"Uh-huh. How about what it does to you?"

"Ha," he said. "Now that's something else, isn't it?" He picked the glass up again, put the glass down again. "I guess you're pretty strong on this AA stuff, huh?"

"It saved my life."

"You been sober awhile, huh? Two, three years?"

"More like ten."

"Jesus," he said. "No, uh, little vacations along the way?"

"Not so far."

He nodded, taking it in. "Ten years," he said.

"You do it a day at a time," I told him. "It tends to add up."

"You still go to the meetings after all this time? How often do you go?"

"At first I went every day. Sometimes I went to two or three meetings a day during the early years. I'll still go every day when I feel like drinking, or if I'm under a lot of stress. And sometimes I'll let my attendance drop to one or two meetings a week. Most of the time, though, I go to three or four meetings a week."

"Even after all these years. Where do you find the time?"

"Well, I always had time to drink."

"Yeah, I guess drinking does pass the time, doesn't it?"

"And it's easy to find meetings that fit into my schedule. That's a nice thing about New York, there are meetings around the clock."

"Oh, yeah?"

I nodded. "All over town," I said. "There's a group on Houston Street that has a meeting every day at midnight and another at two in the morning. What's ironic is the meeting place was one of the city's most notorious after-hours joints for years. They stayed open late then and they still do today."

He thought that was pretty funny. I excused myself and went to the john, stopping on the way back to use the phone. I was pretty sure there was a late meeting on East Eighty-second Street, but I wanted to make sure of the time and the exact address. I called Intergroup, and the woman who answered the phone didn't even have to look it up.

Back at our table, Shorter was still looking at the same half-ounce of beer. I told him there was a meeting in the neighborhood at ten o'clock and that I thought I would probably go to it. I hadn't been to a meeting in a couple of days, I told him, which was a lie. I could use a meeting, I said, which was true.

"You want to go, Jim?"

"Me?"

Who else? "Come on," I said. "Keep me company."

"Gee, I don't know," he said. "I just had these beers, and I had one or two earlier."

"So?"

"Don't you have to be sober?"

"Just so you don't start shouting and throwing chairs," I said. "But I don't think you're likely to do that, are you?"

"No, but-"

"It doesn't cost anything," I said, "and the coffee and cookies are generally free. And you hear people say really interesting things." I straightened up. "But I don't want to talk you into anything. If you're positive you haven't got a problem-"

"I never said that."

"No, you didn't."

He got to his feet. "What the hell," he said. "Let's go before I change my mind."

17

The meeting was in a brownstone on Eighty-second Street off Second Avenue. An AA group had rented the second floor and held half a dozen meetings there every day, starting at seven in the morning and ending at eleven. In concession to their residential neighbors, there was no applause at the late meeting; one indicated approval or enthusiasm by snapping one's fingers.

The speaker was a construction worker with five years' sobriety, and he told a basic, straightforward drinking story and told it succinctly, wrapping it up in twenty minutes. Then there was a break with announcements and the passing of the basket, and then we continued with a show of hands.

I was glad of that. All he had to do was keep his hands in his lap and he wouldn't have to say anything. No reason he should be put on the spot at his first meeting, the way he would be if they went around the room.

When I first came in, the last thing I wanted was to open my mouth in a roomful of alcoholics. And I kept finding my way to round-robin meetings. My name is Matt, I said, time and time again. I pass. I'd have a dozen things buzzing around in my head, but none of them made it past my lips. My name is Matt. Thanks for your qualification. I'll just listen tonight.

At eleven we went downstairs and out. I suggested a cup of coffee and he said that sounded good. We walked to Eighty-sixth, where there was a diner he liked. I was hungry enough to order a grilled-cheese sandwich and an order of onion rings. He just wanted coffee.

He said, "I almost raised my hand. I was this close."

"You can, any time you want. But you don't have to."

"People say anything, don't they? I thought what one person said would relate to what the person before him said, but it doesn't necessarily work that way, does it?"

"You say whatever's on your mind."

"Around our house, what I always heard was, 'Don't tell your business to strangers.' I'm used to keeping things to myself."

"I know what you mean."

"It really works, huh? You don't drink and you go to meetings and you stay sober?"

"It works for me."

"Jesus, I guess it does. Ten years."

"The days add up."

What about God, he wondered. What about the sign on the wall, the list of the twelve suggested steps. You just don't drink, I told him, and you come to meetings, and you keep an open mind. Did I believe in God? Some of the time, I said. I didn't have to believe in God all the time. The only thing I had to do every minute of every day was not pick up a drink.

He said, "I shouldn't be keeping you. You've probably got things to do."

"I'm glad to have the company, Jim."

"You know, I was thinking. In the meeting, because I would be listening to somebody and my mind would wander. I was thinking about Alan Watson. The guy who got stabbed?"

"And?"

"It seems to me there's something nagging at my memory but I can't get ahold of it."

"Maybe if we go through that evening step by step," I said.

"I don't know. Maybe it'll just come to me. You say this friend of his thinks it wasn't just a random mugging?"

"That's what I'm trying to determine."

"Why, is there someone had a reason to kill him?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then-"

No reason he couldn't know. "There have been some other deaths."

"In the same neighborhood?"

"No," I said, "and they didn't happen on the street, either."

"Then what's the connection?"

"The victims knew each other."

"Victims? Then they were all murdered, same as Watson?"

"Some were. Some might have been."

"Might have been?"

"There were suicides that could have been staged," I said, "and a couple of accidental deaths that could have been arranged."

"So you got this group of guys… What is it, a club or something?"

"I can't really go into the details."

"Sure, I understand. What happened, one of the guys hired you? Why didn't they go to the cops?"

"One of the things I have to do," I said, "is determine if it's a police matter or not."

"It would have to be, wouldn't it? If a group of guys are being killed off one after the other-"

"That's what I have to determine."

"I thought you said-"

"The murders could be unconnected. And the suicides could be genuine suicides."

"And the accidents could be legit," he said. "I get it. Are you making much headway?"

"I can't really-"

"- go into details, right. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to get an idea what it is I should be trying to remember. You know, I just took it for granted it was a mugging, what I guess they'd call a crime of opportunity. I think one of the cops used that phrase, meaning the mugger was out there looking to score a few dollars from somebody, and Mr. Watson came along, good neighborhood, looked like he belonged there, suit and tie, obviously a professional man coming home from work, figure he'll have a good watch on his arm and some big bills in his wallet." He frowned. "But if somebody was setting out from the jump to murder Watson, how would he do it? Just stake out his house and wait for him to come home?"

"That's one way."

"Then you'd have somebody lurking in the neighborhood," he said. "I don't remember seeing anything like that, but I don't know if it's something I'd notice. Some sleazebag with dirty clothes and a scruffy beard skulking around in the shadows, well, yeah, part of my job was to spot people like that and either roust them myself or call nine-one-one and drop a dime on them. But the guy you're looking for wouldn't operate like that, would he?"

"Probably not."

"He'd probably be dressed decent," he said, "and he'd want to be able to keep an eye on Watson's house, or on the approach to it. And, come to think of it, he'd most likely be in a car, wouldn't he? You think mugger, you picture a guy on foot, but somebody looking to fake a mugging might have his own car, right?"

"It's very possible."

"Was there a car parked in the neighborhood? Now there were plenty of cars, so the real question is was there anybody sitting in a parked car, and the answer is I would never have noticed something like that. What's the guy look like, the guy you're after?"

"No idea."

"You don't have a suspect in mind, huh? Or a physical description?" I shook my head. "So if he had a car-"

"No idea of the make or model or plate number."

"What I figured, Matt."

"Or even if he had a car," I said. "See, if I knew who did it, I'd be coming at it from another angle entirely."

"Yeah, I see what you mean."

We talked a little about the nature of detection, about the ways I'd approached other cases in the past. He didn't have a police background but the time he'd spent doing guard work and street patrol had left him with an interest in the subject, and he asked good questions and caught on quickly. The conversation died down when the waiter came around to refill our cups, and when it resumed the topic shifted to AA and alcoholism and where Jim might decide to go from here.

"I don't know if I'm an alcoholic," he said earnestly. "I heard a lot tonight that was interesting, but there's plenty that happened to the speaker that never happened to me. I was never hospitalized, I was never in a detox or a rehab."

"On the other hand, he never lost a job because of his drinking."

"Yeah, and I did. No argument there."

"Look," I said, "who knows if it's for you or not? But you're between jobs right now, you were saying how you've got time on your hands, and it's cheaper to kill time in meetings than around the bars. The coffee's free and the conversations are more interesting. It's the same people, you know, in the meetings and in the ginmills. The only difference is the ones in the meetings are sober. That makes them more fun to be around, and a lot less likely to throw up on your shoes."