Beware the Solitary Drinker (10 page)

When I read the note again, I knew it had to do with Angelina's murder.

Chapter Six

I knew the Dublin House because Carl and I used to go there to watch Knick games back in the days of Clyde and the Pearl. You walked up a couple of stone steps and in through an old oak door. Once inside, you came upon your classic gin mill, long, straight, dark, mahogany bar, dim lights, worn plastic booths, the television and the juke box mumbling forth at the same time, both too low for anyone to hear, no one giving a shit anyway. Almost everyone up in years, if not in years at least in miles, all but one or two of them men, all hunched over pilsner glasses, the beer glowing from the lights behind the bar, glowing golden in the dimness as if lit by its own internal light.

Not only had the note not given a name, it hadn't given a time. Night on the Upper West Side meant something though, so I asked Michael to take over the bar and got to the Dublin House around eleven-thirty. I didn't know anyone at the bar, and with only a nodding acquaintance with the bartender, I had no reason to ask if anyone was looking for me. I ordered a draft beer—the Dublin House being one of the dying breed of legitimate bars that cleaned its beer lines once a week—and sat back to wait, like a boy on a blind date. On my second beer, I realized I might actually be in trouble, lured there by someone who might want to do me harm. Just as I ordered my third, Sam the Hammer appeared in the doorway.

I ordered him a light beer.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

I looked at him for a sign that he had sent me the note. There was none in his expression. He drank the beer, wiped the foam off his walrus mustache.

“You're looking for trouble,” Sam said. “Pissing off the wrong people. So I got something for you you're maybe gonna need. When I leave, you keep the bag on the floor.”

“You want another beer?”

“No,” Sam said. He left half his beer behind him and walked out.

I kept in touch with the bag by kicking it now and again. When I finished my beer, I ordered another for good measure. I wasn't any good at this shamusing, but I thought I should wait a longer time after Sam left to throw off suspicion. Suspicion of what by whom—I hadn't a clue.

The bag, which I peeked into as I walked up Broadway after a few feints to make sure no one followed me, contained a wad of newspapers wrapped around something like it might be wrapped around a fish. I peeled the newspapers back and found a gun—a nice black gun with a handle like the cowboy guns I used to play with as a kid. This gun was heavy, had a revolver kind of chamber, and a very short barrel.

When I got back to my apartment, I spent about an hour trying different hiding places for it: under my pillow, but I was afraid it would shoot accidentally and blow my head off; under the mattress, but I imagined that like the princess with the pea I could feel it through the springs; in my top bureau drawer, but anyone could find it there. All of this searching I did at a frantic pace, as if at any moment the cops would break down the door and arrest me or the gun would start going off by itself and chase me around the room.

I finally hid it behind some books in my bookcase. I looked at the bookcase, and the gun's location behind
War and Peace
, from every angle, and was positive that anyone at all could spot it from the front door, though the bookcase was clear across the room and partially blocked by a wall. But it would have to do. I went back to work.

The next afternoon, gunless, I went in search of Sam the Hammer to find out what kind of trouble he thought I was in and what I should do with the gun. In the lobby of my building, between the outside door and the inside door, I ran into Detective Sheehan and almost fainted. I had all I could do to keep from turning myself in before he even opened his mouth.

He stopped in his tracks and stared at me. “What's the matter, McNulty?” he said. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

I couldn't speak for a moment. My mind whirred. All I could think of was the gun. “I'm sick,” I said. “Something I ate.”

“Probably at Oscar's,” Sheehan said. “I made the mistake of eating there once myself.” I laughed, but he was serious. “I was looking for you.” He looked me over with more curiosity than sympathy, like a doctor might. “Are you well enough to talk?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Maybe we can go in your apartment. You can rest and talk at the same time.”

“No…” I stammered. “…I mean, I'd rather go for a walk—get some air.”

Sheehan looked at the door, looked at me. His eyes narrowed, and he became cautious. Every move he made told me I couldn't have made him more suspicious if I was carrying the god-damn gun in my hand.

“Is someone in your apartment?” Sheehan seemed to belly up to me although he hadn't moved.

“No. I just don't want to be inside right now.”

“McNulty, you're the worst liar I've ever come across. If I didn't know where my wife was, I'd break down your door.”

“I don't know your wife.”

“Keep it that way. Let's walk.” He assumed his tough guy policeman attitude, speaking harshly now, more out of the side of his mouth than before.

We walked out of my apartment and west along 110th Street toward the hill that led down to Riverside Drive. As always, I looked for the rats as we climbed down the hill, but the day being gloomy they must have chosen to stay inside. We crossed Riverside Drive and sat down on one of the benches in the tiny playground at 108th Street.

“I understand you're playing amateur detective,” Sheehan growled louder than he needed to for me to hear him, his shoulders back and his chest puffed out to let me know he was ready for a fight if one came along. “You and the murdered girl's sister.”

“I'm a bartender.”

He picked a stick up off the ground and played with it. “She called to tell us Danny Stone didn't kill her sister. She said you knew who did.”

“She talks a lot doesn't she?” I said. If Janet had been there, I would have pushed her into the sandbox.

“Who?” Sheehan asked, his tone loud and harsh enough to make me lean back away from him.

“I don't know.”

“I'm tired of fucking around with you, McNulty.” Sheehan poked the ground with his stick until it snapped; then, his cold blue eyes bored into mine. “You're not as smart as you think you are. I know this neighborhood. I know a lot more than you do. I'm also a lot tougher than you, and lots of the people you deal with are a lot tougher than you and nastier than you think they are.”

“Look, man,” I said. “I'm tired of all this, too. I don't know what she told you. All I have is suspicions…they don't mean anything. I just thought Danny didn't do it. I don't know who did. It could have been half the people I know.”

“Stick to pouring drinks.” Sheehan's tone was still tough, but the tension was gone from his face and, with the way his eyes wrinkled in the corners, he looked almost friendly. “You dig and you dig. Pretty soon you turn up something. Then you'll know too much.”

I looked as levelly as I could into his eyes, finding something there, I guess, because I crossed up my instincts. “A neighborhood guy named Ozzie was waiting in the lobby of Angelina's building late the night she was killed.”

Sheehan nodded.

***

That night at work was slow even for a Sunday, but I was jumping around the place like it was four deep at the bar. To calm my nerves, I played cribbage with Carl, who sipped beers while he waited for Sam to show. I didn't tell Carl about Sam and the gun. I felt like Shirley MacLaine in that movie where she keeps trying to hide the stiff, Harry.

Carl carefully poured some beer from his bottle of Beck's into his glass, holding the bottle in one hand and the glass, slightly tilted, in the other. In spite of his portliness, he was precise in his movements, almost dainty, and his beer pouring was a carefully performed ritual that he savored almost as much as the beer. This night, he was particularly deliberate. I sensed that, taking note of my jitteriness, he tried to be a calming influence. “What have you been doing about tracking down murderers?”

“Trying to forget about it.”

“You know, for Sherlock Holmes it was the only thing worth doing. The rest of the time he spent getting high because he was so jaded by life.”

“That's one approach, all right,” I said, watching Carl turn another corner with his cribbage board peg. “—staying fucked up all the time.”

“Like Ozzie.” Carl took a long swallow of his beer.

He'd put his finger on something I'd known without knowing. I hadn't seen Ozzie since we'd made him a suspect, but for the week or so since Angelina's murder, he'd been drunk morning, noon, and night. Now, it was a tip-off; then, it hadn't meant much. The winos had their ups and downs. One week, they'd be perched at the bar drinking ginger ale. Another week, I'd have to peel them off the floor every night. Normality was drinking every night, but steady enough to walk home and coherent enough to say goodnight. Ozzie hadn't been either of these for a week. He was already so drunk he couldn't talk when he came in. I'd give him a dropper full of Jack Daniels in each drink, charging him for every third one. But he wouldn't notice. St. Brian of the drunks, that's me.

Now, a more sinister light shone on poor old Ozzie.

“You and Nigel took Ozzie home from the Terrace the night after Angelina was killed,” I reminded Carl.

“Did I?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Did he say anything suspicious?”

Carl thought this over. He didn't really remember taking him home that particular night; nor did he remember anything strange about Ozzie or anything Ozzie said on any night he might have taken him home.

“That's great,” I said.

“You're the detective. I'm a doorman.”

“And a poet. Poets are supposed to notice things.”

Carl swallowed a couple of times, puffing himself up in his irritation: a Captain Haddock mood was coming on. “In preparation for my ‘Ode to a Drunk Walking Home,' I presume?”

Nigel showed up about then—sober among the late night wasted. It was, I admit, cheering to see him. He made me feel almost normal.

At breakfast at the Greek's, I asked him the same question I'd asked Carl about Ozzie. He didn't remember either.

“Try to remember, damn it,” I said. “Ozzie saw ghosts that night. He's been drunk for a solid week since then.”

“He was drunk long before that,” Nigel pointed out, his expression superior, his tone disapproving. “He just babbled that night like he does every night. I don't remember what he said. He's unintelligible.”

My seriousness, accented by my tiredness and the hopelessness I usually felt when I was sober at the end of a shift at Oscar's, rubbed off on Nigel. Night and tiredness seemed to be catching up with him, too. I watched his energy and enthusiasm wither.

“He's pathetic,” Nigel said. “Falling apart.…Killing himself.”

“He may have been with Angelina the night she was killed. Danny saw him in the lobby of her building that night.”

Nigel jerked forward like he'd been kicked in the ass. “Why would he be with her?”

“They'd had an affair.”

“You're crazy!” Nigel shouted. “Not Ozzie…she couldn't have.” He was so flabbergasted he was spitting. I knew how he felt.

“Angelina,” I reminded him, “was not the most discriminating young lady.”

Nigel didn't say anything. Since he didn't drink coffee or eat meat, he was sitting across from me in this upper Manhattan all-night greasy spoon sadly eating from a tiny bowl of rice pudding.

“What did you see the night Angelina was killed?” I prodded him. “Where were you? Did you see Angelina? Did you see Ozzie?”

Nigel stopped playing with his rice pudding. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, then looked at me. His eyes looked weird and I wanted him to put the glasses back on. “Ironically, the night Angelina was killed, I was in Connecticut visiting my father for the first time in more than ten years.”

Some people talked easily about their pasts, but Nigel wasn't one of them. His reluctance bothered me, so I labored over finding out, asking question after question, grilling him, while attempting to seem casual, drinking cup after cup of the Greek's wired mud. Nigel didn't sleep at night; we'd done this many nights before. But then it had been stories about being a roadie, about the rock and roll bands and traveling around the country. Now, when I tried to take him back home, he balked. I did get out of him that his father was a corporate executive with an office in the city and that Nigel had grown up on a large estate in Stamford, Connecticut.

“I'm sure this disappoints you,” Nigel said. “You've been befriending a capitalist.”

He had me. I was shocked. My own peculiar reaction was to feel sorry for him. I'd feel awful if I woke up and found myself rich. I couldn't handle the responsibility—or the guilt. But I tried not to hold it against him. Nigel seemed to have repudiated his past.

“You're fortunate. Your son worships you. He'll even hang around your seedy bar just to be with you. Whatever it is that you are, he's proud of you. The only time my father ever thought about me was when he feared I would ruin the family name.”

Talk about Kevin always brought me down off my high horse. Knowing how little I deserved his hero worship made me as humble as a saint. Kevin got along well with everyone on his nights in the city when he sneaked out of my apartment to come down to Oscar's and hang out, but he liked Eric and Nigel best, Nigel in all likelihood because he was the only one besides Kevin who was sober that time of night.

“Have you rejected riches in favor of poverty?”

“Almost,” Nigel said ruefully. “Being rich isn't what you think. But I doubt I could persuade you of that.”

“Probably not.”

“You're a Marxist. You should know the rich are as much pawns of the system as the poor. The employers as much pawns as their employees.”