LaPointe notices that he has changed from looking over a rather difficult shot that would have left him with good position to taking a dogmeat ball hanging on the rim of the pocket. He smiles to himself. Candy Al’s cheap sense of theatrics will not permit him to punctuate some bit of lip with a missed shot.
“Let’s have a talk, Canducci,” LaPointe says, ignoring the ring of young men.
Candy Al brushes the chalk from his fingers before lifting the sharp crease of one trouser leg to squat and line up the straight-in shot. “You want to talk, Canuck? All right, talk. Me, I’m playing pool.” He doesn’t look up to say this, but continues to examine his shot.
LaPointe shakes his head gravely. “That’s too bad.”
“What’s too bad?”
“The way you’re putting yourself in a hard place, Canducci. You’re showing off for these asshole punks. First thing you know, you’ll be forced to say something stupid. And then I’ll have to spank you.”
“Spank me? Ho-ho. You?” He rolls an in-cupped hand and looks around his coterie as if to say, Listen to this crap, will you? He draws back the cue to make his shot.
LaPointe reaches out and sweeps the object ball into its pocket. “Game’s over.”
For the first time, Canducci looks up into LaPointe’s eyes. He detests the crinkling smile in them. He walks slowly around the end of the table to face the cop. There is an inward pressure from the ring of punks, and Guttmann glances around to pick out the first two he’d have to drop to keep them off his arms. Canducci’s heart is thumping under his yellow silk shirt, as much from anger as from fear. LaPointe was right; if it hadn’t been for the audience, he would never have taken this tone; now he has no choice but to play it out.
He stops before LaPointe, tapping the shaft of his cue into his palm. “You know what, Canuck? You take a lot of risks, for an old man.”
LaPointe speaks over his shoulder to Guttmann. “There’s something for you to learn here, son. This Canducci here and his punks are dangerous men.” His eyes do not leave Candy Al’s, and they are still crinkled in a smile.
“Better believe it, cop.”
“Oh, you’re dangerous, all right. Because you’re cowards, and cowards are always dangerous when they’re in a pack.”
Canducci pushes his face toward LaPointe’s. “You got a wise mouth, you know that?”
LaPointe closes his eyes and shakes his head sadly. “Canducci, Canducci… what can I tell you?” He lifts his palms in a fatalistic shrug.
The next happens so quickly that Guttmann remembers only blurred fragments of motion and the sound of scuffling feet. LaPointe suddenly reaches out with one of the lifted hands, grabbing the dandy by the face and driving him back against the wall in two quick steps. Canducci’s head cracks against a pinup of a nude. LaPointe’s broad hand masks the face, the palm against the mouth and the fingers splayed across the eyes.
“Freeze!” he barks. “One move, and he loses his eyes!”
To make his point, he presses slightly with his fingertips, and Canducci produces a terrified squeal that is half-muffled by the heel of LaPointe’s hand. LaPointe can feel saliva from the twisted mouth against his palm.
“Everyone sit on the floor,” LaPointe commands. “Out away from the wall! Sit on your hands, palms up! I want the legs out in front of you! Do what I say, or this asshole will be selling pencils on the street!” Again a slight pressure on the eyes; again a squeal.
The punks exchange glances, no one wanting to be the first to obey. Then Guttmann, with a gesture that surprises LaPointe, grabs one by the arm and slams him up against the wall. The tough sits down with almost comic celerity, and the others follow.
“Sit up straight!” LaPointe orders. “And keep those hands under your asses! I want to hear knuckles crunch!”
This is a trick he learned from an old cop, now dead. When men are sitting on their hands, not only is any quick movement impossible, but they are embarrassed and humbled almost instantly, producing a sense of defeat and the desirable passivity of the prisoner mentality. It is a particularly useful device when you are badly outnumbered.
No one speaks, and for a full minute LaPointe continues to press Canducci’s head against the wall, his fingers splayed over the face and eyes. Guttmann doesn’t understand the delay. He looks over at the Lieutenant, whose head is hanging down and whose body appears oddly limp. “Sir?” he says uneasily.
LaPointe takes two deep breaths and swallows. The worst of it is over. The vertigo has passed. He straightens up, grabs Canducci’s broad paisley tie, and snatches him away from the wall, propelling him ahead toward the gaudy curtain. One more push on the shoulder and Candy Al stumbles into the barroom. LaPointe turns back to the six young men on the floor. “You watch them,” he tells Guttmann. “If one of them moves a muscle, slap his face until his ears ring.” LaPointe knows exactly what threat would most sting cocky Italian boys.
When he pushes aside the curtain and enters the bar, he finds Candy Al sitting at a table, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “The Commissioner’s going to hear about this,” he says without much assurance. “It’s a free country! You cops ain’t the bosses of everything!”
LaPointe picks up his glass of red from the bar and sips it slowly, not setting down the glass until he feels recovered from the swimming dizziness and the constriction in his chest and upper arms that caught him unawares a minute ago. When the last of the effervescence has fizzed out of his blood, he leans back against the bar and looks down at Canducci, who is carefully touching the edge of his handkerchief to the corner of his eye, then examining the damp spot with tender concern.
“You got your finger in my eye! I wear contacts! That could be dangerous for a guy that wears contacts! Fucking cops.” Alone out here without his gang, he reverts to the whining petty thief, alternating between playing it as the movie tough and simpering piteously.
“We’re going to talk about a friend of yours,” LaPointe says, sitting in the chair opposite Canducci.
“I don’t have any friends!”
“That’s truer than you know, shithead. The name is Antonio Verdini, alias Tony Green.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You rented a room for him. The concierge has given evidence.”
“Well, this concierge has her head up her ass! I tell you I never met… whatever you said his name is.”
“Was.”
“What?”
“Was. Not is. He’s dead. Stabbed in an alley.”
The handkerchief is up to Canducci’s eyes, so LaPointe misses the effect of the drop. After a short silence, the Italian says, “So, what’s that to me?”
“Maybe twenty years. Stabbing is the kind of action your people go in for. The Commissioner is on my ass for an arrest. With your record, you’re dogmeat. And I don’t really care if you did it or not. I’ll be satisfied just to get you off the street.”
“I didn’t kill the son of a bitch! I didn’t even know he was dead until you told me. Anyway, I got an alibi.”
“Oh? For what time?”
“You name it, cop! You name it, and I got an alibi for it.” Candy Al dabs at his eyes again. “I think I got a busted blood vessel or something. You’re gonna pay for that. Like they say in the lotteries, un jour ce sera ton tour.”
LaPointe reaches across the table and pats Canducci’s cheek three times, the last tap not gentle. “Are you threatening me?”
Candy Al jerks his head away petulantly. “Where you get off slapping people around? You never heard of police brutality?”
“You’ll have twenty years to make your complaint.”
“I told you, all my time is covered.”
“By them?” LaPointe tips his head toward the poolroom.
“Yeah. That’s right. By them.”
LaPointe dismisses them with a sharp puff of air. “How long do you think one of those kids, sitting back there with his ass in his hands, could stand up to interrogation by me?”