“You know that vaudeville routine? ‘Doctor, it hurts when I do this.’ ‘So don’t do this!’ “

“So?”

“So maybe you should stop picking up the paper.” I gave him a look. “I’m serious,” he said. “Those stories bother me, too. So do the stories about the world situation. If the news was good they wouldn’t put it in the paper. But one day it struck me, or maybe I got the idea from somebody else, but it came to me that there was no law saying I had to read that crap.”

“Just ignore it.”

“Why not?”

“That’s the ostrich approach, isn’t it? What I don’t look at can’t hurt me?”

“Maybe, but I see it a little differently. I figure I don’t have to make myself crazy with things I can’t do anything about anyway.”

“I can’t see myself overlooking that sort of thing.”

“Why not?”

I thought of Donna. “Maybe I’m involved with mankind.”

“Me too,” he said. “I come here, I listen, I talk. I stay sober. That’s how I’m involved in mankind.”

I got some more coffee and a couple of cookies. During the discussion people kept telling the speaker how much they appreciated his honesty.

I thought, Jesus, I never did anything like that. And my eyes went to the wall. They hang these slogans on the wall, gems of wisdom like Keep It Simple and Easy Does It, and the sign my eyes went to as if magnetized read There But For The Grace Of God.

I thought, no, screw that. I don’t turn murderous in blackouts. Don’t tell me about the grace of God.

When it was my turn I passed.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Danny Boy held his glass of Russian vodka aloft so that he could look at the light shine through it. “Purity. Clarity. Precision,” he said, rolling the words, pronouncing them with elaborate care, “The best vodka is a razor, Matthew. A sharp scalpel in the hand of a skilled surgeon. It leaves no ragged edges.”

He tipped back the glass and swallowed an ounce or so of purity and clarity. We were at Poogan’s and he was wearing a navy suit with a red stripe that barely showed in the bar’s halflight. I was drinking club soda with lime. At another stop along the way a freckled-faced waitress had informed me that my drink was called a Lime Rickey. I had a feeling I’d never ask for it by that name.

Danny Boy said, “Just to recapitulate. Her name was Kim Dakkinen. She was a big blonde, early twenties, lived in Murray Hill, got killed two weeks ago in the Galaxy Downtowner.”

“Not quite two weeks ago.”

“Right. She was one of Chance’s girls. And she had a boyfriend, and that’s what you want. The boyfriend.”

“That’s right.”