The Main

11

The evening of pinochle has gone well—for David.

As usual he dominated play, and as usual he overbid his hand, but the luck of the cards allowed Guttmann to bail him out more times than not, and as partners they won devastatingly.

After a particularly good—and lucky—hand, David asked the young man, “Tell me, have you ever thought of becoming a priest?”

Guttmann admitted that the idea seldom crossed his mind.

“That’s good. It would ruin your game.”

On one occasion, when not even luck was enough to save David from his wild overbidding, he treated Guttmann to one of his grousing tirades about how difficult it was, even for a pinochle maven like himself, to schlep a partner who couldn’t pull his own weight. Unlike Father Martin, Guttmann did not permit himself to be martyred to David’s peculiar and personal view of sportsmanship. He countered with broad sarcasm, mentioning that the Lieutenant had rightly described David as a gentle and understanding partner.

But David’s thick skin is impervious to such attacks. He thrust out his lower lip and nodded absently, accepting that as an accurate enough description of his character.

For his part, Moishe was slow in warming to the young intruder into their game, despite Guttmann’s genuine interest in the fabric Moishe had on the loom at that moment. He had been looking forward to one of his rambling philosophic chats with Martin.

Still, so it shouldn’t be a total loss, he made a venture toward drawing Guttmann out during their break for sandwiches and wine. “You went to university, right? What did you major in?”

It occurs to LaPointe that he never asked that question. He wasn’t all that interested.

“Well, nothing really for the first two years. I changed my major three or four times. I was more looking for professors than for fields.”

“That sounds intelligent,” Moishe says.

“Finally, I settled down and took the sequence in criminology and penology.”

“And what sorts of things does one study under those headings?”

David butts in. “How to steal, naturally. Theft for fun and profit. Theft and the Polish Question.”

“Why don’t you shut up for a while?” Moishe suggests. “Your mouth could use the rest.”

David spreads his face in offended innocence and draws back, then he winks at LaPointe. He has been riding Moishe all night, piquing him here and there, ridiculing his play, when he knew perfectly well that all the cards were against him. But he is a little surprised when his gentle partner snaps back like this.

“So?” Moishe asks Guttmann. “What did you study?”

Guttmann shrugs off the value of his studies, a little embarrassed about them in the presence of LaPointe. “Oh, a little sociology, some psychology as related to the criminal and criminal motives—that sort of thing.”

“No literature? No theology?”

“Some literature, sure. No theology. Would you pass the mustard, please?”

“Here you are. You know, it’s interesting you should have studied criminal motives and all this. Just lately I have been thinking about crime and sin… the relationships, the differences.”

“Oh boy,” David puts in. “Here we go again! Listen! About crime it’s all right to think. It’s a citizen’s duty. But about sin? Moishe, my old friend, AK’s like us shouldn’t think about sin. It’s too late. Our chances have passed us by.”

Guttmann laughs. “No, I’m afraid I never think about things like that, Mr. Rappaport.”

“You don’t?” Moishe asks gloomily, his hopes for a good talk crumbling. “That’s strange. When I was a young man thinking was a popular pastime.”

“Things change,” David says.

“Does that mean they improve?” Moishe asks.

Guttmann glances at his watch. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to be going. I have a date, and I’m already late.”

“A date?” David asks. “It’s after eleven. What can you do so late?”

“We’ll think of something.” As soon as he makes this adolescent single-entendre remark, Guttmann feels he has been disloyal to his girl.

Moishe rises. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“That isn’t necessary, sir.”

“You’re already late for your date. And you’re not familiar with the streets around here. So don’t argue. Get your coat.”

As they leave, Moishe has already begun with “…when you stop to think about it, the differences between sin and crime are greater than the similarities. Take, for instance, the matter of guilt…”

As the door closes behind them, David looks at LaPointe and shakes his head. “Oh, that Moishe. Sin, crime, love, duty, the law, the good, the bad… he’s interested in everything that’s so big it doesn’t really matter. A scholar! But in practical things…” His lips flap with a puff of air. “That reminds me of something I wanted to talk to you about, Claude. A matter of law.”

“I’m not a lawyer.”

“I know, I know. But you know something about the law. This may come as a surprise to you, but I am not immortal. I could die. At my age, you have to think about such things. So tell me. What do I have to do to make sure the business goes to Moishe if he should, cholilleh, outlive me?”

LaPointe shrugs. “I don’t know. Isn’t all that handled in your partnership agreement?”

“Well… that’s the problem. Actually, Moishe and I aren’t partners. In the legal sense, I mean. And I have a nephew. I’d hate to see him come along and screw Moishe out of the business. And, believe me, he’s capable of it. Of working for a living, he’s not capable. But of screwing someone out of something? Of that he is capable.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, you and Moishe aren’t partners? I thought he started the business, then later took you on as a partner.”

“That’s right. But you know Moishe. He’s not interested in the business end of business. A beautiful person, but in business a luftmensh. So over the years, he sold out to me so that he wouldn’t have to be bothered with taxes and records and all that.”

“And you’re afraid that if you die—”

“—cholilleh—”

“—he might not get the business? Well, David, I told you I’m no lawyer. But it seems to me that all you have to do is make out a will.”

David sighs deeply. “Yes, I was afraid of that. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. I’m not a superstitious man, don’t get me wrong. But in my opinion a man is just asking for it, if he makes out his will while he’s still alive. It’s like saying to God, Okay. I’m ready whenever you are. And speaking personally for myself, I’m not ready. If a truck should run over me—okay, that’s that. But I’m not going to stand in the middle of the street shouting, Hey! Truck-drivers! I’m ready!”

As LaPointe steps out onto the blustery street, turning up the collar of his overcoat, he meets Moishe, returning from seeing Guttmann to his car. They fall into step and walk along together, as they usually do after games.

“That’s a nice young man, Claude.”

“He’s all right, I suppose. What did you talk about?”

“You.”

LaPointe laughs. “Me as a crime? Or me as a sin?”

“Neither one, exactly. We talked about his university studies; how much the things he learned turned out to reflect the real world.”

“How did I fit into that?”

“You were the classic example of how the things he learned were not like it is in the real world. The things you do and believe are the opposite of everything he wants to do with his life, of everything he believes in. But, oddly enough, he admires you.”

“Hm-m! I didn’t think he liked me all that much.”

“I didn’t say he likes you. He admires you. He thinks you’re the best of your kind.”

“But he can live without the kind.”

“That’s about it.”

They have reached the corner where they usually part with a handshake. But tonight Moishe asks, “Are you in a hurry to go home, Claude?”

LaPointe realizes that Moishe is still hungry for talk; the short walk with Guttmann couldn’t have made up for his usual ramblings with Father Martin. For himself, LaPointe has no desire to get to his apartment. He has known all day what he will find there.

“How about a glass of tea?” Moishe suggests.

“Sure.”

They go across the street to a Russian café where tea is served in glasses set in metal holders. Their table is by the window, and they watch late passers-by in the comfortable silence of old friends who no longer have to talk to impress one another, or to define themselves.

“You know,” Moishe says idly, “I’m afraid I frightened him off, your young colleague. With a young girl on his mind, the last thing in the world he needed was a long-winded talk about sin and crime.” He smiles and shakes his head at himself. “Being a bore is bad enough. Knowing you’re boring but going ahead anyway, that’s worse.”

“Hm-m. I could see you had something stored up.”

Moishe fixes his friend with a sidelong look. “What do you mean, I had something stored up?”

“Oh, you know. All through the game you were sending out little feelers; but Father Martin wasn’t there to take you up. You know, I sometimes think you work out what you’re going to say during the day, while you’re cutting away on your fabric. Then you drop these ideas casually during the pinochle game, like they just popped into your head. And poor Martin is fishing around for his first thoughts, while you have everything carefully thought out.”

“Guilty! And being guilty I don’t mind so much as being transparent!” He laughs. “What chance does the criminal have against you, tell me that.”

LaPointe shrugs. “Oh, they manage to muddle along all right.”

Moishe nods. “Muddle along. System M: the big Muddle. The major organization principle of all governments. She seemed like a nice girl.”

LaPointe frowns. “What?”

“That girl I met in your apartment yesterday. She seemed nice.”

LaPointe looks at his friend. “Why do you say that? You know perfectly well she didn’t seem nice. She seemed like a street girl, which is all she is.”

“Yes, but…” Moishe shrugs and turns his attention to the street. After a silence, he says, “Yes, you’re right. She did seem like a street girl. But all girls of her age seem nice to me. I know better, but… My sister was just her age when we went into the camp. She was very lovely, my sister. Very shy. She never… she didn’t survive the camp.” He stares out the window for a while. Then he says quietly, “I’m not even sure I did. Entirely. You know what I mean?”

LaPointe cannot know what he means; he doesn’t answer.

“I guess that’s why I imagine that all girls of her age are nice… are vulnerable. That’s funny. Girls of her age! If she had lived, my sister would be in her early fifties now. I can’t picture that. I get older, but she remains twenty in my mind. You know what I mean?”

LaPointe knows exactly what he means; he doesn’t answer.

Moishe closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Ach, I don’t think I’m up to stumbling around in these parts of my memory. Better to let these things rest. They have been well grieved.”

“Well grieved? That’s a funny thing to say.”

“Why funny, Claude? You think grief is shameful?”

LaPointe shrugs. “I don’t think about it at all.”

“That’s odd. Of course grief is good! The greatest proof that God is not just playing cruel games with us is that He gave us the ability to grieve, and to forget. When one is wounded—I don’t mean physically—forgetfulness cauterizes and heals it over, but there would be rancor and hate and bitterness trapped under the scar. Grief is how you drain the wound, so it doesn’t poison you. You understand what I mean?”

LaPointe lifts his palms. “No, Moishe. I don’t. I’m sorry… but I’m not Father Martin. This kind of talk…”

“But Claude, this isn’t philosophy! Okay, maybe I say things too fancy, too preciously, but what I’m talking about isn’t abstract. It’s everyday life. It’s… obvious!”

“Not to me. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say grief is good. It has nothing to do with me.” LaPointe realizes that his tone is unfriendly, that he is closing the door to the chat Moishe seems to need. But this talk about grief makes him uncomfortable.

Behind his round glasses, Moishe’s eyes read LaPointe’s face. “I see. Well… at least allow me to pay for the tea. That way, I won’t regret having bored you. Regret! There’s a little trio often confused: Grief, Remorse, Regret! Grief is the gift of the gods; Remorse is the whip of the gods; and Regret…? Regret is nothing. It’s what you say in a letter when you can’t fill an order in time.”

LaPointe looks out the window. He hopes Father Martin will get well soon.

They shake hands on the sidewalk in front of the Russian café, and LaPointe decides to take one last walk down the Main before turning in. He has to put his street to bed.

Even before switching on the green-and-red lamp, he senses in the temperature of the room, in the smell of the still air, the emptiness.

Of course, he knew she would be gone when he came back tonight. He knew it as he lay in bed beside her, smelling the ouzo she had drunk. He knew it as he tried to get back to sleep after that dream… what was it? Something about water?

He makes coffee and brings the cup to his armchair. The streetlamps down in the park spill damp yellow light onto the gravel paths. Sometimes it seems the snow will never come.

The silence in the room is dense, irritating. LaPointe tells himself that it’s just as well Marie-Louise is gone. She was becoming a nuisance, with that silly, brief laugh of hers. He sniffs derision at himself and reaches for one of his Zolas, not caring which one. He opens the volume at random and begins to read. He has read them through and through, and it no longer matters where he begins or ends. Before long, he is looking through the page, his eyes no longer moving.

Images, some faded, some crisp, project themselves onto his memory in a sequence of their own. A thread of the past comes unraveled, and he tugs it with gentle attention, pulling out people and moments woven so deep into the fabric of the past that they seemed forgotten. The mood of his daydream is not sadness or regret; it is curiosity. Once he has recalled and dealt with a moment or a face, it does not return to his memory. He examines the fragment, then lets it fall from him. He seldom remembers the same thing twice. There isn’t time.

Some of the images come from his real life: Trois Rivières, playing in the street as a kid, his grandfather, St. Joseph’s Home, Lucille, the yellow alley cat with the crooked tail, one paw lifted tentatively from the ground.

Other memories, no less vivid, come from his elaborate fantasy of living in the house in Laval with Lucille and the girls. These images are richest in detail: his workshop in the garage with nails up to hold the tools, and black-painted outlines to show which tool goes where. The girls’ First Holy Communions, all in white with gifts of silver rosaries and photographs posed for reluctantly and stiffly. He sees the youngest girl—the tomboy, the imp—with her scuffed knee just visible under the thin white communion stocking…

He sniffs and rises. His rinsed-out cup is placed on the drainboard, where it always goes. He cleans the pressure maker and puts it where he always puts it. Then he goes into the bathroom to shave, as he always does, before going to bed. As he swishes down the black whiskers, he notices several long hairs in the bowl. She must have washed her hair before leaving. And she didn’t rinse it out carefully. Sloppy twit.

He is sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling off his shoes, when something occurs to him. He pads into the living room and opens the drawer in which he keeps his house money, uncounted and wadded up. There is a bunch of twenties there, some tens. He does not know how much there was in the first place. Perhaps she took some. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she left some.

He lies on his back in the middle of the bed, looking up at the ceiling glowing from the streetlamp outside the window.

He never realized before how big this bed is.

Guttmann is tapping away on the portable typewriter when LaPointe enters with a grunt of greeting as he hangs his overcoat on the wooden rack.

“I’m beginning to see daylight at the end of the tunnel, sir.”

“What are you talking about?”

“These reports.”

“Ah. Good boy. You’ve got a future in the department. That’s the important thing—the paper work.” LaPointe picks up a yellow telephone memo from his desk. “What’s this?”

“You got a call. I took the message.”

“Hm-m.” The call was from Carrot. She questioned her clients who went bar crawling with Tony Green; there seemed to be only one place he frequented regularly, the Happy Hour Whisky à Go-Go on Rachel Street. LaPointe knows the place, just one block off the Main. He decides to drop in on his way home that evening. The leads are thinning out; this is the last live one.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“You got a call from upstairs. The Commissioner wants to see you.”

“That’s wonderful.” He sits at his desk and glances over the Morning Report: several car thefts, two muggings, somebody shot in a bar in east Montreal, another mugging, a runaway teen-ager… all routine. Nothing interesting, nothing from the Main.

He starts to make out his duty sheet for yesterday. What did he do yesterday? What can you write down? Drank coffee with Bouvier? Talked to Candy Al Canducci? Walked around the streets? Played pinochle? Took a glass of tea with Moishe? Went home to find the bed bigger than I remembered? He turns the green form over and looks at the three-quarters of a page left blank for “Remarks and Suggestions.” He suppresses an urge to write: Why don’t you shove this form up your ass?

LaPointe is feeling uncertain this morning, and diminished. He had a major crise while brushing his teeth. First the fizzing blood, then tight bands of jagged pain gripped his chest and upper arms. He felt himself falling forward into a gray mist in which lights exploded. When it passed, he was on his knees, his forehead on the toilet seat. As he continued brushing his teeth, he joked with himself: I guess you better get a lighter toothbrush, LaPointe.

“Tomorrow’s my last day,” Guttmann says.

“What?”

“Wednesday I go back to working with Sergeant Gaspard.”

“Oh?” It is a noncommittal sound. He has enjoyed showing off his patch and his people to the kid; he has even enjoyed Guttmann’s way of braving out his scorn for the shiny new college ideas. But it wouldn’t do to seem to miss the boy.

“How did it go last night?” he asks, making conversation to avoid the goddamned paper work.

“Go, sir? Oh, with Jeanne?”

“If that’s her name.”

Guttmann smiles in memory. “Well, I got there late, of course. And at first she didn’t believe me when I told her I was playing pinochle with three men in the back room of an upholstery shop. It sounded phony to me even while I was saying it.”

“Does it matter what she thinks?”

Guttmann considers this for a second. “Yes, it does. She’s a nice person.”

“Ah, I see. Not just a girl. Not just a lay.”

“That’s the way it started, of course. And God knows I’m not knocking that part of it. But there’s more. We sort of fit together. It’s hard to explain, because I don’t mean that we always agree. Matter of fact, we almost never agree. It’s kind of like a mold and a coin, if you know what I mean. They’re exact opposites, and they fit together perfectly.” There is a slight shift in his tone, and he is now thinking out the relationship aloud, rather than talking to LaPointe. “She’s the only person I’ve ever known who… I mean, I don’t have to be set up and ready when I talk to her. I just say what I feel like saying, and it doesn’t bother me if it comes out wrong, or stupid-sounding. You know what I mean, sir?”

“How did you meet her?”

Guttmann doesn’t understand why LaPointe is interested, but he enjoys the uncommon friendly tone of the chat. He has no way of knowing that his leaving tomorrow is what allows the Lieutenant to relax with him, because he won’t have to deal with him further. “Well, I told you she lives in my apartment building. We met in the basement.”

“Sounds romantic.”

Guttmann laughs. “Yeah. There’s a bunch of coin-operated washing machines down there. It was late at night, and we were alone, waiting for our washing to get done, so we started talking.”

“About what?”

“I don’t remember. Soap, maybe. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Pretty? Well, yes, I guess so. I mean, obviously I find her attractive. That first night in the basement, I wasn’t thinking of much other than getting her into bed. But pretty isn’t what she is mostly. If I had to pick one thing about her, it would be her nutty sense of humor.”

LaPointe sniffs and shakes his head. “That sounds dangerous. I remember when I was a kid on the force, I went on a couple of blind dates set up by friends. And whenever they described my girl as ‘a good talker’ or ‘a kid with a great sense of humor,’ that always meant she was a dog. What I usually wanted at the time was a pig, not a dog.”

For a second, Guttmann tries to picture the Lieutenant as a young cop going on blind dates. The image won’t come into focus.

“I know what you mean,” he says. “But you know what’s even worse than that?”

“What?”

“When the guy who’s set you up can’t think of anything to say but that your girl has nice hands. That’s when you’re really in trouble!”

LaPointe is laughing in agreement when the phone rings. It is the Commissioner’s office, and the young lady demanding that LaPointe come up immediately has a snotty, impatient tone.

After announcing on the intercom that Lieutenant LaPointe is in the outer office, the secretary with the impeding miniskirt sets busily to work, occasionally glancing accusingly at the Lieutenant. When she arrived at the office at eight that morning, the Commissioner was already at work.

The man who isn’t a step AHEAD is a step BEHIND.

Resnais’ mood was angry and tense, and everyone in the office was made to feel its sting. The secretary blames LaPointe for her boss’s mood.

For the first time, Resnais doesn’t come out of his office to greet LaPointe with his bogus handshake and smile. Three clipped words over the intercom request that he be sent in.

When LaPointe enters, Resnais is standing with his back to the window, rocking up on his toes. The gray light of the overcast day glints off the purplish suntan on his head, and there is a lighter tone to his sunlamped bronze around the ears, indicating that his haircut is fresh.

“I sent for you at eight this morning, LaPointe.” His tone is crisp.

“Yes. I saw the memo.”

“And?”

“I just got in.”

“In this shop, we start at eight in the morning.”

“I get off the street at one or two in the morning. What time do you usually get home, Commissioner?”

“That’s none of your goddamned onions.” Even angry, Resnais does not forget to use idioms common to the social level of his French Canadian men. “But I didn’t call you up here to chew your ass about coming in late.” He has decided to use vulgar expressions to get through to LaPointe.

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

“What? Oh, yes. Go ahead.” Resnais sits in his high-backed chair, designed by osteopaths to reduce fatigue. He takes a deep breath and blows it out. Might as well get right to it.

The surgeon who cuts slowly does no kindness to his patient.

He glances at his note pad, open on the immaculate desk beside two sharpened pencils and a stack of blue memo cards. “I assume you know a certain Scheer, Anton P.”

“Scheer? Yes, I know him. He’s a pimp and a pissou.”

“He’s also a citizen!”

“You’re not telling me that Scheer had the balls to complain about me.”

“No official complaint has been lodged—and won’t be, if I can help it. I warned you about your methods just a couple of days ago. Did you think I was just talking out of my ass?”

LaPointe shrugs.

Resnais looks at his notes. “You ordered him off the street. You denied him the use of a public thoroughfare. Who in hell do you think you are, LaPointe?”

“It was a punishment.”

“The police don’t punish! The courts punish. But it wasn’t enough that you ordered him off the streets, you publicly degraded him, making him take off his clothes and climb into a basement well, with the possible risk of injury. Furthermore, you did this before witnesses—a crowd of witnesses including young women who laughed at him. Public degradation.”

“Only his shoelaces.”

“What?”

“I only ordered him to take off his shoelaces.”

“My report says clothes.”

“Your report is wrong.”

Resnais takes one of the pencils and makes the correction. He has no doubt at all of LaPointe’s honesty. But that is not the point. “It says here that there was another policeman involved. I want his name.”

“He just happened to be walking with me. He had no part in it.”

LaPointe’s matter-of-fact tone irritates Resnais. He slaps the top of his desk. “I won’t fucking well have it! I’ve worked too goddamned hard to build a good community image for this shop! And I don’t care if you’re the hero of every wet-nosed kid on the force, LaPointe. I won’t have that image ruined!”

Anger is a bad weapon, but a great tool.

LaPointe looks at Resnais with the expression of bored patience he assumes when questioning suspects. When the Commissioner has calmed down, he says, “If Scheer didn’t lodge a complaint, how do you know about this?”

“That’s not your affair.”

“Some of his friends got to you, right? Ward bosses?”

It is Resnais’ habit to play it straight with his men. “All right. That’s correct. A man in municipal politics brought it to my attention. He knows how I’ve worked to maintain good press for the force. And he didn’t want to make this public if he didn’t have to.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t need insubordination from you.”

“Tell me something. Why do you imagine your friend interfered on this pimp’s behalf?”

“The man is not my friend. I know him only at the athletic club. But he’s a politically potent man who can help the force… or hurt it.” Resnais smiles bitterly. “I suppose that sounds like ass-kissing to you.”

LaPointe shrugs.

Resnais stares at him for a long moment. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Put it together. Scheer is not the run-of-the-mill pimp. He specializes in very young girls. Either your… friend… is a client, or he’s open to blackmail. Why else would he help a turd like Scheer?”

Resnais considers this for a moment. Then he makes some notes on his pad. Above all, he is a good cop. “You might be right. I’ll have that looked into. But nothing alters the fact that you have exposed the department to bad public opinion with your gangster methods. Have you ever thought of them that way? As gangster methods?”

LaPointe has not. But he doesn’t care about that. “So you intend to tell your political friend that you gave me a sound ass-chewing and everything will be fine from now on?”

“I will tell him that I privately reprimanded you.”

“And he’ll pass the word on to Scheer?”

“I suppose so.”

“And Scheer will come back out onto the street, sassy-assed and ready to start business again.” LaPointe shakes his head slowly. “No, that’s not the way it’s going to happen, Commissioner. Not on my patch.”

“Your patch! LaPointe of the Main! I’m sick up to here of hearing about it. You may think of yourself as the cop of the street, but you’re not the whole force, LaPointe. And that run-down warren of slums is not Montreal!”

LaPointe stares at Resnais. Run-down warren!

For a second, Resnais has the feeling that LaPointe is going to hit him. He knows he went too far, talking about the Main like that. But he has no intention of backing down. “You were telling me that this Scheer wouldn’t be allowed to start up business again. What do you think you’re going to do, Claude?” It’s “Claude” now. Resnais is shifting his forensic line.

LaPointe rises and goes to Resnais’ window. He never noticed that the Commissioner looks out on the Hôtel de Ville too, on the scaffolding and sandblasting. It doesn’t seem right that they should share the same view. “Well, Commissioner. You can go ahead and tell your friend that you gave me a ‘private reprimand.’ But you’d better also tell him that if his pimp sets foot on my patch, I’ll hurt him.”

“I am giving you a direct order to stop your harassment of this citizen.”

There is a long silence, during which LaPointe continues to look out the window as though he has not heard.

Resnais pushes his pencils back and forth with his forefinger. Finally, he speaks with a quiet, flat tone. “Well. This is the attitude I expected from you. You don’t leave me any alternative. Discharging you will make a real gibelotte for me. I won’t bullshit you by pretending it’s going to be easy. The men will put up a hell of a stink. I won’t come out of it smelling like a rose, and the force won’t come out of it without bruises. So I’m going to rely on your loyalty to the force to make it easier. Because, you see, Claude, I’ve come to a decision. One way or another, you’re out.”

LaPointe leans slightly forward as though to see something down in the street that interests him more than the Commissioner’s talk.

“Look at it this way, Claude. You came on the force when you were twenty-one. You’ve got thirty-two years of service. You can retire on full pay. Now, I’m not asking you to retire right now, this morning. I’d be content if you’d send in a letter of resignation effective, say, in six months. That way no one would relate your leaving to any trouble between us. You would save face, and I wouldn’t have the mess of petitions and letters to the papers from the kids. Make up an excuse. Say it’s for reasons of health—whatever you want. For my part, I’ll see to it you’re promoted to captain just before you go. That’ll mean you retire on captain’s pay.”

Resnais swivels in his posture chair to face LaPointe, who is still looking out the window, unmoving. “One way or another, Claude, you’re going. If I have to, I’ll retire you under the ‘good of the department’ clause. I warned you to sort yourself out, but you wouldn’t listen. You just don’t seem to be able to change with the changing times.” Resnais turns back to his desk. “I’m not denying that it would go easier on me if you would turn in your resignation voluntarily, but I don’t expect you to do it for me. There’s never been any love lost between us. You’ve always resented my drive and success. But there’s no point going into that now. I’m asking you to resign quietly for the good of the department, and I honestly believe that you care about the force, in your own way.” There is just the right balance between regret and firmness in his voice. Resnais evaluates the effect of the sound as he speaks, and he is pleased with it.

LaPointe takes a deep breath, like a man coming out of a daydream. “Is that all, Commissioner?”

“Yes. I expect your resignation on my desk within the week.”

LaPointe sniffs and smiles to himself. He would lose nothing by turning in a resignation effective in six months. He doesn’t have six months left.

By the time LaPointe has his hand on the doorknob, Resnais is already looking over his appointment calendar. He is a little behind.

The man who enslaves his minutes liberates his hours.

“Phillipe?” LaPointe says quietly.

Resnais looks up in surprise. This is the first time in the thirty years they have been on the force together that LaPointe has called him by his first name.

LaPointe’s right fist is in the air. Slowly, he extends the middle finger.

When he gets back to his office, LaPointe finds Detective Sergeant Gaspard sitting on the edge of his desk, a half-empty paper cup of coffee in his hand.

“What’s going on?” LaPointe asks, dropping into his swivel chair and turning it so he can look out the window.

“Nothing much. I was just trying to pump the kid here; see if he is learning the gamique under you.”

“And?”

“Well, he’s at least learned enough to keep his mouth shut. When I asked him how you were coming on the Green case, he said you’d tell me what you wanted me to know.”

“Good boy,” LaPointe says.

Guttmann doesn’t look up from his typing for fear of losing his place, but he nods in agreement with the compliment.

“Well?” Gaspard asks. “I don’t want to seem nosy, but it is technically my case, and I haven’t had a word from you for a couple of days. And I want to be ready, if this case is what Resnais le Grand wanted to see you about.”

Already the rumor has been around the department that Resnais was in a furious mood when he called in LaPointe.

“No, it wasn’t about that,” LaPointe says.

Gaspard’s raised eyebrows indicate that he is more than willing to hear what it was all about, but instead LaPointe turns back from the window and gives him a quick rundown of progress so far.

“So you figure the kid was being laundered, eh?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“And if he was such a big time sauteux de clôtures as you say, almost anyone might have put that knife into him—some jealous squack, somebody’s lover, somebody’s brother—almost anyone.”

“That’s it.”

“You on to anything?”

“We’ve got suspects falling out of the trees. But most of the leads have healed up now. I’ve got something I’m looking into tonight; a bar the kid used to go to.”

“You expect to turn something there?”

“Not much. Probably twenty more suspects.”

“Hungh! Well, keep up the good work. And do your best to bring this one in, will you? I could use another letter of merit. So how’s our Joan getting on? Is he as much a pain in the ass to you as he was to me?”

LaPointe shrugs. He has no intention of complimenting the kid in his presence. “Why do you ask? You want him back today?”

“No, not if you can stand to have him a while longer. He cramps my romantic form, hanging around all the time.” Gaspard drains the cup, wads it up in his hand, and misses the wastebasket “Okay, if that’s all you’ve got to tell me about our case, I’ll get back to keeping the city safe for the tourists. Just look at that kid type, will you? Now that’s what I call style!”

Guttmann growls as Gaspard leaves with a laugh.

LaPointe feels a slight nausea from the ebb of angry adrenalin after his session with the Commissioner. The air in his office is warm and has an already-breathed taste. He wants to get out of here, go where he feels comfortable and alive. “Look, I’m going up on the Main. See what’s going on.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“No. I lose you tomorrow, and I want this paper work caught up.”

“Oh.” Guttmann does not try to conceal his deflation.

LaPointe tugs on his overcoat. “I’m just going to make the rounds. Talk to people. This Green thing has taken up too much of my time. I’m getting out of touch.” He looks down at the young man behind the stacks of reports. “What do you have on for this evening around seven? A date to wash clothes?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. Meet me at the Happy Hour Whisky à Go-Go on Rachel Street. It’s our last lead. You might as well see this thing through.”

Before it lost its cabaret license, the Happy Hour Whisky à Go-Go was a popular dance hall where girls from the garment shops and men from the loading docks could pick one another up, dance a little, ogle, drink, make arrangements for later on. It was a huge, noisy barn with a turning ball of mirrored surfaces depending from the ceiling, sliding globs of colored light around the walls, over the dancers, and into the orchestra, the amplified instruments of which made the floor vibrate. But once too often, the owner had been careless about letting underage girls in and about making sure his bouncers stopped fights before they got to the bottle-throwing stage, so now dancing is not permitted, and the patronage has shrunk to a handful of people sitting around the U-shaped bar, a glowing island in a vastness of dark, unused space.

At the prow of the bar is a drum stage four feet in diameter on which a go-go dancer slowly grinds her ass, her tempo in no way associated with the beat of the whining, repetitive rock music provided by a turntable behind the bar. The dancer is not young, and she is fat. Bored and dull-eyed, she undulates mechanically, her great bare breasts sloshing about as she slips her thumbs in and out of the pouch of her G-string, tugging it away from her écu and letting it snap back in a routine ritual of provocation. Blue and orange lights glow dimly through the bottles of the back bar, producing most of the illumination, save for a strong narrow beam at the cash register. Ultraviolet lamps around the dancing drum cause the dancer’s G-string to glow bright green. She has also applied phosphorescent paint to her nipples, and they glow green too. Standing just inside the door, far from the bar, LaPointe looks over the customers until he picks out Guttmann. From that distance, the back-lit figure of the dancer is almost invisible, save for the phosphorescent triangle of her crotch and the circles of her nipples. As she grinds away, she looks like a man with a goatee, chewing and rolling his eyes.

LaPointe climbs up on a stool beside Guttmann and orders an Armagnac. “What are you drinking?” he asks Guttmann.

“Ouzo.”

“Why ouzo?”

Guttmann shrugs. “Because it’s a Greek bar, I guess.”

“Good thing it isn’t an Arab bar. You’d be drinking camel piss.” LaPointe looks along the curve of customers, A couple of young men with nothing to do; a virile-looking woman in a cloth coat sitting directly in front of the dancer, staring up with cold fascination and tickling her upper lip with her finger; two soldiers already a little drunk; an old Greek staring disconsolately into his glass; a neatly dressed man in his fifties, suit and tie, a briefcase up on the bar, watching the play of the thumbs in and out of the G-string, his starched collar picking up the ultraviolet light and glowing greenish. All in all, the typical flotsam of outsiders and losers one finds in this kind of bar in the early evenings, or in rundown movie houses in the afternoons.

The fat dancer turns her head as she jiggles from foot to foot and nods once to LaPointe. He does not nod back.

Sitting behind the bar, at the base of the drum, is a girl who attends to the jury-rigged turntable and amplifier. She is fearful of not doing her job right, so she stares at the turning disc, holding her breath, poised to lift the needle and move it to the next selection when the song runs out. She counts the bands to the one she must hit next, mouthing the numbers to herself. Occasionally she lifts her face to look up at the fat dancer. Her eyes brim with admiration and wonder. The lights, the color, and everyone watching. Show business! She appears to be fifteen or sixteen, but her face has no age. It is the bland oval of a seriously retarded child, and its permanent expression is a calm void over which, from time to time, comes a ripple of confusion and doubt.

The tune is nearing its end, and the girl is straining her concentration in preparation for changing the needle without making that horrible rasping noise. The dancer looks down at her and shakes her head. The girl doesn’t know what this signal means! She is confused and frightened. She freezes! After an undulating hiss, the record goes on to the next band—the wrong band! The girl snatches her hands away from the machine, recoiling from all responsibility. But the dancer is already coming down from the drum, her great breasts flopping with the last awkward step. She growls at the girl and lifts the needle from the record herself. Then she walks along behind the bar to a back room. In a minute she emerges, wearing clacking bedroom slippers and a gossamer tent of a dressing gown through which the brown, pimpled cymbals of her nipples are visible.

She slides onto the stool next to Guttmann, her sweaty cheek squeaking on the plastic. She smells of sweat and cologne.

“Want to buy me a drink, gunner?” she asks Guttmann.

LaPointe leans forward and speaks across the young man. “He’s not a mark. He’s with me.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant. I mean, how was I to know? You didn’t come in together.”

With a tip of his head, LaPointe orders her to follow as he takes up his Armagnac and walks away from the bar to a table with bentwood chairs inverted on it. He has three chairs down by the time the woman and Guttmann arrive. The table is small, and Guttmann cannot easily move his knee away from hers. She presses her leg against his to let him know she knows.

“What’s the trouble now, Lieutenant?” The tone indicates that she has had run-ins with LaPointe before. She can’t imagine why, but the Lieutenant has never liked her. Not even in the old days, when she was working the streets.

LaPointe wastes no time with her. “There’s a kid who comes in here. Young, Italian, doesn’t have much English. Good-looking. Probably calls himself Tony Green.”

“He’s in trouble?”

LaPointe stares at her dully. He asks questions; he doesn’t answer them.

“Okay, I know the kid you mean,” she says quickly, sensing his no-nonsense mood.

“Well?” he says. He has no specific questions, so he makes her do the talking.

“What can I tell you? I don’t know much about him. He started coming in here a couple of months ago, sort of regular, you know. At first he can’t say diddly shit in English, but now he can talk pretty good. Sometimes he comes alone, sometimes with a couple of pals…” Willing though she is, she runs out of things to say.

“Go on.”

“What can I say? Ah… he usually drinks Strega, if that’s any use. Just another cock hanging out. He ain’t been in for the last few nights.”

“He’s dead.”

“No shit?” she asks, only mildly interested. “Well, that explains it, then.”

“Explains what?”

“Well… we had a little appointment set up for last Thursday night. And he didn’t show.”

“That was the night he was killed.”

“Just my luck. Now I’m out the fifty bucks.”

“He was going to pay you fifty bucks?” LaPointe asks incredulously. “What for? Six months’ worth?”

“No, he didn’t want me. He had me the first night or so he was here. He’s big on back-door stuff. But he didn’t seem interested in a second helping.”

“If not you, who then?”

She lifts her chin toward the bar. “He wanted to screw the kid that helps me with the music.”

Guttmann glances at LaPointe. “Christ,” he says. “A moronic kid?”

“Now wait a minute!” the dancer protests quickly. “You can’t hang anything on me. The kid’s nineteen. She’s got consent. Ask the Lieutenant. She’s nineteen, ain’t she?”

“Yes, she’s nineteen. With the mind of a seven-year-old.”

“There you are! And anyway, she seems to like it. She never complains. Just stares off into space all the time it’s going on. Look, I got to get back to my public. That butch in the front will pull her goddamned lip off if I’m late. Look, I’d tell you if I knew anything about the Italian kid. You know that, Lieutenant. Shit, the last thing I need is more trouble. But like I said, he was just another cock hanging out for a little fonne. Hey, did you notice that civilian in the suit? Now, there’s a weirdo for you. You know what he’s doing under the bar?”

“Sacre le camp,” LaPointe orders.

The dancer tucks down the corners of her mouth and shrugs, making a little farting noise of indifference with her mouth. Then she leaves for the back room, from which she soon appears without the slippers and dressing robe to clamber up onto the drum and stand, bored and impatient, while the retarded girl tries to set the needle down silently. She fails, and there is a screech before the whining music begins. The dancer darts a punitive glance at her, then begins to jiggle from foot to foot, running her thumbs around the belt of her G-string and in and out of the pouch.

The sting of the reprimand slides quickly from the girl’s smooth mind, and soon she is lost in rapt fascination, looking up at the woman dancing in the blue and orange light, all eyes on her. Show business.

Guttmann finishes his ouzo at a gulp. “I hate to admit it, but I’m beginning to agree with you.”

“You’d better watch that.”

“This Green was real shit.”

“Yes. Come on. Let’s go.”

At the door, LaPointe looks back at the dimly lit bar, small in the cavern of the unused dance floor. The man with the goatee is chewing and rolling his eyes.

They walk side by side down Rachel toward the Main, toward the luminous cross that advertises Christianity from the crest of Mont Royal.

“It’s still early,” Guttmann says. “You want a cup of coffee?”

That’s a switch, and LaPointe senses that the young man wants to talk, but he feels too fed up, too tired of it all. “No, thanks. I’ll just go home. I’m tired.”

They walk on in silence.

“That Green…” Guttmann mutters.

“What?”

“I mean, come on. That’s too sick.”

“No sicker than that dancer.”

“Sir?”

“The girl is her daughter.”

Guttmann walks on mechanically, staring ahead, his fists clenched in his overcoat pockets. They cross over St. Laurent, where LaPointe stops to say goodbye. “You have a date with your girl tonight?” he asks.

“Yes, sir. Nothing big. We’re just going to sit around and talk about things.”

“Like the future?”

“That sort of thing. Will you tell me something, Lieutenant? Does anyone survive a career as a cop and still feel anything but disgust for people?”

“A few do.”

“You?”

LaPointe examines the boy’s earnest, pained face. “See you in the morning.”

“Sure.”