Both she and Guttmann laugh. A glance from LaPointe, and she is laughing alone as she pours out the Armagnac. “Say when.”
“That’s fine. Now, how do you know my name?”
“Don’t be so modest. Everyone on the Main knows Lieutenant LaPointe.”
“You know the Main?”
“I grew up there. Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant. There’s no way in the world you could remember me. I left when I was just a kid. Thirteen years old. But I remember you. Of course that was twenty years ago, and you weren’t a lieutenant, and your hair was all black, and you were slimmer. But I remember you.” There is something harder than amusement in the glitter of her eyes. Then she turns to Guttmann. “What do you think of that? What do you think of a woman giving away her age like that? Here I go admitting that I’m thirty-three, when I know perfectly that I could pass for thirty-two any day… if the light wasn’t too strong.”
“So you come from the street?” LaPointe says, unconvinced.
“Oh, yes, sir. From the deepest depths of the street. My mother was a hooker.” She has learned to say that with the same offhandedness as one might use to mention that her mother was a blonde, or a liberal. She evidently likes to drop bombs. But she laughs almost immediately. “Hey, what do you say, gang. Shall we drink at the bar, or go sit in a booth?”
When they have returned to the “conversation island,” Mlle. Montjean assumes her most businesslike voice. She tells LaPointe that she wants to know exactly why he is here, asking questions. When she knows that, she will decide whether or not to answer without the advice of counsel.
“Have you any reason to think you might be in trouble?” he asks.
But she is not taking sucker bait like that. She smiles as she sips her aperitif.
LaPointe is not comfortable with her elusive blend of caution and practiced charm. She is so unlike the girls on his patch, though she claims to be one of them. He dislikes being kept off balance by her constant changes of verbal personality. She was the urbane vamp at first, completely castrating the policeman in Guttmann. Then there was that clowning “gun moll” routine under the guise of which she had admitted to being caught off base… but to nothing more. LaPointe fears that when he hits her with the fact that Green is dead, her control will be so high that it will mask any surprise she might feel. In that way, she could seem guilty without being so. She might even confuse him by being frank and honest. She is the type for whom honesty is also a ploy.
“So,” LaPointe says, looking around at the costly things decorating the apartment, “you’re from the Main, are you?”
“From is the active word, Lieutenant. I’ve spent my whole life being from the Main.”
“Montjean? You say your mother was a hooker named Montjean?”
“No, I didn’t say that, Lieutenant. Naturally, I have changed my name.”
“From?”
Mlle. Montjean smiles. “Can I offer you another Armagnac? I’m afraid it will have to be a quick one; I have a working lunch coming up. We’re involved in something that might interest you, Lieutenant. We’re developing an intensive course in Joual. You’d be surprised at the number of people who want to learn the Canadian usages and accents. Salesmen, mostly, and politicians. The kinds of people who make their living by being trusted. Like policemen.”
LaPointe finishes his drink and sets the tulip glass carefully on the glass tabletop. “This Antonio Verdini I mentioned…?”
“Yes?” She lifts her eyebrows lazily.
“He’s dead. Stabbed in an alley up on the Main.”
She looks levelly at LaPointe, not a flutter in her eyelids. After a moment, her gaze falls to the marble-and-gold cigarette lighter, and she stares at it, motionless. Then she takes a cigarette from a carved teak box, lights it, tilts back her head with a bounce of her hair, and jets the uninhaled smoke over the heads of her guests. She delicately plucks an imaginary bit of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.
“Oh?” she asks.
“Presumably you were lovers,” LaPointe says matter-of-factly, ignoring Guttmann’s quick glance.
Mlle. Montjean shrugs. “We screwed, if that’s what you mean.” More of that precious bomb-dropping, a kind of counter-attack against LaPointe’s ballistic use of Green’s death. Her control had been excellent throughout her long pause… but there was the pause.
“Our information says that he was learning English here,” LaPointe continues. “I assume that’s right?”
“Yes. One of our Italian-speaking instructors was guiding him through an intensive course in English.”
“And that’s how you met him?”
“That’s how I met him, Lieutenant. Tell me, do I need a lawyer now?”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Then you probably don’t need a lawyer. Unless you intend to withhold information, or refuse to assist us in our inquiry.”
She taps the ash from her cigarette unnecessarily, gaining time to think. Her control is still good, but for the first time she is troubled.
“You’re thinking about the others, of course,” LaPointe says.
“What others?”
LaPointe bends on her that melancholy patience he assumes during examination when he lacks the information necessary to lead the conversation.
“All right, Lieutenant. I’ll cooperate. But let me ask you something first. Does this have to get into the papers?”
“Not necessarily.”
“You see, my school is rather special—expensive, elite. Scandal would ruin it. And it’s everything I’ve worked for. It represents ten years of work. What’s more, it represents the ten thousand miles I’ve managed to walk away from the Main. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand. Tell me about the others.”
“Well, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Mike was killed the same way: stabbed in the street.”
“Mike?”
“Michael Pearson. Dr. Michael Pearson. He used to run the Language Learning Center at McGill.”
“And you were lovers?”
She smiles thinly. “You do run to circumlocution, don’t you?”
“And what about the other one. The American?”
Her eyes open with confusion. “What other one?”
“The American. Ah…” He looks to Guttmann.
“John Albert MacHenry,” Guttmann fills in quickly.
Mlle. Montjean glances from one to the other. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think I ever met anyone by that name. I can assure you that I never… screwed… your Mr. MacHenry.” She reaches over and squeezes LaPointe’s arm. “That’s just my homey way of saying we were not lovers, Lieutenant.”
“You seem sure of that, Mlle. Montjean. Do you keep a list?”
Her smile is fixed and her eyes perfectly cold. “As a matter of fact, I do. At least, I keep a diary. And it’s a fairly long list, if you will forgive my bragging. I enjoy keeping count. My analyst tells me that it’s rather typical behavior in cases like mine. He tells me the reason I use so many men is because I detest them, and by scoring them one after the other I deny them any individuality. He talks like that, my analyst. Like a textbook. And can you guess when he told me all this crap? In bed. After I had scored him too. Later, he sat right there where you’re sitting and told me how he understood my need to screw even him. A typical gesture of rejection, he told me. And when I mentioned that he wasn’t much of a lay, he tried to laugh it off. But I know I got to him.” She grins. “The phony bastard.”
“The point of all that being that you don’t know this American, this MacHenry?”
“Precisely. Oh, I’ve had my share of Americans, of course. One should have an American at least once a quarter. It makes Canadians look so good by comparison. And at least once a year, one should have an Englishman. Partially to make even the Americans look good, and partially as penance. Did you know that making love with a Brit shortens one’s time in purgatory?” The intercom on her desk buzzes; Mlle. Montjean butts out her cigarette and rises, flattening her skirt with her palms. “That will be my luncheon appointment. I assume I’m free to go to it?”