When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (7 page)

He stopped to talk to Dennis on the way out. I nursed my coffee. By the time I was done with it a woman two tables away had paid her check and left her newspaper behind. I read it, and had another cup of coffee with it, and a shot of bourbon to sweeten the coffee.

The afternoon crowd was starting to fill the room when I called the waitress over. I palmedher a buck and told her to put the check on my tab.

"No check," she said. "The gentleman paid it."

She wasnew, she didn't know Skip by name. "He wasn't supposed to do that," I said. "Anyway, I had a drink after he left. Put it on my tab, all right?"

"Talk to Dennis," she said.

She went to take somebody's order before I could reply. I went to the bar and crooked a finger for Dennis. "She tells me there's no check for my table," I said.

"She speaks the truth." He smiled. He often smiled, as if much of what he saw amused him. "Devoepaid the check."

"He wasn't supposed to do that. Anyway, I had a drink after he left and told her to put it on my tab, and she said to see you. Is this something new? Don't I have a tab?"

His smile broadened. "Anytime you want one, but as a matter of fact you don't have one now. Mr.Devoe covered it.Wiped the slate clean."

"What did it come to?"

"Eighty dollars and change.I could probably come up with the exact figure if it mattered. Does it?"

"No."

"He gave me a hundred dollars to cover your tab, the check today, a tip forLyddie and something to ease my own weariness of the soul. I suppose one could maintain that your most recent drink was not covered, but my inscrutable sense of the rightness of things is that it was."Another wide smile. "So you owe us nothing," he said.

I didn't argue. If there was one thing I learned in the NYPD, it was to take what people gave me.

I went back to my hotel, checked for mail and messages. There were none of either. The desk clerk, a loose-limbed black man fromAntigua, said that he didn't mind the heat but he missed the ocean breezes.

I went upstairs and took a shower. My room was hot. There was an air-conditioner, but something was wrong with its cooling element. It moved the warm air around and gave it a chemical flavor but didn't do much about the heat or the humidity. I could shut it off and open the window from the top, but the air outside was no better. I stretched out and must have dozed off for an hour or so, and when I woke up I needed another shower.

I took it and then called Fran. Her roommate answered. I gave my name and waited what seemed like a long time for Fran to come to the phone.

I suggesteddinner, and maybe a movie afterward if we felt up to it. "Oh, I'm afraid I can't tonight, Matt," she said. "I have other plans.Maybe some other time?"

I hung up regretting that I'd called. I checked the mirror, decided I didn't really need a shave after all, got dressed and got out of there.

It was hot on the street, but it would cool down in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, there were bars all over the place, and their air-conditioners all worked better than mine.

CURIOUSLY, I didn't hit it all that hard. I was in a surly mood, gruff and ill-tempered, and that usually led me to take my drinks fast. But I was restless, and as a result I moved around a lot. There were even a few bars that I walked into and out of without ordering anything.

At one point I almost got into a fight. In a joint on Tenth Avenue a rawboned drunk with a couple of teeth missing bumped into me and spilled part of his drink on me, then took exception to the way I accepted his apology. It was all over nothing- he was looking for a fight and I was very nearly ready to oblige him. Then one of his friends grabbed his arms from behind and another stepped between us, and I came to my senses and got out of there.

I walked east on Fifty-seventh. A couple of black hookers were working the pavement in front of the Holiday Inn. I noticed them more than I usually did. One, with a face like an ebony mask, challenged me with her eyes. I felt a rush of anger, and I didn't know who or what I was angry at.

I walked over to Ninth, up half a block to Armstrong's. I wasn't surprised to see Fran there. It was almost as if I had expected her to be there, seated at a table along the north wall. She had her back to me and hadn't noticed me come in.

Hers was a table for two, and her partner was no one I recognized. He had blond hair and eyebrows and an open young face, and he was wearing a slate-blue short-sleeved shirt with epaulets. I think they call it a safari shirt. He was smoking a pipe and drinking a beer. Her drink was something red in an oversize stemmed glass.

Probably a tequila sunrise.That was a big year for tequila sunrises.

I turned to the bar, and there was Carolyn. The tables were crowded but the bar was half empty, lightly attended for that hour on a Friday night. At her right, toward the door, a couple of beer drinkers stood talking baseball. To her left, there were three vacant stools in a row.

I took the middle one and ordered bourbon, a double with water back. Billie served it, saying something about the weather. I took a sip of my drink and shot a quick glance at Carolyn.

She didn't appear to be waiting for Tommy or for anyone else, nor did she look as though she'd just breezed in a few minutes ago. She was wearing yellow pedal pushers and a sleeveless lime-green blouse. Her light brown hair was combed to frame her little fox face. She was drinking something dark from a lowball glass.

At least it wasn't a tequila sunrise.

I drank some bourbon, glanced in spite of myself at Fran and was irritated with my own irritation. I'd had two dates withher, there was no great mutual attraction, no chemical magic, just two nights of leaving her at her door. And tonight I'd called her, late, and she'd said she had other plans, and here she was, drinking a tequila sunrise with her other plan.

Where did I get off being mad about that?

I thought,I'll bet she doesn't tell him she's got an early day tomorrow. I bet the White Hunter there doesn't have to say goodnight downstairs.

To my right, a voice with a Piedmont softness to it said, "I forget your name."

I looked up.

"I believe we were introduced," she said, "but I don't recall your name."

"It's Matthew Scudder," I said, "and you're right, Tommy introduced us. You're Carolyn."

"Carolyn Cheatham. Have you seen him?"

"Tommy? Not since it happened."

"Neitherhave I. Were you-all at the funeral?"

"No. I thought about going but I didn't get there."

"Why would you go? You never met her, did you?"

"No."

"Neither didI." She laughed. There wasn't much mirth in it. "Big surprise, I never met his wife. I would have gone this afternoon. But I didn't." She took her lower lip between her teeth. "Matt.Whyn't you buy me a drink? Or I'll buy you one, butcome sit next to meso's I don't have to shout. Please?"

She was drinking Amaretto, a sweet almond-flavored liqueur that she took on the rocks. It tastes like dessert but it's almost as strong as whiskey.

"He told me not to come," she said."To the funeral. It was someplace in Brooklyn, that's a whole foreign nation to me, Brooklyn, but a lot of people went from the office. I wouldn't have had to know how to get there, I could have had a ride, I could have been part of the office crowd, come to pay my respects along with everybody else. But he said not to, he said it wouldn't look right."

Her bare arms were lightly dusted with golden hair. She was wearing perfume, a floral scent with anundertaste of musk.

"He said it wouldn't look right," she said. "He said it was a matter of respect for the dead." She picked up her glass and stared into it.

She said, "Respect. What's the man care about respect? What's he so much as know about respect, for the dead or for the living? I would just have been part of the office crowd. We both work there atTannahill, far as anyone knows we're just friends. Lord's sake, all we ever were is friends."

"Whatever you say."

"Well, shit," she said, drawling it, giving the word an extra syllable or two. "Ah don't mean to say Ah wasn't fucking him. Ah surely don't mean that. But all it ever waswas laughs and good times. He was married and went home to mama most every night"- she drank some Amaretto- "and that wasjes fine, believe me, because who in her rightmind'd want TommyTillary around by the dawn's early light? Christ in the foothills, Matthew, did I spill this or drink it?"

We agreed that she was drinking them a little too fast. Sweet drinks, we assured each other, had a way of sneaking up on a person. It was this fancy New York Amaretto shit, she maintained. It wasn't like the bourbon she'd grown up on. You knew where you stood with bourbon.

I reminded her that I was a bourbon drinker myself, and it pleased her to learn this. Alliances have been forged on more tenuous bonds than that, and she sealed ours with a sip from my glass. I offered it to her, and she put her little hand on mine to steady the glass, sipping daintily at the liquor.

"BOURBON is low-down," she said. "You know what I mean?"

"Here I thought it was a gentleman's drink."

"It's for a gentleman likes to get down in the dirt. Scotch is vests and ties and prep school. Bourbon is an old boy ready to let the animal out, ready to let the nasty show. Bourbon is sitting up on a hot night and not minding if you sweat."

Nobody was sweating. We were in her apartment, sitting on her couch in a sunken living room set about a foot below the level of the kitchen and foyer. Her building wasan Art Deco apartment house on Fifty-seventh just a few doors west of Ninth. A bottle of Maker's Mark from the store around the corner stood on top of her glass-and-wrought-iron coffee table. Her air-conditioner was on, quieter than mine and more effective. We were drinking out of rocks glasses but we weren't bothering with ice.

"You were a cop," she said. "Didn't he tell me that?"

"He could have."

"And now you're a detective?"

"In a way."

"Just so you're not a robber. Be something if I got myself stabbed by a burglar tonight, wouldn't it? He's with me and she gets killed, and then he's with her and I get killed. Except I don't guess he's with her right about now, is he. She's in the ground by now."

Her apartment was small but comfortable. The furniture had cleanlines, the pop art prints on the brick wall were framed simply in aluminum frames. From her window you could see the green copper roof of theParc Vendome on the far corner.

"If a burglar came in here," she said, "I'd stand a better chance than she did."

"Because you've got me to protect you?"

"Mmmm," she said."Mahhero."

We kissed then. I tipped up her chin and kissed her, and we moved into an easy clinch. I breathed in her perfume, felt her softness. We clung together for a moment or two, then withdrew and reached as if in synchronization for our drinks.

"Even if I was alone," she said, picking up the conversation as readily as she'd picked up the drink. "I could protect myself."

"You're a karate black belt."

"I'm a beaded belt, honey, to match my purse. No, I could protect myself with this here, just give me a minute and I'll show you."

A pair of modern matte-black step tables flanked the sofa. She leaned across me to grope for something in the drawer of the one on my side. She was sprawled facedown across my lap. An inch of golden skin showed between the tops of the yellow pedal pushers and the bottom of her green blouse. I put my hand on her behind.

"Now quit that, Matthew! I'll forget what I'm looking for."

"That's all right."

"No it's not. Here. See?"

She sat up, a gun in her hand. It was the same matte-black finish as the table. It was a revolver, and looked to be a.32.A small gun, all black, with a one-inch barrel.

"Maybe you should put that away," I said.

"I know how to behave around guns," she said. "I grew up in a house full of guns.Rifles, shotguns, handguns. My pa and both my brothers hunted.Quail, pheasants. Some ducks. I know about guns."

"Is that one loaded?"

"Wouldn't be much good if it wasn't, would it? Can't point at a burglar and say bang. He loaded it 'fore he gave it to me."

"Tommy gave it to you?"

"Uh-huh." She held the gun at arm's length, sighted across the room at an imaginary burglar. "Bang," she said. "He didn't leave me any shells, just the loaded gun. So if I was to shoot a burglar I'd have to ask him for more bullets the next day."

"Why'd he give it to you?"

"Not to go duck hunting." She laughed. "For protection," she said. "I said how I got nervous sometimes, a girl living alone in this city, and one time he brought me this here. He said he bought it for her, to have it for protection, but she wouldn't have any part of it, wouldn't even take it in her hand." She broke off and giggled.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, that's what they all say. 'My wife won't even take it in her hand.' I got a dirty mind, Matthew."

"Nothing wrong with that."

"I told you bourbon was low-down.Brings out the beast in a person. You could kiss me."

"You could put the gun away."

"You got something against kissing a woman with a gun in her hand?" She rolled to her left, put the gun in the drawer and closed it. "I keep it in the bedside table," she explained, "so it'll be handy if I need it in a hurry. This here makes up into a bed."

"I don't believe you."

"You don't huh? Want me to prove it to you?"

"Maybe you'd better."

AND so we did what grownups do when they find themselves alone together. The sofa opened up into an adequate bed and we lay upon it with the lights out and the room lit by a couple of candles in straw-wrapped wine bottles. Music played on an FM station. She had a sweet body, an eager mouth, perfect skin. She made a lot of enthusiastic noises and more than a few skillful moves, and afterward she cried some.