The Main

by Trevanian

  “Be my guest,” Gaspard says with a wave of his arm that indicates he is happy to be rid of the mess. “And if I ever get the clap, you can have that, too.”

  “I’ll route the paper work through you, so we don’t upset the Masters.”

  Gaspard nods. That is the way LaPointe usually works. It avoids direct run-ins with the administration. There is nothing official about LaPointe’s assignment to the Main. In fact, there is no organizational rubric that covers him. The administration slices crime horizontally into categories: theft, bunco, vice, homicide. LaPointe’s responsibility is a vertical one: all the crime on the Main. This assignment was never planned, never officially recognized, it just developed as a matter of chance and tradition; and there are those in authority who chafe at this rupture of the organizational chain. They consider it ridiculous that a full lieutenant spends his time crawling around the streets like a short timer. But they console themselves with the realization that LaPointe is an anachronism, a vestige of older, less efficient methods. He will be retiring before long; then they can repair the administrative breach.

  LaPointe turns to the uniformed policeman. “You found the body?”

  Caught off guard, and wanting to respond alertly, the Chiac cop gulps, “Yes, sir.”

  There is a brief silence. Then LaPointe lifts his palms and opens his eyes wide as if to say, “Well?”

  The young officer glances across at Guttmann as he tugs out his notebook. The leather folder has a little loop to hold a pen. It’s the kind of thing a parent or girlfriend might have given him when he graduated from the academy. He clears his throat. “We were cruising. My partner was driving slowly because I was checking license plates against the watch list of stolen cars—”

  “What did you have for breakfast?” Gaspard asks.

  “Pardon me, sir?” The Chiac officer’s ears redden.

  “Get on with it, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Yes, sir. We passed the alley at… ah… well, let’s see. I wrote the note about ten minutes later, so that would put us at the alley at two-forty or two-forty-five. I saw a movement down the alley, but we had passed it by the time I told my partner to stop. He backed up and I got a glance of a man hopping down the alley. I jumped out and started to chase him, then I came across the body.”

  “You gave pursuit?” LaPointe asks.

  “Well… yes, sir. That is, after I discovered that the guy on the ground was dead, I ran to the end of the alley after the other one. But he had disappeared. The street was empty.”

  “Description?”

  “Not much, sir. Just caught a glimpse as he hopped away. Tallish. Thin. Well, not fat. Hard to tell. He had on a big shabby overcoat, sort of like…” The officer quickly looks away from LaPointe’s shapeless overcoat. “…you know. Just an old overcoat.”

  LaPointe seems to be concentrating on a rivulet of condensed water running down the steamy window beside him. “Il a clopine?” he asks without looking at the officer. “That’s twice you said the man ‘hopped’ off. Why do you choose that word?”

  The young man shrugs. “I don’t know, sir. That’s what he seemed to do… sort of hobble off. But quick, you know?”

  “And he was dressed shabbily?”

  “I had that impression, sir. But it was dark, you know.”

  LaPointe looks down at the tabletop as he taps his lips with his knuckle. Then he sniffs and sighs. “Tell me about his hat.”

  “His hat?” The young officer’s eyebrows rise. “I don’t remember any…” His expression seems to spread. “Yes! His hat! A big floppy hat. Dark color. I don’t know how that could have slipped my mind. It was kind of like a cowboy hat, but the brim was floppy, you know?”

  For the first time since they entered the Roi des Frites, Guttmann speaks up in his precise European French, the kind Canadians call “Parisian,” but which is really modeled on the French of Tours. “You know who the man is, don’t you, Lieutenant? The one who ran off?”

  “Yes.”

  Gaspard yawns and rubs his legs. “Well, there it is! You see, kid? You’re learning from me how to solve cases. Just talk people into committing their crimes on the Main, and turn them over to LaPointe. Nothing to it. It’s all in the wrist.” He speaks to LaPointe. “So it’s routine after all. The guy was stabbed for his money, and you know who…”

  But LaPointe is shaking his head. It’s not that simple. “No. The man this officer saw running away is a street bomme. I know him. I don’t think he would kill.”

  “How do you know that, sir?” Guttmann’s young face is intense and intelligent. “What I mean is… anyone can kill, given the right circumstances. People who would never steal might kill.”

  With weary slowness, LaPointe turns his patient fatigued eyes on the Anglo.

  “Ah…” Gaspard says, “did I mention that my Joan here had been to college?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Oh, yeah! He’s been through it all. Books, grades, long words, theories, raise your hand to go to the bathroom—one finger for pee-pee, two for ca-ca.” Gaspard turns to Guttmann, who takes a long-suffering breath. “One thing I’ve always wondered, kid,” Gaspard pursues. “Maybe you can tell me from all your education. How come a man grins when he’s shitting a particularly hard turd? I mean, it isn’t all that much fun, really.”

  Guttmann ignores Gaspard; he looks directly at LaPointe. “But what I said is true, isn’t it? People who would never steal might kill, under the right circumstances?”

  The kid’s eyes are frank and vulnerable and they shine with suppressed embarrassment and anger. After a second, LaPointe answers, “Yes. That’s true.”

  Gaspard grunts as he stands and stretches his settled spine. “Okay, it’s your package, LaPointe. Me, I’m going home. I’ll collect the reports in the morning and send them over to you.” Then Gaspard gets an idea. “Hey! Want to do me a favor? How about taking my Joan here for a few days? Give him a chance to see how you do your dirty work. What do you say?”

  The Chiac officer’s mouth opens. These goddamned Roundheads get all the luck.

  LaPointe frowns. They never assign Joans to him, just as they never give him committee work. They know better.

  “Come on,” Gaspard persists. “He can sort of be liaison between my shop and yours. Take him off my back for a few days. He cramps my style. How can I pick up a quick piece of ass with him hanging around all the time, taking notes?”

  LaPointe shrugs. “All right. For a couple of days.”

  “Great,” Gaspard says. As he buttons his overcoat up to the neck, he looks out the window. “Look at this goddamned weather, will you! It’s already socking in again. By dawn the clouds will be back. Have you ever seen the snow hold off so long? And every night it gets cold as a witch’s tit.”

  LaPointe’s mind is elsewhere. He corrects Gaspard thoughtlessly. “ecu. Cold as a witch’s ecu.”

  “You’re sure it’s not tit?”

  “ecu.”

  Gaspard looks down at Guttmann. “You see, kid? You’re going to learn a lot with LaPointe. Okay, men, I’m off. Keep crime off the streets and in the home, where it belongs.”

  The Chiac officer follows Gaspard out into the windy night. They get into the patrol car and drive off, leaving the street totally empty.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” Guttmann says. “I hope you don’t feel railroaded into taking me on.”

  But LaPointe has already crooked his finger at Dirtyshirt Red, who shuffles over to the table. “Sit down, Red.” LaPointe shifts to English because it’s Red’s only language, the language of success. “Have you seen the Vet tonight?”

  Dirtyshirt Red makes a face. Over the years he has fostered a fine hatred for his fellow bomme, with all his blowing off about being a war hero, and always bragging about his great kip—a snug sleeping place he has hidden away somewhere. A comforting idea strikes Dirtyshirt Red.

  “Is he in trouble, Lieutenant? He’s a badass, believe you me. I wouldn’t put nothin’ p
ast him! What’s he done, Lieutenant?”

  LaPointe settles his melancholy eyes on the bomme.

  “Okay,” Red says quickly. “Sorry. Yeah, I seen him. Down Chez Pete’s Place, maybe ‘bout six, seven o’clock.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since?”

  “No. I left to go down to the Greek bakery and get some toppins promised me. I didn’t want that potlickin’ son of a bitch hanging around trying to horn in. He’s harder to shake than snot off a fingernail.”

  “Listen, Red. I want to talk to the Vet. You ask around. He could be holed up somewhere because he probably got a lot of drinking money tonight.”

  The thought of his fellow tramp coming into a bit of luck infuriates Dirtyshirt Red. “That wino son of a bitch, the potlickin’ splat of birdshit! Morviat! Fartbubble! Him and his snug pad off somewheres! I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him…”

  Dirtyshirt Red continues his flow of bile, but it is lost on LaPointe, who is staring out the window where beads of condensation make double rubies of the taillights of predawn traffic. Trucks, mostly. Vegetables coming into market. He feels disconnected from events; a kind of generalized deja vu. It’s all happened before. Some different kid, killed in some different way, found in some different place; and LaPointe sorting it out in some other cafe, looking out some other window at some other predawn street. It really doesn’t matter very much anymore. He’s tired.

  Without seeming to, Guttmann has been examining LaPointe’s reflection in the window. He has, of course, heard tales about the Lieutenant, his control over the Main, his dry indifference to authorities within the department and to political influences without, improbable myths concerning his courage. Guttmann is intelligent enough to have discounted two-thirds of these epic fables as the confections of French officers seeking an ethnic hero against the Anglophonic authorities.

  Physically, LaPointe satisfies Guttmann’s preconceptions: the wide face with its deep-set eyes that is practically a map of French Canada; the mat of graying hair that appears to have been combed with the fingers; and of course the famous rumpled overcoat. But there are aspects that Guttmann had not anticipated, things that contradict his caricature of the tough cop. There is a quality that might be called “distance”; a tendency to stay on the outer rim of things, withdrawn and almost daydreaming. Then too, there is something disturbing in LaPointe’s patient composure, in the softness of his husky voice, in the crinkling around his eyes that makes him seem… the only word that Guttmann can come up with is “paternal.” He recalls that the young French policemen sometimes refer to him as “Papa LaPointe,” not that anyone dares to call him that within his hearing.

  “…and that potlickin’ cockroach—that gnat—tells everybody what a hero he was in the war! That pimple on a whore’s ass—that wart—tells everybody what a nice private kip he’s got! That son of a bitch gnat-wart tells—”

  With the lift of a hand, LaPointe cuts short Dirtyshirt Red’s flow of hate, just as he is getting up steam. “That’s enough. You ask around for the Vet. If you locate him, call down to the QG. You know the number.” With a tip of his head, LaPointe dismisses the bomme, who shuffles to the door and out into the night.

  Guttmann leans forward. “This Vet is the man with the floppy hat?”

  LaPointe frowns at the young policeman, as though he has just become aware of his presence. “Why don’t you go home?”

  “Sir?”

  “There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you at my office tomorrow.”

  Guttmann reacts to the Lieutenant’s cool tone. “Listen, Lieutenant. I know that Gaspard sort of dumped me on you. If you’d rather not…” He shrugs.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Guttmann looks down at the Formica tabletop. He sucks a slow breath between his teeth. Being with LaPointe isn’t going to be much fun. “All right, sir. I’ll be there at eight.”

  LaPointe yawns and scrubs his matted hair with his palm. “You’re going to have a hell of a wait. I’m tired. I won’t be in until ten or eleven.”

  After Guttmann leaves, LaPointe sits looking through the window with unfocused eyes. He feels too tired and heavy to push himself up and trudge back to the cold apartment. But… he can’t sit here all night. He rises with a grunt.

  Because the streets are otherwise empty, LaPointe notices a couple standing on a corner. They are embracing, and the man has enclosed her in his overcoat. They press together and sway. It’s four-thirty in the morning and cold, and their only shelter is his overcoat. LaPointe glances away, unwilling to intrude on their privacy.

  When he turns the corner of Avenue Esplanade, the wind flexes his collar. Litter and dust swirl in miniature whirlwinds beside iron-railed basement wells. LaPointe’s body needs oxygen; each breath has the quality of a sigh.

  A slight movement in the park catches his eye. A shadow on one of the benches at the twilight rim of a lamplight pool. Someone sitting there. At the foot of his long wooden stoop, he turns and looks again. The person has not moved. It is a woman, or a child. The shadow is so thin it doesn’t seem that she is wearing a coat. LaPointe climbs a step or two, then he turns back, crosses the street, and enters the park through a creaking iron gate.

  Though she should be able to hear the gravel crunching under his approaching feet, the young girl does not move. She sits with her knees up, her heels against her buttocks, arms wrapped around her legs, face pressed into her long paisley granny gown. Beside her, placed so as to block some of the wind, is a shopping bag with loop handles. It is not until LaPointe’s shadow almost touches her that she looks up, startled. Her face is thin and pale, and her left eye is pinched into a squint by a bruise, the bluish stain of which spreads to her cheekbone.

  “Are you all right?” he asks in English. The granny gown makes him assume she is Anglo; he associates the new, the modern, the trendy with the Anglo culture.

  She does not answer. Her expression is a mixture of defiance and helplessness.

  “Where do you live?” he asks.

  Her chin still on her knees, she looks at him with steady, untrusting eyes. Her jaw takes on a hard line because she is clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. Then she squints at him appraisingly. “You want to take me home with you?” she asks in Joual French, her voice flat; perhaps with fatigue, perhaps with indifference.

  “No. I want to know where you live.” He doesn’t mean to sound hard and professional, but he is tired, and her direct, dispassionate proposition took him unawares.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  Her sass is a little irritating, but she’s right; it’s no business of his. Kids like this drift onto the Main every day. Flotsam. Losers. They’re no business of his, until they get into trouble. After all, he can’t take care of them all. He shrugs and turns away.

  “Hey?”

  He turns back.

  “Well? Are you going to take me home with you, or not?” There is nothing coquettish in her tone. She is broke and has no place to sleep; but she does have an ecu. It’s a matter of barter.

  LaPointe sighs and scratches his hairline. She appears to be in her early twenties, younger than LaPointe’s daydream children. It’s late and he’s tired, and this girl is nothing to him. A skinny kid with a gamine face spoiled by that silly-looking black eye, and anything but attractive in the oversized man’s cardigan that is her only protection against the wind. The backs of her hands are mottled with cold and purple in the fluorescent streetlight.

  Not attractive, probably dumb; a loser. But what if she turned up as a rape statistic in the Morning Report?

  “All right,” he says. “Come on.” Even as he says it, he regrets it. The last thing he needs is a scruffy kid cluttering up his apartment.

  She makes a movement as though to rise, then she looks at him sideways. He is an old man to her, and she knows all about old men. “I don’t do anything… special,” she warns him matter-of-factly.

  He f
eels a sudden flash of anger. She’s younger than his daughters, for Christ’s sake! “Are you coming?” he asks impatiently.

  There is only a brief pause before she shrugs with protective indifference, rises, and takes up her shopping bag. They walk side by side toward the gate. At first he thinks she is stiff with the cold and with sitting all huddled up. Then he realizes that she has a limp; one leg is shorter than the other, and the shopping bag scrapes against her knee as she walks.

  He opens his apartment door and reaches around to turn on the red-and-green overhead lamp, then he steps aside and she precedes him into the small living room. Because the putty has rotted out of the big bow windows, they rattle in the wind, and the apartment is colder than the hallway.

  As soon as he closes the door, he feels awkward. The room seems cramped, too small for two people. Without taking off his overcoat, he bends down and lights the gas in the fireplace. He squats there, holding down the lever until the limp blue flames begin to make the porcelain nipples glow orange.

  Oddly, she is more at ease than he. She crosses to the window and looks down at the park bench where she was sitting a few minutes ago. She rubs her upper arms, but she prefers not to join him near the fire. She doesn’t want to seem to need anything that’s his.

  With a grunt, LaPointe stands up from the gas fire. “There. It’ll be warm soon. You want some coffee?”

  She turns down the corners of her mouth and shrugs.

  “Does that mean you want coffee, or not?”

  “It means I don’t give a shit one way or the other. If you want to give me coffee, I’ll drink it. If not…” Again she shrugs and squeeks a little air through tight lips.

  He can’t help smiling to himself. She thinks she’s so goddamned tough. And that shrug of hers is so downriver.

  The French Canadian’s vocabulary of shrugs is infinite in nuance and paraverbal articulation. He can shrug by lifting his shoulders, or by depressing them. He shrugs by glancing aside, or by squinting. By turning over his hands, or simply lifting his thumbs. By sliding his lower lip forward, or by tucking down the corners of his mouth. By closing his eyes, or by spreading his face. By splaying his fingers; by pushing his tongue against his teeth; by tightening his neck muscles; by raising one eyebrow, or both; by widening his eyes; by cocking his head. And by all combinations and permutations of these. Each shrug means a different thing; each combination means more than two different things at the same time. But in all the shrugs, his fundamental attitude toward the role of fate and the feebleness of Man is revealed.