Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Married cops.”

“That’s right, you were married then.”

“I’m married now.”

“To me. Jesus, the way things turn out, huh?”

“A club like this,” I said, “and the same kind of music playing.”

“Sad enough to break your heart, but nobody dies.”

“You were the most beautiful woman in the room that night,” I said. “And you still are.”

“Ah, Pinocchio,” she said, and squeezed my hand. “Lie to me.”

We closed theplace. Outside on the street she said, “God, I’m impossible. I don’t want the night to end.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“In the old days,” she said, “you knew all the after-hours joints. Remember when Condon’s would stay open late for musicians, and they’d jam until dawn?”

“I remember Eddie Condon’s hangover cure,” I said. “ ‘Take the juice of two quarts of whiskey...’ I forget what came after that.”

“Oblivion?”

“You’d think so. Say, I know where we can go.”

I flagged a cab and we rode down to Sheridan Square, where there’s a basement joint with the same name as a long-gone Harlem jazz club. They start around midnight and stay open past dawn, and it’s legal because they don’t serve alcohol. I used to go to late joints for the booze, and I learned to like the music because I heard so much of it there, and because you could just about taste the alcohol in every flatted fifth. Nowadays I go for the music, and what I hear in the blue notes is not so much the booze as all the feelings the drink used to mask.

That night there were a lot of different musicians sitting in with what I guess was the house rhythm section. There was a tenor player who sounded a little like Johnny Griffin and a piano player who reminded me of Lennie Tristano. And as always there was a lot of music I barely heard, background music for my own unfocused thoughts.

The sky was light by the time we dragged ourselves out of there. “Look at that,” Elaine said. “It’s bright as day.”

“And well it might be. It’s morning.”

“What a New York night, huh? You know, I loved our trip to Europe, and other places we’ve gone together, but when you come right down to it—”

“You’re a New York kind of gal.”

“You bet your ass. And what we heard tonight was New York music. I know all about the music coming up the river from New Orleans, all that crap, and I don’t care. That was New York music.”

“You’re right.”

“And nobody died,” she said.

“That’s right,” I said. “Nobody died.”

Elaine said, “Younever stop working, do you?”

I looked at her. We were in Florence, sitting at a little tile-topped table in the Piazza di San Marco, sipping cappuccino every bit as good as the stuff they served at the Peacock on Greenwich Avenue. It was a bright day but the air was cool and crisp, the city bathed in October light. Elaine was wearing khakis and a tailored safari jacket, and looked like a glamorous foreign correspondent, or perhaps a spy. I was wearing khakis, too, and a polo shirt, and the blue blazer she called my Old Reliable.

We’d had five days in Venice. This was the second of five days in Florence, and then we’d have six days in Rome before Alitalia took us back home again.

I said, “Nice work if you can get it.”

“Uh-uh,” she said. “I caught you. You were scanning the area the way you always do.”

“I was a cop for a lot of years.”

“I know, and I guess it’s a habit a person doesn’t outgrow. And not a bad one, either. I have some New York street smarts myself, but I can’t send my eyes around a room and pick up what you can. And you don’t even think about it. You do it automatically.”

“I guess. But I wouldn’t call it working.”

“When we’re supposed to be basking in the beauties of Florence,” she said, “and exclaiming over the classic beauty of the sculpture in the piazza, and instead you’re staring at an old queen in a white linen jacket five tables over, trying to guess if he’s got a yellow sheet and just what’s written on it — wouldn’t you call that working?”

“There’s no guesswork required,” I said. “I know what it says on his yellow sheet.”

“You do?”

“His name is Horton Pollard,” I said. “If it’s the same man, and if I’ve been sending a lot of looks his way it’s to make sure he’s the man I think he is. It’s well over twenty years since I’ve seen him. Probably more like twenty-five.” I glanced over and watched the white-haired gentleman saying something to the waiter. He raised an eyebrow in a manner that was at once arrogant and apologetic. It was as good as a fingerprint. “It’s him,” I said. “Horton Pollard. I’m positive.”

“Why don’t you go over and say hello?”

“He might not want that.”

“Twenty-five years ago you were still on the job. What did you do, arrest him?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Honestly? What did he do? Art fraud? That’s what comes to mind, sitting at an outdoor table in Florence, but he was probably just a stock swindler.”

“Something white-collar, in other words.”

“Something flowing-collar, from the looks of him. I give up. What did he do?”

I’d been looking his way, and our glances caught. I saw recognition come into his eyes, and his eyebrows went up again in that manner that was unmistakably his. He pushed his chair back, got to his feet.

“Here he comes,” I said. “You can ask him yourself.”

“Mr. Scudder,” hesaid. “I want to say Martin, but I know that’s not right. Help me out.”

“Matthew, Mr. Pollard. And this is my wife, Elaine.”

“How fortunate for you,” he told me, and took the hand she extended. “I looked over here and thought, What a beautiful woman! Then I looked again and thought, I know that fellow. But then it took me a minute to place you. The name came first, or the surname, at any rate. His name’s Scudder, but how do I know him? And then of course the rest of it came to me, all but your first name. I knew it wasn’t Martin, but I couldn’t sweep that name out of my mind and let Matthew come in.” He sighed. “It’s a curious muscle, the memory. Or aren’t you old enough yet to have found it so?”

“My memory’s still pretty good.”

“Oh, mine’s good, ” he said. “It’s just capricious. Willful, I sometimes think.”

At my invitation, he pulled up a chair from a nearby table and sat down. “But only for a moment,” he said, and asked what brought us to Italy, and how long we’d be in Florence. He lived here, he told us. He’d lived here for quite a few years now. He knew our hotel, on the east bank of the Arno, and pronounced it charming and a good value. He mentioned a café just down the street from the hotel that we really ought to try.

“Although you certainly don’t need to follow my recommendations,” he said, “or Michelin’s, either. You can’t get a bad meal in Florence. Well, that’s not entirely true. If you insist on going to high-priced restaurants, you’ll encounter the occasional disappointment. But if you simply blunder into whatever humble trattoria is closest, you’ll dine well every time.”

“I think we’ve been dining a little too well,” Elaine said.

“It’s a danger,” he acknowledged, “although the Florentines manage to stay quite slim themselves. I started to bulk up a bit when I first came here. How could one help it? Everything tasted so good. But I took off the pounds I gained and I’ve kept them off. Though I sometimes wonder why I bother. For God’s sake, I’m seventy-six years old.”