The Main

by Trevanian

  “What?”

  “Nothing, sir. Just a thought.”

  The interior of the bar is overwarm from a large oil heater, its orange flame dimly billowing behind a mica window. The woman behind the bar is overblown, her chubby arms clattering with plastic bracelets, her high-piled hairdo an unnatural blue-black, her eye make-up and lipstick florid, and the deep V of her spangled blouse revealing the slopes of flaccid breasts that get most of their shape from the encasing fabric. She completes a languid yawn before asking the men what they will have.

  LaPointe orders a glass of red, and Guttmann, tugging off his overcoat in the excessive heat, asks for the same thing, although he does not particularly care for wine outside meals.

  From the back room, beyond a gaudy floral curtain, comes the click of pool balls followed by a curse in Italian and laughter from the other players.

  “Who’s your friend, Lieutenant?” the barmaid asks as she pours the wine and bestows upon Guttmann a carnivorous leer.

  “Is Candy Al back there?” LaPointe asks.

  “Where else would he be this time of day?”

  “Tell him I want to talk to him.”

  “That won’t be the best news he’s had all week.” Brushing close by Guttmann, the barmaid goes into the back room, walking with her knees slightly bent to make her broad ass swing invitingly.

  “It looks like you’ve scored,” LaPointe says as he sets his empty glass back on the bar. He always drinks off a coup de rouge at one go, like the workers of his home city.

  “That’s wonderful,” Guttmann says. “Do you think I’m her first love?”

  “One of the first this morning.”

  LaPointe knows this bar well. It serves two very different kinds of clients. Old Italian men in cloth caps often sit in pairs at the oilcloth-covered tables, talking quietly and drinking the harsh red. When they order, they hold the barmaid by her hip. It is an automatic gesture meaning nothing specific, and the right to hold the barmaid’s hip goes, by immutable tradition, to the one who is paying for the drinks.

  In summer, the back door is always open, and old men play at bowls on the tarmac alley where there is a thick covering of sand for this purpose. Every twenty minutes or so, a girl brings out a tray of glasses filled with wine. She collects the cork beer coasters from under empty glasses and stacks them at the end of the bar as a count of the wine drunk. The games are played for wine, and very seriously, with slow dignity and with much criticism and praise. Sometimes tipsy old men steal one or two of the coasters and put them into their pockets, not to avoid paying for the wine, but so that the barmaid will have to come looking for them, and when she does, they get a grab of her ass.

  In contrast to these good people, the ones who hang out in the poolroom with its jukebox are the young toughs of the neighborhood, who squander their days gambling borrowed money and lying to one another about their sexual conquests and their knife fights. Candy Al Canducci reigns over these wise-cracking punks, who admire his flashy expensive clothes and flashy cheap women. Someday, they too…

  He occasionally lends them money, or buys rounds of drinks. In return they serve him as flunkies, doing little errands, or standing around looking tough when he makes a personal visit to one of the bars dominated by another boss.

  The whole thing is a cut-rate imitation of heavier Family action in north and east Montreal, but it has its share of violence. Occasionally there are border disputes over numbers territories, and there will be a week or two of conflict, single members of one gang beaten up by five or six men from another, with faces and testicles the special targets of pointy-toed shoes. Sometimes there is a nighttime scuffle in a back alley, silent except for panting and the scrape of shoes, and a nasal grunt when the knife goes in.

  LaPointe always knows what is happening, but he lets it go so long as no one is involved but themselves. The two things he does not permit are murder and drugs, the one because it gets into the papers and makes his patch look bad, the other just because he does not permit it. If there is a murder, he has a little chat with the bosses, and in the end some informer gives him the killer. It’s a tacit understanding they have. Every once in a while, one of the bosses will feel he can stand up to LaPointe. Then things start to go badly for him. His boys begin to get picked up for every minor charge in the book; the police start to hit his numbers drops one after the other; small amounts of narcotics turn up every time LaPointe searches an apartment. The coterie of young toughs around the recalcitrant boss begins to thin out, and each of the bosses knows that with the first sign of weakness his brothers will turn on him and devour his territory. Even the proudest ends with having a little chat with LaPointe, and with turning over the killer he has been sheltering, or pulling back from his little tentative into drugs. Of course, there is the usual tough talk about LaPointe waking up some morning dead, but this is just face-saving. The bosses don’t really want him gone. The next cop might not let them settle things among themselves, and they might not be able to trust his word, as they can always trust LaPointe’s.

  While there are these unspoken agreements, there is no protection. From time to time, one of the bosses makes a mistake. And when he does, LaPointe puts him away. They expect nothing else; LaPointe is like Fate—always there, always waiting. The bosses are all Catholics, and this sense of hovering punishment satisfies their need for retribution. The older ones take an odd pride in their cop and in his dogged honesty. You cant buy LaPointe. You can come to an understanding with him, but you can’t buy him.

  For his part, LaPointe has no delusions about his control on the Italian Main. This is not the Mafia he faces. The Mafia, with its American connections and trade union base, operates in north and east Montreal, where it occasionally becomes visible through sordid shootouts in the Naugahyde-and-chrome bars they infest. It isn’t so much LaPointe’s presence that prevents the organization from moving onto the Main as it is the district’s own character. The Main is too poor to be worth the pain the old cop would give them.

  At forty, Candy Al Canducci is the youngest of the local petty bosses; he is flashy in a “B” movie way, wise-mouthed, self-conscious, pushy; he lacks the Old-World dignity of the older bosses, most of whom are good family men who care about their children and take care of the unemployed and aged on their blocks. They’re all thieves; but Candy Al is also a punk.

  The barmaid’s plastic bracelets clatter as she bats the gaudy curtain aside and comes back into the bar. “He doesn’t want to see you, Lieutenant. Says he’s busy. In conference.”

  There has been a silence in the back room for the past minute or two, and now there is suppressed laughter with this phrase “in conference.”

  The barmaid leans against the counter and plants a fist on her hip. She looks steadily at Guttmann as she toys with the crucifix around her neck, tickling her breasts by dragging the cross in and out of the cleavage.

  “In conference, eh?” LaPointe asks. “Oh, I see. Well, at least give me another red.”

  There is a snicker from the back room, and the click of pool balls begins again.

  As the barmaid takes her time going around to pour the wine, LaPointe tugs off his overcoat and drops it over a chair. Without waiting for the drink, he slaps the floral curtain aside and enters the poolroom. Guttmann takes a breath and follows him.

  The hanging lamp over the pool table makes a high wainscoting of light that decapitates the half-dozen young men standing around the table. They draw back to the walls as LaPointe enters. One of them puts his hand in his pocket. A knife, probably, but mostly a sassy gesture. And one young tough pats the back of his hair into place, as though preparing for a photograph. Guttmann sets his broad body in the doorway as he notices that there is no other exit from the room. He feels a trickle of sweat under his shoulder holster. Seven against two; not much room for movement.

  Candy Al Canducci continues playing, pretending not to have noticed the policemen enter. The coat of his closely cut suit hangs open, and his br
oad paisley tie brushes the green felt as he lines up a shot with taunting care. His pants are so tight that the outlines of his girdle-underwear can be seen.

  LaPointe notices that he has changed from looking over a rather difficult shot that would have left him with good position to taking a dogmeat ball hanging on the rim of the pocket. He smiles to himself. Candy Al’s cheap sense of theatrics will not permit him to punctuate some bit of lip with a missed shot.

  “Let’s have a talk, Canducci,” LaPointe says, ignoring the ring of young men.

  Candy Al brushes the chalk from his fingers before lifting the sharp crease of one trouser leg to squat and line up the straight-in shot. “You want to talk, Canuck? All right, talk. Me, I’m playing pool.” He doesn’t look up to say this, but continues to examine his shot.

  LaPointe shakes his head gravely. “That’s too bad.”

  “What’s too bad?”

  “The way you’re putting yourself in a hard place, Canducci. You’re showing off for these asshole punks. First thing you know, you’ll be forced to say something stupid. And then I’ll have to spank you.”

  “Spank me? Ho-ho. You?” He rolls an in-cupped hand and looks around his coterie as if to say, Listen to this crap, will you? He draws back the cue to make his shot.

  LaPointe reaches out and sweeps the object ball into its pocket. “Game’s over.”

  For the first time, Canducci looks up into LaPointe’s eyes. He detests the crinkling smile in them. He walks slowly around the end of the table to face the cop. There is an inward pressure from the ring of punks, and Guttmann glances around to pick out the first two he’d have to drop to keep them off his arms. Canducci’s heart is thumping under his yellow silk shirt, as much from anger as from fear. LaPointe was right; if it hadn’t been for the audience, he would never have taken this tone; now he has no choice but to play it out.

  He stops before LaPointe, tapping the shaft of his cue into his palm. “You know what, Canuck? You take a lot of risks, for an old man.”

  LaPointe speaks over his shoulder to Guttmann. “There’s something for you to learn here, son. This Canducci here and his punks are dangerous men.” His eyes do not leave Candy Al’s, and they are still crinkled in a smile.

  “Better believe it, cop.”

  “Oh, you’re dangerous, all right. Because you’re cowards, and cowards are always dangerous when they’re in a pack.”

  Canducci pushes his face toward LaPointe’s. “You got a wise mouth, you know that?”

  LaPointe closes his eyes and shakes his head sadly. “Canducci, Canducci… what can I tell you?” He lifts his palms in a fatalistic shrug.

  The next happens so quickly that Guttmann remembers only blurred fragments of motion and the sound of scuffling feet. LaPointe suddenly reaches out with one of the lifted hands, grabbing the dandy by the face and driving him back against the wall in two quick steps. Canducci’s head cracks against a pinup of a nude. LaPointe’s broad hand masks the face, the palm against the mouth and the fingers splayed across the eyes.

  “Freeze!” he barks. “One move, and he loses his eyes!”

  To make his point, he presses slightly with his fingertips, and Canducci produces a terrified squeal that is half-muffled by the heel of LaPointe’s hand. LaPointe can feel saliva from the twisted mouth against his palm.

  “Everyone sit on the floor,” LaPointe commands. “Out away from the wall! Sit on your hands, palms up! I want the legs out in front of you! Do what I say, or this asshole will be selling pencils on the street!” Again a slight pressure on the eyes; again a squeal.

  The punks exchange glances, no one wanting to be the first to obey. Then Guttmann, with a gesture that surprises LaPointe, grabs one by the arm and slams him up against the wall. The tough sits down with almost comic celerity, and the others follow.

  “Sit up straight!” LaPointe orders. “And keep those hands under your asses! I want to hear knuckles crunch!”

  This is a trick he learned from an old cop, now dead. When men are sitting on their hands, not only is any quick movement impossible, but they are embarrassed and humbled almost instantly, producing a sense of defeat and the desirable passivity of the prisoner mentality. It is a particularly useful device when you are badly outnumbered.

  No one speaks, and for a full minute LaPointe continues to press Canducci’s head against the wall, his fingers splayed over the face and eyes. Guttmann doesn’t understand the delay. He looks over at the Lieutenant, whose head is hanging down and whose body appears oddly limp. “Sir?” he says uneasily.

  LaPointe takes two deep breaths and swallows. The worst of it is over. The vertigo has passed. He straightens up, grabs Canducci’s broad paisley tie, and snatches him away from the wall, propelling him ahead toward the gaudy curtain. One more push on the shoulder and Candy Al stumbles into the barroom. LaPointe turns back to the six young men on the floor. “You watch them,” he tells Guttmann. “If one of them moves a muscle, slap his face until his ears ring.” LaPointe knows exactly what threat would most sting cocky Italian boys.

  When he pushes aside the curtain and enters the bar, he finds Candy Al sitting at a table, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “The Commissioner’s going to hear about this,” he says without much assurance. “It’s a free country! You cops ain’t the bosses of everything!”

  LaPointe picks up his glass of red from the bar and sips it slowly, not setting down the glass until he feels recovered from the swimming dizziness and the constriction in his chest and upper arms that caught him unawares a minute ago. When the last of the effervescence has fizzed out of his blood, he leans back against the bar and looks down at Canducci, who is carefully touching the edge of his handkerchief to the corner of his eye, then examining the damp spot with tender concern.

  “You got your finger in my eye! I wear contacts! That could be dangerous for a guy that wears contacts! Fucking cops.” Alone out here without his gang, he reverts to the whining petty thief, alternating between playing it as the movie tough and simpering piteously.

  “We’re going to talk about a friend of yours,” LaPointe says, sitting in the chair opposite Canducci.

  “I don’t have any friends!”

  “That’s truer than you know, shithead. The name is Antonio Verdini, alias Tony Green.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You rented a room for him. The concierge has given evidence.”

  “Well, this concierge has her head up her ass! I tell you I never met… whatever you said his name is.”

  “Was.”

  “What?”

  “Was. Not is. He’s dead. Stabbed in an alley.”

  The handkerchief is up to Canducci’s eyes, so LaPointe misses the effect of the drop. After a short silence, the Italian says, “So, what’s that to me?”

  “Maybe twenty years. Stabbing is the kind of action your people go in for. The Commissioner is on my ass for an arrest. With your record, you’re dogmeat. And I don’t really care if you did it or not. I’ll be satisfied just to get you off the street.”

  “I didn’t kill the son of a bitch! I didn’t even know he was dead until you told me. Anyway, I got an alibi.”

  “Oh? For what time?”

  “You name it, cop! You name it, and I got an alibi for it.” Candy Al dabs at his eyes again. “I think I got a busted blood vessel or something. You’re gonna pay for that. Like they say in the lotteries, un jour ce sera ton tour.”

  LaPointe reaches across the table and pats Canducci’s cheek three times, the last tap not gentle. “Are you threatening me?”

  Candy Al jerks his head away petulantly. “Where you get off slapping people around? You never heard of police brutality?”

  “You’ll have twenty years to make your complaint.”

  “I told you, all my time is covered.”

  “By them?” LaPointe tips his head toward the poolroom.

  “Yeah. That’s right. By them.”

  LaPointe dismisses them with a sharp puf
f of air. “How long do you think one of those kids, sitting back there with his ass in his hands, could stand up to interrogation by me?”

  Canducci’s eyes flicker; LaPointe’s point is made. “I’m telling you I didn’t kill this guy!”

  “You mean you had him killed?”

  “Shit, I don’t even know this Verdini!”

  “But at least you remember his name now.”

  There is a pause. Canducci considers his situation.

  “I don’t talk to cops. I think you’re holding an empty bag. You got a witness? You got fingerprints? You got the knife? If you had any lever on me, we wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d be downtown. You’re empty, cop!” Canducci says this last loudly, to be overheard by the boys in the back. He wants them to see how he treats cops.

  Candy Al’s reasoning is correct, so LaPointe has to take another tack. He shifts in his chair and looks out the window past Canducci’s head. For a moment he seems to be absorbed in watching two kids playing in the street, coatless despite the cold. “I hear you’ve got something going with your boys back there,” he says absently.

  “What do you mean? What you talking?”

  “I’m talking about the rumor that you keep your boys around for pleasure. That you pay them to use you like a woman.” LaPointe shrugs. “Your flashy clothes, your silks, you wear a girdle… it’s easy to see how a rumor like that could spread.”

  Canducci’s face bloats with outrage. “Who’s saying this? Give me a name! I’ll sink my fingernails into his forehead and snatch his fucking face off!”

  LaPointe lifts a hand. “Take it easy. The rumor hasn’t started yet.”

  Canducci is confused. “What the hell you talking about?”

  “But by tomorrow night, everyone on the street will be saying that you take it like a woman. I only have to drop a hint here, a wink there.”