Men who look busy are often only disorganized.
Resnais stations himself in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, the glare of the overcast skies making it difficult to look in his direction without squinting.
“Well, how have you been, Claude?”
LaPointe smiles at the accent. Resnais is really trilingual. He speaks continental French; perfect English, although with the growled “r” of the Francophone who has finally located that difficult consonant; and he can revert to a Joual as twangy as the next man’s when he is addressing a group from east Montreal, or speaking to senior French Canadian officers.
“I think I’ll make it through the winter, Commissioner.” LaPointe never uses his first name.
Resnais laughs. “I’m sure you will! Tough old son of a bitch like you? I’m sure you will!” There is something phony and condescending in his use of profanity, just like one of the guys. He clasps his hands behind his back and rocks up on his toes, a habit born of being rather short for a policeman. His body is thick, but he keeps in perfect trim by jogging with neighbors, swimming with members of his exclusive athletic club, and playing handball in the police league, for which he signs up just like any other cop, and where he accepts defeat at the hands of younger officers with laughing good grace. His expensive suits are closely cut, and he could pass for ten years younger than he is, despite the gleaming pate with its wreath of coal-black hair. Suntanning under lamps has given him a slightly purplish gleam. “Still living in the old place on Esplanade?” he asks offhandedly.
“Yes. Just like it says in my dossier,” LaPointe responds.
Resnais laughs heartily. “I can’t get away with anything with you, can I?” It is true that he makes a practice of looking over a man’s file just before seeing him, for the purpose of refreshing himself on an intimate detail or two—number of children and their sexes, the wife’s name, awards or medals. He drops these bits of information casually, as though he knows each man personally and holds in his memory details of his life. He once read somewhere that this was a trick used by a popular American general in the Second World War, and he adopted it as a good management tactic.
An employee gives of his TIME, a buddy gives of HIMSELF.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in LaPointe’s life to comment upon. No children, a wife long since dead, citations for merit and bravery all earned years ago. You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to mention the street a man lives on.
“I don’t want to waste too much of your time, Commissioner,” LaPointe says, “So, if there’s something…” He raises his eyebrows.
Resnais does not like that. He prefers to control the timing and flow of conversation when it involves delicate personnel problems like this one. To do so is an axiom of Small Group and One-to-One Communication Technique.
If you’re not IN control, you’re UNDER control.
“I was expecting you this morning, Claude.”
“I was on a case.”
“I see.” The Commissioner again rocks onto his toes and squeezes his hands behind his back. Then he sits down in his high-backed desk chair and turns it so that he is looking not at LaPointe, but past him, out of the window. “Frankly, I’m afraid I have to give you what in the old days was called an ass-chewing.”
“We still call it that.”
“Right. Now look, Claude, we’re both old-timers…”
LaPointe shrugs.
“…and I don’t feel I have to pull any punches with you. I’ve been forced to talk to you about your methods before. Now, I’m not saying they’re inefficient. I know that sometimes going by the book means losing an arrest. But things have changed since we were young. Greater emphasis is placed today upon the protection of the individual than upon the protection of the society.” There seem to be invisible quotation marks around this last sentence. “I’m not calling these changes good, and I’m not calling them bad. They are facts of life. And facts of life that you continue to ignore.”
“You’re talking about the Dieudonné case?”
Resnais frowns. He doesn’t like being rushed. “That’s the case in point right now. But I’m talking about more than this one instance. This isn’t the first time you’ve gotten information by force. And it’s not the first time I’ve told you that this is not the way things happen in my department.” He instantly regrets having called it his department. Make every man feel a part of the organization.
He works best who works for himself.
“I don’t think you know the details of the case, Commissioner.”
“I assure you that I know the case. I’ve had every bit of it rammed down my throat by the public prosecutor!”
“The old woman was shot for seven dollars and some change! Not even enough for the punk to get a fix!”
“That’s not the point!” Resnais’ jaw tightens, and he continues with exaggerated control. “The point is this. You got information against Dieudonné by means of force and threat of force.”
“I knew he did it. But I couldn’t prove it without a confession.”
“How did you know he did it?”
“The word was out.”
“What, exactly, does that mean?”
“It means the word was out. It means that he’s a bragging son of a bitch who spills his guts when he takes on a load of shit.”
“You’re telling me he admitted to others that he killed the old woman… whatshername?”
“No. He bragged about having a gun and not being afraid to use it.”
“That’s hardly admission of murder.”
“No, but I know Dieudonné. I’ve known him since he was a wiseassed kid. I know what he’s capable of.”
“Believe it or not, your intuition does not constitute evidence.”
“The slugs from his gun matched up, didn’t they?”
“The slugs matched up, all right. But how did you get the gun in the first place?”
“He told me where he had buried it.”
“After you beat him up.”
“I slapped him twice.”
“And threatened to lock him up in a room and let him suffer a cold-turkey withdrawal! Christ, you didn’t even have any hard evidence to connect him with the old woman… whatshername!”
“Her name, goddamn it, was Mrs. Czopec! She was seventy-two years old! She lived in the basement of a building that doesn’t have plumbing. There’s a bit of sooty dirt in front of that building, and in spring she used to get free seed packets on boxes of food, and plant them and water them, and sometimes a few came up. But her basement window was so low that she couldn’t see them. She and her husband were the first Czechs on my patch. He died four years ago, but he wasn’t a citizen, so she didn’t have much in benefits coming in. She clung to her purse when that asshole junkie tried to snatch it because the seven dollars was all the money she had to last to the end of the month. When I checked out her apartment, it turned out that she lived on rice. And there was evidence that toward the end of the month, she ate paper. Paper, Commissioner.”
“That’s not the point!”
LaPointe jumps up from his chair, “You’re right! That’s not the point. The point is that she had a right to live out her miserable life, planting her stupid flowers, eating her rice, spending half of every day in church where she couldn’t afford to light a candle! That’s the point! And that hophead son of a bitch shot her through the throat! That’s the point!”
Resnais lifts a denying palm. “Look, I’m not defending him, Claude…”
“Oh? You mean you aren’t going to tell me that he was underprivileged? Maybe his father never took him to a hockey game!”
Resnais is off balance. What’s wrong with LaPointe? It isn’t like him to get excited. He’s supposed to be the big professional, so coldblooded. Resnais expected chilly insubordination, but this passion is… unfair. To regain control of the situation, Resnais speaks flatly. “Dieudonné is getting off.”