The bomme nods vigorously, still keeping his teeth clenched. He wants to be cooperative, but he doesn’t dare speak. He’s afraid to open his mouth. Afraid he’ll start screaming, and they will put him into a room. Like the English army doctors did after he was liberated from prison camp. They put him into a room because he kept screaming. He was screaming because they locked him in a room!
The Vet breathes nasally, in short puffs, humming with each exhalation. The hum strokes his need to scream just enough to keep it within control, like lightly rubbing a mosquito bite that you mustn’t scratch for fear of infection.
“Take it easy, Vet. Answer every question truthfully, and I’ll make sure you get back on the street. All right?”
The tramp nods. With great effort, he forces his breathing to slow. Then he carefully unclenches his teeth. “I’ll do… whatever… anything.”
“Good. Now, last night you took a wallet from a man in an alley.”
The Vet bobs his head once.
“I don’t care about the money. You can keep it.”
The Vet forces himself to speak. “Money… gone.”
“You drank it up?”
He nods once.
“It’s the wallet I want. If you can give me the wallet, you’re free to go.”
The Vet opens his mouth wide and takes three rapid, shallow breaths. “I have it! I have it!”
“But not on you.”
“No.”
“Where?”
“I can get it.”
“Good. I’ll come along with you.”
The Vet doesn’t want this. His eyes flick about the room. “No. I’ll bring it to you. I promise.”
“That’s not good enough, Vet. You’d promise anything right now. I’ll go with you.”
The Vet’s upper lip spreads flat over his teeth and his nostrils dilate. “I can’t!” He begins to sob.
LaPointe scrubs his hair and sighs. “Is it your kip? You don’t want me to find out where it is?”
The bomme nods vigorously.
“I’m sorry. But there’s nothing for it. It’s late, and I’m tired. Either we go right now to get the wallet, or you start ten days of a vag charge.”
The tramp looks at Guttmann, his eyes pleading for intervention. The young man frowns and stares at the floor.
LaPointe stands up. “Okay, that’s it. I don’t have time to fool around with you.”
“All right!” The Vet jumps to his feet and shouts into LaPointe’s face. “All right! All right!”
LaPointe puts his hands on the tramp’s shoulders and presses him back into his chair. “Take it easy.” He turns to Guttmann. “Go down and check us out a car and driver.”
Before leaving, Guttmann glances again at the Vet, who has retreated into the comfort of rocking and humming.
No sooner has the police car carried them three blocks from the Quartier Général and the threat of being locked up than the Vet’s whimpering dread evaporates and he reverts to his cocky, egoistic self. He does not deign to talk to Guttmann, who sits beside him because LaPointe got in front to avoid the alkaline smell of urine. Instead, he leans forward and talks to the Lieutenant’s back, explaining what happened in a loud voice because the windows of the car are open to avoid an onset of claustrophobia, and the bitter wind whistles through the car.
“I was just coming down the street, Lieutenant, when I happened to look up the alley and see this mark. He was kneeling down… low, you know? With his forehead on the bricks. I figures he’s a drunk or maybe high on something. Maybe he’s sick, I says to myself. I got first-aid training in the army. You can make a tourniquet with your belt. Did you know that? Sure. Easy as pie, if you know how. This riffraff on the street don’t know anything. They never been in the army. They don’t know shit from Shinola. Well, I walks up the alley. He don’t move. There’s nobody around. It’s real cold and everybody’s off the Main. Now, I wasn’t thinking of rolling him or nothing. Honest to God, Lieutenant. I just thought he might be sick or something. Need a tourniquet, maybe. When I get close to him, I could see he was real well-dressed. He looks funny. I mean, you know, ridiculous. Kneeling there with his ass in the air. Then I notice his wallet’s half out of his pocket. So… I just… took it. I mean, if I didn’t take it, one of those street tramps was sure to. So why not? First come, first served; that’s what we used to say in the army.”
“You didn’t know he was dead?”
“Honest to God, I didn’t. There wasn’t any blood or anything.”
That is true. The bleeding was largely internal.
“So, anyway, it comes to me that I might as well lift his poke. Share the wealth, like we used to say in the army. So I reach over and pull it out. It comes out hard, what with him squatting over like that and the ass of his pants so tight, you know. And just as I got it, all of a sudden this cop car stops down to the end of the alley, and this cop shouts at me!” The Vet’s breath begins to shorten as he relives his fear. “So I takes off! I was a-scared he might run me in! I can’t be locked up, Lieutenant! If I’m in a closed place, I start to scream. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?”
“All right! Take it easy.”
“Did I tell you that the army doctors kept me locked up after they liberated the camp?”
“You mentioned it. Where are we going?”
“Just straight up the Main. Up to Van Horne. I’ll show you when we get there. Yeah, the army doctors kept me locked up in a hospital ward especially for fruitcakes. They didn’t understand. I might have been there forever. But then this young doctor—Captain Ferguson, his name was—he says why don’t they give me a chance on the outside. See how it would work. Well, I got out, and I stopped screaming just like that. They warned me not to get a job where I was cooped up, and I never did. I didn’t have to. I’m a ninety percent disability. Ninety percent! That’s a lot, ain’t it? Hey, you got a cigarette?”
“No.”
The driver twists to get a pack out of his pocket. “Give him one of mine, Lieutenant. We sure could use the smell of smoke in here.”
As they near the intersection of Van Horne and St. Laurent, LaPointe becomes curious about this famous snug kip the Vet has always boasted about. It is generally known on the street that the Vet drinks up his pension check within two weeks and has to sell blood to keep alive after that. Like other tramps, winos, addicts, and hippie types in extremis, he lies about how long it has been since he gave blood, as he lies about diseases he has had. There is always a need for his uncommon type—another source of his endless bragging. Whenever he gets money, he buys a couple of bottles, but he never drinks much on the Main. He brings it off with him to his hideaway.
Following the Vet’s directions, they turn left on Van Horne. The tramp’s voice softens toward confidentiality as he speaks to LaPointe. “You can tell him to stop here at the corner. Just you come with me, Lieutenant. I don’t want anyone else to come. Okay? Okay?”
“I’ll leave the driver here. The young man is attached to me.”
Guttmann glances over, uncertain whether or not LaPointe is sending him up.
The car pulls over to the curb, and LaPointe instructs the driver to wait for them.
An unlit side street of storage companies and warehouses ends abruptly at a woven wire fence that screens off a little-used freight shunt yard, the tracks of which glow dimly down in a black depression below and beyond the fence. LaPointe and Guttmann follow the Vet down the steep embankment, glissading dangerously over cinders, braking to prevent a headlong run that would precipitate them into the darkness below.
At the base of the slope, the Vet begins to cut across the tracks with the kind of familiarity that does not require light. LaPointe tells him to wait a minute, and he closes his eyes to speed up the dilation of his pupils. The smudgy dark gray cityglow has the effect of moonlight through mist, obscuring details, yet providing too much light to permit the eyes to adjust to the dark. Eventually, however, LaPointe can make out the parallel sets of rails and the glisten of tar on the ties. He tells the Vet to go on, but more slowly. He feels uncomfortable and out of his element, walking through this broken ground of cinder and weeds that is neither city terrain nor country, but a starved and sooty wasteland that the city has not occupied and the country cannot reclaim.