The Main

12

Two days pass; Guttmann has returned to Detective Sergeant Gaspard to finish out his tour as a Joan. When no new leads open on the Green case, there is talk down in homicide of closing down the investigation.

Pig weather continues to depress spirits and abrade tempers, and a popular rumor circulates on the Main to the effect that Russian and American atomic testing has done irremediable damage to the polar icecap, and the weather will never return to normal.

LaPointe’s time and attention is soaked up by typical problems of the Main. Mr. Rothmann’s butcher shop is broken into; the newspaper vendor on the corner of Rue Roy is held up for eight dollars and thirty-five cents; and the construction force demolishing a block of row houses to make way for a high-rise parking facility arrives on the site one morning to find that extensive vandalism has ruined work and tools. On a scabby brick wall, the posse of vandals has painted:

On the Rothmann break-in, nothing was stolen and the only damage was to the doorframe and lock. Probably some street tramp or shelterless American draft avoider trying to get out of the damp cold of night. Once again, LaPointe advises Mr. Rothmann to install special police locks, and once again Mr. Rothmann argues that the police ought to pay for them. After all, he’s a taxpayer, isn’t he?

The holdup of the newspaper vendor is a different matter. LaPointe presses it to a quick finish because he realizes that someone might have been killed. Not the victim; the holdup man.

The paper seller could only give a description of the thief’s shoes and legs, and of the gun. Tennis shoes, bell-bottom jeans. A kid. And a black gun with a tiny hole in the barrel. The tiny hole meant the weapon was one of those exact-replica waterguns the Montreal police have made repeated complaints about, to no avail. After all, the people who sell them to kids are taxpayers, aren’t they? It’s a free country, isn’t it?

LaPointe makes two telephone calls and talks with four people on the street. The word is out: the Lieutenant wants this kid, and he wants him right now. If he doesn’t have him by noon, the street is going to become a hard place to live on.

Two and a half hours later, LaPointe is sitting in the cramped kitchen of a basement flat with the thief and his parents. The father admits he doesn’t know what the hell is wrong with these goddamned kids these days. The mother says she works her fingers to the bone, never sees anything but these four walls, and what thanks does it get you? You carry them under your heart for nine months, you feed them, you send them to Mass, and what does it get you?

The kid sits at the kitchen table, picking at the oilcloth. His eyes lowered, he answers LaPointe’s questions in a reluctant monotone. Once he makes the mistake of sassing.

In two steps, LaPointe crosses the room and snatches the kid up by the collar of his imitation-leather jacket. “What do you think happens if a cop chases you and you flash that goddamned water pistol? Hein? You could be killed for eight lousy bucks!”

There is fear in the kid’s eyes; defiance too.

LaPointe drops him back into his chair. What’s the use?

It’s a first offense. The Lieutenant can make arrangements, can find a job for the kid swabbing out some restaurant on the Main. The boy will pay the newspaper vendor back. He will have no record. But next time…

As he leaves, he hears the mother whining about carrying a child under her heart for nine months, and what thanks does she get? Heartache! Nothing but heartache!

There will be a next time.

About the vandalism at the building site, LaPointe does nothing, although this is not the first time it has happened. He goes through the motions, but he does nothing. His sympathy is with the people who are losing their homes and being shipped out to glass-and-cement suburban slums high-rising from muddy “green zones” dotted with emaciated twigs of one-year-old trees tied by rags to supporting sticks.

Corners, whole blocks of row houses are being torn down to make room for commercial buildings. Narrow streets of three-story Victorian brick with lead-sheeted mansard roofs are falling prey to the need to centralize small industry and commerce without threatening land values and the quality of life in the better neighborhoods. The residents of the Main are too poor, too ignorant, too weak politically to protect themselves from the paternal tyranny of city planning committees. The Main is a slum, anyway. Bad plumbing; rats and roaches; inadequate playgrounds. Relocating the immigrants is really for their own good; it helps to break up the language and culture nodes that delay their assimilation into New Montreal: Chicago on the St. Lawrence.

Although LaPointe knows that this blind striking out at the construction sites will change nothing, that the little people of the Main must lose their battle and ultimately their identity, he understands their need to protest, to break something.

More subtle than these dramatic attacks on the Main are the constant erosions from all points on its perimeter. Individuals and organizations have discovered that protecting what is left of old Montreal can be a profitable activity. Under the pretext of preservation, rows of homes are bought up and gutted, leaving only “quaint” shells. Good plumbing and central heating are installed, rooms enlarged, and residences are created for affluent and swinging young lawyers, pairs of career girls, braces of interior decorators. It is fashionable to surprise friends by saying you live on the Main. But these people don’t live on the Main; they play house on the Main.

LaPointe sees it all happening. In his bitterest moods he feels that this bubble in his chest is consonant with the rest of it; there wouldn’t be much point in surviving the Main.

When he arrives at the office Thursday morning, his temper is ragged. He has picked up word that Scheer is bragging about being back on the street before long. Obviously, the Commissioner has reported to his political acquaintance.

After scanning the Morning Report, he paws about in the three days’ worth of back paper work that has accumulated since Guttmann’s departure. Then he comes across a memo from Dr. Bouvier asking him to drop down to Forensic Medicine when he has a free moment.

As always, the smells of wax, chemicals, heat, and dust in the basement hall trigger memories of St. Joseph’s: moue, tranches, the Glory Hole, Our Lady of the Chipped Cheek…

When LaPointe enters his office, Bouvier is just drawing a cup of coffee from his urn, his finger crooked into the cup to tell when it is nearly full.

“That you, Claude? Come in and be impressed by one of my flashes of insight, this particular one focused on the case of one Antonio Verdini—alias Green—discovered one night in an alley, his body having acquired a biologically superfluous, and even detrimental, orifice.”

LaPointe grunts, in no mood for Bouvier’s florid style.

“My ingenious filing system”—Bouvier waves toward his high-heaped desk—”has produced the interesting fact that our Mr. Green’s uncommon appetite for ventilation was shared by”—he cocks his head in LaPointe’s direction and pauses for effect—”the victims of two other unsolved murder cases.”

“Oh?”

“Somehow I had expected more than ‘oh?’.”

“Which cases, then?”

“Men known to the department, and therefore to God, as H-49854 and H-50567, but to their intimates as MacHenry, John Albert, and Pearson, Michael X. This X indicates that his parents gave him no middle name, doubtless in a spirit of orthographic economy.” Bouvier holds the two files out to LaPointe and stares proudly at him with one huge eye and one nicotine-colored blank. The Lieutenant scans rapidly, then reads more closely. These are Bouvier’s personal files, fuller than the official records because they include clippings from newspapers, relevant additional information, and certain scribbled notes in his large, tangled hand.

One file is six years old, the other two and a half. Both stabbings; both males; both without signs of robbery; both at night on deserted streets.

“Well?” Bouvier gloats.

“Could be coincidences.”

“There’s a limit to antichance. Notice that both happened on the edges of what you call your patch—although I hear there is some difference of opinion between you and the Risen Cream as to the extent of that realm, and of its monarch’s authority.”

“What’s all this business here?” LaPointe puts one report on Bouvier’s desk, keeping his finger on a passage scribbled in the doctor’s hand.

Pressing the bridge of his broken glasses to hold them in place, Bouvier leans over, his face close to the page. “Ah! Technical description of the wound. Angle of entry of the weapon.”

“Identical in all three cases?”

“No. Not quite.”

“Well, then?”

“That’s where you discern the touch of genius in me! The angles of entry are not identical. They vary. They vary in direct proportion to the heights of the three men. If you insist on playing the game of coincidence, you have to accept that there were three killers of identical height, and who held a knife in the identical way, and all three of whom were most gifted in the use of a knife. And if you want to stack up coincidences with the abandon of a Victorian novelist, how’s this? Pearson, Michael X., made love shortly before his death. Once again, that nasty habit of failing to wash up. A professor at McGill, too! You’d think he’d know better. The other fellow, MacHenry, John Albert, was an American up here on business. There is every reason to believe that he also made love shortly before contributing his personal dust to the Universal Dust. He washed up within an hour of his death. Not a full bath; just the crotch area. There’s the American businessman for you! Time is money.”

“Can I take these with me?” LaPointe asks rhetorically, already on his way out with the reports.

“But make sure you bring them back. I can’t stand having my files in disorder!” Bouvier calls after him.

Read and reread, Bouvier’s dossiers rest on LaPointe’s desk, covering the unfinished paper work. He links his fingers over his head and leans back in his swivel chair to look at the large-scale city plan of Montreal tacked up on his wall, finger-smudged only in the area of the Main. His eye picks up the places where the three men were found—stabbed, but not robbed. The Green kid… there. In that alley almost in the center of the Main district. The American businessman… there. On a narrow street off Chateaubriand between Rue Roy and Rue Bousquet, on what LaPointe would call the outer edge of his patch. And that professor from McGill… there. Well outside the Main, on Milton Street between Lorne and Shuter, normally a busy area, but probably deserted at… what was it?… estimated time of death: between 0200 and 0400 hours.

Probably the same killer. Probably the same woman. Jealousy? Over a period of six years? Hardly what you would call a flash of jealous anger. One woman. One killer. Perhaps the woman was the killer. And… what kind of woman could unite a Canadian professor, an American businessman, and an illegal Italian alien with sperm on his brain?

The freshest of these old cases is thirty months old. All traces would be healed over by now.

He sighs and puts the files into a thick interdepartmental envelope to send them over to Gaspard in homicide. LaPointe can picture Gaspard’s anger when he discovers he has inherited a set of killings with a sex link. Just the kind of thing the newspapers salivate over. Unknown Knife Slayer Stalks… Police Baffled…

All the while he is eating in a cheap café, unaware of what is on his plate, all the while he walks slowly through the Main, putting the street to bed, LaPointe carries the details of the two files in the back of his mind, turning over the sparse references to personal life, looking for bits that match up with what he knows about Tony Green. But nothing. No links. He is standing outside his apartment on Esplanade, looking up at the dark windows of his second-story flat, when he decides to return to the Quartier Général and muck around with late paper work, rather than face a night alone with his coffee and his Zola.

“What in hell are you doing here?”

“Jesus Christ! You startled me, sir.”

“You leave something behind?”

Guttmann has been sitting at LaPointe’s desk, his mind floating in a debris of problems and daydreams. “No. I just remembered that you have a map of the city on your wall, and I still had my key, so…”

“So?”

“It’s about that packet of files you left for Sergeant Gaspard.”

With a jerk of his thumb, LaPointe evicts Guttmann from his swivel chair and occupies it himself. “I’ll bet he was happy to find three closed cases suddenly reopened.”

“Oh, yes, sir. He could hardly contain his delight. He was particularly colorful on the subject of Dr. Bouvier. He said he needed that kind of help about as much as starving Pakistanis need Red Cross packages filled with menus.”

“Hm-m. But that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing in my office.”

Guttmann goes to the wall map and points out light pencil lines he has drawn on it. “I got this weird idea in the middle of the night.”

LaPointe is puddling about in his paper work. “Joans aren’t supposed to have ideas. It ruins their typing,” he says without looking up.

“As it turned out, it wasn’t much of an idea.”

“No kidding? Let’s hear it.”

Guttmann shrugs his shoulders, not eager to share his foolishness. “Oh, it was just grade-school geometry. It occurred to me that we know where each of the three men was killed, and we know where each was going at the time. So, if we extended the lines back on the map…”

LaPointe laughs. “The lines would meet on the doorstep of the killer?”

“Something like that. Or if not at the doorstep of the killer, at least on the doorstep of the woman they all made love with. I assume it was one woman, don’t you?”

“Either that or a whorehouse.”

“Well, either way, it would be one dwelling.”

LaPointe looks up at the map on which Guttmann’s three lines enclose a vast triangle including the east half of the Main district and a corner of Parc Fontaine. “Well, you’ve narrowed it down to eastern Canada.”

Guttmann realizes how stupid his idea sounds when said aloud. “It was just a wild shot. I knew that any two lines would have to meet somewhere. And I hoped that the third would zap right in there.”

“I see.” LaPointe moves aside the files Guttmann brought along with him and picks up a splay of unfinished reports. He wants the kid to see he came here to do some work. Not because he was lonely. Not because his bed was too big.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, sir?”

“If you’re getting one for yourself.”

While Guttmann is at the machine down the hall, LaPointe’s eyes wander back to the wall map. He makes a nasal puff of derision at the idea that things get solved by geometry and deduction. What you need is an informer, a lot of pressure, a fist.

With a brimming paper cup in each hand, Guttmann has some trouble with the door; he slops some and burns his fingers. “Goddamn it!” He gives the door a kick.

LaPointe glances up. This kid is usually so controlled, so polite. As Guttmann sits in his old chair against the wall, his long legs stretched out in front of him, LaPointe sips his coffee.

“What’s your problem?”

“Sir?”

“Trouble with this girl of yours?”

“No, that isn’t it. That’s turning out to be a really fine thing.”

“Oh? How long have you known her? A week?”

“How long does it take?”

LaPointe nods. That is true. He had been sure he wanted to spend his life with Lucille after knowing her for two hours. Of course, it was a year before they had the money to get married.

“No, it isn’t the girl,” Guttmann continues, looking into his coffee. “It’s the force. I’m thinking pretty seriously about quitting.” He had wanted to talk to LaPointe about this that evening after they’d been at the go-go joint, but there hadn’t been an opportunity. He looks up to see how the Lieutenant is taking the news.

There is no response at all from LaPointe. Perhaps a slight shrug. He never gives advice in this kind of situation; he doesn’t want the responsibility.

There is an uncomfortable, interrogative quality to the silence, so LaPointe looks up at the wall map for something to fill it. “What’s that northwest-southeast line supposed to be?”

Guttmann understands. The Lieutenant doesn’t want to talk about it. Well… “Ah, let me see. Well, that X is the alley where we found Green.”

“I know that.”

“And the circle is his apartment—the rooming house with the concierge with the broken lip? So I just drew a line between them and continued it on southeast to see where it would lead. Just an approximation. It cuts through the middles of blocks and such, but it must have been the general direction he came from.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t going back to his rooming house.”

“Sir?”

“He was going to the Happy Hour Whisky à Go-Go, remember? He had a date with that dancer’s retarded kid.”

Guttmann looks at the map more closely and frowns. “Yeah. That’s right!” He takes out his pencil and crosses to the map. Freehand, he sketches in the revised line, and the vast triangle is reduced by a considerable wedge. “That narrows it down a lot.”

“Sure. To maybe thirty square blocks and six or eight thousand people. Just for the hell of it, let’s take a look at the other lines. What’s the one running roughly east-west?”

“That’s the McGill professor. The X is where his body was found; the circle is his office on the campus.”

“How do you know he was going to his office?”

“Assumption. His apartment was up north. Why would he walk west unless he was going to the campus? Maybe to do some late work. Grade papers, something like that.”

“All right. Assume it. Now, what about the other line? The north-south one?”

“That’s the American. His body was found right… here. And his hotel was downtown, right… ah… here. So I just extended the line back.”

“But he wouldn’t have walked south.”

“Sure he would. That was the direction to his hotel, and also the best direction to go to find taxis.”

“What about his car?”

“Sir?”

“Look in the report. There was something about a rented car. It was found three days later, after the rental agency placed a complaint. Don’t you remember? The car was ticketed for overparking. Bouvier made some wiseassed note about the bad luck of getting a parking ticket the same night you get killed.”

Guttmann taps his forehead with his knuckle. “Yes! I forgot about that.”

“Don’t worry about it. One line out of three isn’t bad. For a Joan.”

“Where was the car parked?”

“It’s in the report. Somewhere a few blocks from where they found the body.”

Guttmann takes up the folder on MacHenry, John Albert, and leafs quickly through it. He misses what he’s looking for and has to flip back. The major reason Dr. Bouvier is able to come up with his little “insights” from time to time is his cross-indexing of information. In the standard departmental files, the murder of MacHenry, the report of the car-rental agency, and the traffic report of the ticketed car would be in separate places; in fact in separate departments. But in Dr. Bouvier’s files, they are together. “Here it is!” Guttmann says. “Let’s see… the rental car… recovered by the agency from police garage… ah! It was parked near the corner of Rue Mentana and Rue Napoléon. Let’s see what that gives us.” He goes to the map again and sketches the new line. Then he turns back to LaPointe. “Now, how about that, Lieutenant?”

The three lines fail to intersect by a triangle half the size of a fingernail. And the center of that triangle is Carré St. Louis, a rundown little park on the edge of the Main.

LaPointe rises and approaches the map. “Could be coincidence.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We would be looking for a woman somewhere around Carré St. Louis who has made love three times in the past six years. It’s just possible that more than one would fit that description.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Murders aren’t solved by drawing lines on maps, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hm-m.”

Guttmann lets the silence extend awhile before offering, “I’ll bet Sergeant Gaspard would let me go with you. I’ve just about finished his paper work too.”

LaPointe taps the pale green rectangle of the square with his thick forefinger. It has been about a week since he wandered through there on his rounds. The night of the Green killing, come to think of it. He pictures the statue of the dying Cremazie.

The empty pond, its bottom littered. The peace symbol dripping rivulets of paint, like a bleeding swastika. The word love, but the spray can ran out while they were adding fuck yo…

LaPointe nods. “All right. Tomorrow morning well take a walk around there.” He returns to his desk and finishes his cooling coffee, crushing the cup and tossing it toward the wastebasket. “What does she think about it?”

“Sir?”

“Your girl. What does she think about your decision to leave the department?”

Taken off balance, Guttmann shrugs and wanders back to his chair. “Oh, she wants me to do what I want to do. Maybe… maybe I shouldn’t have joined up in the first place. I came out of school with the idea that I could do something… useful. Social work, maybe. I don’t know. I knew how people felt about the police, particularly the young, and I thought… Anyway, I realize now I wasn’t cut out to be a cop. Maybe I’ve always known it. Being with you these few days has sort of pushed me over the edge, you know what I mean? I just don’t have the stomach for it. I don’t want everyone I meet to hate me, or fear me. I don’t want to live in a world populated by tramps and losers and whores and punks and junkies. It’s just… not for me. I’d never be good at it. And nobody likes to be a failure. I’ve talked it all over with Jeanne; she understands.”

“Jeanne?”

“The girl in my building.”

“She’s canadienne, this girl of yours?”

“Didn’t I mention that?”

“No.”

“Well, she is.”

“Hm-m. You’ve got better taste than I thought. Are you going to drink that coffee?”

“No. Here. You know, this idea about the map was really sort of an excuse to come down here and think things over.”

“And now you’ve decided?”

“Pretty much.”

Guttmann sits in silence. LaPointe drinks the coffee as he looks at the wall map with half-closed eyes, then he scrubs his hair with his hand. “Well, I’d better call it a day.”

“Can I drop you off, sir?”

“In that toy car of yours?”

“It’s the only car I’ve got.”

LaPointe seems to consider this for a moment. “All right. You can drop me off.”

Guttmann feels like saying, Thank you very much, sir.

But he does not.