The Main

10

Guttmann has arranged the overdue reports in stacks on the little table serving as a desk, leaving just enough room for his typewriter. He has finally made some order and sense out of the mess LaPointe dumped on him; there is a stack for this week’s reports, one for last week’s, one for the week before, and so on. But largest of all is the pile he mentally calls the Whatever-the-Hell-This –Is bunch.

The hissing roar of sandblasting across the street vibrates the cheap ripply glass of the window, causing Guttmann to look up. His eyes meet LaPointe’s, which are fixed on him with a frown. Guttmann smiles and nods automatically and returns to his work. But a couple of minutes later he can still feel the Lieutenant’s eyes on him, so he looks up again.

“Sir?”

“Is that all you know of that song?”

“What song, sir?”

“The song you keep humming over and over! You keep humming the same little bit!”

“I didn’t realize I was humming.”

“Well, I realize it. And it’s sending me up the goddamned wall!”

“Sorry, sir.”

LaPointe’s grunt suggests that “Sorry” isn’t enough. Ever since he came in this morning, he has been emitting dark vibrations and making little murmurs and growls of short temper each time he loses his place in the routine work on his desk. He stands up abruptly, pushing back his swivel chair with the backs of his knees. There is an indented line of white in the plaster from years of the chair banging against it. His thumbs hooked in the back of his belt, he looks out over the Hôtel de Ville, its façade latticed with scaffolding. This morning the noise of the stone-cleaning grates directly upon his nerve ends, like cold air on a bad tooth. And those monotonous zinc clouds!

Guttmann’s typewriter clacks on in the rapid, one-word bursts of the experienced bad typist. His memory touches the two nights and a day he has just spent with the girl who lives in his apartment building. He passed Saturday evening in her flat, helping her doctor a head cold. She wore a thick terrycloth robe that did nothing good for her appearance, and she had bouts of sneezing that left her limp and miserable, her face pale and her eyes brimming with tears. But her sense of humor held up, and she found this to be a ridiculous way for them to pass their first date. She got a little high on the hot toddies he made for her, and so did he, because he insisted on keeping her company by drinking one for each of hers. When he looked over her books and records, he discovered that their tastes were absolutely opposite, but their levels of appreciation about the same.

Around midnight, she kicked him out, telling him that she wanted to get a good night’s sleep to fight off the cold. He suggested some light exercise might do her a world of good. She laughed and told him she didn’t want him to catch her cold. He said he was willing to pay that price, but she said no.

Next morning, he telephoned her from bed. Her cold had broken and she felt well enough to go out. They passed the day visiting galleries and making jokes about the modern junk-art on display. He spent more than he could afford on dinner, and later, in his apartment, they talked about all sorts of things. They seldom agreed on details, but they found similar things funny and the same things important. After they had made love, they lay on their right sides, she coiled in against him, her bottom in his lap. She slept, breathing softly, while he lay awake for a time, sensing the subtle thrill of waves of gentleness emitting from him and enveloping her. A remarkable girl. Not only fun to talk with and great in bed, but really… remarkable…

LaPointe turns from the window and looks flatly at Guttmann, who catches the movement and glances up with his habitual smile, which fades as he realizes he has been humming again.

“Sorry.”

LaPointe nods curtly.

“By the way, sir, I ran the name Antonio Verdini and the alias Tony Green through ID. They haven’t called back yet.”

“They won’t have anything.”

“Maybe not, but I thought I should run it through anyway.”

LaPointe sits again before his paper work. “Just like it says in the book,” he mutters.

“Yes, sir,” Guttmann says, more than a little tired of LaPointe’s cafard this morning, “just like it says in the book.” The book also says that reports of investigations must be turned in within forty-eight hours, and some of this crap on Guttmann’s desk is weeks late, and almost all of it is incomplete, a couple of scribbled notes that are almost indecipherable. But Guttmann decides against mentioning that.

LaPointe makes a guttural sound and pushes aside a departmental form packet: green copy, yellow copy, blue copy, pink fucking copy…

“I’m going down to Bouvier’s shop for a cup of coffee, if anyone wants me. You keep up the good work.” He dumps all his unfinished work into Guttmann’s in-box.

“Thank you, sir.”

The telephone rings, catching LaPointe at the door. Guttmann answers, rather hoping it is something that will annoy the Lieutenant. He listens awhile, then puts his palm over the mouthpiece. “It’s the desk. There’s a guy down there asking to speak to you. It’s about the Green stabbing.”

“What’s his name?”

Guttmann takes his hand away and repeats the question. “It’s someone who knows you. A Mr. W–.”

He mentions the name of the wealthiest of the old Anglo families in Montreal. “Is that the Mr. W–?”

LaPointe nods.

Guttmann raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I didn’t know you had Connections in Important Places, sir.”

“Yes, well… Tell you what. While I’m down with Bouvier, you interview Mr. W–. Tell him you’re my assistant and I have every confidence in you. He won’t know you’re lying.”

“But, sir…”

“You’re here to get experience, aren’t you? No better way to learn to swim than by jumping off the dock.”

LaPointe leaves, closing the door behind him.

Guttmann clears his throat before saying into the phone, “Send Mr. W–up, will you?”

“Another cup, Claude?” Dr. Bouvier asks, catching a folder that is slipping from the tip of his high-heaped desk, holding it close to his clear lens to read the title, then tucking it back in toward the bottom.

“No, I don’t think I could handle another.” Bouvier laughs ritually and pushes his glasses back up to the bridge of his stubby nose. But they slip down immediately because the dirty adhesive tape with which they are repaired is loose again. He must get them fixed someday. “Did you see the report I sent up on your stabbing? We ran his clothes through the lab and the result was zero.”

“I didn’t see the report. But I’m not surprised.”

“If you didn’t come down here to talk about the report, then what? You just come down to improve your mind? Or is the weather getting you down? One of my young men was complaining about the weather this morning, grousing about the way it keeps threatening snow without delivering. He said he wished it would either shit or get off the pot. Now, there’s a daunting image for the bareheaded pedestrian. I warned the lad about the dangers of indiscriminate personification, but I doubt that he took it to heart. All right, let’s talk then. I suppose you’re pissed about that stabbing of yours getting into the papers so soon. I’m sorry about that; but the leak didn’t come from this office. Someone up in the Commissioner’s shop released it.”

“Those assholes.”

“Penetrating evaluation, if something of an anatomic synecdoche. But come on, it’s not so grave. Just a couple of column inches. No photograph. No details. You still have the advantage of surprise as you walk your way through the case. By the way, how’s that stroll coming along?”

LaPointe shrugs. “Nothing much. The victim’s turning out to be a real turd, the kind anyone might have wanted to kill.”

“I see. You have assholes for bosses and a turd for a victim. There’s a certain consistency in that. I hear your Joan ran a name and an alias through ID this morning. Your victim?” Bouvier points his face toward LaPointe, one eye hidden behind the nicotine lens, the other huge and distorted. He is showing off a bit, proving he knows everything that goes on.

“Yes, that’s the victim.”

“Hm-m. An Italian kid with an Anglo alias. No record of fingerprints. Not a legal immigrant. What does that give us? A sailor who jumped ship?”

“I doubt it.”

“Yes. The hands were wrong. No calluses. Any leads to a skill or a craft?”

“No.” LaPointe’s head rises just as Bouvier’s eye is opening wide. They have the same thought at the same moment.

It is Bouvier who expresses it. “Do you think your victim was being laundered?”

“Possible.”

There are a couple of small-timers up on the Italian Main who make their money by “laundering” men for the American organized-crime market. A young man who gets into trouble in Calabria or Sicily can be smuggled into Canada, usually on a Greek ship, and brought into Montreal, where he blends into the polyglot population of the Main while he learns a little English, and while the laundryman makes sure the Italian authorities are not on his tail. These “clean” men are slipped across the border to the States, where they are valuable as enforcers and hit men. Like a clean gun that the police cannot trace through registration, these laundered men have no records, no acquaintances, no fingerprints. And should they become awkward or dangerous to their employers, there is no one to avenge, even to question, their deaths.

It is possible that the good-looking kid who called himself Tony Green was in the process of being laundered when he met his death in that alley.

Dr. Bouvier takes off his glasses, turning his back so that LaPointe doesn’t see the eye normally covered by the nicotine lens. He flexes the broken bridge and slips them back on, pinching the skin of his nose to make them stay up better. “All right. Who’s active in the laundry business up on your patch?”

Old man Rovelli died six months ago. That leaves Canducci—Alfredo (Candy Al) Canducci.

“Chocolate,” LaPointe says to himself.

“What?”

“Chocolate. As in candy. As in Candy Al.”

“I assume that makes some subtle sense?”

“The kid had a ‘cousin’ who rented his room for him. The concierge thought the name had something to do with chocolate.”

“And you make that Candy Al Canducci. Interesting. And possible. I’ll tell you what—I’ll put in a little time on the case. Maybe your friendly family pathologist can come up with one of his ‘interesting little insights.’ Not that my genius is always appreciated by you street men. I remember once dropping a fresh possibility onto your colleague, Gaspard, when he was satisfied that he had already wrapped up a case. He described my assistance as being as welcome as a fart in a bathysphere. You want some more coffee?”

“No.”

Guttmann has made slight rearrangements to receive Mr. Matthew St. John W–. He has moved his chair over to LaPointe’s desk, and has seated himself in the Lieutenant’s swivel chair. He rises to greet Mr. W–, who looks around the room with some uncertainty.

“Lieutenant LaPointe isn’t here?”

“I’m sorry, sir. He’s not available just now. I’m his assistant. Perhaps I could help?”

Mr. W–looks exactly like his photographs in the society section of the Sunday papers—a slim face with fragile bones and veins close to the surface, full head of white hair combed severely back, revealing a high forehead over pale eyes. His dark blue suit is meticulously tailored, and there is not a smudge on the high shine of his narrow, pointed black shoes.

“I had hoped to see Lieutenant LaPointe.” His voice is thin and slightly nasal, and its tone is chilly. He surveys the young policeman thoughtfully. He hesitates.

Not wanting to lose him, Guttmann waves a hand at the chair opposite him and says in as offhanded a voice as possible, “I believe you had some assistance to offer in the Green case, sir?”

Mr. W–frowns, the wrinkles very shallow in his pallid forehead. “The Green case?” he asks.

Guttmann’s jaw tightens. He is glad LaPointe isn’t there. The victim’s name was not mentioned in the newspaper. But the only thing to do is brave it out. “Yes, sir. The young man found in the alley was named Green.”

Mr. W–looks toward the corner of the room, his eyes hooded with thought. “Green,” he says, testing the sound. He sighs as he sits on the straight-backed chair, lifting his trousers an inch by the creases. “You know,” he says distantly, “I never knew that his name was Green. Green.”

Instantly, Guttmann wishes he had somebody with him, a witness or a stenographer.

But Mr. W–has anticipated his thoughts.

“Don’t worry, young man. I will repeat anything I say to you. What happens to me is not important. What does matter is that everything be handled as quietly as possible. My family… I know I could rely on Lieutenant LaPointe to be discreet. But…” Mr. W–smiles politely, indicating that he is sorry, but he has no reason to trust a young man he does not know.

“I wouldn’t do anything without consulting the Lieutenant.”

“Good. Good.” And Mr. W–seems willing to let the conversation rest there. A thin, polite smile on his lips, he looks past Guttmann’s head to the damp, metallic skies beyond the window.

“You… ah… you say you didn’t know his name was Green?” Guttmann prompts, making every effort to keep the excitement he feels from leaking into his voice.

Mr. W–shakes his head slightly. “No, I didn’t. That must seem odd to you.” He laughs a little sniff of self-ridicule. “In fact, it seems odd to me… now. But you know how these things are. The social moment when you should have exchanged names somehow passes with the thing undone, and later it seems foolish, even impolite, to ask the other person his name. Has that ever happened to you?”

“Sir?” Guttmann is surprised to find the conversational ball suddenly in his court. “Ah, yes, I know exactly what you mean.”

Mr. W–investigates Guttmann’s face carefully.

“Yes. You have the look of someone who’s capable of understanding.”

Guttmann clears his throat. “Did you know this Green well?”

“Well enough. Well enough. He was… that is to say, he died before we…” Mr. W–sighs, closes his eyes, and presses his fingers into the shallow sockets. “Explanations always seem so bizarre, so inadequate. You see, Green knew about the White Plot and the Ring of Seven.”

“Sir?”

“I’d better begin at the beginning. Do you remember the nursery rhyme ‘As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives’? Of course, you probably never considered the significance of the repeated sevens—the warning passed to the Christian world about the Ring of the Seven and the Jewish White Plot. Not many people have troubled to study the rhyme, to unravel its implications.”

“I see.”

“That poor young Mr. Green stumbled upon the meaning. And now he’s dead. Stabbed in an alley. Tell me, was there a bakery near where he was found?”

Guttmann glances toward the door, trying to think up something he has to go do. “Ah… yes, I suppose so. The district has lots of bakeries.”

Mr. W–smiles and nods with self-satisfaction.

“I knew it. It’s all tied up with the White Plague.”

Guttmann nods. “Tied up with the White Plague, is it?”

“Ah! So Lieutenant LaPointe has told you about that, has he? Yes, the White Plague is their name for the steady poisoning of the gentile with white foods—flour, bread, sugar, Cream of Wheat…”

“Cream of Wheat?”

“That surprises you, doesn’t it? I can’t blame you. There was a time when we hoped against hope that Cream of Wheat wasn’t in on it. But certain evidence has come into our hands. I mustn’t tell you more than you need to know. There’s no point in endangering you needlessly.”

Guttmann leans back in the swivel chair, links his fingers, and puts his palms on the top of his head. His eyes droop, as though with fatigue.

Mr. W–glances quickly toward the door to make sure no one is listening, then he leans forward and speaks with a confidential rush of words. “You see, the Ring of Seven is directed from Ottawa by the Zionist lobby there. I began to collect evidence against them seven years ago—note the significance of that figure—but only recently has the scope of their plot become…”

Guttmann is silent as he drives LaPointe up the Main in his yellow sports car. It is eleven in the morning and the street is congested with off-loading grocery and goods trucks, and with pedestrians who flow out into the street to bypass blocked sidewalks. It is necessary to crawl along and stop frequently. From time to time Guttmann glances at the Lieutenant, and he is sure there are crinkles of amusement around his eyes. But Guttmann is damned if he will give him the satisfaction of bringing it up first.

So it is LaPointe who has to ask, “Did you get a confession out of Mr. W–?”

“Very nearly, sir. Yes.”

“Did you learn about Cream of Wheat?”

“What, sir? In what connection would he mention Cream of Wheat?”

“Well, he usually…” LaPointe laughs and nods. “You almost got me, son. You heard about Cream of Wheat, all right!” He laughs again.

“You might have warned me, sir.”

“Nobody warned me the first time. I was sure I had a walk-in confession.”

Guttmann pictures LaPointe being sucked in, leaning forward to catch each word, just as he had done. He has to laugh too. “I suppose this Mr. W–is harmless enough.”

“Look out for that kid!”

“I saw him! Jesus Christ, sir.”

“Sorry. Yes, he’s harmless enough, I suppose. There was a delicate case some years ago. Your Mr. W–and a young man were picked up in a public bathroom. The kid was Jewish. Because of W–’s family, the thing was hushed up, and they were both back out on the street before morning. But the fear of scandal did something to the old man.”

“And ever since then he comes in each time there’s a murder in the papers?”

“Not every murder. Only when the victim is a young male. And only if it’s a stabbing.”

“Christ, talk about sophomore psychology.”

“That truck’s backing out!”

“I see him, sir. Are you sure you’re comfortable?”

“What do you mean?”

“It must be hard to drive from over there.”

“Come on, come on! Let’s get going!”

Guttmann waits for the truck to clear, then eases forward. “Yes, that’s real sophomore psychology stuff. The need to confess; the stabbing image.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing, sir.” It seems odd to Guttmann that LaPointe should know so much about human reactions and the human condition, but at the same time be so uneducated. He doubts that the Lieutenant could define words like “id” and “fugue.” He probably recognizes the functioning of these forces and devices without having any names for them.

The worst of the traffic tangle behind them, they continue north on St. Laurent, cresting the hill at the barren little park of Carré Vallières, squeezed in between the Main and St. Dominique. It is a meager little triangle of sooty dirt, no grass, six or seven stunted trees. There are three benches of weathered wood once painted green, where old men play draughts in the summer, and in autumn huddle in their overcoats and stare ahead, or vacantly watch passers-by. For no reason he knows, LaPointe has always associated his retirement with this little square. He pictures himself sitting on one of those benches for an hour or two—always in winter, always with snow on the ground and bright sunshine. The roar of traffic up the Main passes close to the bench he has picked out for himself, and the smell of diesel fumes never leaves the air. From the top of the little rise he will be able to keep an eye on his street, even in retirement.

Once past the park and St. Joseph Street, they are on the Italian Main, where the street loses its cosmopolitan character. Unlike the lower Main, LaPointe’s real patch, the quality of the Italian Main is not porous and ever-changing, with languages and people slowly permutating through the arrival and absorption of new tides of immigrants. The upper Main has been Italian for as long as anyone can remember, and its people do not move away to blend into the amorphous Canadian mass. The street and the people remain Italian.

At a signal from LaPointe, Guttmann pulls over and parks before a dingy little restaurant bearing the sign:

They get out and cross the street, turning down Rue Dante, past a barbershop, empty save for the owner who is enthroned in one of his leather chairs, reading the paper with the air of a man completely at his ease, a man who knows he will not be interrupted by customers. Stuck in the window are sun-faded pictures of vapid young men advertising passé hairstyles. One grins from beneath a flattop, and another sports that long-sided fashion that used to be called a “duck’s ass.” In fact, as LaPointe knows, the only customers are the barber’s relatives, who get their hair cut for free. The place is a numbers drop.

At the intersection of a narrow street, LaPointe turns down toward a small bar halfway between Rue Dante and St. Zotique. It occurs to Guttmann that in this Franco-Italian district there is something particularly appropriate about a bar being situated halfway between streets named Dante and St. Zotique. He mentions this to LaPointe, and asks if the Lieutenant ever thought of it as a kind of cultural metaphor.

“What?”

“Nothing, sir. Just a thought.”

The interior of the bar is overwarm from a large oil heater, its orange flame dimly billowing behind a mica window. The woman behind the bar is overblown, her chubby arms clattering with plastic bracelets, her high-piled hairdo an unnatural blue-black, her eye make-up and lipstick florid, and the deep V of her spangled blouse revealing the slopes of flaccid breasts that get most of their shape from the encasing fabric. She completes a languid yawn before asking the men what they will have.

LaPointe orders a glass of red, and Guttmann, tugging off his overcoat in the excessive heat, asks for the same thing, although he does not particularly care for wine outside meals.

From the back room, beyond a gaudy floral curtain, comes the click of pool balls followed by a curse in Italian and laughter from the other players.

“Who’s your friend, Lieutenant?” the barmaid asks as she pours the wine and bestows upon Guttmann a carnivorous leer.

“Is Candy Al back there?” LaPointe asks.

“Where else would he be this time of day?”

“Tell him I want to talk to him.”

“That won’t be the best news he’s had all week.” Brushing close by Guttmann, the barmaid goes into the back room, walking with her knees slightly bent to make her broad ass swing invitingly.

“It looks like you’ve scored,” LaPointe says as he sets his empty glass back on the bar. He always drinks off a coup de rouge at one go, like the workers of his home city.

“That’s wonderful,” Guttmann says. “Do you think I’m her first love?”

“One of the first this morning.”

LaPointe knows this bar well. It serves two very different kinds of clients. Old Italian men in cloth caps often sit in pairs at the oilcloth-covered tables, talking quietly and drinking the harsh red. When they order, they hold the barmaid by her hip. It is an automatic gesture meaning nothing specific, and the right to hold the barmaid’s hip goes, by immutable tradition, to the one who is paying for the drinks.

In summer, the back door is always open, and old men play at bowls on the tarmac alley where there is a thick covering of sand for this purpose. Every twenty minutes or so, a girl brings out a tray of glasses filled with wine. She collects the cork beer coasters from under empty glasses and stacks them at the end of the bar as a count of the wine drunk. The games are played for wine, and very seriously, with slow dignity and with much criticism and praise. Sometimes tipsy old men steal one or two of the coasters and put them into their pockets, not to avoid paying for the wine, but so that the barmaid will have to come looking for them, and when she does, they get a grab of her ass.

In contrast to these good people, the ones who hang out in the poolroom with its jukebox are the young toughs of the neighborhood, who squander their days gambling borrowed money and lying to one another about their sexual conquests and their knife fights. Candy Al Canducci reigns over these wise-cracking punks, who admire his flashy expensive clothes and flashy cheap women. Someday, they too…

He occasionally lends them money, or buys rounds of drinks. In return they serve him as flunkies, doing little errands, or standing around looking tough when he makes a personal visit to one of the bars dominated by another boss.

The whole thing is a cut-rate imitation of heavier Family action in north and east Montreal, but it has its share of violence. Occasionally there are border disputes over numbers territories, and there will be a week or two of conflict, single members of one gang beaten up by five or six men from another, with faces and testicles the special targets of pointy-toed shoes. Sometimes there is a nighttime scuffle in a back alley, silent except for panting and the scrape of shoes, and a nasal grunt when the knife goes in.

LaPointe always knows what is happening, but he lets it go so long as no one is involved but themselves. The two things he does not permit are murder and drugs, the one because it gets into the papers and makes his patch look bad, the other just because he does not permit it. If there is a murder, he has a little chat with the bosses, and in the end some informer gives him the killer. It’s a tacit understanding they have. Every once in a while, one of the bosses will feel he can stand up to LaPointe. Then things start to go badly for him. His boys begin to get picked up for every minor charge in the book; the police start to hit his numbers drops one after the other; small amounts of narcotics turn up every time LaPointe searches an apartment. The coterie of young toughs around the recalcitrant boss begins to thin out, and each of the bosses knows that with the first sign of weakness his brothers will turn on him and devour his territory. Even the proudest ends with having a little chat with LaPointe, and with turning over the killer he has been sheltering, or pulling back from his little tentative into drugs. Of course, there is the usual tough talk about LaPointe waking up some morning dead, but this is just face-saving. The bosses don’t really want him gone. The next cop might not let them settle things among themselves, and they might not be able to trust his word, as they can always trust LaPointe’s.

While there are these unspoken agreements, there is no protection. From time to time, one of the bosses makes a mistake. And when he does, LaPointe puts him away. They expect nothing else; LaPointe is like Fate—always there, always waiting. The bosses are all Catholics, and this sense of hovering punishment satisfies their need for retribution. The older ones take an odd pride in their cop and in his dogged honesty. You cant buy LaPointe. You can come to an understanding with him, but you can’t buy him.

For his part, LaPointe has no delusions about his control on the Italian Main. This is not the Mafia he faces. The Mafia, with its American connections and trade union base, operates in north and east Montreal, where it occasionally becomes visible through sordid shootouts in the Naugahyde-and-chrome bars they infest. It isn’t so much LaPointe’s presence that prevents the organization from moving onto the Main as it is the district’s own character. The Main is too poor to be worth the pain the old cop would give them.

At forty, Candy Al Canducci is the youngest of the local petty bosses; he is flashy in a “B” movie way, wise-mouthed, self-conscious, pushy; he lacks the Old-World dignity of the older bosses, most of whom are good family men who care about their children and take care of the unemployed and aged on their blocks. They’re all thieves; but Candy Al is also a punk.

The barmaid’s plastic bracelets clatter as she bats the gaudy curtain aside and comes back into the bar. “He doesn’t want to see you, Lieutenant. Says he’s busy. In conference.”

There has been a silence in the back room for the past minute or two, and now there is suppressed laughter with this phrase “in conference.”

The barmaid leans against the counter and plants a fist on her hip. She looks steadily at Guttmann as she toys with the crucifix around her neck, tickling her breasts by dragging the cross in and out of the cleavage.

“In conference, eh?” LaPointe asks. “Oh, I see. Well, at least give me another red.”

There is a snicker from the back room, and the click of pool balls begins again.

As the barmaid takes her time going around to pour the wine, LaPointe tugs off his overcoat and drops it over a chair. Without waiting for the drink, he slaps the floral curtain aside and enters the poolroom. Guttmann takes a breath and follows him.

The hanging lamp over the pool table makes a high wainscoting of light that decapitates the half-dozen young men standing around the table. They draw back to the walls as LaPointe enters. One of them puts his hand in his pocket. A knife, probably, but mostly a sassy gesture. And one young tough pats the back of his hair into place, as though preparing for a photograph. Guttmann sets his broad body in the doorway as he notices that there is no other exit from the room. He feels a trickle of sweat under his shoulder holster. Seven against two; not much room for movement.

Candy Al Canducci continues playing, pretending not to have noticed the policemen enter. The coat of his closely cut suit hangs open, and his broad paisley tie brushes the green felt as he lines up a shot with taunting care. His pants are so tight that the outlines of his girdle-underwear can be seen.

LaPointe notices that he has changed from looking over a rather difficult shot that would have left him with good position to taking a dogmeat ball hanging on the rim of the pocket. He smiles to himself. Candy Al’s cheap sense of theatrics will not permit him to punctuate some bit of lip with a missed shot.

“Let’s have a talk, Canducci,” LaPointe says, ignoring the ring of young men.

Candy Al brushes the chalk from his fingers before lifting the sharp crease of one trouser leg to squat and line up the straight-in shot. “You want to talk, Canuck? All right, talk. Me, I’m playing pool.” He doesn’t look up to say this, but continues to examine his shot.

LaPointe shakes his head gravely. “That’s too bad.”

“What’s too bad?”

“The way you’re putting yourself in a hard place, Canducci. You’re showing off for these asshole punks. First thing you know, you’ll be forced to say something stupid. And then I’ll have to spank you.”

“Spank me? Ho-ho. You?” He rolls an in-cupped hand and looks around his coterie as if to say, Listen to this crap, will you? He draws back the cue to make his shot.

LaPointe reaches out and sweeps the object ball into its pocket. “Game’s over.”

For the first time, Canducci looks up into LaPointe’s eyes. He detests the crinkling smile in them. He walks slowly around the end of the table to face the cop. There is an inward pressure from the ring of punks, and Guttmann glances around to pick out the first two he’d have to drop to keep them off his arms. Canducci’s heart is thumping under his yellow silk shirt, as much from anger as from fear. LaPointe was right; if it hadn’t been for the audience, he would never have taken this tone; now he has no choice but to play it out.

He stops before LaPointe, tapping the shaft of his cue into his palm. “You know what, Canuck? You take a lot of risks, for an old man.”

LaPointe speaks over his shoulder to Guttmann. “There’s something for you to learn here, son. This Canducci here and his punks are dangerous men.” His eyes do not leave Candy Al’s, and they are still crinkled in a smile.

“Better believe it, cop.”

“Oh, you’re dangerous, all right. Because you’re cowards, and cowards are always dangerous when they’re in a pack.”

Canducci pushes his face toward LaPointe’s. “You got a wise mouth, you know that?”

LaPointe closes his eyes and shakes his head sadly. “Canducci, Canducci… what can I tell you?” He lifts his palms in a fatalistic shrug.

The next happens so quickly that Guttmann remembers only blurred fragments of motion and the sound of scuffling feet. LaPointe suddenly reaches out with one of the lifted hands, grabbing the dandy by the face and driving him back against the wall in two quick steps. Canducci’s head cracks against a pinup of a nude. LaPointe’s broad hand masks the face, the palm against the mouth and the fingers splayed across the eyes.

“Freeze!” he barks. “One move, and he loses his eyes!”

To make his point, he presses slightly with his fingertips, and Canducci produces a terrified squeal that is half-muffled by the heel of LaPointe’s hand. LaPointe can feel saliva from the twisted mouth against his palm.

“Everyone sit on the floor,” LaPointe commands. “Out away from the wall! Sit on your hands, palms up! I want the legs out in front of you! Do what I say, or this asshole will be selling pencils on the street!” Again a slight pressure on the eyes; again a squeal.

The punks exchange glances, no one wanting to be the first to obey. Then Guttmann, with a gesture that surprises LaPointe, grabs one by the arm and slams him up against the wall. The tough sits down with almost comic celerity, and the others follow.

“Sit up straight!” LaPointe orders. “And keep those hands under your asses! I want to hear knuckles crunch!”

This is a trick he learned from an old cop, now dead. When men are sitting on their hands, not only is any quick movement impossible, but they are embarrassed and humbled almost instantly, producing a sense of defeat and the desirable passivity of the prisoner mentality. It is a particularly useful device when you are badly outnumbered.

No one speaks, and for a full minute LaPointe continues to press Canducci’s head against the wall, his fingers splayed over the face and eyes. Guttmann doesn’t understand the delay. He looks over at the Lieutenant, whose head is hanging down and whose body appears oddly limp. “Sir?” he says uneasily.

LaPointe takes two deep breaths and swallows. The worst of it is over. The vertigo has passed. He straightens up, grabs Canducci’s broad paisley tie, and snatches him away from the wall, propelling him ahead toward the gaudy curtain. One more push on the shoulder and Candy Al stumbles into the barroom. LaPointe turns back to the six young men on the floor. “You watch them,” he tells Guttmann. “If one of them moves a muscle, slap his face until his ears ring.” LaPointe knows exactly what threat would most sting cocky Italian boys.

When he pushes aside the curtain and enters the bar, he finds Candy Al sitting at a table, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “The Commissioner’s going to hear about this,” he says without much assurance. “It’s a free country! You cops ain’t the bosses of everything!”

LaPointe picks up his glass of red from the bar and sips it slowly, not setting down the glass until he feels recovered from the swimming dizziness and the constriction in his chest and upper arms that caught him unawares a minute ago. When the last of the effervescence has fizzed out of his blood, he leans back against the bar and looks down at Canducci, who is carefully touching the edge of his handkerchief to the corner of his eye, then examining the damp spot with tender concern.

“You got your finger in my eye! I wear contacts! That could be dangerous for a guy that wears contacts! Fucking cops.” Alone out here without his gang, he reverts to the whining petty thief, alternating between playing it as the movie tough and simpering piteously.

“We’re going to talk about a friend of yours,” LaPointe says, sitting in the chair opposite Canducci.

“I don’t have any friends!”

“That’s truer than you know, shithead. The name is Antonio Verdini, alias Tony Green.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You rented a room for him. The concierge has given evidence.”

“Well, this concierge has her head up her ass! I tell you I never met… whatever you said his name is.”

“Was.”

“What?”

“Was. Not is. He’s dead. Stabbed in an alley.”

The handkerchief is up to Canducci’s eyes, so LaPointe misses the effect of the drop. After a short silence, the Italian says, “So, what’s that to me?”

“Maybe twenty years. Stabbing is the kind of action your people go in for. The Commissioner is on my ass for an arrest. With your record, you’re dogmeat. And I don’t really care if you did it or not. I’ll be satisfied just to get you off the street.”

“I didn’t kill the son of a bitch! I didn’t even know he was dead until you told me. Anyway, I got an alibi.”

“Oh? For what time?”

“You name it, cop! You name it, and I got an alibi for it.” Candy Al dabs at his eyes again. “I think I got a busted blood vessel or something. You’re gonna pay for that. Like they say in the lotteries, un jour ce sera ton tour.”

LaPointe reaches across the table and pats Canducci’s cheek three times, the last tap not gentle. “Are you threatening me?”

Candy Al jerks his head away petulantly. “Where you get off slapping people around? You never heard of police brutality?”

“You’ll have twenty years to make your complaint.”

“I told you, all my time is covered.”

“By them?” LaPointe tips his head toward the poolroom.

“Yeah. That’s right. By them.”

LaPointe dismisses them with a sharp puff of air. “How long do you think one of those kids, sitting back there with his ass in his hands, could stand up to interrogation by me?”

Canducci’s eyes flicker; LaPointe’s point is made. “I’m telling you I didn’t kill this guy!”

“You mean you had him killed?”

“Shit, I don’t even know this Verdini!”

“But at least you remember his name now.”

There is a pause. Canducci considers his situation.

“I don’t talk to cops. I think you’re holding an empty bag. You got a witness? You got fingerprints? You got the knife? If you had any lever on me, we wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d be downtown. You’re empty, cop!” Canducci says this last loudly, to be overheard by the boys in the back. He wants them to see how he treats cops.

Candy Al’s reasoning is correct, so LaPointe has to take another tack. He shifts in his chair and looks out the window past Canducci’s head. For a moment he seems to be absorbed in watching two kids playing in the street, coatless despite the cold. “I hear you’ve got something going with your boys back there,” he says absently.

“What do you mean? What you talking?”

“I’m talking about the rumor that you keep your boys around for pleasure. That you pay them to use you like a woman.” LaPointe shrugs. “Your flashy clothes, your silks, you wear a girdle… it’s easy to see how a rumor like that could spread.”

Canducci’s face bloats with outrage. “Who’s saying this? Give me a name! I’ll sink my fingernails into his forehead and snatch his fucking face off!”

LaPointe lifts a hand. “Take it easy. The rumor hasn’t started yet.”

Canducci is confused. “What the hell you talking about?”

“But by tomorrow night, everyone on the street will be saying that you take it like a woman. I only have to drop a hint here, a wink there.”

“Bullshit! Nobody would believe you! I got a doll on my arm every night.”

“A smart cover-up. But always a different girl. They never hang around. Maybe because you can’t satisfy them.”

“Agh, I get tired of them. I need a little variety.”

“That’s your story. The other bosses would grab up a rumor like that in a second. They’d have big laughs over it. So Candy Al is a fif! Some punk would paint words on your car. Pretty soon your boys would drift away, because they don’t want people saying they’re queers. You’d be alone. People would talk behind their hands when you walked by. They’d whistle at you from across the street.” Every touch is calculated to make the proud Italian wince.

His mind racing, Canducci glares at LaPointe for a full minute. Yes. A rumor like that would spread like clap in a nunnery. They’d love it, those shitheads over on Marconi Street. His jaw tightens and he looks down at the floor. “You’d do that? You’d spread a rumor like that about a man?”

LaPointe snaps his fingers softly. “Like that.”

Candy Al glances toward the poolroom and lowers his voice. He speaks quickly to get it over with. “All right. This Verdini? A friend asked me to find a room for him because his English ain’t too good. I found the room. And that’s it. That’s all I know. If he got himself killed, that’s tough shit. I got nothing to do with it.”

“What’s this friend’s name?”

“I don’t remember. I got lots of friends.”

“Just a minute ago you told me you didn’t have any friends.”

“Agh!”

LaPointe lets the silence sit on Canducci.

“Look! I’m giving it to you straight, Lieutenant!”

“Lieutenant? What happened to Canuck?”

Canducci shrugs, lifting his hands and dipping his head. “Agh, I was just pissed. People say things when they’re pissed.”

“I see. I want you to say the word ‘wop’ for me.”

“Ah, come on!”

“Say it.”

Canducci turns his head and stares at the wall. “Wop,” he says softly.

“Good. Now keep talking about this kid.”

“I already told you everything I know!”

After a moment of silence, LaPointe sighs and rises. “Have it your way, Canducci. But tell me one thing. Those boys back there? Which one’s best?”

“That ain’t funny!”

“Your friends will think so.” LaPointe slaps his hand on the bar to summon the barmaid, who disappeared when she heard how things were going in the poolroom. She has been around enough to know that it is not wise to witness Candy Al’s defeats. She comes from the back room, tugging down her skirt, which is so tight across the hips that it continually rides up.

“What do I owe you?” LaPointe asks.

“Just a minute,” Canducci says, raising his hand. “What’s your rush? Sit down, why don’t you?”

The barmaid looks from one to the other, then returns to the back room.

LaPointe sits down. “That’s better. But let’s cut the bullshit. I don’t have the time. I’ll start the story for you. This Green was brought into the country illegally. You were laundering him. You found him a room on the lower Main, away from this district where the immigration authorities might look for him if the Italian officials had sent out a want bulletin. You kept him in walking-around money. You probably arranged for him to learn a little English, because that’s part of the laundering process. Now you take it from there.”

Canducci looks at LaPointe for a moment. “I’m not admitting any of that, you know.”

“Of course not. But let’s pretend it’s true.”

“Okay. Just pretending what you say is true… This kid was a sort of distant cousin to me. The same village in Calabria. He was supposed to be a smart kid, and tough. But he gets into a little trouble back in the old country. So next thing you know he’s here, and I’ve promised to find some kind of work for him. As a favor.”

LaPointe smiles at the obliquity.

“Okay. So I get him a room, and I get him started learning some English. But I don’t see him often. That wouldn’t be smart, you dig? But all the time this bastard’s needing money. I give him a lot, but he always needs more. He blows it on the holes. I never seen such a crotch hound. I warn him that he’s beginning to get a reputation about all the squack he’s stabbing, and what the super don’t need right now is a reputation. He goes after all kinds. Even old women. He’s sort of weird that way, you know? So the only time I visit him is to tell him he shouldn’t draw attention to himself. I tell him to take it easy with the holes. But he don’t listen, and he asks me for more money. Five will get nine it was a woman that put the knife into him.”

“Go on.”

“Go on to what? That’s all! I warn him, but he don’t listen. And you walk in here this morning and tell me he’s got himself reamed. He should of listened.”

“You don’t sound too sorry for your cousin.”

“I should be sorry for myself! I’m out a lot of scratch! And for what?”

“Call it a business risk. Okay, give me the names of some of his women.”

“Who knows names? Shit, he was on the make day and night. Drag a net down the Main and you’ll come up with half a dozen he’s rammed. But I can tell you this. He went for weird action. Two at a time. Old women. Gimps. Kids. That sort of thing.”

“You said something about his taking English lessons? Who was he taking them from?”

“No idea. I give him a list of ads from the papers. I let him pick for himself. The less I know about what these guys are doing, the better for me.”

“What else do you want to tell me?”

“There’s nothing else to tell. And listen—” Canducci points a chubby white finger at LaPointe—”there ain’t no witnesses here. Anything I might have said, I would deny in court. Right?”

LaPointe nods, his eyes never leaving Candy Al’s as he weighs and evaluates the story he just heard. “It could be the way you say. It could also be that the kid got too dangerous for you, drawing attention to himself and always asking you for money. It could be you decided to cut your losses.”

“My word of honor!”

LaPointe’s lower eyelids droop. “Well, if I have your word of honor… what else could I want?” He rises and begins to tug on his overcoat. “If I decide I need more from you, I’ll be by. And if you try to leave town, I’ll take that as a confession.”

Canducci dabs at his eyes once more, then folds his mauve handkerchief carefully into his breast pocket and pats it into place. “It’s a crying goddamned shame, you know that?”

“What is?”

“That way this kid gets me into trouble. That’s what you get for trying to help a relative.”

After LaPointe and Guttmann leave the bar, Canducci sits for a time, thinking about how he will play it. He takes several bills from his wallet. As he saunters into the poolroom where his boys are standing around sheepishly, working their hands to restore circulation, he tucks the money back into the wallet with a flourish. “Sorry about that, boys. My fault. I got a little behind in my payments. These penny-and-nickel cops don’t like it when they don’t get their payoff on time. Okay, rack ‘em up.”

They are the only customers in the A-One Café. After serving them the one-plate lunch, the old Chinese has returned to his station by the window where, his eyes empty, he looks out on the sooty brick warehouses across the street.

“Well?” LaPointe asks. “How do you like it?”

Guttmann pushes his plate aside and shakes his head. “What was it called?”

“I don’t think it has a name.”

“I’m not surprised.”

There is a certain pride in the Lieutenant’s voice when he says, “It’s the worst food in Montreal, maybe in all of Canada. That’s why you can always come here to talk. There’s never anyone else here to disturb you.”

“Hm-m!” Guttmann notices that his grunt sounded just like the Lieutenant’s grumpy responses.

During the meal, LaPointe has filled him in on what he learned from Candy Al, together with a description of the operation known as laundering.

“And you think this Canducci might have killed Green, or had him killed?”

“It’s possible.”

Guttmann shakes his head. “With every lead, we turn another suspect. It’s worse than not having any suspects. We’ve got that tramp, the Vet. Then we’ve got that guy Arnaud, the concierge’s friend. Now Canducci, or one of his punks. And it seems that it might have been almost any woman on the Main who isn’t under ten or over ninety. And what about the woman you talked to alone? The lesbian who runs a café. Is she a viable?”

Is she a viable? Precisely the kind of space-age jargon that LaPointe detests. But he answers. “I suppose. She had reason, and opportunity. And she’s capable of it.”

“What does that give us now? Four possibles?”

“Don’t forget your Mr. W–. You came close to wringing a confession out of him.”

Guttmann feels a flush at the nape of his neck. “Yes, sir. That’s right.”

LaPointe chuckles. “I’m not ragging you, kid.”

“Oh? Is that so, sir?”

“No, you’re thinking all right. You’re thinking like a good cop. But don’t forget that this Green was a turd. Just about everybody he touched would have some reason for wanting him dead. It’s not all that surprising that we find a suspect behind every door. But pretty soon it will be over.”

“Over? In what way over?”

“The leads are starting to thin out. The talk with Canducci didn’t turn another name or address.”

“The leads could be thinning out because we’ve already touched the killer. And passed him by.”

“I haven’t passed anybody by yet. And there’s still the possibility that Carrot will come up with a name or two, maybe a bar he used to go to.”

“Carrot?”

“The lesbian.”

“But she’s a suspect herself.”

“All the more reason for her to help us… if she’s innocent, that is. But I wouldn’t bet on closing this case. I have a feeling that pretty soon we’re going to open the last door, and find that blank wall.”

“And you don’t particularly care?”

“Not particularly. Not now that we know the sort of kid the victim was.”

Guttmann shakes his head. “I can’t buy that.”

“I know you can’t But I’ve got other things to do besides chase around after shadows. I’ve got the whole neighborhood to look after.”

“Tell me something, Lieutenant. If this Green were a nice kid, say a kid who grew up on the Main, wouldn’t you try harder?”

“Probably. But a case like this is hard to sort out. When you’re tracking a kid like this Green, you meet nothing but dirty types. Almost everyone you meet is guilty. The question is, what are they guilty of?”

“Guilty until proven innocent?”

“Lawyers being what they are, probably guilty even then.”

“I hope I never think like that”

“Stay on the street for a few years. You will. By the way, you didn’t do too badly back in Canducci’s bar. We walked in without a warrant, slapped people around, and you handled yourself like a cop. What happened to all this business about civil rights and going by the book?”

Guttmann lifts his hands and lets them drop back onto the table. You can’t discuss things with LaPointe. He always cuts both ways. But Guttmann realizes that he has a point. When he handled that tight moment when the boys were resisting the order to sit on their hands, he had felt… competent. There is a danger in being around LaPointe too long. Things get less clear; right and wrong start to blend in at the edges.

When he looks up, Guttmann sees a crinkling around LaPointe’s eyes. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking about your Mr. W–.”

“Honest to God, I’d give a lot if you’d get off that, sir.”

“No, I wasn’t going to rag you. It just occurred to me that if Mr. W–ever did kill somebody, all he’d have to do would be to wait until it got into the papers, then come to us with a confession involving Jewish plots and Cream of Wheat We’d toss him right out”

“That’s a comforting thought.”

“Oh. By the way, didn’t you say something the other night about playing pinochle?”

“Sir?”

“Didn’t you tell me you used to play pinochle with your grandfather?”

“Ah… yes, sir.”

“Want to play tonight?”

“Pinochle?”

“That’s what we’re talking about.”

“Wait a minute. I’m sorry, but this just came out of nowhere, sir. You’re asking me to play pinochle with you tonight?”

“With me and a couple of friends. The man who usually plays with us is sick. And cutthroat isn’t much fun.”

Guttmann senses that this offer is a gesture of acceptance. He can’t remember anyone in the department having bragged about spending off time with the Lieutenant. And he is free tonight. The girl in his building takes classes on Monday nights and doesn’t get back until eleven.

“Yes, sir. I’d like to play. But it’s been a while, you know.”

“Don’t worry about it. Nothing but three old farts. But just in case you’re a little rusty, I’ll arrange for you to be partners with a very gentle and understanding man. A man named David Mogolevski.”