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I must have told him how Id found myself standing in front of Armstrongs, because he talked some about the owner of the Falling Rock, and whod killed him and why. We talked about other neighborhood homicides over the years, most of them old cases, with the killers themselves long since gone to the same hell or heaven as their victims. Mick remembered a whole string of men killed for no real reason at all, because someone was drunk and took a remark the wrong way.
"I wonder," he said, "if your mans grown to like the work. "
"My man?"
"Himself, thats killing men and writing letters to the newspaper about it. The Peoples Will, and do you suppose Williams his true name?"
"No idea. "
"That might add to the fun," he said, "or not, as the case may be. Hes full of himself, isnt he? Killing and claiming credit like a fucking terrorist. "
"Its like that," I said. "Like terrorism. "
"They all start with a cause," he said, "and its noble or its not, and along the way it fades and grows dim. For they fall in love with what theyre doing, and why theyre after doing it scarcely matters. " He looked off into the distance. "Its a terrible thing," he said, "when a man develops a taste for killing. "
"You have a taste for it. "
"I have found joy in it," he allowed. "Its like drink, you know. It stirs the blood and quickens the heart. Before you know it youre dancing. "
"Thats an interesting way to put it. "
"I have schooled myself," he said deliberately, "not to take life without good reason. "
"Will has his reasons. "
"He had them at the start. By now he may be caught up in the dance. "
"He says hes through. "
"Does he. "
"You dont believe him?"
He thought about it. "I cant say," he said at length, "for not knowing him, or what drives him. "
"Maybe hes worked his way to the end of his list. "
"Or hes tired of the game. The work takes its toll. But if hes got a taste for it…"
"He may not be able to quit. "
"Ah," he said. "Well see, wont we?"
* * *
I spent the rest of the week and most of the next one just getting through the days and enjoying the fall season. One offer of work came in, a negligence lawyer who needed someone to chase down witnesses to an accident, but I passed on it, pleading a heavy caseload. I didnt have a heavy caseload, I didnt have any kind of a caseload at all, and for the time being I wanted to keep it that way.
I read the paper every morning and went to a noon meeting every day, and an evening meeting too, more often than not. My attendance at AA wanes and waxes with the tides in my life. I go less often when Im busier with other things, and seem to add meetings automatically in response to the prompting of stress, which I may or may not consciously feel.
Something evidently had me wanting to go to more meetings, and I didnt argue with it. The thought did come to me that Id been sober for too many years to need so many meetings, and I told the thought to go to hell. The fucking disease almost killed me, and the last thing I ever want to do is give it another chance.
When I wasnt at a meeting I was walking around town, or at a concert or a museum with Elaine, or sitting in the park or in a coffee shop with TJ. I spent a certain amount of time thinking about Will and the people hed killed, but there was nothing in the news to add fresh fuel to that particular fire, so it burned less brightly with every passing day. The tabloids did what they could to keep the story prominent, but there was only so much they could do, and yet another indiscretion in the British royal family helped nudge Will off the front page.
One afternoon I went into a church. Years ago, when I turned in my shield and left my wife and kids, I found myself dropping into churches all the time, though almost never when there was a service going on. I guess I found some measure of peace there. If nothing else I found silence, often an elusive commodity in New York. I got in the habit of lighting candles for people whod died, and once you start that youre stuck, because its a growth industry. People keep dying.
I got in another habit, too. I began tithing, giving a tenth of whatever money came my way to whatever poor box I saw next. I was ecumenical about it, but the Catholics got most of my trade because they worked longer hours. Their churches were more apt to be open when I was looking for a beneficiary for my largesse.
Ive thought about it, and I cant say for sure what the tithing was all about. During those years I didnt keep records or pay taxes, or even file a return, so its possible I thought of my tithe as a voluntary tax. It couldnt have amounted to very much, anyway, because I went long stretches without working, and when I worked I never made a great deal of money. My rent always got paid on time and my tab at Armstrongs got settled sooner or later, and when I could manage it I sent money to Anita and the boys. But the sums involved were small, and you wouldnt see any priests riding around in Lincolns on ten percent of my gross.
When I got sober I began spending my time not in the sanctuaries of churches but in their basements, where my contribution when they passed the basket was limited by tradition to a dollar. I rarely lit a candle, and I stopped tithing altogether, though I could no more tell you why than I could explain having begun the practice in the first place.
"You cleared up a little," my sponsor suggested, "and you realized you had more use for the money than the church did. "
I dont know that thats it. For a while I gave away a lot of money on the street, hi essence tithing to the homeless population of New York. (Maybe I was just cutting out the middleman, making a collective poor box of all those empty coffee cups and outstretched hands. ) That habit, too, ran its course, perhaps because I was daunted by the ever-increasing profusion of cups and hands. Compassion fatigue set in. Unable to stuff a dollar bill into every beseeching cup or hand, I stopped it altogether; like most of my fellow New Yorkers, I got so I didnt even notice them anymore.
Things change. Sober, I found I had to do many of the chickenshit things that everybody else has to do. I had to keep records, had to pay taxes. For years I charged clients arbitrary flat fees and saved myself the aggravation of itemizing my expenses, but you cant work that way for attorneys, and now that I have a PI license much of my work comes from attorneys. I still work the old way for clients who are as casual as I am, but more often than not I save receipts and keep track of my expenses, just like everybody else.
And Elaine and I give away a tenth of our income. Mine comes from detective work, of course, and hers is primarily from her real estate investments, although her shop is beginning to turn a small profit. She keeps the books-thank God-and writes the checks, and our few dollars find their way to the dozen or so charities and cultural institutions on our list. It is, to be sure, a more regimented way of doing things. I feel more like a solid citizen and less like a free spirit, and I do not always prefer it this way. But neither do I spend much time chafing at the collar.
The church I went into on this occasion was on a side street in the west forties. I didnt notice the name of it, and couldnt tell you if Id ever dropped in there before.
I was lucky to find it open. While my own use of churches has diminished in recent years, so too has their accessibility. It seems to me that the Catholic churches, at least, used to be open the whole day long, from early in the morning until well into the evening. Now their sanctuaries are often locked up between services. I suppose thats a response to crime or homelessness or both. I suppose an unlocked church is an invitation, not only to the occasional citizen looking for a moments peace, but to all of those whod curl up and nap in the pews or steal the candlesticks from the altar.
This church was open and seemingly unattended, and it was a throwback in another way as well. The candles at the little side altars were real ones, actual wax candles that burned with an open flame. Lots of churches have switched over to electrified altars. You drop your quarter in the slot and a flame-shaped bulb
goes on and stays on for your quarters worth of time. Its like a parking meter, and if you stay too long they tow away your soul.
Its not my church, so I cant see that Ive got any rights in the matter, but when did that sort of logic ever keep an alcoholic from nursing a resentment? Im sure the electric candles are cost-efficient, and I dont imagine theyre any harder for God to overlook than the real thing. And maybe Im just a spiritual Luddite, hating change for its own sake, resisting an improvement in the candle-lighting dodge even as I resisted TJs arguments for a computer. If Id been alive at the time, I probably would have been every bit as pissed off when they switched from oil lamps to candles. "Nothings the same anymore," youd have heard me grumbling. "What kind of results can you expect from melting wax?"
* * *
I wouldnt have wasted a quarter on an electric flame. But this church had the real thing, with three or four little candles lit. I looked at them, and my mind summoned up an image of Adrian Whitfield. I couldnt think what good it could do him to burn a candle on his behalf, but I found myself recalling Elaines words. What could it hoit? So I slipped a dollar bill in the slot, lit one candle from the flame of another, and let myself think about the man.
I got a funny montage of images.
First I was seeing Adrian Whitfield at his apartment a few hours after hed learned about Wills letter. He was pouring a drink even as he proclaimed himself a nondrinker, then explaining, talking about the drinks hed had already that day.
Then I saw him sprawled on the carpet with Kevin Dahlgren hunkered down beside him, picking up the glass hed dropped, sniffing at it. I hadnt been there to see it, had only heard Dahlgrens account of the moment, but the image came to me as clearly as if Id witnessed it myself. I could even smell what Dahlgren had smelled, the odor of bitter almonds superimposed upon the aroma of good malt whiskey. Id never smelled that combination in my life, but my imagination was inventive enough to furnish it quite vividly.
The next flash I got was of Marty McGraw. He was sitting in the topless joint where Id met him, a shot glass clutched in one hand, a beer glass in the other. There was a belligerent expression on his face, and he was saying something but I couldnt make it out. The reek of cheap whiskey trailed up at me from the shot glass, the reek of stale beer from the other, and the two were united on his breath.
Adrian again, talking into a telephone. "Im going to let the genie out," he said. "First one today. "
Mick Ballou at Grogans, on our most recent night together. It was what he thought of as a sober night, in that he was passing up the whiskey and staying with beer. The beer in this instance was Guinness, and I could see his big fist wrapped around a pint of the black stuff. The smell of it came to me, dark and rich and grainy.
I got all of this in a rush, one image after another, and each overlaid heavily with scents, singly or in combination. Smell, they say, is the oldest and most primal sense, the sure trigger for memory. It bypasses the thought process and goes straight to the most primitive part of the brain. It doesnt pass Go, it doesnt collect its thoughts.
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