'But I did. I told Burke to put on a pot of strong coffee, I was that sure you'd be by to drink it. Then I sent him home an hour ago, I sent them all home and sat down to wait for you. Will it be coffee then? Or will you have Coca-Cola, or soda water?'
'Coffee's fine. I'll get it.'
'You will not. Sit down.' A smile played lightly on his thin lips. 'Ah, Jesus,' he said. 'I'm glad you're here.'
Chapter 13
We sat at a table off to the side. I had a mug of strong black coffee and he had a bottle of the twelve-year-old Irish that is his regular drink. The bottle had a cork stopper, a rarity these days; stripped of its label it would make a pretty decent decanter. Mick was drinking his whiskey out of a small cut-glass tumbler that may have been Waterford. Whatever it was it stood a cut above the regular bar glassware, and like the whiskey it was reserved for his private use.
'I was here the night before last,' I said.
'Burke told me you came by.'
'I watched an old movie and waited for you. Little Caesar, Edward G. Robinson. 'Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?' '
'You'd have had a long wait,' he said. 'I worked that night.' He picked up his glass and held it to catch the light. 'Tell me something, man. Do you always need money?'
'I can't go very far without it. I have to spend it and that means I have to earn it.'
'But are you scratching for it all the fucking time?'
I had to think about it. 'No,' I said at length. 'Not really. I don't earn a lot, but I don't seem to need much. My rent's cheap, I don't have a car, I don't carry any insurance, and I've got no one to support except myself. I couldn't last long without working, but some work always seems to come along before the money runs out.'
'I always need money,' he said. 'And I go out and get it, and I turn around and it's gone. I don't know where it goes.'
'That's what everyone says.'
'I swear it melts away like snow in the sun. Of course you know Andy Buckley.'
'The best dart player I ever saw.'
'He's a fair hand. A good lad, too.'
'I like Andy.'
'You'd have to like him. Did you know he still lives at home with his mother? God bless the Irish, what a strange fucking race of men we are.' He drank. 'Andy doesn't make a living throwing darts in a board, you know.'
'I thought he might do more than that.'
'Sometimes he'll do something for me. He's a grand driver, Andy is. He can drive anything. A car, a truck, anything you could ask him to drive. He could likely fly a plane if you gave him the keys.' The smile was there for an instant. 'Or if you didn't. If you misplaced the keys and needed someone to drive without them, Andy's your man.'
'I see.'
'So he went off to drive a truck for me. The truck was full of men's suits. Botany 500, a good line of clothing. The driver knew what he was supposed to do. Just let himself be tied up and take his time working himself loose and then tell how a couple of niggers jumped him. He was getting well paid for his troubles, you can be sure of that.'
'What happened?'
'Ah, 'twas the wrong driver,' he said, disgusted. 'Your man woke up with a bad head and called in sick, entirely forgetting he was to be hijacked that day, and Andy went to tie up the wrong man and had to knock him on the head to get the job done. And of course the fellow got loose as quick as he could, and of course he called the police at once and they spotted the truck and followed it. By the grace of God Andy saw he was being followed and so he didn't drive to the warehouse, or there would have been more men than himself arrested. He parked the truck on the street and tried to walk away from it, hoping they'd wait for him to come back to it, but they outguessed him and took him right down, and the fucking driver came down and picked him out of a lineup.'
'Where's Andy now?'
'Home in bed, I shouldn't doubt. He was in earlier and said he had a touch of the flu.'
'I think that's what Elaine's got.'
'Has she? It's a nasty thing. I sent him home. Get in bed with a hot whiskey, I told him, and ye'll be a new man in the morning.'
'He's out on bail?'
'My bondsman had him out in an hour, but now he's been released altogether. Do you know a lawyer named Mark Rosenstein? A very soft-spoken Jewish lad, I'm forever asking him to speak up. Don't ask how much money I handed him.'
'I won't.'
'I'll tell you anyway. Fifty thousand dollars. I don't know where it all went, I just put it into his hands and left it to him. Some went to the driver, and your man changed his story and swore it wasn't Andy at all, it was someone else entirely, someone taller and thinner and darker and with a Russian accent, I shouldn't wonder. Oh, he's very good, Rosenstein is. He'd make no impression in court, you could never hear what he was saying, but you do better if you stay out of court entirely, wouldn't you say?' He freshened his drink. 'I wonder how much of the money stayed with the little Jew. What would you guess? Half?'
'That sounds about right.'
'Ah, well. He earned it, didn't he? You can't let your men rot in prison cells.' He sighed. 'But when you spend money like that you have to go out and get more.'
'You mean they wouldn't let Andy keep the suits?' I went on to tell him Joe Durkin's story of Maurice, the dope dealer who'd demanded the return of his confiscated cocaine. Mick put his head back and laughed.
'Ah, that's grand,' he said. 'I ought to tell that one to Rosenstein. 'If you were any good at all,' I'll tell him, 'ye'd have arranged it so that we got to keep the suits.' ' He shook his head. 'The fucking dope dealers,' he said. 'Did you ever try any of that shit yourself, Matt? Cocaine, I mean.'
'Never.'
'I tried it once.'
'You didn't like it?'
He looked at me. 'The hell I didn't,' he said. 'By God it was lovely! I was with a girl and she wouldn't rest until I tried some. And then she got no rest at all, let me tell you. I never felt so fine in my life. I knew I was the grandest fellow that ever lived and I could take charge of the world and solve all its problems. But before I did that it might be nice to have a little more of the cocaine, don't you know. And the next thing you knew it was the middle of the afternoon, and the cocaine was all gone, and the girl and I had fucked our silly brains out, and she was rubbing up against me like a cat and telling me she knew where to get more.
' 'Get your clothes on,' I told her, 'and buy yourself some more cocaine if you want it, but don't bring it back here because I never want to see it again, or you either.' She didn't know what was wrong but she knew not to stay around to find out. And she took the money. They always take the money.'
I thought of Durkin and the hundred dollars I'd given him. 'I shouldn't take this from you,' he'd said. But he hadn't given it back.
'I never touched cocaine again,' Mick said. 'And do you know why? Because it was too fucking good. I don't ever want to feel that good again.' He brandished the bottle. 'This lets me feel as good as I need to feel. Anything more than that is unnatural. It's worse than that, it's fucking dangerous. I hate the stuff. I hate the rich bastards with their jade snuff bottles and gold spoons and silver straws. I hate the ones who smoke it on the streetcorners. My God, what it's doing to the city. There was a cop on television tonight saying you should lock your doors when you're riding in a taxi. Because when your cab stops for a light they'll come in after you and rob you. Can you imagine?'
