we didn't, but he could bring me a cup of black coffee when he had a moment. Elaine said she'd have herb tea. 'Any kind,' she said. 'Surprise me.'
He brought her Red Zinger. 'What a surprise,' she said.
I tried my coffee, and something must have shown in my face, because Elaine's eyebrows went up a
notch.
'For an instant there,' I said, 'I could taste booze in the coffee.'
'But it's not really there.'
'No. Good coffee, but only coffee.'
'What they call a sense-memory, I guess.'
'I guess.'
You could say I came by it honestly. Years ago, before Jimmy lost his lease and relocated a long block to the west, Armstrong's had been situated on Ninth Avenue around the corner from my hotel, and it had functioned for me almost as an extension of my personal living space. I socialized there, I isolated there, I met clients there. I put in long hours of maintenance drinking there, and sometimes I did more than maintain and got good and drunk at the bar or at my table in the back. My usual drink was bourbon, and when I didn't drink it neat, the way God made it, I would stir it into a mug of coffee. Each flavor, it seemed to me then, complemented and enhanced the other, even as the caffeine and alcohol balanced one another, the one keeping you awake while the other softened the edges of consciousness.
I have known people who, when quitting smoking, have had to give up coffee temporarily because they so strongly associate the two. I had problems of my own getting sober, but coffee was not one of them, and I have been able to go on drinking it with pleasure, and apparently with impunity, at an age when most of my contemporaries have found it advisable to switch to decaf. I like the stuff, especially when it's good, the way Elaine makes it at home (although she hardly ever has a cup herself) or the way they brew it in the Seattle-style coffee bars that have sprouted up all over town. The coffee's always been good at Armstrong's, rich and full-bodied and aromatic, and I took a sip now, savoring it, and wondered why I'd tasted bourbon.
'There was nothing you could have done,' Elaine said. 'Was there?'
'No.'
'You told him he ought to leave the country.'
'I could have pushed a little harder,' I said, 'but I don't think he would have done anything differently, and I can't blame him for that. He had a life to live. He took all the precautions a man could be expected to take.'
'Reliable did a good job for him?'
'Even in hindsight,' I said, 'I can't point to a thing they did wrong.
I suppose they could have posted men around the clock in his apartment, whether or not there was anybody in it, but even after the fact I can't argue that that's what they should have done. And as far as my own part in all this is concerned, no, I can't see anything I left undone that might have made a difference. It would have been nice if I'd had some brilliant insight that told me who Will was, but that didn't happen, and that gives me something in common with eight million other New Yorkers, including however many cops they've got assigned to the case.'
'But something's bothering you.'
'Will's out there,' I said. 'Doing what he does, and getting away with it. I guess that bothers me, especially now that he's struck down a man I knew. A friend, I was going to say, and that would have been inaccurate, but I had the sense the last time I spoke with him that Adrian Whitfield might have become a friend. If he'd lived long enough.'
'What are you going to do?'
I drank the rest of my coffee, caught the waiter's eye and pointed to my empty cup. While he filled it I thought about the question she'd asked. I said, 'The funeral's private, just for the family. There'd be a crowd otherwise, with all the headlines he's getting. I understand there'll be a public memorial service sometime next month, and I'll probably go to that.'
'And?'
'And maybe I'll light a candle,' I said.
'It couldn't hoit,' she said, giving the phrase an exaggerated Brooklyn pronunciation. It was the punch line to an old joke, and I guess I smiled, and she smiled back across the table at me.
'Does the money bother you?'
'The money?'
'Didn't he write you a check?'
'For two thousand dollars,' I said.
'And don't you get a referral fee from Reliable?'
'Dead clients don't pay.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'A basic principle of the personal-security industry,' I said.
'Someone used it for the title of a book on the subject. Wally took a small retainer, but it won't begin to cover what he has to pay in hourly rates to the men he's had guarding Whitfield. He's legally entitled to bill the estate, but he already told me he's going to eat it. Since he'll wind up with a net loss, I won't be picking up a referral fee.'
'And you're just as glad, aren't you?'
'Oh, I don't know. If he'd made money on the deal I'd have been comfortable taking a share of it. And if
