One or the Other
Page 31
Dougherty said, “Yes, but it would be better if there are charges.”
“Yes.”
Dougherty stood on the sidewalk and watched Legault and her husband drive away through the empty streets. The parties — and the mourning — came to an end. Then he went back into the station.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Detective Carpentier said, “You know, without the confession you have nothing.”
Dougherty said, “I know.”
Carpentier tapped the paper and said, “It may not be accepted into court, they could get good lawyers.”
Dougherty didn’t say anything.
“It is very detailed,” Carpentier said. “You got them to say all this?”
“Honestly,” Dougherty said, “Sergeant Legault came in from Longueuil and handled most of it. She would appreciate it if we didn’t mention that.”
“We may have to,” Carpentier said.
“Understood.”
Carpentier shook his head and let out an exhausted sigh. “It’s been quite a night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is good work, Dougherty.”
Dougherty didn’t say anything.
“Very good police work.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Carpentier stood up. It seemed to Dougherty that the overcoat must weigh a thousand pounds. “This is going to cause a lot of problems for Captain Allard and his detectives in Longueuil. It’s going to cause a lot of problems for Olivier, too, with the chief.”
Dougherty nodded. It had been months since his meeting with the assistant director of detectives, Paul-Emile Olivier, and that hadn’t gone all that well.
“I’ll talk to him,” Carpentier said. “And when this blows over in a couple of months I’ll see to it you are transferred to the homicide squad.”
Dougherty wasn’t sure he heard right and said, “Pardon me, sir?”
“You’re going to be a homicide detective,” Carpentier said. He was walking out of the squad room then, and he stopped at the door and looked back. “Don’t worry, you’ll hate it as much as you hate working patrol soon enough.”
Dougherty said, “I don’t hate working patrol.”
Carpentier winked and said, “I know.”
He walked out, and a few moments later Dougherty realized he’d been holding his breath and let it out in a long exhale. He looked around the squad for someone to shake hands with but there was no one there.
Outside the sun was coming up.
As Dougherty drove to LaSalle he started to wonder what he’d say to Judy. They were settled into such a good routine, they were both working days and having dinner together.
They were going to get married.
He had no idea what he’d say to her.
But when he walked into the apartment and saw Judy sitting at the dining room table eating breakfast he knew it would be okay.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
These days if someone brings up the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the conversation usually quickly becomes about the debt incurred, the lack of a gold medal for the host country and the unfinished stadium. But from my vantage point as a sixteen-year-old living in LaSalle, the Olympics were great. I attended one event, with my father, a soccer game between Iran and eventual silver medalist Poland, and I watched many hours a day on TV. I also saved the daily insert section in the Montreal Star for years afterwards. The highlights for me were Nadia Comǎneci, Caitlyn Jenner (then known as Bruce Jenner), Sugar Ray Leonard, the Spinks Brothers, and Greg Joy’s silver medal in the high jump.
But in researching One or the Other I looked at the summer of 1976 in Montreal as an adult and it seemed quite different. Yes, it was a big party, but big changes were in the air.
The Brink’s truck robbery happened very much like it is described in the book and the perpetrators were never caught and the nearly three million dollars never recovered. Whether or not the money was used to purchase cocaine to be sold in the city that summer is speculation, but there is no doubt someone brought in a lot of cocaine and sold it in Montreal that summer.
Bob Colacello, the editor of Interview magazine, wrote that by the mid-1970s “cocaine suddenly was everywhere . . . It went from something people tried to hide, except among close friends, to something people took for granted, and shared openly . . . None of us thought cocaine was really dangerous, or even addictive, back then. Heroin was off limits in our crowd, but coke was like liquor or pot or poppers, fuel for fun, not self-destruction.”
In 1976 a book came out called Cocaine Handbook, with lots of useful information like “testing for purity.” The intro said, “Now that it has come into everyday use . . .” Another phrase that came up a few times in my research was, “Some people have a rule about cocaine: Never buy it, never turn it down.”
Along with cocaine, disco arrived in a big way. Of course, like cocaine it had been around for a while but suddenly that summer it was everywhere. Writing about the large number of discos that opened, the Montreal Gazette said, in a way that seems very Montreal to me, “Saying a street is fashionable may sound derogatory but Crescent Street handles it with elegance and spark.” Seeing something fashionable as a negative may be one of the most striking examples of the gap between the two solitudes in Montreal at the time.
Disco did not arrive in the suburbs in 1976. As a teenager I was firmly in the “disco sucks” camp even though sometimes, when no one else was around, I slipped my radio from CHOM-FM to CKGM-AM to hear “Play That Funky Music” or “Car Wash.” Rediscovering and re-evaluating disco was one of the most fun things about writing this book. Dorian Lynskey’s book, 33 Revolutions Per Minute, has a great chapter on disco as protest music, bringing gay rights to the forefront. In retrospect this is easy to see. At the time it was not. And the movie Funkytown gives a very good idea of what the club scene was like in Montreal in 1976.
Ulrike Meinhof, of the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof gang), really was found hanged in her maximum-security prison cell in West Germany. Her death was ruled a suicide but immediately many people questioned the circumstances. In July 1976, a member of the RAF, Monika Berberich, and three members of the 2 June Movement, Juliane Plambeck, Gabriele Rollnik and Inge Viett, escaped from prison in West Germany. With the memory of the Munich Olympics still fresh, these events added to the security tension at the Montreal Olympics.
After the Olympics, I headed into my final year of high school, the teachers went on strike (there were a lot of strikes in the 1970s) and Quebec headed into an election. It’s usually remembered as the Parti Québécois upset victory, but the real surprise was probably the strong showing of the resurgent Union Nationale party under the leadership of Rodrigue Biron, which led to a three-way split and the PQ majority.
Two teenagers were murdered in 1979, strangled and thrown from the Jacques-Cartier Bridge by two men who had committed many crimes before that night. The two men were picked up quickly by the Montreal police and convicted of the two murders. They are still in prison.
As always, I rely on a lot of people for help with the research, though of course, the mistakes are entirely mine.
My father, though he passed away in 1985, was a Montrealer his whole life and my first guide to the city and I have used a lot of his insights. My uncle Bob, Robert S. McFetridge, though he passed away in 2008 also provided me with a lot of insight into his city (and picking up my tickets for the Olympic soccer game at his corner office on the top floor of Place Ville Marie was a thrill). My cousin Mike Powell took me to the Bob Dylan and The Band concert at the Montreal Forum mentioned in the book. Sadly, Mike was killed in 1990.
Randy McIlwaine, Keith Daniel and Dawn Stark from LaSalle High continue to try to correct my foggy memories of those days, but I resist. Jacques Filippi has once again taken on the task of making my awful French readable. Once again, the mistakes that
remain are mine.
Thanks to everyone at ECW Press. I could not imagine writing these so very Canadian novels without the support of a truly Canadian publisher. And especially to Jen Knoch, who once again provided thorough and thoughtful editing.
And, of course, thanks to my wife, Laurie Reid.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John McFetridge has enjoyed wide critical acclaim for his six novels. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was named a book of the year by Quill & Quire and Tumblin’ Dice was an Amazon Editors’ Pick. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.
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Copyright © John McFetridge, 2016
Published by ECW Press
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McFetridge, John, 1959-, author
One or the other : an Eddie Dougherty mystery / John McFetridge.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77041-327-6 (paperback);
ISBN 978-1-77090-884-0 (PDF);
ISBN 978-1-77090-885-7 (ePub)
I. Title.
PS8575.F48O44 2016 C813’.6 C2016-902323-0
C2016-902324-9
Editor for the press: Jen Knoch
Cover design: Scott Barrie | Cyanotype
Cover images: front, top photo © Tedd Church/Montreal Gazette, falling man © Kamenetskiy Konstantin/Shutterstock, bridge © Michel Piccaya/Shutterstock; back, man with pistol © Baibulsinov Serik/Shutterstock
Author photo: Jimmy McFetridge
The publication of One or the Other has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We also acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.