A Ticket to the Boneyard by Lawrence Block Page B

had any business being there at that hour, but I suppose you could have said the same thing about me.
    I didn’t get any flak over the incident, as a matter of fact I got a departmental recognition, but from then on I had no heart for the job or my life. I quit the department, and around the same time I gave up trying to be a husband and father and moved into the city. I found a hotel room, and around the corner I found a saloon.
    The next seven years are somewhat blurred in memory, although God knows they had their moments. The booze worked for a long time. Somewhere along the line it stopped working, but I drank it anyway because I seemed to have no choice. Then I started hitting detox wards and hospitals and losing three or four days at a time in blackouts, and I had a seizure and, well, things happened.
    What it used to be like, what happened, and what it’s like now . . .
     
     
    “He’s out there,” she said.
    “It seems impossible. He’d have been out years ago. It bothered me at the time that the judge gave him as short a sentence as he did.”
    “You didn’t say anything.”
    “I didn’t want to worry you. But he got one-to-ten, so he could have been on the street in less than a year. I never figured that would happen, he didn’t strike me as the type to charm a parole board or get released after serving a minimum sentence, but even so you’d figure him to be out in three or four years, say five at the most. That’s longer than most people can manage to nurse a grudge. But if he served five years that would mean he’s been breathing free air for seven years now. Why would he wait this long to go after Connie?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you want to do, Elaine?”
    “I don’t know that, either. I think what I want to do is throw some things in a suitcase and get a cab to JFK. I think that’s what I want to do.”
    I could understand the impulse, but I told her it struck me as a little premature. “Let me make a few calls in the morning,” I said. “It’s possible he did something and wound up back in the joint. It’d be silly to fly to Brazil if he’s locked up in Green Haven.”
    “Actually I was thinking more along the lines of Barbados.”
    “Or if he’s dead,” I said. “I thought at the time that he was a good candidate to come out of there in a body bag. He’s the type to make enemies, and it doesn’t take a lot for someone to stick a knife in you.”
    “Then who sent me the clipping?”
    “Let’s not worry about that until we see if we can rule him out.”
    “All right. Matt? You’ll stay here tonight?”
    “Sure.”
    “I know I’m being silly but I’ll feel better. You don’t mind?”
    “I don’t mind.”
     
     
    She made up the couch for me with a couple of sheets and a blanket and a pillow. She’d offered me half the bed but I said I’d be more comfortable on the couch, that I felt restless and didn’t want to worry about disturbing her with my tossing and turning. “You wouldn’t disturb me,” she said. “I’m going to take a Seconal, I take one about four times a year, and when I do nothing disturbs me that registers less than seven on the Richter scale. You want one? It’s just the thing if you’re wired. You’ll be out cold before you even have time to relax.”
    I passed on the pill and took the couch instead. She went to bed and I stripped to my shorts and got under the covers. I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. I kept opening them and looking at the lights of Queens across the river. A couple of times I thought with regret of the Seconal not taken, but it was never really an option. As a sober alcoholic, I couldn’t take sleeping pills or tranquilizers or mood-elevators or any painkiller much stronger than aspirin. They interrupt sobriety and seem to undercut a person’s commitment to recovery, and people who use them usually wind up drinking again.
    I suppose I slept some, although it felt a lot like a white night. After a while the