The Main

by Trevanian

  “A little,” LaPointe says. “You have a connection with McGill then?”

  “No formal connection. Some of their students get experience and credit by working with us. Oh!” She butts her cigarette hurriedly. “Excuse me just a moment, won’t you.” She leaves the “conversation island,” consisting of deeply padded white leather “comfort forms” around a kidney-shaped, glass-topped coffee table, the whole sunken two steps below the floor level. She goes quickly to her desk overlooking Carre St. Louis, and there she presses the button of a concealed tape recorder and speaks conversationally: “Maggie, remind me tomorrow to get in touch with Dr. Moreland. Subject: Evaluation Procedures for Part-time Students.” She releases the button and smiles across at the policemen. “I would have forgotten that completely if I hadn’t happened to mention it to you. I’ve got a brain like a sieve.”

  This is a social lie and an obvious one. Mlle. Montjean runs her specialized and very expensive school with such great efficiency that she appears to have free time for people who drop in unexpectedly. Even policemen.

  The school occupies a double building: the facades of two former homes have been gutted and renovated to contain “conversation foyers,” “learning environments,” and audio-visual support systems on the first two floors, while the mansard-roofed third story houses Mlle. Montjean’s living and working quarters. Guttmann is impressed by the way she has folded into her large living room the equipment necessary for running her business. Files are concealed within Victorian court cupboards; her hi-fi system is tied in with her dictation instruments; her business telephones are ceramic French “coffee-grinder” models; her desk is an inlaid feminine escritoire; the “conversation island” would serve equally well for staff meetings or a romantic tete-a-tete. The walls and ceiling are white stucco with attic beams revealed and varnished, and this neutral background helps to blend the improbable, but not offensive, melange of modern, Victorian, and antique furniture.

  In theory it ought not work, this mixture of furniture styles, the stucco walls and dark beams, the Persian carpets, the modern and classical prints on the walls. But any feeling of discord and jumble is avoided by the sense that everything has been selected by one person of firm personality and taste. All the elements are aligned by one coign of vantage, one articulation of preference.

  LaPointe doesn’t like the place.

  “I haven’t offered you a drink, have I?” she says, shaking her head as though to imply she would forget it if it weren’t attached. “What do you take before lunch? Dubonnet?”

  Guttmann says Dubonnet would be fine.

  “Lieutenant?” she asks.

  “Nothing, thank you.” After being shown up to the office apartment by a fussy man of uncertain function, LaPointe presented his identification card and introduced a question about the faculty of the school. Graciously, indeed overwhelmingly, Mlle. Montjean took up the cue, describing her business with a glibness that had a quality of rote. Even the asides and pauses to light a cigarette seemed considered, rehearsed. She said more than he wanted to know, as though attempting to drown questions with answers.

  LaPointe sits back and lets Guttmann be the focus for her talk. This kind of woman—educated, capable, confident of her attraction and gifts—is alien to LaPointe’s experience.

  Of one thing he is sure; she is hiding something.

  “Are you sure I can’t tempt you, Lieutenant? I have everything.” She gestures toward a bar at the end of the room, near a wide marble fireplace.

  “Say, that’s a real bar,” Guttmann says in surprise. “That’s fantastic.” He rises and goes with her as she crosses to pour out the drinks. It is indeed a real bar, complete with back bar and beveled mirrors, a brass rail, copper fittings, and even a spittoon.

  “I like to believe my guests will treat that as a mere decoration,” she says, indicating the spittoon.

  “Where did you get a turn-of-the-century bar like this?” Guttmann asks.

  “Oh, they were tearing down one of those little places up on the Main, and I just bought it.” She grins mischievously. “The workmen had a hell of a time getting it up here. The walnut top is one piece. They had to bring it in through the window.”

  Guttmann tries the bar on for size, putting his stomach against the polished wood and his foot up on the rail. “Fits just fine. I’ll bet the neighbors wondered what you were up to here. I mean, a whole bar. Come on!”

  “That never occurred to me. I should have had my bed brought in through the window, too. That would really have given them something to gossip about. It’s one of those big circular waterbeds.” She laughs lightly. Guttmann realizes she is a very attractive woman.

  LaPointe’s patience with this social nonsense is thin. He rises from the deep cushions of the “conversation island” and joins them at the bar. “I would like a little Armagnac after all, Mlle. Montjean. And I would like to know something about Antonio Verdini, alias Tony Green.”

  She does not pause in pouring out the Dubonnet, but her voice is unmodulated when she responds, “And I would like to know what you’re doing here. Why you’re interested in my school. And why you’re asking these questions.” She looks up and smiles at LaPointe. “Armagnac, did you say?”

  “Please. Do you mind the questions?”

  “I’m not sure.” She takes down the Armagnac bottle and looks at it thoughtfully. “Tell me, Lieutenant LaPointe. Would my lawyer be unhappy with me, if I were to answer your questions without his being here?”

  “Possibly. How did you know my name?”

  “You showed me your identification when you came in.”

  “You barely glanced at it.” There is another thing he does not mention. By habit he holds out his identification card with his thumb over his name. He’s been a cop for a long time.

  She sets the bottle down and looks directly at him, her eyes shifting from one of his to the other. Then she slowly raises both arms until her palms are level with her ears. In a deep, graveled voice she says, “You got me, Lieutenant. I give up. But don’t tell Rocky and the rest of the mob that I ratted.”

  Both she and Guttmann laugh. A glance from LaPointe, and she is laughing alone as she pours out the Armagnac. “Say when.”

  “That’s fine. Now, how do you know my name?”

  “Don’t be so modest. Everyone on the Main knows Lieutenant LaPointe.”

  “You know the Main?”

  “I grew up there. Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant. There’s no way in the world you could remember me. I left when I was just a kid. Thirteen years old. But I remember you. Of course that was twenty years ago, and you weren’t a lieutenant, and your hair was all black, and you were slimmer. But I remember you.” There is something harder than amusement in the glitter of her eyes. Then she turns to Guttmann. “What do you think of that? What do you think of a woman giving away her age like that? Here I go admitting that I’m thirty-three, when I know perfectly that I could pass for thirty-two any day… if the light wasn’t too strong.”

  “So you come from the street?” LaPointe says, unconvinced.

  “Oh, yes, sir. From the deepest depths of the street. My mother was a hooker.” She has learned to say that with the same offhandedness as one might use to mention that her mother was a blonde, or a liberal. She evidently likes to drop bombs. But she laughs almost immediately. “Hey, what do you say, gang. Shall we drink at the bar, or go sit in a booth?”

  When they have returned to the “conversation island,” Mlle. Montjean assumes her most businesslike voice. She tells LaPointe that she wants to know exactly why he is here, asking questions. When she knows that, she will decide whether or not to answer without the advice of counsel.

  “Have you any reason to think you might be in trouble?” he asks.

  But she is not taking sucker bait like that. She smiles as she sips her aperitif.

  LaPointe is not comfortable with her elusive blend of caution and practiced charm. She is so unlike the girls on his patch, though she
claims to be one of them. He dislikes being kept off balance by her constant changes of verbal personality. She was the urbane vamp at first, completely castrating the policeman in Guttmann. Then there was that clowning “gun moll” routine under the guise of which she had admitted to being caught off base… but to nothing more. LaPointe fears that when he hits her with the fact that Green is dead, her control will be so high that it will mask any surprise she might feel. In that way, she could seem guilty without being so. She might even confuse him by being frank and honest. She is the type for whom honesty is also a ploy.

  “So,” LaPointe says, looking around at the costly things decorating the apartment, “you’re from the Main, are you?”

  “From is the active word, Lieutenant. I’ve spent my whole life being from the Main.”

  “Montjean? You say your mother was a hooker named Montjean?”

  “No, I didn’t say that, Lieutenant. Naturally, I have changed my name.”

  “From?”

  Mlle. Montjean smiles. “Can I offer you another Armagnac? I’m afraid it will have to be a quick one; I have a working lunch coming up. We’re involved in something that might interest you, Lieutenant. We’re developing an intensive course in Joual. You’d be surprised at the number of people who want to learn the Canadian usages and accents. Salesmen, mostly, and politicians. The kinds of people who make their living by being trusted. Like policemen.”

  LaPointe finishes his drink and sets the tulip glass carefully on the glass tabletop. “This Antonio Verdini I mentioned…?”

  “Yes?” She lifts her eyebrows lazily.

  “He’s dead. Stabbed in an alley up on the Main.”

  She looks levelly at LaPointe, not a flutter in her eyelids. After a moment, her gaze falls to the marble-and-gold cigarette lighter, and she stares at it, motionless. Then she takes a cigarette from a carved teak box, lights it, tilts back her head with a bounce of her hair, and jets the uninhaled smoke over the heads of her guests. She delicately plucks an imaginary bit of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.

  “Oh?” she asks.

  “Presumably you were lovers,” LaPointe says matter-of-factly, ignoring Guttmann’s quick glance.

  Mlle. Montjean shrugs. “We screwed, if that’s what you mean.” More of that precious bomb-dropping, a kind of counter-attack against LaPointe’s ballistic use of Green’s death. Her control had been excellent throughout her long pause… but there was the pause.

  “Our information says that he was learning English here,” LaPointe continues. “I assume that’s right?”

  “Yes. One of our Italian-speaking instructors was guiding him through an intensive course in English.”

  “And that’s how you met him?”

  “That’s how I met him, Lieutenant. Tell me, do I need a lawyer now?”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Then you probably don’t need a lawyer. Unless you intend to withhold information, or refuse to assist us in our inquiry.”

  She taps the ash from her cigarette unnecessarily, gaining time to think. Her control is still good, but for the first time she is troubled.

  “You’re thinking about the others, of course,” LaPointe says.

  “What others?”

  LaPointe bends on her that melancholy patience he assumes during examination when he lacks the information necessary to lead the conversation.

  “All right, Lieutenant. I’ll cooperate. But let me ask you something first. Does this have to get into the papers?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “You see, my school is rather special—expensive, elite. Scandal would ruin it. And it’s everything I’ve worked for. It represents ten years of work. What’s more, it represents the ten thousand miles I’ve managed to walk away from the Main. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I understand. Tell me about the others.”

  “Well, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Mike was killed the same way: stabbed in the street.”

  “Mike?”

  “Michael Pearson. Dr. Michael Pearson. He used to run the Language Learning Center at McGill.”

  “And you were lovers?”

  She smiles thinly. “You do run to circumlocution, don’t you?”

  “And what about the other one. The American?”

  Her eyes open with confusion. “What other one?”

  “The American. Ah…” He looks to Guttmann.

  “John Albert MacHenry,” Guttmann fills in quickly.

  Mlle. Montjean glances from one to the other. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think I ever met anyone by that name. I can assure you that I never… screwed… your Mr. MacHenry.” She reaches over and squeezes LaPointe’s arm. “That’s just my homey way of saying we were not lovers, Lieutenant.”

  “You seem sure of that, Mlle. Montjean. Do you keep a list?”

  Her smile is fixed and her eyes perfectly cold. “As a matter of fact, I do. At least, I keep a diary. And it’s a fairly long list, if you will forgive my bragging. I enjoy keeping count. My analyst tells me that it’s rather typical behavior in cases like mine. He tells me the reason I use so many men is because I detest them, and by scoring them one after the other I deny them any individuality. He talks like that, my analyst. Like a textbook. And can you guess when he told me all this crap? In bed. After I had scored him too. Later, he sat right there where you’re sitting and told me how he understood my need to screw even him. A typical gesture of rejection, he told me. And when I mentioned that he wasn’t much of a lay, he tried to laugh it off. But I know I got to him.” She grins. “The phony bastard.”

  “The point of all that being that you don’t know this American, this MacHenry?”

  “Precisely. Oh, I’ve had my share of Americans, of course. One should have an American at least once a quarter. It makes Canadians look so good by comparison. And at least once a year, one should have an Englishman. Partially to make even the Americans look good, and partially as penance. Did you know that making love with a Brit shortens one’s time in purgatory?” The intercom on her desk buzzes; Mlle. Montjean butts out her cigarette and rises, flattening her skirt with her palms. “That will be my luncheon appointment. I assume I’m free to go to it?”

  LaPointe rises. “Yes. But we have more to talk about.”

  She has crossed to her desk and is taking up a folder of material pertaining to her working lunch. She glances at her calendar. “I’m tied up all afternoon. Are you free tonight, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say nine o’clock? Here?”

  She shakes hands with Guttmann, then offers her hand to LaPointe. “You really don’t remember me, do you, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m afraid not. Should I?”

  Still holding his hand, she smiles a montage of amusement and sadness. “We’ll talk about it tonight. Armagnac, isn’t it?”

  She shows them to the door.

  By nine o’clock it is dark in the little park of Carre St. Louis. For the first time in weeks, the wind is from the north and steady. If it remains in that quarter, it will bring the cleansing snow. But its immediate effect is to hone the edge of the damp cold. LaPointe has to fold in the flap of his collar against his throat as he cuts across the deserted park, picking his way carefully over the root-veined path because the dappled light from distant streetlights serves more to confuse than to illuminate.

  Suddenly he stops. Save for the hiss of wind through gnarled branches, there is no sound. But he has a tingling in the back of his neck, as though someone were watching him. He looks around through the zebra dapple of black trees and shadows interlaced with the silver of streetlights bordering the park. There is nothing to be seen.

  He continues across toward Mlle. Montjean’s school, where there are lights behind drawn shades on the first and third floors; probably late students learning French or English in a hurry. His knock is answered by the fussy man he met earlier. Mlle. Montjean is not in, but she is due
any minute; she has left instructions that the Lieutenant is to be shown up to her apartment. The nervous man looks LaPointe over, his lips pursed critically. It isn’t his business who Mlle. Montjean’s friends are. He doesn’t care what his employer does on her own time. But there are limits. A policeman, really. Oh, well, he’ll show him up anyway.

  Three lamps light the apartment, pooling three distinct areas. There is a porcelain lamp on the escritoire by the windows overlooking the square; a dim hanging lamp picks out the sunken “conversation island”; and beyond that, over the bar, is a glass ball confected of bits of colored glass and lit from within. The room is centrally heated, the dwindling fire in the fireplace largely decorative. LaPointe takes off his overcoat and makes himself at home to the extent of putting two kiln-dried, steam-cleaned logs on the fire and poking at the embers. He enjoys fiddling with open fires, and he often pictures himself in his daydream home in Laval, turning logs or pushing in burnt-off ends. The bark has begun to crackle and flutter with blue flame when Mlle. Montjean enters, her coat already off, her fur hat in her hand.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. But you know how these things are.” She does not mention what things. “Oh, good. I’m glad you’ve tended the fire. I was afraid it would die out; and I set it especially for you.” She ducks under the bar flap and begins to pour out two Armagnacs, light from the ball of glass shining in her carefully done hair. When LaPointe sits on a bar stool across from her, he realizes that she has been drinking fairly heavily, not beyond control, but perhaps a little beyond caring.

  “I hope you didn’t have anything big on tonight,” she says.

  “Nothing very big. A pinochle game I had to postpone, that’s all.”

  “Hey, wow, Lieutenant.” She makes two clicking sounds at the side of her cheek. “Pinochle! You really know how to get it on.” She lifts her glass. “Salut?”

  “Salut.”

  She finishes half her drink and sets it down on the bar. “That word ‘salut’ reminds me of a proof we recently had that our aural-oral system of language learning is not without its flaws. We had an Arab student here—a nephew of one of those oil pirates—and he was being preened to take over the world, or learn to surrender in six languages, or whatever the fuck they do. Dumb as a stick! But they were giving him all sorts of special tutoring at McGill—I think his uncle bribed them by buying an atomic laboratory for them, or half of South America, or something like that… I mean, he was really stupid. He was so dumb he’d have difficulty making the faculty of a polytechnic in Britain, or getting his Ph.D. in journalism in the States… That line would get a laugh in an academic crowd.”