“The one I feel sorry for is that poor little chambermaid. She’s from Ecuador, I think she’s an illegal, barely speaks a word of English, and she had to walk in on that.” He snorted. “You want to look at the body, give us a positive make? You’ll see something’ll stick in your memory.”

“Don’t you have an identification?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We got fingerprints. She was arrested once a few years back in Long Island City. Loitering with intent, fifteen days suspended. No arrests since then.”

“She worked in a house after that,” I said. “And then Chance put her in the apartment on Thirty-eighth Street.”

“A real New York odyssey. What else have you got, Scudder? And how do I get hold of you if I need you?”

I didn’t have anything else. I gave him my address and phone. We said a few more polite things to each other and I hung up and the phone rang. I owed forty-five cents for going over the three minutes my dime had bought me. I broke another dollar at the bar, put the money in the slot, and returned to the bar to order another drink. Early Times, straight up, water back.

This one tasted better. And after it hit bottom I felt something loosen up inside me.

At the meetings they tell you it’s the first drink that gets you drunk. You have one and it triggers an irresistible compulsion and without meaning it you have another and another and you wind up drunk again. Well, maybe I wasn’t an alcoholic because that wasn’t what was happening. I’d had two drinks and I felt a whole lot better than I did before I’d had them and I certainly didn’t feel any need to drink anymore.

I gave myself a chance, though. I stood there for a few minutes and thought about having a third drink.

No. No, I really didn’t want it. I was fine the way I was.

I left a buck on the bar, scooped the rest of my change, and headed for home. I walked past Armstrong’s and didn’t feel like stopping in. I certainly didn’t have the urge to stop for a drink.

The early News would be out by now. Did I want to walk down to the corner for it?

No, the hell with it.

I stopped at the desk. No messages. Jacob was on duty, riding a gentle codeine buzz, filling in the squares of a crossword puzzle.

I said, “Say, Jacob, I want to thank you for what you did the other night. Making that phone call.”

“Oh, well,” he said.

“No, that was terrific,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”