"He carrying any extra weight for it?"
"No."
"So what's it matter?"
The waitress came over and I ordered the spinach pie and a small Greek salad. When she moved off he said, "You spy the way she was scopin' us out? Like she wondering what fool put you and me at the same table. Then she realize we together, so she got to figure out why. Runs all the numbers through her mind, like you're a john and I'm a hustler, you're a cop and I'm some lowlife you're 'bout to bust."
I was wearing pleated gray slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar unbuttoned. TJ wore a shiny rayon vest striped vertically in black and scarlet, and nothing but brown skin under it. His pants were knee-length baggy black shorts. "I'm a cop on the take," I offered, "and you're a millionaire drug trafficker prepared to pay me off."
"You talkin'," he said. "The Excalibur's parked at the curb, Herb." He took a drink and wiped milk from his upper lip. "Say this Mims- what's his first name? El something."
"Eldoniah."
"Eldoniah. That from the Bible?"
"I don't know."
" 'I swear I don't know how those people come up with those names.' " He's a good mimic, and the line came out in a fairly accurate version of Long Island Lockjaw. In his own voice- or one of his voices, anyway- he said, "You clear Mims for this one killing, he still doin' the same twenty he doin' now."
I told him I wasn't interested in clearing Mims, who was clearly where he belonged. My food came, and while I ate I explained about the club of thirty-one.
He said, "Somebody be killing them."
"It looks that way."
"Who you figure doin' it, one of them or some other dude?"
"No way to tell."
"Have to be somebody with a reason, an' it ought to be more of a reason than killing a cabdriver for his coin bank." He finished his milk, wiped his mouth again. He said, "I been workin' some for Elaine. Mostly mindin' the store."
"She mentioned it."
"Kind of cool to watch people come in and take a look at me. Like they 'spect I'll grab something and go bookin' on out the door, an' then they catch on that I'm in charge."
"There are black people running stores all over the city," I said. "The antique store two doors up the street from Elaine is run by a black woman."
"Yeah, an' there's black receptionists in the big office buildings, and black folks at department-store information desks, all of 'em right out where you can see them. Thing is, they don't be lookin' like they just got in off the Deuce. They dressed for success, Bess."
"Has Elaine said anything?"
He shook his head. "She cool with it. But what I might do is keep some straight clothes on a hanger in her back room."
We talked about that some, and then he said, "I guess I could take a ride uptown, see what the brothers and sisters know about my uncle Eldoniah. Thing is, folks just be talkin' different types of trash. Dude's on the street, all he'll tell you is how bad he is, like he dusted six cops and robbed the Bank of England. Same dude's in prison, it's always for something he didn't do."
"I know," I said. "The prisons are all overcrowded, and none of those guys ever did what they went away for."
"I'll go up to the Bronx, see if anybody knows anything. All this is four years ago, that what you said?"
"It's been almost that long since Cloonan was killed. The murder Mims was tried for came later on, and the trial was postponed a couple of times. He's only been working on his twenty for the past year and a half."
"Makes it a little easier," he said. "Least there's a chance somebody'll remember who he was."
I got the check. While I was leaving the tip he said, "I was just thinking. These dudes in the club? How it's suspicious that half of 'em's dead after thirty years. Is that right, thirty years?"
"More like thirty-two."
"Thirty-two years," he said. "You couldn't start a club like that on the Deuce. Never mind no thirty-two years. 'Fore you knew it, you wouldn't have nobody left to have a meeting with. The ones that wasn't dead themselves, they most likely be locked up for killin' the other ones." He took a black Raiders cap from the back pocket of his shorts, tucked his hair into it, checked his reflection in the mirror. He said, "Group of dudes I knew four, five years ago, half of 'em's dead. Didn't take thirty-two years, neither. Dyin' must be easy, when I think of all the dudes caught on real quick how to do it."
"Try to be a slow learner," I said.
"Oh, I tryin'," he said. "I doin' the best I can."
11
I treated myself to the afternoon, catching a movie on Twenty-third Street, then walking downtown to the Village. I passed the apartment building that had risen where Cunningham's had once stood, and the brownstone a block away where Carl Uhl had been murdered. I got down to Perry Street in time for the four o'clock meeting and stood in the rear with a cup of coffee from the pastry shop around the corner.
The speaker told what a friend alcohol had been, and how it had turned on him. "Toward the end," he said, "it just didn't work anymore. Nothing worked. Nothing relaxed me, not even seizures."
While I waited for a bus on Hudson Street, a florist's display caught my eye. I had them wrap a dozen Dutch iris, rode the bus to Fifty-fourth, and walked over to Elaine's shop.
"These are beautiful," she said. "What brought this on?"
"They were going to be diamonds," I said, "but the client got cheap about the bonus."
"What bonus?"
"For the picture we took at Wallbanger's."
"Oh, God," she said. "What a crazy evening that was. I wonder how many bars like that there are in the city, with grown men and women sticking themselves to the wall."
"I know one on Washington Street," I told her, "where they stick each other to the wall, but they don't use Velcro."
"What do they use, Krazy Glue?"
"Manacles, leg irons."
"Oh, I think I know the place you mean. But didn't they have to close?"
"They reopened again under another name."
"Is it boys only these days? Or is it still boys and girls?"
"Boys and girls. Why?"
"I don't know," she said. "One isn't obliged to participate, is one?"
"One doesn't even have to walk in the door."
"I mean you can just observe, right?"
"Why you ask, kemo sabe?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'm interested."
"Oh?"
"Well, look how much fun we had at the Velcro Derby out in Queens. It might be even more of a hoot to watch people get kinky."
"Maybe."
"It would finally give me a chance to wear that leather outfit that I had no business buying."
"Ah, that's why you want to go," I said. "It's not sex at all, it's to make a fashion statement. You're right, though, it's the perfect costume for the well-dressed dominatrix. But what would I wear?"
"Knowing you, probably your gray glen-plaid suit. As a matter of fact you'd look really hot in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt."
"I don't own a black T-shirt."
"I'll get you one. I'd get you a black tanktop if I thought you'd wear it, but would you?"
"No."
"That's what I thought. Let me put these in water, and then I'll close up and you can walk me home. Unless the flowers were for the apartment?"
"No, I thought they'd look nice here."
"You're right, and I've even got an empty vase the right size. There, don't they look pretty? We'll stop at the Korean and pick up something for a salad, and I'll fix us some pasta and a salad and we'll eat at the kitchen table. How does that sound?"
I said it sounded fine.