by Con Lehane
By the time they got to the Library Tavern, McNulty had subdued the cocktail hour crowd buzzing around the bar, so he had time to stop and chat. McNulty did pretty much as he pleased behind the bar. The tavern owners long before had given up trying to rein him in, since, as curmudgeonly as he was, almost all of the bar patrons, including Ambler and Adele, came to the Library Tavern specifically because he was behind the bar. He earned the loyalty of the after-work imbibers by his craftsmanship and by his sincere interest in those things folks who frequented the bar wanted to tell him.
“What’s up with your grandson?” McNulty asked. “I haven’t seen him since I took him to the track. That must be a month ago.”
“Johnny’s fine,” Ambler said. “School is busier now. He has more homework.” Ambler’s grandson, whom he cared for because the boy’s mother was dead and his father in prison, was devoted to McNulty, as he was devoted to Adele who—despite her awkward relationship with Ambler—was like a mother to him. “He keeps asking when you’ll take him to the track again,” Ambler said. “I don’t understand how he wins every time he goes with you.”
McNulty took a reconnaissance glance around the bar before sticking his coffee cup under the tap and drawing himself a beer. “What he does is he has me bet for him on a horse I’m not betting on.”
Adele’s expression was playful as she leaned toward the bartender. “Where’s your new friend tonight?”
Ambler cringed. He should have known Adele was gearing up for the question since she suggested having a beer.
McNulty stepped back from her. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do.” Adele’s smile was impish. “Shannon, the pretty blonde with the big brown eyes.”
“She’s not a new friend.” McNulty’s tone was chilly. “I don’t keep track of her, so I don’t know where she is.”
“She seemed fond of you.” Adele’s tone was sympathetic because she realized McNulty was offended.
“I don’t do any better with women than I do with horses.” McNulty made his point and walked to the other end of the bar to make drinks for one of the servers who was icing glasses and placing them on the service bar.
“I hurt his feelings.” Adele turned to Ambler looking for help. “I didn’t mean to.”
Ambler might have told her she was making a mistake. McNulty was the kind of bartender you found yourself confiding in. It didn’t work the other way. Ambler had known McNulty for a few years but knew little about his life beyond the bar. He had a son whom he loved and an ex-wife, whom he didn’t so much dislike as was disliked by. Ambler knew also that most of McNulty’s pay went to support his son who was now in college.
Beyond that, most of what Ambler knew of McNulty, he knew from stories the bartender told. It would be, “I knew this girl once, a dancer with the Rockettes…” or “You know that guy who got shot in the East Village last night, he used to come into my bar when I worked…” “My ex-wife’s newest boyfriend is a cop so she says she’s gonna have me arrested if I’m late on my child support…” and so on. McNulty didn’t tell you if he was lonely or his heart had been broken or he worried he drank too much or he hadn’t been sleeping well or feared he would die alone. He kept that sort of thing to himself.
“I’d let it go for now.” Ambler watched the bartender pour or stir or shake drinks for the servers, how deftly his hands moved, how quickly he did things, no wasted effort, pouring with both hands; for one drink, pouring from two bottles in one hand, one bottle in the other at the same time. “McNulty doesn’t admit to feelings.”
When Ambler and Adele left the bar, they stood together for a moment. A chill rode on the breeze but it was a pleasant early autumn evening, autumn the best time of year in the city. By the first of September in most years, the summer heat was gone taking along with it the stench from the black and green plastic garbage bags piled up by the curbs in front of the city’s restaurants and apartment buildings. This evening as he stood with Adele for a moment in front of the Library Tavern before they went their separate ways, Ambler felt a strange longing for something he couldn’t place and for that reason didn’t want to part with her just yet.
“Did you apply for the assistant director position in Special Collections?” he asked. Adele was both a curator and a librarian with an MLS degree, all of the credentials she needed to apply for the job, but she was reluctant to apply for reasons he didn’t understand. “You’d be Harry’s assistant.”
Harry Larkin, the director of Special Collections, was both their boss and a friend. A medieval historian, a former Jesuit, and the library’s version of an absentminded professor, he’d retained enough of his priestliness to watch over his staff like a shepherd his flock, protecting Ambler in particular—a somewhat notorious amateur detective—from the wrath of the powers-that-be in the library’s upper echelons.
“The only reason I’d want the job is so I could boss you around.” Adele smiled. Sometimes her smile was perfunctory. Other times, like this, it melted his heart.
“You already do,” he said.
“Seriously, I like my job as it is. Harry lets me do pretty much what I want. I don’t like being told what to do, and I don’t want to have to tell anyone else what to do.”
“What if Harry hires a micromanager who does tell us what to do? You could protect us from that by taking the assistant job. The library needs you.”
Adele put her hand on her hip and assumed her schoolmarm pose. “Do I detect an ulterior motive?”
Ambler began his denial but they both knew what Adele was getting at. The 42nd Street Library housed the New York Public Library’s humanities and social sciences collections. A number of the collections, including the Manuscript and Archives Division, the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, the Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the Arents Tobacco Collection, and others, were world-renowned collections.
Ambler’s crime fiction collection with its own reading room on the second floor, while not world-renowned, was one of a very few collections of its kind in the nation. Nonetheless, Ambler worried about its survival. The library continually dealt with financial pressure and in the not-too-distant past had closed reading rooms, such as the Slavic and Baltic division reading room, that to the library Board of Trustees’ way of thinking, were underutilized. The axe could fall on the crime fiction reading room at any moment.
“Well, I’d trust you more than anyone to protect the crime fiction reading room—”
“Aren’t you the flatterer?” Adele laughed. “Don’t look so hurt. I’m teasing. You need all the help you can get with Mrs. Young out for your scalp.”
Lisa Young, New York City society matron and member of the library’s Board of Trustees, was Johnny’s grandmother on his mother’s side. Adele knew about the custody battles Mrs. Young and Ambler had had already. Despite Adele’s teasing, she would protect him; he’d already seen how ferociously she’d fight for him and especially for Johnny.
He watched her face now and saw beyond the cheerfulness something else in her expression that reminded him of the longing he’d felt earlier that he didn’t understand. “You’d be better at the job than anyone else. That’s all I mean. You don’t appreciate how wonderful you are.” Something changed in her expression, surprise, confusion. “I mean at work,” he said, correcting himself because he’d said more than he meant to … let on more than he’d meant to.
“You’re quite persuasive.” Adele had been watching the traffic that like a herd of cattle jostled its way uptown. “We’re lucky, aren’t we, to work with books that we love? And we have Johnny in our lives…” She looked into Ambler’s eyes, the expression in hers sad, belying her words. She blinked rapidly a few times, searched for something in his gaze and turned back to the traffic. “And yet…” she glanced back at him quickly, possibly angrily. “I’m just foolish … a foolish woman.” She sounded angry. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I don’t want to be a supervis
or.” She glared at him. “I want to be left alone.” Turning from him, she started walking, if not stomping, up Madison Avenue.
Ambler stood in front of the Library Tavern watching her walk away. Once more, he didn’t understand. Despite her anger, she moved gracefully as she always did, her hips swaying gently as she walked. He watched her until she blended into the other walkers on the sidewalk and the gathering darkness.
Chapter 2
The next afternoon as Adele was cutting through Bryant Park on her way back to the library from lunch, she saw Shannon Darling sitting in one of the park’s bistro chairs next to the steps to the terrace at the back of the library. She was smoking a cigarette, so Adele walked over to her.
“Hi,” Adele said. “Do you remember me?”
“I remember you.” Shannon looked up at her, reminding her of how she’d described Shannon’s eyes to McNulty. They were big and brown with something gentle and appealing, yet intense, in them.
Adele smiled. “I don’t want to sound like the park police. It’s against the law to smoke in the park. I don’t want you to get a fine.”
“Oh my goodness,” Shannon quickly stubbed out her cigarette on the gravel in front of her. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s not something you’d expect.” Adele gestured at the park surrounding them. “First, you couldn’t smoke inside. Now, you can’t smoke outside. I don’t know where you’re supposed to go. I guess stand on the street corner.”
Shannon continued to look at her intently, the scrutiny strangely not uncomfortable. “It’s nice that you’re not judgmental.” Shannon said.
They talked easily, surprising Adele. Shannon said she started smoking when she was a teen to be cool and now it was difficult to stop because she’d been doing it so long. When Adele told her about the Arents Tobacco Collection in the library, Shannon was intrigued, so Adele took her in and showed her some of the collection. Afterward, Shannon wanted to buy Adele a cup of coffee, so they sat for a few more minutes in the small coffee area on the main floor across from the Library Shop.
“I know you saw me in that cocktail lounge the other night. I almost said hello, but I got distracted, talking with that man. I want you to know that wasn’t me that night. When I drink I lose my internal filters and … say things.” She looked away and then back at Adele who saw a great deal of sadness in her eyes. “Sometimes I freak people out. I say things.” Shannon bowed her head before meeting Adele’s gaze again. Her expression was that of a child who’d been hurt by someone whom she didn’t expect to hurt her, so part of the hurt was bewilderment and disappointment. “I’m not used to socializing. I suppose I shouldn’t do it.… I’ve been taken advantage of.”
Late that afternoon, when Adele saw Shannon leave the crime fiction reading room for the evening, she popped in to tell Raymond what she’d discovered about Shannon. “She was entirely different than I thought of her, charming, intelligent, engaging, so different from the woman she was in the bar, a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“She’s a bit of an enchantress,” Raymond said.
Adele began to tell him more about her talk with Shannon that afternoon but changed her mind. The conversation was a woman-to-woman thing, a sharing of confidence. Raymond might understand, but he might understand what Shannon said in a man-way. What Adele realized was that Shannon was honest about herself in a way most people weren’t and because of that was vulnerable in a way most people weren’t. Adele understood without Shannon coming right out and saying it that men sensed her vulnerability, her openness, and maybe neediness, and took advantage of her because of it.
“She’s very intense, Raymond, and not always aware of how she appears to people, so she can seem rude. And maybe she’s embarrassed because you saw her in the bar with McNulty and those men.” Adele paused. “Still, there’s something mysterious about her. When I asked where she lived, she changed the subject to ask where I lived and where I grew up. She didn’t want to tell me about her life.” Adele took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes to engage Raymond’s gaze. “She’s hiding something.”
Chapter 3
Two days later, a week to the day after Ambler first met Shannon Darling in the Library Tavern, Adele interrupted him at work in the crime fiction reading room. Her expression as she banged through the reading room door was a cry of alarm, so he sprang from his chair ready to throw himself into action with no idea what that action would be.
“McNulty’s missing.”
“What?” Ambler collapsed back into his chair.
“He didn’t show up for work. He was supposed to work lunch today and didn’t show up. The manager had to work the bar and was furious … as well as clumsy and slow.”
“Well, that—”
“McNulty called while I was there and told the manager he wouldn’t be back.”
Ambler’s mind raced, thoughts tumbling over one another. McNulty was a steady presence in his life, as solidly dependable behind the bar of the Library Tavern as the marble lions standing guard in front of the library. “Maybe he got a better job. He’s been waiting for years for one of the bartenders at the Algonquin to die. If that job opened—”
Adele peered at him like a physician who discovered a worrisome symptom. “The manager said he’d make sure no bar in New York would hire him.”
Ambler was about to say people didn’t just drop everything and disappear. But sometimes people did disappear, up and leave like Flitcraft. “Maybe a beam fell,” he said.
“A beam fell? What are you talking about? Did a beam fall on your head?”
He didn’t want to bring up Flitcraft. “McNulty has not disappeared. He has responsibilities, his son, his dad. He wouldn’t do that.”
“I bet it has to do with that woman.”
“Who?”
“Shannon.”
Ambler’s faith in McNulty was not rewarded. When he got home, his grandson Johnny handed him an envelope. “I found this under the door. It’s from Uncle McNulty.”
The note was succinct. “I need to disappear for a while. I gave Pop and Kevin your phone number and email. Theirs are below. I told them they can count on you if something comes up. I got a cat needs feeding, too. I don’t know what you’re going to do about that, probably Pop.” In the envelope with the note was the key to McNulty’s apartment.
“What’s going on?”
Ambler looked up from the note to Johnny’s troubled expression. The boy unfailingly knew when something happened or was about to happen that Ambler wanted to keep from him. “Nothing much.” He tried to sound offhand.
“Can I read the note?”
“No.” Ambler folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket.
“What’s wrong that you won’t tell me?”
“McNulty asked me for a favor. You don’t have to know everything.”
Johnny was quiet for a moment. “You only get like this when something bad happens. You think I don’t know when you worry; you think you can worry by yourself, and I don’t know.” He turned his cobalt blue, searing eyes on Ambler. “Well, I know when something’s wrong and I worry anyway. I just don’t know what I’m worried about.”
The phone rang, so Johnny went back to his homework.
“Ray? Mike Cosgrove.”
Ambler sighed. “One woe doth tread upon another’s heel.”
His friend Mike Cosgrove was a homicide detective with the NYPD. “I’m not sure what that means, but I have a feeling you’re right.”
“I’m afraid to ask what you want.”
“You don’t have to ask. I’m going to tell you…”
Ambler waited.
“I’m looking for your friend, the elusive bartender.”
“McNulty? Why?”
“I get paid to ask questions not answer them. When’d you see him last?” Cosgrove’s tone grew more cynical, if that were possible. “Take your time answering. You don’t have a spotless record letting go of what you know about folks who’ve gone missing.”
/> “You’re not so forthcoming yourself. I don’t know where he is. I’m told his employer said he’s missing.”
“Have you heard from him?”
Ambler hesitated. Cosgrove wouldn’t be looking for McNulty when he was on the clock unless McNulty had some knowledge about a homicide. Such a thing wasn’t out of the question given the bartender’s lifestyle and some of his acquaintances. Ambler didn’t see how telling Mike what he knew would hurt McNulty. It wouldn’t much help Cosgrove either.
“He left me a note asking me to look in on his elderly father and his son … and his cat.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Do you know where I can find his father and son?”
He gave Cosgrove McNulty’s father’s phone number.
Cosgrove, expecting less cooperation, was gruffly appreciative.
“I can give you the address for the cat.” Ambler glanced at the floppy eared mutt in the corner who was beginning to grow into his galoshes-sized feet. “We have a dog here. I don’t think a cat would fit in.”
“Cat?… Oh, yeah.… No.” Mike forced a laugh. “The bartender’s name came up. I remembered he was a friend of yours. I wanted to ask him a few questions; I didn’t expect he’d disappear.” Cosgrove cleared his throat.
“Do you want to tell me what it’s about?”
“I don’t. But I will. As you might expect given what I do for a living—though God knows why I do it—there’s been a murder. This one took place last night in a five-star hotel not far from your library. It being a five-star hotel there’s more than the usual interest from One Police Plaza. The victim’s body was found in a female guest’s room. He was shot. She’s gone. We don’t know much more than that. What we do know, from a bartender in the hotel’s lobby bar, is that at one point in the evening she had a drink with a well-known bartender-about-town named Brian McNulty.”
“He’s a witness?”