Rodney Whitaker - The Main

Soon he was back in his office, doing his regular duties. He received his third commendation for bravery and, a year later, his second Police Medal. Down at the Quartier Général, the myth of the indestructible LaPointe was even more firmly established.

Indestructible maybe, but altered. Something subtle but significant had shifted in his perception. He had accepted the fact of his death so totally, had surrendered to it with such calm, that when he did not die, he felt unfinished, open-ended, off balance.

For the first time since he had cauterized his emotions with hate after the death of his wife, he felt lonely, a loneliness expressed in a kind of melancholy gentleness toward the people of his patch, particularly toward the old, the children, the losers.

It was shortly after he was hit in the alley that he met and began to play pinochle with Moishe, David, and Martin—his friends.

Only one rectangle of dingy neon breaks the dark of Rue Lionais, a beer bar that is a hangout for loudmouths and toughs of the quartier. LaPointe mentally runs down a list of its usual clientele and decides to drop in. The barman greets him loudly and with a bogus grin. Knowing the loud greeting is a warning signal for the customers, LaPointe ignores the owner and looks about the dim, fuggy room. One man catches his eye, a dandy dresser with the thin, mobile face of a hustler. The dandy is sitting with a group of middle-aged toughs whose faces record a lot of cheap hooch and some battering. LaPointe stands in the arched entranceway and points at the dandy. When the man raises his eyebrows in a mask of surprise, LaPointe crooks his finger once.

As the dandy rises, one of the toughs, a penny-and-nickle arm known as Lollipop, gets to his feet as if to protect his mate. LaPointe looks at the tough, his eyes calm and infinitely bored; he shake his head slowly. For a face-saving moment, the tough does not move. Then LaPointe points a stabbing finger toward their booth, and the tough sits down, grumbling to himself.

The dandy flashes a broad smile as he approaches LaPointe. “Good to see you, Lieutenant. Now isn’t that coincidence? I was just telling—”

“Cut the shit, Scheer. I ran into the Gimp on the street”

“The Gimp?” Scheer frowns and blinks as he pretends to search his memory. “Gee, I don’t think I know anybody by—”

“What day is this, Scheer?”

“Pardon me? What day?”

“I’m busy.”

“It’s Thursday, Lieutenant.”

“Day of the month.”

“Ah… the ninth?”

“All right, I want you to stay off the street until the ninth of next month. And I don’t want to see any of your girls working.”

“Now look, Lieutenant! You don’t have any right! I’m not under arrest!”

LaPointe’s eyes open with mock surprise. “Did I hear you say I don’t have any right?”

“Well… what I meant was…”

“I’m not interested in what you meant, Scheer. LaPointe is giving you a punishment. One month off the street. And if I see you around before that, I’m going to hurt you.”

“Now, just a minute—”

“Do you understand what I just said to you, asshole?” LaPointe reaches out with his broad stubby hand and pats the dandy’s cheek firmly enough to make his teeth click. “Do you understand?”

The dandy’s eyes shine with repressed fury. “Yes. I understand.”

“How long?”

“A month.”

“And who’s giving you the punishment?”

Scheer’s jaw muscles work before he says bitterly, “Lieutenant LaPointe.”

LaPointe tilts his head toward the door. “Now, get out.”

“I’ll just tell the guys I’m going.”

LaPointe closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly. “Out.”

The dandy starts to say something, then thinks better of it and leaves the bar. LaPointe turns to follow him, but he stops and decides to visit the booth. By standing up aggressively, this Lollipop has challenged his control. That is dangerous, because if LaPointe ever lets these types build up enough courage, they could beat him to a pulp. His image must be kept high in the street because the shadow of his authority covers more ground than his actual presence can. He approaches the booth.

The three toughs pretend not to see him coming. They stare down at their bottles of ale.

“You. Lollipop,” LaPointe says. “Why did you stand up when I called your friend over?”

The big man doesn’t look up. He sets his mouth in determined silence.

“I think you were showing off, Lollipop,” LaPointe says quietly.

The brute shrugs and looks away.

LaPointe picks up the tough’s half-finished bottle of ale and pours it into his lap. “Now you sit there awhile. I wouldn’t want you going out into the street like that. People would think you pissed your pants.”

As LaPointe leaves the bar, he hears two of the toughs laughing while the third growls angrily.

That’s just fine, LaPointe thinks. It’s the kind of story that will get around.

He turns up Avenue Esplanade toward his second-floor apartment in a row of bow-windowed buildings facing Parc Mont Royal. Above the park, a luminous cross stands atop the black bulk of the Mont. The wind gusts and flaps the tails of his overcoat. His legs are heavy as he mounts the long wooden stoop of number 4240.

He closes the door of his apartment and flicks on the slack toggle switch. Two of the four bulbs are burnt out in the red-and-green imitation Tiffany lamp. He tugs off his overcoat and hangs it over the wooden umbrella stand. Then, by habit, he goes into the narrow kitchen and sets water to boil. The stove’s pilot light is blocked with ancient grease and has to be lit with a match. The circle of blue flame pops on and singes his fingers, as always. He snaps his hand back and swears without passion, as usual.

While the water is heating, he goes into the bedroom and sits heavily on the bed. The only light is the upward-lancing beam of a streetlamp below his window, illuminating the ceiling and one wall but leaving the floor and the furniture in darkness. He grunts as he pulls off his shoes and wriggles his toes before stepping into his carpet slippers. He loosens his tie, pulls his shirt out from under his belt and scratches his stomach.

By now the water will be boiling, so back he goes into the unlit kitchen, his slippers slapping against his heels. His coffee-maker is an old-fashioned pressure type, with a handle to force the water through the grounds. His cup is always on the counter, its bottom always wet because he never wipes it, just rinses it out and turns it upside down on the drainboard.

Coffee cup in hand, he pads into the living room, where he settles into his overstuffed armchair by the bow window. Over the years, the springs and stuffing of the chair have shifted and bunched until it fits him perfectly. Holding the saucer under his chin in the way of workingclass men from Trois Rivières, he sips noisily. Four long sips and the cup is empty, save for the thick dregs. He believes that his routine cup of coffee before bed helps him to sleep. He sets the cup aside and turns to look out of the window. Beyond the limp curtain is the park, and above the dark hump of Mont Royal, the sky is a smudged gray-black, dim with cityglow. Within the park’s iron fence, lamp-posts lay vague patterns of light along the footpath. The street is empty; the park is empty.

He scrubs his matted hair with the palm of his hand and sighs, comfortable and half anesthetized by the platitudes of routine that comprise his life in the apartment. Sitting slumped like this, wearing slippers, his shirt over his belly, he does not look like the tough cop who has become something of a folk hero to young French Canadian policemen because of his personal, only coincidentally legal style of handling the Main, and because of his notorious indifference to administrators, regulations, and paper work. Rather, he looks like a middle-aged man whose powerful peasant body is beginning to sag. A man who has come to prefer peace to happiness; silence to music.