'Something to take it slow and see what happens, I guess.'
'Something like that.'
THAT was Monday. For the next couple of days I took a lot of long walks and spent time at a lot of churches. I would have a couple of drinks in the evening to make it easier to get to sleep, but to all intents and purposes I wasn't doing any serious drinking at all. I walked around, I enjoyed the weather, I kept checking my telephone messages, I read the Times in the morning and the Post at night. I began wondering after a while why I wasn't getting the phone message I was waiting for, but I wasn't upset enough to pick up the phone and place a call myself.
Then Thursday around two in the afternoon I was walking along, not going anywhere in particular, and as I passed a newsstand at the corner of Fifty-seventh and Eighth, I happened to glance at the headline of the Post. I normally waited and bought the late edition, but the headline caught me and I bought the paper.
Jerry Broadfield was dead.
Chapter 17
When he sat down across from me, I knew who it was without raising my eyes. I said, 'Hi, Eddie.'
'Figured I'd find you here.'
'Not hard to guess, was it?' I waved a hand to signal Trina. 'What is it, Seagram's? Bring my friend here a Seagram's and water. I'll have another of these.' To him I said, 'It didn't take you long. I've only been here about an hour myself. Of course the news must have hit the street with the noon edition. I just didn't happen to see a paper until an hour ago. It says here that he got it around eight this morning.
Is that right?'
'That's right, Matt. According to the report I saw.'
'He walked out the door and a late-model car pulled up at the curb and somebody gave him both barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. A school kid said the man with the gun was white but didn't know about the man in the car, the driver.'
'That's right.'
'One man's white and the car's described as blue and the gun was left at the scene. No prints, I don't suppose.'
'Probably not.'
'No way to trace the sawed-off, I don't guess.'
'I haven't heard, but- '
'But there won't be any way to trace it.'
'Doesn't figure to be.'
Trina brought the drinks. I picked mine up and said, 'Absent friends, Eddie.'
'Sure thing.'
'He wasn't your friend, and though you may not believe it, he was less my friend than yours, but that's how we'll drink the toast, to absent friends. I drank your toast the way you wanted it, so you can drink mine.'
'Whatever you say.'
'Absent friends,' I said.
We drank. The booze seemed to have more of a punch after a few days of taking it easy. I certainly hadn't lost my taste for it, though. It went down nice and easy and made me vitally aware of just who I was.
I said, 'You figure they'll ever find out who did it?'
'Want a straight answer?'
'Do you think I want you to lie to me?'
'No, I don't figure that.'
'So?'
'I don't suppose they'll ever find out who did it, Matt.'
'Will they try?'
'I don't think so.'
'Would you, if it were your case?'
He looked at me. 'Well, I'll be perfectly honest with you,' he said after a moment's thought. 'I don't know. I'd like to think I'd try. I think some- I think, fuck it, I think a couple of our own must of done it.
What the hell else can you think, right?'
'Right.'
'Whoever did it was a fucking idiot. An absolute fucking idiot who just did the department more harm than Broadfield could ever hope to do. Whoever did it ought to hang by the neck, and I like to think I'd go after the bastards with everything I had if it was my case.' He lowered his eyes. 'But to be honest, I don't know if I would. I think I'd go through the motions and sweep it under the rug.'
'And that's what they'll do out in Queens .'
