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
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
