The Main

at the mouth of the alley, tears of cold in their eyes, their gloved fingers under their armpits for warmth.

Despite the cold and the hour, a small knot of rubbernecks has gathered at the mouth of the alley. They move about and stand on tiptoe to catch glimpses, and they talk to one another in hushed, confidential tones, instant friends by virtue of shared experience.

LaPointe crosses the street just as an ambulance pulls up. He stands for a time on the rim of the knot of onlookers, unobtrusively joining them. Some maniac killers, like some arsonists, like to blend with the crowd and experience the effects of their actions.

There is a street bomme in conversation with a small uncertain man whose chin is buried in a thick wrap of scarf. This latter looks out of place here, like a bank clerk, or an accountant. LaPointe lays his hands on the shoulder of the bomme.

“Oh, hi-ya, Lieutenant.”

“What are you doing up at this end of the street, Red?”

“It got too cold in that doorway. The wind shifted. It was better walking around.”

LaPointe looks into the tramp’s eyes. He is not lying. “All the same, stay around. Got any fric?”

“None I can spend.” Like most clochards, Dirtyshirt Red always keeps a dollar or two stashed back for really hard times.

“Here.” LaPointe gives him a quarter. “Get some coffee.” With a jerk of his head he indicates the all-night Roi des Frites joint across the street.

The clerk, or accountant, or pederast, moves away from the bomme. Anyone on talking terms with a policeman can’t be perfectly trustworthy.

LaPointe looks up and down the street. The air is so cold and clear that streetlights seem to glitter, and the corners of buildings a block away have sharp, neat edges, like theatrical sets. Everyone’s breath is vapor, twin jets when they exhale through their noses. From somewhere there comes the homey, yeasty smell of bread. The bakeries would be working at this hour, men stripped to the waist in hot back rooms, sweating with the heat of ovens.

As LaPointe turns back toward the alley, it starts. A light, rather pleasant tingle in his chest, as though his blood were carbonated. God damn it. A rippling fatigue drains his body and loosens his knees. A constriction swells in his chest, and little bands of pain arc across his upper arms. He leans against the brick wall and breathes deeply and slowly, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. There are dark patches in his vision, and bright dots. The flashing red light atop the police car begins to blur.

“Lieutenant LaPointe?”

The chest constrictions start to ebb, and the stabs of pain in his arms become duller.

“Sir?”

Slowly, his body weight returns as the sense of floating deflates. He dares a deep breath taken in little sucks to test for pain.

“Lieutenant LaPointe?”

“What, for Christ’s sake!”

The young man recoils from the violence of the response. “My name’s Guttmann, sir.”

“That’s your problem.”

“I’m working with Detective Sergeant Gaspard.”

“That’s his problem.”

“I was the one who telephoned you.” The young officer-in-training’s voice is stiff with resentment at LaPointe’s uncalled-for sarcasm. “Sergeant Gaspard is down the alley. He asked me to keep an eye out for you.”

LaPointe grunts. “Well?”

“Sir?”

LaPointe settles his heavy melancholy eyes on the OIT. “You say Gaspard is waiting for me?”

“Yes, sir. Oh. Follow me, sir.”

LaPointe shakes his head in general criticism of young policemen as he follows Guttmann into the alley where a bareheaded photographer from the forensic lab is packing up the last of his equipment.

“That you, LaPointe?” Gaspard asks from the dark. Like a handful of the most senior men on the force, Gaspard tutoyers LaPointe, but he never uses his first name. In fact, most of them would have to search their memories to come up with his first name.

LaPointe lifts a hand in greeting, then drops the fist back into the pocket of his rumpled overcoat.

The forensic photographer tells Gaspard that he is going back to the Quartier General with the film. He will get it into an early batch, and it will be developed by mid-morning. He sniffs back draining sinuses and grumbles, “Colder than a witch’s ecu!”

“Titon,” Gaspard corrects absent-mindedly, as he shakes hands with LaPointe.

“We haven’t searched the body yet. We’ve been waiting for Flash Gordon here to take the class pictures.” Gaspard addresses the photographer. “Well? If you’re through, I’ll let my men move the bundle.”

The victim is a young male dressed in a trendy suit with belled trousers, a shirt with a high rolled collar, and shoes of patent leather. He had dropped to his knees when stabbed, then he had fallen forward. LaPointe has never seen a corpse in that posture: on its knees, its buttocks on its heels, its face pressed into the gravel, its arms stretched out with the palms down. It looks like a young priest serving High Mass, and showing off with excessive self-abasement.

LaPointe feels sorry for it A corpse can look ugly, or peaceful, or tortured; but it’s too bad to look silly. Unfair.

Guttmann and another detective turn the body over to examine the pockets for identification. A piece of gravel is embedded in the boy’s smooth cheek. Guttmann flicks it off, but a pink triangular dent remains.

LaPointe mutters to himself, “Heart.”

“What?” Gaspard asks, tapping out a cigarette.

“Must have been stabbed through the heart.” Without touching each of the logical steps, LaPointe’s experience told him that there were only two ways the body could have ended up in that comic posture. Either it had been stabbed in the heart and died instantly, or it had been stabbed in the stomach and had tried to cover up the cold hole. But there was no smell of excrement, and a man stabbed in the stomach almost always soils himself through sphincter convulsion. Therefore, heart.

To turn the body over, the detectives have to straighten it out first. They lift it from under its arms and pull it forward, unfolding it. When they lower it to the pavement, the young face touches the ground.

“Careful!” LaPointe says automatically.

Guttmann glances up, assuming he is being blamed for something. He already dislikes the bullying LaPointe. He doesn’t have much use for the old-time image of the tough cop who uses fists and wisetalk, rather than brains and understanding. He has heard about LaPointe of the Main from admiring young French Canadian cops, and the Lieutenant is true to Guttmann’s predicted stereotype.

Sergeant Gaspard pinches one of his ears to restore feeling to the lobe. “First time I’ve ever seen one kneeling like that. Looked like an altar boy.”

For a moment, LaPointe finds it odd that they had similar images of the body’s posture. But, after all, they share both age and cultural background. Neither of them is a confessing Catholic any longer, but they were brought up with a simple fundamentalist Catholicism that would define them forever, define them negatively, as a mold negatively defines a casting. They are non-Catholics, which is a very different thing from being a non-Protestant or a non-Jew.

The detectives go through the pockets routinely, one putting the findings into a clear plastic bag with a press seal, while Guttmann makes a list, tipping his note pad back awkwardly to catch the light from the street.

“That’s it?” Gaspard asks as Guttmann closes his notebook and blows on his numb fingers.

“Yes, sir. Not much. No wallet. No identification. Some small change, keys, a comb—that sort of thing.”

Gaspard nods and gestures to the ambulance attendants who are waiting with a wheeled stretcher. With