Lawrence Block - Out on the Cutting Edge

“I understand how it works.”

“Then what’s your interest? You got some kind of an insurance angle, your client can’t collect if you get a suicide verdict?”

“I haven’t got a client. And I doubt he had any insurance.”

“Because I remember we had an insurance investigator come up in connection with the gentleman from West End Avenue. He had a whole lot of coverage, too. Might have been as much as a million dollars.”

“And they didn’t want to pay it?”

“They were going to have to pay something. Suicide’ll only nullify a policy for a certain amount of time after it’s taken out, to prevent you from signing up when you’ve already decided to kill yourself. This case, he’d had the policy long enough so suicide didn’t cancel it. So what was the hook?” He frowned, then brightened. “Oh, right. He had that double indemnity clause where they pay you twice as much for accidental death. I have to say I never saw the logic to that. I mean, dead is dead. What’s the difference if you have a heart attack or wreck your car? Your wife’s got the same living expenses, your kid’s college is gonna cost the same. I never understood it.”

“The insurer didn’t want to accept a claim of accidental death?”

“You got it. Said a man puts a rope around his neck and hangs hisself, that’s suicide. The wife got herself a good lawyer and they had to pay the whole amount. Man had the intention of hanging hisself, but he did not have the intention of killing hisself, and that made it an accident and not a suicide.” He smiled, liking the justice of it, then remembered the matter at hand. “But you’re not here about insurance.”

“No, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t have any. He was a friend of mine.”

“Interesting friend for you to have. Turns out he had a sheet on him longer than his dick.”

“Mostly small-time, wasn’t it?”

“According to what he got collared for. Far as what he got away with, how could you say? Maybe he kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and went scot-free.”

“I think it was a little before his time. I have a fair idea of the kind of life he used to lead, although I don’t know the details. But for the past year he’s been staying sober.”

“You’re saying he was an alcoholic.”

“A sober one.”

“And?”

“I want to know if he died sober.”

“What difference does it make?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“I got an uncle used to be a terrible alcoholic. He quit drinking and now he’s a different person.”

“It works that way sometimes.”

“Used to be you didn’t want to know the man, and now he’s a fine human being. Goes to church, holds a job, acts right with people. Your friend, it didn’t look like he’d been drinking. There was no bottles laying around.”

“No, but he might have done some drinking elsewhere. Or he could have taken other drugs.”

“You mean like heroin?”

“I would doubt it.”

“Because I didn’t see no tracks. Still, there’s more than you think that’ll snort it.”

“Any drugs,” I said. “They’re doing a complete autopsy, aren’t they?”

“They got to. The law requires it.”

“Well, could I see the results when you get them?”

“Just so you’ll know if he died sober?” He sighed. “I guess. But what does it matter? They got some rule, he’s got to be sober when he dies or they won’t bury him in the good section of the cemetery?”

“I don’t know if I can explain it.”

“Try.”

“He didn’t have much of a life,” I said, “and he didn’t have much of a death, either. For the past year he’s been trying to stay sober a day at a time. He had a lot of trouble at the beginning and it never got to be what you could call easy for him, but he stayed with it. Nothing else ever worked for him. I just wanted to know if he made it.”

“Give me your number,” Bellamy said. “That report comes in, I’ll call you.”

I heard an Australian qualify once at a meeting down in the Village. “My head didn’t get me sober,” he said. “All my head ever did was get me into trouble. It was my feet got me sober. They kept taking me to meetings and my poor head had no choice but to follow. What I’ve got, I’ve got smart feet.”

My feet took me to Grogan’s. I was walking around, up one street and down another, thinking about Eddie Dunphy and Paula Hoeldtke and not paying much attention to where I was going. Then I looked up, and I was at the corner of Tenth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, right across from Grogan’s Open House.

Eddie had crossed the street to avoid the place. I crossed the street and went in.

It wasn’t fancy. A bar, on the left as you entered, ran the length of the room. There were dark wooden booths on the right, and a row of three or four tables between them. There was an old-fashioned tile floor, a stamped tin ceiling that needed minor repairs.

The clientele was all male. Two old men sat in silence in the front booth, letting their beers go flat. Two booths back there was a young man wearing a ski sweater and reading a newspaper. There was a dart board on the back wall, and a fellow wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap was playing by himself.

At the front end of the bar, two men sat near a television set, neither paying attention to the picture. There was an empty stool between them. Toward the back, the bartender was leafing through a tabloid, one of the ones that tell you Elvis and Hitler are still alive, and a potato chip diet cures cancer.

I walked over to the bar and put my foot on the brass rail. The bartender looked me over for a long moment before he approached. I ordered a Coke. He gave me another careful look, his blue eyes unreadable, his face expressionless. He had a narrow triangular face, so pale he might have lived all his life indoors.

He filled a glass with ice cubes, then with Coke. I put a ten on the bar. He took it to the register, punched No Sale, and returned with eight singles and a pair of quarters. I left my change on the bar in front of me and sipped at my Coke.

The television set was showing Santa Fe Trail , with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Flynn was playing Jeb Stuart, and an impossibly young Ronald Reagan was playing George Armstrong Custer. The movie was in black and white, with the commercials in color.

I sipped my Coke and watched the movie, and when the commercials came on I turned on my stool and watched the fellow in back shoot darts. He would toe the line and lean so far forward I kept thinking he would be unable to keep his balance, but he evidently knew what he was doing; he stayed on his feet, and the darts all wound up in the board.

After I’d been there twenty minutes or so, a black man in work clothes came in wanting to know how to get to DeWitt Clinton High School. The bartender claimed not to know, which seemed unlikely. I could have told him, but I didn’t volunteer, and no one else spoke up, either.

“Supposed to be around here somewhere,” the man said. “I got a delivery, and the address they gave me ain’t right. I’ll take a beer while I’m here.”

“There’s something wrong with the pressure. All I’m getting is foam.”

“Bottled beer be fine.”

“We only have draught.”

“Guy in the booth has a bottle of beer.”

“He must have brought it with him.”

The message got through. “Well, shit,” the driver said. “I guess this here’s the Stork Club. Fancy place like this, you got to be real careful who you serve.” He stared hard at the bartender, who gazed back at him without showing a thing. Then he turned and walked out fast with his head lowered, and the door swung shut behind him.

A little while later the dart player sauntered over and the bartender drew him a pint of the draught Guinness, thick and black, with a rich creamy head on it. He said, “Thanks, Tom,” and drank, then wiped the foam from his mouth onto his sleeve. “Fucking niggers,” he said. “Pushing in where they’re not wanted.”