Out on the Cutting Edge

by Lawrence Block

Page 10

 

  "I got a sponsor when I was about two days out of detox. I got his number next to my phone. The phone doesnt work and Ive never called him anyway. We go to different meetings, so I never see him, either. "

  "Whats his name?"

  "Dave. I dont know his last name, and I have to say Im beginning to forget what he looks like, its so long since I saw him. But Ive never yet thrown his number away, so I guess hes still my sponsor. I mean, I could call him if I had to, right?"

  "Sure. "

  "I could even take the step with him. "

  "If you felt comfortable with him. "

  "I dont even know him. Do you have anybody that you sponsor, Matt?"

  "No. "

  "You ever hear anybodys fifth step?"

  "No. "

  There was a bottle cap on the sidewalk and he kicked at it. "Because I guess thats what Im leading up to. I cant believe it, a crook looking to confess to a cop. Of course youre not with the department no more, but would you still, you know, be bound to report anything I said?"

  "No. I wouldnt have the legal right to withhold information, the way a priest or a lawyer might, but thats how Id treat it. As privileged information. "

  "Would you be willing? Itd be a whole load of shit once I got started, you might not want to sit through it. "

  "Ill force myself. "

  "I feel funny asking. "

  "I know. I felt the same way. "

  "If it was just me involved," he began, then broke off the sentence. He said, "What I want to do, I want to take a couple of days, sort things out in my mind, think some things through. Then if youre still willing we can get together and I can talk some. If thats all right with you. "

  "Theres no hurry," I told him. "Wait until youre ready. "

  He shook his head. "If I wait till Im ready Ill never do it. Gimme the weekend to sort it out and then well sit down and do it. "

  "Sorting it out is part of it. Take all the time you need. "

  "I been doing that," he said. He grinned, put a hand on my shoulder. "Thanks, Matt. Thats my block coming up and I think Ill say good night. "

  " Night, Eddie. "

  "Have a good weekend. "

  "You too. Maybe Ill run into you at a meeting. "

  " St. Paul s is just Monday through Friday, right? Ill probably get there Monday night, anyway. Matt? Thanks again. "

  He headed for his building. I walked up a block on Tenth, walked east on one of the cross streets. A few doors from the corner of Ninth Avenue, three young men in a doorway went silent at my approach. Their eyes followed me all the way to the corner, and I could feel their stares like darts between my shoulder blades.

  Halfway home a hooker asked me if I felt like partying. She looked young and fresh, but they mostly do these days; drugs and viruses keep them from lasting long enough to fade.

  I told her wed have to make it some other time. Her smile, at least as enigmatic as the Mona Lisas, stayed with me all the way home. At Fifty-sixth Street a black man, bare to the waist, asked me for spare change. Half a block farther, a woman stepped out of the shadows and made the same request. She had lank blond hair and the face of an Okie out of one of those Depression photographs. They each got a dollar from me.

  There were no messages at the hotel desk. I went up to my room and took a shower and got into bed.

  Some years back three brothers named Morrissey owned a small four-story brick building on West Fifty-first half a block from the river. They lived in the top two stories, rented out the ground floor to an Irish amateur theater, and sold beer and whiskey after hours on the second floor. There was a time when I went there a lot, and there may have been half a dozen occasions when Mickey Ballou and I were there at the same time. I dont know that we ever exchanged a word, but I remember seeing him there, and knowing who he was.

  My friend Skip Devoe had said of Ballou that, if he had ten brothers and they all stood around in a circle, youd think you were at Stonehenge. Ballou had that megalithic quality, and he had too an air of wild menace just held in check. There was a man named Aronow, a manufacturer of womens dresses, who one night spilled a drink on Ballou. Aronows apology was immediate and profuse, and Ballou mopped himself up and told Aronow to forget it, and Aronow left town and didnt come back for a month. He didnt even go home and pack, he took a cab straight to the airport and was on a flight within the hour. He was, we all agreed, a cautious man, but not overly cautious.

  Lying there, waiting for sleep to come, I wondered what was on Eddies mind and what it might have to do with the Butcher Boy. I didnt stay up late worrying about it, though. I figured Id find out soon enough.

  The good weather held all weekend. Saturday I went to a ball game. The Mets and the Yankees had both had a shot at it. The Mets were still leading their division, in spite of the fact that nobody was hitting. The Yankees had slipped to six or seven out and it didnt look as though they were going to turn it around. That weekend the Mets were in Houston for three games with the Astros. The Yankees were coming to the end of a home stand, hosting the Mariners, and I got to see Mattingly win it with a double down the line in the eleventh.

  Coming home, I stayed on past my stop and rode down to the Village. I had dinner at an Italian place on Thompson Street, caught a meeting, made an early night of it.

  Sunday I went over to Jim Fabers apartment and watched the Mets on the cable sports channel. Gooden held the Astros to three scratch hits through eight innings, but the Mets couldnt get any runs across for him, and Johnson pulled him in the top of the ninth for a pinch hitter, Mazzilli, who promptly flied out to deep short. "I think that was a mistake," Jim said softly, and in the bottom of the ninth the Houston second baseman walked, stole second, and scored on a sharp single through the middle.

  We ate at a Chinese restaurant Jim had been wanting to try, then went to a meeting at Roosevelt Hospital. The speaker was a shy woman with an expressionless face and a voice that didnt carry past the first two rows. We were in the back and it was impossible to hear a word. I gave up trying and let my mind wander. I started thinking about the game and wound up thinking about Jan Keane and how shed enjoyed going to ball games even though she had only a vague notion of what they were doing out there on the field. She told me once that she liked the perfect geometry of the game.

  I took her to the fights once but she hadnt cared for that. She said she found it all exhausting to watch. But she loved hockey. She had never seen a match until we went together, and she wound up liking it far more than I do.

  I was glad when the meeting ended, and I went straight home afterward. I didnt feel like being around people.

  Monday morning I earned a couple of dollars. A woman whod sobered up at St. Paul s had moved in a few months ago with a fellow in Rego Park. Hed been sober at the time, but hed slipped around for years, drifting in and out of the program, and he picked up a drink again shortly after they set up housekeeping. It took six or eight weeks and one good beating for her to realize that shed made a mistake and that she didnt have to go on taking it, and shed moved back to the city.

  But shed left some things at the apartment and she was afraid to go back there by herself. She asked what I would charge to ride shotgun.

  I told her she didnt have to pay me. "No, I think I should," she said. "This isnt just an AA favor. Hes a violent son of a bitch when he drinks, and I dont want to go out there without someone whos professionally qualified to deal with that sort of thing. I can afford to pay you and Ill be more comfortable doing it that way. "

  She arranged for a cabbie named Jack Odegaard to run us out and back. I knew him from meetings, but I hadnt known his last name until I read it on the hack license posted over the glove box.

  Her name was Rosalind Klein. The boyfriends name was Vince Broglio, and he wasnt a terribly violent son of a bitch that afternoon. He mostly just sat around chuckling ironically to himself and sucking on a longneck Strohs while Roz packed up a couple of suitcases and
a brace of shopping bags. He was watching game shows on TV, using the remote control to hop back and forth between the channels. The whole apartment was littered with boxes of half-eaten pizza from Dominos and those little white cartons of takeout food from Chinese restaurants. And empty beer and whiskey bottles. And overflowing ashtrays, and empty cigarette packs wadded up and tossed into corners.

  At one point he said, "You my replacement? The new boyfriend?"

  "Just along for the ride. "

  He laughed at that. "Arent we all? Along for the ride, I mean. "

  A few minutes later, without taking his eyes off the Sony, he said, "Women. "

  "Well," I said.

  "If they didnt have pussies thered be a bounty on em. " I didnt say anything, and he glanced my way, looking to read my expression. "Now that," he said, "might be construed to be a sexist remark. " He had a little trouble getting his tongue around construed; and he got interested in the word and let go of his original train of thought. "Construed," he said. "I gotta get construed, blewed and tattooed. My whole problem, see, is I got misconstrued once. Hows that for a problem?"

  "Its a pretty good one. "

  "Let me tell you something," he said. "Shes the one with a problem. "

  Jack Odegaard drove us back to the city, and he and I helped Roz get her stuff into her apartment. Before the move shed lived on Fifty-seventh a few doors from Eighth Avenue. Now she was in a high-rise at Seventieth and West End. "I had a big one-bedroom," she said, "and now Im in a studio, and my rents more than double what it used to be. I ought to have my head examined for letting go of my old place. But I was moving into a beautiful two-bedroom in Rego Park. You saw the apartment, if you can imagine what it looked like before the shit hit the fan. And if youre going to commit to a relationship you have to show some faith in it, dont you?"

  She gave Jack fifty bucks for the trip and paid me a hundred for my hazardous duty. She could afford it, just as she could handle the higher rent; she made good money working in the news department of one of the TV networks. I dont know what exactly she did there, but I gather she did it well.

  I thought I might see Eddie at St. Paul s that night but he wasnt there. Afterward I walked down to Paris Green to talk to the bartender whod recognized Paula Hoeldtkes picture. I thought he might have remembered something, but he hadnt.

  The next morning I called the telephone company and was told that Paula Hoeldtkes phone had been disconnected. I was trying to find out when this had happened and for what reason, but I had to go through channels before I could find somebody who was authorized to tell me. The service had been terminated at the customers request, a woman told me, and then asked me to hold the line for a moment. She returned to inform me further that there was an outstanding final balance in the customers favor. I asked how that could be; had she overpaid the final bill?

  "She never received her final statement," the woman told me. "She evidently didnt leave a forwarding address. She had put down a deposit prior to installation, and the final bill came to less than the funds on deposit. In fact-"