Guttmann looks at the map more closely and frowns. “Yeah. That’s right!” He takes out his pencil and crosses to the map. Freehand, he sketches in the revised line, and the vast triangle is reduced by a considerable wedge. “That narrows it down a lot.”
“Sure. To maybe thirty square blocks and six or eight thousand people. Just for the hell of it, let’s take a look at the other lines. What’s the one running roughly east-west?”
“That’s the McGill professor. The X is where his body was found; the circle is his office on the campus.”
“How do you know he was going to his office?”
“Assumption. His apartment was up north. Why would he walk west unless he was going to the campus? Maybe to do some late work. Grade papers, something like that.”
“All right. Assume it. Now, what about the other line? The north-south one?”
“That’s the American. His body was found right… here. And his hotel was downtown, right… ah… here. So I just extended the line back.”
“But he wouldn’t have walked south.”
“Sure he would. That was the direction to his hotel, and also the best direction to go to find taxis.”
“What about his car?”
“Sir?”
“Look in the report. There was something about a rented car. It was found three days later, after the rental agency placed a complaint. Don’t you remember? The car was ticketed for overparking. Bouvier made some wiseassed note about the bad luck of getting a parking ticket the same night you get killed.”
Guttmann taps his forehead with his knuckle. “Yes! I forgot about that.”
“Don’t worry about it. One line out of three isn’t bad. For a Joan.”
“Where was the car parked?”
“It’s in the report. Somewhere a few blocks from where they found the body.”
Guttmann takes up the folder on MacHenry, John Albert, and leafs quickly through it. He misses what he’s looking for and has to flip back. The major reason Dr. Bouvier is able to come up with his little “insights” from time to time is his cross-indexing of information. In the standard departmental files, the murder of MacHenry, the report of the car-rental agency, and the traffic report of the ticketed car would be in separate places; in fact in separate departments. But in Dr. Bouvier’s files, they are together. “Here it is!” Guttmann says. “Let’s see… the rental car… recovered by the agency from police garage… ah! It was parked near the corner of Rue Mentana and Rue Napoleon. Let’s see what that gives us.” He goes to the map again and sketches the new line. Then he turns back to LaPointe. “Now, how about that, Lieutenant?”
The three lines fail to intersect by a triangle half the size of a fingernail. And the center of that triangle is Carre St. Louis, a rundown little park on the edge of the Main.
LaPointe rises and approaches the map. “Could be coincidence.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We would be looking for a woman somewhere around Carre St. Louis who has made love three times in the past six years. It’s just possible that more than one would fit that description.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Murders aren’t solved by drawing lines on maps, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hm-m.”
Guttmann lets the silence extend awhile before offering, “I’ll bet Sergeant Gaspard would let me go with you. I’ve just about finished his paper work too.”
LaPointe taps the pale green rectangle of the square with his thick forefinger. It has been about a week since he wandered through there on his rounds. The night of the Green killing, come to think of it. He pictures the statue of the dying Cremazie.
Pour Mon Drapeau
Je Viens Ici Mourir
The empty pond, its bottom littered. The peace symbol dripping rivulets of paint, like a bleeding swastika. The word love, but the spray can ran out while they were adding fuck yo…
LaPointe nods. “All right. Tomorrow morning well take a walk around there.” He returns to his desk and finishes his cooling coffee, crushing the cup and tossing it toward the wastebasket. “What does she think about it?”
“Sir?”
“Your girl. What does she think about your decision to leave the department?”
Taken off balance, Guttmann shrugs and wanders back to his chair. “Oh, she wants me to do what I want to do. Maybe… maybe I shouldn’t have joined up in the first place. I came out of school with the idea that I could do something… useful. Social work, maybe. I don’t know. I knew how people felt about the police, particularly the young, and I thought… Anyway, I realize now I wasn’t cut out to be a cop. Maybe I’ve always known it. Being with you these few days has sort of pushed me over the edge, you know what I mean? I just don’t have the stomach for it. I don’t want everyone I meet to hate me, or fear me. I don’t want to live in a world populated by tramps and losers and whores and punks and junkies. It’s just… not for me. I’d never be good at it. And nobody likes to be a failure. I’ve talked it all over with Jeanne; she understands.”
“Jeanne?”
“The girl in my building.”
“She’s
“Didn’t I mention that?”
“No.”
“Well, she is.”
“Hm-m. You’ve got better taste than I thought. Are you going to drink that coffee?”
“No. Here. You know, this idea about the map was really sort of an excuse to come down here and think things over.”
“And now you’ve decided?”
“Pretty much.”
Guttmann sits in silence. LaPointe drinks the coffee as he looks at the wall map with half-closed eyes, then he scrubs his hair with his hand. “Well, I’d better call it a day.”
“Can I drop you off, sir?”
“In that toy car of yours?”
“It’s the only car I’ve got.”
LaPointe seems to consider this for a moment. “All right. You can drop me off.”
Guttmann feels like saying, Thank you very much, sir.
But he does not.
13
A clammy mist settles over Carre St. Louis, sweating the statue of Cremazie, sogging litter in the pond, varnishing the gnarled roots that convulse over a surface too cindery and hard-packed to penetrate. Between stunted, leafless trees, there are weathered park benches, all bearing carved graffiti in which vulgar, romantic, and eponymous impulses overlay and defeat one another.
Once a square of town houses around a pleasant park, Carre St. Louis has run to ruin and has been invaded by jangling, alien styles. To the west is a great Victorian pile, its capricious projections and niches bound together by a broad sign all along the front: young Chinese men’s Christian association. Even the lack of repainting for many years and the hanging mist that broods over the park does not mute its garish, three-foot-high Chinese characters of red and gold. The top of the square is dominated by a grotesquerie, a crenelated castle in old gray stone and new
