The Main

“I like to believe my guests will treat that as a mere decoration,” she says, indicating the spittoon.

“Where did you get a turn-of-the-century bar like this?” Guttma

“Oh, they were tearing down one of those little places up on the Main, and I just bought it.” She grins mischievously. “The workmen had a hell of a time getting it up here. The walnut top is one piece. They had to bring it in through the window.”

Guttma

“That never occurred to me. I should have had my bed brought in through the window, too. That would really have given them something to gossip about. It’s one of those big circular waterbeds.” She laughs lightly. Guttma

LaPointe’s patience with this social nonsense is thin. He rises from the deep cushions of the “conversation island” and joins them at the bar. “I would like a little Armagnac after all, Mlle. Montjean. And I would like to know something about Antonio Verdini, alias Tony Green.”

She does not pause in pouring out the Dubo

“Please. Do you mind the questions?”

“I’m not sure.” She takes down the Armagnac bottle and looks at it thoughtfully. “Tell me, Lieutenant LaPointe. Would my lawyer be unhappy with me, if I were to answer your questions without his being here?”

“Possibly. How did you know my name?”

“You showed me your identification when you came in.”

“You barely glanced at it.” There is another thing he does not mention. By habit he holds out his identification card with his thumb over his name. He’s been a cop for a long time.

She sets the bottle down and looks directly at him, her eyes shifting from one of his to the other. Then she slowly raises both arms until her palms are level with her ears. In a deep, graveled voice she says, “You got me, Lieutenant. I give up. But don’t tell Rocky and the rest of the mob that I ratted.”

Both she and Guttma

“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 Guttma

“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 Guttma

“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 Guttma

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 u

“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?”