You could get there an hour early and sit around and have coffee and talk to people, but I never did. I had two hours to kill and I didn't know how.
They tell you not to let yourself get too hungry. I hadn't had anything to eat since that hot dog in the park.
I thought of food and my stomach turned at the notion.
I walked back to my hotel. It seemed as though every place I passed was a bar or a liquor store. I went up to my room and stayed there.
I got to the meeting a couple of minutes early. Half a dozen people said hello to me by name. I got some coffee and sat down.
The speaker told an abbreviated drinking story and spent most of the time telling of all the things that had
happened to him since he got sober four years ago. His marriage had broken up, his youngest son had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, he'd gone through a period of extended unemployment and several bad bouts of clinical depression.
'But I didn't drink,' he said. 'When I first came here you people told me there's nothing so bad that a drink won't make it worse. You told me the way to work this program is not drink even if my ass falls off. I'll tell you, sometimes I think I stay sober on sheer fucking stubbornness.
That's okay. I figure whatever works is fine with me.'
I wanted to leave at the break. Instead I got a cup of coffee and took a couple of Fig Newtons. I could hear Kim telling me that she had an awful sweet tooth. 'But I never gain an ounce. Aren't I lucky?'
I ate the cookies. It was like chewing straw but I chewed them and washed them down.
During the discussion one woman got into a long riff about her relationship. She was a pain in the ass, she said the same thing every night. I tuned out.
I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic. A woman I know got killed last night. She hired me to keep her from getting killed and I wound up assuring her that she was safe and she believed me. And her killer conned me and I believed him, and she's dead now, and there's nothing I can do about it. And it eats at me and I don't know what to do about that, and there's a bar on every corner and a liquor store on every block, and drinking won't bring her back to life but neither will staying sober, and why the hell do I have to go through this? Why?
I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic and we sit around in these goddamned rooms and say the same damned things all the time and meanwhile out there all the animals are killing each other. We say Don't drink and go to meetings and we say The important thing is you're sober and we say Easy does it and we say One day at a time and while we natter on like brainwashed zombies the world is coming to an end.
I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic and I need help.
When they got to me I said, 'My name is Matt. Thanks for your qualification. I enjoyed it. I think I'll just listen tonight.'
I left right after the prayer. I didn't go to Cobb's Corner and I didn't go to Armstrong's, either. Instead I walked to my hotel and past it and halfway around the block to Joey Farrell's on Fifty-eighth Street.
They didn't have much of a crowd. There was a Tony Bennett record on the jukebox. The bartender was nobody I knew.
I looked at the back bar. The first bourbon that caught my eye was Early Times. I ordered a straight shot with water back. The bartender poured it and set it on the bar in front of me.
I picked it up and looked at it. I wonder what I expected to see.
I drank it down.
Chapter 7
It was no big deal. I didn't even feel the drink at first, and then what I experienced was a vague headache and the suggestion of nausea.
Well, my system wasn't used to it. I'd been away from it for a week. When was the last time I'd gone a full week without a drink?
I couldn't remember. Maybe fifteen years, I thought. Maybe twenty, maybe more.
I stood there, a forearm on the bar, one foot on the bottom rung of the bar stool beside me, and I tried to determine just what it was that I felt. I decided that something didn't hurt quite so much as it had a few minutes ago. On the other hand, I felt a curious sense of loss. But of what?
'Another?'
I started to nod, then caught myself and shook my head. 'Not right now,' I said. 'You want to let me have some dimes? I have to make a couple of calls.'
He changed a dollar for me and pointed me toward the pay phone.
I closed myself into the booth and took out my notebook and pen and started making calls. I spent a few dimes learning who was in charge of the Dakkinen case and a couple more reaching him, but finally I was plugged into the squad room at Midtown North. I asked to speak to Detective Durkin and a voice said, 'Just a minute,' and 'Joe? For you,'
and after a pause another voice said, 'This is Joe Durkin.'
I said, 'Durkin, my name is Scudder. I'd like to know if you've made an arrest in the Dakkinen murder.'
'I didn't get that name,' he said.
'It's Matthew Scudder, and I'm not trying to get information out of you, I'm trying to give it. If you haven't
