Beware the Solitary Drinker (5 page)

“Me? Sure…I guess,” I said.

A beseeching look, an entreaty, tears starting up in the corners of her eyes. I didn't like this. Carl was eyeing the cab like he might make a run for it. Janet Carter looked at me with those pain-filled eyes. “Poor, little Angel—” she began, then turned away, sobbing, her shoulders shuddering.

I patted her awkwardly on the back. “I'm sorry,” I said. I didn't know what she wanted. I suppose at that moment she didn't either. But I couldn't turn her down, whatever it was. I gave her my phone number and the phone number and address for Oscar's and left her standing, sniffling, on the porch. There was something about her, too, even in her sniffling. Strength, maybe. Determination not to give in to her sorrow? Anger? I couldn't tell. I wasn't sure I wanted to see this Miss Carter again. But I wasn't sure I didn't want to see her.

***

At dinner in a surprisingly good German restaurant near the bus depot, Carl and I drank Wurtzburger drafts, direct from Germany, and ate weiner schnitzel.

When we were finished, Carl's expression turned owlish, so I expected something serious. “It would be better if Angelina's sister didn't come to New York,” he said.

“Oh?”

He fidgeted a bit with what was left on his plate, then sloshed the beer around in his stein. “There's something you should know about Angelina,” he said in a determined voice. “She acted in some movies for Boss and Rocky—” His eyes softened with sympathy. Maybe the shock I felt registered on my face. It was the shock of finding out what I couldn't believe but knew immediately must be true as soon as I heard the words.

Cheap sixteen-millimeter flicks made in the cellar of 811 West End Avenue. I knew about Rocky's flicks. I'd even, in my innocence, thought I was the one who first told Angelina about them. We'd sat in that cellar on a sagging filthy couch in the shadows of the giant boilers watching them once. A girl slapped around by two guys, until her tits hung out of her dress and the guys became frenzied like starving dogs and devoured her while she writhed, tied to the bed, panting, bleeding from her mouth.

When we walked home afterward, I told Angelina I didn't know why there were movies like that.

“Men get off on them,” she said.

“I don't.”

“It's better for men to watch that than to do it,” she said. “Men are into really sick things.”

I hadn't gone back. But I guessed now that Angelina had …or maybe she'd already been there, just protected me from knowing she was more depraved than I thought.

Rocky, when not a movie mogul, was the super of the building Carl worked in. He came into Oscar's every night, except the one night a week he went to visit his girlfriend in Staten Island, and drank anywhere from eight to a dozen Dewars. He'd been doing it for twenty years, Oscar told me. I marveled each night that his rotted liver didn't explode right in front of me. Reuben told me once that the day after Rocky got married he came home and found his wife in bed with someone else. “Right in his own bed,” Oscar said, as if he'd been there. Reuben repeated it, “Right in his own bed.” All of Reuben's unfaithful wives, it seemed, had enough savoir faire to use someone else's bed. Rocky had gone to sea after that, worked in the engine rooms of the big ships, studied during his sober times, eventually landed up in New York a stationary engineer peddling sadomasochistic bondage flicks on the side. Other women had acted for him, I knew, none as pretty as Angelina though. I couldn't guess why any woman would go near him. He was grimy, leering, missing half his teeth, mumbling and drooling and slurring words when he was drunk. He wore the same clothes all week and the cellar smelled of urine from the bottles he pissed in when he was too drunk to get off the couch. Yet other women had gone to him—and now Angelina.

***

On the way back to the city in the dim and shadowy light of the Peter Pan bus, Carl seemed much wiser than I was as he talked about Angelina. I discovered she visited him on many nights and spoke to him for hours at a time, sometimes all night long, in his booth off the lobby of 811. I was surprised by how much he knew about her.

“She wanted to do things,” Carl said. “She wanted to be a singer. I told her to take lessons, and she did. She was really serious.” Carl was serious also. He wrote for hours every night, had been to writing workshops, had published poems in small magazines. I admired him because he was his own barometer of success. I was even impressed that he liked me; it made me feel that I might not be altogether full of shit.

“Why did she have such a fucked up thing for men?” I asked, even though the answer no longer made any difference.

“She said she felt closer to you than anyone she'd ever known.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“It's what she said. It means she hadn't given up. She said you and I were the only men friends she had and that we'd changed her way of looking at men.”

“Great,” I said. “Do you think that's what got her killed?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you know who killed her?”

“No. She couldn't stay away from fucked-up men. The part of her she could control, she worked hard on to become something. She really was quite remarkable. But the other part she couldn't do anything about.”

Chapter Three

I was off Monday, the day after we got back from the wake in Springfield. On Tuesday night, about half an hour after I got to work, Janet Carter appeared. I saw her through the window walking down Broadway to the bar. She held herself straight when she walked, her arms swinging by her side, taking long strides, her shoulders back. She wore gray slacks and a black jacket that on a man would be called a sports jacket.

My mind dreaded the sight of her. She meant trouble, no question about it. Yet my heart quickened. I kept my eye on her from the moment I spotted her, lest by some chance she not come in after all. When she opened the door, conversation stopped and heads turned.

“Good evening,” she said, holding out her hand like a businessman again. “Do you remember me?”

Sitting herself down on a corner barstool, she took stock of the place with what I sensed was mild disapproval, then looked at me questioningly. “Do you always work behind the bar?”

“I'm the bartender.”

“Oh.” She looked confused. “I thought you owned the bar.”

I didn't know why she would think that.

“You said I should come to your bar. I thought you meant you owned it.”

I poured her a dark rum and grapefruit juice and braced myself. She'd put on a good bit of make-up, but it didn't hide the reddened eyes and the puffiness beneath. She had a professional kind of presence. I wouldn't say it was a false front. But it was automatic: a smile, a handshake, a way of giving her full attention, as if what you said must be really important. I didn't know what she did for a living. But she was polished, used to making her way in some area that used to be a man's world. Much of this style was muted by the toll Angelina's death had taken on her. But, like I said, how she presented herself was automatic. She was charming without trying, without even thinking about it.

“I'm not sure this is the right place to find out much about your sister,” I said. “I didn't know her that well. She took singing lessons, I know. She worked further downtown…. You'd probably find out more about her down there.” I was tiptoeing around because I didn't want big sister Janet to find out too much about Angelina's habits in Sin City, and I especially didn't want one of Oscar's blabbermouths to spill the beans about Rocky's porno flicks.

“Angelina was here the night she died,” Janet said by way of establishing that she was settling in for a while. “Who were her friends? Did anyone here now know her?”

“She wasn't here that long,” I said, groping for an answer that sounded like it said something without actually doing so. I'd become an oracle—except I taught untruth. “People knew her, I guess. I don't know who all were friends.”

“Do you know if she had a boyfriend?”

“I think she was sort of shopping around.”

“Did she try you for size?” Janet Carter arched an appraising eyebrow.

Even though I didn't say anything, she seemed to have her answer. I began to think a red light lit up on my forehead when I toyed with the truth.

Nigel picked that moment to arrive. He was a pretty good yacker so, while I would have preferred Carl, Nigel would do, certainly better than Reuben or Oscar or Sam the Hammer. Self-effacing as usual, and in much better shape than the last time I'd seen him, Nigel perked up immediately—as all of the regulars would—as soon as he spied the new and pretty female face at the bar.

Janet Carter carried herself well, and her body fit nicely into her more relaxed clothes, her breasts straining just so slightly against her silk blouse that was open along her neck, her jacket tapered along her hips. She was good to look at, though some hardness in her manner suggested not easily touchable. She flashed him a brief smile, and Nigel beamed.

“He knew your sister,” I told Janet, and Nigel's face dropped like I'd kneed him in the balls.

I didn't blame him. One of the advantages a bartender has is control of the conversation—he can get two people next to one another talking or arguing then walk away to the end of the bar. For them, committed more or less to their chosen barstools, walking away is not so easy.

I hoped Nigel would keep her busy with small talk, so she wouldn't get a chance to pump the regulars for any real information. He usually had a lot to say. Every situation that came up reminded him of something that had happened to him in the past. His stories weren't boring, but they somehow never related to him, the teller. If he told of getting stoned with the Allman Brothers or driving from Chicago to Minneapolis with Jerry Garcia, you thought it was exciting or interesting but it did nothing to alter your opinion of Nigel who was telling the story. He still seemed wimpy and uninteresting.

But my plan didn't work. She got away from him, managing to accost Reuben and Duffy, the Boss, and even Oscar. She created discomfort, not unlike Sheehan, as she went from one bar stool to the next. She paid no attention to the clear differences in class and style, not seeming to notice how the winos reacted—as if the madam of the house had descended into the servants' quarters.

“All of these men knew Angelina,” she said well into the night when she came to rest on her barstool after floating from one end of the bar to the other for a couple of hours. She didn't seem concerned that I'd misled her. “Everyone is so nice.”

Ignoring her sociable smile, I watched instead the sadness and rage hiding in her dark eyes.

“Did you find out all you need to know?” I asked, suspecting she hadn't found out much.

“I'm not really sure what I found out.” Her expression grew quizzical as she thought over what she'd heard. “Everyone talks in riddles.” She'd just spoken to Sam, and before that Oscar, so the longer she thought it over the less sure she would be.

Just like god damn Sheehan to pick that moment—when I thought I might hustle her out of the joint—to saunter in and sit down beside her.

“Hello, McNulty,” he said, wiping at the bar in front of him with his fingers as if it might be sticky. “Had a couple of days off?” I waited for him to acknowledge that the bar was clean. “Went to the girl's funeral I understand.” He leaned forward onto his elbows. “Nice gesture…See anyone from the neighborhood?”

Janet hadn't taken her eyes off Sheehan since he sat down, so it didn't take him long to sense her interest. Turning to her with a more engaging manner than I thought him capable of, he held out his hand and said, “I'm Detective Pat Sheehan.”

“I'm Janet Carter. Are you investigating my sister's murder?”

“Yes. I am,” he said. He looked her over in an appraising sort of way that I thought she should find offensive, but she didn't seem to notice, or care if she did notice.

She didn't take her eyes off his face. Her own face was rigid.

“I'm surprised to see you in New York. In fact, I've just finished reading a statement you gave to the Springfield police this morning.”

“Do you know who killed her?”

“No.”

“I want to find out,” Janet said. Her voice shook, and she seemed to freeze over. It was rage—anger so deep and brooding that it surprised me. She'd been wearing a pretty convincing mask, this poised professional from Massachusetts. For that moment, she seemed as tough as Sheehan.

“So do we,” said Sheehan. “Maybe you could convince McNulty here and his cronies to cooperate.”

When she turned to look at me, the rage was still in her eyes, but it wasn't directed against me as I expected it to be; it went inward. She went after herself, a look of bitterness you might associate with failure or despair or self-hate. She might fit into Oscar's after all.

Sheehan stood up and without speaking to me walked to the end of the bar toward Oscar, said something to him, then left the bar without looking at me again.

When he left, Janet nursed a drink and brooded for a long time. She seemed to have lost interest in conversation but did tell me she'd be in town for a couple of days, staying at a hotel in the Sixties, the Empire, next to Hanrahan's.

Trying to cheer her up with a bit of New York City lore, I told her it was the hotel the ballet dancers stay in when they come to town to dance at Lincoln Center. I'd always wanted to work at Hanrahan's, mainly because of the ballet dancers, but also because of the name. Its full name was Hanrahan's Baloon. Legend has it that they told Hanrahan, who'd just put the name of his new joint—Hanrahan's Saloon—in lights, that he couldn't use the word saloon because saloons are against the law in New York. So Hanrahan, rather than paying for a completely new sign, changed the S to B.

Janet said she picked the hotel because Hanrahan's was the last place Angelina worked, and went back to nursing her drink.

Around one, I put her in a cab right in front of Oscar's, and, under the delusion I worked for the Visitor's Bureau, asked her to have lunch with me the next day.

She seemed surprised and thought about it for a minute before she said yes, her response bringing a sparkle of light to her eyes and a flush of color to her cheeks.

“I'll pick you up at the hotel around two,” I said.

“Isn't that a little late?”

“I thought it was early myself.”

***

We ate lunch at an American Restaurant in the Seventies, one of a chain of Upper West Side Greek coffee shops, a kind of upscale greasy spoon. On the walk up Broadway, I pointed out the Ansonia Hotel, one of the West Side's most intriguing buildings, which was across the street from the Central Bank building where my socialist dentist had his office.

After Janet's lunch and my breakfast, we walked to Central Park. This time, I showed her the Dakota, where John Lennon once lived—realizing, when her face crumbled, that I wasn't doing a very good job of steering her away from thoughts of death and murder.

Next, I pointed out the Inn on the Park, where I'd once worked. The inn has white Christmas lights in the trees all year round, lots of floor to ceiling windows, sparkling chandeliers, and crystal vases with fresh flowers every day. We stood for a long time looking at it.

“It's beautiful,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.

“It's a shit hole,” I told her. “I used to make piña coladas in a five gallon pail, using the bar boy's broom handle to stir them, the same broom I used to chase the rats out of the garden…”

She wasn't shocked by my outburst, just looked at me curiously, as if not sure why I'd say such a thing. I wasn't sure myself, except I didn't like that she was impressed by the glitter. I wanted her to know what it was like behind the glitter.

Janet Carter, dressed for an afternoon walk in slacks and a dress shirt with a sweater over it, had an air of casual, well-groomed confidence that I normally didn't like. There was something vacant in how she was also, as if an important part of her was somewhere else. Me, I felt left over from the night before, red-eyed and murky of mind, flabby and out of sorts.

When we walked across Strawberry Fields, this profound sadness caught up with me: for Angelina, for John Lennon, for the day not long after John Lennon was murdered that a couple of thousand of us stood in front of the Dakota singing “Give Peace a Chance.”

For that moment, tasting sadness, climbing a grassy hill in the cool sun of a New York City autumn, for that moment, I felt unbearably lonely; I felt sad for everyone, and hopeless, and I shivered from fear that rippled through me like a chill.

“Why'd you come to New York?” I asked Janet, who, head down, her own expression far from cheerful, climbed the hill beside me.

“I don't know—to get whatever my sister left behind, I guess.” She started to say more but stopped, as if she couldn't make up her mind what she should say if she did go on.

“I was afraid Angelina would be killed in New York…” she said suddenly, out of nowhere. We stopped on the hill and she faced me, her expression stony, her body going rigid. “…I tried to stop her. I feel like it's my fault…I feel like it's my fault she was murdered.”

“How could it be your fault?”

“I told her not to come.”

“You told her not to come, and she came anyway.”

“I had a premonition—”

“Premonitions don't mean anything,” I said—not something you should say to a visibly distraught, not-far-from-the-edge premonition believer.

“No,” she said, all too calmly. “Angelina and I were really close. We had premonitions about what might happen to one another. It happened enough times that we both believed them.”

This businesslike and self-assured professional woman had come unstrung for the moment. I was embarrassed for her and turned away. I didn't want to hear about premonitions. If there were such things, why didn't Angelina have a premonition about going to the park with someone who was going to murder her?

“I need to find out for myself what happened,” Janet said to my back. It seemed that once she got started explaining herself, she needed to keep going until she was sure I understood.

So I understood: guilt and anger brought her here. She came to the city to wear out whatever guilt she had.

“You can wait just as well in Massachusetts and find out what happened to your sister. You don't need to be here.”

“I know I should be here….” Her eyes reddened, so she began walking away from me. After a few steps, she straightened her shoulders and turned around. “I have to find out what happened. I knew my sister better than anyone. I'd be able to help…I'd know things others wouldn't know. I'd do anything to find her killer. Anything.” Her voice shook with anger; her eyes flashed with challenge.

“Why? What good will it do if you do find the killer? It won't bring her back. Angelina will still be dead.”

Janet Carter turned on me. “How can you say that? You don't care about finding the killer? You wouldn't rip him apart? You wouldn't kill him with your own hands if you knew?…What kind of man are you?”