The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [84]
“If they hadn’t come round with their offer,” he said, “I’d never have closed Grogan’s. It never would have occurred to me. But the time’s right, you know.”
Kristin nodded, and I sensed they’d discussed this point before. Elaine asked what was so right about the timing.
“My life’s changed,” he said. “In many ways, beyond the miracle that an angel came down from heaven to be my bride.”
“How he does go on,” Kristin said.
“My business interests,” he said, “are all legitimate. The few wide boys I had working for me have moved on, and if they’re still doing criminal deeds they’re doing them at someone else’s behest. I’m a silent partner in several enterprises, and I may have come by my interest by canceling a debt or doing someone an illegal favor, but the businesses themselves are lawful and so is my participation.”
“And Grogan’s is an anomaly?” Elaine frowned. “I don’t see how, exactly. It’s evolved like the rest of your life, and it’s more a yuppie watering hole than a hangout for hoodlums.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not the point. In the bar business there’s no end of men looking to cheat you. Suppliers billing you for undelivered goods, bartenders making themselves your silent partners, hard men practicing extortion and calling it advertising or charity. But I always had a pass, you know, because they knew to be afraid of me. Who’d try to get over on a man with my reputation? Who’d dare to steal from me, or cheat me, or put pressure on me?”
“Whoever did would be taking his life in his hands.”
“Once,” he said. “Once that was true. Now the lion’s old and toothless and wants only to lie by the fire. And sooner or later some lad would make his move, and I’d have to do something about it, something I’d not care to do, something I’m past doing. No, I’m well out of the game.” He sighed. “Will I miss it? There’s parts of the old life I miss, and it’s no shame to admit it. I wouldn’t care to have it back, but there’s times when I miss it.” His eyes found mine. “And you? Is it not the same for you?”
“I wouldn’t want it back.”
“Not for anything. But do you miss it? The drink, and all that went with it?”
“Yes,” I said. “There are times I do.”
It was late when we left. Mick turned off the one light, locked up, proclaiming the latter a waste of time. “If anyone wants to come in and take something, what does it matter? None of it’s mine anymore.”
He had his car, the big silver Cadillac, and dropped us off. Nobody had much to say beyond a few pleasantries as we got out of the car, and the silence held while Elaine and I crossed the Parc Vendome’s lobby and ascended in the elevator. She had her key out and let us in, and we checked Voice Mail and email, and she found a coffee cup I’d left beside the computer and returned it to the kitchen.
We tried the Conor Pass engraving in a few spots—in a hallway, in the front room—and decided to defer the decision of where to hang it. Elaine felt it wanted to be seen at close range, so we left it for now, propped against the base of a lamp on the drum–top table.
The little tasks one does, all of them performed in a companionable silence.
And then she said “It wasn’t so bad.”
“No. It was a good evening, actually.”
“I love the two of them so much. Individually and together.”
“I know.”
“And he’s much better off without the place. He’ll be fine, don’t you think?”
“I think so.”
“But it really is, isn’t it? The end of an era.”
“Like Seinfeld?”
She shook her head. “Not quite,” she said. “There won’t be any reruns.”
I began writing about Matthew Scudder in the early 1970s. My first marriage was in dissolution, and I was living alone in an apartment a block from Columbus Circle. I wrote out a series proposal, my agent made a deal with Dell, and the three books flowed from my typewriter one after another: The Sins of the Fathers, Time to Murder and Create, and In the Midst of Death.
Paperback distribution in general was problematic during those years, and Dell’s troubles were greater than most; they returned much of their manuscript inventory, paid for but unpublished, to