Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) (12 page)

Tonight, I had reviewed my whole life. I couldn’t do that when I drank, and I didn’t enjoy it now. It made me feel bleak. For a guy my age with the brains I’d like to think I have, I hadn’t accomplished much. Nor was I eager to change. I’d rather scream and bang my head against the wall. I could think of nothing but that caressing slither of liquid fire running down my throat and my esophagus. What a dumb thing to be enslaved to! Fermented grain. I ask you.

It had worked better when I didn’t need so much of it. When I didn’t have anything to lose except a few years’ time that I would probably have dicked around with anyway, the way most young guys do. Lately, booze had taken me not to Pluto but to Purgatory: a nasty, boring vestibule to Hell. Pain had faded to dullness and futility. I wanted out. I wanted a drink with an agony of desire. Now.

How could I stand the boredom of sobriety? I couldn’t even stand the boredom of being a drunk. When someone in the meeting said in chipper tones, “Hi, I’m Pollyanna, I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic,” I wanted to barf. I had to admit that Jimmy seemed pretty happy. I had watched him closely for the past fifteen years, trying to decide if what he had was worth shooting for. But Jimmy is the right kind of terminal loner. He’s a hundred percent content with his own company at any time. He finds so many weird things interesting and amusing. And he isn’t even alone. He has Barbara. He has the many millions of people who use the Internet. He even has all the people in history who are just as vivid to him as if they weren’t long dead. I’d never stayed sober long enough to confirm it, but I had an awful feeling I was the wrong kind of terminal loner. That would be the kind who experiences loneliness as a black and endless void reeking of despair.

I’d always said my buddy Jack Daniels kept me from ever being lonely. But who was I kidding? Oh, right. Myself. Denial, that well known river in Egypt. Denial is to alcoholism as pustules are to the Black Plague. Unavoidable. As I sat there on the floor with crumbs all over me, an empty bag and an empty box spilling out of my lap, and physically, emotionally, and spiritually nowhere to go, I felt a wave of sheer terror wash over me. I’ve never felt anything quite like it. Then it felt as if something really big and dull and heavy that existed both inside of me and all around me, as big as the whole damn universe, went
thud
. A hand that didn’t feel like mine reached out to the phone, which was miraculously within reach. Somebody else’s fingers dialed Jimmy’s number. And a voice that wasn’t mine said, “Jimmy? Hey, man. I think I just hit bottom.”

*

Jimmy thought a recovery job would do me good. He didn’t consider finding God’s killer a job, either. Barbara, on the other hand, thought a toe in the corporate world might lead eventually to a whole foot or even a leg in the door of God’s family’s business. My first temp job took me way downtown to Wall Street. It was mostly typing and filing, though they love to make a guy make the coffee. I decided to hit a meeting on my lunch hour. A church or two survive among the temples to Mammon. As every recovering alcoholic knows, every church comes with a basement. And every church basement is honeycombed with meeting rooms that can be rented out to fill the clerical coffers. Did you think AA meetings take place in crypts? That we drink our coffee and tell our sordid stories perched on stone sarcophagi?

The First Step of AA says we are powerless over alcohol and, by implication, everyone and everything outside ourselves. After a long morning in a busy corporate law office, I needed a reminder that I was powerless over temperamental partners and frenzied associates. I also began to appreciate another spiritual slogan you hear a lot around the rooms: “This too shall pass.” One reason I had put up with temping for so long was my continual desire for whatever was going on to pass. Another was that I was too unreliable for a permanent job.

I slipped into a packed room about fifteen minutes late. It looked even more crowded because everybody was bundled into their outer clothes. This church seemed to be economizing on fuel. It was a worse than nippy day, with temperatures in the twenties. I spotted a narrow slot between two women who looked as if the space they took up might be fifty percent feathers. Slithering into it, I found the one on my right was my friend Maureen. Mo. She gave me a sidelong look and a brief smile and returned her attention to the speaker.

“So after spending $80,000 on law school tuition, here I am working as a paralegal in the same firm where I once dreamed of making partner, and you know what? I’m grateful.”

I heaved what turned out to be a loud sigh. I couldn’t help it. Mo stuck out an elbow and nudged me sharply in the ribs. This taking sobriety seriously was uphill work. They tell you, “Identify, don’t compare,” but sometimes it was really, really hard. Jimmy always said that if I started showing up on time for meetings, I would hear the beginning of the speaker’s story, the part about all the stupid things he did while he was drinking and drugging. Maybe he had a point.

The happy paralegal wound up his qualification. I wondered what firm he worked at. Maybe I could temp there instead of where I was, a place more notable for scowls and snarls than expressions of blissful gratitude. Everybody patted their hands together in polite applause, much of it muffled by gloves and mittens.

I managed to space out through all the shares. It wasn’t a long meeting. Because everybody was on their lunch hour, people came and went constantly. Now the room was emptying out. Mo turned to me.

“Time for coffee? My boss is out this afternoon, no one’s watching the clock on me for once.”

“Sure. I’m temping, so they’re paying me by the hour, and my minutes come pretty cheap.”

Wall Street becomes one big wind tunnel in the winter. We walked briskly to the nearest place, the kind of cafeteria where you can get a latte and a gourmet sandwich for more than you really want to pay. The amenities included paper plates, no service, and formica tables filmed with spills and crumbs from the previous occupants. Mo grabbed a table and used a handful of paper napkins to wipe it off while I got us coffee. Real drunks don’t drink latte.

Going out for coffee after a meeting is a big tradition. You’re supposed to learn to socialize without booze or your drug of choice. You’re supposed to stop isolating and build a social network. You’re supposed to have a normal conversation. You have to live one day at a time. But you don’t have to keep saying it like a parrot. Jimmy has great sobriety, and he’s just as likely to tell you the difference between an arbalest and a trebuchet as “Let go and let God.”

“Speaking of God,” I said to Mo. “Not God God. God the guy.” From what I could tell, if anyone had tried to stop him from using the G word as his AA name, they’d failed.

Mo looked uncomfortable.

“You knew him?” Stalling.

“I was in detox with him.” I went for shock value. “I was there when he died.”

“Such a sad thing,” she said flatly. Flat wasn’t at all like the Mo I knew. She was usually more like all lit up or in the depths of despair. Maybe she had bipolar disorder, like Laura. Manic depressive. Maybe she was on too much lithium.

“I heard you were an item.”

“With God? Hardly!”

“Someone you had a resentment against?”

“I said my share of prayers for his health and happiness,” she said.

You’re supposed to pray for anyone you resent. You ask a Higher Power to give them all the good things you want for yourself. But you don’t have to mean it. On those terms, even I might try it some time. You’ve got to love AA.

“Can I ask you something?”

She looked wary.

“Did you by any chance see him recently? Since New Year’s?”

“I’ve got to get going.” She stood up and gathered her things together. “It was nice talking with you. Good luck with your sobriety.”

Well, that was a big success. I guess I needed some more practice in socializing.

“Can I phone you?” I called after her.

But she was already gone.

*

Jimmy and I sat in a meeting on the Upper West Side, not far from his apartment. We were in the front. He got me up there by telling me the meeting started fifteen minutes sooner than it really did and getting there before me. He spent most of the extra time reminding me that I was a recovering alcoholic with about two minutes sobriety, not a private eye. I needed to put first things first. Another slogan.

“Closure!” I seized on one of Barbara’s favorite words. “I need closure on this business in the detox so I can move on.” With more sincerity, I added, “You weren’t there, Jimmy. I saw the guy die. Hell, I liked him. I think about it when I can’t sleep, and I’m sleeping lousy. I can’t imagine why I haven’t gone back on the sauce yet, except that I don’t want to hear what you’d have to say about it.”

“That never stopped you before.”

People drifted in and came up to say hello. For someone who never came out from behind his computer, Jimmy knew everybody. And then the meeting started, and we couldn’t talk.

The speaker that night was really funny. The room rocked with laughter as he recounted one hilarious near-death experience after another. Trust me, if you were a recovering alcoholic you would know this is not an oxymoron. At one point I went off into a reverie about being the one up there getting the laughs. I sure had the material. When I was a kid, for a while I wanted to be a stand-up comic. But when I grew up, my drinking put the kibosh on the standing up part of it. Jimmy must have remembered, because he leaned over and whispered, “This could be you.”

“Right,” I whispered back. “I’ve already got the stories; all I need are the ninety days.”

“So there I was,” the speaker said, “with my three-hundred-dollar pants on one side of the sliding doors and me on the other.” Everybody roared. And that wasn’t even the punch line.

He finished to prolonged applause. Then came the break. I turned to Jimmy. Jimmy nodded at the speaker, what you could see of him through the crowd surrounding him. He said, “His name is Glenn. Go up and get his number.”

I made a “Who, me?” face at him. It didn’t do any good.

“You know you need a sponsor. It can’t be me, and you’re not going to be able to work with someone you think is a gloomy Gus or a Big Book thumper. You’ve got to start somewhere. Having someone’s phone number doesn’t commit you to anything. It might even keep you from waking me up in the middle of the night some time. Go on. You don’t have to have a conversation. Just get the number.” He gave me a little shove.

I got the number. Then the meeting started again. I felt I’d earned a cup of terrible coffee and a few Oreos. Anyhow, one of Jimmy’s friends had taken my seat. Jimmy looked around for me until he made eye contact. He stuck out his index finger, made a circle in the air above his watch with it, and pointed at the door. In other words, meet him after the meeting. I stood up straight and saluted. Then I slumped against the back wall, sipping at the toxic muck in my Styrofoam cup. At least it had caffeine in it, so it trumped detox coffee.

After the meeting, Jimmy made his way through the chattering crowd, detouring around hugging couples and groups trying to decide where to go for coffee. He reached me just as Glenn, strolling past, caught my eye and asked if I wanted to join a bunch of them at the coffee shop around the corner.

“Go,” said Jimmy in my ear.

“You coming, Jim?” Glenn asked.

“Not tonight. Bruce will; we just need a minute.” Glenn moved on as Jimmy added, to me, “I told Barbara I’d be back right after the meeting, but I want to give you something.” We went with the flow, literally, moving with the current of people out the door, past the clot of smokers, and onto the sidewalk. “I knew you and Barbara were not going to be talked out of this, so I did a little research for you.” He handed me a couple of index cards on which he’d scrawled a list of Internet addresses.

“URLs,” Jimmy said. “I found them for you, but you, my son, are going to do the reading. You said your friend had a trust, and now that he’s dead, he also has an estate. First, you’re going to see if he had a will. If he did, you’re going to see what’s in it, who benefits from his death. If not, we’re still going to be able to figure out who inherits. And then there are the terms of the trust. Someone scoops the pot on that too; that kind of money doesn’t just disappear if the beneficiary dies.”

“I don’t have to do any hacking?” I asked suspiciously. “One, you know I don’t know how. And two, I’m damned if I’ll go to jail for playing sorcerer’s apprentice. Especially, as you so neatly put it, with two minutes sobriety.”

“Nope. All this stuff is public record, now that he’s dead. Well, I did get a little creative. I wanted to see if I could check out how much bread we were talking about. You don’t want to know what I did and how I did it, and I didn’t even write it down. The less lyin’, cheatin’, snoopin’, and breakin’ the law I do, the less amends I have to make. But we’re talking a couple million bucks easy. More if the economy improves, some of it’s invested for growth. More than enough to motivate anyone who was up for it if he kicked the bucket. So the next step is we find out who that was. Or who-all they were, as the case may be.”

“Are you volunteering me?” I didn’t really mind. For someone who I knew didn’t want anything to do with it, Jimmy had already done a lot. “Two million sounds like a lot of money to me.” A lot of bottles, a lot of grams, a lot of ounces or vials or tabs. Or on the other hand, a lot of living that God would never get to do.

“One step at a time, bro.” Jimmy clapped me on the shoulder. He nodded toward the direction he would be going, away from the coffee shop.

I guessed I was committed to meeting Glenn and his friends. The thought of even beginning to get to know somebody new well enough to maybe ask him to sponsor me gave me a flutter in the gut. It made me a lot more nervous than the idea of plunging into cyberspace to look for a possible killer. I’d known Jimmy forever. We had a friendship I didn’t have to work at. We were in each other’s bones. As for God, well, we’d washed up together on the same spit of an island. Fellow survivors for a while. I guess when you’re clinging to a life raft trying to keep the water out of your nose for one more breath, you don’t worry about what kind of impression you make. It’s okay if your underwear is ripped. Or gone. But here I was on dry land, in more ways than one. And the only other friend I’d ever had, not counting women, was booze.