He pulled out and drove off. He seemed to be driving all right for as far as I was able to track him. I hoped he didn’t have too far to go.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

I walked straight back to my hotel. The liquor stores were closed but the bars were still open. I passed them without much effort, resisted too the call of street whores on Fifty-seventh Street on either side of the Holiday Inn. I gave Jacob a nod, confirmed that I’d had no calls, and went upstairs.

Sanctimonious bastard. No better than I am. He’d been ugly drunk, with that defensive belligerence of the drinker who had exposed too much of himself. His words didn’t mean anything. He’d have addressed them to any companion, or to the night itself.

Still, they echoed in my head.

I got into bed but couldn’t sleep, got up and put the light on and sat on the edge of the bed with my notebook. I looked over some of the notes I made, then jotted down a point or two from our conversation in the bar on Tenth Avenue. I made a few further notes to myself, playing with ideas like a kitten with a yarn ball. I put the notebook down when the process reached a point of diminishing returns, with the same thoughts turning over and over upon themselves. I picked up a paperback I’d bought earlier but couldn’t get into it. I kept reading the same paragraph without getting the sense of it.

For the first time in hours I really wanted a drink. I was anxious and edgy and wanted to change it. There was a deli with a cooler full of beer just three doors from the hotel, and when had beer ever led me into a blackout?

I stayed where I was.

Chance hadn’t asked my reason for working for him. Durkin had accepted money as a valid motive. Elaine was willing to believe I was doing it because it was what I did, even as she turned tricks and God pardoned sinners. And it was all true, I could indeed use the money and detecting was what I did insofar as I did anything, it was as much of a profession as I had.

But I had another motive, and perhaps it was a deeper one. Searching for Kim’s killer was something I could do instead of drinking.

For awhile, anyway.

When I woke up the sun was shining. By the time I showered and shaved and hit the street it was gone, tucked away behind a bank of clouds. It came and went all day, as if whoever was in charge didn’t want to commit himself.