'Why?'
'I don't know. Why does anybody do anything?'
'I've often wondered.' I thought about it. 'A lot of us maintain our anonymity to one degree or another.
There's a longstanding tradition against going public about being a member of AA, though lately that's getting honored in the breach.'
'I know. All these Hollywood types go straight from Betty Ford to Barbara Walters.'
'They're not supposed to do that,' I said, 'but it's your own business to what extent you stay anonymous in your private life. I don't tell casual acquaintances unless I have a reason. And if I'm at a business meeting and the other fellow orders a drink, I'll just order a Coke. I won't issue an explanation.'
'And if he asks if you drink?'
'Sometimes I'll say 'Not today,' something like that. Or, 'It's a little early for me,' if I'm feeling particularly devious. But I can't imagine pouring a drink and pretending to drink it, or keeping colored water in a scotch bottle.' I remembered something. 'Anyway,' I said, 'there were the liquor store records, the deliveries he'd had over the past months.
They confirmed that he was just what he claimed to be, a guy who had one drink a day on the average.'
'He was ill,' she said. 'Some kind of lymphatic cancer, wasn't it?'
'It metastasized to the lymph system. I believe the original site was one of the adrenals.'
'Maybe he couldn't drink as much as he used to. Because of the cancer.'
'I suppose that's possible.'
'And he was in denial about his health, wasn't he? Or at least he wasn't telling people about it.'
'So?'
'So maybe that would lead him to pretend he was more of a drinker than he was.'
'But the first thing he did was tell me he wasn't much of a drinker.'
'You're right.' She frowned. 'I give up. I don't get it.'
'I don't get it, either.'
'But you don't give up, do you?'
'No,' I said. 'Not yet.'
* * *
Over dinner she said, 'Was Glenn Holtzmann a drinker?'
'Not that I ever noticed. And where did that question come from?'
'Your dreams.'
'You know,' I said, 'I'm having enough trouble making sense out of the thoughts I have while I'm awake. What was it Freud said about dreams?'
' 'Sometimes it's only a cigar.' '
'Right. If there's any connection between Glenn Holtzmann and the liquor Adrian Whitfield didn't have on his breath, I'm afraid it's too subtle for me.'
'I was just wondering.'
'Holtzmann was a phony,' I said. 'He betrayed people and sold them out.'
'Was Adrian a phony?'
'Did he have some secret life besides practicing criminal law? It doesn't seem very likely.'
'Maybe you sensed that he was hiding something about himself.'
'By pretending to be more of a drinker than he was. Or at least by pretending to have had more to drink on that one night than he had.'
'Right.'
'So my unconscious mind immediately made the leap from him to Glenn Holtzmann.'
'Why?'
'That was going to be my next question,' I said. 'Why indeed?' I put down my fork. 'Anyway,' I said,
'I think I figured out what Glenn Holtzmann was trying to tell me.'
'In the dream, you mean.'
'Right, in the dream.'
'Well?'
' 'Too much money.' '
'That's it?'
'What did we just say? Sometimes it's only a cigar?'
