"That must be it," I said. "I caught a glimpse of him last week in Grogan's, and I thought he looked familiar, and it's probably because I'd seen him the same as you did. And you're right, he's definitely got one of those faces."
"All those strong features," Danny Boy said, "and you don't expect to find them all on the same face, do you? That nose shouldn't go with that mouth."
I gave TJ a sketch of the slugger and folded one and tucked it in my wallet. As an afterthought I added a copy of the second sketch as well. I put everything else back in the padded mailing envelope.
I looked at my watch, and Danny Boy said, "The band'll be back in a couple of minutes. You want to catch the next set?"
"I was thinking I might go over to Brooklyn."
"To see our friend? You might find him in."
"And if not I could wait for him."
"Keep you company," TJ said. "He ain't in, you can tell me stories to pass the time, an' I can pretend I ain't heard 'em before."
"Past your bedtime," I said.
"You need someone to watch your back, Jack, 'specially when you's the wrong skin tone for the neighborhood. An' if you's to brace this dude Chili, you got to know two's better than one." At the concern in my face, he said, "Hey, I'll be safe. You armed and dangerous, man. You'll protect me."
"Just stay away from parked cars," Danny Boy said, and we both stared at him. "Oh, from when I was a kid," he said. "I told you about my list, right? Well, when I was growing up there were always a few kids every year who got run over by cars, and the cops sent someone around every spring and every fall to tell the schoolkids about traffic safety. You ever pull that detail, Matthew?"
"I was spared."
"There'd be this slide show, and an explanation of how each victim bought it. 'Mary Louise, age seven. Ran from between parked cars.' And half the time or more, that was it, running out from between parked cars. Because the motorist didn't see you coming."
"So?"
"So in my young mind, it was the parked cars that were dangerous. I'd sort of slink past them on the street, like they were crouched and ready to spring. Wasn't until later I realized that the cars that were parked were essentially benign. It was the moving ones that would kill you."
"Parked cars," I said.
"That's it. A fucking menace."
I thought for a moment, then turned to TJ. "If you really want to tag along to Brooklyn," I said, "why don't you do me a favor? Go to the men's room and stow this under your shirt."
He took the padded envelope, weighed it in his hand. "Don't seem fair," he said. "You got your state-of-the-art Kevlar vest, an' I got cardboard. You think this'll stop a bullet?"
"It's so you'll have your hands free," I said, "although I'm not sure that's an advantage. And put it in back, not in front, so that it doesn't spoil the lines of your shirt."
"Already planning on it," he said.
When he was out of earshot, I said, "I've been thinking about your list, Danny Boy."
"Just so you stay off it."
"How's your health?"
He gave me a look. "What did you hear?"
"Not a thing."
"Then what's the matter? Don't I look good?"
"You look fine. The question is Elaine's, as a matter of fact. It was her first reaction when I told her about your little list."
"She was always a perceptive woman," he said. "She's the real detective in the family, you know."
"I know."
"Well," he said, and folded his hands on the table. "I had this little operation."
"Oh?"
"Colon cancer," he said, "and they got it all. Caught it early and got it all."
"That's good news."
"It is," he agreed. "The surgery got it before it could spread, and they wanted to do chemo afterward just in case, and I let them. I mean, who's gonna roll the dice on that one, right?"
"Right."
"But it was the kind of chemo where you get to keep your hair, so it wasn't all that bad. The worst part was the colostomy bag, but there was a second operation to reattach the colon- Jesus, you don't want to hear this, do you?"
"No, go on."
"That's it, really. I felt a lot better about life after the second operation. A colostomy bag puts a crimp in a man's love life. There may be girls who are turned on by that sort of thing, but I hope I never meet one."
"I never heard a word, Danny Boy."
"Nobody did."
"You didn't want visitors?"
"Or cards in the mail, or phone calls, or any of that shit. Funny, because information's my life, but I wanted a lid on this. I trust you'll keep it quiet. You'll tell Elaine but that's all."
"Absolutely."
"There's always a chance of a recurrence," he said, "but they assure me it's slim. No reason I can't live to be a hundred. 'You'll die on someone else's specialty,' the doc tells me. I thought it was a nice way to put it." He poured himself some more vodka and left the glass on the table in front of him. "But it gets your attention," he said.
"It must."
"It does. That's when I started making the list. I knew all along that nobody lives forever, but I guess I didn't quite believe that it applied to me. And then I did."
"So you started writing down names."
"I suppose every name I put down was one more person I'd outlasted. I don't know what I thought that would prove. No matter how long your list gets, sooner or later you get to be the final entry on it."
"If I made a list," I said, "it'd be a long one."
"They all keep getting longer," he said, "until they don't. Here comes TJ, so we'll talk about something else. He's a good boy. Keep his name off the list, will you? And your own, too."
The rain had quit, at least for the time being. There were cabs cruising on Amsterdam and I hailed one. "Waste of time," TJ said. "He ain't about to go to Brooklyn."
I told the driver Ninth and Fifty-seventh. TJ said, "Why we goin' there, Claire?"
"Because I don't happen to have two grand on me," I said, "and Chilton Purvis might want a look at it."
"'Show me the money!' Mean to say we actually gonna pay him that much?"
"We're going to say so."
"Oh," he said, and thought it over. "You keep that kind of money 'round your house? I'da knowed that, I'da stuck you up."
We got out of the cab on the northeast corner and walked to the hotel entrance. "Let's go up for a minute," I said. "I want to use the phone to make sure I haven't got cops in the living room. And you can get that envelope for me. I'll leave it across the street."
Upstairs in his room he said, "If you was all along meanin' to leave the envelope at your house, why'd I have to stick it up under my shirt?"
"To make sure you wouldn't leave it in the cab."
"You wanted to talk private with Danny Boy."
"Go to the head of the class."
"I been at the head of the class all along, so ain't no need for me to go there. Wha'd you an' him talk about?"
"If I'd wanted to share it with you," I said, "I wouldn't have sent you to the men's room."
I called across the street, and talked to the machine until Elaine picked up and said the coast was clear. TJ and I went downstairs, and he waited at the hotel entrance while I crossed the street and entered the Parc Vendôme lobby. I went upstairs, got twenty hundred-dollar bills from our emergency stash, and told Elaine not to wait up.
Three cabbies in a row passed up the added incentive of a twenty-dollar tip for a ride to Brooklyn. There's a regulation, they have to take you anywhere in the five boroughs, but what are you going to do if they won't?
"That dude just now," TJ said. "He was tempted. He wouldn't do it for twenty, but he'da done it for fifty."
"The city'll do it for a buck and a half each," I said, and we walked over to Eighth and caught the subway.
There may have been a closer subway stop than the one where we got off. We wound up walking eight or ten blocks on East New York Avenue. It wasn't the best neighborhood in town, nor was this the best time to be in it- well after midnight when we left the subway station, and close to one by the time we found Tapscott Avenue.