To turn the body over, the detectives have to straighten it out first. They lift it from under its arms and pull it forward, unfolding it. When they lower it to the pavement, the young face touches the ground.
“Careful!” LaPointe says automatically.
Guttmann glances up, assuming he is being blamed for something. He already dislikes the bullying LaPointe. He doesn’t have much use for the old-time image of the tough cop who uses fists and wisetalk, rather than brains and understanding. He has heard about LaPointe of the Main from admiring young French Canadian cops, and the Lieutenant is true to Guttmann’s predicted stereotype.
Sergeant Gaspard pinches one of his ears to restore feeling to the lobe. “First time I’ve ever seen one kneeling like that. Looked like an altar boy.”
For a moment, LaPointe finds it odd that they had similar images of the body’s posture. But, after all, they share both age and cultural background. Neither of them is a confessing Catholic any longer, but they were brought up with a simple fundamentalist Catholicism that would define them forever, define them negatively, as a mold negatively defines a casting. They are non-Catholics, which is a very different thing from being a non-Protestant or a non-Jew.
The detectives go through the pockets routinely, one putting the findings into a clear plastic bag with a press seal, while Guttmann makes a list, tipping his note pad back awkwardly to catch the light from the street.
“That’s it?” Gaspard asks as Guttmann closes his notebook and blows on his numb fingers.
“Yes, sir. Not much. No wallet. No identification. Some small change, keys, a comb—that sort of thing.”
Gaspard nods and gestures to the ambulance attendants who are waiting with a wheeled stretcher. With professional adroitness and indifference, they turn the body onto the stretcher and roll it toward the back doors of the ambulance. The cart rattles over the uneven brick pavement, and one arm flops down, the dead hand palsied with the vibrations.
They will deliver it to the Forensic Medicine Department, where it will be fingerprinted and examined thoroughly, together with the clothes and articles found in the pockets. The prints will be telephoned to Ottawa, and by morning Dr. Bouvier, the department pathologist, should have a full report, including a make on the victim’s identity.
“Who found the body?” LaPointe asks Gaspard.
“Patrol car. Those two officers on guard.”
“Have you talked to them?”
“No, not yet. Did you recognize the stiff?” It is generally assumed that LaPointe knows by sight everyone who lives around the Main.
“No. Never saw him before.”
“Looked Portuguese.”
LaPointe thrusts out his lower lip and shrugs. “Or Italian. The clothes were more Italian.”
As they walk back to the mouth of the alley, the ambulance departs, squealing its tires unnecessarily. LaPointe stops before the uniformed men on guard. “Which of you found the body?”
“I did, Lieutenant LaPointe,” says the nearest one quickly. He has the rectangular face of a peasant, and his accent is Chiac. It is a misfortune to speak Chiac, because there is a tradition of dour stupidity associated with the half-swallowed sound; it is a hillbilly accent used by comics to enhance tired jokes.
“Come with us,” LaPointe says to the Chiac officer, and to his disappointed partner, “You can wait in the car. And turn that damned thing off.” He indicates the revolving red light.
LaPointe, Gaspard, Guttmann, and the Chiac officer cross the street to the Roi des Frites. The policeman left behind is glad to get out of the cold, but he envies his partner’s luck. He would give anything to take coffee with LaPointe. He could just see the faces of the guys in the locker room when he dropped casually, “Lieutenant LaPointe and I were having a coffee together, and he turns to me and says…” Someone would throw a towel at him and tell him he was full of shit up to his eyebrows.
Dirtyshirt Red rises when the policemen enter the bright interior of the all-night coffee place, but LaPointe motions him to sit down again. Quite automatically, he has already taken over the investigation, although Gaspard from homicide is technically in charge of it. It is an unspoken law in the department that what happens on the Main belongs to LaPointe. And who else would want it?
The four men sit at a back table, warming their palms on the thick earthenware cups. The Chiac officer is a little nervous—he wants to look good in front of Lieutenant LaPointe; even more, he doesn’t want to seem a boob in relation to this Anglo tagging along with Sergeant Gaspard.
“By the way, have you met my Joan?” Gaspard asks LaPointe.
“I met him.” LaPointe glances at the big-boned young man. Must be a bright lad. You only get into the OIT apprentice program if you are in the top 10 percent of your academy class, and then only after you have done a year of service and have the recommendation of your direct superior.
When LaPointe began on the force, there were almost no Anglo cops. The pay was too low; the job had too little prestige; and the French Canadians who made up the bulk of the department were not particularly kind to interlopers.
“He’s not a bad type, for a Roundhead,” Gaspard says, indicating his apprentice, and speaking as though he were not present. “And God knows it’s not hard to teach him. There’s nothing he already knows.”
The Chiac officer grins, and Guttmann tries to laugh it off.
Gaspard drinks off the last of his coffee and taps on the window to get the attention of the counterman for a refill. “Robbery, eh?” he says to LaPointe.
“I suppose so. No wallet. Only change in the pockets. But…”
Gaspard is an old-timer too. “I know what you mean. No signs of a fight.”
LaPointe nods. The victim was a big, strong-looking boy in his mid-twenties. Well built. Probably the kind who lifts weights while he looks darkly at himself in a mirror. If he had resisted the theft, there would have been signs of it. On the other hand, if he had simply handed over his wallet, why would the mugger knife him?
“Could be a nut case,” Gaspard suggests.
LaPointe shrugs.
“Christ, we need that sort of thing like the Pope needs a Wassermann,” Gaspard says. “Thank God there was a robbery.”
The Chiac patrolman has been listening, maintaining a serious expression and making every effort to participate intelligently. That is, he has been keeping his mouth shut and nodding with each statement made by the older men. But now his cold-mottled forehead wrinkles into a frown. Why is it fortunate that there was a robbery? He lacks the experience to sense that there was something not quite right about the killing… something about the position of the body that makes both LaPointe and Gaspard intuitively uncomfortable. If there had been no robbery, this might have been the start of something nasty. Like rape mutilations, motiveless stabbings are likely to erupt in patterns. You get a string of four or five before the maniac gets scared or, less often, caught. It’s the kind of thing the newspapers love.
“I’ll walk it around for a few days,” LaPointe says. “See what Bouvier’s report gives us. You don’t mind if I take it on, do you?” The question is only pro forma. LaPointe feels that all crime on his patch belongs to him by right, but he is careful of the feelings of the other senior men.
“Be my guest,” Gaspard says with a wave of his arm that indicates he is happy to be rid of the mess. “And if I ever get the clap, you can have that, too.”
“I’ll route the paper work through you, so we don’t upset the Masters.”
Gaspard nods. That is the way LaPointe usually works. It avoids direct run-ins with the administration. There is nothing official about LaPointe’s assignment to the Main. In fact, there is no organizational rubric that covers him. The administration slices crime horizontally into categories: theft, bunco, vice, homicide. LaPointe’s responsibility is a vertical one: all the crime on the Main. This assignment was never planned, never officially recognized, it just developed as a matter of chance and tradition; and there are those in authority who chafe at this rupture of the organizational chain. They consider it ridiculous that a full lieutenant spends his time crawling around the streets like a short timer. But they console themselves with the realization that LaPointe is an anachronism, a vestige of older, less efficient methods. He will be retiring before long; then they can repair the administrative breach.