Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [3]
“Mister,” Harold said, “don’t you mind the rain?”
The man shook his head. “Just water,” he said. “A little water never hurt anyone.”
Harold had shouted; the other man had spoken at a normal level, or maybe even a little quieter. So even though Harold had leaned into it, he hadn’t caught the words. “What?” he said.
The man bent at the knees. He stuck the umbrella straight out in front of them and pressed the release. It opened up enormously, suddenly cutting them off from the storm. “I said, a little water never hurt anyone.”
He still spoke quietly but now the storm was muted behind the umbrella, and Harold heard him. “I don’t know,” Harold said. “But I’m not going to argue with a guy’s got an umbrella.”
The man smiled. He took his hand out of his pocket and brought with it a slightly battered pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?” The man thumbed the pack open and extended it.
It was suddenly dry and quiet—relatively dry and relatively quiet—and a man Harold had never seen before was offering him a cigarette. Why? Harold tried to read the answer in the man’s eyes. They didn’t reveal a lot. They were ordinary eyes in an ordinary face. They had wrinkles at the corners and were overhung by untrimmed gray eyebrows. They were not cruel, or cloudy, or cold, or anything else in particular. Just eyes. Just a face. Just a man doing his fellow man a good turn.
Harold plucked a cigarette out of the pack and stuck it between his lips. Then he looked up again, to get another read on those eyes. Whatever he thought he might see, he didn’t.
You’re on the street, you can’t be too careful, Harold told himself. Careful keeps you alive. But there are limits. When a guy comes by and offers you a cigarette, you take it and say thank you. It doesn’t happen every day.
Harold reached back to take another, for later, or maybe two or even three as long as the guy was offering. But the pack of cigarettes was gone now, replaced with a brass lighter. At least it looked like brass—hard to tell in a dark doorway.
Harold leaned into the flame. It took three tries for him to catch it on the tip of the cigarette. He dragged deep when it caught, let the warmth rush into his throat and lungs. First cigarette in … how long? Hard to say. You lost track of exact time living on the street. But it had to have been at least a month.
“Thanks,” Harold said.
“Don’t mention it.” The man straightened up, lifting the umbrella and stepping around so that he was standing in front of Harold. “Make the night a little easier to get through.”
“You’re a mensch,” Harold said. “You know what that is, a mensch?”
The man nodded. “What’s your name?”
Harold coughed, a wet, rattling sound he brought up from deep in his chest. “Harry.”
“You take care, Harry,” the man said.
“Don’t you worry about me. I been through storms would make this look like pissing in a can. You take care—you got the nice suit.” Harold made himself smile up at the man. He thought, Maybe the guy will leave me the umbrella. Then he thought, What, and walk out in the rain without it? Next he thought, I could probably take it away from him. But finally he thought, The guy gave you a cigarette, talked to you, passed his time with you, kept you dry for a while, and you mug him for his umbrella? Schmuck.
He thought all this in the time it took him to take two more drags on the cigarette.
“I hate to ask,” Harold said, not quite able to get the umbrella fantasy out of his mind, “but would you mind standing there while I finish this? A little easier without the rain in my face …” He let his words trail off. The man was shaking his head.
“Sorry. I have to be somewhere.”
“Nah, that’s okay, I understand.” Harold raised the cigarette. “Thanks for the smoke.”
“My pleasure,” the man said.
“Sladek, Harold R. R for Robert.” The detective flipped through the creased wallet he’d retrieved from Harold’s pocket. There was a long-expired driver’s license from New Jersey; a photograph of Harold, when his hair had been