As if he had decided to be old. He had arranged himself in front of the big picture window behind his desk, his back to the door, a dark form without detail against the bright morning light that came through the eastward- looking window. When I came in he didn't move while I closed the door behind me and walked to a chair and sat down in front of his desk. I waited for a while. Finally, Joe turned slowly from the window to look at me. He had on a dark blue suit, a dark blue shirt, and a powder blue tie. He should have been nipping a silver dollar.
He said, 'How long I known you, Spenser?'
'Long time,' I said.
'You got a smart mouth. You think you're God's gift to the fucking universe. And you been a pain in my ass since I knew you.'
'Nice of you to remember, Joe.'
'I shoulda put you in the ground a long time ago.'
'But you didn't,' I said.
'Half the people I know are dead and most of the others are gone, and you keep showing up.'
'Good to be able to count on something, isn't it?'
Broz walked stiffly from the window and lowered himself gingerly into the chair behind his desk. He put the palms of his hands carefully together and rested his chin lightly against his fingertips.
He took in some air and let it out slowly through his nose.
'Whaddya want?' he said.
'Some Russians tried to kill me last night.'
'Good for them.'
'Depends how you look at it,' I said.
'Two of them are dead.'
Broz shrugged.
'I know you're good,' he said.
'Never said you weren't good.'
'I got no fight with any Russians,' I said.
'Somebody sent them.'
Broz kept looking at me with his clasped hands under his chin.
He had a powder blue show hankie in his breast pocket. It matched the tie perfectly.
'And there's some, ah, realignment, maybe, going on in the rackets in town. There's something happening with Gino Fish and Julius Ventura. I hear the Russians are trying to move some people up from New York.'
Broz nodded silently.
'Thought you might be able to tell me a little something.'
Broz didn't move. He didn't say anything. Looking past him through the big window all I could see was sky and the kind of light you get over water. I waited. Joe unclasped his hands and rested them on the dark walnut arms of his leather chair and tilted the chair back slowly.
'You want a drink?' he said.
'Little early in the day for me.'
Joe nodded.
'Early, late, don't make much difference to me anymore. I don't sleep much and when I do, I don't know I'm sleeping unless I have a dream. I eat when I'm hungry. I drink when I want to.'
He stood and moved slowly to the ebony bar with the blue leather padding in the corner of the room where so many years ago a guy named Phil had made me a bourbon and water, with a dash of bitters. Things hadn't worked out between me and Phil. I had to kill him a couple of weeks later. He took some ice from a silver ice bucket and put it in a lowball glass and poured some Wild Turkey over it. He carried the drink carefully back to his desk and put it down and sat carefully back down in his chair. Then he picked up the drink and looked at it and took a sip and put it down carefully.
He looked at me for a moment and then shifted his eyes so that he was staring past me.
'I know I owe you,' Broz said.
'You don't say anything about that, and I notice that you don't. But you coulda killed my kid, when was it? Three years ago?'
'More like five,' I said.
'Five years ago. You coulda killed him, and you' da been justified.'
He picked up his drink and had another sip, put the glass down carefully without spilling any, and looked at it absently.
'Kid's out of the business,' Broz said. He could have been talking to himself for all the notice he seemed to take of me.
'Set him up in a nice tavern out in Pittsfield. Wasn't cut out for the business. And Vinnie's gone.'
'He's with Gino now,' I said, just to remind him I was there.
