The Main

don’t you shove this form up your ass?

LaPointe is feeling uncertain this morning, and diminished. He had a major crise while brushing his teeth. First the fizzing blood, then tight bands of jagged pain gripped his chest and upper arms. He felt himself falling forward into a gray mist in which lights exploded. When it passed, he was on his knees, his forehead on the toilet seat. As he continued brushing his teeth, he joked with himself: I guess you better get a lighter toothbrush, LaPointe.

“Tomorrow’s my last day,” Guttmann says.

“What?”

“Wednesday I go back to working with Sergeant Gaspard.”

“Oh?” It is a noncommittal sound. He has enjoyed showing off his patch and his people to the kid; he has even enjoyed Guttmann’s way of braving out his scorn for the shiny new college ideas. But it wouldn’t do to seem to miss the boy.

“How did it go last night?” he asks, making conversation to avoid the goddamned paper work.

“Go, sir? Oh, with Jeanne?”

“If that’s her name.”

Guttmann smiles in memory. “Well, I got there late, of course. And at first she didn’t believe me when I told her I was playing pinochle with three men in the back room of an upholstery shop. It sounded phony to me even while I was saying it.”

“Does it matter what she thinks?”

Guttmann considers this for a second. “Yes, it does. She’s a nice person.”

“Ah, I see. Not just a girl. Not just a lay.”

“That’s the way it started, of course. And God knows I’m not knocking that part of it. But there’s more. We sort of fit together. It’s hard to explain, because I don’t mean that we always agree. Matter of fact, we almost never agree. It’s kind of like a mold and a coin, if you know what I mean. They’re exact opposites, and they fit together perfectly.” There is a slight shift in his tone, and he is now thinking out the relationship aloud, rather than talking to LaPointe. “She’s the only person I’ve ever known who… I mean, I don’t have to be set up and ready when I talk to her. I just say what I feel like saying, and it doesn’t bother me if it comes out wrong, or stupid-sounding. You know what I mean, sir?”

“How did you meet her?”

Guttmann doesn’t understand why LaPointe is interested, but he enjoys the uncommon friendly tone of the chat. He has no way of knowing that his leaving tomorrow is what allows the Lieutenant to relax with him, because he won’t have to deal with him further. “Well, I told you she lives in my apartment building. We met in the basement.”

“Sounds romantic.”

Guttmann laughs. “Yeah. There’s a bunch of coin-operated washing machines down there. It was late at night, and we were alone, waiting for our washing to get done, so we started talking.”

“About what?”

“I don’t remember. Soap, maybe. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Pretty? Well, yes, I guess so. I mean, obviously I find her attractive. That first night in the basement, I wasn’t thinking of much other than getting her into bed. But pretty isn’t what she is mostly. If I had to pick one thing about her, it would be her nutty sense of humor.”

LaPointe sniffs and shakes his head. “That sounds dangerous. I remember when I was a kid on the force, I went on a couple of blind dates set up by friends. And whenever they described my girl as ‘a good talker’ or ‘a kid with a great sense of humor,’ that always meant she was a dog. What I usually wanted at the time was a pig, not a dog.”

For a second, Guttmann tries to picture the Lieutenant as a young cop going on blind dates. The image won’t come into focus.

“I know what you mean,” he says. “But you know what’s even worse than that?”

“What?”

“When the guy who’s set you up can’t think of anything to say but that your girl has nice hands. That’s when you’re really in trouble!”

LaPointe is laughing in agreement when the phone rings. It is the Commissioner’s office, and the young lady demanding that LaPointe come up immediately has a snotty, impatient tone.

After announcing on the intercom that Lieutenant LaPointe is in the outer office, the secretary with the impeding miniskirt sets busily to work, occasionally glancing accusingly at the Lieutenant. When she arrived at the office at eight that morning, the Commissioner was already at work.

The man who isn’t a step AHEAD is a step BEHIND.

Resnais’ mood was angry and tense, and everyone in the office was made to feel its sting. The secretary blames LaPointe for her boss’s mood.

For the first time, Resnais doesn’t come out of his office to greet LaPointe with his bogus handshake and smile. Three clipped words over the intercom request that he be sent in.

When LaPointe enters, Resnais is standing with his back to the window, rocking up on his toes. The gray light of the overcast day glints off the purplish suntan on his head, and there is a lighter tone to his sunlamped bronze around the ears, indicating that his haircut is fresh.

“I sent for you at eight this morning, LaPointe.” His tone is crisp.

“Yes. I saw the memo.”

“And?”

“I just got in.”

“In this shop, we start at eight in the morning.”

“I get off the street at one or two in the morning. What time do you usually get home, Commissioner?”

“That’s none of your goddamned onions.” Even angry, Resnais does not forget to use idioms common to the social level of his French Canadian men. “But I didn’t call you up here to chew your ass about coming in late.” He has decided to use vulgar expressions to get through to LaPointe.

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

“What? Oh, yes. Go ahead.” Resnais sits in his high-backed chair, designed by osteopaths to reduce fatigue. He takes a deep breath and blows it out. Might as well get right to it.

The surgeon who cuts slowly does no kindness to his patient.

He glances at his note pad, open on the immaculate desk beside two sharpened pencils and a stack of blue memo cards. “I assume you know a certain Scheer, Anton P.”

“Scheer? Yes, I know him. He’s a pimp and a pissou.”

“He’s also a citizen!”

“You’re not telling me that Scheer had the balls to complain about me.”

“No official complaint has been lodged—and won’t be, if I can help it. I warned you about your methods just a couple of days ago. Did you think I was just talking out of my ass?”

LaPointe shrugs.

Resnais looks at his notes. “You ordered him off the street. You denied him the use of a public thoroughfare. Who in hell do you think you are, LaPointe?”

“It was a punishment.”

“The police don’t punish! The courts punish. But it wasn’t enough that you ordered him off the streets, you publicly degraded him, making him take off his clothes and climb into a basement well, with the possible risk of injury. Furthermore, you did this before witnesses—a crowd of witnesses including young women who laughed at him. Public degradation.”