'You had dinner yet? C'mon downstairs, meet me outside.'
In the car he said, 'You know Manhattan better than I do. Where do you want to go? Pick a place.'
We went to Paris Green on Ninth Avenue. Bryce greeted me by name and gave us a window table, and Gary waved theatrically from the bar. Kenan ordered a glass of wine and I asked for a Perrier.
'Nice place,' he said.
After we'd ordered dinner he said, 'I don't know, man. I got no reason to be in the city. I just got in the car and drove around and I couldn't think of a single place to go. I used to do that all the time, just drive around, do my part for the oil shortage and the air pollution. You ever do that? Oh, how could you, you don't have a car. Suppose you want to get away for a weekend? What do you do?'
'Rent one.'
'Yeah, sure,' he said. 'I didn't think of that. You do that much?'
'Fairly often when the weather's decent. My girlfriend and I go upstate, or over to Pennsylvania.'
'Oh, you got a girlfriend, huh? I was wondering. Two of you been keeping company for a long time?'
'Not too long.'
'What's she do, if you don't mind my asking.'
'She's an art historian.'
'Very good,' he said. 'Must be interesting.'
'She seems to find it interesting.'
'I mean she must be interesting. An interesting person.'
'Very,' I said.
He was looking better this evening, his hair barbered and his face shaved, but there was still an air of weariness about him, with a current of restlessness moving beneath it.
He said, 'I don't know what to do with myself. I sit around the house and it just makes me nuts. My wife's dead, my brother's doing God knows what, my business is going to hell, and I don't know what to do.'
'What's the matter with your business?'
'Maybe nothing, maybe everything. I set up something on this trip I just made. I got a shipment due sometime next week.'
'Maybe you shouldn't tell me about it.'
'You ever have opiated hash? If you were strictly a boozer you probably didn't.'
'No.'
'That's what I got coming in. Grown in eastern Turkey and coming our way via Cyprus, or so they tell me.'
'What's the problem?'
'The problem is I should have walked away from the deal. There are people in it I got no reason to trust, and I went in on it for the worst possible reason. I did it to have something to do.'
I said, 'I can work for you in the matter of your wife's death. I can do that irrespective of how you make your living, and I can even break a few laws on your behalf. But I can't work for you or with you as far as your profession is concerned.'
'Petey told me that working for me would lead him back to using.
Is that a factor for you?'
'No.'
'It's just something you wouldn't touch.'
'I guess so, yes.'
He thought for a moment, then nodded. 'I can appreciate that,' he said. 'I can respect it. On the one hand, I'd like to have you with me because I'd be confident with you backing my play. And it's very lucrative. You know that.'
'Of course.'
'But it's dirty, isn't it? I'm aware of it. How could I not be? It's a dirty business.'
'So get out of it.'
'I'm thinking about it. I never figured to make it my life's work. I always figured another couple of years, a few more deals, a little more money in the offshore account. Familiar story, right? I wish they'd just legalize it, make it simple for everybody.'
'A cop said the same thing just the other day.'
'Never happen. Or maybe it will. I'll tell you, I'd welcome it.'
'Then what would you do?'
'Sell something else.' He laughed. 'Guy I met this past trip, Lebanese like me, I hung out with him and his wife in Paris. 'Kenan,' he says, 'you got to get out of this business, it deadens your soul.' He wants me to throw in with him. You know what he does? He's an arms dealer, for Christ's sake, he sells weapons.
