The Main

4

Even before he opens his eyes, he knows it is late. Something in the quality of the sounds out in the street is wrong for getting-up time. He sits on the edge of his bed and groggily reaches for his bathrobe. It is not there. Only then does he remember the girl sleeping in his robe out in the living room.

He tiptoes through on his way to the kitchen, fully dressed, although he usually takes his coffee before dressing. He doesn’t want her to see him padding around in his underwear.

She lies on her side, curled up, the blankets so high that only her mop of frizzed hair is visible. From the line of her body beneath the blankets, he can tell that her hands are between her legs, the palms touching the sides of her thighs. He remembers sleeping like that when he was a kid.

His cup is on the drainboard, where it always is, but he has to rummage about in the cupboard to find another. He puts too little water in the kettle, underestimating the amount needed for two cups, but he decides not to boil more because the coffee already made will get cold. Pouring from one cup to another to make equal shares doesn’t work out well, and he loses about a quarter of a cup. He grumbles “Merde” with each accident or miscalculation. It’s really a nuisance having someone living with you. Staying with you, that is.

Because the cups are only half full, he has no difficulty balancing them as he carries them into the living room.

She is still asleep as he places the cups carefully on the table by the window. The worn springs of his chair clack; he grimaces and settles down more slowly. Maybe he shouldn’t wake her; she is sleeping so peacefully. But what’s the point of making coffee for two if you don’t give it to her? But, no. It’s best to let the poor kid sleep.

“Coffee?” he asks, his voice husky.

She doesn’t move.

All right. Let her sleep, then.

“Coffee?” he asks louder.

She half hums, half groans, and her head turns under the blankets.

Poor kid’s worn out. Let her sleep.

“Marie-Louise?”

A hand slips out and tugs the blanket from her cheek. Her eyelids flutter, then open. She blinks twice and frowns as she tries to remember the room. How did she get here?

“Your coffee will get cold,” he explains.

She looks at him Wearily, not recognizing him at first. “What?” she asks, her voice squeaky. “Oh… you.” She presses her eyes shut before opening them again. The puffiness of her black eye has gone down, and the purplish stain has faded toward green.

“Your coffee’s ready. But if you’d rather sleep, go ahead.”

“What?”

“I said… you can go back to sleep, if you want.”

She frowns dazedly. She can’t believe he woke her up to tell her that. She puts her hand over her eyes to shade them from the cold light as she recollects, then turns and looks at him, wondering what he is up to. He didn’t want it last night, so he’s probably after a little now.

But he’s just sitting there, sipping his coffee.

When she sits up, she notices that her robe is open to the nipples; she tugs it back around her. She accepts the cup he hands her and looks into it bleakly. “Do you have any milk?”

“No. Sorry.”

She sips the thick dark brew. “How about sugar?”

“No. I don’t keep sugar in the house. I don’t use it, and it attracts ants.”

She shrugs and drinks it anyway. At least it’s hot.

They don’t talk, and instead of looking at one another, they both look out the window at the park across the street. A woman is pushing a pram along the path while a spoiled child dangles from her free hand, twisting and whining. She gives it a good shake and a splat on the bottom that seems to improve its humor.

Marie-Louise can see the bench where he found her. It’s going to be cold and damp again today, and she won’t be able to make a score until dark, if then. Maybe he would let her stay. No, probably not. He’d be afraid she might steal something. Still, it’s worth a try.

“You feel better this morning?” she asks.

“Better?”

“If you don’t have to rush off, we could…” Palm up, her hand saws the air between them horizontally in an eloquent Joual gesture.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

“It won’t cost you. Just let me stay until dark.” She produces a childish imitation of a sexy leer that is something between the comic and the grotesque, with that black eye of hers. “I would be good to you.” When he does not respond, another thought occurs to her. “I’m all right,” she promises. “I mean… I’m healthy.”

He looks at her calmly for several seconds. Then he rises. “I have to go to work. Would you like more coffee?”

“No. No, thank you.”

“Don’t you like coffee?”

“Not really. Not without milk and sugar.”

“I’m sorry.”

She lifts her shoulders. “It’s not your fault.”

He pulls out his wallet. “Look…” He doesn’t know exactly how to say this. After all, it doesn’t matter to him one way or the other if she stays or goes. “Look, there’s a store around the corner. You can buy things for your breakfast. The… the stove works.” What a stupid thing to say. Of course the stove works.

She reaches up and takes the offered ten-dollar bill. This must mean she can stay until night.

He takes up his overcoat. “Okay. Good, then.” He goes to the door. “Oh, yes. You’ll need a key to get back in after your shopping. There’s one on the mantel.” It occurs to him that it must seem stupid to leave the extra key on the mantel, because you would have to be in the apartment to get it. And if you’re already in the apartment… But Lucille had always left it there, and he never misplaced his own key, so…

As he is leaving, she asks, “May I use your things?”

“My things?”

“Towel. Deodorant. Razor.”

Razor? Oh, of course. He has forgotten that women shave under their arms. “Certainly. No, wait a minute. I use a straight razor.”

“What’s that?”

“You know… just a… straight razor.”

“And you don’t want me using it?”

“I don’t think you can. Why don’t you buy yourself a razor? There’s enough money there.” He closes the door behind him and gets halfway down the stairs before something occurs to him.

“Marie-Louise?” He has opened the door again.

She looks up. She has been pawing through her shopping bag of clothes, planning to take this chance to wash out a few things and dry them in front of the gas heater before he comes back. She acts as though she’s been caught at something. “Yes?”

“The stove. The pilot light doesn’t work. You have to use a match.”

“Okay.”

He nods. “Good.”

When he arrives at the Quartier Général, the workday is in full swing. The halls outside the magistrate’s courts are crowded with people standing around or waiting on benches of dark wood, worn light in places by the legs and buttocks of the bored, or the nervous. One harassed woman has three children with her, separated in age by only the minimal gestation period. She hasn’t made up that day; perhaps she has given up making up. The youngest of her kids clings to her skirt and whimpers. Her tension suddenly cracking, she screams at it to shut up. For an instant the child freezes, its eyes round. Then its face crumples and it howls. The mother hugs and rocks it, sorry for both of them. Two young men lounge against a window frame, their slouching postures meant to convey that they are not impressed by this building, these courts, this law. But each time the door to the courtroom opens, they glance over with expectation and fear. There are a few whores, victims of a street sweep somewhere. One is telling a story animatedly; another is scratching under her bra with her thumb. A girl in her late teens, advanced pregnancy dominating her skinny body, chews nervously on a strand of hair. An old man rocks back and forth in misery, rubbing his palms against the tops of his legs. It’s his last son; his last boy. Youngish lawyers in flowing, dusty black robes and starched collars crossed at the throat, their smooth foreheads puckered into self-important frowns, stalk through the crowd with long strides calculated to give the impression that they are on important business and have no time to waste.

LaPointe scans automatically for faces he might recognize, then steps into one of the big, rickety elevators. Two young detectives mumble greetings; he nods and grunts. He gets out on the second floor and goes down the gray corridor, past old radiators that thud and hiss with steam, past identical doors with ripple-glass windows. His key doesn’t seem to work in his lock. He mutters angrily, then the door opens in his hand. It wasn’t locked in the first place.

“Good morning, sir.”

Oh, shit, yes. Gaspard’s Joan. LaPointe has forgotten all about him. What was his name? Guttmann? LaPointe notices that Guttmann has already moved in and made himself at home at a little table and a straight-backed chair in the corner. He hums a kind of greeting as he hangs his overcoat on the wooden coat tree. He sits heavily in his swivel chair and begins to paw around through his in-box.

“Sir?”

“Hm-m.”

“Sergeant Gaspard’s report is on your desk, along with the report he forwarded from the forensic lab.”

“Have you read it?”

“No, sir. It’s addressed to you.”

LaPointe is following his habit of scanning the Morning Report first thing in his office. “Read it,” he says without looking up.

It seems strange to Guttmann that the Lieutenant seems uninterested in the report. He opens the heavy brown interdepartmental envelope, unwinding the string around the plastic button fastener. “You’ll have to initial for receipt, sir.”

“You initial it.”

“But, sir—”

“Initial it!” This initialing of routing envelopes is just another bit of the bureaucratic trash that trammels the ever-reorganizing department. LaPointe makes it a practice to ignore all such rules.

What’s this? A blue memo card from the Commissioner’s office. Look at this formal crap:

FROM: Commissioner Resnais

TO: Claude LaPointe, Lieutenant

SUBJECT: Morning of 21 November: appointment for

MESSAGE: I’d like to see you when you get in.

Resnais

(dictated, but not signed)

LaPointe knows what Resnais wants. It will be about the Dieudonné case. That weaselly little turd of a lawyer is threatening to lodge a 217 assault charge against LaPointe for slapping his client. We must protect the civil rights of the criminal! Oh, yes! And what about the old woman that Dieudonné shot through the throat? What about her, with her last breaths whistling and flapping moistly through the hole?

LaPointe pushes the memo card aside with a growl.

Guttmann glances up from the report on the kid they found in the alley. “Sir? Something wrong?”

“Just read the report.” He must be tired this morning. Even this kid’s careful continental French annoys him. And he seems to take up so goddamned much room in the office! LaPointe hadn’t noticed last night how big the kid was. Six-two, six-three; weighs about 210. And his attempt to fit himself into as little space as possible behind that small table makes him seem even bigger and bulkier. This isn’t going to work out. He’ll have to turn him back over to Gaspard as soon as possible.

LaPointe shoves the routine papers and memos away and rises to look out his office window toward the Hôtel de Ville. There are scaffolds clinging to the sides of the Victorian hulk, and above the scaffolds the sandblasters have cleaned to a creamy white a façade that used to bear the comfortable patina of soot with water-run accents of dark gray. For months now, they have been sandblasting the building, and the roaring hiss has become a constant in LaPointe’s office, replacing the rumble of traffic as a base line for silence. It is not the noise that bothers LaPointe, it is the change. He liked the Hôtel de Ville the way it was, with its stained and experienced exterior. They change everything. The law, rules of evidence, acceptable procedure in dealing with suspects. The world is getting more complicated. And younger. And all these new forms! This endless paper work that he has to peck out with two fingers, hunched over his ancient typewriter, growling and smashing at the keys when he makes an error…

…It’s strange to think of her using his Mum. Putting his Mum under her arms. He supposes young girls don’t use Mum. They probably prefer those fancy sprays. He shrugs. Well, that’s just too bad. Mum is all he has. And if it’s not good enough for her…

“No identification,” Guttmann says, mostly to himself.

“What?”

“The forensic lab report, sir. No identification of that man in the alley. And no make on the fingerprints.”

“They checked with Ottawa?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hm-m.” The victim looked like the type who ought to have a record, if not for petty arrests, at least as an alien. No fingerprints. One possibility immediately occurs to LaPointe. The victim might have been an unregistered alien, one of those who slip into the country illegally. They are not uncommon on the Main; most of them are harmless enough, victims of the circular paradox of having no legal nationality, and therefore no passports and no means of legitimate immigration, therefore, no legal nationality. Several of the Jews who have been on the street for years are in this category, particularly those who came from camps in Europe just after the war. They cause no trouble; anyway, LaPointe knows about them, and that’s what counts.

“What else is in the report?”

“Not much, sir. A technical description of the wound… angle of entry and that sort of thing. They’re running down the clothing.”

“I see.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We?” LaPointe looks at the daunting pile of back work, of forms and memos and reports on his desk. “Tell me, Guttmann. When you were in college, did you learn to type?”

Guttmann is silent for fully five seconds before saying, “Ah… yes, sir?” The rising note says it all. “You know, sir,” he adds quickly, “Sergeant Gaspard had me filling out reports for him when I was assigned as his Joan. It struck me that was a sort of perversion of the intention of the apprentice program.”

“A what?”

“A perversion of the… That was one of the reasons I was glad when he let me work with you.”

“It was?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see. Well, in that case, you start working on this junk on my desk. Whatever requires a signature, sign. Sign my name if you have to.”

Guttmann’s face is glum. “What about Commissioner Resnais?” he asks, glad to have a little something to pique back with. “There was a memo about him wanting to see you.”

“I’ll be down in Forensic Medicine, talking to Bouvier, if anyone calls.”

“And what should I tell the Commissioner’s office, if they call?”

“Tell them I’m perverting your intentions… that was it, wasn’t it?”

As LaPointe steps out of the elevator on the basement level, he is met by a medley of odors that always brings the same incongruous image to his mind: a plaster statue of the Virgin, her bright blue eyes slightly strabismic through the fault of the artist, and a small chip out of her cheek. With this mental image always comes a leaden sensation in his arms and shoulders. The stale smells of the Forensic Medicine Department are linked to this odd sensation of weight in his arms by a long organic chain of association that he has never attempted to follow.

The odor in these halls is an olio of chemicals, floor wax, paint cooking on hot radiators, dusty air, the sum of which is very like the smells of St. Joseph’s Home, where he was sent after the pneumonia took his mother. (In Trois Rivières, it wasn’t pneumonia; it was the pneumonia. And it didn’t kill one’s mother; it took her.)

The smells of St. Joseph’s: floor wax, hot radiators, wet hair, wet wool, brown soap, dust, and the acrid smell of ink, dried and caked on the sides of the inkwell.

Inkwell. The splayed nib scrapes over the paper. You have to write it a hundred times, perfectly, without a blemish. That will teach you to daydream. Your mind slips away from the exercise for a second, and the point of the nib digs into the cheap paper on the upstroke. A splatter of ink makes you have to start all over again. It’s a good thing for you that Brother Benedict didn’t find the moue on you. You’d get something worse than a hundred lines for that. You’d get a tranche.

Moue. You make moue by pressing bread into a small tin box and moistening it with a little water and spit. In a day or two, it begins to taste sweet. It is the standard confection of the boys at St. Joseph’s, and is munched surreptitiously during classes, or is traded for favors, or gambled in games of “fingers” in the dormitory after lights out, or given to the big boys to keep from being toughed up. Because the bread is stolen from the dinner line, moue is illegal in St. Joseph’s, and if you’re found with it on you, you get a tranche. You can pick up tranches for other sins too. For talking in line, for not knowing your lessons, for fighting, for sassing. If you haven’t worked off all your tranches by the end of the week, you don’t eat on Sunday.

A tranche is a fifteen-minute slice of time spent in the small chapel the boys call the Glory Hole, where you kneel before the plaster Mary, your arms held straight out in cruciform, under the supervision of old Brother Jean who seems to have no other duties than to sit in the second row of the Glory Hole and record the boys’ punishments. You kneel there, arms straight out. And for five minutes it’s easy. By the end of the first fifteen minutes, your arms are like lead, your hands feel huge, and the muscles of your shoulders are trembling with effort. Maybe you shouldn’t try for your second tranche. Anything less than a full fifteen-minute slice doesn’t count at all. You can do as much as fourteen minutes before your arms collapse, and it’s as though you hadn’t even tried. Oh, to hell with it! Go for a second one. Get the goddamned thing over with. Halfway through the second tranche you know you’re not going to make it. You squeeze your eyes shut and grit your teeth. Everyone says that Brother Jean cheats, makes the second slice longer than the first. You ball up your fists and fight against the numbness in your shoulders. But inevitably the arms sag. “Up. Up,” says Brother Jean gently. With a sneer of pain, you pull your arms back up. You take deep breaths. You try to think of something other than the pain. You stare at the face of the plaster Virgin, so calm, so pure, with her slightly crossed eyes and her goddamned stupid chipped cheek! The hands fall, clapping to the sides of the legs, and you grunt with the sudden change in the timbre of the pain. Brother Jean’s voice is flat and soft. “LaPointe. One tranche.”

Every time he steps off the elevator into the basement and breathes these particular odors, LaPointe’s arms feel heavy, for no reason he can think of.

For a second, he attributes the sensation to his heart, his aneurism. He awaits the rest of it—the bubbles in his blood, the constriction, the exploding lights behind the eyes. When these do not come, he smiles at himself and shakes his head.

The door to Dr. Bouvier’s office is open, and he is talking to one of his assistants while he examines a list on a clipboard, holding the board close to his right eye, huge behind a thick lens. His left eye is hidden behind a lens the color of nicotine. It must be an ugly eye, for he takes pains to prevent anyone from seeing it. He tells his assistant to make sure something is done by this afternoon, and the young man leaves. Bouvier scratches his scalp with the back of his pencil, then cocks his head toward the door. “Who’s that?” he demands.

“LaPointe.”

“Ah! Come in. For God’s sake, don’t hover. How about some coffee?”

LaPointe sits in a scrofulous old leather chair beneath one of the high wire-screened windows that let a ghost of daylight into the basement rooms. Bouvier feels along the ledge behind him until he touches a cup. He puts his finger down into it and, finding it wet, deduces it is his. He feels for another, finds it, and brings it close to his right eye to be sure he has not butted cigarettes in it. His minimal standards of sanitation satisfied, he fills the cup and thrusts it in LaPointe’s direction.

In his own way, Bouvier is as much an epic figure in the folklore of the department as LaPointe. He is famous, of course, for his coffee. Imaginations strain in efforts to account for the taste and texture of this ghastly brew. He is famous also for his desk, which is piled with letters, forms, memos, requisitions, and files to a height that is an offense to the law of gravity. Bouvier also possesses, both in legend and in fact, a remarkable memory for minute details of past cases, a memory that has developed proportionately as he descended toward blindness. By means of this memory, he is sometimes able to reveal a linking modus operandi between what appear to be unrelated events or cases. His “interesting little insights” have occasionally led to solutions, or to the discrediting of facile solutions already in hand. But these “interesting little insights” are not always welcome, because they sometimes reopen files everyone would rather leave closed.

Like LaPointe, Bouvier is a bachelor, and he puts in a prodigious amount of time down in the bowels of the QG, where his duties have spread far beyond those normally assigned to a staff pathologist. His authority has expanded into each vacuum created by a departing man or a new reorganization, until, by his own admission, his domain is so wide that the department would collapse two days after he left.

Not that he’s ever likely to leave. From medical school he went directly into the army, where he served through the Second World War. When he got out, money was tight and he took a temporary job with the police until he could set up in practice. Time passed, and his eyesight began to fail. He stayed on with the department because, as he used to say himself, a patient’s confidence might be eroded a bit if, as a brain surgeon, Bouvier had to begin by saying: “Now, sir, if you would please direct my hands toward your head.”

He sits in the straight-backed kitchen chair behind his heaped-up desk, sniffing as he pushes up the glasses that continually slip down his stubby nose. He broke them a few years ago, and they are patched at the bridge with dirty adhesive tape. He intends to get new ones one of these days. “Well?” he asks, as LaPointe presses his refilled cup into his hand, “I assume you’re here on behalf of that kid who got reamed on your patch. Anything special about the case?”

LaPointe shrugs. “I doubt it.”

“Good. Because I don’t think you will close this one. If you took the time to read my report, written in crisp but lucid professional language, you would know that there were no fingerprints on record with Ottawa. And we all appreciate the heavy significance of that.”

Bouvier reveals his bitterness at ending up a police pathologist by his sarcasm and cynicism, and by a style of speech that mixes swatches of erudition with vulgarity and gallows humor. To this he adds a jerky, non sequitur conversational tactic that dazzles many and impresses some.

LaPointe long ago learned to handle the technique by simply waiting until Bouvier got around to the point.

“Can you tell me anything that is not in the report?” LaPointe asks.

“A great deal, of course. I could tell you things ranging through aesthetics, to thermodynamics, to conflicting theories concerning the functions of Stonehenge; but I suspect your interests are more restricted than that. Informational tunnel vision: an occupational hazard. All right, how about this? Your young man used hair spray, if that’s any help.”

“None at all. Is the press release out?”

“No, I’ve still got it here in my out-box.” Bouvier waves vaguely toward the heaped tabletop. By departmental practice, information concerning murder, suicide, or rape cases is not released to the newspapers until Bouvier has finished his examination and the next of kin are informed. “You want me to hold it?”

“Yes. For a couple of days.” When pressure from newspapers or family allows, LaPointe likes to start his inquiries before the press release is out. He prefers to make the first mention of the crime, to watch for qualities of surprise or anticipation.

“I could probably block it up here forever,” Bouvier says. “I doubt that anyone will be around inquiring after this one. Except maybe a woman claiming breach of promise, or a pregnancy suit, or both. He made love shortly before his death.”

“How do you know that?”

Bouvier sips his coffee, makes a face, and cocks his nicotine lens at the cup. “This is terrible. I think something’s fallen into the pot. I’ll have to empty it one of these days and take a look. On second thought, maybe I don’t want to know. Say, I hear you’ve broken down and taken on a Joan.”

Three-quarters blind and never out of his den in the bowels of the building, Dr. Bouvier knows everything that is going on in the Quartier Général. He makes a point of letting people know that he knows.

“Gaspard sent his Joan over to me for a few days.”

“Hm-m. I can’t help feeling sorry for the kid. He’s an interesting boy, too. Have you read his file?”

“No. But I suppose you have.”

“Of course. Did very well in college. Excellent grades. The offer of a scholarship to do graduate study in social work, but he chose instead to enter the force. Another instance of a strange demographic pattern I have observed. Year by year, the force is attracting a better class of young men. On the other hand, what with kids bungling their way through amateur holdups to get a fix, crime is attracting a lower class than it once did. It was simpler in our day, when the men on both sides were of the same sociological, intellectual, and ethical molds. But what you really wanted to know was how I divined that the young man in the alley made love shortly before he was killed. Simple really. He failed to wash up afterwards, in direct contradiction to the sound paternal advice given in army VD films. I wonder if they ever consider how carefully they’re going to be examined after they get themselves gutted, or in some other way manage to shuffle their mortal coils off to Buffalo. I remember my mother always telling me to wear clean shorts, in case I got hit by a truck. For much of my youth I entertained the belief that clean shorts were a totemic protection against trucks—in much the same way that apples keep doctors away. When I think of the daring and dangerous things I used to do in the middle of heavy traffic to amuse my friends, all in the belief that I was invulnerable because I had just changed my shorts! So tell me, what are the gods up to these days? Is our anointed Commissioner Resnais still driving toward a brilliant future in politics, as he drives the rest of us toward dreams of regicide?”

“Every day they dream up a new form, a new bit of paper work. We’ve got paper work coming out of our ears.”

“Hm! Have you talked to your doctor about that? I just read in a medical journal about a man who drank molten iron and pissed out telephone wire. Something of an exhibitionist, I suspect. Even more to the point, we haven’t finished checking out your stiff’s clothing. The analysis of dust and lint and crap in pockets and cuffs isn’t quite done. I’ll contact you if anything comes up. Matter of fact, I’ll give the case a bit of thought. Might even come up with one of my ‘interesting little insights.’ “

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. And to prove that, how about another cup of coffee?”

Guttmann is typing out an overdue report when LaPointe enters. He has taken the liberty of going through the Lieutenant’s desk and clearing out every forgotten or overlooked report and memo he could find. He tried to organize them into some kind of sequence at first, but now he is taking them in random order and bungling through as best he can.

LaPointe sits at his desk and surveys the expanse of unlittered surface. “Now, that looks better,” he says.

Guttmann looks over the piles of paper work on his little table. “Did you find out anything from Dr. Bouvier, sir?”

“Only that you’re supposed to be a remarkable young man.”

“Remarkable in what way, sir?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I see. Oh, by the way, the Commissioner’s office called again. They’re pretty upset about your not coming right up when you got in.”

“Hm-m. Any call from Dirtyshirt Red?”

“Sir?”

“That bomme you met last night. The one who’s looking for the Vet.”

“No, sir. No call.”

“I don’t imagine the Vet will be out on the streets before dark anyway. He has drinking money. What time is it?”

“Just after one, sir.”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No, sir. I’ve been doing paper work.”

“Oh? Well, let’s go have lunch.”

“Sir? Do you realize that some of these reports are six months overdue?”

“What does that have to do with getting lunch?”

“Ah… nothing?”

They sit by the window of a small restaurant across Bonsecours Street from the Quartier Général, finishing their coffee. The decor is a little frilly for its police clientele, and Guttmann looks particularly out of place, his considerable bulk threatening his spindly-legged chair.

“Sir?” Guttmann says out of a long silence. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about. Why do the older men on the force call us apprentices ‘Joans’?”

“Oh, that comes from long ago, when most of the force was French. They weren’t called ‘Joans’ really. They were called ‘jaunes.’ Over the years it got pronounced in English.”

“Jaunes? Yellows? Why yellows?”

“Because the apprentices are always kids, still wet behind the ears…”

Guttmann’s expression says he still doesn’t get it.

“…and yellow is the color of baby shit,” LaPointe explains.

Guttmann’s face is blank.

LaPointe shrugs. “I suppose it doesn’t really make much sense.”

“No, sir. Not much. Just more of the wiseass ragging the junior men have to put up with.”

“That bothers you, eh?”

“Sure. I mean… this isn’t the army. We don’t have to break a man’s spirit to get him to conform.”

“If you don’t like the force, why don’t you get out? Use that college education of yours.”

Guttmann looks quickly at the Lieutenant. “That’s another thing, sir. I guess I’m supposed to be sorry that I got a little education. But I’m afraid I just can’t cut it.” His ears are tingling with resentment.

LaPointe rubs his stubbly cheek with the palm of his hand. “You don’t have to cut it, son. Just so long as you can type. Come on, finish your coffee and let’s go.”

Leaving Guttmann waiting on the sidewalk, LaPointe returns to the restaurant and places a call from the booth at the back. Five times… six… seven… the phone rings, unanswered. He shrugs philosophically and sets the receiver back into its cradle. But just as he hangs up, he thinks he hears an answering click on the other end. He dials again quickly. This time the phone is answered on the first ring.

“Yes?”

“Hello. It’s me. Claude.”

“Yes?” She does not place the name.

“LaPointe. The man who owns the apartment.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She has nothing more to say.

“Is everything all right?”

“All right?”

“I mean… did you buy enough for breakfast and lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

There is a silence.

She volunteers, “Did you call just now?”

“Yes.”

“I was in the bathroom. It stopped ringing just when I answered.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Oh. Well… why did you call?”

“I just wanted to know if you found everything you need.”

“Like what?”

“Like… did you buy a razor?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good.”

A short silence.

Then he says, “I won’t be back until eight or nine tonight.”

“And you want me out by then?”

“No. I mean, it’s up to you. It doesn’t matter.”

A short silence.

“Well? Should I go or stay?”

A longer silence.

“I’ll bring some groceries back with me. We can make supper there, if you want.”

“Can you cook?” she asks.

“Yes. Can’t you?”

“No. I can do eggs and mince and things like that.”

“Well, then, I’ll do the cooking.”

“Okay.”

“It’ll be late. Can you hold out that long?”

“What do you mean?”

“You won’t get too hungry?”

“No.”

“Well then. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Okay.”

LaPointe hangs up, feeling foolish. Why call when you have nothing to say? That’s stupid. He wonders what he’ll buy for supper.

The dumb twit can’t even cook.

The secretary’s skirt is so short that modesty makes her back up to file cabinets and squat to extract papers from the lower drawers.

LaPointe sits in a modern imitation-leather divan so deep and soft that it is difficult to rise from it. On a low coffee table are arranged a fine political balance of backdated Punch and Paris Match magazines, together with the latest issue of Canada Now. The walls of the Commissioner’s reception room are adorned with paintings that have the crude draftsmanship and flat perspective of fashionable Hudson Bay Indian primitive; and there is a saccharine portrait of an Indian girl with pigtails and melting brown comic-sad eyes too large for her face, after the style of an American husband-and-wife team of kitsch painters. The size of the eyes, their sadness, and the Oriental upturn of the corners make it look as though the girl’s mother plaited her braids too tightly.

Along with the popular Indian trash on the walls, there are several framed posters, examples of the newly established Public Relations Department. One shows a uniformed policeman and a middle-aged civilian male standing side by side, looking down at a happy child. The slogan reads: Crime Is Everybody’s Business. LaPointe wonders what crime the men are contemplating.

The leggy secretary squats again, her back to the file cabinet, to replace a folder. Her tight skirt makes her lose her balance for a second, and her knees separate, revealing her panties.

LaPointe nods to himself. That’s smart; to avoid showing your ass, you flash your crotch.

The door behind the secretary’s desk opens and Commissioner Resnais appears, hand already out, broad smile in place. He makes it a habit to greet senior men personally. He brought that back with him from a seminar in the States on personnel management tactics.

Make the men who work FOR you think they work WITH you.

“Claude, good to see you. Come on in.” Just the opposite of Sergeant Gaspard, Resnais uses LaPointe’s first name, but does not tutoyer him. The Commissioner’s alert black eyes reveal a tension that belies his facile camaraderie.

Resnais’ office is spacious, its furniture relentlessly modern. There is a thick carpet, and two of the walls are lined with books—and not only lawbooks. There are titles dealing with social issues, psychology, the history of Canada, problems of modern youth, communications, and the arts and crafts of Hudson Bay Indians. No civilian visitor could avoid being impressed by the implication of social concern and modern attitudes toward the causes and prevention of crime. No ordinary cop, this Commissioner. A liberal intellectual working in the trenches of quotidian law enforcement.

Nor is it easy to dismiss Resnais as a bogus political man. He has in fact read each of the books in his office. He in fact does his best to understand and respond to modern community needs. He does in fact see himself as a liberal; as a policeman by vocation, and a politician by necessity. Resnais is not the man to attract devotion and affection from those under him, but the majority of the force respect him, and many of the younger men admire him.

Like LaPointe, Resnais began by patrolling a beat. Then he went to night school; perfected his English; married into one of the reigning Anglo families of Montreal; took leaves of absence, without pay, to finish his college education; made a career of delicate cases involving people and events that required protection from the light of newspaper exposure. Finally, he became the first career policeman to occupy the traditionally civilian post of commissioner. For this reason, he thinks of himself as a cop’s cop. Few of the older men on the force share his view. True, he has been on the force for thirty years, but he was never a cop in the rough-and-tumble sense. He never shook information out of a pimp he despised. He never drank coffee at two in the morning out of a cracked mug, sleeplessness irritating his eyes, his overcoat stinking of wet wool. He never had to use the cover of a car door when returning fire.

LaPointe notices his personnel file on Resnais’ desk, otherwise bare save for a neat stack of pale blue memo cards, an open note pad, and two perfectly sharpened pencils.

Men who look busy are often only disorganized.

Resnais stations himself in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, the glare of the overcast skies making it difficult to look in his direction without squinting.

“Well, how have you been, Claude?”

LaPointe smiles at the accent. Resnais is really trilingual. He speaks continental French; perfect English, although with the growled “r” of the Francophone who has finally located that difficult consonant; and he can revert to a Joual as twangy as the next man’s when he is addressing a group from east Montreal, or speaking to senior French Canadian officers.

“I think I’ll make it through the winter, Commissioner.” LaPointe never uses his first name.

Resnais laughs. “I’m sure you will! Tough old son of a bitch like you? I’m sure you will!” There is something phony and condescending in his use of profanity, just like one of the guys. He clasps his hands behind his back and rocks up on his toes, a habit born of being rather short for a policeman. His body is thick, but he keeps in perfect trim by jogging with neighbors, swimming with members of his exclusive athletic club, and playing handball in the police league, for which he signs up just like any other cop, and where he accepts defeat at the hands of younger officers with laughing good grace. His expensive suits are closely cut, and he could pass for ten years younger than he is, despite the gleaming pate with its wreath of coal-black hair. Suntanning under lamps has given him a slightly purplish gleam. “Still living in the old place on Esplanade?” he asks offhandedly.

“Yes. Just like it says in my dossier,” LaPointe responds.

Resnais laughs heartily. “I can’t get away with anything with you, can I?” It is true that he makes a practice of looking over a man’s file just before seeing him, for the purpose of refreshing himself on an intimate detail or two—number of children and their sexes, the wife’s name, awards or medals. He drops these bits of information casually, as though he knows each man personally and holds in his memory details of his life. He once read somewhere that this was a trick used by a popular American general in the Second World War, and he adopted it as a good management tactic.

An employee gives of his TIME, a buddy gives of HIMSELF.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in LaPointe’s life to comment upon. No children, a wife long since dead, citations for merit and bravery all earned years ago. You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to mention the street a man lives on.

“I don’t want to waste too much of your time, Commissioner,” LaPointe says, “So, if there’s something…” He raises his eyebrows.

Resnais does not like that. He prefers to control the timing and flow of conversation when it involves delicate personnel problems like this one. To do so is an axiom of Small Group and One-to-One Communication Technique.

If you’re not IN control, you’re UNDER control.

“I was expecting you this morning, Claude.”

“I was on a case.”

“I see.” The Commissioner again rocks onto his toes and squeezes his hands behind his back. Then he sits down in his high-backed desk chair and turns it so that he is looking not at LaPointe, but past him, out of the window. “Frankly, I’m afraid I have to give you what in the old days was called an ass-chewing.”

“We still call it that.”

“Right. Now look, Claude, we’re both old-timers…”

LaPointe shrugs.

“…and I don’t feel I have to pull any punches with you. I’ve been forced to talk to you about your methods before. Now, I’m not saying they’re inefficient. I know that sometimes going by the book means losing an arrest. But things have changed since we were young. Greater emphasis is placed today upon the protection of the individual than upon the protection of the society.” There seem to be invisible quotation marks around this last sentence. “I’m not calling these changes good, and I’m not calling them bad. They are facts of life. And facts of life that you continue to ignore.”

“You’re talking about the Dieudonné case?”

Resnais frowns. He doesn’t like being rushed. “That’s the case in point right now. But I’m talking about more than this one instance. This isn’t the first time you’ve gotten information by force. And it’s not the first time I’ve told you that this is not the way things happen in my department.” He instantly regrets having called it his department. Make every man feel a part of the organization.

He works best who works for himself.

“I don’t think you know the details of the case, Commissioner.”

“I assure you that I know the case. I’ve had every bit of it rammed down my throat by the public prosecutor!”

“The old woman was shot for seven dollars and some change! Not even enough for the punk to get a fix!”

“That’s not the point!” Resnais’ jaw tightens, and he continues with exaggerated control. “The point is this. You got information against Dieudonné by means of force and threat of force.”

“I knew he did it. But I couldn’t prove it without a confession.”

“How did you know he did it?”

“The word was out.”

“What, exactly, does that mean?”

“It means the word was out. It means that he’s a bragging son of a bitch who spills his guts when he takes on a load of shit.”

“You’re telling me he admitted to others that he killed the old woman… whatshername?”

“No. He bragged about having a gun and not being afraid to use it.”

“That’s hardly admission of murder.”

“No, but I know Dieudonné. I’ve known him since he was a wiseassed kid. I know what he’s capable of.”

“Believe it or not, your intuition does not constitute evidence.”

“The slugs from his gun matched up, didn’t they?”

“The slugs matched up, all right. But how did you get the gun in the first place?”

“He told me where he had buried it.”

“After you beat him up.”

“I slapped him twice.”

“And threatened to lock him up in a room and let him suffer a cold-turkey withdrawal! Christ, you didn’t even have any hard evidence to connect him with the old woman… whatshername!”

“Her name, goddamn it, was Mrs. Czopec! She was seventy-two years old! She lived in the basement of a building that doesn’t have plumbing. There’s a bit of sooty dirt in front of that building, and in spring she used to get free seed packets on boxes of food, and plant them and water them, and sometimes a few came up. But her basement window was so low that she couldn’t see them. She and her husband were the first Czechs on my patch. He died four years ago, but he wasn’t a citizen, so she didn’t have much in benefits coming in. She clung to her purse when that asshole junkie tried to snatch it because the seven dollars was all the money she had to last to the end of the month. When I checked out her apartment, it turned out that she lived on rice. And there was evidence that toward the end of the month, she ate paper. Paper, Commissioner.”

“That’s not the point!”

LaPointe jumps up from his chair, “You’re right! That’s not the point. The point is that she had a right to live out her miserable life, planting her stupid flowers, eating her rice, spending half of every day in church where she couldn’t afford to light a candle! That’s the point! And that hophead son of a bitch shot her through the throat! That’s the point!”

Resnais lifts a denying palm. “Look, I’m not defending him, Claude…”

“Oh? You mean you aren’t going to tell me that he was underprivileged? Maybe his father never took him to a hockey game!”

Resnais is off balance. What’s wrong with LaPointe? It isn’t like him to get excited. He’s supposed to be the big professional, so coldblooded. Resnais expected chilly insubordination, but this passion is… unfair. To regain control of the situation, Resnais speaks flatly. “Dieudonné is getting off.”

LaPointe is stopped cold. He can’t believe it. “What?”

“That’s right. The public prosecutor met with his lawyers yesterday. They threatened to slap you with a two-seventeen assault, and the newspapers would love that! I have my—I have the department to think of, Claude.”

LaPointe sits down. “So you made a deal?”

“I don’t like that term. We did the best we could. The lawyers could probably have gotten the case thrown out, considering how you found the gun. Fortunately for us, they are responsible men who don’t want to see Dieudonné out on the street any more than we do.”

“What kind of deal?”

“The best we could get. Dieudonné pleads guilty to manslaughter; they forget the two-seventeen against you. There it is.”

“Manslaughter?”

“There it is.” Resnais sits back in his high-backed desk chair and gives this time to sink in. “You see, Claude, even if I condoned your methods—and I don’t—the bottom line is this: they don’t work anymore. The charges don’t stick.”

LaPointe is lost and angry. “But there was no other way to get him. There was no hard evidence without the gun.”

“You keep missing the point.”

LaPointe stares straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. “You’d better get word to Dieudonné that if he ever sets foot on the Main after he gets out…”

“For Christ’s sake! Don’t you ever listen? Does a truck have to drive over you? You’ve embarrassed… the department long enough! I’ve worked like a son of a bitch to give this shop a good image in the city, and all it takes…! Look, Claude. I don’t like doing this, but I’d better lay it on the line for you. I know the reputation you have among the guys in the shop. You keep your patch cool, and I know that no other man, probably no team of men, could do what you do. But times have changed. And you haven’t changed with them.” Resnais fingers LaPointe’s personnel file. “Three recognitions for merit. Twice awarded the Police Medal. Twice wounded in the line of duty—once very seriously, as I recall. When we heard about that bullet grazing your heart, we kept an open line to the hospital all night long. Did you know that?”

LaPointe is no longer looking at the Commissioner; his eyes are directed out the window. He speaks quietly. “Get on with it, Commissioner.”

“All right. I’ll get on with it. This is the last time you embarrass this shop. If it happens one more time… if I have to go to bat for you one more time…” There is no need to finish the sentence.

LaPointe draws his gaze back to the Commissioner’s face. He sighs and rises. “Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

Resnais looks down at LaPointe’s file, his jaw tight. “Yes. That’s all.”

The slam of the office door rattles the glass, and LaPointe brushes past Guttmann without a word. He sits heavily in his desk chair and stares vacantly at the Forensic Medicine report on that kid found in the alley. Instinct for self-preservation warns Guttmann to keep his head down over his typing and not say a word. For half an hour, the only sound in the room is the tapping of the typewriter and the hiss of the sandblasting across the street.

Then LaPointe takes a deep breath and rubs his mat of hair with his palm. “Did I get a call from Dirtyshirt Red?”

“No, sir. No calls at all.”

“Hm-m.” LaPointe rises and comes to Guttmann’s little table, looking over his shoulder. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, it’s going fine, sir. It’s lots of fun. I’d rather type out reports than anything I can think of.”

LaPointe turns away, grunting his disgust for all paper work and all who bother with it. Outside the window, the city is already growing dark under the heavy layers of stationary cloud. He tugs down his overcoat from the wooden rack.

“I’m going up onto the Main. See what’s happening.”

Guttmann nods, not lifting his eyes from the form he is retyping, for fear of losing his place again.

“Well?”

The younger man puts his finger on his place and looks up. “Well what, sir?”

“Are you coming or not?”

A minute later, the door is locked, the lights off, and the unfinished report is still wound into the machine.