by Trevanian
“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.”
“Only his shoelaces.”
“What?”
“I only ordered him to take off his shoelaces.”
“My report says clothes.”
“Your report is wrong.”
Resnais takes one of the pencils and makes the correction. He has no doubt at all of LaPointe’s honesty. But that is not the point. “It says here that there was another policeman involved. I want his name.”
“He just happened to be walking with me. He had no part in it.”
LaPointe’s matter-of-fact tone irritates Resnais. He slaps the top of his desk. “I won’t fucking well have it! I’ve worked too goddamned hard to build a good community image for this shop! And I don’t care if you’re the hero of every wet-nosed kid on the force, LaPointe. I won’t have that image ruined!”
Anger is a bad weapon, but a great tool.
LaPointe looks at Resnais with the expression of bored patience he assumes when questioning suspects. When the Commissioner has calmed down, he says, “If Scheer didn’t lodge a complaint, how do you know about this?”
“That’s not your affair.”
“Some of his friends got to you, right? Ward bosses?”
It is Resnais’ habit to play it straight with his men. “All right. That’s correct. A man in municipal politics brought it to my attention. He knows how I’ve worked to maintain good press for the force. And he didn’t want to make this public if he didn’t have to.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t need insubordination from you.”
“Tell me something. Why do you imagine your friend interfered on this pimp’s behalf?”
“The man is not my friend. I know him only at the athletic club. But he’s a politically potent man who can help the force… or hurt it.” Resnais smiles bitterly. “I suppose that sounds like ass-kissing to you.”
LaPointe shrugs.
Resnais stares at him for a long moment. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Put it together. Scheer is not the run-of-the-mill pimp. He specializes in very young girls. Either your… friend… is a client, or he’s open to blackmail. Why else would he help a turd like Scheer?”
Resnais considers this for a moment. Then he makes some notes on his pad. Above all, he is a good cop. “You might be right. I’ll have that looked into. But nothing alters the fact that you have exposed the department to bad public opinion with your gangster methods. Have you ever thought of them that way? As gangster methods?”
LaPointe has not. But he doesn’t care about that. “So you intend to tell your political friend that you gave me a sound ass-chewing and everything will be fine from now on?”
“I will tell him that I privately reprimanded you.”
“And he’ll pass the word on to Scheer?”
“I suppose so.”
“And Scheer will come back out onto the street, sassy-assed and ready to start business again.” LaPointe shakes his head slowly. “No, that’s not the way it’s going to happen, Commissioner. Not on my patch.”
“Your patch! LaPointe of the Main! I’m sick up to here of hearing about it. You may think of yourself as the cop of the street, but you’re not the whole force, LaPointe. And that run-down warren of slums is not Montreal!”
LaPointe stares at Resnais. Run-down warren!
For a second, Resnais has the feeling that LaPointe is going to hit him. He knows he went too far, talking about the Main like that. But he has no intention of backing down. “You were telling me that this Scheer wouldn’t be allowed to start up business again. What do you think you’re going to do, Claude?” It’s “Claude” now. Resnais is shifting his forensic line.
LaPointe rises and goes to Resnais’ window. He never noticed that the Commissioner looks out on the Hotel de Ville too, on the scaffolding and sandblasting. It doesn’t seem right that they should share the same view. “Well, Commissioner. You can go ahead and tell your friend that you gave me a ‘private reprimand.’ But you’d better also tell him that if his pimp sets foot on my patch, I’ll hurt him.”
“I am giving you a direct order to stop your harassment of this citizen.”
There is a long silence, during which LaPointe continues to look out the window as though he has not heard.
Resnais pushes his pencils back and forth with his forefinger. Finally, he speaks with a quiet, flat tone. “Well. This is the attitude I expected from you. You don’t leave me any alternative. Discharging you will make a real gibelotte for me. I won’t bullshit you by pretending it’s going to be easy. The men will put up a hell of a stink. I won’t come out of it smelling like a rose, and the force won’t come out of it without bruises. So I’m going to rely on your loyalty to the force to make it easier. Because, you see, Claude, I’ve come to a decision. One way or another, you’re out.”
LaPointe leans slightly forward as though to see something down in the street that interests him more than the Commissioner’s talk.
“Look at it this way, Claude. You came on the force when you were twenty-one. You’ve got thirty-two years of service. You can retire on full pay. Now, I’m not asking you to retire right now, this morning. I’d be content if you’d send in a letter of resignation effective, say, in six months. That way no one would relate your leaving to any trouble between us. You would save face, and I wouldn’t have the mess of petitions and letters to the papers from the kids. Make up an excuse. Say it’s for reasons of health—whatever you want. For my part, I’ll see to it you’re promoted to captain just before you go. That’ll mean you retire on captain’s pay.”
Resnais swivels in his posture chair to face LaPointe, who is still looking out the window, unmoving. “One way or another, Claude, you’re going. If I have to, I’ll retire you under the ‘good of the department’ clause. I warned you to sort yourself out, but you wouldn’t listen. You just don’t seem to be able to change with the changing times.” Resnais turns back to his desk. “I
’m not denying that it would go easier on me if you would turn in your resignation voluntarily, but I don’t expect you to do it for me. There’s never been any love lost between us. You’ve always resented my drive and success. But there’s no point going into that now. I’m asking you to resign quietly for the good of the department, and I honestly believe that you care about the force, in your own way.” There is just the right balance between regret and firmness in his voice. Resnais evaluates the effect of the sound as he speaks, and he is pleased with it.
LaPointe takes a deep breath, like a man coming out of a daydream. “Is that all, Commissioner?”
“Yes. I expect your resignation on my desk within the week.”
LaPointe sniffs and smiles to himself. He would lose nothing by turning in a resignation effective in six months. He doesn’t have six months left.
By the time LaPointe has his hand on the doorknob, Resnais is already looking over his appointment calendar. He is a little behind.
The man who enslaves his minutes liberates his hours.
“Phillipe?” LaPointe says quietly.
Resnais looks up in surprise. This is the first time in the thirty years they have been on the force together that LaPointe has called him by his first name.
LaPointe’s right fist is in the air. Slowly, he extends the middle finger.
When he gets back to his office, LaPointe finds Detective Sergeant Gaspard sitting on the edge of his desk, a half-empty paper cup of coffee in his hand.
“What’s going on?” LaPointe asks, dropping into his swivel chair and turning it so he can look out the window.
“Nothing much. I was just trying to pump the kid here; see if he is learning the gamique under you.”
“And?”
“Well, he’s at least learned enough to keep his mouth shut. When I asked him how you were coming on the Green case, he said you’d tell me what you wanted me to know.”
“Good boy,” LaPointe says.
Guttmann doesn’t look up from his typing for fear of losing his place, but he nods in agreement with the compliment.
“Well?” Gaspard asks. “I don’t want to seem nosy, but it is technically my case, and I haven’t had a word from you for a couple of days. And I want to be ready, if this case is what Resnais le Grand wanted to see you about.”
Already the rumor has been around the department that Resnais was in a furious mood when he called in LaPointe.
“No, it wasn’t about that,” LaPointe says.
Gaspard’s raised eyebrows indicate that he is more than willing to hear what it was all about, but instead LaPointe turns back from the window and gives him a quick rundown of progress so far.
“So you figure the kid was being laundered, eh?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“And if he was such a big time sauteux de clotures as you say, almost anyone might have put that knife into him—some jealous squack, somebody’s lover, somebody’s brother—almost anyone.”
“That’s it.”
“You on to anything?”
“We’ve got suspects falling out of the trees. But most of the leads have healed up now. I’ve got something I’m looking into tonight; a bar the kid used to go to.”
“You expect to turn something there?”
“Not much. Probably twenty more suspects.”
“Hungh! Well, keep up the good work. And do your best to bring this one in, will you? I could use another letter of merit. So how’s our Joan getting on? Is he as much a pain in the ass to you as he was to me?”
LaPointe shrugs. He has no intention of complimenting the kid in his presence. “Why do you ask? You want him back today?”
“No, not if you can stand to have him a while longer. He cramps my romantic form, hanging around all the time.” Gaspard drains the cup, wads it up in his hand, and misses the wastebasket “Okay, if that’s all you’ve got to tell me about our case, I’ll get back to keeping the city safe for the tourists. Just look at that kid type, will you? Now that’s what I call style!”
Guttmann growls as Gaspard leaves with a laugh.
LaPointe feels a slight nausea from the ebb of angry adrenalin after his session with the Commissioner. The air in his office is warm and has an already-breathed taste. He wants to get out of here, go where he feels comfortable and alive. “Look, I’m going up on the Main. See what’s going on.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“No. I lose you tomorrow, and I want this paper work caught up.”
“Oh.” Guttmann does not try to conceal his deflation.
LaPointe tugs on his overcoat. “I’m just going to make the rounds. Talk to people. This Green thing has taken up too much of my time. I’m getting out of touch.” He looks down at the young man behind the stacks of reports. “What do you have on for this evening around seven? A date to wash clothes?”
“No, sir.”
“All right. Meet me at the Happy Hour Whisky a Go-Go on Rachel Street. It’s our last lead. You might as well see this thing through.”
Before it lost its cabaret license, the Happy Hour Whisky a Go-Go was a popular dance hall where girls from the garment shops and men from the loading docks could pick one another up, dance a little, ogle, drink, make arrangements for later on. It was a huge, noisy barn with a turning ball of mirrored surfaces depending from the ceiling, sliding globs of colored light around the walls, over the dancers, and into the orchestra, the amplified instruments of which made the floor vibrate. But once too often, the owner had been careless about letting underage girls in and about making sure his bouncers stopped fights before they got to the bottle-throwing stage, so now dancing is not permitted, and the patronage has shrunk to a handful of people sitting around the U-shaped bar, a glowing island in a vastness of dark, unused space.
At the prow of the bar is a drum stage four feet in diameter on which a go-go dancer slowly grinds her ass, her tempo in no way associated with the beat of the whining, repetitive rock music provided by a turntable behind the bar. The dancer is not young, and she is fat. Bored and dull-eyed, she undulates mechanically, her great bare breasts sloshing about as she slips her thumbs in and out of the pouch of her G-string, tugging it away from her ecu and letting it snap back in a routine ritual of provocation. Blue and orange lights glow dimly through the bottles of the back bar, producing most of the illumination, save for a strong narrow beam at the cash register. Ultraviolet lamps around the dancing drum cause the dancer’s G-string to glow bright green. She has also applied phosphorescent paint to her nipples, and they glow green too. Standing just inside the door, far from the bar, LaPointe looks over the customers until he picks out Guttmann. From that distance, the back-lit figure of the dancer is almost invisible, save for the phosphorescent triangle of her crotch and the circles of her nipples. As she grinds away, she looks like a man with a goatee, chewing and rolling his eyes.
LaPointe climbs up on a stool beside Guttmann and orders an Armagnac. “What are you drinking?” he asks Guttmann.
“Ouzo.”
“Why ouzo?”
Guttmann shrugs. “Because it’s a Greek bar, I guess.”
“Good thing it isn’t an Arab bar. You’d be drinking camel piss.” LaPointe looks along the curve of customers, A couple of young men with nothing to do; a virile-looking woman in a cloth coat sitting directly in front of the dancer, staring up with cold fascination and tickling her upper lip with her finger; two soldiers already a little drunk; an old Greek staring disconsolately into his glass; a neatly dressed man in his fifties, suit and tie, a briefcase up on the bar, watching the play of the thumbs in and out of the G-string, his starched collar picking up the ultraviolet light and glowing greenish. All in all, the typical flotsam of outsiders and losers one finds in this kind of bar in the early evenings, or in rundown movie houses in the afternoons.
The fat dancer turns her head as she jiggles from foot to foot and nods once to LaPointe. He does not nod back.
Sitting behind the bar, at t
he base of the drum, is a girl who attends to the jury-rigged turntable and amplifier. She is fearful of not doing her job right, so she stares at the turning disc, holding her breath, poised to lift the needle and move it to the next selection when the song runs out. She counts the bands to the one she must hit next, mouthing the numbers to herself. Occasionally she lifts her face to look up at the fat dancer. Her eyes brim with admiration and wonder. The lights, the color, and everyone watching. Show business! She appears to be fifteen or sixteen, but her face has no age. It is the bland oval of a seriously retarded child, and its permanent expression is a calm void over which, from time to time, comes a ripple of confusion and doubt.
The tune is nearing its end, and the girl is straining her concentration in preparation for changing the needle without making that horrible rasping noise. The dancer looks down at her and shakes her head. The girl doesn’t know what this signal means! She is confused and frightened. She freezes! After an undulating hiss, the record goes on to the next band—the wrong band! The girl snatches her hands away from the machine, recoiling from all responsibility. But the dancer is already coming down from the drum, her great breasts flopping with the last awkward step. She growls at the girl and lifts the needle from the record herself. Then she walks along behind the bar to a back room. In a minute she emerges, wearing clacking bedroom slippers and a gossamer tent of a dressing gown through which the brown, pimpled cymbals of her nipples are visible.
She slides onto the stool next to Guttmann, her sweaty cheek squeaking on the plastic. She smells of sweat and cologne.
“Want to buy me a drink, gunner?” she asks Guttmann.
LaPointe leans forward and speaks across the young man. “He’s not a mark. He’s with me.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant. I mean, how was I to know? You didn’t come in together.”
With a tip of his head, LaPointe orders her to follow as he takes up his Armagnac and walks away from the bar to a table with bentwood chairs inverted on it. He has three chairs down by the time the woman and Guttmann arrive. The table is small, and Guttmann cannot easily move his knee away from hers. She presses her leg against his to let him know she knows.
