Free A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block Page A

or Poogan’s Pub. He switches back and forth.”
    “A man wouldn’t want to get stuck in a rut,” he said. “You think it might be a good idea to take someone with you?”
    “I’m not going to drink.”
    “No,” he said, “you’re not, but you might be more comfortable with a sober friend along.”
    I thought about it, weighed that against the inhibiting effect of a stranger at the table. “Not this time,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
    “Whichever bar you’ll find him in, I’m sure they’ll have a pay phone. And you’ve got plenty of quarters, don’t you?”
    “Quarters and subway tokens. Although I won’t need a token. I’ll be on West Seventy-second, I’ll walk there and back.”
    “That’s fine,” he said. “The exercise’ll do you good.”
    I walked up to the corner of Seventy-second and Columbus. Poogan’s was half a block one way and the Top Knot was about as far in the other direction, and I felt like the donkey standing midway between two bales of hay. Either you made an arbitrary choice or you starved to death. I flipped a mental coin and went to the Top Knot, and of course he was at Poogan’s, sitting at a table with an iced bottle of Stoli in a wood-grained plastic bucket.
    The man at the table was holding a Rubik’s Cube, not manipulating it, just frowning at it. I walked over and said, “Hello, Danny Boy,” and without raising his eyes he said, “Matthew, have you ever seen one of these things?”
    “I’ve seen them. I’ve never actually played with one of them.”
    “Somebody gave this to me,” he said. “The idea is to wind up with solid colors on all six sides, though why anyone would want to go to the trouble is beyond me. Do you want this?”
    “No, but thanks.”
    He put the device on the table, looked up at me, smiled broadly. “Sit down,” he said. “It’s good to see you. Maybe I’ll leave this toy for the waitress. I get the feeling she’s easily amused. You’re looking well, Matthew. Something to drink?”
    “Maybe a Coke,” I said, “but there’s no hurry. We can wait until she shows up to collect her Rubik’s Cube.”
    “
That’s
what it’s called. I was thinking Kubek, but I knew that was wrong. Remember Tony Kubek?”
    The Yankee infielder, and I did indeed remember him, and we talked baseball for a few minutes. Then the waitress came by and I ordered a Coke, and Danny Boy took a drink of vodka and let her top up his glass.
    Danny Boy Bell is a diminutive albino Negro, always superbly dressed by the boys’ departments at Saks and Paul Stuart. His albinism has made him a creature of the night, but I think he’d keep vampire’s hours regardless of his skin’s sensitivity to sunlight. The world needs two things, I’ve heard him say, a dimmer switch and a volume control, both of them dialed way down. Dark rooms and soft music are his natural preference, all washed down with vodka, with the occasional company of some pretty young woman unburdened by much in the way of brainpower.
    When I was working out of the Sixth, Danny Boy was my best snitch, and one of only a few whose company didn’t make me feel like I needed a shower. He wasn’t looking to beat a criminal charge, or even a score, or feel important. He was in fact not so much a snitch as a broker in information, and every night he put in his hours at Poogan’s or the Knot, and people on every side of the law pulled up a chair at his table to ask him things or tell him things or both. He lived within a few blocks of both of his hangouts, and he rarely went anywhere else unless it was to watch a fight at the Garden or catch a set at a jazz club. Mostly he sat in his chair and drank his vodka, and it might have been water for all the visible effect it had on him.
    My Coke came, and I took a sip and wondered what visible effect it had on me.
    I said, “There’s a fellow who got himself killed a week ago. Lived in a furnished room in the East Nineties, made ends meet by delivering