valise. She didn’t tell him that, just maybe, this was no random snatch and steal attempt. Who would believe such a thing?
Maybe someone who believed in these ancient documents and the Dark Lord’s words. Someone who knew about his goals and his many emissaries.
At dawn the train, chugging and spent, labored into Penn Station. The platform was packed with day- trippers, commuters and visiting families.
As other passengers began reaching for their bags, Cadence stayed nested in her seat, tidied up now and still opposite 9-11 man. They exchanged knowing nods and smiles in comment on the passengers walking down the aisle toward the exit door.
When it was time, she got up and reached out and shook his hand.
“Julian, it’s been nice traveling with you. I hope you find your place to finally get off the train.”
He smiled in return. “You know, I’m feeling more confident about that. I’m going back to the Midwest. Maybe … oh … Topeka. That seems safe.”
“I think it would be great. Who knows? Take a day and sleep in a bed at a hotel or a bed and breakfast. Let the train just go on without you. Listen to it click-clack and whistle away. Leave your burden on the train. Just let it go.”
He nodded. People were waiting for her to clear the aisle.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
She trundled down the aisle, hesitated at the exit door. Below her was the step stool.
Rumbles of other trains and the incomprehensible sounds from the P.A. speakers mixed with the shuffle of the crowd with rollerbags and sneakers and clackety heels. The crowd broke; she saw daylight and headed for it.
She surfaced, bag in hand, to meet a mild Indian summer afternoon. A sweep of fresh air, alive with moisture and carrying the myriad smells of the city, swirled around her. As she breathed in the energy of that wind, she felt the city’s trademark, the palpable, buzzing presence of possibility. Anything might happen here. There would be no easy bargain but there would be commerce. That alone gave her hope. Here, her pent-up energy could be focused. She could get down to the real search.
Her little map from the Algonquin website said the hotel was less than ten blocks away. After four days locked up on the train, this would be easy. She picked up her bags and struck out due north. Once she got there, she would unload her stuff at the hotel and go directly to her first clue.
As the breeze kicked up and the sky darkened with an incoming thunderstorm, she found the hotel. The Algonquin was a spritely, fourteen-story dowager built in 1902. It looked smart and well-taken-care-of. She checked in on Mel’s tab, got organized and immediately left. It took her less than an hour to find the place she had travelled two thousand miles to see.
She stood alone outside the West End Bar.
A raw wind whipped sudden rain along Broadway at the corner of 110th Street. She looked at the yellowed scrap of menu in her hand.
The place right where it should be. Cadence wrestled the door against the wind and stepped inside. The place was busy, shadowy regulars installed on their usual stools. Behind the bar a man with Popeye arms bulging out of rolled-up sleeves, bathed in weird glow-light from under the bar. Gruff and balding, he fit the place.
She felt unexpectedly at home in places like this, where the dark wood-paneled walls had absorbed maybe seventy years of tobacco and beer smells, giving them back in the day, taking in more at night. Gin joint sounds filled the air — small talk, jukebox, clinking and washing, liquid pouring, imported beer bottles gasping into life as their caps tinkled off the opener.
She saw an empty bar stool and claimed it as the door opened again behind her. She could feel the wet street air swirl in and mix with the saloon smells. A figure moved in hitches and starts from the door over to the back corner, melting into a booth.
The barkeep moved towards her. “Yes, ma’am?”
She fidgeted with her bag, ordered a Manhattan, and looked up to see two things. First, the guy’s face lacked a left eye. A deep vertical scar transected the socket. Second, the hands placing the beer and glass on the bar lacked a finger. Left, ring.
“Uh …” is all she could get out for a second.
“Relax, ma’am, I’m not near the ogre I look.” His voice was friendly and low-key, which only lowered her blush to a paler shade of vermillion. He moved off to another customer and she looked at the menu scrap she had pulled from her pocket:
WEST END BAR
14423 Broadway
New York, NY
June 14, 1970
And there it was scrawled along the bottom:
“So what brings you here?” The barkeep had returned.
“Well, can I ask you a question first?”
“Shoot. First one’s free.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Me, on and off for fifteen years probably. What, you writing a book?”
“Close, but not exactly.”
Something dawned on her, looking at his left hand splayed across the bar wood. The missing piece of finger might be tied to the eye scar, like his hand had shot up to ward off whatever happened. Whatever
“The reason I asked, you came in here like you were looking for something besides a drink. Or company.”
“OK, I’m trying to find out something about this….” She slid the menu scrap in front of him. “It concerns a relative, my grandfather, the person who got the note at the bottom. Probably looked in his twenties then. Any ideas?”
He was clearly charmed by the vintage menu. It was a few moments before he answered. “We still do a Hunter’s Stew special, but otherwise this is way before my time.”
“The owner maybe?”
“Nope, they’re an investment group now, buying up distressed places around the upper West Side.”
“I hear this place was something of a landmark.”
“Still is. Lots of odd folks come in here — me excluded. Students, writers, tattoo artists, Nobel laureates, Columbia nerd-types, retirees, and invalids living in rent-controlled apartments who show up once a week. They order cocktails no one remembers — Sidecars, Old-Fashioneds, you know. They all come in and out. Gets to be a pattern from this side of the bar.”
“So what writers?”
