“I’m sure of it.”
“And if he was such a big time sauteux de clôtures as you say, almost anyone might have put that knife into him—some jealous squack, somebody’s lover, somebody’s brother—almost anyone.”
“That’s it.”
“You on to anything?”
“We’ve got suspects falling out of the trees. But most of the leads have healed up now. I’ve got something I’m looking into tonight; a bar the kid used to go to.”
“You expect to turn something there?”
“Not much. Probably twenty more suspects.”
“Hungh! Well, keep up the good work. And do your best to bring this one in, will you? I could use another letter of merit. So how’s our Joan getting on? Is he as much a pain in the ass to you as he was to me?”
LaPointe shrugs. He has no intention of complimenting the kid in his presence. “Why do you ask? You want him back today?”
“No, not if you can stand to have him a while longer. He cramps my romantic form, hanging around all the time.” Gaspard drains the cup, wads it up in his hand, and misses the wastebasket “Okay, if that’s all you’ve got to tell me about our case, I’ll get back to keeping the city safe for the tourists. Just look at that kid type, will you? Now that’s what I call style!”
Guttmann growls as Gaspard leaves with a laugh.
LaPointe feels a slight nausea from the ebb of angry adrenalin after his session with the Commissioner. The air in his office is warm and has an already-breathed taste. He wants to get out of here, go where he feels comfortable and alive. “Look, I’m going up on the Main. See what’s going on.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“No. I lose you tomorrow, and I want this paper work caught up.”
“Oh.” Guttmann does not try to conceal his deflation.
LaPointe tugs on his overcoat. “I’m just going to make the rounds. Talk to people. This Green thing has taken up too much of my time. I’m getting out of touch.” He looks down at the young man behind the stacks of reports. “What do you have on for this evening around seven? A date to wash clothes?”
“No, sir.”
“All right. Meet me at the Happy Hour Whisky à Go-Go on Rachel Street. It’s our last lead. You might as well see this thing through.”
Before it lost its cabaret license, the Happy Hour Whisky à Go-Go was a popular dance hall where girls from the garment shops and men from the loading docks could pick one another up, dance a little, ogle, drink, make arrangements for later on. It was a huge, noisy barn with a turning ball of mirrored surfaces depending from the ceiling, sliding globs of colored light around the walls, over the dancers, and into the orchestra, the amplified instruments of which made the floor vibrate. But once too often, the owner had been careless about letting underage girls in and about making sure his bouncers stopped fights before they got to the bottle-throwing stage, so now dancing is not permitted, and the patronage has shrunk to a handful of people sitting around the U-shaped bar, a glowing island in a vastness of dark, unused space.
At the prow of the bar is a drum stage four feet in diameter on which a go-go dancer slowly grinds her ass, her tempo in no way associated with the beat of the whining, repetitive rock music provided by a turntable behind the bar. The dancer is not young, and she is fat. Bored and dull-eyed, she undulates mechanically, her great bare breasts sloshing about as she slips her thumbs in and out of the pouch of her G-string, tugging it away from her écu and letting it snap back in a routine ritual of provocation. Blue and orange lights glow dimly through the bottles of the back bar, producing most of the illumination, save for a strong narrow beam at the cash register. Ultraviolet lamps around the dancing drum cause the dancer’s G-string to glow bright green. She has also applied phosphorescent paint to her nipples, and they glow green too. Standing just inside the door, far from the bar, LaPointe looks over the customers until he picks out Guttmann. From that distance, the back-lit figure of the dancer is almost invisible, save for the phosphorescent triangle of her crotch and the circles of her nipples. As she grinds away, she looks like a man with a goatee, chewing and rolling his eyes.
LaPointe climbs up on a stool beside Guttmann and orders an Armagnac. “What are you drinking?” he asks Guttmann.
“Ouzo.”
“Why ouzo?”
Guttmann shrugs. “Because it’s a Greek bar, I guess.”
“Good thing it isn’t an Arab bar. You’d be drinking camel piss.” LaPointe looks along the curve of customers, A couple of young men with nothing to do; a virile-looking woman in a cloth coat sitting directly in front of the dancer, staring up with cold fascination and tickling her upper lip with her finger; two soldiers already a little drunk; an old Greek staring disconsolately into his glass; a neatly dressed man in his fifties, suit and tie, a briefcase up on the bar, watching the play of the thumbs in and out of the G-string, his starched collar picking up the ultraviolet light and glowing greenish. All in all, the typical flotsam of outsiders and losers one finds in this kind of bar in the early evenings, or in rundown movie houses in the afternoons.
The fat dancer turns her head as she jiggles from foot to foot and nods once to LaPointe. He does not nod back.
Sitting behind the bar, at the base of the drum, is a girl who attends to the jury-rigged turntable and amplifier. She is fearful of not doing her job right, so she stares at the turning disc, holding her breath, poised to lift the needle and move it to the next selection when the song runs out. She counts the bands to the one she must hit next, mouthing the numbers to herself. Occasionally she lifts her face to look up at the fat dancer. Her eyes brim with admiration and wonder. The lights, the color, and everyone watching. Show business! She appears to be fifteen or sixteen, but her face has no age. It is the bland oval of a seriously retarded child, and its permanent expression is a calm void over which, from time to time, comes a ripple of confusion and doubt.
The tune is nearing its end, and the girl is straining her concentration in preparation for changing the needle without making that horrible rasping noise. The dancer looks down at her and shakes her head. The girl doesn’t know what this signal means! She is confused and frightened. She freezes! After an undulating hiss, the record goes on to the next band—the wrong band! The girl snatches her hands away from the machine, recoiling from all responsibility. But the dancer is already coming down from the drum, her great breasts flopping with the last awkward step. She growls at the girl and lifts the needle from the record herself. Then she walks along behind the bar to a back room. In a minute she emerges, wearing clacking bedroom slippers and a gossamer tent of a dressing gown through which the brown, pimpled cymbals of her nipples are visible.
She slides onto the stool next to Guttmann, her sweaty cheek squeaking on the plastic. She smells of sweat and cologne.
“Want to buy me a drink, gunner?” she asks Guttmann.
LaPointe leans forward and speaks across the young man. “He’s not a mark. He’s with me.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant. I mean, how was I to know? You didn’t come in together.”
With a tip of his head, LaPointe orders her to follow as he takes up his Armagnac and walks away from the bar to a table with bentwood chairs inverted on it. He has three chairs down by the time the woman and Guttmann arrive. The table is small, and Guttmann cannot easily move his knee away from hers. She presses her leg against his to let him know she knows.
“What’s the trouble now, Lieutenant?” The tone indicates that she has had run-ins with LaPointe before. She can’t imagine why, but the Lieutenant has never liked her. Not even in the old days, when she was working the streets.