.”

  Burnside was nodding and he said, “That’s too bad.”

  “He didn’t even fight back.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s strange,” Dougherty said. “I understand he was involved in some of the benefit shows — Jesse Winchester, I think, and Pete Seeger at Place des Arts?”

  “Well, I really just do the rock stuff,” Burnside said. “All the big shows, did you see the Stones at the Forum?”

  Dougherty said, “I got called in when the bomb went off.”

  “That was some union thing out of the States, wasn’t it?”

  Dougherty said yeah, but he could tell Burnside knew a lot more about it than he was letting on.

  “Led Zeppelin, that was fantastic,” Burnside said. “I do all the big rock shows. When I was a kid I worked for Sam Gesser, you know him?”

  “No.”

  “Old-timer, great guy, he booked all the legends: Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Liberace. It was in Montreal that he came up with the name, did you know that?”

  Dougherty said no but decided to let Burnside keep talking. The guy was so nervous he had to and Dougherty was thinking that if he was here, Detective Carpentier would let him talk.

  “Yeah, he was just a kid then, Liberace, he was playing the Mount Royal Hotel, the Normandie Roof, but he wasn’t getting much action. He was Walter Liberace then, that was it, nothing special. But then they came up with the idea to just call him Liberace, put that on the posters and the ads, make him sound a little more exotic, and it worked. He stuck with it after that.”

  “That was this Gesser guy?” Dougherty said. He wanted Burnside to keep talking, relax a little, let his guard down.

  “No, that was someone else, I’m not sure who it was. I got a job as a stage manager for Gesser when I was a teenager, and then Janis Joplin puked all over his shoes backstage at the Forum and I got all the rock acts.” He held out his hands like it was a punchline but they were shaking so Dougherty just waited and Burnside said, “He said to me, ‘Kid, you can have all the rock stuff,’ and here I am.”

  Dougherty thought about saying something about Burnside’s father owning half of downtown maybe being a little bit of it, too, but he instead said, “When was the last time you saw David?” and he could tell Bu
rnside knew exactly when it was by the way he made a big deal about taking another drag and thinking about it.

  Finally he said, “Quite a while. I don’t know exactly.”

  “You weren’t at the party they had for him, at the Yellow Door?”

  “I didn’t know him that well.”

  Dougherty could tell it was a lie. He couldn’t say exactly how but he knew. He said, “Look, it’s okay, I know the guy was bringing in drugs, supplying the bands, I don’t care about that,” and Burnside burst out laughing, a loud, high-pitched squawk, and looked to Dougherty like he was relieved. “He didn’t get landed immigrant status,” Dougherty said, “so he worked in the underground.”

  Burnside pulled himself together but he still had a slight look of amusement on his face, still glad to be talking about drug smuggling. He said, “Officer, I don’t have any idea about that. I won’t deny these bands and their fans have drugs. Have you been in the Forum for a show? You’ll get high just being there, everybody’s smoking dope, but that’s not my business.”

  “It’s not mine, either,” Dougherty said. “I’m trying to find out who caved in his skull.”

  Burnside nodded, serious again, and Dougherty was thinking the guy’s really off guard, time to get something out of him, but now he wasn’t sure what it would be. He thought talking about the drugs would’ve shaken him more.

  “He was killed Saturday night,” Dougherty said, “September second, the night of the Canada-Russia game, the first one here at the Forum.”

  “That was a few weeks ago,” Burnside said.

  “Were you with him that day?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  Dougherty shrugged and said, “Friday?”

  Burnside stood up and stubbed out his cigarette, saying, “Officer, I have no idea why you think I was with David Murray but you’re mistaken. I barely knew the man. Now, I’m sorry but I’m very busy. Sophie will show you out.”

  Then he looked past Dougherty and said, “Sophie!” and when she came into the office he said, “Officer . . .” and when he realized he didn’t know the name just said, “The officer is leaving now.”