The Main

Resnais looks down at LaPointe’s file, his jaw tight. “Yes. That’s all.”

The slam of the office door rattles the glass, and LaPointe brushes past Guttma

Then LaPointe takes a deep breath and rubs his mat of hair with his palm. “Did I get a call from Dirtyshirt Red?”

“No, sir. No calls at all.”

“Hm-m.” LaPointe rises and comes to Guttma

“Oh, it’s going fine, sir. It’s lots of fun. I’d rather type out reports than anything I can think of.”

LaPointe turns away, grunting his disgust for all paper work and all who bother with it. Outside the window, the city is already growing dark under the heavy layers of stationary cloud. He tugs down his overcoat from the wooden rack.

“I’m going up onto the Main. See what’s happening.”

Guttma

“Well?”

The younger man puts his finger on his place and looks up. “Well what, sir?”

“Are you coming or not?”

A minute later, the door is locked, the lights off, and the unfinished report is still wound into the machine.

5

By the time they cross Sherbrooke, the last greenish light is draining from sallow cloud layers over the city. Streetlights are already on, and the sidewalks are begi

As they pass a shop, LaPointe takes his hand from his pocket and lifts it in greeting. A bald little man with a green eyeshade waves back.

Guttma

“Buttonholes?” Guttma

LaPointe repeats one of the street’s ancient jokes. “It would be a wonderful business, if Mr. Klein didn’t have to provide the material.”

Guttma

Each time they pass a bar, the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke greets them for a second before it is blown away by the raw wind. Halfway up St. Laurent, LaPointe turns in at a run-down bar called Chez Pete’s Place. It is fuggy and dark inside, and the proprietor doesn’t bother to look up from the girlie magazine in his lap when the policemen enter.

Three men sit around a table in back, one a tall, boney tramp with a concave chest who has the shakes so badly that he is drinking his wine from a beer mug. The other two are arguing drunkenly across the table, pounding it sometimes, to the confused distress of the third.

“Floyd Patterson wasn’t shit! He never… he couldn’t… he wasn’t shit, compared to Joe Louis.”

“Ah, that’s your story! Floyd Patterson had a great left. He had what you call one of your world’s great lefts! He could hit… anything.”

“Ah, he couldn’t… he couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag! I used to know a guy who told me that he wasn’t shit, compared to Joe Louis. You know… do you know what they used to call Joe Louis?”

“I don’t care what they called him! I don’t give a big rat’s ass!”

“They used to call Joe Louis… Gentleman Joe. Gentleman Joe! What do you think of that?”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why did they call him Gentleman Joe?”

“Why? Why? Because… because that Floyd Patterson couldn’t punch worth shit, that’s why. Ask anybody!”

LaPointe crosses to the group. “Has anyone seen Dirtyshirt Red today?”

They look at one another, each hoping the question is directed to someone else.

“You,” LaPointe says to a little man with a narrow forehead and a large, stubbly Adam’s apple.

“No, Lieutenant. I ain’t seen him.”

“He was in a couple hours ago,” the other volunteers. “He asked around about the Vet.” The name of this universally detested tramp brings grunts from several bommes at other tables. No one has any stomach for the Vet, with his uppity ways and his bragging.

“And what did he find out?”

“Not much, Lieutenant. We told him the Vet come in here late last night.”

“How late?”

The proprietor lifts his head from the skin magazine and listens.

“Well?” LaPointe asks. “Was it after closing time?”

One of the tramps glances toward the owner. He doesn’t want to get in trouble with the only bar that will let bommes come in. But nothing is as bad as getting in trouble with Lieutenant LaPointe. “Maybe a little after.”

“Did he have money?”

“Yeah. He had a wad! His pension check must of come. He bought two bottles.”

“Two bottles,” another sneers. “And you know what that cheap bastard does? He gives one bottle to all of us to share, and he drinks the other all by hisself!”

“Potlickin’ son of a bitch,” says another without heat.

LaPointe crosses to the bar and speaks to the owner. “Did he seem to have money?”

“I don’t sell on the cuff.”

“Did he flash a roll?”

“He wasn’t that drunk. Why? What did he do?”

LaPointe looks at the owner for a second. There is something disgusting about making your money off bommes. He reaches into his pocket and takes out some change. “Here. Give them a bottle.”

The proprietor counts the change with his index finger. “Hey, this ain’t enough.”

“It’s our treat. Yours and mine. We’re going fifty-fifty.”

The arrangement does not please the owner, but he reaches under the bar and grudgingly gets out a bottle of muscatel. By the time it touches the counter, one of the bommes has come over and picked it up.

“Hey, thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll tell Red you’re lookin’ for him.”

“He knows.”

They have been wandering for an hour and a half, threading through the narrow streets that branch out from the Main, LaPointe stopping occasionally to go into a bar or café, or to exchange a word with someone on the street Guttma

At this moment, LaPointe is talking with a fat woman with frizzy, bright orange hair. She leans out of a first-story window, her knobby elbows planted on the stone sill over which she has been shaking a dust mop in fine indifference to passers-by. From the tenor of their conversation, Guttma