Small Town

“And I’m supposed to have gone home with Marilyn Fairchild.



Home from where?”



“A bar called the Kettle of Fish, John. You wouldn’t happen to know it, would you? It’s a few blocks from here on Sheridan Square.”



“On Christopher Street,” he said. “Of course I know it. I probably go there three, four times a week. I went there when it was the Lion’s Head, and I stopped going there when it reopened as the Monkey’s Paw, and then the old Kettle of Fish, which was on Macdougal Street just about forever and then moved around the corner to West Third, well, they moved into the old Lion’s Head space, or at least the name moved there . . .”



“And you started drinking there again.”



“It’s one of the places I tend to go to. In the late afternoon, mostly, when the writing’s done for the day.”



“And sometimes at night, John? Like the night before last?”



“The night before last . . .”



“Take your time, give it some thought. You just think of something, John? You have the look of a man who just now thought of something.”



“Oh, for Chrissake,” he said. “That dizzy bitch.”



“You remember now, huh, John?”



“If it’s the same woman,” he said. “Short hair, sort of reddish brown? Lives on Waverly?”



“I believe it’s Charles Street,” Reade said.



“But you’re right about the hair,” Slaughter said. “The length and the color. You’re doing great, John.”



Patronizing son of a bitch. “Charles Street,” he said. “We walked up Waverly from the Kettle, but I guess she was around the corner on Charles. Must have been Charles. What’s her name supposed to be? Marilyn Fairchild? Because that’s not the name she gave me.”



“And what name did she give you, John?”



“I might recognize it if I heard it again. I don’t think we got as far as last names, but the first name she gave me certainly wasn’t Marilyn.”



“You met her in the Kettle of Fish, John.”



“I was having a drink at the bar. She walked in and picked me up.”



“She picked you up.”



“Why, isn’t that how she remembers it? If I’d have been looking to pick somebody up, I wouldn’t have gone to the Kettle.”



“Why not?”



“People go there to drink,” he said. “And to talk and hang out.



Sometimes you might go home with somebody, but it’ll most likely be somebody you’ve known forever from a whole lot of boozy conversations, and one night you’re both drunk enough to think you ought to go home together, and it generally turns out to be a mistake, but the next time you run into each other you both either pretend it never happened or that you had a good time.”



“And that’s how it was with Marilyn Fairchild?” He shook his head. “That’s the point. She wasn’t a regular, or at least I never saw her there before. And she walked in and scanned the bar like she was shopping, and I guess I was close enough to what she was looking for, because she came right over to me and put a cigarette between her lips.”



“So you could light it for her.”



“Except she took it out,” he remembered, “and saw my cigarettes on the bar.”



“Camels.”



“And she said how she hadn’t had one of those in ages, and I gave her one and lit it for her, and I said if she was going to smoke she’d better drink, too, and I bought her whatever she was having.”



“Wild Turkey.”



“Is that what it was? Yes, by God, it was, because the next thing I knew she was saying she had a whole bottle of the stuff just around the corner, and she whisked me out of there and up to her apartment, and I might like to flatter myself that I picked her up, but it was very much the other way around. She picked me up.”



“And took you home.”



“That’s right. What does she say happened? I picked her up?”



“Why do you figure she would say that, John?”



“Who the hell knows what she’d say? She was a dizzy bitch. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m too fucking old for barroom pickups, I really am. I’m forty-seven, I’ll be forty-eight next month, I’m too old to go around sleeping with people I don’t know.”



“Sometimes, though, a couple of drinks . . .”



“It clouds your judgment,” he agreed.



“And you had more drinks at her apartment?”



“A drink. Then I went home.”



“One drink and you went home?”



“That’s what I just said. What’s her story?”



“Right now we just want to get your story, John.”



“Why? Did she make a complaint? If she did, I think I have a right to hear it before I respond to it. What does she say I did?” They looked at each other, and he took a step backward, as if someone had struck him a blow in the chest. He said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”



“What makes you say that, John?”



“That’s why you’re here. What happened to her? What did she do, go out looking for somebody else?”



“Why would she do that, John?”



“Because she was still horny, I guess.”



“What did you do, John? Turn the lady down? Had a glass of her Wild Turkey and decided you didn’t want to get naked with her after all?”



“The chemistry wasn’t right.”



“So you kept your clothes on?”



“I didn’t say that.”



“You took them off?”



He stood still for a long moment. They were asking more questions but he had stopped listening. He turned from them, walked to his desk.



“John?”



“I want to make a phone call,” he said. “I have a right to make a phone call, don’t I?”



“You’re not under arrest, John,” Slaughter said, and Reade told him it was his phone, and of course he had the right to use it. But if he could answer a few questions first maybe they could get this all cleared up and then he could make all the calls he wanted.



Yeah, right. He dialed, and Nancy put him through to Roz. “I need a lawyer,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of cops here, and I think I’m a suspect in the murder of a woman I met the other night.” He looked across the desk at them. “Is that right? Am I a suspect?” They didn’t respond, but that was as good as if they had.



He talked for a minute or two, then replaced the receiver. “No more questions,” he said. “I’m done talking until my lawyer gets here.”



“Was that your lawyer just now, John?”



He didn’t have a lawyer. The last lawyer he’d used was the moron who represented him in the divorce, and he’d since heard the guy was ill with something, and could only hope he’d died of it. He needed a criminal lawyer, and he didn’t know any, had never had need of one. And Roz wasn’t a lawyer, she was a literary agent, but she’d know what to do and whom to call.



He didn’t say any of this, however. He sat at his desk, and they continued to ask questions, but he’d answered as many questions as he was going to.



And, now that he’d stopped saying anything, one of them, Slaughter or Reade, took a card from his wallet and read him his Miranda rights. Now that he’d finally elected to remain silent, now that he’d finally called for an attorney, they told him it was his right to do so.



He had the feeling he’d already said a lot more than he should have.



four



L’AIGLON D’OR WASon Fifty-fifth between Park and Madison, and had been there for decades. A classic French restaurant, it had long since ceased to be trendy, and the right side of the menu guaranteed that it would never be a bargain. The great majority of its patrons had been coming for years, cherishing the superb cuisine, the restrained yet elegant decor, and the unobtru-sively impeccable service. The tables, set luxuriously far apart, were hardly ever all taken, nor were there often more than two or three of them vacant. This, in fact, was very much as the proprietor preferred it. A Belgian from Bruges, who most people assumed was French, he wanted to make a good profit, but hated to turn anyone away. “The man who cannot get a table one week,” he had said more than once, “will not come back the next week.” In response, one customer quoted Yogi Berra— Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded. The proprietor nodded in agreement. “Précisément,” he said. “If it is too crowded, no one comes.” Francis Buckram saw he was a few minutes early and had the cab drop him at the corner. He found things to look at in a couple of Madison Avenue shop windows, and contrived to make his entrance at 8:05.



They were waiting for him at the table, three middle-aged men in dark suits and ties. Buckram, wearing a blazer and tan slacks, wondered if he should have chosen a suit himself. His clothes had nothing to apologize for, the blazer was by Turnbull & Asser, the slacks were Armani, the brown wing tips were Allen Edmonds, and he knew he wore the clothes well, but did they lack the gravitas the meeting required?



No, he decided, that was the point. The meeting was their idea, and he wasn’t coming hat in hand. Insouciance was the ticket, not gravitas.



Fancy words for a cop.



Well, he was a fancy kind of a cop, always had been. Always had the expensive clothes and the extensive vocabulary, and knew when to trot them out and when to leave them in the closet. Grow-ing up in Park Slope, he’d been as well liked as Willy Loman ever hoped to be, and he was good enough in sports and enough of a cutup in class to mask an ambition that got him a full scholarship to Colgate. That was the next thing to Ivy League and a healthy cut above Brooklyn College, which was where most of his classmates went, if they went anywhere at all. He’d surprised them by going away to a fancy school, and he surprised his classmates at Colgate by going straight from the campus to the NYPD. He’d scored well on the LSAT and got accepted at four of the five law schools he’d applied to, told them all thanks but no thanks and went on the cops.



He stopped at the bar to say hello to Claudia Gerndorf, who’d profiled him for New York magazine shortly after he was appointed commissioner. She introduced him to her companion, a labor leader he’d met in passing, and he gave the man a nod and a smile but didn’t offer to shake hands. The guy had never been arrested, not so far as Buckram knew, but that didn’t mean his hands were clean enough to shake.



“I’ve got a column now in the New York Observer,” she said.



“You know, we really ought to sit down one of these days and catch up.”



“We’ll do that,” he said. “Meanwhile, there’s a table of fellows I’ve got to sit down with right now.”



And you can put that in your column, he thought. Former Police Commissioner Francis J. Buckram—and don’t make it Francis X., assuming that every Francis gets stuck with Xavier for a middle name, and for God’s sake don’t make the last name Bush-man—that Francis J. Buckram was spotted at a fashionable East Side eatery, sharing vichyssoise and frogs’ legs with three real estate heavies. He might not get anything out of the evening but heartburn and a headache, but a little ink linking his name with some serious New York money couldn’t do him any harm.