private, and you’re looking into his death, and you’re sitting there drinking club soda. I can’t help connecting the dots.”
“You’re not a bad investigator yourself.”
“Well, two plus two, you know? He owes me an apology, he wants to make amends. He used to be an alcoholic, but he’s not drinking anymore, and part of staying sober is what he’s doing now. There was an expression he used, something about cleaning up the mess he made—”
“The wreckage of the past.”
“That’s it.” He drank some beer. “The hell, I know a little about addiction. Fucking blow took me down big-time. And right about this time I place the guy. If I ever knew his last name I long since forgot it, but I’m listening to him and he’s talking about a coke deal, how he beat me for a couple of grand, and of course, Jesus, he’s High-Low Jack.”
“That’s what you used to call him?”
“Well, I don’t know that I ever called him that. I called him Jack. Or man, we all called each other man all the time.
“High-Low Jack.”
“Right. And I remembered the deal. Not the numbers, whether it was two grand or five or whatever it was, but I was making this quantity buy and I was no rube, I checked it out first, laid out a line and had a taste, and it was very good and righteous coke.”
“And you got it home and it wasn’t.”
“It magically turned into baby laxative,” he said, “somewhere between Googie’s men’s room and my apartment. Not the first time I got burned, and not the last, either. I was mad as hell, believe it, but at the same time I had to admire how slick he’d been. And now here he is, parked in my lobby, perched on the edge of this sectional sofa, asking if I remember the amount because he wants to make arrangements to pay me back. Just so much a month, but for as long as it takes to make it right.”
I hadn’t seen him signal the waiter, who appeared magically with another Dos Equis. I had barely touched my soda.
He said, “Cheers,” and took a sip. “You can probably guess what I told him. I said he didn’t owe me a thing. Whatever he beat me out of would have gone straight up my nose. And the money wasn’t mine in the first place. It was my firm’s, and it was a drop in the bucket I siphoned out of that place. I had to make restitution, and I did, but you never pay back everything you took, because they didn’t know just how bad I hurt them and neither did I. Whatever my debt was, they’d marked it paid in full, and that’s how I felt about whatever Jack thought he owed me.”
“And that’s what you told him.”
“Yes, and I had to spell it out, because he didn’t want to get off the hook that easily. What I didn’t say, but I have to admit it was going through my mind, was what did I want with a guy in a thrift-shop overcoat showing up once a week to slip me a ten-dollar bill? Makes you feel better, I said, find a charity you like and give them a few bucks. But as far as you and I are concerned, I said, we’re square.”
“And he accepted that.”
“Finally. He said he guessed he could cross me off his list. I guess I wasn’t the only person he burned.”
“One way or another,” I said, “there were quite a few people he felt he needed to make amends to.”
“And everybody in your crowd goes through something like that?” He didn’t wait for an answer, brandished his stein of beer. “Might find out for myself,” he said. “One of these days.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Except I pretty much stick to beer these days. Cocaine was my problem, you know. I got one noseful of blow, and nothing was ever gonna be the same. But I stopped, and I never had a taste since. And I got to tell you it’s all over the place. There’s a guy at the bar, I’m not gonna point him out, but all I’d have to do is tip him a wink and go to the can, and he’d follow me there and sell me whatever I want. And he’s here all the time, and wherever you go there’s somebody just like him.
“So these days just about the only thing I allow myself from south of the border is this here, and maybe a small glass of brandy after a big meal. Can’t turn into an alcoholic that way, can you?”
“It’s not what you drink,” I said, as I’d heard others say. “It’s what it does to you.”
“That the party line on the subject? Well, who knows where I’ll end up. But that doesn’t mean I’m asking you to save me a seat.”
XVII
FRANCIS PAUL DUKACS was easy to find, once I had that name to work with. By then I’d called every Dukes in the Manhattan book, and every Duke, too; there weren’t all that many of either, and it seemed reasonable that one of them might be related to Frankie Dukes, or at least know of him. But plural or singular, nobody could help me out.
Then I got home from St. Paul’s one night and there was a message to call Mr. Bell. I dialed the number on the slip and they answered at the Top Knot and called Danny Boy to the phone. “You could stop by,” he said, “and I was going to suggest that, but it’s easier to pass this on over the phone. Unless you feel the need to compare the Top Knot’s Coca-Cola with Poogan’s, in which case I’d welcome your company.”
I told him I was just about ready to call it a night.
“Then write this down, Matthew. Francis Paul Doo-kosh, except that’s not how it’s spelled.” He spelled it out for me. “It’s Hungarian, I think, or maybe Czech. One of those countries that get in the papers whenever the Russians send in their tanks.”
“Frankie Dukes.”
“The man himself. And that is all I know about him, though I could probably find out more. But that may be all
