palms in a fatalistic shrug.
The next happens so quickly that Guttmann remembers only blurred fragments of motion and the sound of scuffling feet. LaPointe suddenly reaches out with one of the lifted hands, grabbing the dandy by the face and driving him back against the wall in two quick steps. Canducci’s head cracks against a pinup of a nude. LaPointe’s broad hand masks the face, the palm against the mouth and the fingers splayed across the eyes.
“Freeze!” he barks. “One move, and he loses his eyes!”
To make his point, he presses slightly with his fingertips, and Canducci produces a terrified squeal that is half-muffled by the heel of LaPointe’s hand. LaPointe can feel saliva from the twisted mouth against his palm.
“Everyone sit on the floor,” LaPointe commands. “Out away from the wall! Sit on your hands, palms up! I want the legs out in front of you! Do what I say, or this asshole will be selling pencils on the street!” Again a slight pressure on the eyes; again a squeal.
The punks exchange glances, no one wanting to be the first to obey. Then Guttmann, with a gesture that surprises LaPointe, grabs one by the arm and slams him up against the wall. The tough sits down with almost comic celerity, and the others follow.
“Sit up straight!” LaPointe orders. “And keep those hands under your asses! I want to hear knuckles crunch!”
This is a trick he learned from an old cop, now dead. When men are sitting on their hands, not only is any quick movement impossible, but they are embarrassed and humbled almost instantly, producing a sense of defeat and the desirable passivity of the prisoner mentality. It is a particularly useful device when you are badly outnumbered.
No one speaks, and for a full minute LaPointe continues to press Canducci’s head against the wall, his fingers splayed over the face and eyes. Guttmann doesn’t understand the delay. He looks over at the Lieutenant, whose head is hanging down and whose body appears oddly limp. “Sir?” he says uneasily.
LaPointe takes two deep breaths and swallows. The worst of it is over. The vertigo has passed. He straightens up, grabs Canducci’s broad paisley tie, and snatches him away from the wall, propelling him ahead toward the gaudy curtain. One more push on the shoulder and Candy Al stumbles into the barroom. LaPointe turns back to the six young men on the floor. “You watch them,” he tells Guttmann. “If one of them moves a muscle, slap his face until his ears ring.” LaPointe knows exactly what threat would most sting cocky Italian boys.
When he pushes aside the curtain and enters the bar, he finds Candy Al sitting at a table, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “The Commissioner’s going to hear about this,” he says without much assurance. “It’s a free country! You cops ain’t the bosses of everything!”
LaPointe picks up his glass of red from the bar and sips it slowly, not setting down the glass until he feels recovered from the swimming dizziness and the constriction in his chest and upper arms that caught him unawares a minute ago. When the last of the effervescence has fizzed out of his blood, he leans back against the bar and looks down at Canducci, who is carefully touching the edge of his handkerchief to the corner of his eye, then examining the damp spot with tender concern.
“You got your finger in my eye! I wear contacts! That could be dangerous for a guy that wears contacts! Fucking cops.” Alone out here without his gang, he reverts to the whining petty thief, alternating between playing it as the movie tough and simpering piteously.
“We’re going to talk about a friend of yours,” LaPointe says, sitting in the chair opposite Canducci.
“I don’t have any friends!”
“That’s truer than you know, shithead. The name is Antonio Verdini, alias Tony Green.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You rented a room for him. The concierge has given evidence.”
“Well, this concierge has her head up her ass! I tell you I never met… whatever you said his name is.”
“Was.”
“What?”
“Was. Not is. He’s dead. Stabbed in an alley.”
The handkerchief is up to Canducci’s eyes, so LaPointe misses the effect of the drop. After a short silence, the Italian says, “So, what’s that to me?”
“Maybe twenty years. Stabbing is the kind of action your people go in for. The Commissioner is on my ass for an arrest. With your record, you’re dogmeat. And I don’t really care if you did it or not. I’ll be satisfied just to get you off the street.”
“I didn’t kill the son of a bitch! I didn’t even know he was dead until you told me. Anyway, I got an alibi.”
“Oh? For what time?”
“You name it, cop! You name it, and I got an alibi for it.” Candy Al dabs at his eyes again. “I think I got a busted blood vessel or something. You’re gonna pay for that. Like they say in the lotteries,
LaPointe reaches across the table and pats Canducci’s cheek three times, the last tap not gentle. “Are you threatening me?”
Candy Al jerks his head away petulantly. “Where you get off slapping people around? You never heard of police brutality?”
“You’ll have twenty years to make your complaint.”
“I told you, all my time is covered.”
“By them?” LaPointe tips his head toward the poolroom.
“Yeah. That’s right. By them.”
LaPointe dismisses them with a sharp puff of air. “How long do you think one of those kids, sitting back there with his ass in his hands, could stand up to interrogation by me?”
Canducci’s eyes flicker; LaPointe’s point is made. “I’m telling you I didn’t kill this guy!”
“You mean you
“Shit, I don’t even know this Verdini!”
“But at least you remember his name now.”
There is a pause. Canducci considers his situation.
“I don’t talk to cops. I think you’re holding an empty bag. You got a witness? You got fingerprints? You got the knife? If you had any lever on me, we wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d be downtown. You’re empty, cop!” Canducci says this last loudly, to be overheard by the boys in the back. He wants them to see how he treats cops.
Candy Al’s reasoning is correct, so LaPointe has to take another tack. He shifts in his chair and looks out the window past Canducci’s head. For a moment he seems to be absorbed in watching two kids playing in the street, coatless despite the cold. “I hear you’ve got something going with your boys back there,” he says absently.
“What do you mean? What you talking?”
“I’m talking about the rumor that you keep your boys around for pleasure. That you pay them to use you like a woman.” LaPointe shrugs. “Your flashy clothes, your silks, you wear a girdle… it’s easy to see how a rumor like that could spread.”
Canducci’s face bloats with outrage. “Who’s saying this? Give me a name! I’ll sink my fingernails into his forehead and snatch his fucking face off!”
LaPointe lifts a hand. “Take it easy. The rumor hasn’t started yet.”
Canducci is confused. “What the hell you talking about?”
“But by tomorrow night, everyone on the street will be saying that you take it like a woman. I only have to drop a hint here, a wink there.”
“Bullshit! Nobody would believe you! I got a doll on my arm every night.”
“A smart cover-up. But always a different girl. They never hang around. Maybe because you can’t satisfy them.”
“Agh, I get tired of them. I need a little variety.”
“That’s your story. The other bosses would grab up a rumor like that in a second. They’d have big laughs over it. So Candy Al is a
