“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll look around and see if I can find you a job.”
“In a cocktail bar?”
“I can’t promise that. Maybe as a waitress in a restaurant.”
She wrinkles her nose. That doesn’t appeal to her at all. She has seen lots of waitresses, running around and being shouted at during rush times, or standing, tired and bored, and staring out of windows when the place is empty. And the uniforms always look frumpy. If it weren’t for this damned pig weather, and if the men never tried to beat you up, she’d rather go on like she is than be a waitress.
“I’ll try to find you a job,” he says. “Meanwhile you can stay here, if you want.”
“And we’ll sleep together?” She wants to get the conditions straight at the beginning. It is something like making sure you get your money in advance.
He turns from the window and settles his eyes on her. “Do you really want to?”
She shrugs a “why not?” Then she discovers a loose thread on the sleeve of the dressing gown. She tries to break it off.
He clears his throat and rubs his cheek with his knuckles. “I need a shave.” He rises. “Would you like another coffee before we go to bed?”
She looks up at him through her mop of hair, the errant thread between her teeth. “Okay,” she says, nipping off the thread and spitting out the bit.
He is shaving when the phone rings.
He has to wipe the lather from his cheek before putting the receiver to his ear. “LaPointe.”
Guttmann’s voice sounds tired. “I just got down here.”
“Down where?”
“The Quartier Général. They called me at my apartment. They’ve picked up your Sinclair, and he’s giving them one hell of a time.”
“Sinclair?”
“Joseph Michael Sinclair. That’s the real name of your bum, the Vet. He’s in a bad way. Raving. Screaming. They’re talking about giving him a sedative, but I told them to hold off in case you wanted to question him tonight.”
“No, not tonight. Tomorrow will do.”
“I don’t know, sir…”
“Of course you don’t know. That’s part of being a Joan.”
“What I was going to say was, this guy’s a real case. It’s taking two men to hold him down. He keeps screaming that he can’t go into a cell. Something about being a claustrophobic.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
“Just thought you ought to know.”
LaPointe’s shoulders slump, and he lets out a long nasal sigh. “All right. You talk to the Vet. Tell him nobody’s going to lock him up. Tell him I’ll be down in a little while. He knows me.”
“Yes, sir. Oh, and sir? Terribly sorry to disturb you at home.”
What? Sarcasm from a Joan? LaPointe grunts and hangs up.
Marie-Louise is mending the paisley granny dress she was wearing when he found her in the park. She looks up questioningly when he enters the living room.
“I have to go downtown. What are you smiling at?”
“You’ve got soap on one side of your face.”
“Oh.” He wipes it off.
As he tugs on his overcoat, he remembers the coffee water steaming away on the stove. “Shall I make you a cup before I go?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t really like coffee all that much.”
“Why do you always drink it then?”
She shrugs. She doesn’t know. She takes what’s offered.
6
By the thermometer it is not so cold as last night, but that was a dry cold, crystallizing on surfaces, and this is a damp cold, the serrate edge of which penetrates to LaPointe’s chest as he walks down the deserted Main. He does not find a cruising taxi until Sherbrooke.
LaPointe’s footfalls clip hollowly along the empty, half-lit halls outside the magistrates’ courts. The sound is oddly loud and melancholy, without the covering envelope of noise that fills the building during the day.
The elevator doors open, and he walks down the brightly lit corridor of the Duty Office. There is sound and life here: the stuttering clack of a typewriter in clumsy hands; the hum of fluorescent lights; and somewhere a transistor radio plays popular music.
Guttmann steps into the hall at the sound of the elevator. He looks unkempt and haggard; more like a real cop, LaPointe thinks.
“Good morning, sir. He’s in here.” Guttmann’s tone is flat and unfriendly.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” LaPointe asks.
“Sir?”
“Your attitude, tone of voice. What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t know it showed, sir.”
“It shows. I warned you to cancel that date of yours.”
“I did, sir. She went to a film with a friend. But she dropped by later for a drink. We live in the same apartment building.”
“And the call got you out of bed?”
“Something like that.”
“At an awkward time?”
“As awkward as it gets, sir.”
LaPointe laughs. Guttmann recognizes the comic possibilities of the situation, but he doesn’t find this particular case funny.
LaPointe enters the Duty Office, Guttmann following. Joseph Michael “the Vet” Sinclair is sitting on a wooden bench against the wall. His long arms are wrapped around his legs, his face is pressed against his knees, and he still wears his ridiculous floppy-brimmed hat. He rocks himself back and forth in misery, humming or moaning one note over and over again. His grip on reality seems fragile. Occasionally he looks around the room, bewildered and frightened, and his teeth begin to chatter, his breath comes in canine sniffs, and he struggles against screaming.
LaPointe’s nostrils dilate with the stench of urine. Joseph Michael Sinclair has wet himself.
The symptoms resemble withdrawal. LaPointe has seen this once before. The Vet is a victim of claustrophobia. The Duty Office is a big room, so that isn’t what is eroding his sanity. It was the trip down in a police car and, even more, the thought of being locked up in a cell. The Vet is trapped in the classic terrible cycle facing the claustrophobic: he is almost mad with the fear of being shut up, and if he gives way to his madness, they will lock him up.
“Where did you pick him up?” LaPointe asks one of the officers getting coffee at the dispensing machine, a tough Polish old-timer who never bothered to take his sergeant’s examinations because he doesn’t want the hassle of responsibility. Although his French is thin and badly accented, he has always been accepted by the French Canadian cops as one of them, because he so obviously is not one of the others.
The coffee is hot, and the Polish cop winces as he changes the paper cup from hand to hand, looking for a place to set it down. His gestures are comically delicate, because the paper cup is fragile. He manages to balance it on a ledge and snaps his fingers violently. “Jesus H. Christ! We picked him up on St. Urbain, just south of Van Horne. Somebody named Red phoned in the tip. He gave us one hell of a chase. Took off across Van Horne, hopping like a gimpy rabbit! Right through the traffic! Cars and trucks hitting their brakes! Scared the shit out of the drivers. Their assholes must of bit chunks out of the car seats. And there I am, right after him, dancing and dodging through the traffic. Then your friend here climbs the fence and is halfway down the bank into the freight yard before I get to him. Look at that, will you?” He reaches around and tugs out the slack in the seat of his pants, showing a triangular rip. “Got that climbing the goddamned wire fence after the son of a bitch! Twenty-seven bucks shot in the ass!”
“Literally,” Guttmann says.
“What?” the Polish cop demands.
“Did he give you any trouble?” LaPointe asks.
“Any trouble? Wild as a cat crapping razor blades, that’s all! You wouldn’t know it to see him now, but it took both of us to get him into the car. Kick? Wriggle? Scream? You’da thought we were gang-banging the Mother Superior.”