“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
“It won’t cost you. Just let me stay until dark.” She produces a childish imitation of a sexy leer that is something between the comic and the grotesque, with that black eye of hers. “I would be good to you.” When he does not respond, another thought occurs to her. “I’m all right,” she promises. “I mean… I’m healthy.”
He looks at her calmly for several seconds. Then he rises. “I have to go to work. Would you like more coffee?”
“No. No, thank you.”
“Don’t you like coffee?”
“Not really. Not without milk and sugar.”
“I’m sorry.”
She lifts her shoulders. “It’s not your fault.”
He pulls out his wallet. “Look…” He doesn’t know exactly how to say this. After all, it doesn’t matter to him one way or the other if she stays or goes. “Look, there’s a store around the corner. You can buy things for your breakfast. The… the stove works.” What a stupid thing to say. Of course the stove works.
She reaches up and takes the offered ten-dollar bill. This must mean she can stay until night.
He takes up his overcoat. “Okay. Good, then.” He goes to the door. “Oh, yes. You’ll need a key to get back in after your shopping. There’s one on the mantel.” It occurs to him that it must seem stupid to leave the extra key on the mantel, because you would have to be in the apartment to get it. And if you’re already in the apartment… But Lucille had always left it there, and he never misplaced his own key, so…
As he is leaving, she asks, “May I use your things?”
“My things?”
“Towel. Deodorant. Razor.”
Razor? Oh, of course. He has forgotten that women shave under their arms. “Certainly. No, wait a minute. I use a straight razor.”
“What’s that?”
“You know… just a… straight razor.”
“And you don’t want me using it?”
“I don’t think you can. Why don’t you buy yourself a razor? There’s enough money there.” He closes the door behind him and gets halfway down the stairs before something occurs to him.
“Marie-Louise?” He has opened the door again.
She looks up. She has been pawing through her shopping bag of clothes, planning to take this chance to wash out a few things and dry them in front of the gas heater before he comes back. She acts as though she’s been caught at something. “Yes?”
“The stove. The pilot light doesn’t work. You have to use a match.”
“Okay.”
He nods. “Good.”
When he arrives at the Quartier Général, the workday is in full swing. The halls outside the magistrate’s courts are crowded with people standing around or waiting on benches of dark wood, worn light in places by the legs and buttocks of the bored, or the nervous. One harassed woman has three children with her, separated in age by only the minimal gestation period. She hasn’t made up that day; perhaps she has given up making up. The youngest of her kids clings to her skirt and whimpers. Her tension suddenly cracking, she screams at it to shut up. For an instant the child freezes, its eyes round. Then its face crumples and it howls. The mother hugs and rocks it, sorry for both of them. Two young men lounge against a window frame, their slouching postures meant to convey that they are not impressed by this building, these courts, this law. But each time the door to the courtroom opens, they glance over with expectation and fear. There are a few whores, victims of a street sweep somewhere. One is telling a story animatedly; another is scratching under her bra with her thumb. A girl in her late teens, advanced pregnancy dominating her skinny body, chews nervously on a strand of hair. An old man rocks back and forth in misery, rubbing his palms against the tops of his legs. It’s his last son; his last boy. Youngish lawyers in flowing, dusty black robes and starched collars crossed at the throat, their smooth foreheads puckered into self-important frowns, stalk through the crowd with long strides calculated to give the impression that they are on important business and have no time to waste.
LaPointe scans automatically for faces he might recognize, then steps into one of the big, rickety elevators. Two young detectives mumble greetings; he nods and grunts. He gets out on the second floor and goes down the gray corridor, past old radiators that thud and hiss with steam, past identical doors with ripple-glass windows. His key doesn’t seem to work in his lock. He mutters angrily, then the door opens in his hand. It wasn’t locked in the first place.
“Good morning, sir.”
Oh, shit, yes. Gaspard’s Joan. LaPointe has forgotten all about him. What was his name? Guttmann? LaPointe notices that Guttmann has already moved in and made himself at home at a little table and a straight-backed chair in the corner. He hums a kind of greeting as he hangs his overcoat on the wooden coat tree. He sits heavily in his swivel chair and begins to paw around through his in-box.
“Sir?”
“Hm-m.”
“Sergeant Gaspard’s report is on your desk, along with the report he forwarded from the forensic lab.”
“Have you read it?”
“No, sir. It’s addressed to you.”
LaPointe is following his habit of scanning the Morning Report first thing in his office. “Read it,” he says without looking up.
It seems strange to Guttmann that the Lieutenant seems uninterested in the report. He opens the heavy brown interdepartmental envelope, unwinding the string around the plastic button fastener. “You’ll have to initial for receipt, sir.”
“You initial it.”
“But, sir—”
“Initial it!” This initialing of routing envelopes is just another bit of the bureaucratic trash that trammels the ever-reorganizing department. LaPointe makes it a practice to ignore all such rules.
What’s this? A blue memo card from the Commissioner’s office. Look at this formal crap:
FROM: Commissioner Resnais
TO: Claude LaPointe, Lieutenant
SUBJECT: Morning of 21 November: appointment for
MESSAGE: I’d like to see you when you get in.
Resnais
(dictated, but not signed)
LaPointe knows what Resnais wants. It will be about the Dieudonné case. That weaselly little turd of a lawyer is threatening to lodge a 217 assault charge against LaPointe for slapping his client. We must protect the civil rights of the criminal! Oh, yes! And what about the old woman that Dieudonné shot through the throat? What about her, with her last breaths whistling and flapping moistly through the hole?
LaPointe pushes the memo card aside with a growl.
Guttmann glances up from the report on the kid they found in the alley. “Sir? Something wrong?”
“Just read the report.” He must be tired this morning. Even this kid’s careful continental French annoys him. And he seems to take up so goddamned much room in the office! LaPointe hadn’t noticed last night how big the kid was. Six-two, six-three; weighs about 210. And his attempt to fit himself into as little space as possible behind that small table makes him seem even bigger and bulkier. This isn’t going to work out. He’ll have to turn him back over to Gaspard as soon as possible.
LaPointe shoves the routine papers and memos away and rises to look out his office window toward the Hôtel de Ville. There are scaffolds clinging to the sides of the Victorian hulk, and above the scaffolds the sandblasters have cleaned to a creamy white a façade that used to bear the comfortable patina of soot with water-run accents of dark gray. For months now, they have been sandblasting the building, and the roaring hiss has become a constant in LaPointe’s office, replacing the rumble of traffic as a base line for silence. It is not the noise that bothers LaPointe, it is the change. He liked the Hôtel de Ville the way it was, with its stained and experienced exterior. They change everything. The law, rules of evidence, acceptable procedure in dealing with suspects. The world is getting more complicated. And younger. And all these new forms! This endless paper work that he has to peck out with two fingers, hunched over his ancient typewriter, growling and smashing at the keys when he makes an error…