“The slugs from his gun matched up, didn’t they?”
“The slugs matched up, all right. But how did you get the gun in the first place?”
“He told me where he had buried it.”
“After you beat him up.”
“I slapped him twice.”
“And threatened to lock him up in a room and let him suffer a cold-turkey withdrawal! Christ, you didn’t even have any hard evidence to connect him with the old woman… whatshername!”
“Her name, goddamn it, was Mrs. Czopec! She was seventy-two years old! She lived in the basement of a building that doesn’t have plumbing. There’s a bit of sooty dirt in front of that building, and in spring she used to get free seed packets on boxes of food, and plant them and water them, and sometimes a few came up. But her basement window was so low that she couldn’t see them. She and her husband were the first Czechs on my patch. He died four years ago, but he wasn’t a citizen, so she didn’t have much in benefits coming in. She clung to her purse when that asshole junkie tried to snatch it because the seven dollars was all the money she had to last to the end of the month. When I checked out her apartment, it turned out that she lived on rice. And there was evidence that toward the end of the month, she ate paper. Paper, Commissioner.”
“That’s not the point!”
LaPointe jumps up from his chair, “You’re right! That’s not the point. The point is that she had a right to live out her miserable life, planting her stupid flowers, eating her rice, spending half of every day in church where she couldn’t afford to light a candle! That’s the point! And that hophead son of a bitch shot her through the throat! That’s the point!”
Resnais lifts a denying palm. “Look, I’m not defending him, Claude…”
“Oh? You mean you aren’t going to tell me that he was underprivileged? Maybe his father never took him to a hockey game!”
Resnais is off balance. What’s wrong with LaPointe? It isn’t like him to get excited. He’s supposed to be the big professional, so coldblooded. Resnais expected chilly insubordination, but this passion is… unfair. To regain control of the situation, Resnais speaks flatly. “Dieudonné is getting off.”
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.