Lawrence Block - When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

I started to put my notebook away, then went over and put a dime in the phone instead. I looked up Drew Kaplan's number and dialed it. I thought of the woman who'd told me about Mickey Mouse, glad I didn't have to see her bright clothing on a morning like this one.

"Scudder," I said, when the girl rang me through to Kaplan. "I don't know if it helps, but I've got a little more proof that our friends aren't choirboys."

AFTERWARD I went for a long walk. I walked downNinth Avenue, stopping at Miss Kitty's to say a quick hello to JohnKasabian, but I didn't stay long. I dropped into a church onForty-secondStreet, then continued on downtown, past the rear entrance of the Port Authority bus terminal, down through Hell's Kitchen andChelsea to the Village. I walked through the meatpacking district and stopped at a butchers' bar on the corner ofWashington and Thirteenth and stood among men in bloody aprons drinking shots with short beer chasers. I went outside and watched carcasses of beef and lamb suspended on steel hooks, with flies buzzing around them in the heat of the midday sun.

I walked some more and got out of the sun to have a drink at the Corner Bistro on Jane and Fourth and another at the Cookie Bar onHudson. I sat at a table at the White Horse and ate a hamburger and drank a beer.

Through all of this I kept running things through my mind.

I swear to God I don't know how anybody ever figures anything out, myself included. I'll watch a movie in which someone explains how he figured something out, fitting clues together until a solution appeared, and it will make perfect sense to me as I listen along.

But in my own work it is rarely like that.When I was on the force most of my cases moved toward solution (if they moved that way at all) in one of two ways. Either I didn't know the answer at all until a fresh piece of information made itself instantly evident, or I knew all along who had done whatever had been done, and all that was ever needed was sufficient evidence to prove it in court. In the tiny percentage of cases where I actually worked out a solution, I did so by a process I did not understand then and do not understand now. I took what I had and stared at it and stared at it and stared at it, and all of a sudden I saw the same thing in a new light, and the answer was in my hand.

Have you ever worked a jigsaw puzzle? And have you then been stuck for the moment, and kept taking up pieces and holding them this way and that, until finally you take up a piece you must have already held between thumb and forefinger a hundred times, one you've turned this way and that, fitted here and fitted there? And this time the piece drops neatly into place, it fits where you'd swear you tried it a minute ago, fits perfectly, fits in a way that should have been obvious all along.

I was at a table in the White Horse, a table in which someone had carved his initials, a dark brown table with the varnish wearing thin here and there. I had finished my hamburger, I had finished my beer,I was drinking a cup of coffee with a discreet shot of bourbon in it. Shreds and images flitted through my mind. I heard NelsonFuhrmann talking about all the people with access to the basement of his church. I saw Billie Keegan draw a record from its jacket and place it on a turntable. I watched BobbyRuslander put the blue whistle between his lips. I saw the yellow-wigged sinner, Frank or Jesse, grudgingly agree to move furniture. I watched TheQuare Fellow with Fran the nurse, walked with her and her friends to Miss Kitty's.

There was a moment when I didn't have the answer, and then there was a moment when I did.

I can't say I did anything to make this happen. I didn't work anything out. I kept picking up pieces of the puzzle, I kept turning them this way and that, and all of a sudden I had the whole puzzle, with one piece after another locking effortlessly and infallibly into place.

Had I thought of all this the night before, with all my thoughts unraveled in blackout like Penelope's tapestry? I don't really think so, although such is the nature of blackouts that I shall never be able to say with certainty one way or the other. Yet it almost felt that way. The answers as they came were so obvious- just as with a jigsaw puzzle, once the piece fits you can't believe you didn't see it right away. They were so obvious I felt as though I were discovering something I had known all along.

I called NelsonFuhrmann. He didn't have the information I wanted, but his secretary gave me a phone number, and I managed to reach a woman who was able to answer some of my questions.

I started to phone Eddie Koehler,then realized I was only a couple of blocks from the Sixth Precinct. I walked over there, found him at his desk, and told him he had a chance to earn the rest of the hat I'd bought him the day before. He made a couple of telephone calls without leaving his desk, and when I left there I had a few more entries in my notebook.

I made phone calls of my own from a booth on the corner, then walked over toHudson and caught a cab uptown. I got out at the corner ofEleventh AvenueandFifty-first Street and walked toward the river. I stopped in front of Morrissey's, but I didn't bang on the door or ring the bell. Instead I took a moment to read the poster for the theater downstairs. TheQuare Fellow had finished its brief run. A play by John B. Keane was scheduled to open the following night. The Man from Clare, it was called. There was a photograph of the actor who was to play the leading role. He had wiry red hair and a haunted, brooding face.

I tried the door to the theater. It was locked. I knocked on it, and when that brought no response I knocked on it some more. Eventually it opened.

A very short woman in her mid-twenties looked up at me. "I'm sorry," she said. "The box office will be open tomorrow during the afternoon. We're shorthanded right now and we're in final rehearsals and-"

I told her I hadn't come to buy tickets. "I just need a couple minutes of your time," I said.

"That's all anybody ever needs, and there's not enough of my time to go around." She said the line airily, as if a playwright had written it for her. "I'm sorry," she said more matter-of-factly. "It'll have to be some other time."

"No, it'll have to be now."

"My god, what is this? You're not the police, are you? What did we do, forget to pay somebody off?"

"I'm working for the fellow upstairs," I said, gesturing. "He'd want you to cooperate with me."

"Mr. Morrissey?"

"Call Tim Pat and ask him, if you want. My name is Scudder."

From the rear of the theater, someone with a rich brogue called out, "Mary Jean, what in Christ's fucking name is taking you so long?"

She rolled her eyes, sighed, and held the door open for me.

AFTER I left the Irish theater I called Skip at his apartment and looked for him at his saloon.Kasabian suggested I try the gym.

I tried Armstrong's first. He wasn't there, and hadn't been in, but Dennis said someone else had. "A fellow was looking for you," he told me.

"Who?"

"He didn't leave his name."

"What did he look like?"

He considered the question. "If you were choosing up sides for a game of cops and robbers," he said thoughtfully, "you would not pick him to be one of the robbers."

"Did he leave a message?"

"No.Or a tip."

I went to Skip's gym, a large open second-floor loft on Broadway over a delicatessen. A bowling alley had gone broke there a year or two earlier, and the gym had the air of a place that wouldn't outlast the term of its lease. A couple of men were working out with free weights. A black man, glossy with sweat, struggled with bench presses while a white partner spotted him. On the right, a big man stood flat-footed, working the heavy bag with both hands.

I found Skip doingpulldowns on the lat machine. He was wearing gray sweatpants and no shirt and he was sweating fiercely. The muscles worked in his back and shoulders and upper arms. I stood a few yards off watching while he finished a set. I called his name, and he turned and saw me and smiled in surprise, then did another set ofpulldowns before rising and coming over to take my hand.