“Are you any good?”
“Sir, excuse me. But doesn’t it strike you as odd that we are sitting in a Chinese all-night coffee shop at two in the morning talking about pinochle?”
LaPointe laughs. The kid’s okay. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he says, taking from his overcoat pocket the wallet the Vet gave him, and emptying the contents onto the table. There is a scrap of paper with two girls’ names written in different hands, evidently by the girls themselves. First names only; not much help. There is a little booklet the size of a commemorative stamp, containing a dozen pictures of various sex positions and combinations: the kind of thing shown to objecting but giggling girls by a man who believes the myth that seeing the act automatically brings a woman to the point of panting necessity. In an accordion-pleated change pocket there are two contraceptives of the sort sold in vending machines in the toilets of cheap bars: guaranteed to afford maximum protection with minimum loss of sensation. Sold only for the prevention of disease. One of them features a “tickler”; the other is packed in a liquid lubricant. No money; the Vet got that. No driver’s license. The wallet is cheap imitation alligator, quite new. There is a card in one of the plastic windows with places for the owner to provide particulars. Childishly, the dead man had felt impelled to fill it in. LaPointe passes the wallet over to Guttmann, who reads the round, infantile printing:
NAME
ADDRESS
PHONE
BLOOD TYPE
“So the victim’s name was Tony Green,” Guttmann says.
“Probably not.” There is a businesslike, mechanical quality to LaPointe’s voice. “The printing is European. See the barred seven? The abbreviation for ‘apartment’ is wrong. That seems to give us a young alien. And the kid had a Latin look—probably Italian. But not a legal entrant, or his fingerprints would have been on file with Ottawa. He picked the name Tony Green for himself. If he runs true to form for Italian immigrants, his real name would be something like Antonio Verdi—something like that.”
“Does the name mean anything to you? You know him?”
LaPointe shakes his head. “No. But I know the house. It’s a run-down place near Marie-Anne and Clark. We’ll check it out tomorrow morning.”
“What do you expect to turn there?”
“Impossible to say. It’s a start. It’s all we have in hand.”
“That, and the fact that the victim was a little hung up on sex. Oh, God!”
“Why ‘Oh, God’?”
“You know that girl I had to leave tonight? Well, I promised her we’d go out tomorrow morning. Take coffee up on the Mount. Maybe drop in at a gallery or two. Have dinner maybe. Now I’ll have to beg off again.”
“Why do that? There’s no real point in your coming along with me tomorrow, if you don’t want to.”
“Why do you say that, sir?”
“Well… you know. All this business of the apprentice Joans learning the ropes from the old-timers is a lot of crap. Things don’t work that way. There’s no way in the world that you’re going to end up a street cop like me. You have education. You speak both languages well. You have ambition. No. You won’t end up in this kind of work. You’re the type who ends up in public relations, or handling ‘delicate’ cases. You’re the type who gets ahead.”
Guttmann is a little stung. No one likes to be a “type.” “Is there anything wrong with that, sir? Anything wrong with wanting to get ahead?”
“No, I suppose not.” LaPointe rubs his nose. “I’m just saying that what you might learn from me won’t be of much use to you. You could never work the way I work. You wouldn’t even want to. Look at how you got all steamed up about the way I handled that pimp, Scheer.”
“I only mentioned that he has his rights.”
“And the kids he bashes around? Their rights?”
“There are laws to protect them.”
“What if they’re too dumb to know about the laws? Or too scared to use them? A girl hits the city on a bus, coming from some farm or village, stupid and looking for a good time… excitement. And the first thing you know, she’s broke and scared and willing to sell her ass.” LaPointe isn’t thinking of Scheer’s girls at this moment.
“All right,” Guttmann concedes. “So maybe something has to be done about men like Scheer. Stiffer laws, maybe. But not stopping him on the street and making an ass of him in front of people, for God’s sake.”
LaPointe shakes his head. “You’ve got to hit people where they’re tender. Scheer is a strutting wiseass. Embarrass him in public and he’ll keep off the street for a while. It varies with the man. Some you threaten, some you hurt, some you embarrass.”
Guttmann lifts his palms and looks about with round eyes, as though calling upon God to listen to this shit. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing, sir. Some you hurt, some you threaten, some you embarrass—what is that, a Nazi litany? Those are supposed to be tactics for keeping the peace?”
“They didn’t tell you about that in college, I suppose.”
“No, sir. They did not.”
“And, of course, you’d play everything by the book.”
“I’d try. Yes.” This is simply said; it is the truth. “And if the book was wrong, I’d do what I could to change it. That’s how it works in a democracy.”
“I see. Well—by the book—the Vet was guilty of a crime, wasn’t he? He took money from this wallet. Would you put him inside? Let him scream for the rest of his life?”
Guttmann is silent. He isn’t sure. No, probably not.
“But that would be playing it by the book. And do you remember that
“Well… I didn’t know about him. I didn’t know he was…”
“That’s the point, son! You don’t know. The
Guttmann’s ears are reddening. “But
“That’s right! I know. After thirty years, I know! I know the difference between a harmless nut and a murderer. I know the difference between shit tracks on a man’s arm and the marks left by selling blood to stay alive!” With a guttural sound and a wave of his hand LaPointe dismisses the use of explaining anything to Guttmann’s type.
Guttmann sits, silently pushing his spoon back and forth between his fingers. He isn’t cowed. He speaks quietly, without looking up. “It’s fascism, sir.”
“What?”
