Otherwise I'd have had to wrestle with the temptation to wallow in six months'
worth of Doonesbury.
By the time I got out of there I had half a dozen possible cases jotted down in my notebook. One was particularly likely, the victim an accounting major at Brooklyn College who went missing three days before a birdwatcher encountered her one morning in Green-Wood Cemetery. The story said that she'd been subjected to sexual assault and sexual mutilation, which suggested to me that someone had done a job on her with a carving knife. Evidence at the scene indicated that she had been killed elsewhere and dumped at the cemetery, and police had drawn a similar conclusion about Marie Gotteskind, that she had already been dead when her killers discarded her body on the Forest Park Golf course.
I got back to my hotel around six. There were messages from Elaine and both Khourys, along with three slips announcing simply that TJ had called.
I called Elaine first and she reported that she'd made all the calls.
'By the end I was beginning to believe my own cover story,' she said. 'I was thinking to myself, This is fun, but it'll be even more fun when we make the movie. Except there's not going to be a movie.'
'I think somebody already made it.'
'I wonder if anybody will actually call.'
I got Kenan Khoury and he wanted to know how things were coming along. I told him I had managed to open up several lines of inquiry, but that I didn't expect quick results.
'But you think we got a shot,' he said.
'Definitely.'
'Good,' he said. 'Listen, why I called, I'm going to be out of the country on business for a couple of days. I have to go to Europe. I'm flying out tomorrow from JFK and I'll be coming back Thursday or Friday. Anything comes up, just call my brother. You've got his phone number, don't you?'
I had it on a message slip right in front of me, and I called it after I got off the phone with Kenan. Peter sounded groggy when he answered and I apologized for waking him. He said, 'No, that's okay, I'm glad you did. I was watching basketball and I dozed off in front of the set. I hate when that happens, I always wind up with a stiff neck. Reason I called, I was wondering if you were planning to go to a meeting tonight.'
'I thought I would, yes.'
'Well, how about if I pick you up and we go together? There's a Saturday night meeting in Chelsea I got in the habit of going to, nice little group, meets at eight o'clock in the Spanish church on Nineteenth Street.'
'I don't think I know it.'
'It's a little out of the way, but when I first got sober I was in an outpatient program in that neighborhood and this became my regular Saturday meeting. I don't get down there as much these days but having the car and all, you know I've got Francine's Toyota—'
'Yes.'
'So suppose I pick you up in front of your hotel around seven-thirty? That sound good?'
I said it sounded fine, and when I left the hotel at seven-thirty he was parked out in front. I was just as glad I didn't have to walk anywhere. It had been drizzling on and off during the afternoon, and now it was coming down steadily.
On the way to the meeting we talked about sports. The baseball teams were a month into spring training, with the season opener less than a month away. I'd been having a little trouble getting interested this spring, although I would probably get caught up in it once they got going. For the time being, though, most of the news was about contract negotiations, with one player sulking because he knew he was worth more than $83 million a year. I don't know, maybe he's worth it, maybe they're all worth it, but it makes it hard for me to give a damn whether they win or lose.
'I think Darryl's finally ready to dig in and play,' Peter said. 'He's been hitting a ton the past few weeks.'
'Now that we don't have him anymore.'
'Always the way it is, huh? Years we spend waiting for him to reach his full potential, and we got to see him do it in a Dodger uniform.'
We parked on Twentieth Street and walked around the block to the church. It was Pentecostal, and held services in both Spanish and English. The meeting was in the basement, with perhaps forty people in attendance. I saw a few faces I recognized from other meetings around town, and Pete said hello to quite a few people, one of whom said she hadn't seen him in a while. He said he'd been going to other meetings.
The format was one you didn't encounter that often in New York.
After the speaker told his story, the meeting broke up into small groups, with seven to ten people sitting around each of five tables. There was a table for beginners, one for general discussion, one to discuss one of the Twelve Steps, and I forget what else. Pete and I both wound up at the general discussion table, where people tended to talk about what was going on in their lives at the moment and how they were managing to stay sober. I usually seem to get more out of that than discussion that centers around a topic, or on one of the philosophical underpinnings of the program.
One woman had recently started work as an alcoholism counselor, and she talked about how it was difficult for her to retain her enthusiasm for meetings after spending eight hours dealing with the same issues at her job. 'It's hard to keep it separate,' she said. A man talked about the fact that he had just been diagnosed as HIV-positive, and how he was dealing with that. I talked about the cyclical nature of my work, and how I grew restless when I went too long between jobs and put myself under too much pressure when a job did come along. 'It was easy to balance things out when I drank,' I said, 'but I can't do that anymore. Meetings help.'
Pete talked when it was his turn, mostly commenting on some points other people had made. He didn't say much about himself.
At ten o'clock we stood in a big circle and held hands and said the prayer. Outside, the rain had softened some.
