The Main

7

“Hey?”

He does not move.

“Hey?”

“Ugh!” LaPointe wakes with a start, blinking his eyes against the watery light coming through the window. It is another gray day with low skies and diffused, shadowless brightness. He squeezes his eyes shut again before finally opening them. His back is stiff from sleeping on the narrow sofa, and his feet stick out from below the overcoat he has used as a blanket. “What time is it?” he asks.

“A little before eleven.”

He nods heavily, still drugged with sleep. He sits up and scratches his head, grinning stupidly. These last two nights have taken their toll—his joints are stiff and his head cobwebby.

“I’ve got water boiling,” she says. “I was going to make some coffee, but I don’t know how to work your pot.”

“Yes. It’s an old-fashioned kind. Just a minute. Give me a chance to wake up. I’ll do it.” He yawns deeply. His overcoat covers him from the waist down, but his thick chest is exposed. He rubs the graying hair vigorously because it itches. “Tabernouche!” he grunts.

“Hard night?” she asks.

“Long, anyway.”

She is wearing Lucille’s pink quilted dressing gown again, but she has been up long enough to brush out her hair and put on eye make-up. There is a slight smell of gas in the room. She must have had some difficulty lighting the gas fire.

In his sleep, his penis has come out of the fly of his undershorts. He manages to tuck it back in with the same gesture as that with which he pulls up his overcoat and puts it on in place of a robe. Barefooted, he goes into the kitchen to make coffee.

She laughs half a dozen ascending notes, then stops short.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. You look funny with your bare legs coming out of the bottom of your overcoat.”

He looks down. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

While he is pressing hot water through the fine grounds, it occurs to him that only one thing triggers her peculiar, interrupted laugh: people looking ridiculous. She laughed at her black eye, at him with soap on his cheek, at herself wearing Lucille’s coat, and now at him again. It’s a cruel sense of humor, one that doesn’t even spare herself as a possible victim.

He gives her a cup of coffee and carries one with him to the bathroom, where he washes up and dresses.

Later, he fries eggs and toasts bread over the gas ring, and they take their breakfast in the living room, she coiled up on the sofa, her plate balanced on the arm, he in his chair.

“Why did you sleep out here?” she asks.

“Oh… I didn’t want to disturb you,” he explains, partially.

“Yeah, but why didn’t you use the blankets I used last night?”

“I didn’t really mean to sleep. I was just going to rest. But I dozed off.”

“Yeah, but then why did you take your clothes off?”

“Why don’t you just eat your eggs?”

“Okay.” She spoons egg onto a bit of toast and eats it that way. “Where did you go last night?” she asks.

“Just work.”

“You said you work with the police. You work in an office?”

“Sometimes. Mostly I work on the streets.”

That seems to amuse her. “Yeah. Me too. You enjoy being a cop?”

He tucks down the corners of his mouth and shrugs. He never thought of it that way. When she changes the subject immediately, he assumes she isn’t really interested anyway.

“Don’t you get bored living here?” she asks. “No magazines. No television.”

He looks around the frumpy room with its 1930’s furniture. Yes, he imagines it would be dull for a young girl. True, there are no magazines, but he has some books, a full set of Zola, whom he discovered by chance twenty years ago, and whom he reads over and over, going down the row of novels by turn, then starting again. He finds the people and events surprisingly like those on his patch, despite the funny, florid language. But he doesn’t imagine she would care to read his Zolas. She probably reads slowly, maybe even mouths the words.

Well, if she’s bored, then she’ll probably leave soon. No reason for her to stay, really.

“Ah… why don’t we go out tonight?” he offers. “Have dinner.”

“And go dancing?”

He smiles and shakes his head. “I told you I don’t dance.”

This disappoints her. But she is resourceful when it comes to getting her way with men. “I know! Why don’t we go to a whisky à go-go after dinner. People can dance by themselves there.”

He doesn’t care much for the thought of sitting in one of those cramped, noisy places with youngsters hopping all around him. But, if it would please her…

She presses her tongue against her teeth and decides to gamble on pushing this thing to her advantage. “I… I really don’t have the right clothes to go out,” she says, not looking up from her cup. “I only have what I could sneak out in the shopping bag.”

His eyes crinkle as he looks at her. He knows exactly what she’s up to. He doesn’t mind giving her money to buy clothes, if that’s what she wants, but he doesn’t like her thinking he’s a dumb mark.

He sets down his cup and crosses to the large veneered chest. He has a habit of putting his housekeeping money into the top drawer every payday, and taking out what he needs through the month. He knows it’s a bad habit, but it saves time. And who would dare to steal from Claude LaPointe? He is surprised at how many twenties have accumulated, crumpled up in the drawer; must be five or six hundred dollars’ worth. Ever since the mortgage on the house was paid off, he has more money than he needs. He takes out seven twenties and flattens them with his hand. “Here. I’ll be working today. You can go out and buy yourself a dress.”

She takes the bills and counts them. Maybe he doesn’t know how much a dress costs. So much the better for her.

“There’s enough there to buy yourself a coat too,” he says.

“Oh? All right.” Before falling asleep last night, she thought about asking him for money, but she didn’t know quite how to go about it. After all, they hadn’t screwed. He didn’t owe her.

While she sits looking out the window, thinking about the dress and coat, LaPointe examines her face. The green eye shadow she uses disguises what is left of her black eye. It’s a nice pert face. Not pretty, but the kind you want to hold between your palms. It occurs to him that he has never kissed her.

“Marie-Louise?” he says quietly.

She turns to him, her eyebrows raised interrogatively.

He looks down at the park, colorless under yeasty skies. “Let’s make a deal, Marie-Louise. For me, I like having you here, having you around. I suppose we’ll make love eventually, and I’ll enjoy that. I mean… well, naturally, I’ll enjoy that. Okay. That’s for me. For you, I suppose being here is better than sitting out your nights in some park or bus station. But… you find it dull here. And sooner or later you’ll go off somewhere. Fine. I’ll probably be tired of having you around by then. You can have money to buy some clothes. If you need other things, I don’t mind giving you money. But I’m not a mark, and I wouldn’t like you to think of me as one. So don’t try to con me, and don’t bullshit me. That wouldn’t be fair, and it would make me angry. Is it a deal?”

Marie-Louise looks steadily at him, trying to understand what he’s up to. She’s not used to this kind of frankness, and she doesn’t feel comfortable with it. She really wishes they had screwed and he had paid his money. That’s neat. That’s easy to understand. She feels as if she’s being accused of something, or trapped into something.

“I knew there was money in that drawer,” she says defensively. “I was looking around last night, and I found it.”

“But you didn’t take it and run off. Why not?”

She shrugs. She doesn’t know why not. She’s not a thief, that’s all. Maybe she should have taken it. Maybe she will, someday. Anyway, she doesn’t like this conversation. “Look, I better get going. Or did you want to come shopping with me?”

“No, I have work—” LaPointe hears a car door slam down in the street. He half rises from his chair and peers down from the second-story window. Guttmann has just gotten out of a little yellow sports car and is looking along the row for the house number.

LaPointe tugs his overcoat on rapidly. He doesn’t want Guttmann to see Marie-Louise and ask questions or, worse yet, pointedly avoid asking questions. The sleeve of his suit coat slips from his grasp, and he has to fish up through the arm of the overcoat to tug it down. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll see you this evening.”

“Okay.”

“What time will you be through shopping?”

“I don’t know.”

“Five? Five-thirty?”

“Okay.”

As he clumps down the narrow stairs he grumbles to himself. She’s too passive. There’s nothing to her. Want some coffee? Okay. Even though she doesn’t like coffee. Shall we eat at five? Okay. Do you want to stay with me? Okay. Do you want to leave? Okay. Shall we make love? Okay. How about screwing out on the hall landing? Okay.

She doesn’t care. Nothing matters to her.

Guttmann has his ringer on the buzzer when the front door opens with a jerk and LaPointe steps out.

“Morning, sir.”

LaPointe buttons up his overcoat against the damp chill. “Your car?” he asks, indicating with a thrust of his chin the new little yellow sports model.

“Yes, sir,” Guttmann says with a touch of pride, turning to descend the steps.

“Hm-m!” Obviously the Lieutenant doesn’t approve of sports cars.

But Guttmann is in too good a mood to care about LaPointe’s prejudices. “That’s to say, the car belongs to me and the bank. Mostly the bank. I think I own the ashtray and one of the headlights.” His buoyancy is a result of a rare piece of good luck. When he called the girl this morning to tell her he would have to cancel their date, she beat him to it, telling him she had one hell of a head cold, and she wanted to sleep in to see if she could shake it off. He managed to sound disappointed, and he arranged to look in on her that evening.

LaPointe finds the tiny car difficult to get into, and he grunts as he slams the door on his coattail and has to open it again. In fact, he feels silly, riding around in a little yellow automobile. He would rather walk. Give him a chance to check on the street. Guttmann, for all that he is bigger than LaPointe, slips in quite easily. With a popping baritone roar, the car starts up and pulls away from the curb.

LaPointe cranes his neck to see if Marie-Louise is watching from the window. She is not.

They find a parking space on Clark, only half a block up from the rooming house. Opening the door, LaPointe scrapes it against the high curb; Guttmann closes his eyes and winces. LaPointe mutters something about stupid toy cars as he squeezes out and angrily slams the door behind him. Because it is Saturday, the street is full of kids, and one of them has paused in his game of “ledgey” to remark aloud that old men shouldn’t ride around in little cars. LaPointe raises the back of his hand to him, but the boy just stares in sassy defiance as he wipes his nose gravely on the sleeve of a stretched-out sweater. LaPointe cannot repress a grin. A typical pugnacious French Canadian kid. A ‘tit coq.

The rooming house is like others around the Main. Dull brick in need of paint; dirty windows with limp curtains of grayish fabric that hangs as though it is damp; a fly-specked card in the window of first floor front advertising rooms to let. This doesn’t necessarily mean there is a vacancy. The concierge is probably too lazy to put the card in and take it out each time a short-time vagrant comes or goes. LaPointe climbs the wooden stoop and twists the old-fashioned bell, which rattles dully, broken. When there is no answer, he bangs on the door. Guttmann has joined him on the landing, looking back nervously at the small group of ragged kids that has gathered around his car. LaPointe bangs more violently, making the window rattle.

Almost immediately the door is snatched open by a slovenly woman who pushes back a lock of lank gray hair and snaps, “Hey! What the hell’s wrong with you? You want to break down the door?” Her lower lip is swollen and cracked where someone hit her recently.

“Police,” LaPointe says, not bothering to show identification.

She looks from LaPointe to Guttmann quickly, then stands back from the doorway. They enter a hall that smells of Lysol and boiled cabbage. The woman’s attitude has changed from anger to tense uncertainty. “What do you want?” she asks, touching two fingers gingerly to the split lip.

The tentative tone of the question gives LaPointe his cue. She’s frightened about something. He doesn’t know what it is, and he doesn’t care, but he’ll push it a little to give her a scare and make her cooperative. “Routine questions,” he says. “But not here in the hall.”

She shrugs and enters her apartment, not inviting them to come in, but leaving the door open behind her. LaPointe follows and looks around as Guttmann, a little nervous, smiles politely and closes the door behind him. Without a warrant, you’re supposed to await an invitation before entering a home.

The small room is crowded with junk furniture, and hot from an oversized electric heater she uses because it doesn’t cost her anything. It just goes on the landlord’s monthly bill. She keeps the place too hot because otherwise she’d feel she was losing money. LaPointe knows her type, knows how to handle her. He unbuttons his overcoat and turns to the woman just as she is glancing nervously out the window. She is expecting someone; someone she hopes will not come while the police are there. She adjusts the curtain, as though that is why she went to the window in the first place. “What do you want?” she asks sullenly.

For a moment, LaPointe does not answer. He looks levelly at her, draws a deep, bored breath and says, “You know perfectly well. I don’t have time to play games with you.”

Guttmann glances at him, confused.

“Look,” the woman says. “Arnaud doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t know where he is. He moved out a month ago, the lazy son of a bitch.”

“That’s your story,” LaPointe says, tossing a pillow out of the only comfortable chair and sitting down.

“It’s the truth! Do you think I’d lie for him?” She touches her split lip. “The bastard gave me this!”

LaPointe glances at the fresh bruise. “A month ago?”

“Yes… no. I met him on the street yesterday.”

“And he said good morning, and hit you in the mouth?”

The woman shrugs and turns away.

LaPointe watches her in silence.

She glances quickly toward the window, but does not dare to go and look out.

LaPointe sighs aloud. “Come on. I don’t have all day.”

For another minute, she remains tight-lipped. Then she gives in, shrugging, then letting her shoulders drop heavily. “Look, officer. The TV was a present. It doesn’t even work good. He gave it to me, like he gave me this fat lip, and once the clap, the no-good bastard!”

So that’s it. LaPointe turns to Guttmann, who is still hovering near the door. “Take down the serial number of the TV.”

The young man squats behind the set and tries to find the number. He doesn’t know why in hell he is doing this, and he feels like an ass.

“You know what it means if the set turns out to be stolen?” LaPointe asks the woman.

“If Arnaud stole it, that’s his ass. I don’t know anything about it”

LaPointe laughs. “Oh, the judge is sure to believe that.” That’s enough, LaPointe thinks. She’s scared and ready to cooperate now. “Sit down. Let’s forget the TV for now. I want to know about one of your roomers. Tony Green.”

Confused by the change of topic, but relieved to have the questioning veer away from herself, the concierge instantly becomes confidential and friendly. ‘Tony Green? Honest, officer—”

“Lieutenant.” It always surprises LaPointe to find people on the Main who don’t know of him.

“Honest, Lieutenant, there’s no one by that name staying here. Of course, they don’t always give their right names.”

“Good-looking kid. Young. Mid-twenties. Probably Italian. Stayed out all night last night.”

“Oh! Verdini!” She makes a wide gesture and her lips flap with a puff of breath. “It’s nothing when he stays out all night! It’s women with him. He’s all the time after it. Chases every plotte and guidoune on the street. Sometimes they even come here looking for him. Sometimes he has them in his room, even though it’s against the rules. Once there were two of them up there at the same time! The neighbors complained about all the grunting and groaning.” She laughs and winks. “His thing is always up. He wears those tight pants, and I can always see it bulging there. What’s wrong? What’s he done? Is he in trouble?”

“Give me the names of the women who came here.”

She shrugs contemptuously and tucks down the corners of her mouth. The gesture opens the crack in her lip, and she licks it to keep it from stinging. “I couldn’t be bothered trying to remember them. They were all sorts. Young, old, fat, skinny. A couple no more than kids. He’s a real sauteux de clôtures. He puts it into all kinds.”

“And you?”

“Oh, a couple of times we passed on the stairs and he ran his hand up under my dress. But it never went further. I think he was afraid of—”

“Afraid of this Arnaud you haven’t seen in a month?”

She shrugs, annoyed with herself at her slip.

“All right. How long has this Verdini lived here?”

“Two months maybe. I can look at the rent book if you want.”

“Not now. Give me the names of the women who came here.”

“Like I told you, I don’t know most of them. Just stuff dragged in off the street.”

“But you recognized some of them.”

She looks away uncomfortably. “I don’t want to get anybody into trouble.”

“I see.” LaPointe sits back and makes himself comfortable. “You know, I have a feeling that if I wait here for half an hour, I may be lucky enough to meet your Arnaud. It’ll be a touching scene, you two getting together after a month. He’ll think I waited around because you told me about the TV. That will make him angry, but I’m sure he’s the understanding type.” LaPointe’s expressionless eyes settle on the concierge.

For a time she is silent as she meditatively torments her cracked lip with the tip of her finger. At last she says, “I think I recognized three of them.”

LaPointe nods to Guttmann, who opens his notebook.

The concierge gives the name of a French Canadian chippy whom LaPointe knows. She doesn’t know the name of the second woman, but she gives the address of a Portuguese family that lives around the corner.

“And the third?” LaPointe asks.

“I don’t know her name either. It’s that woman who runs the cheap restaurant just past Rue de Bullion. The place that—”

“I know the place. You’re telling me that she came here?”

“Once, yes. Not to get herself stuffed, of course. After all, she’s a butch.”

Yes, LaPointe knows that. That is why he was surprised.

“They had a fight,” the concierge continues. “You could hear her bellowing all the way down here. Then she slammed out of the place.”

“And you don’t know any of the other people who visited this Verdini?”

“No. Just plottes. Oh… and his cousin, of course.”

“His cousin?”

“Yes. The guy who rented the room in the first place. Verdini didn’t speak much English and almost no French at all. His cousin rented the room for him.”

“Let’s hear about this cousin.”

“I don’t remember his name. I think he mentioned it, but I don’t remember. He gave me an address too, in case there were any problems. Like I said, this Verdini didn’t speak much English.” She is growing more tense. Time is running out against Arnaud’s return.

“What was the address?”

“I didn’t pay any attention. I got other things to do with my time than worry about the bums who live here.”

“You didn’t write it down?”

“I couldn’t be bothered. I remember it was somewhere over the hill, if that’s any help.”

By “over the hill” she means the Italian stretch of the Main, between the drab little park in Carré Vallières at the top of the rise and the railroad bridge past Van Horne.

“How often did you see this cousin?”

“Only once. When he rented the room. Oh, and another time, about a week ago. They had a row and—hey! Chocolate!”

“What?”

“No… not chocolate. That’s not it. For a second there I thought I remembered the cousin’s name. It was right on the tip of my tongue. Something to do with chocolate.”

“Chocolate?”

“No, not that. But something like it. Cocoa? No, that’s not it. It’s gone now. Something to do with chocolate.” She cannot help drifting to the window and peeking through the curtains.

LaPointe rises. “All right. That’s all for now. If that ‘chocolate’ name comes back to you, telephone me.” He gives her his card. “And if I don’t hear from you, I’ll be back. And I’ll talk to Arnaud about it.”

She takes the card without looking at it. “What’s the wop kid done? Some girl knocked up?”

“That’s not your affair. You just worry about the TV set.”

“Honest to God, Lieutenant—”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

They sit in the yellow sports car. LaPointe appears to be deep in thought, and Guttmann doesn’t know where to go first.

“Sir?”

“Hm-m?”

“What’s a plotte?” Guttmann’s school French does not cover Joual street terms.

“Sort of a whore.”

“And a guidoune?”

“Same kind of thing. Only amateur. Goes for drinks.”

Guttmann says the words over in his mind, to fix them. “And a… sauteux de… what was it?”

“A sauteux de clôtures. It’s an old-fashioned term. The concierge probably comes from downriver. It means a… sort of a man who runs after women, but there’s a sense that he chases young women more than others. Something like a cherry-picker. Hell, I don’t know! It means what it means!”

“You know, sir? Joual seems to have more words for aspects of sex than either English or French-French.”

LaPointe shrugs. “Naturally. People talk about what’s important to them. Someone once told me that Eskimos have lots of words for snow. French-French has lots of words for ‘talk.’ And English has lots of—ah, there she goes!”

“What?”

“That’s what I’ve been waiting for. The concierge just took the To Let’ sign out of the window. She was trying to get at it all the time we were there. It’s a warning to her Arnaud to stay away. I’d bet anything it’ll be put back as soon as we drive away.”

Guttmann shakes his head. “Even though he bashes her in the mouth.”

“That’s love for you, son. The love that rhymes with ‘forever’ in all the songs. Come on, let’s go.”

They run down the two leads given them by the concierge. The first girl they catch coming out of her apartment as they drive up. LaPointe meets her at the bottom of the stoop and draws her aside to talk, while Guttmann stands by feeling useless. The girl doesn’t know anything, not even his name. Just Tony. They met in a bar, had a couple of drinks, and went up to his room. No, she hadn’t charged him for it. He was just a good-looking guy, and they had a little fun together.

LaPointe gets back into the car. Not much there. But at least he learned that Tony Green’s English was not all that bad. Obviously he had been taking lessons during the two months he stayed at the rooming house.

Guttmann is even more out of it at the second girl’s house. Not a girl, really; a Portuguese woman in her thirties with two kids running around the place and a mother in a black dress who doesn’t speak a word of French, but who hovers near the door of an adjoining bedroom, visible only to the standing Guttmann. From time to time, the mother smiles at Guttmann, and he smiles back out of politeness. The timing of the old woman’s smile is uncanny in conjunction with the daughter’s confession. She seems to punctuate each sexual admission with a nod and a grin. Guttmann is put in mind of his deepest secret dread when he was a kid: that his mother could read his thoughts.

The young woman is scared, and she talks to LaPointe in a low, rapid voice, glancing frequently toward her mother’s room, not wanting her to hear, even though she doesn’t have two words of French. Just having her mother listen to the incomprehensible noise that carries this kind of confession is daunting.

Her husband left her two years ago. A person has to have some fun in life. The mother nods and grins. Yes, she met Tony Green at a cabaret where she went with a girlfriend to dance. Yes, she did go to his room. The mother nods. No, not alone. She is embarrassed. Yes, the other woman, her friend, was with them. Yes, all three together in the same bed. The mother grins and nods; Guttmann smiles back. It wasn’t her idea—all three in the same bed—but that’s the way this Tony wanted it. And he was such a good-looking boy. After all, a person has to have some fun in life. It’s rough, being left with two kids to bring up all by yourself, and a mother who is just about useless. The mother nods. It’s rough, working eight hours a day, six days a week. The oldest girl goes to convent school. Uniforms. Books. It all costs money. So you have to work six days a week, eight hours a day. And nobody’s getting any younger. It’s a sin, sure, but a person has to have some fun. The mother smiles and nods.

LaPointe slides into the car beside Guttmann, and for a while sits in silence while he seems to sort through what the women have told him.

Guttmann can’t help being impressed by LaPointe’s manner as he talked to this woman and that girl in the street. At first they were afraid because he was a cop, but soon they seemed to be chatting away, almost enjoying unburdening themselves to someone who understood, like a priest. LaPointe asked very few questions, but he had a way of nodding and rolling his hand that requested them to go on… And what next?… And then? The Lieutenant’s attitude was very different from his tough, bullying manner with the concierge. Guttmann remembers him saying something about using different tactics with different people: some you threaten, some you hit, some you embarrass.

And some you understand? Is understanding a tactic too?

“Let’s go have a cup of coffee,” LaPointe says.

“That’s a wonderful idea, sir.” Guttmann’s stomach is still sour with all the coffee he drank yesterday. “I was hoping we’d have a chance to get some coffee.”

The Le Shalom Restaurant is bustling with customers from the small garment shops of the district: young women with only half an hour off push and crowd to get carry-out orders; boisterous forts from the loading docks push sandwiches into their mouths and ogle the girls; intense young Jewish men in suits lean over their plates, talking business. There are few older Jews because most of them are first generation and still keep Shabbes.

Even though it’s afternoon, most of the orders involve breakfast foods, because many of the people only had time for a quick cup of coffee that morning. And besides, eggs are the best food you can buy for the money. This area of Mont Royal Street is the center of the garment service industry, where labor from undereducated French Canadian girls is cheap. There are no big important companies in the district, but dozens of small, second-story operations that receive specialty orders from the bigger houses.

Two telephones behind the serving counter ring constantly. While three distraught girls hustle raggedly to clear and serve the tables, most of the real work is done by one middle-aged woman behind the counter. She does all the checks, serves the whole counter, answers all phone orders, keeps short orders rolling, argues and jokes with the customers, and wages a long-running feud with the harassed Greek cook.

To a customer: This your quarter? No? Must be for the coffee. Couldn’t be a tip. Who around here would tip a quarter? To the cook: Two meat sandwiches. And lean for once! Where’s my three orders of eggs? Like hell I didn’t! What use are you? To a customer: Look, darling, keep your shirt on. I got only two hands, right? To the phone: Restaurant? Two Danish? Right. Coffee. One double cream. Right. One no sugar. What’s the matter? Someone getting fat up there? Hold on one second, darling…To a customer: What’s your problem, honey? Here, give me that. Look, it’s added up right. Nine, sixteen, twenty-five and carry the two makes fourteen, carry the one makes two. Check it yourself. And do me a favor, eh? If I ever ask you to help me with my income tax—refuse. Back to the phone: Okay, that was two-Danish two-coffee one-double-cream one-no-sugar… and? One toast, right. One ginger ale? C’est tout? It’ll be right up. What’s that? Look, darling, if I took time to read back all the orders, I’d never get anything done. Trust me. To a customer: Here’s your eggs, honey. Enjoy. To a customer: Just hold your horses, will you? Everyone’s in a hurry. You’re something special? To the cook: Well? You got those grilled cheese? What grilled cheese? Useless! Get out of my way! To the phone: Restaurant? Just give me your order, darling. We’ll exchange cute talk some other time. Yes. Yes. I got it. You want that with the toast or instead of? Right. To a customer: Look, there’s people standing. If you want to talk, go hire a hall. To LaPointe: Here we go, Lieutenant. Lean, like you like it. So who’s the good-looking kid? Don’t tell me he’s a cop too! He looks too nice to be a cop. To a customer: I’m coming already! Take it easy; you’ll live longer—To herself: Not that anybody cares how long you live.

The woman behind the counter is Chinese. She learned her English in Montreal.

The high level of noise and babble in the restaurant insulates any given conversation, so LaPointe and Guttmann are able to talk as they eat their plump hot meat sandwiches and drink their coffee.

“He’s turning out to be a real nice kid,” Guttmann says, “our poor helpless victim in the alley.”

LaPointe shrugs. Whether or not this Tony Green was a type who deserved being stabbed is not the question. What’s more important is that someone was sassy enough to do it on LaPointe’s patch.

“Well, there’s one thing we can rule out,” Guttmann says, sipping his milky coffee after turning the cup so as to avoid the faint lipstick stain on the rim. “We can rule out the possibility of Antonio Verdini being a priest in civilian clothes.”

LaPointe snorts in agreement. Although he remembered a case in which…

“Do you feel we’re getting anywhere, sir?”

“It’s hard to say. Most murders go unsolved, you know. Chances are we’ll learn a lot about this Tony Green. Little by little, each door leading to another. We tipped the Vet because he has a funny hop to his walk. From him we got the wallet. The wallet brought us to the rooming house, where we learned a little about him, got a couple of short leads. From the girls we learned a little more. We’ll keep pushing along, following the leads. Another door will lead us to another door. Then suddenly we’ll probably come up against a wall. The last room will have no door. With a type like that—rubbers with ticklers, two women at a time, ‘blood type: hot!’—anybody might have put him away. Maybe he got rough with some little agace-pissette who decided at the last moment that she didn’t want to lose her josepheté after all, and maybe he slapped her around a little, and maybe her brother caught up with him in that alley, maybe… ah, it could be anybody.”

“Yes, sir. There’s also the possibility that we’ve already touched the killer. I mean, it could be the Vet. You don’t seem to suspect him, but he did take the wallet, and he’s not the most stable type in the world. Or, if Green was playing around with that concierge, her boyfriend Arnaud might have put him away. I mean, we have reason to suspect he’s no confirmed pacifist.” Guttmann finishes his sandwich and pushes aside the plate with its last few greasy patates frites.

“You know, you’re right there,” LaPointe says. “At some point or other in this business, the chances are we’ll touch the killer. But we probably won’t know it. We’ll probably touch him, pass over him, maybe come back and touch him again. Or her. That doesn’t mean we’ll ever get evidence in hand. But you never know. If we keep pressing, we might get him, even blind. He might get jumpy and do something dumb. Or we might flush out an informer. That’s why we have to go through the motions. Right up until we hit the blank wall.”

“What do we do now?”

“Well, you go home and see if you can make up with that girl of yours. I’m going to have a talk with someone. I’ll see you Monday at the office.”

“You’re going to question that woman who runs a restaurant? The lesbian the concierge mentioned?”

LaPointe nods.

“I’d like to come along. Who knows, I might learn something.”

“You think that’s possible? No. I know her. I’ve known her since she was a kid on the street. She’ll talk to me.”

“But not if I was around?”

“Not as openly.”

“Because I’m a callow and inexperienced youth?”

“Probably. Whatever callow means.”

As LaPointe turns off the Main, he passes a brownstone that has been converted into a shul by members of one of the more rigid Jewish sects—the ones with side-locks—he can never remember its name. A voice calls to him, and he turns to see a familiar figure on the Main, walking slowly and with dignity, his shtreimel perfectly level on his head. LaPointe walks back and asks what the matter is. Their janitor is home sick with a cold, and they need a Shabbes goy to turn on the lights. LaPointe is glad to be of help, and the old Chasidic gentleman thanks him politely, but not excessively, because after all the Lieutenant is a public servant and everyone pays taxes. Too much thanks would give the appearance of artificial humility, and too humble is half proud.

He turns the corner of a side street to face a stream of damp wind as he walks toward La Jolie France Bar-B-Q, the café nearest the Italian boy’s rooming house. It is the kind of place that does all its business at mealtimes, mostly from single workingmen who take their meals there at a weekly rate. So the place is empty when he enters, meeting a wall of pleasant heat after the penetrating cold. Almost immediately, the steamy windows and the thick smell of hot grease from patates frites make him open his overcoat and tug it off. He has his pick of tables, all of which are still littered with dishes and crumbs and slops. He sits instead at the counter, which is clean, if wet with recent wiping. Behind the counter a plump young girl with vacant eyes rinses out a glass in a sink of water that is not perfectly clear. She looks up and smiles, but her voice is vague, as though she is thinking of something else. “You want?” she asks absently.

Just then a short, sinewy woman with her hair dyed orange-red and a Gauloise dangling from the corner of her mouth bursts through the back swinging door, hefting a ten-gallon can of milk on her hip. “I’ll take care of the Lieutenant, honey. You get the dishes off the tables.” With a grunt and a deft swing, she hoists the heavy can into place in the milk dispenser, then she threads its white umbilical cord down through the hole in the bottom. “What can I do for you, LaPointe?” she asks, not stopping her work, nor taking the cigarette from her mouth.

“Just a cup of coffee, Carrot.”

“A cup of coffee it is.” She takes up a butcher knife and with a quick slice cuts off the end of the white tube. It bleeds a few drops of milk onto the stainless-steel tray. “Aren’t you glad that wasn’t your bizoune?” she asks, tossing the knife into the oily water and taking down a coffee mug from the stack. “Not that you’d really miss it all that much at your age. Black with sugar, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“There you go.” The mug slides easily over the wet counter. “Come to think of it, even if you don’t chase the buns anymore, you were probably a pretty good botte in your day. God knows you’re coldblooded enough.” She leans against the counter as she speaks, one fist on a flat hip, the smoke of her fat French cigarette curling up into her eyes, which are habitually squinted against the sting of it. She is one of the few people who tutoyer LaPointe. She tutoyers all men.

“She’s new, isn’t she?” LaPointe asks, nodding toward the plump girl who is lymphatically stacking dishes while gazing out the window.

“No, she’s used. Goddamned well used!” Carrot laughs, then a stream of raw smoke gets into her lungs and she coughs—a dry wheezing cough, but she does not take the cigarette from her lips. “New to you, maybe. She’s been around for about a year. But then, I haven’t seen you around here since I had that last bit of trouble. That makes a fellow wonder if your coming around means she’s in trouble.” She watches him, one eye squinted more than the other.

He stirs the unwanted coffee. “Are you in trouble, Carrot?”

“Trouble? Me? No-o-o. A middle-aged lesbian with rotten lungs, a bad business, a heavy mortgage, two shots in prison on her record, and the laziest bitch in North America working for her? In trouble? No way. I won’t be in trouble until they stop making henna. Then I’m in trouble. That’s the problem with being nothing but a pretty face!” She laughs hoarsely, then her dry cough breaks up the rising thread of gray cigarette smoke and puffs it toward LaPointe.

He doesn’t look up from his coffee. “There was a good-looking Italian boy named Verdini, or Green. You went to his place.”

“So?”

“You had a fight.”

“Just words. I didn’t hit him.”

“No threats?”

She shrugs. “Who remembers, when you’re mad. I probably told him I’d cut off his hose if he didn’t stop sniffing around my girl. I don’t remember exactly. You mean the son of a bitch reported me?”

“No. He didn’t report you.”

“Well, that’s a good thing for him. Whatever I said, it must have scared him good. He hasn’t been back here since. Do you know what that son of a bitch wanted? He used to come in here once in a while. He sized up the situation. I mean… just look at her. Look at me. You don’t have to be a genius to size up the situation. So, while I’m waiting on the counter, this asshole is singing the apple to my girl. Well, he’s a pretty boy, and she owns all the patents on stupid, so pretty soon she’s ga-ga. But it isn’t just her he wants. He thought it would be a kick to have us both at the same time! Sort of a round robin! He talked the dumb bitch into asking me if I’d be interested. Can you believe that? He gave her his address and told her we could drop in anytime. I dropped in, all right! I went over there and dropped on him like a ton of shit off a rooftop! Hey, what’s all this about? If he didn’t report me, why are you asking about him?”

“He’s dead. Cut.”

She reaches up slowly and takes the cigarette from the corner of her mouth. It sticks to the lower lip and tugs off a bit of skin. She touches the bleeding spot with the tip of her tongue, then daubs at it with the knuckle of her forefinger. Her eyes never leave LaPointe’s. After a silence, she says simply, “Not me.”

He shrugs. “It’s happened before, Carrot. Twice. And both times because someone was after one of your girls.”

“Yeah, but Jesus Christ, I only beat them up! I didn’t kill them! And I did my time for it, didn’t I?”

“Carrot, you have to realize that with your record…”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. But I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t shit you, LaPointe. I didn’t shit you either of those other times, did I?”

“But it wasn’t a matter of murder then. And there were witnesses, so it wouldn’t have done you any good to shit me.”

Carrot nods. That’s true.

The plump girl comes back to the counter carrying only four plates and a couple of spoons. She hasn’t heard the conversation. She hasn’t been paying attention. She has been humming a popular song, repeating certain passages until she thinks they sound right.

“That’s good, honey,” Carrot says maternally. “Now go get the rest of the dishes.”

The girl stares at her vacantly, then, catching her breath as though she suddenly understands, she turns back and begins to clear the next table.

Carrot’s face softens as she watches the girl, and LaPointe remembers her as a kid, a fresh-mouthed tomboy in knickers, flipping war cards against a wall—gory cards with pictures of the Sino-Japanese war. She was loud and impish, and she had the most vulgar tongue in her gang. The hair she rucked up into her cap used to be genuinely red. LaPointe recalls the time she smashed her toe when she and her gang were pushing a car off its jack for the hell of it. They brought her to the hospital in a police car. She didn’t cry once. She dug her fingernails into LaPointe’s hand, but she didn’t cry. Any boy of her age would have wailed, but she didn’t dare. She was never a girl; just the skinniest of the boys.

After a silence, LaPointe asks, “You figure she’s worth it?”

“What do you mean?” Carrot lights another Gauloise and sucks in the first long, rasping drag, then she lets it dangle forgotten between her lips.

“A dummy like that? Is she worth the trouble you’re in now?”

“Nobody says she’s a genius. And talking to her is like talking to yourself… but with dumber answers.”

“So?”

“What can I say? She’s fantastic in the rack. The best botte I ever had. She just stares up at the ceiling, squeezing those big tits of hers, and she comes and comes and comes. There’s no end to it. And all the time she’s squirming all over the bed. You have to hang on and ride her, like fighting a crocodile. It makes you feel great, you know what I mean? Proud of yourself. Makes you feel you’re the best lover in the world.”

LaPointe looks over at the bovine, languid girl shuffling aimlessly to the third table. “And you would kill to keep her?”

Carrot is silent for a time. “I don’t know, LaPointe. I really don’t. Maybe. Depends on how mad I got. But I didn’t kill that wop son of a bitch, and that’s the good Lord’s own truth. Don’t you believe me?”

“Do you have an alibi?”

“I don’t know. That depends on what time the bastard got himself cut.”

That’s a good answer, LaPointe thinks. Or a smart one. “He was killed night before last. A little after midnight.”

Carrot thinks for only a second. “I was right here.”

“With the girl?”

“Yeah. That is, I was watching television. She was up in bed.”

“You were alone, then?”

“Sure.”

“And the girl was asleep? That means she can’t swear you didn’t go out.”

“But I was right here, I tell you! I was sitting right in that chair with my feet up on that other one. Last customer was out of here about eleven. I cleaned up a little. Then I switched on the TV. I wasn’t sleepy. Too much coffee, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you go up to bed with her?”

Carrot shrugs. “She’s flying the flag just now. She doesn’t like it when she’s flying the flag. She’s just a kid, after all.”

“What did you watch?”

“What?”

“On TV. What did you watch?”

“Ah… let’s see. It’s hard to remember. I mean, you don’t really watch TV. Not like a movie. You just sort of stare at it. Let’s see. Oh, yeah! There was a film on the English channel, so I changed over to the French channel.”

“And?”

“And… shit, I don’t remember. I’d been working all day. This place opens at seven in the morning, you know. I think I might have dropped off, sitting there with my feet up. Wait a minute. Yes, that’s right. I did drop off. I remember because when I woke up it was cold. I’d turned off the stove to save fuel, and…” Her voice trails off, and she turns away to look out the window at the empty street, somber and cold in the zinc overcast. A little girl runs by, screeching with mock fright as a boy chases her. The girl lets herself be caught, and the boy hits her hard on the arm by way of caress. Carrot inhales a stream of blue smoke through her nose. “It doesn’t sound too good, does it, LaPointe?” Her voice is flat and tired. “First I tell you I was watching TV. Then when you ask me what was on, I tell you I fell asleep.”

“Maybe it was all that coffee you drank.”

She glances at him with a gray smile. “Yeah. Right. Coffee sure knocks you out.” She shakes her head. Then she draws a deep breath. “What about your coffee, pal? Can I warm it up for you?”

LaPointe doesn’t want more coffee, but he doesn’t want to refuse her. He drinks the last of the tepid cup, then pushes it over to her.

While pouring the coffee, her back to him, she asks with the unconvincing bravado of a teen-age tough, “Am I your only suspect?”

“No. But you’re the best.”

She nods. “Well, that’s what counts. Be best at whatever you do.” She turns and grins at him, a faded imitation of the sassy grin she had when she was a kid on the street. “Where do we go from here?”

“Not downtown, if that’s what you mean. Not now, anyway.”

“You’re saying you believe me?”

“I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying I don’t know. You’re capable of killing, with that temper of yours. On the other hand, I’ve known you for twenty-eight years, ever since I was a cop on the beat and you were a kid always getting into trouble. You were always wild and snotty, but you weren’t stupid. With a day and a half to think up an alibi, I can’t believe you’d come up with a silly story like that. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless a couple of things. Unless you thought we’d never trace the victim to here. Unless you’re being doubly crafty. Unless you’re covering for someone.” LaPointe shrugs. He’ll see. Little by little, he’ll keep opening doors that lead into rooms that have doors that lead into rooms. And maybe, instead of running into that blank wall, one of the doors will lead him back to La Jolie France Bar-B-Q. “Tell me, Carrot. This Italian kid, did he have any friends among your customers?”

She gives him his coffee. “No, not friends. The only reason he ate here sometimes was because some of the guys talk Italian, and his English wasn’t all that good. But he always had money, and a couple of my regulars went bar crawling with him once or twice. I heard them groaning about it the next morning, so sick they couldn’t keep, anything but coffee down.”

“What bars?”

“Shit, I don’t know.”

“Talk to your customers tomorrow. Find out what you can about him.”

“I’m closed on Sundays.”

“Monday then. I want to know what bars he went to. Who he knew.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, does chocolate mean anything to you?”

“What kind of question is that? I can take it or leave it alone.”

“Chocolate. As a name. Can you think of anybody with a name like chocolate or cocoa or anything like that?”

“Ah… wasn’t there somebody who used to be on TV with Sid Caesar?”

“No, someone around here. Someone this Tony Green knew.”

“Search me.”

“Forget it, then.” LaPointe swivels on his counter stool and looks at the plump girl. She has given up clearing the tables, or maybe she has forgotten what she was supposed to be doing, and she stands with her forehead against the far window, staring vacantly into the street and making a haze of vapor on the glass with her breath. She notices the haze and begins to draw X’s in it with her little finger, totally involved in the activity. LaPointe cannot help picturing her squirming all over the bed, kneading her own breasts. He stands up to leave. “Okay, Carrot. You call me if you find out anything about this kid’s bars or friends. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll be back.”

“And maybe you’ll be back anyway, right?”

“Yes, maybe.” He buttons up his overcoat and goes to the door.

“Hey, LaPointe?”

He turns back.

“The coffee? That’s fifteen cents.”