“Thought I’d find you here.” Polk strained a smile. “How’s it goin’, Connie?”
“It’s okay.”
“Got a cigarette?”
“Sure.”
Constantine picked his Marlboros off the bar, shook one out of the deck in Polk’s direction. Polk took it, flipped the filter between his teeth. Constantine stuck one in his mouth, lighted Polk’s, put fire to his own. He dragged deeply, tossed the spent match into the ashtray that sat to the right of his drink.
“You ready for another?” Polk said.
“Yeah,” Constantine said. “One more.”
Polk signaled the bartender. “An Absolut and tonic here, and a vodka rocks for my friend.” Polk turned to Constantine. “You take a special kind?”
“Just vodka,” said Constantine, and the bartender went away to fix the drinks.
“You ought to try the good stuff,” Polk said.
“It’s all alike.”
“Just the same, you ought to try it some time. It’s okay to have nice things.” “You sound like Grimes.”
“Well,” Polk said, “just look at him. Whatever you think of the man, he’s got it all. Doesn’t he?”
The bartender served the drinks. Polk tapped Constantine’s glass with his, had a healthy pull off his cocktail. Polk put the glass back on the bar.
“I talked to Randolph,” he said, looking at Constantine carefully, out the corner of his eye. “Randolph thinks you’ve got somethin’ going on with Grimes’s woman.”
“It’s my business if I do,” Constantine said.
“I’m not gonna tell you to knock it off,” Polk said, waving his hand.
Constantine dragged on his cigarette, exhaled. “What were you going to tell me, Polk?”
“Just this,” Polk said, putting his hand on Constantine’s arm. “I passed up on a lot of good things in my life. That’s just one of the mistakes I’ve made along the way, and believe me, I’ve made plenty. But when you come across something as fine as that woman… you don’t let it get away from you, Connie, not for nothin’.” Polk lowered his voice, squinted. “If you have to, you take it.”
Constantine gently pulled his arm from Polk’s grip. “Thanks for the advice,” he said.
Polk looked away, then into his drink. He had a sip, had a hit of his smoke. He cocked one eyebrow, shook his head. “Anyway, that’s not what I came to tell you. I came to apologize, really. I came to apologize for getting you into all this. I didn’t mean for-”
Constantine stopped him. “I let myself in on it, Polk. So forget it.”
Polk’s expression lightened as he placed his hand back on Constantine’s arm. “Well, after tomorrow, there’s still Florida. Right, Connie?”
Constantine thought about it, chuckled. “To tell you the truth, I’d forgotten all about it. Florida-that’s where we were goin’?”
“It’s still on, son. You and me.” Polk glanced at his wristwatch, finished his drink in one gulp. “I gotta get goin’, pal, Charlotte’s waiting.”
Polk got off the stool, snapped up his windbreaker to the neck. Constantine put his hand on Polk’s shoulder.
“Hold on a second,” Constantine said. “There’s something I gotta know.”
“What?” Polk said.
“In the meeting, you told Grimes that if something happened to you, your share would go to me.” Constantine stared into the bright blue of Polk’s eyes. “Why?”
Polk smiled. “It’s simple, Connie. That day I picked you up hitchhiking-I asked you for a smoke. Well, you probably don’t remember, but you gave me your last one. It was a small thing to do, I know. But it’s been a long time since someone’s done that. It meant something. It meant something, to me.” Polk smiled at Constantine.
“Take it easy, Polk.”
“You too, kid.”
Polk turned, headed for the exit. Constantine watched him limp away.
The bartender, a heavy, slow man with a round, moley face and easy manners, stood in front of Constantine. He wiped the bar with a white rag, emptied Constantine’s ashtray, used the rag to clean out the ashtray. He placed the ashtray back on the bar.
“Another?” he said.
“This’ll do it,” Constantine said. “Thanks.”
The bartender went to the register, pulled Constantine’s check. Constantine watched him figure out the tab as he mouthed the words to the fat-bottomed funk coming from the deck. Constantine hit his cigarette down to the filter, crushed the cherry in the ashtray. He looked at his face in the barroom mirror through the spaces of the liquor bottles lined on the rack.
So the job, and then Florida. Florida would be next. He had been to Florida, driven there from South Carolina, stayed briefly. He had been most places, it seemed. He supposed it was inevitable that he’d see some of those places again.
“Life is short”: he’d heard that overused expression, in bars all over the world. Men used it to explain away everything, from their most recent, foolish purchase, to their next drink, to their last meaningless affair. Life, in fact, seemed very long to Constantine. He could not imagine living another thirty-five, forty years. What would he do?
The thing of it was, Constantine did not fear death. He thought-no, he was certain -that death would be exactly the same for him as that time before his birth: a black nothing, a total absence of sensation. The end of his life, though, that might be something, as that was something that a man could only experience once. If he was curious about anything, it was to feel those last few seconds of free-fall before the blackness. Constantine sat on the bar stool, wondering what it would be like, at the very end.
Chapter 19
The men met in the foyer of the Grimes estate at ten o’clock on Friday morning.
Valdez and Gorman stood together next to the entrance to the library, their hands in the pockets of their loose-fitting, zippered jackets. Randolph, Polk, and Constantine stood on the opposite end of the foyer, talking quietly. Jackson dug under his thumbnail with a metal file, and stood alone.
A little past ten, Weiner came down the stairs carrying a large duffel bag in his right hand. Grimes walked from his office, leaned on the rail that ran around the landing, and looked down on the men. Grimes wore a blazer over a salmon-colored polo shirt, with khaki slacks and loafers. His gray hair had been lightly slicked back.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Weiner said, placing the duffel bag in the center of the marbled foyer.
The men formed a semicircle around Weiner and the bag. Weiner crouched down, zipped open the bag. He looked inside it, looked up at Randolph.
“You’re okay,” Weiner said. “Right, Randolph?”
“I got mine,” Randolph said, pulling back the lapel of his jacket to reveal the butt of a holstered. 45. Constantine recognized the checkered walnut stock, the raised horse insignia in the middle of the grip.
“Constantine?” Weiner said.
“I won’t need-”
“We already went through this, kid.”
“The Colt, then,” said Constantine.
Weiner pulled a blue-steeled automatic from the bag, handed it, butt out, to Constantine.
“Full clip,” Weiner said. “Safety on.”
Gorman nudged Valdez as Constantine checked it.
“You know how to use it, driver?” Gorman said.
Constantine ignored Gorman, hefted the gun in his hand.
“Jackson?” Weiner said.
