The Main

by Trevanian

  “Bullshit! Nobody would believe you! I got a doll on my arm every night.”

  “A smart cover-up. But always a different girl. They never hang around. Maybe because you can’t satisfy them.”

  “Agh, I get tired of them. I need a little variety.”

  “That’s your story. The other bosses would grab up a rumor like that in a second. They’d have big laughs over it. So Candy Al is a fif! Some punk would paint words on your car. Pretty soon your boys would drift away, because they don’t want people saying they’re queers. You’d be alone. People would talk behind their hands when you walked by. They’d whistle at you from across the street.” Every touch is calculated to make the proud Italian wince.

  His mind racing, Canducci glares at LaPointe for a full minute. Yes. A rumor like that would spread like clap in a nunnery. They’d love it, those shitheads over on Marconi Street. His jaw tightens and he looks down at the floor. “You’d do that? You’d spread a rumor like that about a man?”

  LaPointe snaps his fingers softly. “Like that.”

  Candy Al glances toward the poolroom and lowers his voice. He speaks quickly to get it over with. “All right. This Verdini? A friend asked me to find a room for him because his English ain’t too good. I found the room. And that’s it. That’s all I know. If he got himself killed, that’s tough shit. I got nothing to do with it.”

  “What’s this friend’s name?”

  “I don’t remember. I got lots of friends.”

  “Just a minute ago you told me you didn’t have any friends.”

  “Agh!”

  LaPointe lets the silence sit on Canducci.

  “Look! I’m giving it to you straight, Lieutenant!”

  “Lieutenant? What happened to Canuck?”

  Canducci shrugs, lifting his hands and dipping his head. “Agh, I was just pissed. People say things when they’re pissed.”

  “I see. I want you to say the word ‘wop’ for me.”

  “Ah, come on!”

  “Say it.”

  Canducci turns his head and stares at the wall. “Wop,” he says softly.

  “Good. Now keep talking about this kid.”

  “I already told you everything I know!”

  After a moment of silence, LaPointe sighs and rises. “Have it your way, Canducci. But tell me one thing. Those boys back there? Which one’s best?”

  “That ain’t funny!”

  “Your friends will think so.” LaPointe slaps his hand on the bar to summon the barmaid, who disappeared when she heard how things were going in the poolroom. She has been around enough to know that it is not wise to witness Candy Al’s defeats. She comes from the back room, tugging down her skirt, which is so tight across the hips that it continually rides up.

  “What do I owe you?” LaPointe asks.

  “Just a minute,” Canducci says, raising his hand. “What’s your rush? Sit down, why don’t you?”

  The barmaid looks from one to the other, then returns to the back room.

  LaPointe sits down. “That’s better. But let’s cut the bullshit. I don’t have the time. I’ll start the story for you. This Green was brought into the country illegally. You were laundering him. You found him a room on the lower Main, away from this district where the immigration authorities might look for him if the Italian officials had sent out a want bulletin. You kept him in walking-around money. You probably arranged for him to learn a little English, because that’s part of the laundering process. Now you take it from there.”

  Canducci looks at LaPointe for a moment. “I’m not admitting any of that, you know.”

  “Of course not. But let’s pretend it’s true.”

  “Okay. Just pretending what you say is true… This kid was a sort of distant cousin to me. The same village in Calabria. He was supposed to be a smart kid, and tough. But he gets into a little trouble back in the old country. So next thing you know he’s here, and I’ve promised to find some kind of work for him. As a favor.”

  LaPointe smiles at the obliquity.

  “Okay. So I get him a room, and I get him started learning some English. But I don’t see him often. That wouldn’t be smart, you dig? But all the time this bastard’s needing money. I give him a lot, but he always needs more. He blows it on the holes. I never seen such a crotch hound. I warn him that he’s beginning to get a reputation about all the squack he’s stabbing, and what the super don’t need right now is a reputation. He goes after all kinds. Even old women. He’s sort of weird that way, you know? So the only time I visit him is to tell him he shouldn’t draw attention to himself. I tell him to take it easy with the holes. But he don’t listen, and he asks me for more money. Five will get nine it was a woman that put the knife into him.”

  “Go on.”

  “Go on to what? That’s all! I warn him, but he don’t listen. And you walk in here this morning and tell me he’s got himself reamed. He should of listened.”

  “You don’t sound too sorry for your cousin.”

  “I should be sorry for myself! I’m out a lot of scratch! And for what?”

  “Call it a business risk. Okay, give me the names of some of his women.”

  “Who knows names? Shit, he was on the make day and night. Drag a net down the Main and you’ll come up with half a dozen he’s rammed. But I can tell you this. He went for weird action. Two at a time. Old women. Gimps. Kids. That sort of thing.”

  “You said something about his taking English lessons? Who was he taking them from?”

  “No idea. I give him a list of ads from the papers. I let him pick for himself. The less I know about what these guys are doing, the better for me.”

  “What else do you want to tell me?”

  “There’s nothing else to tell. And listen—” Canducci points a chubby white finger at LaPointe—”there ain’t no witnesses here. Anything I might have said, I would deny in court. Right?”

  LaPointe nods, his eyes never leaving Candy Al’s as he weighs and evaluates the story he just heard. “It could be the way you say. It could also be that the kid got too dangerous for you, drawing attention to himself and always asking you for money. It could be you decided to cut your losses.”

  “My word of honor!”

  LaPointe’s lower eyelids droop. “Well, if I have your word of honor… what else could I want?” He rises and begins to tug on his overcoat. “If I decide I need more from you, I’ll be by. And if you try to leave town, I’ll take that as a confession.”

  Canducci dabs at his eyes once more, then folds his mauve handkerchief carefully into his breast pocket and pats it into place. “It’s a crying goddamned shame, you know that?”

  “What is?”

  “That way this kid gets me into trouble. That’s what you get for trying to help a relative.”

  After LaPointe and Guttmann leave the bar, Canducci sits for a time, thinking about how he will play it. He takes several bills from his wallet. As he saunters into the poolroom where his boys are standing around sheepishly, working their hands to restore circulation, he tucks the money back into the wallet with a flourish. “Sorry about that, boys. My fault. I got a little behind in my payments. These penny-and-nickel cops don’t like it when they don’t get their payoff on time. Okay, rack ‘em up.”

  They are the only customers in the A-One Cafe. After serving them the one-plate lunch, the old Chinese has returned to his station by the window where, his eyes empty, he looks out on the sooty brick warehouses across the street.

  “Well?” LaPointe asks. “How do you like it?”

  Guttmann pushes his plate aside and shakes his head. “What was it called?”

  “I don’t think it has a name.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  There is a certain pride in the Lieutenant’s voice when he says, “It’s the worst food in Montreal, maybe in all of Canada. That’s why you can always come here to talk. There’s never anyone else here to disturb you.”

  “Hm-m!” Guttmann notices that his grunt
sounded just like the Lieutenant’s grumpy responses.

  During the meal, LaPointe has filled him in on what he learned from Candy Al, together with a description of the operation known as laundering.

  “And you think this Canducci might have killed Green, or had him killed?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Guttmann shakes his head. “With every lead, we turn another suspect. It’s worse than not having any suspects. We’ve got that tramp, the Vet. Then we’ve got that guy Arnaud, the concierge’s friend. Now Canducci, or one of his punks. And it seems that it might have been almost any woman on the Main who isn’t under ten or over ninety. And what about the woman you talked to alone? The lesbian who runs a cafe. Is she a viable?”

  Is she a viable? Precisely the kind of space-age jargon that LaPointe detests. But he answers. “I suppose. She had reason, and opportunity. And she’s capable of it.”

  “What does that give us now? Four possibles?”

  “Don’t forget your Mr. W—. You came close to wringing a confession out of him.”

  Guttmann feels a flush at the nape of his neck. “Yes, sir. That’s right.”

  LaPointe chuckles. “I’m not ragging you, kid.”

  “Oh? Is that so, sir?”

  “No, you’re thinking all right. You’re thinking like a good cop. But don’t forget that this Green was a turd. Just about everybody he touched would have some reason for wanting him dead. It’s not all that surprising that we find a suspect behind every door. But pretty soon it will be over.”

  “Over? In what way over?”

  “The leads are starting to thin out. The talk with Canducci didn’t turn another name or address.”

  “The leads could be thinning out because we’ve already touched the killer. And passed him by.”

  “I haven’t passed anybody by yet. And there’s still the possibility that Carrot will come up with a name or two, maybe a bar he used to go to.”

  “Carrot?”

  “The lesbian.”

  “But she’s a suspect herself.”

  “All the more reason for her to help us… if she’s innocent, that is. But I wouldn’t bet on closing this case. I have a feeling that pretty soon we’re going to open the last door, and find that blank wall.”

  “And you don’t particularly care?”

  “Not particularly. Not now that we know the sort of kid the victim was.”

  Guttmann shakes his head. “I can’t buy that.”

  “I know you can’t But I’ve got other things to do besides chase around after shadows. I’ve got the whole neighborhood to look after.”

  “Tell me something, Lieutenant. If this Green were a nice kid, say a kid who grew up on the Main, wouldn’t you try harder?”

  “Probably. But a case like this is hard to sort out. When you’re tracking a kid like this Green, you meet nothing but dirty types. Almost everyone you meet is guilty. The question is, what are they guilty of?”

  “Guilty until proven innocent?”

  “Lawyers being what they are, probably guilty even then.”

  “I hope I never think like that”

  “Stay on the street for a few years. You will. By the way, you didn’t do too badly back in Canducci’s bar. We walked in without a warrant, slapped people around, and you handled yourself like a cop. What happened to all this business about civil rights and going by the book?”

  Guttmann lifts his hands and lets them drop back onto the table. You can’t discuss things with LaPointe. He always cuts both ways. But Guttmann realizes that he has a point. When he handled that tight moment when the boys were resisting the order to sit on their hands, he had felt… competent. There is a danger in being around LaPointe too long. Things get less clear; right and wrong start to blend in at the edges.

  When he looks up, Guttmann sees a crinkling around LaPointe’s eyes. “What is it?”

  “I was just thinking about your Mr. W—.”

  “Honest to God, I’d give a lot if you’d get off that, sir.”

  “No, I wasn’t going to rag you. It just occurred to me that if Mr. W—ever did kill somebody, all he’d have to do would be to wait until it got into the papers, then come to us with a confession involving Jewish plots and Cream of Wheat We’d toss him right out”

  “That’s a comforting thought.”

  “Oh. By the way, didn’t you say something the other night about playing pinochle?”

  “Sir?”

  “Didn’t you tell me you used to play pinochle with your grandfather?”

  “Ah… yes, sir.”

  “Want to play tonight?”

  “Pinochle?”

  “That’s what we’re talking about.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m sorry, but this just came out of nowhere, sir. You’re asking me to play pinochle with you tonight?”

  “With me and a couple of friends. The man who usually plays with us is sick. And cutthroat isn’t much fun.”

  Guttmann senses that this offer is a gesture of acceptance. He can’t remember anyone in the department having bragged about spending off time with the Lieutenant. And he is free tonight. The girl in his building takes classes on Monday nights and doesn’t get back until eleven.

  “Yes, sir. I’d like to play. But it’s been a while, you know.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Nothing but three old farts. But just in case you’re a little rusty, I’ll arrange for you to be partners with a very gentle and understanding man. A man named David Mogolevski.”

  11

  The evening of pinochle has gone well—for David.

  As usual he dominated play, and as usual he overbid his hand, but the luck of the cards allowed Guttmann to bail him out more times than not, and as partners they won devastatingly.

  After a particularly good—and lucky—hand, David asked the young man, “Tell me, have you ever thought of becoming a priest?”

  Guttmann admitted that the idea seldom crossed his mind.

  “That’s good. It would ruin your game.”

  On one occasion, when not even luck was enough to save David from his wild overbidding, he treated Guttmann to one of his grousing tirades about how difficult it was, even for a pinochle maven like himself, to schlep a partner who couldn’t pull his own weight. Unlike Father Martin, Guttmann did not permit himself to be martyred to David’s peculiar and personal view of sportsmanship. He countered with broad sarcasm, mentioning that the Lieutenant had rightly described David as a gentle and understanding partner.

  But David’s thick skin is impervious to such attacks. He thrust out his lower lip and nodded absently, accepting that as an accurate enough description of his character.

  For his part, Moishe was slow in warming to the young intruder into their game, despite Guttmann’s genuine interest in the fabric Moishe had on the loom at that moment. He had been looking forward to one of his rambling philosophic chats with Martin.

  Still, so it shouldn’t be a total loss, he made a venture toward drawing Guttmann out during their break for sandwiches and wine. “You went to university, right? What did you major in?”

  It occurs to LaPointe that he never asked that question. He wasn’t all that interested.

  “Well, nothing really for the first two years. I changed my major three or four times. I was more looking for professors than for fields.”

  “That sounds intelligent,” Moishe says.

  “Finally, I settled down and took the sequence in criminology and penology.”

  “And what sorts of things does one study under those headings?”

  David butts in. “How to steal, naturally. Theft for fun and profit. Theft and the Polish Question.”

  “Why don’t you shut up for a while?” Moishe suggests. “Your mouth could use the rest.”

  David spreads his face in offended innocence and draws back, then he winks at LaPointe. He has been riding Moishe all night, piquing him here and there, ridiculing his play, when he knew perfectly well that all the cards were agains
t him. But he is a little surprised when his gentle partner snaps back like this.

  “So?” Moishe asks Guttmann. “What did you study?”

  Guttmann shrugs off the value of his studies, a little embarrassed about them in the presence of LaPointe. “Oh, a little sociology, some psychology as related to the criminal and criminal motives—that sort of thing.”

  “No literature? No theology?”

  “Some literature, sure. No theology. Would you pass the mustard, please?”

  “Here you are. You know, it’s interesting you should have studied criminal motives and all this. Just lately I have been thinking about crime and sin… the relationships, the differences.”

  “Oh boy,” David puts in. “Here we go again! Listen! About crime it’s all right to think. It’s a citizen’s duty. But about sin? Moishe, my old friend, AK’s like us shouldn’t think about sin. It’s too late. Our chances have passed us by.”

  Guttmann laughs. “No, I’m afraid I never think about things like that, Mr. Rappaport.”

  “You don’t?” Moishe asks gloomily, his hopes for a good talk crumbling. “That’s strange. When I was a young man thinking was a popular pastime.”

  “Things change,” David says.

  “Does that mean they improve?” Moishe asks.

  Guttmann glances at his watch. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to be going. I have a date, and I’m already late.”

  “A date?” David asks. “It’s after eleven. What can you do so late?”

  “We’ll think of something.” As soon as he makes this adolescent single-entendre remark, Guttmann feels he has been disloyal to his girl.

  Moishe rises. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “That isn’t necessary, sir.”

  “You’re already late for your date. And you’re not familiar with the streets around here. So don’t argue. Get your coat.”

  As they leave, Moishe has already begun with “…when you stop to think about it, the differences between sin and crime are greater than the similarities. Take, for instance, the matter of guilt…”

  As the door closes behind them, David looks at LaPointe and shakes his head. “Oh, that Moishe. Sin, crime, love, duty, the law, the good, the bad… he’s interested in everything that’s so big it doesn’t really matter. A scholar! But in practical things…” His lips flap with a puff of air. “That reminds me of something I wanted to talk to you about, Claude. A matter of law.”