"I guess not. Three twenty? Yeah, I guess that's as good a number as any." He got out a fat alligator wallet and counted out six fifties and a twenty. "Three-two-oh," he said, handing them to me. "If this drags on and on and you want more, you let me know. Good enough?"
"Good enough. Suppose I have to get in touch with you, Spinner?"
"Uh-uh."
"Okay."
"Like, you won't have to, and if I wanted to give you an address I couldn't anyway."
"Okay."
He opened the attachй and passed me a nine-by-twelve manila envelope sealed on both ends with heavy-duty tape. I took it from him and put it on the bench beside me. He gave the silver dollar a spin, picked it up, put it in his pocket, and beckoned to Trina for the check. I let him have it. He paid it and left a two-dollar tip.
"What's so funny, Matt?"
"Just that I never saw you grab a check before. And I've seen you pick up other people's tips."
"Well, things change."
"I guess they do."
"I didn't do that often, dragging down somebody's tips. You do lots of things when you're hungry."
"Sure."
He got to his feet, hesitated, put out his hand. I shook it. He turned to go, and I said, "Spinner?"
"What?"
"You said the kind of lawyers you know would open the envelope as soon as you left the office."
"You bet your ass they would."
"How come you don't think I will?"
He looked at me as though the question was a stupid one. "You're honest," he said.
"Oh, Christ. You know I used to take. I let you buy your way out of a collar or two, for Christ's sake."
"Yeah, but you were always square with me. There's honest and there's honest. You're not gonna open that envelope until you have to."
I knew he was right. I just didn't know how he knew it. "Take care of yourself," I said.
"Yeah, you too."
"Watch yourself crossing the street."
"Huh?"
"Watch out for buses."
He laughed a little, but I don't think he thought it was funny.
Later that day, I stopped off at a church and stuffed thirty-two dollars into the poor box. I sat in a rear pew and thought about the Spinner. He'd given me easy money. All I had to do to earn it was nothing at all.
Back in my room, I rolled up the rug and put Spinner's envelope beneath it, centering it under the bed. The maid runs the vacuum cleaner occasionally but never moves the furniture around. I put the rug back in place and promptly forgot about the envelope, and every Friday a call or a message would assure me that Spinner was alive and the envelope could stay right where it was.
Chapter 2
For the next three days I read the papers twice a day and waited for a phone call. Monday night I picked up the early edition of the Times on the way to my room. Under the heading of "Metropolitan Briefs" there's always a batch of crime items tagged "From the Police Blotter," and the last one was the one I was looking for. An unidentified male, white, height approximately five six, weight approximately one forty, age approximately forty-five, had been fished out of the East River with a crushed skull.
It sounded right. I'd have put his age a few years higher and his weight a few pounds lower, but otherwise it sounded very right. I couldn't know that it was Spinner. I couldn't even know that the man, whoever he was, had been murdered. The skull damage could have been done after he went into the water. And there was nothing in the item to indicate how long he'd been in the water. If it was more than ten days or so, it wasn't Spinner; I'd heard from him the Friday before.
I looked at my watch. It wasn't too late to call someone, but it was far too late to call someone and seem casual about it. And it was too early to open his envelope. I didn't want to do that until I was very certain he was dead.
I had a couple more drinks than usual, because sleep was a long time coming. In the morning I woke up with a headache and a bad taste in my mouth. I used aspirin and mouthwash and went down to the Red Flame for breakfast. I picked up a later Times, but there was nothing further on the floater. They had the same item as the earlier edition.
Eddie Koehler is a lieutenant now, attached to the Sixth Precinct in the West Village. I called from my room and managed to get through to him. "Hey, Matt," he said. "It's been a while."
It hadn't been all that long. I asked about his family and he asked about mine. "They're fine," I said.
"You could always go back there," he said.
I couldn't, for far more reasons than I wanted to go into. I couldn't start carrying a badge again, either, but that didn't keep him from asking his next question.
"I don't suppose you're ready to rejoin the human race, huh?"
"That's not going to happen, Eddie."
"Instead you got to live in a dump and scrounge for every buck. Listen, you want to drink yourself to death, that's your business."
"That's right."
"But what's the sense paying for your own drinks when you can drink free? You were born to be a cop, Matt."
"The reason I called-"
"Yeah, there has to be a reason, doesn't there?"
I waited for a minute. Then I said, "Something in the paper that caught my eye, and I thought maybe you could save me a trip to the morgue. They took a floater out of the East River yesterday. Little guy, middle-aged."
"So?"
"Could you find out if they identified him yet?"
"Probably. What's your interest?"
"I got a missing husband I'm sort of looking for. He fits the description. I could go down and take a look at him, but I only know him from photographs and after a little while in the water-"