I tried Gary’s number in the morning. I let it ring and no one answered, neither man nor machine. I tried him again after breakfast with the same result. I took a long walk and tried the number a third time when I got back to the hotel. I put the television on, but all I could find were economists talking about the deficit and evangelists talking about the Day of Judgment. I turned them all off and the phone rang.

It was Willa. “I would have called you a little earlier,” she said, “but I wanted to make sure I was going to live.”

“Rough morning?”

“God. Was I impossible last night?”

“You weren’t so bad.”

“You could say anything and I couldn’t prove you wrong. I don’t remember the end of the evening.”

“Well, you were a little fuzzy there toward the end.”

“I remember having a second brandy at Paris Green. I remember telling myself that I didn’t have to drink it just because it was free. He bought us a round, didn’t he?”

“He did indeed.”

“Maybe he put arsenic in it. I almost wish he had. I don’t remember anything after that. How did I get home?”

“We walked.”

“Did I turn nasty?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You were drunk and you were in a blackout. You didn’t throw up, turn violent, or say anything indiscreet.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Positive.”

“I hate not remembering. I hate losing control.”

“I know.”

There’s a Sunday afternoon meeting in SoHo that I’ve always liked. I hadn’t been there in months. I usually would spend Saturdays with Jan. We’d make the rounds of the galleries and go out for dinner, and I’d stay over, and in the morning she’d fix a big brunch. We’d walk around and look in shops and, when the time came, go to the meeting.

When we stopped seeing each other, I stopped going.

I took a subway downtown and walked in and out of a lot of shops on Spring Street and West Broadway. Most of the SoHo art galleries close on Sunday, but a few stay open, and there was one show I liked, realistic landscapes, all of them of Central Park. Most of them showed only grass and trees and benches, with no buildings looming in the background, but it was nonetheless clear that you were looking at a distinctly urban environment no matter how peaceful and green it appeared. Somehow the artist had managed to instill the city’s hard-edged energy in the canvases, and I couldn’t figure out how he’d done it.

I went to the meeting, and Jan was there. I managed to focus on the qualification, and then during the break I went over and sat next to her.

“It’s funny,” she said. “I was thinking of you just this morning.”

“I almost called you yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“To see if you wanted to go out to Shea.”

“That’s really funny. I watched that game.”

“You were out there?”

“On television. You really almost called?”

“I did call.”

“When? I was home all day.”

“I let it ring twice and hung up.”

“I remember the call. I wondered who that was. As a matter of fact—”

“You wondered if it was me?”

“Uh-huh. The thought crossed my mind.” She had her hands in her lap and she was looking at them. “I don’t think I’d have gone.”

“To the game?”

She nodded. “But it’s hard to say, isn’t it? How I might have reacted. What you’d have said, what I’d have said.”

“Do you want to have coffee after the meeting?”

She looked at me, then looked away. “Oh, I don’t know, Matthew,” she said. “I don’t know.”

I started to say something, but the chairperson was rapping on the table with a glass ashtray to indicate that it was time to resume the meeting. I went back to where I’d been sitting. Toward the end I started raising my hand, and when I got called on I said, “My name is Matt and I’m an alcoholic. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time around people who are drinking. Some of it’s professional and some is social, and it’s not always easy to tell which is which. I spent an hour or two in a ginmill the other night having one of those rambling conversations, and it was just like old times except I was drinking Coke.”

I went on for another minute or two, saying what came to mind. Then someone else got called on and talked about how her building was going co-op and she didn’t see how she could afford to buy her apartment.

After the prayer, after the chairs were folded and stacked, I asked Jan if she felt like coffee. “Some of us go to the place around the corner,” she said. “Do you want to come along?”

“I thought just the two of us.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

I told her I’d walk her to where she was going and we could talk on the way. Once we were outside and had fallen into step together, I couldn’t think what it was I had wanted to say, and so we walked a little ways in silence.

I’ve missed you, I said a couple of times in my mind. Finally I said it aloud.

“Have you? Sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I think of the two of us and I feel sad.”

“Yes.”

“Have you been getting out?”

“I couldn’t get interested. Until the past week or so.”

“And?”

“I fell into something. Without looking for it, which I guess is the way it happens.”

“She’s not in the program.”

“Not hardly.”

“Does that mean she ought to be?”

“I don’t know who ought to be anymore. It doesn’t matter, the whole thing’s not going anywhere.”

After a moment she said, “I think I’d be afraid to spend a lot of time with someone who was drinking.”

“That’s probably a healthy fear.”

“Do you know about Tom?” We went back and forth for a moment, with her trying to describe a long-term member of downtown AA and me unable to place him. “Anyway,” she said, “he was sober for twenty-two years, kept up on his meetings, sponsored a lot of people, everything. And he was in Paris for three weeks over the summer, and he was walking down the street, and he fell into a conversation with this pretty French girl, and she said, ‘Would you like to have a glass of wine?’ “

“And he said?”

“And he said, ‘Why not?’ “

“Just like that.”

“Just like that, after twenty-two years and God knows how many thousands of meetings. ‘Why not?’ “

“Did he make it back?”

“He can’t seem to. He’s sober for two days, three days, and then he goes out and drinks. He looks terrible. His drunks don’t last long because he can’t stay out, he winds up in a hospital after a couple of days. But he can’t stay sober, and when he shows up at a meeting I can’t bear to look at him. I think he’s probably going to die.”

“The cutting edge,” I said.

“How’s that?”

“Just something somebody said.”

We turned the corner, reached the coffee shop where she was to meet her friends. She said, “Don’t you want to join us for a cup of coffee?” I said I didn’t think so, and she didn’t try to talk me into it.

I said, “I wish—”

“I know,” she said. She reached out a hand and held mine for a moment. “Eventually,” she said, “I think we’ll probably be able to feel easier with each other. Now’s too soon.”

“Evidently.”

“It’s too sad,” she said. “It hurts too much.”

She turned from me, headed for the coffee shop. I stood there until she was through the door. Then I started walking, not paying much attention to where I was going. Not much caring.

Once I’d walked out from under my mood I found a pay phone and tried Gary’s number. No one answered. I caught a subway uptown and walked over to Paris Green and found him behind the bar. The bar was empty but there were several tables of people who’d come for a late brunch. I watched as he made up a tray of Bloody Marys, then filled a pair of tulip-shaped glasses half with orange juice and half with champagne.

“The mimosa,” he said to me. “Reverse synergy, the whole less than the sum of its parts. Drink orange juice or drink champagne, I say, but not the two at once out of the same glass.” He proffered a rag and made a show of wiping the bar in front of me. “And what may I get you?”

“Is there coffee?”

He called to a waiter, ordered a cup of coffee for the bar. Leaning toward me, he said, “Bryce said you were looking for me.”

“Last night. And I called you at home a couple of times since then.”

“Ah,” he said. “Never made it home last night, I’m afraid. Thank God there are still ladies left in the world who find a poor barkeep a creature of romance and intrigue.” He grinned richly behind his beard. “If you’d reached me, what would you have said?”

I told him what I had in mind. He listened, nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I could do that. Thing is, I’m on until eight tonight. It’s slow enough right now but there’s nobody around who could cover for me. Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“How accomplished a bartender are you?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll come by for you around eight.”

I went back to my hotel and tried to watch the end of a football game but I couldn’t sit still. I got out of there and walked around. At some point I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and I made myself stop for a slice of pizza. I put a lot of the crushed red pepper on it, hoping it would stir me up a little.

A few minutes before eight I went back to Paris Green and drank a Coke while Gary evened out his cash and checks and turned it all over to his relief. We walked out together and he asked me the name of the place again. I told him, and he said he’d never noticed it. “But I’m not on Tenth Avenue much,” he said. “Grogan’s Open House? It sounds like your basic Irish saloon.”

“It pretty much is.”

We went over what I wanted him to do, and then I waited across the street while he ambled over to Grogan’s front entrance and walked in. I stood in a doorway and waited. The minutes crawled, and I was starting to worry that something had unaccountably gone wrong, that I’d pushed him into a dangerous situation. I was trying to decide whether I’d make things worse by going in myself. I was still mulling it over when the door swung open and he emerged. He had his hands in his pockets and he sauntered along, looking almost too carefree to be true.

I matched his pace for half a block, then crossed over to his side of the street. He said, “Do I know you? What’s the password?”

“Recognize anybody?”

“Oh, no question,” he said. “I wasn’t that certain I’d know him again, but I took one look and knew him right off. And he knew me.”

“What did he say?”

“Didn’t say much of anything, just stood in front of me waiting for me to order. I didn’t let on that I knew him.”

“Good.”

“But, see, he didn’t let on that he knew me, either, but I could see he did. The way he sent little glances my way. Ha! Guilty knowledge, isn’t that what they call it?”

“That’s what they call it.”

“It’s not a bad little store. I like the tile floor and all the dark wood. I had a bottle of Harp, and then I took a second bottle and watched two fellows shooting darts. One of them, I’m sure he must have spent a past life as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I kept thinking he was going to fall on the floor, but he never did.”

“I know who you mean.”

“He was drinking Guinness. That’s a shade too primal a flavor for my tastebuds to come to terms with. I suppose you could mix it with orange juice.” He shuddered. “I wonder what it’s like to work in a place like that, where the closest you get to a mixed drink is scotch and water or the odd vodka tonic. You could live your whole life and never hear anyone order a mimosa. Or a Harvey Wallbanger. Or a hickory dickory daiquiri.”

“What the hell is that?”

“You don’t want to know.” He shuddered again. I asked him if he’d recognized anyone else in the room. “No,” he said. “Only the bartender.”

“And he was the one you saw with Paula.”

“The very lad himself, as the boyos in Grogan’s might put it.” He mused again on the delights of working in a simple, honest bar, unadorned with potted ferns or earnest yuppies. “Of course,” he reminded himself, “the tips are pretty awful.”

And that reminded me. I’d set aside a bill earlier, and now I dug it out and slipped it to him.

I couldn’t get him to take it. “You brought a little excitement into my life,” he said. “What did it cost me, ten minutes and the price of two beers? Someday we’ll sit down and you can tell me how the whole thing turns out, and I’ll even let you buy the beers that night. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough. But they don’t always turn out. Sometimes they just trail off.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said.

I killed fifteen minutes, then went back to Grogan’s myself. I didn’t see Mickey Ballou in the room. Andy Buckley was in the back at the dart board, and Neil was behind the bar. He was dressed as he’d been Friday night, with the leather vest over the red buffalo-plaid shirt.

I stood at the bar and ordered a glass of plain soda water. When he brought it I asked if Ballou had been around. “He looked in earlier,” he said. “He might be back later on. You want me to tell him you were looking for him?”

I said it wasn’t important.

He moved off to the far end of the bar. I took a sip or two of my soda water and glanced his way from time to time. Guilty knowledge, Gary had called it, and that was what it felt like. It was hard to be sure of his voice, my caller the other morning had spoken in a hoarse half-whisper, but I had to figure it was him.

I didn’t know how much more I could find out. Or what I could possibly do with whatever I learned.

I must have stood there for half an hour, and he spent all that time down at the other end of the bar. When I left, my glass of soda wasn’t down more than half an inch from the top. He’d forgotten to charge me for it, and I didn’t bother to leave him a tip.

The manager at the Druid’s Castle said, “Oh, sure, Neil. Neil Tillman, sure. What about him?”

“He used to work here?”

“For around six months, something like that. He left sometime in the spring.”

“So he would have been here the same time Paula was here.”

“I think so, but I couldn’t say for certain without looking it up. And the book’s in the owner’s office, and that’s locked up right now.”

“Why did he leave?”

His hesitation was brief. “People come and go,” he said. “Our turnover rate would amaze you.”

“Why did you let him go?”

“I didn’t say we did.”

“But you did, didn’t you?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I’d rather not say.”

“What was his problem? Was he dealing out of the restaurant? Stealing too much of what came in over the bar?”

“I really don’t feel right talking about it. If you come back tomorrow during the day, you can probably learn what you want to know from the owner. But—”

“He’s a possible suspect,” I said, “in a possible homicide.”

“She’s dead?”

“It’s beginning to look that way.”

He frowned. “I really shouldn’t say anything.”

“You’re not talking for the record. It’ll just be for my own information.”

“Credit cards,” he said. “There was no hard evidence, that’s why I didn’t want to say anything. But it looked as though he was running duplicate slips with customers’ cards. I don’t know just what he was doing or how he was doing it, but there was something shady going on.”

“What did you say when you fired him?”

“I didn’t do it, the owner did. He just told Neil it wasn’t working out, and Neil didn’t push it. That looked pretty much like an admission of guilt, don’t you think? He’d worked here long enough so that you wouldn’t fire him without telling him the reason, but he didn’t want to know.”

“How did Paula fit in?”

“Did she? It never occurred to me that she did. She left on her own, she wasn’t fired, and I’m pretty sure she was still here after we let him go. If she was working with him—well, she could have been, but they never seemed close, you didn’t see them whispering in corners. I never thought of the two of them as involved in any way. There was no gossip, and I certainly didn’t pick up on anything.”

Around midnight I picked up a couple containers of coffee and planted myself diagonally across the street from Grogan’s. I found a doorway and sat there, drinking coffee and keeping an eye on the place. I figured I was reasonably inconspicuous there. There were a lot of guys in doorways, some of them sitting up, some lying down. I was better dressed than most of them, but not by all that much.

Time passed a little faster than when I’d stood around waiting for Gary. My mind would drift, working on a thread of the yarnball it had to grapple with, and ten or fifteen minutes would slip by before I knew it. Throughout it all I kept my eyes pointed at the entrance to Grogan’s. You have to let your mind wander on a stakeout, otherwise you drive yourself crazy with boredom, but you learn to program yourself so that your eyes will bring you back to basics if they register anything you ought to be paying attention to. Now and then some-one would walk in or out of Grogan’s, and that would bring me back from my reverie and I would take note of who it was.

A few minutes after one several people left at once, and moments after that the door opened to release four or five more. The only one I recognized in either batch was Andy Buckley. The door closed after the second group, and a few seconds later the overhead lights went out, leaving the place very dimly lit.

I crossed the street so that I was standing opposite the place. I could see better now, although the doorway I had to lurk in was shallower and not as comfortable. Neil looked to be moving around inside, doing whatever he did to shut the place down for the night. I drew back a little when the door opened and he dragged a Hefty bag out to the street and swung it up into a green Dumpster. Then he went back inside, and I heard the snick of the lock. It was faint, but you could hear it across the street if you were listening for it.

More time passed at a crawl. Then the door opened again and he came out. He drew the steel gates across and locked them. The saloon was still dimly illuminated inside. Evidently those lights stayed on all night for security.

When he had all the padlocks fastened I got to my feet, ready to move off after him. If he took a cab I could forget it, and if he wound up going down into the subway I would probably let him go, but I figured he was odds-on to live somewhere in the neighborhood, and if he walked home it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to tag him. I hadn’t been able to find him listed in the Manhattan phone book, so the easiest way to locate his residence was to let him lead me to it.

I wasn’t sure how I’d play it after that. By ear, probably. Maybe I’d catch up with him on his doorstep and see if he was rattled enough to spill anything. Maybe I’d wait and try to get into his apartment when he was out of it. First, though, I’d follow him and see where he went.

Except he didn’t go anywhere. He just stood there, lurking in his doorway even as I lurked in mine, drawing in his shoulders against the cold, bringing his hands to his mouth and blowing on them. It wasn’t all that cold, but then he didn’t have anything on over the shirt and the vest.

He lit a cigarette, smoked half of it, threw it away. It landed at the curb and sent up a little shower of sparks. As they were dying out, a car heading uptown on Tenth made a right and pulled up in front of Grogan’s, blocking my view of Neil. It was a Cadillac, a long one, silver. The glass was tinted all around and I couldn’t see who was driving, or how many people it held.

For a minute I expected gunshots. I thought I’d hear them, and then the car would pull away fast, and I’d see Neil clutching his middle and sinking to the pavement. But nothing like that happened. He trotted over to the car. The passenger door opened. He got in, closed the door.

The Cadillac pulled away, leaving me there.