“I think it’s that bend in his lip. You barely notice it, but it makes his face the least bit asymmetrical, which never inspires confidence. Whatever it is, he’s been in his last lineup.”
“As long as he stays out of trouble,” I said. “So who were you hoping she’d pick?”
“No, you tell me. Who were you leaning toward?”
“Number Four.”
“On the nose. I shoulda had you for my witness, Matt. Is that cop instinct talking, or did you recognize him?”
“I think it was the expression on his face after she made her call. I know they can’t hear anything in there, but he picked up something and knew he was off the hook.”
“I missed that.”
“But I think I’d have picked him anyway. He looked familiar to me, and I can’t think why.”
“Well, he’s got a yellow sheet. Maybe you saw his handsome face in a book of mug shots. High-Low Jack, they call him. Ring a bell?”
It didn’t. I asked his last name, and then repeated it myself—“Jack Ellery, Jack Ellery”—and then something clicked.
“I knew him back when I was a kid,” I said. “Jesus, I haven’t seen him since grade school.”
“Well,” Lonergan said, “I’d say the two of you took different career paths.”
The next time I saw him was years later. In the meantime I had left the NYPD and moved from a split-level house in Syosset to a hotel room just west of Columbus Circle. I didn’t look for a job, but jobs found me, and I wound up functioning as a sort of unlicensed private eye. I didn’t keep track of expenses and I didn’t furnish written reports, and the people who hired me paid me in cash. Some of the cash paid for my hotel room, and a larger portion covered my tab at the bar around the corner, where I took most of my meals, met most of my clients, and spent most of my time. And if there was anything left over, I bought a money order and sent it to Syosset.
Then, after too many blackouts and too many hangovers, after a couple of trips to detox and at least one seizure, the day came when I left a drink untouched on top of a bar and found my way to an AA meeting. I’d been to meetings before, and I’d tried to stay sober, but I guess I hadn’t been ready, and I guess this time I was. “My name’s Matt,” I told a roomful of people, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
I hadn’t said that before, not the whole sentence, and saying it is no guarantee of sobriety. Sobriety’s never guaranteed, it always hangs by a thread, but I left that meeting feeling that something had shifted. I didn’t have a drink that day, or the day after, or the day after that, and I kept going to meetings and stringing the days together, and I must have been somewhere in the middle of my third month of sobriety when I next encountered Jack Ellery. I’d had my last drink on the thirteenth of November, so it would have been the last week of January or the first week of February, something like that.
I know I couldn’t have had three full months yet, because I remember that I raised my hand and gave my day count, and you only do that for the first ninety days. “My name’s Matt,” you say, “and I’m an alcoholic, and today is Day Seventy-seven.” And everybody says, “Hi, Matt,” and then it’s somebody else’s turn.
This was at a three-speaker meeting on East Nineteenth Street, and after the second speaker they had a secretary’s break, when they made announcements and passed the basket. People with anniversaries announced them, and drew applause, and the newbies shared their day counts, and then the third speaker told his story and wrapped it all up by ten o’clock so we could all go home.
I was on my way out the door when I turned at the sound of my name and there was Jack Ellery. My seat was in the front, so I hadn’t noticed him earlier. But I knew him at a glance. He looked older than he had on the other side of the one-way glass, and there was more in his face than the years alone could account for. There’s no charge for the seats in an AA room, but that’s because you pay for them in advance.
“You don’t recognize me,” he said.
“Sure I do. You’re Jack Ellery.”
“Jesus, you’ve got some memory. What were we, twelve, thirteen years old?”
“I think I was twelve and you were thirteen.”
“Your dad had the shoe store,” he said. “And you were a class behind me, and one day I realized I hadn’t seen you in a while, and nobody knew where you went. And the next time I passed the shoe store, it was gone.”
“Like most of his business ventures.”
“He was a nice man, though. I remember that. Mr. Scudder. He impressed the hell out of my mother one time. He had that machine, you stood with your feet in the opening and it gave you some sort of X-ray picture of them. She was all set to spring for a new pair of shoes, and your dad said my feet hadn’t grown enough to need ’em. ‘That’s an honest man, Jackie,’ she said on the way home. ‘He could have taken advantage and he didn’t.’ ”
“One of the secrets of his success.”
“Well, it made an impression. Jesus, old times in the Bronx. And now we’re both of us sober. You got time for a cup of coffee, Matt?”
II
WE SAT ACROSS from each other in a booth in a diner on Twenty-third Street. He took his coffee with a lot of cream and sugar. Mine was black. The only thing I ever put in it was bourbon, and I didn’t do that anymore.
He remarked again on my having recognized him, and I said it worked both ways, he’d recognized me. “Well, you said your name,” he said. “When you gave your day count. You’ll be coming up on ninety pretty soon.”
Ninety days is a sort of probationary period. When you’ve been clean and dry for ninety days, you’re allowed to tell your story at a meeting, and to hold various group offices and service positions. And you can stop raising your hand and telling the world how many days you’ve got.
He’d been sober sixteen months. “That year,” he said. “I had a year the last day of September. I never thought I’d make that year.”
“They say it’s tough right before an anniversary.”
