Fiddlers

‘You’re clean on that one, right?’ he said.

‘Which one ain’t I clean on?’ Everado asked, and grinned, and turned for applause to one of his three henchmen lined around the room with their arms folded across their chests. They all grinned back. Hawes felt like smacking all of them across the mouth.

‘There’s an old lady who got shot twice in the face last night,’ he said. ‘Her name’s Helen Reilly.’

‘So?’ Everado said.

‘Martin Reilly was her husband.’

‘So?’

‘So the Nine-Seven gave you a rough time after Reilly was shot in a drive-by

‘That’s water under the bridge, man. We’re all grownups now.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning my sister’s married now, with two kids already. Why should I care about a crush she had on somebody from the Royals?’

‘Maybe because it was your sister who went to the cops.’

‘She knows better now.’

‘Still pisses you off, though, doesn’t it?’

Nope. For what purpose should I still be angry? Everything’s cool now, man. Why you comin aroun here, stirrin up trouble?’

‘Know anybody named Alicia Hendricks?’

‘No.’

‘Max Sobolov?’

‘No.’

‘Christine Langston?’

“Who are all these people?’

‘They wouldn’t have come up here buying dope, would they?’

‘Oh, we gonna talk dope now? This club is not involved in dope, no way, no how.’

‘I’ll check with Narcotics, you know.’

‘So check. They’re our best buddies, Narcotics,’ Everado said, and grinned at his henchmen again. They all grinned back. ‘You’re on the wrong block, mister.’

Hawes figured maybe he was.

* * * *

She was wearing for their Saturday night out a simple black dress, white hair loose around her face, black high-heeled sandals. Her only piece of jewelry was a gold ring with a red stone, on the ring finger of her right hand, echoing the color of her lipstick. Hawes wondered if she’d ever been married. Beautiful woman, fifty- something years old, hadn’t she ever been married? He also wondered fifty what?

‘So where’d you get the white streak?’ she asked.

She was drinking a Bombay martini on the rocks. He was drinking bourbon and soda. She was referring to the white streak in his otherwise red hair, just over the left temple.

‘I was investigating a burglary, talking to the vic,’ he said, making it short; he’d only been asked a hundred times before. ‘The super rushed in with a knife, mistook me for the perp, cut me. The hair grew back white.’

‘Bores you, right?’

‘Sort of. How old are you, Paula?’

‘Wow! Right between the eyes! Fifty-one. Why? How old are you?’

‘Thirty-four.’

‘Makes me old enough to be your mother. Une femme d’un certain age, right?’

‘Well, it’s something we should talk about, I guess.’

‘I debated it, you know. For about thirty seconds.’

‘Me, too.’

‘There’s enough trouble making a relationship work, we don’t need the age thing.’

‘Exactly my reasoning.’

‘I just got out of a relationship that didn’t work…”

‘Me, too.’

‘So there’s that, too.’

‘Catching each other on the rebound.’

‘Right.’

‘So what are we doing here?’

‘I guess we want to be here.’

‘I know I do.’

‘Me, too. How old was this other woman? The one that just ended?’

‘Late twenties? I never asked.’

‘Ah. But you asked me.’

‘Only because you’re so beautiful.’

‘Nice save.’

‘How old was your guy?’

‘Mid-fifties.’

‘More appropriate, right?’

‘I guess. But somehow you don’t seem inappropriate.’

‘Neither do you.’

‘So what shall we do here, Cotton?’

‘Let’s eat,’ Hawes said. ‘I’m starved, aren’t you?’

* * * *

So she ordered the roasted peppers with anchovies and mozzarella to start, and then the veal piccata as her main dish, and he ordered the bruschetta to start, and then the linguine puttanesca. He asked if she would like a white wine with her veal, but she said she really preferred red with everything, and so he ordered a bottle of their best Merlot. As the waiter uncorked it, and poured it, Paula said, ‘There’s a genuine benefit to drinking red wine, you know. Other alcoholic products weaken the immune system and leave the body vulnerable. But they say red wine fights heart disease and cancer.’

The waiter nodded in agreement, and padded off.

Hawes raised his glass.

‘What shall we drink to, Paula?’ he asked.

‘I dunno,’ she said, and looked into her glass. ‘Depends on how old the wine is, don’t you think?’

He caught her little quip, smiled, looked into his own glass, pondered a moment, and then nodded and looked across the table at her.

‘Age cannot wither her,’ he said, ‘nor custom stale her infinite variety,’ and clinked his glass against hers.

‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘But let’s make a deal, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Let’s never talk about the difference in our ages again.’

‘Never is a long, long time.’

‘I hope so,’ she said.

They clinked glasses again, drank.

‘Mmm,’ she said.

‘Delicious,’ he said.

‘How come you’re quoting Shakespeare at me?’ she asked.

‘We just had a case where the perp was fond of doing that.’

‘The perp,’ she said, and nodded. ‘I guess I’ll have to get used to cop talk, too.’

‘I guess,’ he said.

Over dessert, she told him that she’d been married for six years when her husband was called up from the