Lawrence Block - A Drop of the Hard Stuff

A MATTHEW SCUDDER NOVEL

NEW YORK BOSTON LONDON

This is for MEGAN and CRAIG

As the governor of North Carolina
said to the governor of South Carolina,
Its a long time between drinks.

Ive often wondered, Mick Ballou said, how it would all have gone if Id taken a different turn.

We were at Grogans Open House, the Hells Kitchen saloon hes owned and operated for years. The gentrification of the neighborhood has had its effect on Grogans, although the bar hasnt changed much inside or out. But the local hard cases have mostly died or moved on, and the crowd these days is a gentler and more refined bunch. Theres Guinness on draft, and a good selection of single-malt Scotches and other premium whiskeys. But its the joints raffish reputation that draws them. They get to point out the bullet holes in the walls, and tell stories about the notorious past of the bars owner. Some of the stories are true.

They were all gone now. The barman had closed up, and the chairs were on top of the tables so theyd be out of the way when the kid came in at daybreak to sweep up and mop the floor. The door was locked, and all the lights out but the leaded-glass fixture over the table where we sat with our Waterford tumblers. There was whiskey in Micks, club soda in mine.

Our late nights have grown less frequent in recent years. Were older, and if were not quite inclined to move to Florida and order the Early Bird Special at the nearest family restaurant, neither are we much given to talking the night away and greeting the dawn wide-eyed. Were both too old for that.

He drinks less these days. A year or so back he got married, to a much younger woman named Kristin Hollander. The union astonished almost everyonebut not my wife, Elaine, who swears she saw it comingand it could hardly fail to change him, if only because it gave him a reason to go home at the days end. He still drinks twelve-year-old Jameson, and drinks it neat, but he doesnt drink as much of it, and there are days when he doesnt drink at all. I still have a taste for it, he has said, but for years I had a deep thirst, and the thirst has left me. I couldnt tell you where its gone.

In earlier years, it was not that unusual for us to sit up all night, talking the hours away and sharing the occasional long silence, each of us drinking his chosen beverage. At dawn hed don the bloodstained butchers apron that had belonged to his father. Hed go to the Butchers Mass at St. Bernards, in the meatpacking district. Once in a while Id keep him company.

Things change. The meatpacking district is trendy now, a yuppie bastion, and most of the firms that gave the area its name have gone out of business, their premises converted to restaurants and apartments. St. Bernards, long an Irish parish, is the new home of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I cant remember the last time I saw Mick wearing that apron.

This was one of our rare late nights, and I suppose we both felt the need for it, or wed have gone home by now. And Mick had turned reflective.

A different turn, I said. What do you mean?

There are times, he said, when it seems to me that there was nothing for it, that I was destined to follow the one particular course. I lose sight of it these days, because my business interests are all as clean as a hounds tooth. Why a hounds tooth, have you ever wondered?

No idea.

Ill ask Kristin, he said, and shell sit down at the computer and pop up with the answer in thirty seconds. Thats if I remember to ask her. He smiled at a private thought. What I lose sight of, he said, is that I became a career criminal. Now I was hardly a trailblazer in that respect. I lived in a neighborhood where crime was the leading occupation. The surrounding streets were a sort of vocational high school.

And you graduated with honors.

I did. I might have been valedictorian, if theyd had such a thing on offer for young thieves and hoodlums. But, you know, not every boy on our block wound up leading a life of villainy. My father was respectable. He waswell, Ill honor his memory enough not to say what he was, but Ive told you about him.

You have.

All the same, he was a respectable man. He got up every morning and went to work. And the road my brothers took was a higher one than mine. One a priestwell, that didnt last, but only because he lost his faith. And John, a great success in business and a pillar of his community. And Dennis, the poor lad, who died in Vietnam. I told you how I went down to Washington just to see his name on that memorial.

Yes.

Id have made a terrible priest. I wouldnt even find a welcome diversion in molesting altar boys. And I cant imagine myself kissing asses and counting dollars like my brother John. But can you guess the thought Ive had? That I might have taken the road you took.

And become a cop?

Is the notion that outlandish?

No.

When I was a little boy, he said, it seemed to me that a cop was a wonderful thing for a man to be. Standing there in a handsome uniform, directing traffic, helping children cross the street safely. Protecting us all from the bad guys. He grinned. The bad guys indeed. Little did I know. But there were lads on our block who did put on the blue uniform. One of them, Timothy Lunney was his name, he wasnt so different from the rest of us. You wouldnt have found it remarkable to hear hed taken to robbing banks, or making collections for the shylocks.

We talked some about what might have been, and just how much choice a person had. That last was something to think about, and we both took a few minutes to think about it, and let the silence stretch. Then he said, And how about yourself?

Me?

You didnt grow up knowing youd become a cop.

No, not at all. I never really planned it. Then I took the entrance exam, which back then Id have had to be a moron to fail, and then I was in the Academy, and, well, there I was.

Could you have gone the other way?

And drifted instead into a life of crime? I thought about it. I cant point to any innate nobility of character that would have ruled it out, I said. But I have to say I never felt any pull in that direction.

No.

There was a boy I grew up with in the Bronx, I remembered, and we lost track of each other completely when my family moved away. And then I ran into him a couple of times years later.

And hed taken the other path.

He had, I said. He was no great success at it, but thats where his life led him. I saw him once through a one-way mirror in a station house, and then lost track of him again. And then we caught up with each other some years later. It was before you and I got to know each other.

Were you still drinking?

No, but I wasnt away from it long. Less than a year. Interesting, really, the things that happened to him.

Well, he said, dont stop now.

I COULDNT TELL YOU the first time I saw Jack Ellery, but it would have to have been during the couple of years I spent in the Bronx. We were a class apart at the same grammar school, so Id have seen him in the halls or outside at recess, or playing stickball or stoopball after school let out. We got to know each other well enough to call each other by our last names, in the curious manner of boys. If youd asked me then about Jack Ellery, Id have said he was all right, and I suppose hed have said the same about me. But thats as much as either of us would have been likely to say, because thats as well as we knew each other.