LaPointe scans automatically for faces he might recognize, then steps into one of the big, rickety elevators. Two young detectives mumble greetings; he nods and grunts. He gets out on the second floor and goes down the gray corridor, past old radiators that thud and hiss with steam, past identical doors with ripple-glass windows. His key doesn’t seem to work in his lock. He mutters angrily, then the door opens in his hand. It wasn’t locked in the first place.

“Good morning, sir.”

Oh, shit, yes. Gaspard’s Joan. LaPointe has forgotten all about him. What was his name? Guttmann? LaPointe notices that Guttmann has already moved in and made himself at home at a little table and a straight-backed chair in the corner. He hums a kind of greeting as he hangs his overcoat on the wooden coat tree. He sits heavily in his swivel chair and begins to paw around through his in-box.

“Sir?”

“Hm-m.”

“Sergeant Gaspard’s report is on your desk, along with the report he forwarded from the forensic lab.”

“Have you read it?”

“No, sir. It’s addressed to you.”

LaPointe is following his habit of scanning the Morning Report first thing in his office. “Read it,” he says without looking up.

It seems strange to Guttmann that the Lieutenant seems uninterested in the report. He opens the heavy brown interdepartmental envelope, unwinding the string around the plastic button fastener. “You’ll have to initial for receipt, sir.”

“You initial it.”

“But, sir—”

“Initial it!” This initialing of routing envelopes is just another bit of the bureaucratic trash that trammels the ever-reorganizing department. LaPointe makes it a practice to ignore all such rules.

What’s this? A blue memo card from the Commissioner’s office. Look at this formal crap:

FROM: Commissioner Resnais

TO: Claude LaPointe, Lieutenant

SUBJECT: Morning of 21 November: appointment for

MESSAGE: I’d like to see you when you get in.

Resnais

(dictated, but not signed)

LaPointe knows what Resnais wants. It will be about the Dieudonné case. That weaselly little turd of a lawyer is threatening to lodge a 217 assault charge against LaPointe for slapping his client. We must protect the civil rights of the criminal! Oh, yes! And what about the old woman that Dieudonné shot through the throat? What about her, with her last breaths whistling and flapping moistly through the hole?

LaPointe pushes the memo card aside with a growl.

Guttmann glances up from the report on the kid they found in the alley. “Sir? Something wrong?”

“Just read the report.” He must be tired this morning. Even this kid’s careful continental French annoys him. And he seems to take up so goddamned much room in the office! LaPointe hadn’t noticed last night how big the kid was. Six-two, six-three; weighs about 210. And his attempt to fit himself into as little space as possible behind that small table makes him seem even bigger and bulkier. This isn’t going to work out. He’ll have to turn him back over to Gaspard as soon as possible.

LaPointe shoves the routine papers and memos away and rises to look out his office window toward the Hôtel de Ville. There are scaffolds clinging to the sides of the Victorian hulk, and above the scaffolds the sandblasters have cleaned to a creamy white a façade that used to bear the comfortable patina of soot with water-run accents of dark gray. For months now, they have been sandblasting the building, and the roaring hiss has become a constant in LaPointe’s office, replacing the rumble of traffic as a base line for silence. It is not the noise that bothers LaPointe, it is the change. He liked the Hôtel de Ville the way it was, with its stained and experienced exterior. They change everything. The law, rules of evidence, acceptable procedure in dealing with suspects. The world is getting more complicated. And younger. And all these new forms! This endless paper work that he has to peck out with two fingers, hunched over his ancient typewriter, growling and smashing at the keys when he makes an error…

…It’s strange to think of her using his Mum. Putting his Mum under her arms. He supposes young girls don’t use Mum. They probably prefer those fancy sprays. He shrugs. Well, that’s just too bad. Mum is all he has. And if it’s not good enough for her…

“No identification,” Guttmann says, mostly to himself.

“What?”

“The forensic lab report, sir. No identification of that man in the alley. And no make on the fingerprints.”

“They checked with Ottawa?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hm-m.” The victim looked like the type who ought to have a record, if not for petty arrests, at least as an alien. No fingerprints. One possibility immediately occurs to LaPointe. The victim might have been an unregistered alien, one of those who slip into the country illegally. They are not uncommon on the Main; most of them are harmless enough, victims of the circular paradox of having no legal nationality, and therefore no passports and no means of legitimate immigration, therefore, no legal nationality. Several of the Jews who have been on the street for years are in this category, particularly those who came from camps in Europe just after the war. They cause no trouble; anyway, LaPointe knows about them, and that’s what counts.

“What else is in the report?”

“Not much, sir. A technical description of the wound… angle of entry and that sort of thing. They’re running down the clothing.”

“I see.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We?” LaPointe looks at the daunting pile of back work, of forms and memos and reports on his desk. “Tell me, Guttmann. When you were in college, did you learn to type?”

Guttmann is silent for fully five seconds before saying, “Ah… yes, sir?” The rising note says it all. “You know, sir,” he adds quickly, “Sergeant Gaspard had me filling out reports for him when I was assigned as his Joan. It struck me that was a sort of perversion of the intention of the apprentice program.”

“A what?”

“A perversion of the… That was one of the reasons I was glad when he let me work with you.”

“It was?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see. Well, in that case, you start working on this junk on my desk. Whatever requires a signature, sign. Sign my name if you have to.”

Guttmann’s face is glum. “What about Commissioner Resnais?” he asks, glad to have a little something to pique back with. “There was a memo about him wanting to see you.”

“I’ll be down in Forensic Medicine, talking to Bouvier, if anyone calls.”

“And what should I tell the Commissioner’s office, if they call?”

“Tell them I’m perverting your intentions… that was it, wasn’t it?”

As LaPointe steps out of the elevator on the basement level, he is met by a medley of odors that always brings the same incongruous image to his mind: a plaster statue of the Virgin, her bright blue eyes slightly strabismic through the fault of the artist, and a small chip out of her cheek. With this mental image always comes a leaden sensation in his arms and shoulders. The stale smells of the Forensic Medicine Department are linked to this odd sensation of weight in his arms by a long organic chain of association that he has never attempted to follow.

The odor in these halls is an olio of chemicals, floor wax, paint cooking on hot radiators, dusty air, the sum of which is very like the smells of St. Joseph’s Home, where he was sent after the pneumonia took his mother. (In Trois Rivières, it wasn’t pneumonia; it was the pneumonia. And it didn’t kill one’s mother; it took her.)

The smells of St. Joseph’s: floor wax, hot radiators, wet hair, wet wool, brown soap, dust, and the acrid smell of ink, dried and caked on the sides of the inkwell.