Black Rock (19 page)

chapter

seventeen

Dougherty managed to get his mother calmed down by asking her if Cheryl left a note or took her things, but his mother said she hadn't.

“But she never come home last night and she never come home today.”

Dougherty said okay, trying to remember what day it was and coming up with Friday. “She's eighteen, Mom. She's not a runaway. She can leave if she wants,” and that started his mother off again, crying and saying he sounded just like his father. Dougherty said, “Wow, bet you never thought you'd say that.”

“He say to just wait, she be back.”

“He's right. She's probably at some friend's house.”

“But can't you do something.”

“Me? What can I do?”

“The police, can't you find her?”

Dougherty said, “Ma, look, she's going to come back today or tomorrow. Or she'll be gone for the weekend, maybe, but there's nothing we can do.”

“But those girls. They were all kill.” Her French accent coming on a lot stronger than usual now.

“That was different, Ma. They were killed in their apartments — they all had apartments.”

“Not Brenda.”

Dougherty said, “No, not Brenda. But she was younger, not as old as Cheryl,” and he was back in his conversation with Ruth, seeing all the differences.

“So you can look for her.”

“There's nothing we can do.”

“I don't believe that.”

His mother was calm now, moving past her fear and anger and heading straight to helplessness, which Dougherty always found funny coming from her. She was about the last person he'd ever see as helpless, but she could play the card when she thought it would help.

So he said, “Okay, I'll go into the station and see what I can do. Have you called Franny's mother?”

“No, I don't want them to know.”

“To know what?”

“That I don't know where is Cheryl.”

He wanted to laugh. “Okay, well you wait, I bet you Franny's mother calls you.”

“I'm worried.”

“I know, I understand. Look, I'm off on Sunday. I'll come out for dinner and if she's not back by then I'll ask around.”

“Ask who?”

“Her friends.”

There was a pause and then a meek, “Okay,” and then Dougherty said, “It'll be fine, Ma, you'll see. She'll be back as soon as she gets hungry.”

“She's not so helpless you know.” Dougherty knew that if his mother was defending Cheryl it meant she'd stopped worrying, or at least was less worried, and he could get off the phone.

“Okay, I'll see you Sunday.”

“Okay.”

Late Saturday night Cheryl called Dougherty crying and hysterical.

He'd spent the day and most of the early evening hanging around in front of Jean Way's apartment building, showing people the Lincoln pictures and getting a few maybes but mostly just shrugs. One guy said that in January there was a lot of snow and not much parking on the street and that gave Dougherty the idea to talk to the attendants working on the nearby parking lots. They looked at him like he was crazy, and one of them said, “It would be easier to tell you what kind of cars I haven't seen.”

So Dougherty had a late dinner at Mr. Steer on St. Catherine Street and walked home, feeling strangely anonymous in the crowd without his uniform.

Now Cheryl was calming down and saying that she was at the police station. “Which one?”

“I don't know, it's in Toronto.”

“What are you doing in Toronto?”

“We came to see the Festival Express. They got us buses, everybody who had a ticket. And we came here but there was a riot.”

Dougherty tried to imagine what they'd call a riot in Toronto — a few hippies trying to cut in line? “Are you hurt?”

“What? No.”

“Okay, so what do you want?”

Cheryl said, “Can you talk to them?”

“Pig to pig, like we have a secret code?”

She said, “Fu—,” but caught herself and Dougherty felt a little bad. Then she said, “Come on, Eddie, please,” so he said, “Okay. Put him on.”

The Toronto cop said, “So, your sister's name is Cheryl Dougherty?”

“She's got long hair, she's wearing jeans and a jean jacket with patches all over them. She looks like all the rest. What did she do?”

“Maybe she incited a riot or maybe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“If there's a wrong place,” Dougherty said, “Cheryl will find it. Have you processed her?”

“No, we're just getting started.”

“They crashed the gate?”

“The place is a mess — we're bringing some in so they don't get hurt.”

Dougherty said, “Well, if it helps, Cheryl's harmless. She won't shut up sometimes but she's not real trouble.”

“That's what I thought,” the Toronto cop said. “She looks more scared than anything. And her friend, too. Look, if you can vouch for them, I'll put them on a bus to Montreal.”

“All right, man, thanks.”

“Hey, I'd rather she be your problem. We've got plenty more.”

Then Dougherty spoke to Cheryl, told her to be nice to the cop, he didn't have to let her go, and for her and Franny to get on the midnight bus. They'd be in Montreal at six in the morning. Cheryl surprised him by speaking very softly and asking very nicely if he could meet them at the bus station in Montreal because the Métro wouldn't be running that early, and he said, “Yeah, all right.”

And after he hung up he realized Cheryl sounded just like their mother, putting on the helpless act when it helped her. He thought about telling her that when he picked her up, but when he saw her getting off the bus in the brand new terminal at Berri-de-Montigny she looked too pathetic.

Still, he couldn't help smiling and saying, “So, did you have a good time?”

Cheryl didn't say anything, she just walked past him towards the doors, but Franny smiled and said, “Thank you.” Dougherty looked them in the eye to see if they were still stoned or if they'd slept it off on the bus ride, but he couldn't tell.

Both girls sat in the cramped back seat of Dougherty's Mustang and no one said anything until they pulled up in front of the Doughertys' and Franny said thanks again.

The girls got out of the car and both of them went in via the side door and, Dougherty figured, right into the basement.

He was about to drive off when his little brother, Tommy, rode up on his bike. “There's no
Gazette
on Sunday,” Dougherty said, and Tommy said, “
Sunday Express
.”

“You going back to bed?”

“No, I'm up now.”

Dougherty looked at the house and said, “Mom and Dad up yet?”

“Not yet.”

“You want to get some breakfast, go to Pop's?”

Tommy said, “Yeah!” and Dougherty watched him put his bike in the backyard and jump excitedly into the passenger seat of the Mustang.

The sign on the front of the restaurant said
Pearl's Coffee Shoppe
, and Dougherty had no idea why everyone called it Pop's. It was in an old red brick building on Churchill, next to a barber shop and a dry cleaners in a row of storefronts. Inside it could have been the '
50
s — booths, a jukebox and a counter lined with stools.

Dougherty ordered coffee and bacon and eggs over easy, and Tommy said, “Me, too.”

“Maybe you want milk instead of coffee?”

“Okay.”

There were a few other people in the restaurant, a couple of guys at a booth who looked like they might have also been delivering the
Sunday Express
and a guy by himself who looked like he might have been up all night.

When the food came, Dougherty asked Tommy how things were at home and Tommy shrugged. Dougherty said, “Mom and Cheryl fighting a lot?”

“Just all the time.”

“Well, it'll be okay.”

Tommy poured ketchup on his plate and said, “Cheryl is such a bitch.”

“What did you say?”

But Tommy could see that Dougherty was smiling a little and he smiled, too. Then he looked serious again and said, “She's just mad all the time.”

“Yeah, lots of people are.”

“Yeah.”

Dougherty looked around the restaurant and out the window to Churchill Boulevard that cut through Greenfield Park. A block farther down was City Hall, the police station and the fire station and behind them Empire Park, where Tommy played football, and an indoor arena, where he'd play hockey in the winter. Dougherty was thinking now it was a nice little town. “Do Mom and Dad fight much?”

Tommy took a bite of some toast. “Not much.”

Dougherty watched his little brother eat and thought, Yeah, tough times for everybody.

They'd been in the house six years and either his father or his mother had been on strike at least once almost every year. Both worked for the phone company, The Bell, but in different unions, his father a lineman, driving one of those green vans with ladders on the roof, and his mother an operator. Dougherty had lived there four years and been on his own for two, but sometimes he felt like he'd never really lived on the South Shore, like he'd gone straight from the Point to his apartment downtown. Now he was starting to see how Greenfield Park was Tommy's home. But what about Cheryl?

Dougherty was thinking his sister could be somewhere in between Brenda Webber and Shirley Audette, a kid maybe buying hash off some guy on the street and a woman living downtown inviting “good-looking, charming” guys into her apartment. But really, what did he know about Cheryl?

He looked at Tommy. “Hey, you want to go to an Expos game?”

“Yeah, when?”

“I'm working nights this week, and probably the next week, too, but I'll get some tickets and we'll go.”

“Great.”

Dougherty said, “Yeah, great,” and was looking forward to it.

Getting anything positive done these days was starting to feel like a big deal.

After he dropped Tommy off, Dougherty headed back over the bridge into Montreal without stopping to see his parents. He knew the house would be tense, dishes dropped hard on the table, doors slamming and the only talking would be muttering. Not the way to spend his day off.

When he was coming off the bridge and “One Tin Soldier” finished (“Go ahead and hate your neighbour, go ahead and cheat your friend, do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end”), the news guy came on CKGM instead of the DJ to say there had been a plane crash in Toronto. A flight from Montreal to Los Angeles was making a stop and crashed near Malton airport. Early reports were that all
109
people onboard were killed.

Then the news guy said that there wasn't much information yet but it was bright and sunny with excellent visibility in Toronto and they were checking into the possibility the plane had been hijacked or that a bomb was onboard.

Dougherty decided this would have been a good day to sleep through but there was no way he'd be able to do that now, so he parked near his apartment and walked to Station Ten.

The weekend desk sergeant, McKinney, putting in the last few months until retirement, was reading the sports section at the back of the
Sunday Express
tabloid when Dougherty walked in.

“You're not working today.”

“No, but I've got things to do,” Dougherty said. “What did you hear about the plane crash?”

“I heard everybody onboard died.”

“They said on the radio it might have been hijacked or maybe there was a bomb?”

McKinney never looked up from the Expos box score, he just shook his head. “You really think these idiots could bring down a plane?”

“A bomb's a bomb — they figured out how to set those.”

“Well, this is just plain old mechanical failure.”

“They know that already?”

“Oh, there'll be a long investigation, don't worry,” McKinney said, “but that's the way it looks.”

Dougherty said, “Okay, thanks.”

McKinney shrugged and said, “Don't mention it,” clearly having no idea why Dougherty would come into the station on his day off.

Jean Way's apartment had been only two blocks from Station Ten, but instead of walking up to Lincoln Street, Dougherty walked east on de Maisonneuve to Guy.

It had been a year and a half since the riot at Sir George Williams University, and Dougherty looked at the Hall Building on de Maisonneuve between Bishop and Mountain and wondered if anything had changed. He couldn't remember why the students had taken over the new computer rooms on the top floor, something about racist professors or a racist institution. He remembered people saying at the time that it was just a lot of kids who wanted to be like the Americans and have a protest on campus, but the Hall Building wasn't anything like Dougherty imagined a campus would look like — it was just an office building, a modern-looking steel and glass building. Concrete and glass really, ten storeys high on a downtown intersection. The main floor lobby looked like the waiting room at the airport, with rows of plastic seats bolted to the floor and people sitting around waiting. Even on Sunday there were a few people sitting on the plastic chairs and reading books.

The campus of Sir George was spread over the neighbourhood a little, into the old three-storey brownstones on Mackay and Bishop. Dougherty wondered if Bill could be a student, showing up in his
1966
Lincoln and disappearing into the crowd.

He spent a few hours walking the neighbourhood, stop­ping people and showing them the picture of the Lin­coln, but no one could say for sure if they'd seen the car. Dougherty was starting to wonder if it really was better to be doing something,
anything
, rather than nothing.

After the lunch crowds thinned out, Dougherty descended a couple of steps into the Café Prague, not the kind of place he'd ever go in uniform, so he was glad he wasn't wearing one. It was more of a student hangout, with overflowing ashtrays on every table and serving strong coffee and sandwiches on dark rye bread.