by Trevanian
“Got a heavy date?” Guttmann asks.
LaPointe stops and turns to him. “Why do you ask that?”
“Ah… I don’t know. I just thought… Friday night and all. I mean, I’ve got a date tonight myself.”
“That’s wonderful.” LaPointe turns and continues his beat crawl, occasionally making little detours into the networks of side streets. He tests the locks on iron railings. He taps on the steamy window of a Portuguese grocery and waves at the old man. He stops to watch two men carrying a trunk down a long wooden stoop, until it becomes clear that they are helping a young couple move out, to the accompaniment of howls and profanity from a burly hag who seems to think the couple owe her money.
They are walking on an almost empty side street when a man half a block ahead turns and starts to cross the street quickly.
“Scheer!” LaPointe shouts. Several people stop and look, startled. Then they walk on hurriedly. The man has frozen in his tracks, but there is a kinesthetic energy in his posture, as though he would run… if he dared. LaPointe raises a hand and beckons with the forefinger. Reluctantly, Scheer crosses back and approaches the Lieutenant. In the forced swagger of his walk, and in his mod clothes, he is very much the dandy.
“What did I tell you when I saw you in that bar last night, Scheer?”
“Oh, come on, Lieutenant…” There is an oily purr to his voice.
“All right,” LaPointe says with bored fatigue. “Get on that wall.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Scheer turns to the tenement wall and spread-eagles against it. He knows how to do it; he’s done it before. He tries to avoid letting his clothes touch the dirty brick.
Guttmann stands by, unsure what to do, as LaPointe kicks out one of Scheer’s feet to broaden the spread, then runs a rapid pat down. “All right. Off the wall. Take off your overcoat.”
“Listen, Lieutenant…”
“Off!”
Three children emerge from nowhere to watch, as Scheer tugs his overcoat off and folds it carefully before holding it out to LaPointe, each movement defiantly slow.
LaPointe chucks the coat onto the stoop. “Now empty your pockets.”
Scheer does so and holds out the comb, change, wallet, and bits of paper to LaPointe.
“Drop all that trash down into the basement well there,” LaPointe orders.
His mouth tight with hate, Scheer lets his belongings fall into the well fenced off by a wrought-iron railing. The wallet makes a splat because the bottom of the well is covered with an inch of sooty water.
“Now take out your shoelaces and give them to me.”
By now the onlookers have grown to a dozen, two of them girls in their twenties who giggle as Scheer hops to maintain balance while tugging the laces out of the last pair of grommets. Petulantly, he hands them to LaPointe.
The Lieutenant puts them into his pocket. “All right, Scheer. After I leave, you can climb down and get your rubbish. I’ll keep the shoelaces. It’s for your own good. I wouldn’t want you to get despondent over being embarrassed in public and try to hang yourself with them.”
“Tell me! Tell me, Lieutenant! What have I ever done to you?”
“You’re on the street. I told you to stay off it. I wasn’t giving you a vacation, asshole. It was a punishment.”
“I know my rights! Who are you, God or something? You don’t own the fucking street!” He would never have gone that far if there hadn’t been the pressure of the crowd and the need to save face.
LaPointe’s eyes crinkle in a melancholy smile, and he nods slowly. Then his hand flashes out and his slap sends Scheer spinning along the railing. One of the loose shoes comes off.
LaPointe turns and strolls up the street, followed after a moment by the stunned and confused Guttmann.
“What was all that about, Lieutenant?” Guttmann asks. “Who is that guy?”
“No one. A pimp. I ordered him off the street.”
“But… if he’s done something, why don’t you pick him up?”
“I have. Several times. But his lawyers always get him off.”
“Yes, but…” Guttmann looks over his shoulder at the small knot of people around the pimp, who is just climbing out of the dirty basement well. The girls laugh as he tries to walk with his loose shoes flopping. He takes them off and carries them, walking tenderly in his stocking feet.
“But, sir… isn’t that harassment?”
LaPointe stops and looks at the young officer appraisingly, his glance shifting from eye to eye. “Yes. It’s harassment.”
They walk on.
Guttmann sits alone in a small Greek cafe on Rue Cerat, cramped in a space that would be adequate for a man of average size. The place has only two oilcloth-covered tables crowded against the window, across from a glass-fronted display case containing cheese, oil, and olives for sale. A fly-specked sign on the wall says:
7-UP—Ca Ravigote
While LaPointe is telephoning from a booth attached to the outside of the cafe, Guttmann is trying to work out a problem in his mind. He knows what he has to do, but he doesn’t know how to do it. He has been withdrawn since the incident with Scheer half an hour before. Everything he believes in, everything he has learned, combine to make LaPointe’s treatment of that pimp intolerable. Guttmann cannot accept the concept of the policeman as judge—much less as executioner—and he knows what he would have to do should Scheer bring a complaint against the Lieutenant. Further, his sense of fair play demands that he warn LaPointe of his decision, and that will not be easy.
When the Lieutenant returns from the telephone booth a girl of eighteen or nineteen comes from the back room to serve them little cups of strong coffee, her eyes always averted with a shyness that advertises her awareness of men and of her own sexual attractiveness. She has long black lashes and the comfortable beauty of a Madonna.
“How’s your mother?” LaPointe asks.
“Fine. She’s in back. Want me to call her?”
“No. I’ll see her next time I drop by.”
The girl lets her damp brown eyes settle briefly on Guttmann, who smiles and nods. She glances away sidewards, lowers her eyes, and returns to the back room.
“Pretty girl,” Guttmann says. “Pity she’s so shy.”
LaPointe grunts noncommittally. Years ago, the mother was a streetwalker on the Main. She was a lusty, laughing woman always in good spirits, always with a coarse joke to tell, pushing her elbow into your ribs with the punch line. When, every month or two, LaPointe felt the need for a woman, she was usually the one he went with.
Then suddenly she was off the street. She had got pregnant; by a lover, of course, not a customer. With the birth of the child, she changed completely. She began to dress less flashily; she looked for work; she started attending church. She didn’t often laugh, but she smiled a lot. And she devoted herself to her baby girl, like a child playing dolls. She borrowed a little money from LaPointe, who also countersigned her note, and she put a down payment on this back-street cafe. At five dollars a week, she paid LaPointe back, never missing a payment except around Christmas, when she was buying presents for her girl.
They never made love again, but he made it a habit to drop in occasionally during quiet times. They used to sit together by the window and talk while they drank cups of thick Greek coffee. He would listen as she went on about her daughter. It was amazing what that child could do. Talk. Run. And draw? An artist! The mother had plans. The girl would go to university and become a fashion designer. Have you ever seen her drawings? How can I tell you? Taste? You wouldn’t believe it. Never pink and red together.
While in high school, this girl became pregnant. At first the mother couldn’t understand… couldn’t believe it. Then she was crazy with fury. She would kill that boy! She had an acrimonious shout-down with the boy and his parents. No, the boy would not marry her. And here’s why…
The next time LaPointe dropped in, the woman had changed. She was lifeless, dull, vacant. They took coffee together in t
he empty cafe, the woman looking out the window as she talked, her voice flat and tired. The girl had a reputation in high school for being a hot box. She made love with anybody, any time, anywhere—down in the boiler room, once in the boys’ lavatory. Everybody knew about it. She was a slut. She wasn’t even a whore! She gave it away!
LaPointe tried to comfort her. She’ll get married one of these days. Everything will be all right.
No. It was a punishment from God. He’s punishing me for being a whore.
“Good-looking girl,” Guttmann says. “Pity she’s so shy.”
“Yes,” LaPointe says. “A pity.” He swirls his cup to suspend the thick coffee dust and finishes it off, sucking it through a cube of sugar pressed against the roof of his mouth. “Look, I just called in to the QG to have them pick up the Vet.”
“Lieutenant…?”
“We can’t wait forever for Dirtyshirt Red. When they find him, they’ll call you. When they do, get down there immediately. If he’s not too drunk to talk, call me and I’ll come down.”
“You told them to call me?”
“Sure. You’re here to get experience, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“But what?”
“I have a date tonight. I told you.”
“That’s too bad.”
Guttmann takes a deep breath. “Lieutenant?”
“Yes?”
“About that pimp back there?”
“Scheer? What about him?”
“Well, if I’m going to be working with you…”
“I wouldn’t say you’re working with me. It’s more like you’re following me around.”
“Okay. Whatever. But I’m here, and I feel I have to be straight with you.” Guttmann feels awkward looking into LaPointe’s hooded, paternal eyes. He’s sure he’s going to end up making an ass of himself.
“If you have something to say, say it,” LaPointe orders.
“All right. About the pimp. It’s not right to harass a civilian like that. It’s not legal. He has rights, whoever he is, whatever he’s done. Harassment is the kind of stuff that gives the force a bad name.”
“I’m sure the Commissioner would agree with you.”
“That doesn’t make me wrong.”
“It goes a ways.”
Guttmann nods and looks down. “You’re not going to give me a chance to say what I want to say, are you? You’re making it as hard as possible.”
“I’ll say it for you if you want. You’re going to tell me that if this asshole brings charges against me, you feel that you would have to corroborate. Right?”
Guttmann forces himself not to look away from LaPointe’s eyes with their expression of tired amusement. He knows what the Lieutenant is thinking: he’s young. When he gets some experience under his belt, he’ll come around. But Guttmann is sure he will never come around. He would quit the force before that happened. “That’s right,” he says, no quaver at all in his voice. “I’d have to corroborate.”
LaPointe nods. “I told you he was a pimp, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir. But that’s not the point.”
That was what Resnais kept saying: that’s not the point.
“Besides,” Guttmann continues, “there are lots of women working the streets. You don’t seem to hassle them.”
“That’s different. They’re pros. And they’re adults.”
Guttmann’s eyes flicker at this last. “You mean Scheer uses…”
“That’s right. Kids. Junk-hungry kids. And if I deny him the use of the street, he can’t run his kids.”
“Why don’t you take him in?”
“I have taken him in. I told you. It doesn’t do any good. He walks back out again the same day. Pimping is hard to prove, unless the girls give evidence. And they’re afraid to. He’s promised that if they talk, they’ll get their faces messed up.”
Guttmann tips up his cup and looks into the dark sludge at the bottom. Still… even with a pimp who runs kids… a cop can’t be a judge and executioner. Principles don’t change, even when the case in hand makes it tough to maintain them.
LaPointe examines the young man’s earnest, troubled face. “What do you think of the Main?” he asks, lifting the pressure by changing the subject.
Guttmann looks up. “Sir?”
“My patch. What do you think of it? You must realize that I’ve been dragging you around, giving you the grand tour.”
“I don’t know what I think of it. It’s… interesting.”
“Interesting?” LaPointe looks out the window, watching the passers-by. “Yes, I suppose so. Of course, you get a warped idea of the street when you walk it as a cop. You see mostly the hustlers, the fous, the toughs, the whores, the bommes. You get what Gaspard calls a turd’s-eye view. Ninety percent of the people up here are no worse than anywhere else. Poorer, maybe. Dumber. Weaker. But not worse.” LaPointe rubs his hair with his palm and sits back in his chair. “You know… a funny thing happened eight or ten years ago. I was doing the street, and I happened to be walking behind a man—must have been seventy years old—a man who moved in a funny way. It’s hard to explain; I felt I knew him, but I didn’t, of course. It wasn’t how he looked at things; it was what he looked at. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, sir,” lies Guttmann.
“Well, he stopped off for coffee, and I sat down next to him. We started talking, and it turned out that he was a retired cop from New York. That was what I had recognized without knowing it—his beatwalker’s way of looking at things only an old cop would look at: door locks, shoes, telephone booths with broken panes, that sort of thing. He had come up here because his granddaughter was marrying a Canadian and the wedding was in Montreal. He got tired of sitting around making small talk with people he didn’t know, so he wandered off, and he ended up on the Main. He told me that he felt a real pang, walking these streets. It reminded him of New York in the twenties—the different languages, the small shops, workers and hoods and chippies and housewives and kids all mixed up on the same street but not afraid of one another. He said it used to be like that in New York when the immigrants were still coming in. But it isn’t like that anymore. It’s a closed-up frightened city at night. Not even the cops walk around alone. We’re about thirty years behind New York in that way. And as long as I’m on the Main, we are never going to catch up.”
Guttmann imagines that all this has something to do with the harassment of that pimp, but he doesn’t see just how.
“Okay,” LaPointe says, stretching his back. “So if Scheer makes a complaint, you’ll back him up.”
“Yes, sir. I would have to.”
LaPointe nods. “I suppose you would. Well, I have some grocery shopping to do. You’d better get home and get something to eat. Chances are they’ll pick up the Vet tonight, and we may be up late.”
LaPointe rises and tugs on his overcoat, while Guttmann sits there feeling—not defeated exactly in this business of Scheer, but undercut, bypassed.
“What’s wrong?” LaPointe asks, looking down at him.
“Oh… I was just thinking about this date I’ve got for tonight. I hate to break it, because it’s the first time we’ve been out together.”
“Oh, she’ll understand. Make up some lie. Tell her you’re a cop.”
LaPointe braces one of the grocery bags against the wall of the hall and gropes in his pocket for his key. Then it occurs to him that he ought to knock. There is no answer. He taps again. No response.
His first sensation is a sinking in his stomach, like a fast down elevator stopping. Almost immediately, the feeling retreats and something safer replaces it: ironic self-amusement. He smiles at himself—dumb old man—and shakes his head as he inserts his key in the slack lock and pushes the door open.
The lights are on. And she is there.
She is wearing Lucille’s pink quilted dressing gown, which she must have gotten from the closet where Lucille’s things still hang.
Lucille’s dressi
ng gown.
She is sitting on the sofa, one foot tucked up under her butt, sewing something, the threaded needle poised in the air. Her mouth is slightly open, her eyes alert.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says. “I didn’t answer because I thought it might be the landlord. I mean… he might not like the idea of your having a girl in your apartment.”
“I see.” He carries the groceries into the narrow kitchen. She sets her sewing down and follows him.
“Here,” he says. “Unwrap the cheese and let the air get to it.”
“Okay. I’ve been walking around quietly so no one would hear me.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. Just set the cheese on a plate.”
“Which plate?”
“Any one. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t the landlord care if you have girls up here?”
LaPointe laughs. “I am the landlord.” This is true, although he never thinks of himself as a landlord. Seven years after Lucille’s death, he heard that the building was going to be sold. He was used to living there, and he could not quite grasp what it would mean to move away from their home, Lucille’s and his—what that would imply. Because there was nothing to spend it on, he had saved a little money, so he arranged a long-term mortgage and bought the building. Just two years ago, he made the last payment. He had become so used to making out the mortgage check each month that he was surprised when it was returned to him with the notification that the mortgage was paid off. The other tenants—there are three—do not know he owns the building, because he arranged to have the bank receive their rents and credit them to his debt. He did this out of a kind of shame. His concept of “the landlord” was fashioned in the slums of Trois Rivieres, and he doesn’t care for the thought of being one himself.
