Somewhere in the course of things we stopped at the Apollo, a coffee shop on Flatbush. We all ordered the souv-laki. It was good, but Kenan hardly touched his. In the car afterward he said, "I should have ordered eggs or something. Ever since the other night I got no taste for meat. I can't eat it, it turns my stomach. I'm sure I'll get over it, but for the time being I've got to remember to order something else. It makes no sense, ordering something and then you can't bring yourself to eat it."
PETER drove me home in the Camry. He was staying at Colonial Road, he'd been there since the kidnapping, sleeping on the couch in the living room, and he needed to stop by his room to pick up clothes.
Otherwise I'd have called a livery service and taken a taxi. I'm comfortable enough on the subway, I rarely feel unsafe on it, but it seemed a false economy to stint on cab fare with ten thousand dollars in my pocket. I'd have felt pretty silly if I ran into a mugger.
That was my retainer, two banded stacks of hundreds with fifty bills in each, two packets of bills indistinguishable from the eighty packets paid to ransom Francine Khoury. I've always had trouble putting a price on my services, but in this case I'd been spared the decision.
Kenan had dropped the two stacks on the table and asked if that was enough to start with. I told him it was on the high side.
"I can afford it," he said. "I've got plenty of money. They didn't tap me out, they didn't come close."
"Could you have paid the million?"
"Not without leaving the country. I've got an account in the Caymans with half a mil in it. I had just under seven hundred large in the safe here. Actually I probably could have raised the other three here in town, if I made a few phone calls. I wonder."
"What?"
"Oh, crazy thinking. Like suppose I paid the mil, would they have returned her alive? Suppose I never pressed on the phone, suppose I was polite, kissed their asses and all."
"They'd have killed her anyway."
"That's what I tell myself, but how do I know? I can't keep myself from wondering if there was something I could have done. Suppose I played hardball all the way, not a penny paid unless they showed me proof she was alive."
"She was probably already dead when they called you."
"I pray you're right," he said, "but I don't know. I keep thinking there must have been some way I could have saved her. I keep figuring it was my fault."
* * *
WE took expressways back to Manhattan, the Shore Parkway and the Gowanus into the tunnel. Traffic was light at that hour but Pete took it slow, rarely pushing the Camry past forty miles an hour. We didn't talk much at first, and the silences tended to stretch.
"It's been some couple of days," he said finally. I asked him how he was holding up. "Oh, I'm all right,"
he said.
"Have you been getting to meetings?"
"I'm pretty regular." After a moment he said, "I haven't had a chance to get to a meeting since this shit started. I've been, you know, pretty busy."
"You're no good to your brother unless you stay sober."
"I know that."
"There are meetings in Bay Ridge. You wouldn't have to come into the city."
"I know. I was gonna go to one last night, but I didn't get to it." His fingers drummed the steering wheel.
"I thought maybe we'd get back in time to get over to St. Paul's tonight, but we missed it. It's gonna be way past nine by the time we get there."
"There's a ten o'clock meeting on Houston Street."
"Oh, I don't know," he said. "By the time I get to my room, pick up what I need—"
"If you miss the ten there's a midnight meeting. Same place, Houston between Sixth and Varick."
"I know where it is."
Something in his tone did not invite further suggestion. After a moment he said, "I know I shouldn't let my meetings slide. I'll try to make the ten o'clock. The midnight, I don't know about that. I don't want to leave Kenan alone for that long."
"Maybe you'll catch a Brooklyn meeting tomorrow during the day."
"Maybe."
"What about your job? You're letting that slide?"
"For the time being. I called in sick Friday and today, but if they wind up letting me go it's no big deal.
Job like that's not hard to come by."
"What is it, messenger work?"
"Delivering lunches, actually. For the deli on Fifty-seventh and Ninth."
"It must be hard, working a get-well job like that while your brother's raking it in."
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I have to keep all that separate, you know? Kenan wanted me to work for him, with him, whatever you want to call it. I can't be in that business and stay sober.
It's not that you're around drugs all the time, because actually you're not, there's not that much physical contact with the product. It's the whole attitude, the mind-set, you know what I mean?"
"Sure."
"You were right, what you said about meetings. I've been wanting to drink ever since I found out about Francey. I mean about her being kidnapped, before they did what they did. I haven't come close or anything but it's hard keeping the thought out of my mind. I push it away and it comes right back."
"Have you been in touch with your sponsor?"
"I don't exactly have one. They gave me an interim sponsor when I first got sober, and I called him fairly regularly at first but we more or less drifted apart. He's hard to get on the phone, anyway. I should find a regular sponsor, but for some reason I never got around to it."
"One of these days—"
"I know. Do you have a sponsor?"
I nodded. "We got together just last night. We generally have dinner Sunday, go over the week together."
"Does he give you advice?"
"Sometimes," I said. "And then I go ahead and do what I want."
WHEN I got back to my hotel room, the first call I made was to Jim Faber. "I was just talking about you," I told him. "A fellow asked if my sponsor gives advice, and I told him how I always do exactly what you suggest."
"You're lucky God didn't strike you dead on the spot."
"I know. But I've decided not to go to Ireland."
"Oh? You seemed determined last night. Did it look different to you after a night's sleep?"
"No," I admitted. "It looked about the same, and this morning I went to a travel agent and managed to get a cheap seat on a flight leaving Friday evening."
"Oh?"
"And then this afternoon somebody offered me a job and I said yes. You want to go to Ireland for three weeks? I don't think I can get my money back for the ticket."
"Are you sure? It's a shame to lose the money."
"Well, they told me it was nonrefundable, and I already paid for it.
It's all right, I'm making enough on the job so that I can write off a couple hundred. But I did want to let you know that I wasn't on my way to the land of Sodom and Begorrah."
"It sounded like you were setting yourself up," he said. "That's why I was concerned. You've managed to hang out with your friend in his saloon and still stay sober—"
"He does the drinking for both of us."
"Well, one way or another it seems to work. But on the other side of the ocean with your usual support system thousands of miles away, and with you restless to begin with—"
"I know. But you can rest easy now."
"Even if I can't take the credit."
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "Maybe it's your doing. God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to
perform."
"Yeah," he said. "Doesn't He just."
ELAINE thought it was too bad I wouldn't be going to Ireland after all. "I don't suppose there was any possibility of postponing the job," she said.
"No."
"Or that you'll be done by Friday."
"I'll barely be started by Friday."
"It's too bad, but you don't sound disappointed."