“How late?”
The proprietor lifts his head from the skin magazine and listens.
“Well?” LaPointe asks. “Was it after closing time?”
One of the tramps glances toward the owner. He doesn’t want to get in trouble with the only bar that will let bommes come in. But nothing is as bad as getting in trouble with Lieutenant LaPointe. “Maybe a little after.”
“Did he have money?”
“Yeah. He had a wad! His pension check must of come. He bought two bottles.”
“Two bottles,” another sneers. “And you know what that cheap bastard does? He gives one bottle to all of us to share, and he drinks the other all by hisself!”
“Potlickin’ son of a bitch,” says another without heat.
LaPointe crosses to the bar and speaks to the owner. “Did he seem to have money?”
“I don’t sell on the cuff.”
“Did he flash a roll?”
“He wasn’t that drunk. Why? What did he do?”
LaPointe looks at the owner for a second. There is something disgusting about making your money off bommes. He reaches into his pocket and takes out some change. “Here. Give them a bottle.”
The proprietor counts the change with his index finger. “Hey, this ain’t enough.”
“It’s our treat. Yours and mine. We’re going fifty-fifty.”
The arrangement does not please the owner, but he reaches under the bar and grudgingly gets out a bottle of muscatel. By the time it touches the counter, one of the bommes has come over and picked it up.
“Hey, thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll tell Red you’re lookin’ for him.”
“He knows.”
They have been wandering for an hour and a half, threading through the narrow streets that branch out from the Main, LaPointe stopping occasionally to go into a bar or café, or to exchange a word with someone on the street Guttmann is beginning to think the Lieutenant has forgotten about the Vet and that young man stabbed in the alley last night. In fact, LaPointe is still on the lookout for Dirtyshirt Red and the Vet, but not to the exclusion of the rest of his duties. He never pursues only one thing at a time on his street, because if he did, all the other strings would get tangled, and he wouldn’t know what everyone was up to, or hoping for, or worried about.
At this moment, LaPointe is talking with a fat woman with frizzy, bright orange hair. She leans out of a first-story window, her knobby elbows planted on the stone sill over which she has been shaking a dust mop in fine indifference to passers-by. From the tenor of their conversation, Guttmann takes it that she used to work the streets, and that she and LaPointe have a habit of exchanging bantering greetings on the basis of broad sexual baiting and suggestions on both sides that if they weren’t so busy, they would each show the other what real lovemaking is. The woman seems well informed on events on the Main. No, she hasn’t heard anything of the Vet, but she’ll keep her ears open. As for Dirtyshirt Red, yes, that sniping bastard’s been around, also looking for the Vet.
Guttmann can’t believe she ever made a living selling herself. Her face is like an aged boxer’s, a swollen, pulpy look that is more accented than masked by thick rouge, a lipstick mouth larger than her real one, and long false eyelashes, one of which has come unstuck at the corner. As they walk on, he asks LaPointe about her.
“Her pimp did that to her face with a Coke bottle,” LaPointe says.
“What happened to him?”
“He got beat up and warned to stay off the Main.”
“Who beat him up?”
LaPointe shrugs.
“So what did she do after that?”
“Continued to work the street for a couple of years, until she got fat.”
“Looking like that?”
“She was still young. She had a good-looking body. She worked drunks mostly. Hooch and hard-ons blind a man. She’s a good sort. She does cleaning and scrubbing up for people. She takes care of Martin’s house.”
“Martin?”
“Father Martin. Local priest.”
“She is the priest’s housekeeper?”
“She’s a hard worker.”
Guttmann shakes his head. “If you say so.”
Back on St. Laurent, they are slowed by the last of the pedestrian tangle. Snakes of European children with bookbags on their backs chase one another to the discomfort of the crowd. Small knots of sober-faced Chinese kids walk quickly and without chatting. Workingmen in coveralls stand outside their shops, taking last deep drags from cigarettes before flicking them into the gutter and going back to put in their time. Young, loud-voiced girls from the dress factory walk three abreast, singing and enjoying making the crowd break for them. Old women waddle along, string bags of groceries banging against their ankles. Clerks and tailors, their fragile bodies padded by thick overcoats, thread diffidently through the crowd, attempting to avoid contact. Traffic snarls; voices accuse and complain. Neon, noise, loneliness.
“Now that is something,” Guttmann says, looking up at a sign above a shop featuring women’s clothes:
The business is new, and it is located where a pizzeria used to be. The owners are greenhorns newly arrived on the Main. Older, established merchants refer to the shop as “the shmatteria.”
“Shmatteria?” asks Guttmann.
“Yes. It’s sort of a joke. You know… a pizzeria that sells shmattes?”
“I don’t get it.”
LaPointe frowns. That’s the second time this kid hasn’t gotten a street joke. You have to have affection for the street to get its jokes. “I thought you were Jewish,” he says grumpily.
“Not in any real way. My grandfather was Jewish, but my father is a one-hundred-percent New World Canadian, complete with big handshake and a symbolic suntan he gets patched up twice a year in Florida. But what’s this about… how do you say it?”
“Shmatteria. Forget it.”
LaPointe does not remember that twenty-five years ago, when the now-established Jews first came to the Main, he did not know what a shmatte was either.
They climb up a dark flight of stairs with loose metal strips originally meant to provide grips for snow-caked shoes, but now a hazard in themselves. They enter one of the second-floor lounges that overlook St. Laurent. It is still early for trade, and the place is almost empty. An old woman mumbles to herself as she desultorily swings a mop into a dark corner by the jukebox. The only other people in the place are the bartender and one customer, a heavily rouged woman in white silk slacks.
LaPointe orders an Armagnac and sips it, looking down upon the street, where one-way northbound traffic is still heavy and the pedestrian flow is clogged. He has got off the street for a few minutes to give this most congested time of evening a chance to thin out. Friday night is noisy in the Main; there is a lot of drinking and laughter, some fighting, and the whores do good business. But there will be a quieter time between six and eight, when everyone seems to go home to change before coming back to chase after fun. Most people eat at home because it’s cheaper than restaurants, and they want to save their money to drink and dance.
Guttmann sips his beer and glances back at the customer in conversation with the bartender. She seems both young and middle-aged at the same time, in a way Guttmann could not describe. A dark wig falls in long curls to the middle of her back. He particularly notices her hands, strong and expressive, despite the big dinner rings on every finger. There is something oddly attractive about those hands—competent. Periodically, the customer glances away from her talk and looks directly at Guttmann, her eyes frankly inquisitive without being coy.
As they walk back down the long stairs to the street, Guttmann says, “Not really what you’d call a bird.”
“What?” LaPointe asks, his mind elsewhere.