A Little More Free

by John McFetridge

  “Maybe that’s how they met.”

  Dougherty started to say something but then he stopped and said, “Hey, Cheryl.”

  His sister was walking towards him, and she stopped and said, “I don’t see any traffic needs directing.”

  “Did you fall asleep in class?”

  “I’m on my way to the library.” She motioned farther along de Maisonneuve to Drummond, where the apartment building extended over one lane of the street and made a kind of one-block-long tunnel.

  Dougherty said, “You know where the library is?” and Cheryl ignored it and said, “Who’s your friend?”

  “Judy, this is my little sister, Cheryl. She’s just started what we all expect to be a very long career as a student.”

  “Are you going to McGill?”

  “Sir George.”

  Judy said, “What’s your major?” and Dougherty said, “This week?”

  “Ha ha.” Cheryl looked at Judy and said, “Psy-chology.”

  “Cool.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay, now that we’re all caught up,” and made a move to walk away.

  Cheryl said, “Are you going to see Dad later?”

  “Yeah, I start my shift at four, I’ll stop in some time after that.”

  “Mom’s going right after work, she’ll be there by five thirty.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay, I’ll try to make it then,” and started to walk away.

  Judy said, “It was nice to meet you,” and Cheryl said, “You, too,” and they shook hands before walking in different directions on de Maisonneuve.

  After a few steps in silence, Judy said, “Sometimes this is such a small town,” and Dougherty said, “That’s because you’re an Anglo and you only use half of it, or less.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “When was the last time you were east of St. Denis?”

  “My grandfather is buried in Hawthorn-Dale, that’s pretty far east.”

  Dougherty glanced sideways at Judy and said, “My grandfather’s buried there, too.”

  “So you’ve been.”

  “It’s got that big kids’ section.”

  Judy said, “I think that was from a typhus epidemic.”

  “I bet your father says he’ll be happy when the Ville-Marie Tunnel opens.”

  Judy said, “He may have.”

  “This city feels more divided.”

  “More than what?”

  “Than it used to, I guess,” Dougherty said.

  Judy said, “Divide and conquer. We see it in Milton Park all the time. The developers are very good at giving just enough people a little of what they want so we’re always fighting with each other and they get what they want.”

  “So who gets what out of driving the city further apart?”

  “Money, power, the usual.”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, I guess.” He stopped then and said, “I have to get changed and get to work. Do you want to get together later?”

  “You mean when you finish, at midnight?”

  “After I see my dad in the hospital, we could grab dinner.”

  Judy said, “You’d be in your uniform.”

  “I guess it’s a big step for you to be seen with me like this.”

  “It sure is.”

  Dougherty wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not, so he didn’t say anything and waited, but she was just looking at him, so he said, “Yeah, I get it.”

  She nodded a little, and he said, “How about lunch tomorrow?”

  “Okay.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay.”

  Then as he walked back along de Maisonneuve towards Station Ten, Dougherty was thinking that the Richard Burnside connection was probably enough now for Carpentier to get interested and maybe interview the guy himself. And Dougherty felt one step closer to detective.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  It was almost two in the morning when Dougherty finally got back to Station Ten to clock out, and as soon as he walked into the building, the night shift desk sergeant, Arseneault, told him to phone Detective Carpentier at homicide.

  At the homicide office, one of the other detectives answered the phone and said he had no idea why Carpentier wanted him to call, and just before Dougherty hung up the guy said, “Attends une minute.” Dougherty waited while the guy talked to someone else, and then came back on the line saying, “Come down to the office right now. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Who,” Dougherty said, “Carpentier?”

  “No, the pope, bien sûr, Carpentier.” He hung up.

  Dougherty didn’t bother changing out of his uniform, but he walked the couple of blocks to his apartment and got his own car and drove down to Bonsecours Street. On the way through the finally sleeping city, he figured that Carpentier had looked into the Richard Burnside connection he’d given him what seemed like a long time ago, but what was really only about ten hours.

  Time flies when you’re wrestling drunks out of bars.

  Even on a Wednesday night, Montreal was hopping. Late September, even though no one mentioned it, they could feel winter was coming and were getting in every minute of partying before the long hibernation.

  At HQ, Dougherty went up to the fourth floor and walked down the hall to the homicide office. He was getting used to it, and starting to feel like he could fit in coming to work here, wearing a nice suit and taking charge of an investigation. He was thinking maybe Carpentier had already brought in Burnside and got a confession out of him and they were going to celebrate.

  But when he walked into the office, the detectives standing by the window all had stern expressions.

  Carpentier was at his desk, and he motioned Dougherty over and said, “Good, you didn’t change — the uniform will help.”

  “Sir?”

  “We have one of your friends downstairs in detention, and I thought maybe you could talk to him. There are a couple of things we’d like to know.”

  “Is it Richard Burnside?”

  Carpentier looked surprised for a second, and then said, “Oh, no, that was a good idea. The two of them were probably des amoureux, so to speak, but Burnside wasn’t involved in the murder.”

  “He wasn’t?” Dougherty could feel whatever confidence he had coming into the office slipping away.

  “That was the night of the first game, remember, the Soviets at the Forum. Burnside was there, with a group of people, then they went out to drown their sorrows.”

  “He was at the hockey game?”

  Carpentier shrugged. “Lots of witnesses. His father was there.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “No, but we did talk to others. Look, Constable, it was a good idea. You did well,” Carpentier said, “but that’s the way it goes. Now,” he picked up a file and handed it to Dougherty and said, “You know Daniel Buckley.”

  “Buck-Buck, sure.”

  “He’s an informant of yours?”

  “We haven’t spoken in a while.”

  “Yes, he’s moving up. Ste. Marie tells me these Point Boys are moving a lot more drug themselves now, not just unloading the boats.”

  “Yeah,” Dougherty said, “someone in the Point finally got ambitious.”

  “Well, there’s an opportunity now. In any event, this Buckley seems to be moving up.”

  “Up to murder?”

  “Is that hard to believe?”

  Dougherty said, “No, not really.”

  “It’s possible Buckley ordered it, and may have taken part in the murder of Greg Herridge. A kind of house cleaning.”

  “Shit,” Dougherty said, “those guys have been friends their whole lives.”

  “When you move up in this business, you make new friends,” Carpentier said. “It looks like Buckley’s new friends were worried that his old
friends maybe weren’t professional enough.”

  “That’s a tough business.”

  “It is.”

  “I thought it was territory, I thought it was revenge for the guy who was killed in St. Léonard?”

  “It might be — we aren’t positive. What we know is that Buckley called Herridge to meet with him and then he was killed.”

  “So Buckley did it himself or set him up?”

  “Probablement.”

  Dougherty was thinking this was taking it to a whole new level for Buck-Buck, but he wasn’t too surprised. “What do you want to know?”

  “We cannot tell Buckley how we know about the phone call. We have a witness but she needs to be protected.”

  “Has he said anything?”

  Carpentier shrugged and said, “He’s asked for his lawyer, Howard Shrier.”

  “Mob lawyer?”

  Carpentier nodded. “That’s the one. He works for Cotroni.”

  “Buck-Buck is moving up.”

  “You pretend it is a coincidence that you’ve been given the job to transport him to Parthenais jail, talk to him and see if he might be willing to make a deal, tell him it would be good for both of you.”

  Dougherty said, “I can do that,” and Carpentier said, “Yes, you can.”

  * * *

  The guard led Dougherty along the row of cells in the basement that was like a medieval cave: dim lighting, damp and, if it was quiet enough, the sound of rats scurrying around. The guard stopped at the last cell and unlocked it.

  Dougherty said, “Holy shit, Buck-Buck?” and hoped he didn’t overdo it with the surprise. “They told me I was transporting a murderer.”

  Buckley was standing up then and said, “Eat shit, Dougherty.”

  Dougherty laughed and said, “These look good on you,” as he slapped his handcuffs onto Buckley’s wrists and squeezed them tight, the steel teeth clattering as they closed. “This should be a fun ride,” and he gently shoved Buckley’s back.

  In the parking lot, Buckley stopped by the back door of the police car and said, “Now you’re a taxi driver, is that a demotion?”

  Dougherty winked as he put Buckley in the back seat. “Watch your head.”

  He drove slowly out of the parking lot and through the empty streets of Old Montreal, past the construction for the new Ville-Marie Expressway and the big old Édifice Jacques-Viger, dark and looking like an empty castle with its turrets and stone walls, a long way from the fancy hotel and train station it once was, now just a bland office building inside. Almost dawn, the only time the city was ever so quiet.

  “Jesus Murphy, Buck-Buck, you killed Goose? Did he fuck your sister?”

  Dougherty kept his eye on the rear-view, watching Buckley roll his eyes and look out the window, pretending to be bored, but Dougherty knew he had to be a little worried, probably thinking even if the cops didn’t have enough on him they’d fake it well enough to send him down for a few years anyway.

  “Naw,” Dougherty said, “we’d give him a medal for that.”

  Buck-Buck was shaking his head but still not saying anything.

  “They tell me you’re moving up, cleaning house, getting rid of the wannabes and the amateurs, the groupies. I guess Goose wasn’t really tough enough, was he?”

  Dougherty pulled over and stopped. They were on Notre-Dame, under the Jacques Cartier Bridge.

  “He had a big mouth, though,” Dougherty said, “that’s for sure.”

  Buckley said, “So do you.”

  “Nobody listens to me,” Dougherty said. “I’m just some Anglo from the Point, like you.”

  “Not like me, I’d never kiss their asses like you do, you’re practically a frog.”

  “There’s a couple guys, maybe one guy who might listen to me. If I said you might be willing to make a deal.”

  Buckley laughed. Not loud and not hard, but he laughed.

  “They’re going to put you away for Goose, you know that, right?”

  “They’ve got nothing.”

  “They’ll make it up. If they don’t get a deal from you, they’ll get a deal from your lawyer, Shrier. It’ll stop with you, it’ll never get to any of his real clients.”

  “You have no idea what’s going on.”

  “I know you’re going to Kingston for a long time,” Dougherty said. “Did you kill David Murray, too?”

  “You’re funny, Eddie.”

  Dougherty saw something in the rear-view, though, something in Buckley’s eyes.

  “Doesn’t really matter, they’ll pin that one on you, too.”

  Buckley smirked, dismissed it.

  “Two murders, you’ll do real time, twenty-five to life.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Goose told me himself — he was working with Murray, giving him a hard time because Murray wouldn’t commit.”

  “Fag.”

  Dougherty said, “So you killed them both. Shit, you are cleaning house.”

  Buckley shrugged that off, too, and Dougherty realized that Buckley probably killed Goose because of his big mouth, because Goose talked to Dougherty.

  “You’re fucking cold, Danny.” He slammed the car into gear and hit the gas, squealing the tires and pulling a U on the empty street.

  “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Who cares.”

  “If I have to I’ll start talking — this’ll blow up in your face.”

  “Sure it will.”

  “You talk to Murray’s boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, we did,” Dougherty said. “He was at the hockey game.”

  “So what, guy with his money, his connections.”

  “Why would Burnside kill his own boyfriend?”

  “You’re thick, Dougherty, you know that? You think Burnside’s rock ’n’ roll business is making him any money? You think he clears a cent after paying everybody off he has to pay?”

  “So what?”

  “So, what do you think his old man would do if he found out he was a fag?”

  “Sure, you want me to believe Burnside was worried his father would cut off the money.”

  “Cut something off,” Buckley said. He was smiling. “Look, you’re the detective, or you wanna be, I’m just saying that maybe Burnside was the one who wanted Murray to go away.”

  Dougherty took his foot off the gas and eased it onto the brake. “So he hired you?”

  “Me? Jesus Murphy, you don’t give up, I’ll give you that.”

  Dougherty stepped on the gas again but it was in his head now, and he was thinking it was possible. It fit with what he’d heard about the Toronto trip, how Murray wanted to be more public about their relationship and Burnside didn’t, but was it enough reason to kill a guy?

  Well, somebody killed him for some reason.

  They were pulling up in front of Parthenais, the smooth glass building that held the Quebec Provincial Police headquarters and three storeys of jail cells on the top. It was only a few years old and had already had a few headline-grabbing escapes.

  “All right, you sure this bullshit is the story you want to stick to?”

  Buckley was looking up at the cell floors at the top of the building. “I’ve said everything I have to say.”

  Dougherty said, “Then I guess there’s a few French guys looking forward to meeting you.”

  He got out and opened the back door of the police car, and Buckley got out saying, “Don’t worry about me, Eddie, I parle enough français to get by.”

  “Sure you do.” Dougherty pushed him towards the building but was already moving on and thinking about what he’d tell Carpentier, how it was probably nothing, just bullshit from a guy scared he was going to jail for a long time.

  But they should probably check it out.

  * * *

  The sun was coming and the
day was starting at police headquarters. Dougherty checked in the car and rode the elevator up to the fourth floor with a couple of secretaries.

  The homicide office was busy already and Dougherty felt like he was walking into the middle of something. He saw Carpentier talking to Ste. Marie and waited till they finally looked up and waved him over.

  Ste. Marie said, “Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?”

  “Rien,” Dougherty said. “Rien de nouveau.”

  Carpentier said, “He doesn’t want a deal at all?”

  Dougherty wasn’t sure if he should answer in French or English but he said, “He’s still saying he had nothing to do with it. Now he’s saying Richard Burnside had David Murray killed.”

  Ste. Marie shook his head and said, “Encore l’histoire de chantage, tabarnak.”

  “He tried to sell us some bullshit about Burnside being blackmailed,” Carpentier said. “Threatening to go to his father.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. You’re sure it’s bullshit?”

  “Yes, we checked,” Carpentier said. “He’s just throwing shit out there now. Bien, that’s the way he wants it, fine.”

  The detectives turned back to one another, and Dougherty felt dismissed. He waited a few seconds, and then there was no doubt, they were finished with him, so he turned and walked out of the office.

  A couple of men in their fifties wearing nice suits were coming into the office, and Dougherty could feel the place tense up. He heard Carpentier say, “Bonjour, Paul-Emile.”

  On his way down the hall, Dougherty saw Rozovsky go into the evidence room, and he followed him. “Hey Peter, do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  Rozovsky had a cup of coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other, and he said, “Gearing up for something big, it looks like.”

  “The assistant director is here and some other guy.”

  “Marcel Plante,” Rozovsky said. “From the mayor’s office. All kinds of bigwigs coming in.”

  “And me getting the bum’s rush out.”

  “So, what do you want with all that tsuris.”

  Dougherty said, “All that what?”