Acceptable Losses (27 page)

“Who knows? I suppose I ought to call him.”

“What for?” Weinstein looked surprised.

“To tell him the truth, for example. Certain men—like me for example—have a habit of examining their consciences.”

“Conscience-shomscience,” Weinstein said impatiently. “What is this—Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for the goyim? If the guy ever had any reason for shooting you before, he’d be ten times more likely to do it if you called him. He’s got enough troubles as it is. Just to satisfy some crazy, egotistic notion of how you think an upright seducer ought to behave, you’d put another monkey on his back. Anyway, from your account the lady was over twenty-one and knew just what she was doing. And how do you know there weren’t eleven other guys in there at the same time?”

“Of course,” Damon said, “that’s a possibility.”

“A lot more than a possibility. She may be gaga now but she wasn’t gaga eleven years ago. You told Schulter I was your bodyguard. I see I have to be your brain guard, too.”

Damon was shaken by Weinstein’s vehemence, but hurt because of the jeering references to his conscience. The boyhood friend had become an accuser, and for a moment he regretted that Weinstein had recognized him as he drove past the lawn where Weinstein had been spading the flower bed. “You talk like a cop,” he said. “If the crime isn’t actually on the statute books, even if what’s happening is right under your nose, you turn and look the other way.”

“You’re damn right I talk like a cop,” Weinstein said. “And a cop doesn’t go around
inventing
trouble. If your conscience is bothering you, give a donation to some orphan home. Or go to confession and admit you were a sinner and mean to sin no more and drop a ten-dollar bill in the poor box.” There was no adolescent friendship in his voice. “And one more thing. What about your wife? What do you think she’ll do—say, welcome home, I’m delighted you finally have a family? Grow up, Roger, grow up. You’re in deep enough as it is. Don’t dig the hole any deeper.”

“You’re talking too loud,” Damon said. “People’re looking over here to see what the roaring is about. Maybe there’ll come a time when she has to know and I’ll speak then.”

“I hope you never have that conversation. And if you do, just make sure that I’m not there for it.”

They marched swiftly downtown through the deepening twilight, neither of them speaking. By the time they reached Fourteenth Street, Damon’s temper had subsided. He glanced sideways at Weinstein. Weinstein’s face was set in stubborn lines.

“Hey, shortstop,” Damon said. “Truce?”

For a moment Weinstein’s expression didn’t change. Then he grinned. “Of course, old buddy,” he said. He reached out and patted Damon’s arm.

Before going out to dinner, he helped Damon put the books down in the cellar and arrange the records. Damon hung Sheila’s coat in her closet, and Weinstein commenced putting the phonograph arm together and stringing a wire for the radio’s antenna. It didn’t take long, and Damon made himself a drink and sipped at it placidly after putting the first record, the Beethoven triple concerto, on the phonograph.

In the middle of the record, the telephone rang. Damon stiffened. “Go ahead,” Weinstein said. “Answer it.”

Damon put down his drink, went over to the telephone, hesitated, his hand in the air over the instrument, then picked it up. “Hello,” he said.

“This is Oliver. I just called to let you know that if I’d bet you about the Yeats, you’d have won.” He laughed. “I’ve looked all over. It’s not in the house. You’re a wise old librarian, partner. See you on Monday. Have a nice weekend. We’re going out to the Hamptons in the morning and I want you to know the blazer’s going to get its first workout.”

Weinstein had been watching Damon intently. When Damon hung up, he said, “Well … ?”

“It was Oliver Gabrielsen. About a book.”

“Listen, Roger,” Weinstein said. “I’ll never answer the phone. If the guy calls, I don’t want him to know that there’s another man in the house.”

“Right you are.”

“And I won’t pick up the other phone,” Weinstein said. “I don’t want him hearing a second click.”

“I wouldn’t have thought about that.”

Weinstein nodded. “You’re in another line of business.”

“I’m learning fast.”

“Too bad,” Weinstein said. “I hope you don’t go too far—suspicious of everybody and everything at all times, like me. Where’s your kitchen? Do you want me to fix us dinner? I’ve gotten to be a pretty good cook since my wife died.”

“There’s nothing in the house,” Damon said. “And I want to honor you as a welcome guest with a fine non-detective-cooked French dinner.”

“I’ll come quietly, officer,” Weinstein said. “Bring on the dancing girls.”

There were no dancing girls, but Weinstein ploughed happily through a bowl of onion soup and a steak
marchand de vin.
The waiter looked at him disdainfully as he served the table because Weinstein had ordered a black coffee immediately after they sat down and ordered another cup to wash down the steak, while Damon treated himself with a half-bottle of California red wine.

Weinstein ate hugely, consuming a half-dozen slices of bread with his meal and piling the french-fries into his mouth. But at the end of the meal, which he had topped off with a large slice of apple tart with ice cream and still another cup of coffee, he leaned back, saying, “Ah, I could have really done this stuff justice when I was young and still had a real appetite and never enough money to eat in anything but diners. Well,” he said, “if this is what the job is going to be like, I won’t mind if that guy doesn’t show up before I’m ninety. Ah, Roger …” his voice lowered into sentimentality … “we were such good friends … all these years …” He made a large sweeping gesture with his hands as though to encompass the lost decades. “Why did we have to wait for something lousy to happen before we saw each other again?”

“Because the human race never gets its values straight,” Damon said somberly.

That night, although Weinstein’s snores lived up to his wife’s description of them and the house resounded with the regular crescendo and diminuendo of Weinstein’s breathing, Damon slept without dreams. With no alarm clock to wake him because it was Saturday and not a working day, he slept till nearly ten o’clock, later than any time since he had been in the Merchant Marine and was on leave after a voyage on which six ships of his convoy had been sunk.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

T
HE WEEKEND PASSED PLEASANTLY.
It turned out that Weinstein was a movie buff, with a special taste for films about criminals and murders, laughing hilariously at the most serious moments of the entertainments, when detectives shot it out with suspects or infallibly unraveled plots that were so complicated that no one in the audience, and certainly not Weinstein, could follow them. In between he regaled Damon with tales of his own life on the force. New Haven, Damon learned in the two days, was not only the home of Yale University. Damon enjoyed the two days and now did not regret having been driving past the Weinstein house just as his old friend had started to prepare his garden for the spring planting. On Sunday night Weinstein insisted upon making their dinner himself, a Yankee pot roast with mashed potatoes, green peas, a thick gravy, and for dessert an apple pie. With an apron around his copious middle, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his powerful hairy forearms and the pistol butt jutting out of the shoulder holster strapped across his chest, he was an incongruous sight in the small kitchen, bustling among the pots and pans and deftly cleaning up after himself like the most experienced of chefs. Damon found himself laughing at the sight as he came into the kitchen, attracted by the odors floating through the apartment. Weinstein looked at him dourly. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“You.” Then, placatingly, “It all smells delicious.”

“Iron rations,” Weinstein said. “You ought to taste my meals when I have really
appreciative
eaters at the table.”

After dinner they went to a bar below Washington Square. It was dimly but cozily lit and while the other drinkers along the long mahogany bar almost disappeared in the distance, there was enough light so that you could see the faces near you. At the far end of the bar, high up on a shelf, there was a television set. It was lit, but the sound was mercifully off.

The owner, Tony Senagliago, believed in serious drinking. While he was willing to indulge his patrons’ taste for the networks’ offerings to the extent of providing them with silent images which threw a constantly flickering rainbow of colors down the room, he understood that his best customers liked to drink in silence or in quiet conversation with their friends. It was not a bar in which people cruised for girls or men. Women, alone or in pairs or threes were, as courteously as possible, offered tables of their own. When they insisted upon standing or sitting at the bar, Tony would say, regretfully, “Well there’s no law against it,” and make sure that they were served with the utmost lethargy by his barmen. He had no fear of being called a male chauvinist pig and Damon liked and admired him for it. He was a thoughtful reader and in the good old times of the Village, a great many writers had run up tabs at his joint, as he called it. When a particularly good book came into the office Damon always gave Tony a copy and after the man had read it, listened with respect to his opinions.

“Nice place,” said Weinstein, looking around as they settled themselves on high stools next to each other at the bar.

“Many a pleasant afternoon and evening,” Damon said. “What’s your pleasure?” he asked, remembering the barman in the bar on Sixth Avenue where he had lost the answering machine and been knocked down while trying to stop a fight. This was a better bar, he thought, and a happier time.

For once Weinstein ordered a beer. As Damon sipped his Scotch and soda and Weinstein the beer, Weinstein said, “I guess one beer won’t kill me. Although the doctors swear that a single teaspoon of the stuff’ll make an alcoholic start sliding down into the pit again.”

“You?” Damon asked, surprised. “Were you ever a drinker?”

“Let’s say, I was
on
the drink,” Weinstein said gravely. “I ran into a tree with my wife in the car and I swore off. That was eight years ago. Did you know that my mother had gin bottles stashed all over the house?”

“No.”

“Well, she did.”

Damon shook his head wonderingly. That perfect motherly lady, with the blue apron trimmed with lace who had served them milk and cookies in the afternoon. The street he had lived on as a boy had not been as innocent as he remembered it.

After the disagreement on Friday evening they had spoken no more about Julia Larch and her son. Damon had the feeling that Weinstein was convinced that he had won
that
argument and Damon had given up the idea of getting in touch with Julia’s husband. Weinstein was clearly a man who was not used to losing arguments.

“Drinking,” Weinstein was saying, “is like bicycle riding—no matter how long you lay off, you never forget how to do it.” He had finished his first beer and was calling for another. “If I order a third,” he told Damon, “you have my permission to break my arm.”

“It makes you more human,” Damon said. “Finally, a weakness.”

“If weakness is human,” Weinstein said somberly, “I’m as fucking human as they come.” Then he switched the subject abruptly. “I don’t think we’re fooling your Oliver Gabrielsen.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“When you went out of the room to talk to Miss Walton for a minute, he asked me why I didn’t take off my jacket. It was warm in the office, he said, and I’d be more comfortable. And while he was talking to me, he kept looking at the bulge under my shoulder. And he asked me where I got my degree in literature.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I invented a place in Oklahoma. I got to remember the name, in case he asks me again. Butnam Christian University. That was the name of my boss on the force.”

Damon laughed. “If I know Oliver, he’ll look it up. What if he tells you it doesn’t exist?”

“I’ll tell him it went out of business during the war.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to tell him the truth right away? He’s wise to most of what’s happening, anyway. My wife briefed him.”

Weinstein looked irritated. “What is this with you and the truth? Some sort of obsession? Ever hear the phrase—‘need to know’?”

“Yes. They used it on the Manhattan Project when they were making the atomic bomb. Just tell people what’s necessary to do their job and no more.”

“It’s a good rule,” Weinstein said. “Everywhere. In government, police work, marriage. Do you think your wife needs to know about you and that crazy woman out in Indiana?”

“Not right now, no,” Damon said.

“What do you mean, not right now? Not ever. You tell me you’ve got a good marriage. What the hell sense would there be in breaking it up?”

“Let’s drop it for a while, eh?” Damon said. “But speaking of marriage, how is it you never got married again?”

“I’d like to say I’m a one-woman man,” Weinstein said. “But I’d be lying. Marriage …” He shrugged, then took a long draught of his second beer. “Who’d marry me? A fat old cop with a face like the beach at Iwo Jima, on a pension that just keeps me in meat and potatoes. What do you think I’d get? A maiden school teacher who’s been turned down by every man she’s ever met, a widow with dyed hair and tits down to her waist who’s been advertising in the personal columns for a gentleman companion with similar tastes, a divorced lady with five kids who’s used to cops because her husband was a traffic policeman? Naa …” He finished his beer with another mighty gulp. “I got a lot of respect for two things. Myself and sex. I’d lose them both just by saying two fucking words—‘I do.’” He stared darkly at the empty glass on the bar in front of him. “In the Jewish religion it says that when a wife dies the husband should marry the wife’s sister. I was passing fond of my wife and I wouldn’t mind doing that.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“My wife didn’t have a sister.” He laughed hoarsely, like a stand-up comedian enjoying his own joke.