LaPointe is stopped cold. He can’t believe it. “What?”
“That’s right. The public prosecutor met with his lawyers yesterday. They threatened to slap you with a two-seventeen assault, and the newspapers would love that! I have my—I have the department to think of, Claude.”
LaPointe sits down. “So you made a deal?”
“I don’t like that term. We did the best we could. The lawyers could probably have gotten the case thrown out, considering how you found the gun. Fortunately for us, they are responsible men who don’t want to see Dieudonné out on the street any more than we do.”
“What kind of deal?”
“The best we could get. Dieudonné pleads guilty to manslaughter; they forget the two-seventeen against you. There it is.”
“Manslaughter?”
“There it is.” Resnais sits back in his high-backed desk chair and gives this time to sink in. “You see, Claude, even if I condoned your methods—and I don’t—the bottom line is this: they don’t work anymore. The charges don’t stick.”
LaPointe is lost and angry. “But there was no other way to get him. There was no hard evidence without the gun.”
“You keep missing the point.”
LaPointe stares straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. “You’d better get word to Dieudonné that if he ever sets foot on the Main after he gets out…”
“For Christ’s sake! Don’t you ever listen? Does a truck have to drive over you? You’ve embarrassed… the department long enough! I’ve worked like a son of a bitch to give this shop a good image in the city, and all it takes…! Look, Claude. I don’t like doing this, but I’d better lay it on the line for you. I know the reputation you have among the guys in the shop. You keep your patch cool, and I know that no other man, probably no team of men, could do what you do. But times have changed. And you haven’t changed with them.” Resnais fingers LaPointe’s personnel file. “Three recognitions for merit. Twice awarded the Police Medal. Twice wounded in the line of duty—once very seriously, as I recall. When we heard about that bullet grazing your heart, we kept an open line to the hospital all night long. Did you know that?”
LaPointe is no longer looking at the Commissioner; his eyes are directed out the window. He speaks quietly. “Get on with it, Commissioner.”
“All right. I’ll get on with it. This is the last time you embarrass this shop. If it happens one more time… if I have to go to bat for you one more time…” There is no need to finish the sentence.
LaPointe draws his gaze back to the Commissioner’s face. He sighs and rises. “Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?”
Resnais looks down at LaPointe’s file, his jaw tight. “Yes. That’s all.”
The slam of the office door rattles the glass, and LaPointe brushes past Guttmann without a word. He sits heavily in his desk chair and stares vacantly at the Forensic Medicine report on that kid found in the alley. Instinct for self-preservation warns Guttmann to keep his head down over his typing and not say a word. For half an hour, the only sound in the room is the tapping of the typewriter and the hiss of the sandblasting across the street.
Then LaPointe takes a deep breath and rubs his mat of hair with his palm. “Did I get a call from Dirtyshirt Red?”
“No, sir. No calls at all.”
“Hm-m.” LaPointe rises and comes to Guttmann’s little table, looking over his shoulder. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, it’s going fine, sir. It’s lots of fun. I’d rather type out reports than anything I can think of.”
LaPointe turns away, grunting his disgust for all paper work and all who bother with it. Outside the window, the city is already growing dark under the heavy layers of stationary cloud. He tugs down his overcoat from the wooden rack.
“I’m going up onto the Main. See what’s happening.”
Guttmann nods, not lifting his eyes from the form he is retyping, for fear of losing his place again.
“Well?”
The younger man puts his finger on his place and looks up. “Well what, sir?”
“Are you coming or not?”
A minute later, the door is locked, the lights off, and the unfinished report is still wound into the machine.
5
By the time they cross Sherbrooke, the last greenish light is draining from sallow cloud layers over the city. Streetlights are already on, and the sidewalks are beginning to clog with pedestrians. A raw wind has come up, puffing in vagrant gusts around corners and carrying dust that is gritty between the teeth. The cold makes tears stand in Guttmann’s eyes, and the skin of his face feels tight, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate the Lieutenant’s shaggy overcoat hanging to his mid-calves. Guttmann would like to pace along more quickly to heat up the blood, but LaPointe’s step is measured, and his eyes scan the street from side to side, automatically searching out little evidences of trouble.
As they pass a shop, LaPointe takes his hand from his pocket and lifts it in greeting. A bald little man with a green eyeshade waves back.
Guttmann looks up at the sign overhead:
“Buttonholes?” Guttmann asks. “This guy makes buttonholes? What kind of business is that?”
LaPointe repeats one of the street’s ancient jokes. “It would be a wonderful business, if Mr. Klein didn’t have to provide the material.”
Guttmann doesn’t quite get it. He has no way of knowing that no one on the Main quite gets that joke either, but they always repeat it because it has the sound of something witty.
Each time they pass a bar, the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke greets them for a second before it is blown away by the raw wind. Halfway up St. Laurent, LaPointe turns in at a run-down bar called Chez Pete’s Place. It is fuggy and dark inside, and the proprietor doesn’t bother to look up from the girlie magazine in his lap when the policemen enter.
Three men sit around a table in back, one a tall, boney tramp with a concave chest who has the shakes so badly that he is drinking his wine from a beer mug. The other two are arguing drunkenly across the table, pounding it sometimes, to the confused distress of the third.
“Floyd Patterson wasn’t shit! He never… he couldn’t… he wasn’t shit, compared to Joe Louis.”
“Ah, that’s your story! Floyd Patterson had a great left. He had what you call one of your world’s great lefts! He could hit… anything.”
“Ah, he couldn’t… he couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag! I used to know a guy who told me that he wasn’t shit, compared to Joe Louis. You know… do you know what they used to call Joe Louis?”
“I don’t care what they called him! I don’t give a big rat’s ass!”
“They used to call Joe Louis… Gentleman Joe. Gentleman Joe! What do you think of that?”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why did they call him Gentleman Joe?”
“Why? Why? Because… because that Floyd Patterson couldn’t punch worth shit, that’s why. Ask anybody!”
LaPointe crosses to the group. “Has anyone seen Dirtyshirt Red today?”
They look at one another, each hoping the question is directed to someone else.
“You,” LaPointe says to a little man with a narrow forehead and a large, stubbly Adam’s apple.
“No, Lieutenant. I ain’t seen him.”
“He was in a couple hours ago,” the other volunteers. “He asked around about the Vet.” The name of this universally detested tramp brings grunts from several bommes at other tables. No one has any stomach for the Vet, with his uppity ways and his bragging.
“And what did he find out?”
“Not much, Lieutenant. We told him the Vet come in here late last night.”