Out on the Cutting Edge

I went on for another minute or two, saying what came to mind. Then someone else got called on and talked about how her building was going co-op and she didn't see how she could afford to buy her apartment.

After the prayer, after the chairs were folded and stacked, I asked Jan if she felt like coffee. "Some of us go to the place around the corner," she said. "Do you want to come along?"

"I thought just the two of us."

"I don't know if that's a good idea."

I told her I'd walk her to where she was going and we could talk on the way. Once we were outside and had fallen into step together, I couldn't think what it was I had wanted to say, and so we walked a little ways in silence.

I've missed you, I said a couple of times in my mind. Finally I said it aloud.

"Have you? Sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I think of the two of us and I feel sad."

"Yes."

"Have you been getting out?"

"I couldn't get interested. Until the past week or so."

"And?"

"I fell into something. Without looking for it, which I guess is the way it happens."

"She's not in the program."

"Not hardly."

"Does that mean she ought to be?"

"I don't know who ought to be anymore. It doesn't matter, the whole thing's not going anywhere."

After a moment she said, "I think I'd be afraid to spend a lot of time with someone who was drinking."

"That's probably a healthy fear."

"Do you know about Tom?" We went back and forth for a moment, with her trying to describe a long-term member of downtown AA and me unable to place him. "Anyway," she said, "he was sober for twenty-two years, kept up on his meetings, sponsored a lot of people, everything. And he was in Paris for three weeks over the summer, and he was walking down the street, and he fell into a conversation with this pretty French girl, and she said, 'Would you like to have a glass of wine?' "

"And he said?"

"And he said, 'Why not?' "

"Just like that."

"Just like that, after twenty-two years and God knows how many thousands of meetings. 'Why not?' "

"Did he make it back?"

"He can't seem to. He's sober for two days, three days, and then he goes out and drinks. He looks terrible. His drunks don't last long because he can't stay out, he winds up in a hospital after a couple of days. But he can't stay sober, and when he shows up at a meeting I can't bear to look at him. I think he's probably going to die."

"The cutting edge," I said.

"How's that?"

"Just something somebody said."

We turned the corner, reached the coffee shop where she was to meet her friends. She said, "Don't you want to join us for a cup of coffee?" I said I didn't think so, and she didn't try to talk me into it.

I said, "I wish-"

"I know," she said. She reached out a hand and held mine for a moment. "Eventually," she said, "I think we'll probably be able to feel easier with each other. Now's too soon."

"Evidently."

"It's too sad," she said. "It hurts too much."

She turned from me, headed for the coffee shop. I stood there until she was through the door. Then I started walking, not paying much attention to where I was going. Not much caring.

Once I'd walked out from under my mood I found a pay phone and tried Gary's number. No one answered. I caught a subway uptown and walked over to Paris Green and found him behind the bar. The bar was empty but there were several tables of people who'd come for a late brunch. I watched as he made up a tray of Bloody Marys, then filled a pair of tulip-shaped glasses half with orange juice and half with champagne.

"The mimosa," he said to me. "Reverse synergy, the whole less than the sum of its parts. Drink orange juice or drink champagne, I say, but not the two at once out of the same glass." He proffered a rag and made a show of wiping the bar in front of me. "And what may I get you?"

"Is there coffee?"

He called to a waiter, ordered a cup of coffee for the bar. Leaning toward me, he said, "Bryce said you were looking for me."

"Last night. And I called you at home a couple of times since then."

"Ah," he said. "Never made it home last night, I'm afraid. Thank God there are still ladies left in the world who find a poor barkeep a creature of romance and intrigue." He grinned richly behind his beard. "If you'd reached me, what would you have said?"

I told him what I had in mind. He listened, nodded. "Sure," he said. "I could do that. Thing is, I'm on until eight tonight. It's slow enough right now but there's nobody around who could cover for me. Unless-"

"Unless what?"

"How accomplished a bartender are you?"

"No," I said. "I'll come by for you around eight."

I went back to my hotel and tried to watch the end of a football game but I couldn't sit still. I got out of there and walked around. At some point I realized I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and I made myself stop for a slice of pizza. I put a lot of the crushed red pepper on it, hoping it would stir me up a little.

A few minutes before eight I went back to Paris Green and drank a Coke while Gary evened out his cash and checks and turned it all over to his relief. We walked out together and he asked me the name of the place again. I told him, and he said he'd never noticed it. "But I'm not on Tenth Avenue much," he said. "Grogan's Open House? It sounds like your basic Irish saloon."

"It pretty much is."

We went over what I wanted him to do, and then I waited across the street while he ambled over to Grogan's front entrance and walked in. I stood in a doorway and waited. The minutes crawled, and I was starting to worry that something had unaccountably gone wrong, that I'd pushed him into a dangerous situation. I was trying to decide whether I'd make things worse by going in myself. I was still mulling it over when the door swung open and he emerged. He had his hands in his pockets and he sauntered along, looking almost too carefree to be true.

I matched his pace for half a block, then crossed over to his side of the street. He said, "Do I know you? What's the password?"

"Recognize anybody?"

"Oh, no question," he said. "I wasn't that certain I'd know him again, but I took one look and knew him right off. And he knew me."

"What did he say?"

"Didn't say much of anything, just stood in front of me waiting for me to order. I didn't let on that I knew him."

"Good."

"But, see, he didn't let on that he knew me, either, but I could see he did. The way he sent little glances my way. Ha! Guilty knowledge, isn't that what they call it?"

"That's what they call it."

"It's not a bad little store. I like the tile floor and all the dark wood. I had a bottle of Harp, and then I took a second bottle and watched two fellows shooting darts. One of them, I'm sure he must have spent a past life as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I kept thinking he was going to fall on the floor, but he never did."

"I know who you mean."

"He was drinking Guinness. That's a shade too primal a flavor for my tastebuds to come to terms with. I suppose you could mix it with orange juice." He shuddered. "I wonder what it's like to work in a place like that, where the closest you get to a mixed drink is scotch and water or the odd vodka tonic. You could live your whole life and never hear anyone order a mimosa. Or a Harvey Wallbanger. Or a hickory dickory daiquiri."

"What the hell is that?"

"You don't want to know." He shuddered again. I asked him if he'd recognized anyone else in the room. "No," he said. "Only the bartender."

"And he was the one you saw with Paula."

"The very lad himself, as the boyos in Grogan's might put it." He mused again on the delights of working in a simple, honest bar, unadorned with potted ferns or earnest yuppies. "Of course," he reminded himself, "the tips are pretty awful."

And that reminded me. I'd set aside a bill earlier, and now I dug it out and slipped it to him.

I couldn't get him to take it. "You brought a little excitement into my life," he said. "What did it cost me, ten minutes and the price of two beers? Someday we'll sit down and you can tell me how the whole thing turns out, and I'll even let you buy the beers that night. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough. But they don't always turn out. Sometimes they just trail off."

"I'll take my chances," he said.

I killed fifteen minutes, then went back to Grogan's myself. I didn't see Mickey Ballou in the room. Andy Buckley was in the back at the dart board, and Neil was behind the bar. He was dressed as he'd been Friday night, with the leather vest over the red buffalo-plaid shirt.

I stood at the bar and ordered a glass of plain soda water. When he brought it I asked if Ballou had been around. "He looked in earlier," he said. "He might be back later on. You want me to tell him you were looking for him?"

I said it wasn't important.

He moved off to the far end of the bar. I took a sip or two of my soda water and glanced his way from time to time. Guilty knowledge, Gary had called it, and that was what it felt like. It was hard to be sure of his voice, my caller the other morning had spoken in a hoarse half-whisper, but I had to figure it was him.

I didn't know how much more I could find out. Or what I could possibly do with whatever I learned.

I must have stood there for half an hour, and he spent all that time down at the other end of the bar. When I left, my glass of soda wasn't down more than half an inch from the top. He'd forgotten to charge me for it, and I didn't bother to leave him a tip.

The manager at the Druid's Castle said, "Oh, sure, Neil. Neil Tillman, sure. What about him?"

"He used to work here?"

"For around six months, something like that. He left sometime in the spring."

"So he would have been here the same time Paula was here."

"I think so, but I couldn't say for certain without looking it up. And the book's in the owner's office, and that's locked up right now."

"Why did he leave?"

His hesitation was brief. "People come and go," he said. "Our turnover rate would amaze you."

"Why did you let him go?"

"I didn't say we did."

"But you did, didn't you?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "I'd rather not say."

"What was his problem? Was he dealing out of the restaurant? Stealing too much of what came in over the bar?"

"I really don't feel right talking about it. If you come back tomorrow during the day, you can probably learn what you want to know from the owner. But-"

"He's a possible suspect," I said, "in a possible homicide."

"She's dead?"

"It's beginning to look that way."

He frowned. "I really shouldn't say anything."

"You're not talking for the record. It'll just be for my own information."

"Credit cards," he said. "There was no hard evidence, that's why I didn't want to say anything. But it looked as though he was running duplicate slips with customers' cards. I don't know just what he was doing or how he was doing it, but there was something shady going on."