The Main

LaPointe seems to be concentrating on a rivulet of condensed water running down the steamy window beside him. “Il a clopine?” he asks without looking at the officer. “That’s twice you said the man ‘hopped’ off. Why do you choose that word?”

The young man shrugs. “I don’t know, sir. That’s what he seemed to do… sort of hobble off. But quick, you know?”

“And he was dressed shabbily?”

“I had that impression, sir. But it was dark, you know.”

LaPointe looks down at the tabletop as he taps his lips with his knuckle. Then he sniffs and sighs. “Tell me about his hat.”

“His hat?” The young officer’s eyebrows rise. “I don’t remember any…” His expression seems to spread. “Yes! His hat! A big floppy hat. Dark color. I don’t know how that could have slipped my mind. It was kind of like a cowboy hat, but the brim was floppy, you know?”

For the first time since they entered the Roi des Frites, Guttmann speaks up in his precise European French, the kind Canadians call “Parisian,” but which is really modeled on the French of Tours. “You know who the man is, don’t you, Lieutenant? The one who ran off?”

“Yes.”

Gaspard yawns and rubs his legs. “Well, there it is! You see, kid? You’re learning from me how to solve cases. Just talk people into committing their crimes on the Main, and turn them over to LaPointe. Nothing to it. It’s all in the wrist.” He speaks to LaPointe. “So it’s routine after all. The guy was stabbed for his money, and you know who…”

But LaPointe is shaking his head. It’s not that simple. “No. The man this officer saw running away is a street bomme. I know him. I don’t think he would kill.”

“How do you know that, sir?” Guttmann’s young face is intense and intelligent. “What I mean is… anyone can kill, given the right circumstances. People who would never steal might kill.”

With weary slowness, LaPointe turns his patient fatigued eyes on the Anglo.

“Ah…” Gaspard says, “did I mention that my Joan here had been to college?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah! He’s been through it all. Books, grades, long words, theories, raise your hand to go to the bathroom—one finger for pee-pee, two for ca-ca.” Gaspard turns to Guttmann, who takes a long-suffering breath. “One thing I’ve always wondered, kid,” Gaspard pursues. “Maybe you can tell me from all your education. How come a man grins when he’s shitting a particularly hard turd? I mean, it isn’t all that much fun, really.”

Guttmann ignores Gaspard; he looks directly at LaPointe. “But what I said is true, isn’t it? People who would never steal might kill, under the right circumstances?”

The kid’s eyes are frank and vulnerable and they shine with suppressed embarrassment and anger. After a second, LaPointe answers, “Yes. That’s true.”

Gaspard grunts as he stands and stretches his settled spine. “Okay, it’s your package, LaPointe. Me, I’m going home. I’ll collect the reports in the morning and send them over to you.” Then Gaspard gets an idea. “Hey! Want to do me a favor? How about taking my Joan here for a few days? Give him a chance to see how you do your dirty work. What do you say?”

The Chiac officer’s mouth opens. These goddamned Roundheads get all the luck.

LaPointe frowns. They never assign Joans to him, just as they never give him committee work. They know better.

“Come on,” Gaspard persists. “He can sort of be liaison between my shop and yours. Take him off my back for a few days. He cramps my style. How can I pick up a quick piece of ass with him hanging around all the time, taking notes?”

LaPointe shrugs. “All right. For a couple of days.”

“Great,” Gaspard says. As he buttons his overcoat up to the neck, he looks out the window. “Look at this goddamned weather, will you! It’s already socking in again. By dawn the clouds will be back. Have you ever seen the snow hold off so long? And every night it gets cold as a witch’s tit.”

LaPointe’s mind is elsewhere. He corrects Gaspard thoughtlessly. “ecu. Cold as a witch’s ecu.”

“You’re sure it’s not tit?”

“ecu.”

Gaspard looks down at Guttmann. “You see, kid? You’re going to learn a lot with LaPointe. Okay, men, I’m off. Keep crime off the streets and in the home, where it belongs.”

The Chiac officer follows Gaspard out into the windy night. They get into the patrol car and drive off, leaving the street totally empty.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Guttmann says. “I hope you don’t feel railroaded into taking me on.”

But LaPointe has already crooked his finger at Dirtyshirt Red, who shuffles over to the table. “Sit down, Red.” LaPointe shifts to English because it’s Red’s only language, the language of success. “Have you seen the Vet tonight?”

Dirtyshirt Red makes a face. Over the years he has fostered a fine hatred for his fellow bomme, with all his blowing off about being a war hero, and always bragging about his great kip—a snug sleeping place he has hidden away somewhere. A comforting idea strikes Dirtyshirt Red.

“Is he in trouble, Lieutenant? He’s a badass, believe you me. I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him! What’s he done, Lieutenant?”

LaPointe settles his melancholy eyes on the bomme.

“Okay,” Red says quickly. “Sorry. Yeah, I seen him. Down Chez Pete’s Place, maybe ‘bout six, seven o’clock.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“No. I left to go down to the Greek bakery and get some toppins promised me. I didn’t want that potlickin’ son of a bitch hanging around trying to horn in. He’s harder to shake than snot off a fingernail.”

“Listen, Red. I want to talk to the Vet. You ask around. He could be holed up somewhere because he probably got a lot of drinking money tonight.”

The thought of his fellow tramp coming into a bit of luck infuriates Dirtyshirt Red. “That wino son of a bitch, the potlickin’ splat of birdshit! Morviat! Fartbubble! Him and his snug pad off somewheres! I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him…”

Dirtyshirt Red continues his flow of bile, but it is lost on LaPointe, who is staring out the window where beads of condensation make double rubies of the taillights of predawn traffic. Trucks, mostly. Vegetables coming into market. He feels disconnected from events; a kind of generalized deja vu. It’s all happened before. Some different kid, killed in some different way, found in some different place; and LaPointe sorting it out in some other cafe, looking out some other window at some other predawn street. It really doesn’t matter very much anymore. He’s tired.

Without seeming to, Guttmann has been examining LaPointe’s reflection in the window. He has, of course, heard tales about the Lieutenant, his control over the Main, his dry indifference to authorities within the department and to political influences without, improbable myths concerning his courage. Guttmann is intelligent enough to have discounted two-thirds of these epic fables as the confections of French officers seeking an ethnic hero against the Anglophonic authorities.

Physically, LaPointe satisfies Guttmann’s preconceptions: the wide face with its deep-set eyes that is practically a map of French Canada; the mat of graying hair that appears to have been combed with the fingers; and of course the famous rumpled overcoat. But there are aspects that Guttmann had not anticipated, things that contradict his caricature of the tough cop. There is a quality that might be called “distance”; a tendency to stay on the outer rim of things, withdrawn and almost daydreaming. Then too, there is something disturbing in LaPointe’s patient composure, in the softness of his husky voice, in the crinkling around his eyes that makes him seem… the only word that Guttmann can come up with is “paternal.” He recalls that the young French policemen sometimes refer to him as “Papa LaPointe,” not that anyone dares to call him that within his hearing.

“…and that potlickin’ cockroach—that gnat—tells everybody what a hero he was in the war! That pimple on