The Main

by Trevanian

  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 plotte and guidoune on the street. Sometimes they even come here looking for him. Sometimes he has them in his room, even though it’s against the rules. Once there were two of them up there at the same time! The neighbors complained about all the grunting and groaning.” She laughs and winks. “His thing is always up. He wears those tight pants, and I can always see it bulging there. What’s wrong? What’s he done? Is he in trouble?”

  “Give me the names of the women who came here.”

  She shrugs contemptuously and tucks down the corners of her mouth. The gesture opens the crack in her lip, and she licks it to keep it from stinging. “I couldn’t be bothered trying to remember them. They were all sorts. Young, old, fat, skinny. A couple no more than kids. He’s a real sauteux de clotures. He puts it into all kinds.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, a couple of times we passed on the stairs and he ran his hand up under my dress. But it never went further. I think he was afraid of—”

  “Afraid of this Arnaud you haven’t seen in a month?”

  She shrugs, annoyed with herself at her slip.

  “All right. How long has this Verdini lived here?”

  “Two months maybe. I can look at the rent book if you want.”

  “Not now. Give me the names of the women who came here.”

  “Like I told you, I don’t know most of them. Just stuff dragged in off the street.”

  “But you recognized some of them.”

  She looks away uncomfortably. “I don’t want to get anybody into trouble.”

  “I see.” LaPointe sits back and makes himself comfortable. “You know, I have a feeling that if I wait here for half an hour, I may be lucky enough to meet your Arnaud. It’ll be a touching scene, you two getting together after a month. He’ll think I waited around because you told me about the TV. That will make him angry, but I’m sure he’s the understanding type.” LaPointe’s expressionless eyes settle on the concierge.

  For a time she is silent as she meditatively torments her cracked lip with the tip of her finger. At last she says, “I think I recognized three of them.”

  LaPointe nods to Guttmann, who opens his notebook.

  The concierge gives the name of a French Canadian chippy whom LaPointe knows. She doesn’t know the name of the second woman, but she gives the address of a Portuguese family that lives around the corner.

  “And the third?” LaPointe asks.

  “I don’t know her name either. It’s that woman who runs the cheap restaurant just past Rue de Bullion. The place that—”

  “I know the place. You’re telling me that she came here?”

  “Once, yes. Not to get herself stuffed, of course. After all, she’s a butch.”

  Yes, LaPointe knows that. That is why he was surprised.

  “They had a fight,” the concierge continues. “You could hear her bellowing all the way down here. Then she slammed out of the place.”

  “And you don’t know any of the other people who visited this Verdini?”

  “No. Just plottes. Oh… and his cousin, of course.”

  “His cousin?”

  “Yes. The guy who rented the room in the first place. Verdini didn’t speak much English and almost no French at all. His cousin rented the room for him.”

  “Let’s hear about this cousin.”

  “I don’t remember his name. I think he mentioned it, but I don’t remember. He gave me an address too, in case there were any problems. Like I said, this Verdini didn’t speak much English.” She is growing more tense. Time is running out against Arnaud’s return.

  “What was the address?”

  “I didn’t pay any attention. I got other things to do with my time than worry about the bums who live here.”

  “You didn’t write it down?”

  “I couldn’t be bothered. I remember it was somewhere over the hill, if that’s any help.”

  By “over the hill” she means the Italian stretch of the Main, between the drab little park in Carre Vallieres at the top of the rise and the railroad bridge past Van Horne.

  “How often did you see this cousin?”

  “Only once. When he
rented the room. Oh, and another time, about a week ago. They had a row and—hey! Chocolate!”

  “What?”

  “No… not chocolate. That’s not it. For a second there I thought I remembered the cousin’s name. It was right on the tip of my tongue. Something to do with chocolate.”

  “Chocolate?”

  “No, not that. But something like it. Cocoa? No, that’s not it. It’s gone now. Something to do with chocolate.” She cannot help drifting to the window and peeking through the curtains.

  LaPointe rises. “All right. That’s all for now. If that ‘chocolate’ name comes back to you, telephone me.” He gives her his card. “And if I don’t hear from you, I’ll be back. And I’ll talk to Arnaud about it.”

  She takes the card without looking at it. “What’s the wop kid done? Some girl knocked up?”

  “That’s not your affair. You just worry about the TV set.”

  “Honest to God, Lieutenant—”

  “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  They sit in the yellow sports car. LaPointe appears to be deep in thought, and Guttmann doesn’t know where to go first.

  “Sir?”

  “Hm-m?”

  “What’s a plotte?” Guttmann’s school French does not cover Joual street terms.

  “Sort of a whore.”

  “And a guidoune?”

  “Same kind of thing. Only amateur. Goes for drinks.”

  Guttmann says the words over in his mind, to fix them. “And a… sauteux de… what was it?”

  “A sauteux de clotures. It’s an old-fashioned term. The concierge probably comes from downriver. It means a… sort of a man who runs after women, but there’s a sense that he chases young women more than others. Something like a cherry-picker. Hell, I don’t know! It means what it means!”

  “You know, sir? Joual seems to have more words for aspects of sex than either English or French-French.”

  LaPointe shrugs. “Naturally. People talk about what’s important to them. Someone once told me that Eskimos have lots of words for snow. French-French has lots of words for ‘talk.’ And English has lots of—ah, there she goes!”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I’ve been waiting for. The concierge just took the To Let’ sign out of the window. She was trying to get at it all the time we were there. It’s a warning to her Arnaud to stay away. I’d bet anything it’ll be put back as soon as we drive away.”

  Guttmann shakes his head. “Even though he bashes her in the mouth.”

  “That’s love for you, son. The love that rhymes with ‘forever’ in all the songs. Come on, let’s go.”

  They run down the two leads given them by the concierge. The first girl they catch coming out of her apartment as they drive up. LaPointe meets her at the bottom of the stoop and draws her aside to talk, while Guttmann stands by feeling useless. The girl doesn’t know anything, not even his name. Just Tony. They met in a bar, had a couple of drinks, and went up to his room. No, she hadn’t charged him for it. He was just a good-looking guy, and they had a little fun together.

  LaPointe gets back into the car. Not much there. But at least he learned that Tony Green’s English was not all that bad. Obviously he had been taking lessons during the two months he stayed at the rooming house.

  Guttmann is even more out of it at the second girl’s house. Not a girl, really; a Portuguese woman in her thirties with two kids running around the place and a mother in a black dress who doesn’t speak a word of French, but who hovers near the door of an adjoining bedroom, visible only to the standing Guttmann. From time to time, the mother smiles at Guttmann, and he smiles back out of politeness. The timing of the old woman’s smile is uncanny in conjunction with the daughter’s confession. She seems to punctuate each sexual admission with a nod and a grin. Guttmann is put in mind of his deepest secret dread when he was a kid: that his mother could read his thoughts.

  The young woman is scared, and she talks to LaPointe in a low, rapid voice, glancing frequently toward her mother’s room, not wanting her to hear, even though she doesn’t have two words of French. Just having her mother listen to the incomprehensible noise that carries this kind of confession is daunting.

  Her husband left her two years ago. A person has to have some fun in life. The mother nods and grins. Yes, she met Tony Green at a cabaret where she went with a girlfriend to dance. Yes, she did go to his room. The mother nods. No, not alone. She is embarrassed. Yes, the other woman, her friend, was with them. Yes, all three together in the same bed. The mother grins and nods; Guttmann smiles back. It wasn’t her idea—all three in the same bed—but that’s the way this Tony wanted it. And he was such a good-looking boy. After all, a person has to have some fun in life. It’s rough, being left with two kids to bring up all by yourself, and a mother who is just about useless. The mother nods. It’s rough, working eight hours a day, six days a week. The oldest girl goes to convent school. Uniforms. Books. It all costs money. So you have to work six days a week, eight hours a day. And nobody’s getting any younger. It’s a sin, sure, but a person has to have some fun. The mother smiles and nods.

  LaPointe slides into the car beside Guttmann, and for a while sits in silence while he seems to sort through what the women have told him.

  Guttmann can’t help being impressed by LaPointe’s manner as he talked to this woman and that girl in the street. At first they were afraid because he was a cop, but soon they seemed to be chatting away, almost enjoying unburdening themselves to someone who understood, like a priest. LaPointe asked very few questions, but he had a way of nodding and rolling his hand that requested them to go on… And what next?… And then? The Lieutenant’s attitude was very different from his tough, bullying manner with the concierge. Guttmann remembers him saying something about using different tactics with different people: some you threaten, some you hit, some you embarrass.

  And some you understand? Is understanding a tactic too?

  “Let’s go have a cup of coffee,” LaPointe says.

  “That’s a wonderful idea, sir.” Guttmann’s stomach is still sour with all the coffee he drank yesterday. “I was hoping we’d have a chance to get some coffee.”

  The Le Shalom Restaurant is bustling with customers from the small garment shops of the district: young women with only half an hour off push and crowd to get carry-out orders; boisterous forts from the loading docks push sandwiches into their mouths and ogle the girls; intense young Jewish men in suits lean over their plates, talking business. There are few older Jews because most of them are first generation and still keep Shabbes.

  Even though it’s afternoon, most of the orders involve breakfast foods, because many of the people only had time for a quick cup of coffee that morning. And besides, eggs are the best food you can buy for the money. This area of Mont Royal Street is the center of the garment service industry, where labor from undereducated French Canadian girls is cheap. There are no big important companies in the district, but dozens of small, second-story operations that receive specialty orders from the bigger houses.

  Worldwide Tucking & Hemstitching

  Nathan Z. Pearl, President

  Two telephones behind the serving counter ring constantly. While three distraught girls hustle raggedly to clear and serve the tables, most of the real work is done by one middle-aged woman behind the counter. She does all the checks, serves the whole counter, answers all phone orders, keeps short orders rolling, argues and jokes with the customers, and wages a long-running feud with the harassed Greek cook.

  To a customer: This your quarter? No? Must be for the coffee. Couldn’t be a tip. Who around here would tip a quarter? To the cook: Two meat sandwiches. And lean for once! Where’s my three orders of eggs? Like hell I didn’t! What use are you? To a customer: Look, darling, keep your shirt on. I got only two hands, right? To the phone: Restaurant? Two Danish? Right. Coffee. One double cream. Right. One no sugar. What’s the matter? Someone getting fat up there? Hold on one second, darling…To a
customer: What’s your problem, honey? Here, give me that. Look, it’s added up right. Nine, sixteen, twenty-five and carry the two makes fourteen, carry the one makes two. Check it yourself. And do me a favor, eh? If I ever ask you to help me with my income tax—refuse. Back to the phone: Okay, that was two-Danish two-coffee one-double-cream one-no-sugar… and? One toast, right. One ginger ale? C’est tout? It’ll be right up. What’s that? Look, darling, if I took time to read back all the orders, I’d never get anything done. Trust me. To a customer: Here’s your eggs, honey. Enjoy. To a customer: Just hold your horses, will you? Everyone’s in a hurry. You’re something special? To the cook: Well? You got those grilled cheese? What grilled cheese? Useless! Get out of my way! To the phone: Restaurant? Just give me your order, darling. We’ll exchange cute talk some other time. Yes. Yes. I got it. You want that with the toast or instead of? Right. To a customer: Look, there’s people standing. If you want to talk, go hire a hall. To LaPointe: Here we go, Lieutenant. Lean, like you like it. So who’s the good-looking kid? Don’t tell me he’s a cop too! He looks too nice to be a cop. To a customer: I’m coming already! Take it easy; you’ll live longer—To herself: Not that anybody cares how long you live.

  The woman behind the counter is Chinese. She learned her English in Montreal.

  The high level of noise and babble in the restaurant insulates any given conversation, so LaPointe and Guttmann are able to talk as they eat their plump hot meat sandwiches and drink their coffee.

  “He’s turning out to be a real nice kid,” Guttmann says, “our poor helpless victim in the alley.”

  LaPointe shrugs. Whether or not this Tony Green was a type who deserved being stabbed is not the question. What’s more important is that someone was sassy enough to do it on LaPointe’s patch.

  “Well, there’s one thing we can rule out,” Guttmann says, sipping his milky coffee after turning the cup so as to avoid the faint lipstick stain on the rim. “We can rule out the possibility of Antonio Verdini being a priest in civilian clothes.”