Харлан Кобен - Win

My thoughts naturally gravitate to Myron.

He is down in Florida, taking care of his parents and helping his wife settle into a new job. I don’t want to take him away from that. Those who know us well would note that I always came through when Myron would engage in similar quixotic quests and ask for my help — that in fact, after all the times I marched into battle for him without question or pause, Myron “owes” me.

Those folks would be wrong.

Let me clue you in on the advice Myron’s father, one of the wisest men I know, gave his son and his son’s best man — that would be yours truly — on Myron’s wedding day: “Relationships are never fifty-fifty. Sometimes they are sixty-forty, sometimes eighty-twenty. You’ll be the eighty sometimes, you’ll be the twenty others. The key is to accept and be okay with that.”

I believe this simple wisdom is true for all great relationships, not just marriages, so if you add it up, how my friendship with Myron has improved and enhanced my life, no, Myron owes me nothing.

My phone pings a reminder that I have not yet responded to my rendezvous app. I doubt there will be time tonight, but it would be rude to not reply. When I click the notification and scan the request, my eyes widen. I quickly change my mind and set up a meet for eight p.m. tonight.

Let me explain why.

The rendezvous app has a rather unusual “bio” page. No, it’s not like the dating apps where you spew out exaggerated nonsense about how you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. This page starts about akin to ratings one might give an Uber, but because most members use the app on rare occasions (unlike yours truly), the developers have supplemented personal ratings with what could crudely be called an appearance ranking. It’s a far more complicated algorithm than that, scoring in many specific physical fields and on many levels. One of the app rules states that if you ask another client about your ranking — or if that client tells you — you are both immediately forced to relinquish your membership. I, for example, do not know what my rankings are.

I am confident that they are high. No need for false modesty, is there?

To give you an idea, Bitsy Cabot’s aggregate ranking was an accurate 7.8 out of ten. The lowest I would go for is a 6.5. Well, okay, once I went with a 6.0, but nothing else was available. The app’s scoring is very tough. A six on this app would be considered at least an eight anywhere else.

The highest ranking I’ve seen on the app? I was once with a 9.1. She’d been a renowned supermodel before she married a famous rock star. You know her name. That was the only woman above a nine I’d ever seen.

The woman who had currently pinged me for a rendezvous?

Her ranking was a 9.85.

There is no way I was passing that up.

PT calls me. “How did it go with Lake Davies?”

I start with the obvious: “She lied about Strauss being dead.” I then fill him in on the rest of our conversation.

“So what’s your next step?”

“Go to Malachy’s Pub.”

“Forty years later?”

“Yes.”

“Long shot.”

“Is there any other kind?” I counter.

“What else?”

“I have compiled a list of people I may want to interrogate. I need your people to get me current addresses.”

“Email me the list.”

I know how PT works. He gets the information before he gives the information. Now that I’ve done my part, I prompt him: “Anything new on your end?”

“We got week-old CCTV footage from the Beresford. We think it’s from the day of the murder but...”

I wait.

“We don’t know how helpful it will be,” he says.

“Is the killer on it?”

“Likely, yeah. But we can’t really see much.”

“I’d like to view it.”

“I can email you a link in an hour.”

I mull this over for a moment. “I’d rather stop by the Beresford and have one of the doormen show it to me.”

“I’ll set it up.”

“I will go to Malachy’s first.”

“One more thing, Win.”

I wait.

“We can’t keep the ID quiet any longer. Tomorrow morning, the Director is going to announce the body belongs to Ry Strauss.”

“Ain’t you a good-looking fella?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I am.”

Kathleen, the longtime barmaid at Malachy’s, cackles a half laugh, half cigarette-cough at that one. She has a rye (I mean that in two ways) smile and yellow (as opposed to blonde) hair. Kathleen is comfortably north of sixty years old, but she wears it with confidence and an old-world sultry appeal that some might describe as burlesque. She is buxom and curvy and soft. I like Kathleen immediately, but I recognize that it is her occupation to be liked.

“If I was a little younger...” Kathleen begins.

“Or if I were a little luckier,” I counter.

“Oh, stop.”

I arch an eyebrow. It’s one of my trademark moves. “Don’t sell yourself short, Kathleen. The night is young.”

“You’re being fresh.” She playfully slaps me with a dishrag last laundered during the Eisenhower administration. “Charming. Good-looking as hell. But fresh.”

On the stool to my right, Frankie Boy, who is closer to eighty, wears a tweed flat cap. Thick tufts of hair jut out of his ears like Troll dolls turned on their side. His nose couldn’t be more bulbous without cosmetic surgery. I have been to Malachy’s perhaps five times prior to tonight. Frankie Boy is always at this stool.

“Buy you a drink?” I say to him.

“Okay,” Frankie slurs, “but just for the record, I don’t think you’re that good-looking.”

“Sure, you do,” I say.

“Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna have sex with you.”

I sigh. “Dreams die hard in here.”

He likes that.

As I said before, Malachy’s is a legit dive bar — poor lighting, stained (and I mean that in two ways) wood paneling, dead flies in the light fixtures, patrons so regular that it’s sometimes hard to see where the stool ends and their butts begin. A sign above the bar reads, LIFE IS GOOD. SO IS BEER. Wisdom. Regulars blend well with the newcomers, and pretty much anything goes but pretension. There are two televisions, one set up at either end of the bar. The New York Yankees are losing on one, the New York Rangers are losing on the other. No one in Malachy’s seems to be too invested in either.

The menu is standard pub fare. Frankie Boy insists I order the chicken wings. Out comes a plate of grease with a smattering of bone. I slide it to him. We chat. Frankie tells me that he is on his fourth wife.

“I love her so much,” Frankie Boy tells me.

“Congrats.”

“’Course, I loved the other three so much too. Still do.” A tear comes to his eye. “That’s my problem. I fall hard. Then I come in here to forget. Do you know what I’m saying?”

I don’t, but I tell him that I do. The song “True” by Spandau Ballet comes drifting out of the speakers. Frankie Boy starts singing along: “This is the sound of my soul, this is the sound...” He stops and turns to me. “You ever been married, Win?”

“No.”

“Smart. Wait. You gay?”

“No.”

“Not that I care. Be honest, I like a lot of the gays in here. Less competition for the ladies, you know what I’m saying?”

I ask him how long he’s been coming to Malachy’s.

“First time was January 12, 1966.”

“Specific,” I say.

“Biggest day of my life.”

“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious.

Frankie Boy holds up three stubby fingers. “Three reasons.”

“Go on.”

He drops the ring finger. “One, that’s the first day I found this place.”

“Makes sense.”

“Two” — Frankie Boy drops his middle finger — “I married my first wife, Esmeralda.”