LaPointe turns from the window and looks flatly at Guttmann, who catches the movement and glances up with his habitual smile, which fades as he realizes he has been humming again.
“Sorry.”
LaPointe nods curtly.
“By the way, sir, I ran the name Antonio Verdini and the alias Tony Green through ID. They haven’t called back yet.”
“They won’t have anything.”
“Maybe not, but I thought I should run it through anyway.”
LaPointe sits again before his paper work. “Just like it says in the book,” he mutters.
“Yes, sir,” Guttmann says, more than a little tired of LaPointe’s cafard this morning, “just like it says in the book.” The book also says that reports of investigations must be turned in within forty-eight hours, and some of this crap on Guttmann’s desk is weeks late, and almost all of it is incomplete, a couple of scribbled notes that are almost indecipherable. But Guttmann decides against mentioning that.
LaPointe makes a guttural sound and pushes aside a departmental form packet: green copy, yellow copy, blue copy, pink fucking copy…
“I’m going down to Bouvier’s shop for a cup of coffee, if anyone wants me. You keep up the good work.” He dumps all his unfinished work into Guttmann’s in-box.
“Thank you, sir.”
The telephone rings, catching LaPointe at the door. Guttmann answers, rather hoping it is something that will annoy the Lieutenant. He listens awhile, then puts his palm over the mouthpiece. “It’s the desk. There’s a guy down there asking to speak to you. It’s about the Green stabbing.”
“What’s his name?”
Guttmann takes his hand away and repeats the question. “It’s someone who knows you. A Mr. W–.”
He mentions the name of the wealthiest of the old Anglo families in Montreal. “Is that the Mr. W–?”
LaPointe nods.
Guttmann raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I didn’t know you had Connections in Important Places, sir.”
“Yes, well… Tell you what. While I’m down with Bouvier, you interview Mr. W–. Tell him you’re my assistant and I have every confidence in you. He won’t know you’re lying.”
“But, sir…”
“You’re here to get experience, aren’t you? No better way to learn to swim than by jumping off the dock.”
LaPointe leaves, closing the door behind him.
Guttmann clears his throat before saying into the phone, “Send Mr. W–up, will you?”
“Another cup, Claude?” Dr. Bouvier asks, catching a folder that is slipping from the tip of his high-heaped desk, holding it close to his clear lens to read the title, then tucking it back in toward the bottom.
“No, I don’t think I could handle another.” Bouvier laughs ritually and pushes his glasses back up to the bridge of his stubby nose. But they slip down immediately because the dirty adhesive tape with which they are repaired is loose again. He must get them fixed someday. “Did you see the report I sent up on your stabbing? We ran his clothes through the lab and the result was zero.”
“I didn’t see the report. But I’m not surprised.”
“If you didn’t come down here to talk about the report, then what? You just come down to improve your mind? Or is the weather getting you down? One of my young men was complaining about the weather this morning, grousing about the way it keeps threatening snow without delivering. He said he wished it would either shit or get off the pot. Now, there’s a daunting image for the bareheaded pedestrian. I warned the lad about the dangers of indiscriminate personification, but I doubt that he took it to heart. All right, let’s talk then. I suppose you’re pissed about that stabbing of yours getting into the papers so soon. I’m sorry about that; but the leak didn’t come from this office. Someone up in the Commissioner’s shop released it.”
“Those assholes.”
“Penetrating evaluation, if something of an anatomic synecdoche. But come on, it’s not so grave. Just a couple of column inches. No photograph. No details. You still have the advantage of surprise as you walk your way through the case. By the way, how’s that stroll coming along?”
LaPointe shrugs. “Nothing much. The victim’s turning out to be a real turd, the kind anyone might have wanted to kill.”
“I see. You have assholes for bosses and a turd for a victim. There’s a certain consistency in that. I hear your Joan ran a name and an alias through ID this morning. Your victim?” Bouvier points his face toward LaPointe, one eye hidden behind the nicotine lens, the other huge and distorted. He is showing off a bit, proving he knows everything that goes on.
“Yes, that’s the victim.”
“Hm-m. An Italian kid with an Anglo alias. No record of fingerprints. Not a legal immigrant. What does that give us? A sailor who jumped ship?”
“I doubt it.”
“Yes. The hands were wrong. No calluses. Any leads to a skill or a craft?”
“No.” LaPointe’s head rises just as Bouvier’s eye is opening wide. They have the same thought at the same moment.
It is Bouvier who expresses it. “Do you think your victim was being laundered?”
“Possible.”
There are a couple of small-timers up on the Italian Main who make their money by “laundering” men for the American organized-crime market. A young man who gets into trouble in Calabria or Sicily can be smuggled into Canada, usually on a Greek ship, and brought into Montreal, where he blends into the polyglot population of the Main while he learns a little English, and while the laundryman makes sure the Italian authorities are not on his tail. These “clean” men are slipped across the border to the States, where they are valuable as enforcers and hit men. Like a clean gun that the police cannot trace through registration, these laundered men have no records, no acquaintances, no fingerprints. And should they become awkward or dangerous to their employers, there is no one to avenge, even to question, their deaths.
It is possible that the good-looking kid who called himself Tony Green was in the process of being laundered when he met his death in that alley.
Dr. Bouvier takes off his glasses, turning his back so that LaPointe doesn’t see the eye normally covered by the nicotine lens. He flexes the broken bridge and slips them back on, pinching the skin of his nose to make them stay up better. “All right. Who’s active in the laundry business up on your patch?”
Old man Rovelli died six months ago. That leaves Canducci—Alfredo (Candy Al) Canducci.
“Chocolate,” LaPointe says to himself.
“What?”
“Chocolate. As in candy. As in Candy Al.”
“I assume that makes some subtle sense?”
“The kid had a ‘cousin’ who rented his room for him. The concierge thought the name had something to do with chocolate.”
“And you make that Candy Al Canducci. Interesting. And possible. I’ll tell you what—I’ll put in a little time on the case. Maybe your friendly family pathologist can come up with one of his ‘interesting little insights.’ Not that my genius is always appreciated by you street men. I remember once dropping a fresh possibility onto your colleague, Gaspard, when he was satisfied that he had already wrapped up a case. He described my assistance as being as welcome as a fart in a bathysphere. You want some more coffee?”
“No.”