Black Rock (26 page)

chapter

twenty-six

St. James West, what the old beat cop called Upper Lachine Road, was lined with motels thrown up for Expo
67
, the Rose Bowl alleys, a lot of small bars, gas stations and garden centres.

Dougherty didn't know the area: his image of Notre Dame de Grâce was stores lining Sherbrooke Street and old brick houses getting bigger and bigger as they blended into neighbouring Westmount. He'd worked a Sunday in the Park festival the year before but nothing happened from a cop's point of view: bands played, kids danced and people sold homemade jewellery and muffins.

But this part of NDG was literally below the tracks — the commuter train from Windsor Station ­downtown ran a block south of Sherbrooke here — and the houses south of that were duplexes and fourplexes and small apartment buildings.

Now he saw the dairy the old guy mentioned and remembered coming to it as a kid with his father, the two big plaster cows' heads above the window where they bought ice cream cones and bottles of milk. Seeing the area as an adult, Dougherty realized the rows of apartment buildings across the street were probably some kind of housing project.

He turned onto Elmhurst Street and pulled over and parked.

Kids were just getting home from school and the neighbourhood was filling up. Dougherty walked along the sidewalk, looking at the apartment buildings, thinking he should have brought the beat cop with him, had him point out the apartment.

There were hundreds of apartments — it could be any one of them.

No, he remembered, it could only be the first floor. Dougherty walked up and down Elmhurst and at the corner of Trenholme, which was also lined with apartment buildings, and he saw a woman sitting on a balcony on the first floor.

“Hey.”

The woman looked down at him, and Dougherty said, “Did you talk to the police about a man trying to pull your daughter into his car?”

“I don't have a daughter.”

“Do you know anyone this happened to?”

“No.”

Dougherty moved on, thinking it was a lot like the Point here, another neighbourhood where no one wants to talk to the cops.

And then he realized that it was another low-rent English neighbourhood.

He kept walking and asking people if they knew anything about a girl being pulled into a man's car, and no one knew anything until he talked to a guy who looked like he was walking home from working a shift at the dairy. “Yeah, Karen Barber's girl.”

“Where does she live?”

The guy pointed across the street to an apartment building almost on the corner of St. James, and said, “Right there, first floor. On the left.”

Dougherty realized the guy meant the apartment to the left of the front doors, the balcony crammed with wooden chairs and a stand for drying clothes.

The lock on the front door was busted so he didn't have to buzz to get let in. He went up the few steps and down the hall to the left and knocked on the first door.

“What now, why don't you …” and she stopped as she opened the door and saw Dougherty. “What do you want?”

She was younger than he expected. “Are you Karen Barber?”

“What's it to you?”

“Did a man try to pull your daughter into a car?”

Karen Barber, in jeans, a t-shirt and slippers, looked Dougherty up and down. “I already told Officer Gravenor.”

“I'm doing some follow-up.”

She had one hand on the door and the other on her hip. “Why?”

“Because it's my job.”

Dougherty said, “I'd like to talk to your daughter.”

“You got a line on this creep?”

“I'm working on it.”

She moved aside from the door a little, and Dougherty stepped into the apartment.

“Nancy'll be home any minute.”

They walked past the small kitchen and into the living room. The TV was on, a soap opera, and past that was the balcony looking out on Elmhurst and St. James. The Elmhurst Dairy was across the street.

Now Dougherty was thinking this probably wasn't the same guy, this woman's daughter was probably five or six years old, nothing like Brenda Webber.

Dougherty said, “Did it happen out front here, on the street?”

Karen Barber stepped up beside Dougherty, looking out on the street. “No, it was there, across St. James.”

“By the dairy?”

“That's right.”

Karen picked up a cigarette that was burning in an ashtray and took a drag. “Do you want a cup of coffee or something?”

Before Dougherty could say no, the apartment door opened and a teenage girl came in and dropped a bag on the floor. Then seeing him she said, “What's he doing here?”

Karen said, “He just came by. He was asking about the man.”

The girl went into the kitchen, saying, “I told you, nothing happened.”

Dougherty was looking at Karen then, realizing that the teenage girl was the daughter and that the mother could only have had her when she was a teenager herself.

“I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

The girl came out of the kitchen and walked across the living room to the TV.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Didn't she tell you?” Not looking at her mother, the girl changed the channel on the TV, clicking the dial halfway around to a different soap opera. This channel didn't come in nearly as clearly, the screen covered with snow.

“I'd like to hear it from you.”

She flopped down on the couch and put her feet up on the edge of the coffee table. “Nothing happened.”

“It was Friday night,” Karen said, looking at her daughter, “but I didn't find out about it till Sunday.”

“There's nothing to find out.”

Karen looked at Dougherty and said, “I heard her telling one of her friends on the phone.”

“Listening in on my calls.”

“You were standing in the kitchen.”

“I need a phone in my room.”

“You wanna pay for it?”

“Okay,” Dougherty said, “I just want to know what happened. And don't tell me nothing.” He stepped between the couch and the TV and looked down at Nancy. “Start with where you were.”

The girl looked up at him, a little scared, but then she shrugged and said, “I was coming home, on St. James.”

“Right across the street?”

“A couple blocks away, on the other side, by the motel.”

The mom jumped in with “What were you doing there?” but Dougherty quieted her and said, “Were you by yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“And the car slowed down, offered you a ride?”

“I told him I didn't need one.”

The mom broke in again, saying, “I told you not to talk to strangers,” and the daughter yelled back, “I'm not a baby.”

Dougherty held up his hands. “Quiet.”

Then he looked at Nancy. “I need to know exactly what happened. Okay, he tried to pull you into the car?”

Now she was looking past him at the TV. The soap opera had a vampire. Dougherty moved to block her view and said, “You got away?”

“He stopped the car,” Nancy said, “and he got out but I kept walking.”

“Did he offer you anything?”

“Like what?” Karen said.

Dougherty was looking at Nancy, waiting for an answer, and she shook her head no, but he had a feeling he would get a different answer if her mother wasn't here.

“You must have been scared.”

“No.”

“Was he creepy?”

A shrug. “I guess.”

“Did he chase you?”

“When I kept walking he got back in the car and I ran across St. James.”

“Through traffic?”

Another shrug. “A little, I guess.”

“So he couldn't follow.”

She didn't say anything.

“Okay,” Dougherty said, “what did the guy look like?”

“I don't know, it was dark.”

“Young or old?”

She looked up at Dougherty and said, “Young, I guess.”

“Short hair, long hair?”

“Short. He looked like that guy on
Ironside
.”

“The guy in the wheelchair?”

She looked at Dougherty like he was an idiot. “The
other
one.”

“So … clean-cut.”

“I guess.”

“Did he speak English?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he have an accent?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Jesus Murphy,” Karen said, “how long were you talking to him?”

Dougherty kept his eyes on Nancy. “What kind of car was it?”

“I don't know.”

“Was it big or small?”

“Big, I guess.”

“What colour was it?”

“I don't know. White.”

“With a black roof?”

“Yeah, that's right.”

“Okay, that's good,” Dougherty said. “I guess you didn't see the license plate?”

She looked at him and smirked and raised an eyebrow.

He relaxed a little and moved out of the way so Nancy could see the TV.

Karen said, “You know this guy?”

“I'm going to,” Dougherty said and made his way out.

He drove straight to Bonsecours Street to find Carpentier and tell him he could now place the same car at two abductions — or one almost-abduction — so excited he'd forgotten all about the kidnapping.

Until he got to headquarters and the place was lit up like Christmas and every cop in the city was there.

chapter

twenty-seven

On the third floor, Dougherty tried to get into the homicide office but the place was packed. It looked like every detective on the force was crammed in there — and every one of them seemed to be smoking two cigarettes.

Down the hall he saw Rozovsky by himself in the ident office.

“Did you hear?” Rozovsky said, and Dougherty said, “Something about a kidnapping?”

Rozovsky looked up from the file he was holding. “No, Janis Joplin died. What's this about a kidnapping?”

“Funny,” Dougherty said. “And what's-his-name last month.”

“Jimi Hendrix. My sister cried.”

“Mine, too. Not as much as she did over the other one in court.”

“Which one?”

“The one waving his dick around onstage.”

“Oh yeah, Jim Morrison. Yeah she cried about that, too, but it doesn't look like he'll get any jail time.”

Dougherty said, “Too bad,” then he looked at the photos Rozovsky had on the table. “That the ransom note?”

“Hey, hey, we never use the word
ransom
. This is the communiqué.”

“But it's the same demands they had written up last time, when they were going after the American?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Rozovsky spread a few eight-by-ten black-and-white photos across the desk, each one showing a page of the communiqué. “Seven demands. My French isn't great.”

Dougherty translated as he read. “Number one: must see to it that repressive police forces do not commit the monstrous error of attempting to jeopardize the success of the operation by conducting searches, investigations, raids, arrests by any other means.”

“Of course, can't do our jobs.”

“Next: the manifesto has to be published on the front page of every newspaper in Quebec. In case nobody else knows what the problem is, I guess.”

“I like number three,” Rozovsky said, “releasing the prisoners.”

“Like that's going to happen.”

“They released that one in London,” Rozovsky said, “who hijacked the plane.”

“What?”

“Come on, just last month — three planes blown up in the desert.”

“Yeah,” Dougherty said, “it was in all the papers,” using the line his father always used for World War II.

“So, remember one of the planes landed in London, two hijackers onboard with guns and hand grenades. The guy — he was from Honduras or Nicaragua or something — he was killed on the plane and she was arrested?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So, she got released last week.”

“Well, these guys aren't hijackers,” Dougherty said, “Geoffroy put the bomb in Place Victoria.”

“And about a hundred more. He's serving a
124
-year sentence.”

“Most of the rest are in jail for armed robbery.”

“Collecting voluntary taxes, they call it.”

“All right, then they want a plane to go to Cuba or Algeria — they still haven't made up their minds. They just know they want out of here. The Lapalme boys again, and then here's your voluntary tax, half a million dollars in gold bullion. Then it says, When one recalls the spending caused by the recent visit of the Queen of England, the millions of dollars lost by the Post Office Department because of the stubborn millionaire Kierans, the cost of maintaining Quebec within Confederation, etc.… $500,000 is peanuts! Nice of them to point that out.”

“They saved the best for last,” Rozovsky said. “They want the name and the picture of the informer who gave up the last kidnap attempt.”

Dougherty looked up. “I would've liked to see the look on Carpentier's face when he read that.”

“Then there's lots more political stuff,” Rozovsky said, “and then the instructions.”

Dougherty said, “I like this part at the end: ‘We feel confident that the imprisoned political patriots will benefit from the experience in Cuba or Algiers and we thank them in advance for the concern which they will express for our Quebec comrades.' So they're getting on the plane whether they want to or not?”

Rozovsky read the last line: “‘We shall overcome.'”

“Yeah, on a beach in Cuba with half a million bucks. So what's happening now?”

“You didn't hear?”

“I've been busy.”

“They had a press conference, said they received the demands and they're working on it.”

“What are they going to do?”

Rozovsky shrugged. “No idea, but I can't see them going along with any of this. They're putting together a list of suspects now: the guys from the last time, the ones arrested up north — they're out on bail.”

“And the ones from last winter — they had the same demands and the manifesto. They were going after the Israeli ambassador.”

“Everybody's been called in.”

Dougherty shook his head, couldn't believe it, but then he wasn't all that surprised, either. “Like we don't have anything else to do.”

“And they want the manifesto read on TV.”

“Is it the same one they had in the summer?”

“No,” Rozovsky said, “I don't think so.” He pulled a few more of the eight-by-ten photos from the pile and spread them out on the table. “I think it's longer.”

Dougherty said, “Great.” Then he scanned the typewritten text in the first photo and read, “‘
Le Front de libération du Québec n'est pas le Messie, ni un Robin des bois des temps modernes.
' Okay, so they aren't the Messiah or a modern-day Robin Hood, that's good to know.” He read some more and then said, “It is a group of Quebec workers ‘
qui sont décidés à tout mettre en œuvre
,' who have decided to use every means possible so the people of Quebec ‘
puisse prendre définitivement en main son destin.
' Take control of their own destiny. By any means necessary. What are they now, Malcolm X?”

“Yeah, that's good,” Rozovsky said. “This is Marcel X.”

Dougherty skimmed the photos Rozovsky had spread out on the table, saying, “The usual stuff: the FLQ is not an aggressive movement, it's a response to big business and the ‘
marionnettes des gouvernements fédéral et provincial
,' the puppet governments.”

“Yeah,” Rozovsky said, “of course.”

“‘
Le show de la Brinks,
'” Dougherty said, “What's that?”

“Remember, before the election, that bank had a convoy of Brinks trucks move all the money to Toronto.”

“Oh yeah, the Royal Bank.”

“Royal Trust, I think, and I don't think it was money — it was securities or something.”

“Or nothing,” Dougherty said, now remembering the rumour at the time, that the trucks were empty, like the manifesto said, just a show. Then he read some more and translated, “The Lapalme boys get another mention. They really want them hired back.”

“Good jobs, working for the post office,” Dougherty said. “Federal government jobs.”

Rozovsky said, “Right. And Bill
63
, I guess they figure it didn't go far enough making French the language of Quebec.”

Dougherty was still reading. “Shit, they mention Cotroni by name.”

“He's not going to be happy.”

“‘
Faiseurs d'élections Simard-Cotroni
,'” Dougherty said. “Election fixers. I guess that's Édouard Simard.”

“The Premier's father-in-law.”

“And the mob — they're covering everybody. Then it's a democracy of the rich and the
‘parlementarisme britannique, c'est bien fini
,' and that's it for democracy.”

“Parliamentary democracy anyway.”

“Yeah, well,” Dougherty said. “Like my father says, democracy is a terribly flawed system, it's just the best one we've been able to come up with so far.”

“But these guys have something better in mind.”

“I'm sure they do.” He read some more, saying, “Lots of reasons for the poverty, unemployment and slums, lots of reason for you, ‘
M. Bergeron de la rue Visitation, Madame Lemay de St-Hyacinthe, M. Tremblay de la rue Panet
,' lots of reasons why you do not feel free in our country of Quebec, why you drown your despair ‘
dans la bière du chien à Molson
.' Okay, Molson is no Labatt's, but dog beer?”

“They're naming all the names,” Rozovsky said.

“Yeah, but Mr. O'Malley of Liverpool street, nobody cares about your poverty,” Dougherty said and then read, “‘We live in a
société d'esclaves terrorisés
, a society of terrorized slaves' — a little extreme — ‘
terrorisés par les grands patrons: Steinberg, Clark, Bronfman, Smith, Neaple, Timmins, Geoffrion, J.L. Lévesque, Hershorn, Thompson, Nesbitt, Desmarais, Kierans
.'”

“Making it personal,” Rozovsky said, “not a bad idea.”

“Yeah, Trudeau ‘
la tapette
,'
always calling that guy a fag.”

“Barbra Streisand's just a beard.”

Dougherty read some more. “Terrorized by the church gets a mention, of course, Household Finance Corp., Eaton's, Simpsons, Morgan's, Steinberg's — didn't they mention Steinberg's already?”

“Can't mention the Jews enough,” Rozovsky said. “And what's that, terrorized by science?”

“By the closed circles of the universities and their monkey-bosses.” Dougherty shook his head, thinking how much his father had wanted him to go to one of those universities. “Robert Shaw is only the assistant monkey — he's the McGill guy, right?”

“Vice-principal. He was the one they went after in that McGill-Français stuff.”

Dougherty said, “Oh yeah, there was a big protest. I wasn't on duty for that one.”

“And the cops are bad, too,” Rozovsky said, reading the next page. “Arms of the system?”

“Strong-arms. They should understand these ­reasons — they should have been able to see that we live in a terrorized society because, without their force, without their violence, everything fell apart on October
7
.”

“I like the way the cops are the bad guys,” Rozovsky said, “but also without us the place will blow up into anarchy.”

“A one-day wildcat,” Dougherty said, “and no one will ever forget it.” Then he read some more. “‘
Le jour s'en vient où tous les Westmount du Québec disparaîtront de la carte.
' All the Westmounts of Quebec will disappear from the map.'”

“Big talk.”

“And the usual ending,” Dougherty said, dropping the photo,
“‘Vive la révolution Québécoise! Vive le Front de libération du Québec!'”

Rozovsky said, “It's just the usual half-baked Marxist stuff you get on every campus in the world these days with some local names thrown in.”

Dougherty peered down the hall. The homicide office was still full of men and smoke. “I got a good lead on the car.”

“The taxi?”

“No, the murdered women.”

“What did you get?”

“The guy tried to grab another girl, in NDG, out by a motel on St. James. She identified the car, it's definitely a Lincoln.”

“Licence number?”

Dougherty looked at Rozovsky, smirked and raised an eyebrow. “But Carpentier said because it had only been linked to one of the murders, Brenda Webber in the Point, he wanted to be sure it connected to the others.”

“But this wasn't a murder.”

“No, but Ruth said there'd be more.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“This means she's right. There are going to be more — the guy is still out there trying.”

Rozovsky said, “Everybody's looking for the taxi.”

“They can look for Lincolns at the same time.”

“You think so?”

“Sure.”

Rozovsky gave him a look, and Dougherty knew that wasn't going to happen. “God dammit.” He paced the office. “Is Carpentier in there?”

“I think so.”

Dougherty walked out of the ident office and down the hall. He pushed his way into the homicide office and saw Detective Carpentier in a far corner with a few other senior detectives and made his way through.

“Can I talk to you?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“Okay.”

Dougherty was nervous — the other detectives around Carpentier were looking at him. He said, “I talked to a girl today. A man tried to abduct her.”

“Tried?”

“She fought him off, got away.”

“The same car?”

“Same car.”

“What was it, a Cadillac?”

“'
65
or '
66
Lincoln.”

“Where?”

“NDG, St. James Street, past Cavendish.”

“All those motels?”

“Yeah, right there.”

Carpentier considered it and then said, “Maybe he's from out of town.”

Dougherty hadn't thought of that. “You think he'd try and grab a girl right in front of his motel?”

Carpentier shrugged, “I have no idea, just a thought.”

A detective pushed his way past Dougherty and handed Carpentier a piece of paper. Carpentier read in silence for a moment, then said, “Maybe you should see if someone driving a car like that was staying in one of the motels?”

“There are dozens of motels along that strip.”

Carpentier looked up at Dougherty. “Yes, so?”

“Well, you want me to check them all myself?”

Carpentier handed the paper back to the other detective and nodded his approval for whatever was written there. “Yes. We've got a list of people we're putting under surveillance tonight. With any luck we will end this thing tomorrow.”

“And in the meantime?”

Carpentier shook his head. “Hope the next one can fight him off, too.”