Out on the Cutting Edge

"There was nothing you could have done. And nothing you can do for him now."

"I know. He didn't—"

"Didn't what?"

"Say anything to you?"

"I hardly knew him, Matt. I can't remember the last time I talked to him. I don't know if I ever talked to him, beyond 'How's the weather?'

and 'Here's the rent.' "

"He had something on his mind," I said. "I wish to hell I knew what it was."

I dropped into Grogan's in the middle of the afternoon. The dart board wasn't in use and I didn't see Andy Buckley anywhere, but otherwise the crowd was much the same. Tom was behind the stick, and he put a magazine down long enough to draw me a Coke. An old man with a cloth cap was talking about the Mets, lamenting a trade they'd made fifteen years earlier. "They got Jim Fregosi," he said scornfully,

"and they gave up Nolan Ryan. Nolan Ryan!"

On the television screen, John Wayne was putting someone in his place. I tried to picture him pushing through the swinging doors of a saloon, bellying up to the bar, telling the barkeep to bring him a Coke and a chloral hydrate.

I nursed my Coke, bided my time. When my glass was almost empty I crooked a finger for Tom. He came over and reached for my glass but I covered it with my palm. He looked at me, expressionless as ever, and I asked if Mickey Ballou had been in.

"There's people in and out," he said. "I wouldn't know their names."

There was a north-of-Ireland edge to his speech. I hadn't noticed it earlier. "You'd know him," I said.

"He's the owner, isn't he?"

"It's called Grogan's. Wouldn't it be Grogan that owns it?"

"He's a big man," I said. "Sometimes he wears a butcher's apron."

"I'm off at six. Perhaps he comes here nights."

"Perhaps he does. I'd like to leave word for him."

"Oh?"

"I want to talk to him. Tell him, will you?"

"I don't know him. And I don't know yourself, so what would I tell him?"

"My name is Scudder, Matt Scudder. I want to talk to him about Eddie Dunphy."

"I may not remember," he said, his eyes flat, his voice toneless.

"I'm not good with names."

I left, walked around, dropped in again around six-thirty. The crowd was larger, with half a dozen after-work drinkers ranged along the bar. Tom was gone, his place taken by a tall fellow with a lot of curly dark brown hair. He wore an open cowhide vest over a red-and-black flannel shirt.

I asked if Mickey Ballou had been in.

"I haven't seen him," he said. "I just got on myself. Who wants him?"

"Scudder," I said.

"I'll tell him."

I got out of there, had a sandwich by myself at the Flame, and went over to St. Paul's. It was Friday night, which meant a step meeting, and this week we were on the sixth step, in the course of which one becomes ready on some inner level to have one's defects of character removed. As far as I can tell, there's nothing in particular that you do to bring this about. It's just supposed to happen to you. It hasn't happened to me.

I was impatient for the meeting to end but I made myself stay for the whole thing anyway. During the break I took Jim Faber aside and told him I wasn't sure whether or not Eddie had died sober, that the autopsy had found chloral hydrate in his bloodstream.

"The proverbial Mickey Finn," he said. "You don't hear about it much anymore, now that the drug industry has given us so many more advanced little blessings. I only once heard of an alcoholic who used to take chloral hydrate for recreational purposes. She went through a period of controlled solitary drinking; every night she took a dose of chloral, pills or drops, I don't remember, and drank two beers.

Whereupon she passed out and slept for eight or ten hours."

"What happened to her?"

"Either she lost her taste for chloral hydrate or her source dried up, so she moved on to Jack Daniel's.

When she got up to a quart and a half of it daily, something told her she might have a problem. I wouldn't make too much of the chloral hydrate Eddie took, Matt. It might not bode well for his long-term sobriety, but where he is now it's no longer an issue. What's done is done."

Afterward I passed up the Flame and went straight to Grogan's. I spotted Ballou the minute I cleared the threshold. He wasn't wearing his white apron, but I recognized him without it.

He'd have been hard to miss. He stood well over six feet and carried a lot of flesh on a large frame. His head was like a boulder, massive and monolithic, with planes to it like the stone heads at Easter Island.

He was standing at the bar, one foot on the brass rail, leaning in to talk to the bartender, the same fellow in the unbuttoned leather vest I'd seen a few hours ago. The crowd had thinned out since then. There were a couple of old men in a booth, a pair of solitary drinkers strung out at the far end of the bar. In the back, two men were playing darts. One was Andy Buckley.

I went over to the bar. Three stools separated me from Ballou. I was watching him in the mirrored back bar when he turned and looked directly at me. He studied me for a moment, then turned to say something to the bartender.