LaPointe sniffs and shakes his head. “That sounds dangerous. I remember when I was a kid on the force, I went on a couple of blind dates set up by friends. And whenever they described my girl as ‘a good talker’ or ‘a kid with a great sense of humor,’ that always meant she was a dog. What I usually wanted at the time was a pig, not a dog.”
For a second, Guttmann tries to picture the Lieutenant as a young cop going on blind dates. The image won’t come into focus.
“I know what you mean,” he says. “But you know what’s even worse than that?”
“What?”
“When the guy who’s set you up can’t think of anything to say but that your girl has nice hands. That’s when you’re really in trouble!”
LaPointe is laughing in agreement when the phone rings. It is the Commissioner’s office, and the young lady demanding that LaPointe come up immediately has a snotty, impatient tone.
After announcing on the intercom that Lieutenant LaPointe is in the outer office, the secretary with the impeding miniskirt sets busily to work, occasionally glancing accusingly at the Lieutenant. When she arrived at the office at eight that morning, the Commissioner was already at work.
The man who isn’t a step AHEAD is a step BEHIND.
Resnais’ mood was angry and tense, and everyone in the office was made to feel its sting. The secretary blames LaPointe for her boss’s mood.
For the first time, Resnais doesn’t come out of his office to greet LaPointe with his bogus handshake and smile. Three clipped words over the intercom request that he be sent in.
When LaPointe enters, Resnais is standing with his back to the window, rocking up on his toes. The gray light of the overcast day glints off the purplish suntan on his head, and there is a lighter tone to his sunlamped bronze around the ears, indicating that his haircut is fresh.
“I sent for you at eight this morning, LaPointe.” His tone is crisp.
“Yes. I saw the memo.”
“And?”
“I just got in.”
“In this shop, we start at eight in the morning.”
“I get off the street at one or two in the morning. What time do you usually get home, Commissioner?”
“That’s none of your goddamned onions.” Even angry, Resnais does not forget to use idioms common to the social level of his French Canadian men. “But I didn’t call you up here to chew your ass about coming in late.” He has decided to use vulgar expressions to get through to LaPointe.
“Do you mind if I sit down?”
“What? Oh, yes. Go ahead.” Resnais sits in his high-backed chair, designed by osteopaths to reduce fatigue. He takes a deep breath and blows it out. Might as well get right to it.
The surgeon who cuts slowly does no kindness to his patient.
He glances at his note pad, open on the immaculate desk beside two sharpened pencils and a stack of blue memo cards. “I assume you know a certain Scheer, Anton P.”
“Scheer? Yes, I know him. He’s a pimp and a pissou.”
“He’s also a citizen!”
“You’re not telling me that Scheer had the balls to complain about me.”
“No official complaint has been lodged—and won’t be, if I can help it. I warned you about your methods just a couple of days ago. Did you think I was just talking out of my ass?”
LaPointe shrugs.
Resnais looks at his notes. “You ordered him off the street. You denied him the use of a public thoroughfare. Who in hell do you think you are, LaPointe?”
“It was a punishment.”
“The police don’t punish! The courts punish. But it wasn’t enough that you ordered him off the streets, you publicly degraded him, making him take off his clothes and climb into a basement well, with the possible risk of injury. Furthermore, you did this before witnesses—a crowd of witnesses including young women who laughed at him. Public degradation.”
“Only his shoelaces.”
“What?”
“I only ordered him to take off his shoelaces.”
“My report says clothes.”
“Your report is wrong.”
Resnais takes one of the pencils and makes the correction. He has no doubt at all of LaPointe’s honesty. But that is not the point. “It says here that there was another policeman involved. I want his name.”
“He just happened to be walking with me. He had no part in it.”
LaPointe’s matter-of-fact tone irritates Resnais. He slaps the top of his desk. “I won’t fucking well have it! I’ve worked too goddamned hard to build a good community image for this shop! And I don’t care if you’re the hero of every wet-nosed kid on the force, LaPointe. I won’t have that image ruined!”
Anger is a bad weapon, but a great tool.
LaPointe looks at Resnais with the expression of bored patience he assumes when questioning suspects. When the Commissioner has calmed down, he says, “If Scheer didn’t lodge a complaint, how do you know about this?”
“That’s not your affair.”
“Some of his friends got to you, right? Ward bosses?”
It is Resnais’ habit to play it straight with his men. “All right. That’s correct. A man in municipal politics brought it to my attention. He knows how I’ve worked to maintain good press for the force. And he didn’t want to make this public if he didn’t have to.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t need insubordination from you.”
“Tell me something. Why do you imagine your friend interfered on this pimp’s behalf?”
“The man is not my friend. I know him only at the athletic club. But he’s a politically potent man who can help the force… or hurt it.” Resnais smiles bitterly. “I suppose that sounds like ass-kissing to you.”
LaPointe shrugs.
Resnais stares at him for a long moment. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Put it together. Scheer is not the run-of-the-mill pimp. He specializes in very young girls. Either your… friend… is a client, or he’s open to blackmail. Why else would he help a turd like Scheer?”
Resnais considers this for a moment. Then he makes some notes on his pad. Above all, he is a good cop. “You might be right. I’ll have that looked into. But nothing alters the fact that you have exposed the department to bad public opinion with your gangster methods. Have you ever thought of them that way? As gangster methods?”
LaPointe has not. But he doesn’t care about that. “So you intend to tell your political friend that you gave me a sound ass-chewing and everything will be fine from now on?”
“I will tell him that I privately reprimanded you.”
“And he’ll pass the word on to Scheer?”
“I suppose so.”
“And Scheer will come back out onto the street, sassy-assed and ready to start business again.” LaPointe shakes his head slowly. “No, that’s not the way it’s going to happen, Commissioner. Not on my patch.”
“Your patch! LaPointe of the Main! I’m sick up to here of hearing about it. You may think of yourself as the cop of the street, but you’re not the whole force, LaPointe. And that run-down warren of slums is not Montreal!”
LaPointe stares at Resnais. Run-down warren!
For a second, Resnais has the feeling that LaPointe is going to hit him. He knows he went too far, talking about the Main like that. But he has no intention of backing down. “You were telling me that this Scheer wouldn’t be allowed to start up business again. What do you think you’re going to do, Claude?” It’s “Claude” now. Resnais is shifting his forensic line.
LaPointe rises and goes to Resnais’ window. He never noticed that the Commissioner looks out on the Hôtel de Ville too, on the scaffolding and sandblasting. It doesn’t seem right that they should share the same view. “Well, Commissioner. You can go ahead and tell your friend that you gave me a ‘private reprimand.’ But you’d better also tell him that if his pimp sets foot on my patch, I’ll hurt him.”