Out on the Cutting Edge
Page 21

"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 ma-jor 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?
"Zero blood alcohol," Bellamy said. "I didn't know anybody in this town ever had zero blood alcohol."
I could have introduced him to hundreds, starting with myself. Of course I might have had to start with someone else if I'd acted on impulse and gone to Grogan's. The inner voice urging me there had been perfectly reasonable and logical, and I hadn't tried to argue with it. I'd just kept walking north, keeping my options open, and I took a left at Fifty-seventh, and when I got to my hotel I went in and up to bed. I was brushing my teeth when he called in the morning to tell me about Eddie's blood alcohol, or lack thereof.
I asked what else was in the report, and one item caught my attention. I asked him to repeat it, and then I asked a couple of other questions, and an hour later I was sitting in a hospital cafeteria in the East Twenties, sipping a cup of coffee that was better than Willa's, but just barely.
Michael Sternlicht, the assistant medical examiner who had performed the autopsy, was about Eddie's age. He had a round face, and the shape was echoed by the circular lenses of his heavy horn-rimmed glasses to give him a faintly owlish look. He was balding, and called attention to it by combing his remaining hair over the bald spot.
"He didn't have a lot of chloral in him," he told me. "I'd have to say it was insignificant."
"He was a sober alcoholic."
"Meaning he wouldn't take any mood-altering drugs? Not even a sleeping pill?" He sipped his coffee, made a face. "Maybe he wasn't that strict about it. I can assure you he couldn't have taken it to get high, not with the very low level in his bloodstream. Chloral hydrate doesn't much lend itself to abuse anyway, unlike the barbiturates and minor tranquilizers. There are people who take heavy doses of barbiturates and force themselves to stay awake, and the drug has a paradoxical effect of energizing and exhilarating them. If you take a lot of chloral, all that happens is you fall down and pass out."
"But he didn't take enough for that?"
"Nowhere near enough. His blood levels suggest he took in the neighborhood of a thousand milligrams, which is a normal dose to bring on sleep. It would make it a little easier for him to get drowsy and nod off, and it would aid him in sleeping through the night if he was prone to restlessness."
"Could it have been a factor in his death?"