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.”
LaPointe looks over at the miserable bomme whose eyes are now squeezed shut as he rocks back and forth, with each movement moaning a high, thin note that stops short in his throat. He is right on the limen of sanity.
“You didn’t give him anything to calm him down, did you?”
“No, Lieutenant. Your Joan told us not to. Anyway, it wasn’t necessary. As soon as we told him you were coming down, he settled right down. Just started moaning and rocking like that. A real nut case. Twenty-fucking-seven bucks! And not a month old!”
LaPointe crosses to the Vet and places his hand on his shoulder. “Hey?” He gives him a slight shake. “Hey, Vet?” The tramp does not look up; he is lost in the treacherous animal comfort of his rocking and moaning. His own motion and his own sound surround and protect him. He doesn’t want penetrations from the outside.
LaPointe has seen men go inside themselves like this before. He is afraid he’ll lose the Vet if he doesn’t bring him out right now. He takes off the wide-brimmed hat and lifts up the head by the hair. “Hey!”
The bomme tries to pull away, but LaPointe holds the hair tighter. “Vet? Vet!” The smell of urine is strong.
The Vet’s vague humid eyes focus slowly on LaPointe’s face. The slack, unshaven cheeks quiver. As he opens his mouth to speak, a bubble of thick spit forms between the lips and bursts with the first word.
“Lieutenant?” It is a pitiful, mendicant whine. “Don’t let them lock me up. You know what I mean? I can’t be locked up! I can’t! I… I… I… I… I…” With each repetition, the voice rises a note as the Vet plunges toward panic.
LaPointe snatches the greasy hair. He mustn’t lose him. “Vet! No one’s going to lock you up!”
“No, you don’t! I can’t go inside! I can’t!”
“Listen to me!”
“No! No! No!”
LaPointe slaps the tramp’s cheek hard.
The Vet catches his breath and holds it, his cheeks bulging, his eyes wide open and staring up obliquely at the Lieutenant.
“Now listen,” LaPointe says more quietly. “Just listen,” he says softly. “All right?”
The Vet lets his breath escape slowly and remains silent, but his eyes still stare, and there are rapid little pupillary contractions.
LaPointe speaks very slowly and clearly. “No one is going to lock you up. Do you understand that? No one is going to put you inside.”
The bomme’s squinting left eye twitches as he struggles to comprehend. As understanding comes, his body, so long rigid, droops with fatigue; his jaw slackens; his breathing slows; and the bloodshot eyes roll up as though in sleep.
LaPointe releases the hair, and the tramp’s chin drops back into his chest. LaPointe lays his hand protectively on the nape of the Vet’s neck as he turns to Guttmann. “Get some coffee down him.”
Guttmann looks around for a coffeepot.
“The machine!” LaPointe says with exasperation, pointing to the coin-operated dispenser.
The two uniformed cops leave the Duty Office, the Polish old-timer fiddling with the back of his pants to see if he can hide the triangular rip, and his partner assuring him that nobody wants to look at his ass.
LaPointe leans against the wall and presses down his hair with his palm. “After you get a few cups of coffee down him,” he tells Guttmann, “dunk his head in cold water and clean him up a little. Then bring him to my office.”
Guttmann fumbles in his pocket as he looks with distaste at the heap of rags stinking of stale wine and urine. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t seem to have a dime.”
“The machine takes quarters.”
“I don’t have any change at all.”
With infinite patience, LaPointe produces a quarter from the depths of his overcoat pocket and holds it up between thumb and forefinger. “Here. This is called a quarter. It makes vending machines work. It also makes telephones work. What would you do if you had to make an emergency call from a public phone and you had no change on you?”
“I just threw on my clothes and came over when they called. I didn’t even—”
“Always carry change for the phone. It could save somebody’s life.”
Guttmann takes the quarter. “All right, sir. Thanks for the advice.”
“That wasn’t advice.”
Guttmann shoves the quarter into the slot brusquely. What the hell is bugging the Lieutenant? After all, he wasn’t the one who was called away from a night with a bird to come down and wet-nurse a drunk who has pissed his pants!
As he starts to leave the Duty Office for his own floor above, LaPointe pauses at the door. He sniffs and rubs his cheek. He is shaven on only one side. “Look. I’m sorry, I… I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Yes, sir. We’re probably all tired.”
“Did you say it was your first time with that young lady of yours?”
“First for sure. And probably last.” Guttmann is still angry and stung.