Out on the Cutting Edge

10

Andreotti wasn’t on duty when I got over to the precinct house. He was downtown, testifying before a grand jury. The guy he’d been partnered with, Bill Bellamy, couldn’t understand what I wanted with the medical examiner’s report.

“You were there,” he said. “It’s open and shut. Time of death was sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, that’s according to the preliminary report from the man on the scene. All evidence on the scene supports a finding of accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation. Everything — the pornography, the position of the body, the nudity, everything. We see these all the time, Scudder.”

“I know.”

“Then you probably know it’s the best-kept secret in America, because what paper’s going to print that the deceased died jerking off with a rope around his neck? And it’s not just kids. We had one last year, this was a married guy and his wife found him. Decent people, beautiful apartment on West End Avenue. Married fifteen years! Poor woman didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. She couldn’t even believe that he masturbated, let alone that he liked to strangle hisself while he did it.”

“I understand how it works.”

“Then what’s your interest? You got some kind of an insurance angle, your client can’t collect if you get a suicide verdict?”

“I haven’t got a client. And I doubt he had any insurance.”

“Because I remember we had an insurance investigator come up in connection with the gentleman from West End Avenue. He had a whole lot of coverage, too. Might have been as much as a million dollars.”

“And they didn’t want to pay it?”

“They were going to have to pay something. Suicide’ll only nullify a policy for a certain amount of time after it’s taken out, to prevent you from signing up when you’ve already decided to kill yourself. This case, he’d had the policy long enough so suicide didn’t cancel it. So what was the hook?” He frowned, then brightened. “Oh, right. He had that double indemnity clause where they pay you twice as much for accidental death. I have to say I never saw the logic to that. I mean, dead is dead. What’s the difference if you have a heart attack or wreck your car? Your wife’s got the same living expenses, your kid’s college is gonna cost the same. I never understood it.”

“The insurer didn’t want to accept a claim of accidental death?”

“You got it. Said a man puts a rope around his neck and hangs hisself, that’s suicide. The wife got herself a good lawyer and they had to pay the whole amount. Man had the intention of hanging hisself, but he did not have the intention of killing hisself, and that made it an accident and not a suicide.” He smiled, liking the justice of it, then remembered the matter at hand. “But you’re not here about insurance.”

“No, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t have any. He was a friend of mine.”

“Interesting friend for you to have. Turns out he had a sheet on him longer than his dick.”

“Mostly small-time, wasn’t it?”

“According to what he got collared for. Far as what he got away with, how could you say? Maybe he kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and went scot-free.”

“I think it was a little before his time. I have a fair idea of the kind of life he used to lead, although I don’t know the details. But for the past year he’s been staying sober.”

“You’re saying he was an alcoholic.”

“A sober one.”

“And?”

“I want to know if he died sober.”

“What difference does it make?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“I got an uncle used to be a terrible alcoholic. He quit drinking and now he’s a different person.”

“It works that way sometimes.”

“Used to be you didn’t want to know the man, and now he’s a fine human being. Goes to church, holds a job, acts right with people. Your friend, it didn’t look like he’d been drinking. There was no bottles laying around.”

“No, but he might have done some drinking elsewhere. Or he could have taken other drugs.”

“You mean like heroin?”

“I would doubt it.”

“Because I didn’t see no tracks. Still, there’s more than you think that’ll snort it.”

“Any drugs,” I said. “They’re doing a complete autopsy, aren’t they?”

“They got to. The law requires it.”

“Well, could I see the results when you get them?”

“Just so you’ll know if he died sober?” He sighed. “I guess. But what does it matter? They got some rule, he’s got to be sober when he dies or they won’t bury him in the good section of the cemetery?”

“I don’t know if I can explain it.”

“Try.”

“He didn’t have much of a life,” I said, “and he didn’t have much of a death, either. For the past year he’s been trying to stay sober a day at a time. He had a lot of trouble at the beginning and it never got to be what you could call easy for him, but he stayed with it. Nothing else ever worked for him. I just wanted to know if he made it.”

“Give me your number,” Bellamy said. “That report comes in, I’ll call you.”

I heard an Australian qualify once at a meeting down in the Village. “My head didn’t get me sober,” he said. “All my head ever did was get me into trouble. It was my feet got me sober. They kept taking me to meetings and my poor head had no choice but to follow. What I’ve got, I’ve got smart feet.”

My feet took me to Grogan’s. I was walking around, up one street and down another, thinking about Eddie Dunphy and Paula Hoeldtke and not paying much attention to where I was going. Then I looked up, and I was at the corner of Tenth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, right across from Grogan’s Open House.

Eddie had crossed the street to avoid the place. I crossed the street and went in.

It wasn’t fancy. A bar, on the left as you entered, ran the length of the room. There were dark wooden booths on the right, and a row of three or four tables between them. There was an old-fashioned tile floor, a stamped tin ceiling that needed minor repairs.

The clientele was all male. Two old men sat in silence in the front booth, letting their beers go flat. Two booths back there was a young man wearing a ski sweater and reading a newspaper. There was a dart board on the back wall, and a fellow wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap was playing by himself.

At the front end of the bar, two men sat near a television set, neither paying attention to the picture. There was an empty stool between them. Toward the back, the bartender was leafing through a tabloid, one of the ones that tell you Elvis and Hitler are still alive, and a potato chip diet cures cancer.

I walked over to the bar and put my foot on the brass rail. The bartender looked me over for a long moment before he approached. I ordered a Coke. He gave me another careful look, his blue eyes unreadable, his face expressionless. He had a narrow triangular face, so pale he might have lived all his life indoors.

He filled a glass with ice cubes, then with Coke. I put a ten on the bar. He took it to the register, punched No Sale, and returned with eight singles and a pair of quarters. I left my change on the bar in front of me and sipped at my Coke.

The television set was showing Santa Fe Trail, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Flynn was playing Jeb Stuart, and an impossibly young Ronald Reagan was playing George Armstrong Custer. The movie was in black and white, with the commercials in color.

I sipped my Coke and watched the movie, and when the commercials came on I turned on my stool and watched the fellow in back shoot darts. He would toe the line and lean so far forward I kept thinking he would be unable to keep his balance, but he evidently knew what he was doing; he stayed on his feet, and the darts all wound up in the board.

After I’d been there twenty minutes or so, a black man in work clothes came in wanting to know how to get to DeWitt Clinton High School. The bartender claimed not to know, which seemed unlikely. I could have told him, but I didn’t volunteer, and no one else spoke up, either.

“Supposed to be around here somewhere,” the man said. “I got a delivery, and the address they gave me ain’t right. I’ll take a beer while I’m here.”

“There’s something wrong with the pressure. All I’m getting is foam.”

“Bottled beer be fine.”

“We only have draught.”

“Guy in the booth has a bottle of beer.”

“He must have brought it with him.”

The message got through. “Well, shit,” the driver said. “I guess this here’s the Stork Club. Fancy place like this, you got to be real careful who you serve.” He stared hard at the bartender, who gazed back at him without showing a thing. Then he turned and walked out fast with his head lowered, and the door swung shut behind him.

A little while later the dart player sauntered over and the bartender drew him a pint of the draught Guinness, thick and black, with a rich creamy head on it. He said, “Thanks, Tom,” and drank, then wiped the foam from his mouth onto his sleeve. “Fucking niggers,” he said. “Pushing in where they’re not wanted.”

The bartender didn’t respond, just took money and brought back change. The dart player took another long drink of stout and wiped his mouth again on his sleeve. His T-shirt advertised a tavern called the Croppy Boy, on Fordham Road in the Bronx. His billed cap advertised Old Milwaukee beer.

To me he said, “Game of darts? Not for money, I’m too strong a player, but just to pass the time.”

“I don’t even know how to play.”

“You try to get the pointed end into the board.”

“I’d probably hit the fish.” There was a fish mounted on the wall above the dart board, and a deer’s head off to one side. Another larger fish was mounted above the back bar, it was a sailfish or marlin, one of the ones with a long bill.

“Just to pass the time,” he said.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thrown a dart, and I hadn’t been good at it then. Time had by no means improved my skills. We played a game, and as hard as he worked to look bad, I still didn’t come out looking good. When he won the game in spite of himself, he said, “You’re pretty good, you know.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You’ve got the touch. You haven’t played and your aim’s not sharp, but you’ve got a nice light wrist. Let me buy you a beer.”

“I’m drinking Coca-Cola.”

“That there is why your aim’s off. The beer relaxes you, lets you just think the dart into the board. The black stuff’s the best, the Guinness. It works on your mind like polish on silver. Takes the tarnish right off. That do you, or would you rather have a bottle of Harp?”

“Thanks, but I’ll stay with Coke.”

He bought me a refill, and another black pint for himself. He told me his name was Andy Buckley. I gave him my name, and we played another game of darts. He foot-faulted a couple of times, showing a clumsiness he hadn’t revealed when he was practicing. When he did it a second time I gave him a look and he had to laugh. “I know I can’t hustle you, Matt,” he said. “You know what it is? It’s force of habit.”

He won the game quickly and didn’t coax when I said no to another. It was my turn to buy a round. I didn’t want another Coke. I bought him a Guinness, and had a club soda for myself. The bartender rang the “No Sale” key and took money from my stack of change.

Buckley took the stool next to mine. On the television screen, Errol Flynn was winning De Havilland’s heart and Reagan was being gracious in defeat. “He was a handsome bastard,” Buckley said.

“Reagan?”

“Flynn. In like Flynn, all he had to do was look at them and they wet their pants. I don’t think I’ve seen you here before, Matt.”

“I don’t come around very often.”

“You live around here?”

“Not too far. You?”

“Not far. It’s quiet, you know? And the beer’s good, and I like the darts.”

After a few minutes he went back to the dart board. I stayed where I was. A little later the bartender, Tom, glided over and topped up my glass of soda water without asking. He didn’t take any money from me.

A couple of men left. One came in, conferred with Tom in an undertone, and went out again. A man in a suit and tie came in, had a double vodka, drank it right down, ordered another, drank that right down, put a ten-dollar bill on the bar, and walked out. This entire exchange was carried out without a word from him or the bartender.

On the television set, Flynn and Reagan went up against Raymond Massey’s version of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. Van Heflin, rotten little opportunist that he was, got what was coming to him.

I got out of there while the credits were rolling. I scooped up my change, put a couple of bucks back on the bar for Tom, and left.

Outside, I asked myself what the hell I’d thought I was doing there. Earlier I’d been thinking of Eddie, and then I’d looked up and found myself in front of the place he’d been afraid to get near. Maybe I went in myself in order to get a sense of who he’d been before I knew him. Maybe I was hoping for a peek at the Butcher Boy himself, the notorious Mickey Ballou.

What I’d found was a ginmill, and what I’d done was hang out in it.

Strange.

I called Willa from my room. “I was just looking at your flowers,” she said.

“They’re your flowers,” I said. “I gave them to you.”

“No strings attached, huh?”

“No strings. I was wondering if you felt like a movie.”

“What movie?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t I come by for you around six or a little after? We’ll see what’s playing on Broadway and get a bite later.”

“On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s my treat.”

“It was your treat last night.”

“What was last night? Oh, we had Chinese. Did I pay for that?”

“You insisted.”

“Well, shit. Then you can pay for dinner.”

“That was my plan.”

“But the movie’s on me.”

“We’ll split the movie.”

“We’ll work it out when you get here. What time? Six?”

“Around then.”

She wore the blue silk blouse again, this time over loose khaki fatigues with drawstring cuffs. Her hair was braided in twin pigtails, in the style of an Indian maiden. I took hold of her pigtails and held them out at the sides. “Always different,” I said.

“I’m probably too old for long hair.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I don’t even care, anyway. I wore it short for years. It’s fun to be able to do things with it.”

We kissed, and I tasted scotch on her breath. It wasn’t shocking anymore. Once you got used to it, it was a pleasant taste.

We kissed a second time. I moved my mouth to her ear, then down along her neck. She clung to me and heat flowed from her loins and breasts.

She said, “What time’s the movie?”

“Whenever we get there.”

“Then there’s no hurry, is there?”

We went to a first-run house on Times Square. Harrison Ford triumphed over Palestinian terrorists. He was no match for Errol Flynn, but he was a cut above Reagan.

Afterward we went to Paris Green again. She tried the filet of sole and approved of it. I stayed with what I’d had the other night, cheeseburger and fries and salad.

She had white wine with her meal, just a glass of it, and brandy with her coffee.

We talked a little about her marriage, and then a little about mine. Over coffee I found myself talking about Jan, and about how things had gone wrong.

“It’s a good thing you kept your hotel room,” she said. “What would it cost if you gave it up and then wanted to move back in?”

“I couldn’t do it. It’s inexpensive for a hotel, but they get sixty-five dollars a night for their cheapest single. What does that come to? Two thousand dollars a month?”

“Around there.”

“Of course they’d give you some kind of a monthly rate, but it would still have to be well over a thousand dollars. If I had moved out I couldn’t possibly afford to move back in. I’d have had to get an apartment somewhere, and I might have had trouble finding one I could afford in Manhattan.” I considered. “Unless I got serious and found some kind of real job for myself.”

“Could you do that?”

“I don’t know. A year or so ago there was a guy who wanted me to go in with him and open a bona fide detective agency. He thought we could get a lot of industrial work, trademark infringement, employee pilferage control, that sort of thing.”

“You weren’t interested?”

“I was tempted. It’s a challenge, making a go of something like that. But I like the space in the life I lead now. I like to be able to go to a meeting whenever I want, or just take a walk in the park or sit for two hours reading everything in the paper. And I like where I live. It’s a dump, but it suits me.”

“You could open a legitimate agency and still stay where you are.”

I nodded. “But I don’t know if it would still suit me. People who succeed usually want the trappings of success to justify the energy they have to put into it. They spend more money, and they get used to it, and then they need the money. I like the fact that I don’t need very much. My rent’s cheap, and I really like it that way.”

“It’s so funny.”

“What is?”

“This city. Start talking about anything and you wind up talking about real estate.”

“I know.”

“It’s impossible to avoid. I put a sign by the doorbells, No Apartments Available.”

“I saw it earlier.”

“And I still had three people ring the bell to make sure I didn’t have something for rent.”

“Just in case.”

“They thought maybe I just kept the sign there all the time to cut down the volume of inquiries. And at least one of them knew I’d just lost a tenant, so maybe he figured I hadn’t gotten around to taking down the sign. There was a piece in the Times today, one of the major builders is announcing plans to build two middle-income projects west of Eleventh Avenue to house people with family incomes under fifty thousand dollars. God knows it’s needed, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to make any difference.”

“You’re right. We started talking about relationships and we’re talking about apartments.”

She put her hand on mine. “What’s today? Thursday?”

“For another hour or so?”

“And I met you when? Tuesday afternoon? That seems impossible.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want this to go too fast. But I don’t want to put the brakes on, either. Whatever happens with us—”

“Yes?”

“Keep your hotel room.”

When I first got sober there was a midnight meeting every night at the Moravian Church at Thirtieth and Lexington. The group lost the space, and the meeting moved to Alanon House, a sort of AA clubhouse occupying an office suite just off Times Square.

I walked Willa home and then headed over to Times Square and the midnight meeting. I don’t go there often. They get a young crowd, and most of the people who show up have more drugs than alcohol in their histories.

But I couldn’t afford to be choosy. I hadn’t been to a meeting since Tuesday night. I’d missed two nights in a row at my home group, which was unusual for me, and I hadn’t gone to any daytime meetings to pick up the slack. More to the point, I had spent an uncharacteristic amount of time around alcohol in the past fifty-six hours. I was sleeping with a woman who drank the stuff, and I’d whiled away the afternoon in a saloon, and a pretty lowlife one at that. The thing to do was go to a meeting and talk about it.

I went to the meeting, getting there just in time to grab a cup of coffee and a seat before it got started. The speaker was sober less than six months, still what they call mocus — mixed up, confused, uncentered. It was hard to track his story, and my mind kept flitting around, wandering down avenues of its own.

Afterward I couldn’t make myself raise my hand. I had visions of some soberer-than-thou asshole giving me a lot of advice I didn’t want or need. I already knew what kind of advice I’d get from Jim Faber, say, or from Frank. If you don’t want to slip, stay out of slippery places. Don’t go in bars without a reason. Bars are for drinking. You want to watch TV, you got a set in your room. You want to play darts, go buy a dart board.

Jesus, I knew what anyone with a few years in the program would tell me. It was the same advice I’d give to anyone in my position. Call your sponsor. Stay close to the program. Double up on your meetings. When you get up in the morning, ask God to help you stay sober. When you go to bed at night, thank him. If you can’t get to a meeting, read the Big Book, read the Twelve & Twelve, pick up the phone and call somebody. Don’t isolate, because when you’re by yourself you’re in bad company. And let people know what’s going on with you, because you’re as sick as your secrets. And remember this: You’re an alcoholic. You’re not all better now. You’ll never be cured. All you are, all you’ll ever be, is one drink away from a drunk.

I didn’t want to hear that shit.

I left on the break. I don’t usually do that, but it was late and I was tired. And I felt uncomfortable in that room, anyway. I’d liked the old midnight meeting better, even if I’d had to take a cab to get there.

Walking home, I thought about George Bohan, who’d wanted me to open a detective agency with him. I’d known him years back in Brooklyn, we’d been partnered for a while when I first got a detective’s gold shield, and he’d retired and worked for one of the national agencies long enough to learn the business and get his PI license.

I hadn’t answered when that particular opportunity had knocked. But maybe it was time to do that, or something like it. Maybe I had let myself get into a groove and wear it down into a rut. It was comfortable enough, but the months had a way of slipping by and before you knew it years had passed. Did I really want to be an old man living alone in a hotel, queueing up for food stamps, standing in line for a hot meal at the senior center?

Jesus, what a thought.

I walked north on Broadway, shaking off bums before they could launch their spiel. If I was part of a real detective agency, I thought, maybe I could give clients better value for their money, maybe I could operate effectively and efficiently instead of fumbling around like some trench-coated refugee from a 1940’s film. If it occurred to me, say, that Paula Hoeldtke might have left the country, I could interface with a Washington-based agency and find out if she’d applied for a passport. I could hire as many operatives as her father’s budget could stand and check airline manifests for the couple of weeks around the date of her probable disappearance. I could—

Hell, there were lots of things I could do.

Maybe nothing would work. Maybe any further effort to track down Paula was just a waste of time and money. If so, I could drop the case and pick up something else.

The way things stood, I was holding on to the damn thing because I didn’t have anything better to do. Durkin had said I was like a dog with a bone, and he was right, but there was more to it than that. I was a dog who didn’t have but one bone, and when I put it down I had no choice but to pick it back up again.

Stupid way to go through life. Sifting through thin air, trying to find a girl who’d disappeared into it. Troubling the final sleep of a dead friend, trying to establish that he’d been in a sober state of grace when he died, probably because I hadn’t been able to do anything for him while he was alive.

And, when I wasn’t doing one of those two things, I could go hide out at a meeting.

The program, they told you, was supposed to be a bridge back to life. And maybe it was for some people. For me it was turning out to be a tunnel, with another meeting at the end of it.

They said you couldn’t go to too many meetings. They said the more meetings you went to, the faster and more comfortably you recovered.

But that was for newcomers. Most people reduced their attendance at meetings after a couple of years of sobriety. Some of us lived in meetings at the beginning, going to four or five a day, but nobody went on like that forever. People had lives to get on with, and they set about getting on with them.

For Christ’s sake, what was I going to hear at a meeting that I hadn’t already heard? I’d been coming for more than three years. I’d heard the same things over and over until the whole rap was coming out of my ears. If I had a life of my own, if I was ever going to have one, it was time to get on with it.

I could have said all of this to Jim, but it was too late to call him. Besides, all I’d get in response would be the party line. Easy does it. Keep it simple. One day at a time. Let go and let God. Live and let live.

The fucking wisdom of the ages.

I could have popped off at the meeting. That’s what the meetings are there for. And I’m sure all those twenty-year-old junkies would have had lots of useful advice for me.

Jesus, I’d do as well talking to house plants.

Instead, I walked up Broadway and said it all to myself.

At Fiftieth Street, waiting for the light to change, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to see what Grogan’s was like at night. It wasn’t one yet. I could go over and have a Coke before they closed.

The hell, I was always a guy who felt at home in a saloon. I didn’t have to drink to enjoy the atmosphere.

Why not?