“Yes, I know.”

“Oh. Well… why did you call?”

“I just wanted to know if you found everything you need.”

“Like what?”

“Like… did you buy a razor?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good.”

A short silence.

Then he says, “I won’t be back until eight or nine tonight.”

“And you want me out by then?”

“No. I mean, it’s up to you. It doesn’t matter.”

A short silence.

“Well? Should I go or stay?”

A longer silence.

“I’ll bring some groceries back with me. We can make supper there, if you want.”

“Can you cook?” she asks.

“Yes. Can’t you?”

“No. I can do eggs and mince and things like that.”

“Well, then, I’ll do the cooking.”

“Okay.”

“It’ll be late. Can you hold out that long?”

“What do you mean?”

“You won’t get too hungry?”

“No.”

“Well then. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Okay.”

LaPointe hangs up, feeling foolish. Why call when you have nothing to say? That’s stupid. He wonders what he’ll buy for supper.

The dumb twit can’t even cook.

The secretary’s skirt is so short that modesty makes her back up to file cabinets and squat to extract papers from the lower drawers.

LaPointe sits in a modern imitation-leather divan so deep and soft that it is difficult to rise from it. On a low coffee table are arranged a fine political balance of backdated Punch and Paris Match magazines, together with the latest issue of Canada Now. The walls of the Commissioner’s reception room are adorned with paintings that have the crude draftsmanship and flat perspective of fashionable Hudson Bay Indian primitive; and there is a saccharine portrait of an Indian girl with pigtails and melting brown comic-sad eyes too large for her face, after the style of an American husband-and-wife team of kitsch painters. The size of the eyes, their sadness, and the Oriental upturn of the corners make it look as though the girl’s mother plaited her braids too tightly.

Along with the popular Indian trash on the walls, there are several framed posters, examples of the newly established Public Relations Department. One shows a uniformed policeman and a middle-aged civilian male standing side by side, looking down at a happy child. The slogan reads: Crime Is Everybody’s Business. LaPointe wonders what crime the men are contemplating.

The leggy secretary squats again, her back to the file cabinet, to replace a folder. Her tight skirt makes her lose her balance for a second, and her knees separate, revealing her panties.

LaPointe nods to himself. That’s smart; to avoid showing your ass, you flash your crotch.

The door behind the secretary’s desk opens and Commissioner Resnais appears, hand already out, broad smile in place. He makes it a habit to greet senior men personally. He brought that back with him from a seminar in the States on personnel management tactics.

Make the men who work FOR you think they work WITH you.

“Claude, good to see you. Come on in.” Just the opposite of Sergeant Gaspard, Resnais uses LaPointe’s first name, but does not tutoyer him. The Commissioner’s alert black eyes reveal a tension that belies his facile camaraderie.

Resnais’ office is spacious, its furniture relentlessly modern. There is a thick carpet, and two of the walls are lined with books—and not only lawbooks. There are titles dealing with social issues, psychology, the history of Canada, problems of modern youth, communications, and the arts and crafts of Hudson Bay Indians. No civilian visitor could avoid being impressed by the implication of social concern and modern attitudes toward the causes and prevention of crime. No ordinary cop, this Commissioner. A liberal intellectual working in the trenches of quotidian law enforcement.

Nor is it easy to dismiss Resnais as a bogus political man. He has in fact read each of the books in his office. He in fact does his best to understand and respond to modern community needs. He does in fact see himself as a liberal; as a policeman by vocation, and a politician by necessity. Resnais is not the man to attract devotion and affection from those under him, but the majority of the force respect him, and many of the younger men admire him.

Like LaPointe, Resnais began by patrolling a beat. Then he went to night school; perfected his English; married into one of the reigning Anglo families of Montreal; took leaves of absence, without pay, to finish his college education; made a career of delicate cases involving people and events that required protection from the light of newspaper exposure. Finally, he became the first career policeman to occupy the traditionally civilian post of commissioner. For this reason, he thinks of himself as a cop’s cop. Few of the older men on the force share his view. True, he has been on the force for thirty years, but he was never a cop in the rough-and-tumble sense. He never shook information out of a pimp he despised. He never drank coffee at two in the morning out of a cracked mug, sleeplessness irritating his eyes, his overcoat stinking of wet wool. He never had to use the cover of a car door when returning fire.

LaPointe notices his personnel file on Resnais’ desk, otherwise bare save for a neat stack of pale blue memo cards, an open note pad, and two perfectly sharpened pencils.

Men who look busy are often only disorganized.

Resnais stations himself in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, the glare of the overcast skies making it difficult to look in his direction without squinting.

“Well, how have you been, Claude?”

LaPointe smiles at the accent. Resnais is really trilingual. He speaks continental French; perfect English, although with the growled “r” of the Francophone who has finally located that difficult consonant; and he can revert to a Joual as twangy as the next man’s when he is addressing a group from east Montreal, or speaking to senior French Canadian officers.

“I think I’ll make it through the winter, Commissioner.” LaPointe never uses his first name.

Resnais laughs. “I’m sure you will! Tough old son of a bitch like you? I’m sure you will!” There is something phony and condescending in his use of profanity, just like one of the guys. He clasps his hands behind his back and rocks up on his toes, a habit born of being rather short for a policeman. His body is thick, but he keeps in perfect trim by jogging with neighbors, swimming with members of his exclusive athletic club, and playing handball in the police league, for which he signs up just like any other cop, and where he accepts defeat at the hands of younger officers with laughing good grace. His expensive suits are closely cut, and he could pass for ten years younger than he is, despite the gleaming pate with its wreath of coal-black hair. Suntanning under lamps has given him a slightly purplish gleam. “Still living in the old place on Esplanade?” he asks offhandedly.

“Yes. Just like it says in my dossier,” LaPointe responds.

Resnais laughs heartily. “I can’t get away with anything with you, can I?” It is true that he makes a practice of looking over a man’s file just before seeing him, for the purpose of refreshing himself on an intimate detail or two—number of children and their sexes, the wife’s name, awards or medals. He drops these bits of information casually, as though he knows each man personally and holds in his memory details of his life. He once read somewhere that this was a trick used by a popular American general in the Second World War, and he adopted it as a good management tactic.

An employee gives of his TIME, a buddy gives of HIMSELF.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in LaPointe’s life to comment upon. No children, a wife long since dead, citations for merit and bravery all earned years ago. You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to mention the street a man lives on.