The Main

by Trevanian

  “I’m not a lawyer.”

  “I know, I know. But you know something about the law. This may come as a surprise to you, but I am not immortal. I could die. At my age, you have to think about such things. So tell me. What do I have to do to make sure the business goes to Moishe if he should, cholilleh, outlive me?”

  LaPointe shrugs. “I don’t know. Isn’t all that handled in your partnership agreement?”

  “Well… that’s the problem. Actually, Moishe and I aren’t partners. In the legal sense, I mean. And I have a nephew. I’d hate to see him come along and screw Moishe out of the business. And, believe me, he’s capable of it. Of working for a living, he’s not capable. But of screwing someone out of something? Of that he is capable.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean, you and Moishe aren’t partners? I thought he started the business, then later took you on as a partner.”

  “That’s right. But you know Moishe. He’s not interested in the business end of business. A beautiful person, but in business a luftmensh. So over the years, he sold out to me so that he wouldn’t have to be bothered with taxes and records and all that.”

  “And you’re afraid that if you die—”

  “—cholilleh—”

  “—he might not get the business? Well, David, I told you I’m no lawyer. But it seems to me that all you have to do is make out a will.”

  David sighs deeply. “Yes, I was afraid of that. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. I’m not a superstitious man, don’t get me wrong. But in my opinion a man is just asking for it, if he makes out his will while he’s still alive. It’s like saying to God, Okay. I’m ready whenever you are. And speaking personally for myself, I’m not ready. If a truck should run over me—okay, that’s that. But I’m not going to stand in the middle of the street shouting, Hey! Truck-drivers! I’m ready!”

  As LaPointe steps out onto the blustery street, turning up the collar of his overcoat, he meets Moishe, returning from seeing Guttmann to his car. They fall into step and walk along together, as they usually do after games.

  “That’s a nice young man, Claude.”

  “He’s all right, I suppose. What did you talk about?”

  “You.”

  LaPointe laughs. “Me as a crime? Or me as a sin?”

  “Neither one, exactly. We talked about his university studies; how much the things he learned turned out to reflect the real world.”

  “How did I fit into that?”

  “You were the classic example of how the things he learned were not like it is in the real world. The things you do and believe are the opposite of everything he wants to do with his life, of everything he believes in. But, oddly enough, he admires you.”

  “Hm-m! I didn’t think he liked me all that much.”

  “I didn’t say he likes you. He admires you. He thinks you’re the best of your kind.”

  “But he can live without the kind.”

  “That’s about it.”

  They have reached the corner where they usually part with a handshake. But tonight Moishe asks, “Are you in a hurry to go home, Claude?”

  LaPointe realizes that Moishe is still hungry for talk; the short walk with Guttmann couldn’t have made up for his usual ramblings with Father Martin. For himself, LaPointe has no desire to get to his apartment. He has known all day what he will find there.

  “How about a glass of tea?” Moishe suggests.

  “Sure.”

  They go across the street to a Russian cafe where tea is served in glasses set in metal holders. Their table is by the window, and they watch late passers-by in the comfortable silence of old friends who no longer have to talk to impress one another, or to define themselves.

  “You know,” Moishe says idly, “I’m afraid I frightened him off, your young colleague. With a young girl on his mind, the last thing in the world he needed was a long-winded talk about sin and crime.” He smiles and shakes his head at himself. “Being a bore is bad enough. Knowing you’re boring but going ahead anyway, that’s worse.”

  “Hm-m. I could see you had something stored up.”

  Moishe fixes his friend with a sidelong look. “What do you mean, I had something stored up?”

  “Oh, you know. All through the game you were sending out little feelers; but Father Martin wasn’t there to take you up. You know, I sometimes think you work out what you’re going to say during the day, while you’re cutting away on your fabric. Then you drop these ideas casually during the pinochle game, like they just popped into your head. And poor Martin is fishing around for his first thoughts, while you have everything carefully thought out.”

  “Guilty! And being guilty I don’t mind so much as being transparent!” He laughs. “What chance does the criminal have against you, tell me that.”

  LaPointe shrugs. “Oh, they manage to muddle along all right.”

  Moishe nods. “Muddle along. System M: the big Muddle. The major organization principle of all governments. She seemed like a nice girl.”

  LaPointe frowns. “What?”

  “That girl I met in your apartment yesterday. She seemed nice.”

  LaPointe looks at his friend. “Why do you say that? You know perfectly well she didn’t seem nice. She seemed like a street girl, which is all she is.”

  “Yes, but…” Moishe shrugs and turns his attention to the street. After a silence, he says, “Yes, you’re right. She did seem like a street girl. But all girls of her age seem nice to me. I know better, but… My sister was just her age when we went into the camp. She was very lovely, my sister. Very shy. She never… she didn’t survive the camp.” He stares out the window for a while. Then he says quietly, “I’m not even sure I did. Entirely. You know what I mean?”

  LaPointe cannot know what he means; he doesn’t answer.

  “I guess that’s why I imagine that all girls of her age are nice… are vulnerable. That’s funny. Girls of her age! If she had lived, my sister would be in her early fifties now. I can’t picture that. I get older, but she remains twenty in my mind. You know what I mean?”

  LaPointe knows exactly what he means; he doesn’t answer.

  Moishe closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Ach, I don’t think I’m up to stumbling around in these parts of my memory. Better to let these things rest. They have been well grieved.”

  “Well grieved? That’s a funny thing to say.”

  “Why funny, Claude? You think grief is shameful?”

  LaPointe shrugs. “I don’t think about it at all.”

  “That’s odd. Of course grief is good! The greatest proof that God is not just playing cruel games with us is that He gave us the ability to grieve, and to forget. When one is wounded—I don’t mean physically—forgetfulness cauterizes and heals it over, but there would be rancor and hate and bitterness trapped under the scar. Grief is how you drain the wound, so it doesn’t poison you. You understand what I mean?”

  LaPointe lifts his palms. “No, Moishe. I don’t. I’m sorry… but I’m not Father Martin. This kind of talk…”

  “But Claude, this isn’t philosophy! Okay, maybe I say things too fancy, too preciously, but what I’m talking about isn’t abstract. It’s everyday life. It’s… obvious!”

  “Not to me. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say grief is good. It has nothing to do with me.” LaPointe realizes that his tone is unfriendly, that he is closing the door to the chat Moishe seems to need. But this talk about grief makes him uncomfortable.

  Behind his round glasses, Moishe’s eyes read LaPointe’s face. “I see. Well… at least allow me to pay for the tea. That way, I won’t regret having bored you. Regret! There’s a little trio often confused: Grief, Remorse, Regret! Grief is the gift of the gods; Remorse is the whip of the gods; and Regret…? Regret is nothing. It’s what you say in a letter when you can’t fill an order in time.”

  LaPointe looks out the window. He hopes Father Martin will get well soon.

  They shake hands on the sidewalk in fro
nt of the Russian cafe, and LaPointe decides to take one last walk down the Main before turning in. He has to put his street to bed.

  Even before switching on the green-and-red lamp, he senses in the temperature of the room, in the smell of the still air, the emptiness.

  Of course, he knew she would be gone when he came back tonight. He knew it as he lay in bed beside her, smelling the ouzo she had drunk. He knew it as he tried to get back to sleep after that dream… what was it? Something about water?

  He makes coffee and brings the cup to his armchair. The streetlamps down in the park spill damp yellow light onto the gravel paths. Sometimes it seems the snow will never come.

  The silence in the room is dense, irritating. LaPointe tells himself that it’s just as well Marie-Louise is gone. She was becoming a nuisance, with that silly, brief laugh of hers. He sniffs derision at himself and reaches for one of his Zolas, not caring which one. He opens the volume at random and begins to read. He has read them through and through, and it no longer matters where he begins or ends. Before long, he is looking through the page, his eyes no longer moving.

  Images, some faded, some crisp, project themselves onto his memory in a sequence of their own. A thread of the past comes unraveled, and he tugs it with gentle attention, pulling out people and moments woven so deep into the fabric of the past that they seemed forgotten. The mood of his daydream is not sadness or regret; it is curiosity. Once he has recalled and dealt with a moment or a face, it does not return to his memory. He examines the fragment, then lets it fall from him. He seldom remembers the same thing twice. There isn’t time.

  Some of the images come from his real life: Trois Rivieres, playing in the street as a kid, his grandfather, St. Joseph’s Home, Lucille, the yellow alley cat with the crooked tail, one paw lifted tentatively from the ground.

  Other memories, no less vivid, come from his elaborate fantasy of living in the house in Laval with Lucille and the girls. These images are richest in detail: his workshop in the garage with nails up to hold the tools, and black-painted outlines to show which tool goes where. The girls’ First Holy Communions, all in white with gifts of silver rosaries and photographs posed for reluctantly and stiffly. He sees the youngest girl—the tomboy, the imp—with her scuffed knee just visible under the thin white communion stocking…

  He sniffs and rises. His rinsed-out cup is placed on the drainboard, where it always goes. He cleans the pressure maker and puts it where he always puts it. Then he goes into the bathroom to shave, as he always does, before going to bed. As he swishes down the black whiskers, he notices several long hairs in the bowl. She must have washed her hair before leaving. And she didn’t rinse it out carefully. Sloppy twit.

  He is sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling off his shoes, when something occurs to him. He pads into the living room and opens the drawer in which he keeps his house money, uncounted and wadded up. There is a bunch of twenties there, some tens. He does not know how much there was in the first place. Perhaps she took some. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she left some.

  He lies on his back in the middle of the bed, looking up at the ceiling glowing from the streetlamp outside the window.

  He never realized before how big this bed is.

  Guttmann is tapping away on the portable typewriter when LaPointe enters with a grunt of greeting as he hangs his overcoat on the wooden rack.

  “I’m beginning to see daylight at the end of the tunnel, sir.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “These reports.”

  “Ah. Good boy. You’ve got a future in the department. That’s the important thing—the paper work.” LaPointe picks up a yellow telephone memo from his desk. “What’s this?”

  “You got a call. I took the message.”

  “Hm-m.” The call was from Carrot. She questioned her clients who went bar crawling with Tony Green; there seemed to be only one place he frequented regularly, the Happy Hour Whisky a Go-Go on Rachel Street. LaPointe knows the place, just one block off the Main. He decides to drop in on his way home that evening. The leads are thinning out; this is the last live one.

  “Anything else?” he asks.

  “You got a call from upstairs. The Commissioner wants to see you.”

  “That’s wonderful.” He sits at his desk and glances over the Morning Report: several car thefts, two muggings, somebody shot in a bar in east Montreal, another mugging, a runaway teen-ager… all routine. Nothing interesting, nothing from the Main.

  He starts to make out his duty sheet for yesterday. What did he do yesterday? What can you write down? Drank coffee with Bouvier? Talked to Candy Al Canducci? Walked around the streets? Played pinochle? Took a glass of tea with Moishe? Went home to find the bed bigger than I remembered? He turns the green form over and looks at the three-quarters of a page left blank for “Remarks and Suggestions.” He suppresses an urge to write: Why don’t you shove this form up your ass?

  LaPointe is feeling uncertain this morning, and diminished. He had a major crise while brushing his teeth. First the fizzing blood, then tight bands of jagged pain gripped his chest and upper arms. He felt himself falling forward into a gray mist in which lights exploded. When it passed, he was on his knees, his forehead on the toilet seat. As he continued brushing his teeth, he joked with himself: I guess you better get a lighter toothbrush, LaPointe.

  “Tomorrow’s my last day,” Guttmann says.

  “What?”

  “Wednesday I go back to working with Sergeant Gaspard.”

  “Oh?” It is a noncommittal sound. He has enjoyed showing off his patch and his people to the kid; he has even enjoyed Guttmann’s way of braving out his scorn for the shiny new college ideas. But it wouldn’t do to seem to miss the boy.

  “How did it go last night?” he asks, making conversation to avoid the goddamned paper work.

  “Go, sir? Oh, with Jeanne?”

  “If that’s her name.”

  Guttmann smiles in memory. “Well, I got there late, of course. And at first she didn’t believe me when I told her I was playing pinochle with three men in the back room of an upholstery shop. It sounded phony to me even while I was saying it.”

  “Does it matter what she thinks?”

  Guttmann considers this for a second. “Yes, it does. She’s a nice person.”

  “Ah, I see. Not just a girl. Not just a lay.”

  “That’s the way it started, of course. And God knows I’m not knocking that part of it. But there’s more. We sort of fit together. It’s hard to explain, because I don’t mean that we always agree. Matter of fact, we almost never agree. It’s kind of like a mold and a coin, if you know what I mean. They’re exact opposites, and they fit together perfectly.” There is a slight shift in his tone, and he is now thinking out the relationship aloud, rather than talking to LaPointe. “She’s the only person I’ve ever known who… I mean, I don’t have to be set up and ready when I talk to her. I just say what I feel like saying, and it doesn’t bother me if it comes out wrong, or stupid-sounding. You know what I mean, sir?”

  “How did you meet her?”

  Guttmann doesn’t understand why LaPointe is interested, but he enjoys the uncommon friendly tone of the chat. He has no way of knowing that his leaving tomorrow is what allows the Lieutenant to relax with him, because he won’t have to deal with him further. “Well, I told you she lives in my apartment building. We met in the basement.”

  “Sounds romantic.”

  Guttmann laughs. “Yeah. There’s a bunch of coin-operated washing machines down there. It was late at night, and we were alone, waiting for our washing to get done, so we started talking.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t remember. Soap, maybe. Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Pretty? Well, yes, I guess so. I mean, obviously I find her attractive. That first night in the basement, I wasn’t thinking of much other than getting her into bed. But pretty isn’t what she
is mostly. If I had to pick one thing about her, it would be her nutty sense of humor.”

  LaPointe sniffs and shakes his head. “That sounds dangerous. I remember when I was a kid on the force, I went on a couple of blind dates set up by friends. And whenever they described my girl as ‘a good talker’ or ‘a kid with a great sense of humor,’ that always meant she was a dog. What I usually wanted at the time was a pig, not a dog.”

  For a second, Guttmann tries to picture the Lieutenant as a young cop going on blind dates. The image won’t come into focus.

  “I know what you mean,” he says. “But you know what’s even worse than that?”

  “What?”

  “When the guy who’s set you up can’t think of anything to say but that your girl has nice hands. That’s when you’re really in trouble!”

  LaPointe is laughing in agreement when the phone rings. It is the Commissioner’s office, and the young lady demanding that LaPointe come up immediately has a snotty, impatient tone.

  After announcing on the intercom that Lieutenant LaPointe is in the outer office, the secretary with the impeding miniskirt sets busily to work, occasionally glancing accusingly at the Lieutenant. When she arrived at the office at eight that morning, the Commissioner was already at work.

  The man who isn’t a step AHEAD is a step BEHIND.

  Resnais’ mood was angry and tense, and everyone in the office was made to feel its sting. The secretary blames LaPointe for her boss’s mood.

  For the first time, Resnais doesn’t come out of his office to greet LaPointe with his bogus handshake and smile. Three clipped words over the intercom request that he be sent in.

  When LaPointe enters, Resnais is standing with his back to the window, rocking up on his toes. The gray light of the overcast day glints off the purplish suntan on his head, and there is a lighter tone to his sunlamped bronze around the ears, indicating that his haircut is fresh.