references. Still, you'll want to exercise caution.'
'For a change.'
'Quite. If it's not a setup, I don't think he'll sell you out. I don't think he'd want to get that close to Motley.' He drank. 'Besides, you paid him well.'
'A duece was more than he expected to get.'
'I know. There's an advantage, I've found, in giving people more than they expect to get.'
That wasn't a cue, but it reminded me. I opened my wallet in my lap and found a pair of hundreds. I passed them to him and he smiled.
'As Brian would say, that's real decent. But there's no need to pay me now. Why not wait until you find out if his information is valid?
Because you don't owe me anything if it's not.'
'You hang on to it,' I suggested. 'I can always ask for it back if it's old news.'
'True, but—'
'And if it's straight,' I said, 'I might not be around to pay you. So you'd better take the money now.'
'I won't dignify that with an answer,' he said.
'But you'll keep the money.'
'I doubt I'll keep it long. Crystal's an expensive toy. Do you want to stay for another set, Matthew? If not, would you stop at the bar and tell the little darling it's safe to return? And put your money away, I'll pay for your coffee. My God, you're as bad as Brian.'
'I only drank half of that last cup,' I told him. 'It's not bad for instant, though. You're welcome to the rest of it.'
'That's decent of you,' he said. 'That's real decent.'
The cabbie had it all figured out. The only way to handle the crack problem was to cut off the supply.
You couldn't lessen the demand because everybody who tried the stuff got addicted to it, and you couldn't seal the borders, and you couldn't control production in Latin America because the dealers were more powerful than the governments.
'So you gotta be the government,' he said. 'What we do, we annex the fuckers. Take 'em over. Make
'em territories at first, until they shape up and they're ready for statehood. Right away you dry up your drugs at the source. And you got no more wetbacks, because how can people sneak into a country when they're already there? Any place where you got your insurgents, your rebels up in the hills, you declare
'em citizens and draft their asses into the U.S. Army. Next thing you know they got three hots and a cot, they got clean uniforms and GI haircuts and they're shopping at the PX. You do this right, you solve all your problems at once.'
He let me out at the ideal place for solving all my problems at once. Tenth and Fiftieth. Grogan's Open House, Michael J. Ballou, proprietor.
I walked in the door and the beer smell reached out to embrace me.
The crowd was light and the room was quiet. The jukebox was silent, and nobody was playing darts at the back. Burke was behind the bar with a cigarette in his mouth, trying to make his lighter produce a flame.
As I came in he gave me a tiny nod, put down the lighter and lit the cigarette with a match.
I didn't see his lips move but he must have said something because Mick turned at my approach. He was wearing his butcher's apron, more a coat than an apron. It buttoned up to the neck and covered him to the knees. It was gleaming white except where it showed reddish-brown stains. Some of them had faded over the years, and some had not.
'Scudder,' he said. 'Good man. What will you drink?'
I said a Coke would be fine. Burke filled a glass and slid it across the bar to me. I picked it up, and Mick raised his own glass to me. He was drinking JJ&S, the twelve-year-old Irish that the Jameson people turn out in small quantities. Billy Keegan, who'd worked behind the stick at Armstrong's some years back, used to drink it, and I'd tried it on a few occasions. I could still remember what it tasted like.
'It's a late hour for you,' Mick said.
'I was afraid you might be closed.'
'When did we ever close at this hour? It's not two yet. We're open till four, as often as not. I bought this bar to have a place for late drinking. Sometimes a man has need of a late night.' His eyes narrowed.
'Are you all right, man?'
'Why?'
'You look like a man who's been in a fight.'
I had to smile. 'This afternoon,' I said, 'but it didn't put a mark on me. A few nights ago it was a different story.'
'Oh?'
'Maybe we should sit down.'
'Maybe we should,' he agreed. He snatched up the whiskey bottle and led the way to a table. I brought my Coke and followed him. As we sat down, someone at the far end of the room played the jukebox and Liam Clancy declared himself to be a freeborn man of the traveling people. The volume was low and the music didn't get in your
