A Drop of the Hard Stuff

“By finding out who killed your friend.”

“By finding out if there’s a name here I feel comfortable passing on to Redmond. I suppose that amounts to the same thing.”

“Can’t you just eliminate the ones who couldn’t have done it and give him whoever’s left?”

“Stillman could have done that himself,” I said. “The idea is to avoid creating a problem for someone who’s innocent of Jack’s murder, even though he may not be innocent of much else.”

“Some nasty people on that list?”

“I don’t know who’s on it,” I said, “except for Jack’s father, and he’s been dead for a few years now.”

“Which would constitute exculpatory evidence, wouldn’t it? You haven’t read the list?”

“I was too tired last night, and this morning I found other things to do. I guess I’ll go read it now.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” my sponsor said.

But it still wasn’t something I wanted to do, and I went back to the room entertaining the fantasy that the manila envelope would have disappeared during my absence. The maid—whose weekly visit was a day away—would have come early, changing my sheets and emptying my wastebasket and consigning Jack’s Eighth Step to the incinerator. Or a burglar would have broken in and, annoyed at having found nothing worth stealing, would have walked off with it. Or spontaneous combustion, or a flash flood, or—

It was there. I sat down and read it.

By the time I was done I’d skipped lunch, and the sun was down. I went out and had something to eat before my regular Friday night step meeting at St. Paul’s. I had the urge to leave at the break but made myself stay for the whole meeting.

“I’m going to pass on coffee tonight,” I told Jim. “I think I’ll go to a bar instead.”

“You know, there’s been many a time I’ve had that thought myself.”

“I read that fucking list,” I said, “and it took forever, because I kept stopping and staring out the window.”

“At the liquor store across the street?”

“At the Trade Center towers, I suppose, but I wasn’t really looking at anything. Just gazing off into the distance. It was hard going, Jim. I got more of a peek than I wanted into the guy’s heart and soul.”

“So what else would you want to do but go to a bar?”

I gave him a look. “I’ve got a slip of paper with five names on it, and there’s a guy I want to run them past.”

“And the bar’s where you have to meet him.”

“It’s where he’ll be. The Top Knot or Poogan’s Pub. He switches back and forth.”

“A man wouldn’t want to get stuck in a rut,” he said. “You think it might be a good idea to take someone with you?”

“I’m not going to drink.”

“No,” he said, “you’re not, but you might be more comfortable with a sober friend along.”

I thought about it, weighed that against the inhibiting effect of a stranger at the table. “Not this time,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Whichever bar you’ll find him in, I’m sure they’ll have a pay phone. And you’ve got plenty of quarters, don’t you?”

“Quarters and subway tokens. Although I won’t need a token. I’ll be on West Seventy-second, I’ll walk there and back.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “The exercise’ll do you good.”

I walked up to the corner of Seventy-second and Columbus. Poogan’s was half a block one way and the Top Knot was about as far in the other direction, and I felt like the donkey standing midway between two bales of hay. Either you made an arbitrary choice or you starved to death. I flipped a mental coin and went to the Top Knot, and of course he was at Poogan’s, sitting at a table with an iced bottle of Stoli in a wood-grained plastic bucket.

The man at the table was holding a Rubik’s Cube, not manipulating it, just frowning at it. I walked over and said, “Hello, Danny Boy,” and without raising his eyes he said, “Matthew, have you ever seen one of these things?”

“I’ve seen them. I’ve never actually played with one of them.”

“Somebody gave this to me,” he said. “The idea is to wind up with solid colors on all six sides, though why anyone would want to go to the trouble is beyond me. Do you want this?”

“No, but thanks.”

He put the device on the table, looked up at me, smiled broadly. “Sit down,” he said. “It’s good to see you. Maybe I’ll leave this toy for the waitress. I get the feeling she’s easily amused. You’re looking well, Matthew. Something to drink?”

“Maybe a Coke,” I said, “but there’s no hurry. We can wait until she shows up to collect her Rubik’s Cube.”

“That’s what it’s called. I was thinking Kubek, but I knew that was wrong. Remember Tony Kubek?”

The Yankee infielder, and I did indeed remember him, and we talked baseball for a few minutes. Then the waitress came by and I ordered a Coke, and Danny Boy took a drink of vodka and let her top up his glass.

Danny Boy Bell is a diminutive albino Negro, always superbly dressed by the boys’ departments at Saks and Paul Stuart. His albinism has made him a creature of the night, but I think he’d keep vampire’s hours regardless of his skin’s sensitivity to sunlight. The world needs two things, I’ve heard him say, a dimmer switch and a volume control, both of them dialed way down. Dark rooms and soft music are his natural preference, all washed down with