Guttmann is cold, and he walks quickly toward the waiting police car with its dozing driver and its radio, against regulations, tuned to music. Then he realizes that LaPointe is not with him. He turns impatiently and sees the Lieutenant standing against the wire fence, his eyes closed. As Guttmann approaches, LaPointe opens his eyes and rubs his upper arms as though to restore circulation. Before Guttmann can ask what’s wrong, the Lieutenant growls, “Come on! Let’s not stand around here all night! It’s cold, for Christ’s sake!”
They sit in a back booth, the only customers of the A-One Café. When they came in, LaPointe greeted the old Chinese owner: “How’s it going, Mr. A-One?”
The Chinese cackled and responded, “Yes, you bet. That’s a good one!”
Guttmann assumed the greeting and response were ancient and automatic, a ritual joke they have shared for years.
Without asking what they wanted, the old man brought them two cups of coffee, thick and brackish, the lees from an afternoon pot. Then he returned to stand by the front window, motionless, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes focused on a mid-distance beyond his window.
The naked bulb above his head produces an oblique angle of light which deepens the furrows and rivulets of his face. His eyes do not blink.
LaPointe sits huddled in his coat, frowning meditatively as he slowly stirs his coffee, although he has not put sugar into it.
On the wall beside Guttmann’s head is a gaudy embroidered hanging featuring a long-tailed bird resting on the branch of a tree bearing every kind of flower. And tacked up next to it is a picture of a very healthy girl in a swimsuit coyly considering the commitment involved in accepting the bottle of Coke thrust toward her by an aggressive male fist.
Guttmann stifles a yawn so deep that it brings tears. “Not much business,” he says irrelevantly. “Wonder why he stays open all night.”
LaPointe looks up as though he has forgotten the young man’s presence. “Oh, you don’t need much sleep when you’re old. He has no wife. It helps to shorten the nights, I suppose.”
For the first time, Guttmann wonders if LaPointe has a wife. He cannot imagine it; cannot picture him taking a Sunday afternoon walk in some park, a middle-aged matron on his arm. Then the image starts to form in Guttmann’s mind of LaPointe in bed with a woman…
“What is it?” LaPointe asks. “What are you smiling at?”
“Oh, nothing,” Guttmann lies. “It’s just that… I don’t know what in hell I’m doing here. I don’t know why I didn’t take the car back to the Quartier Général.” He pushes out a sigh and shakes his head at himself. “I must be getting dopey with lack of sleep.”
LaPointe nods. “You’ve got what Gaspard calls ‘the sits.’ “
“What?” Guttmann is thrown off track by the unexpected shift to English.
“The sits. That’s when you’re so tired and numb-headed that you don’t have the energy to get up and go home.”
“That’s what I’ve got all right. The sits. That’s a good name for it. I wish I were in bed right now.”
LaPointe glances at him, a smile in his down-sloping eyes.
“No,” Guttmann laughs. “She’s back in her own apartment by now. But maybe all is not lost. We have a date for tomorrow.”
“We’re going to have to do some work tomorrow.”
“But tomorrow’s Saturday.”
LaPointe put his elbow on the table and his forehead in his palm. “That’s right. You see? Your college education wasn’t a waste after all. You know the days of the week. After Friday, Saturday. Come to think of it, tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“What?”
“What time is it?”
“Ah, it’s…” Guttmann tips his wrist toward the light. “Christ, it’s almost two.”
“Want some more coffee?”
“No, sir. After spending the day with you, I don’t think I’ll ever want another cup of coffee in my life.” Guttmann glances toward the motionless Chinese. “Is that all he does? Just stand there looking inscrutable?”
“What does that mean? Inscrutable?”
“Inscrutable means… hell, sir, I don’t know. My brain’s gone to sleep. It means… ah… of or pertaining to the inability to scrute? Je scrute, tu scrutes, il scrute… shit, I don’t know.” He sits back, and his eyes settle on the Chinese again. “He must be lonely.”
LaPointe shrugs. “I doubt it. He’s past that.”
This simple bit of human understanding from the Lieutenant disturbs Guttmann. He can’t peg LaPointe in his mind. Like most liberals, he assumes that all thinking men are liberals. On the one hand, LaPointe is the classic old-timer who rags his juniors, pokes fun at education, harasses and bullies the civilians—the prototypical tough cop. On the other hand, he is a friend to ex-whores with bashed-up faces, a paternal watchdog who chats with people on the street, knows the bums, understands his patch… seems to have affection for it. Pride, even. Guttmann knows better than to think that people are black or white. But he expects to find them gray shades, not alternately black then white. Lieutenant LaPointe: Your Friendly Neighborhood Fascist.
“He should find some old duffers to play pinochle with,” Guttmann says.
“Who?”
“The old Chinese who runs this place.”
“Why pinochle?”
“I don’t know. That’s what old farts do when they don’t know what else to do with themselves, isn’t it? Play pinochle? I mean…” Guttmann stops and closes his eyes. He slowly shakes his head. “No, don’t tell me. You play pinochle, don’t you, sir?”
“Twice a week.”
Guttmann hits his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I should have known. You know, sir, it just seems that fate doesn’t want us to hit it off.”
“Don’t blame fate. It’s your big mouth.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What have you got against pinochle?”
“Believe it or not, I don’t have anything against pinochle. My grandfather used to play pinochle with his cronies late into the night sometimes.”
“Your grandfather.”
“Yes, sir. That’s mostly what I remember him doing; sitting with his friends until all hours. Playing. Pretending it mattered who won and who lost. I just came to associate it with lonely old men, I guess.”
“I see.”
“I have nothing against the game. I’m a pinochle player myself, sir. My grandfather taught me.”
“Are you any good?”
“Sir, excuse me. But doesn’t it strike you as odd that we are sitting in a Chinese all-night coffee shop at two in the morning talking about pinochle?”
LaPointe laughs. The kid’s okay. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he says, taking from his overcoat pocket the wallet the Vet gave him, and emptying the contents onto the table. There is a scrap of paper with two girls’ names written in different hands, evidently by the girls themselves. First names only; not much help. There is a little booklet the size of a commemorative stamp, containing a dozen pictures of various sex positions and combinations: the kind of thing shown to objecting but giggling girls by a man who believes the myth that seeing the act automatically brings a woman to the point of panting necessity. In an accordion-pleated change pocket there are two contraceptives of the sort sold in vending machines in the toilets of cheap bars: guaranteed to afford maximum protection with minimum loss of sensation. Sold only for the prevention of disease. One of them features a “tickler”; the other is packed in a liquid lubricant. No money; the Vet got that. No driver’s license. The wallet is cheap imitation alligator, quite new. There is a card in one of the plastic windows with places for the owner to provide particulars. Childishly, the dead man had felt impelled to fill it in. LaPointe passes the wallet over to Guttmann, who reads the round, infantile printing: