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

lunches for a delicatessen in the neighborhood.”
    “The ends couldn’t have been too far apart,” he said, “if that brought in enough to make them meet. What was his name?”
    “John Joseph Ellery, but everyone called him Jack.”
    He shook his head. “Didn’t hear about the murder, and I can’t say the name rings a bell. What did he do before he decided to give UPS some competition?”
    “A little of this and a little of that.”
    “Ah, a useful trade. And was he still doing a little of both when he wasn’t helping them out at the deli?”
    “He went straight,” I said, and brandished my glass of Coke. “And found a new way of life.”
    “A drier path, so to speak. A path I see you’re still pursuing yourself, Matthew. It’s been a while now, hasn’t it?”
    “A year next month.”
    “That’s great,” he said, and it was clear he meant it, which pleased me. Not everyone I used to drink with was all that enthusiastic about the road I’d taken, and Jim said their reaction said more about them and their own drinking than it did about me and my sobriety. Some felt threatened, he said, while others assumed I’d disapprove of them and wanted to beat me to the punch.
    All the subject of drinking did for Danny Boy was remind him that he had a full glass in front of him, and in response he drank some of it. He said, “John Ellery, better known as Jack. Jack Ellery. Where’d he get killed?”
    “At home.”
    “In his furnished room. How?”
    “Two bullets. One in the forehead, one in the mouth.”
    “ ‘Keep your mouth shut’?”
    “Most likely.”
    “As opposed to ‘You shoulda kept your mouth shut, you fucking rat bastard,’ with the penis severed and stuffed into the mouth, or sometimes halfway down the throat. Are the Italians the only ones who employ that particular calling card, Matthew, or is it in wider use?”
    I had no idea.
    “A little of this, and a little of that. I hate to press for details, but—”
    “Armed robbery, mostly. That’s what he went away for. Liquor stores, mom-and-pop groceries, walk in, show a gun, walk out with what he could grab out of the register. It’s not surprising if you never heard of him, because he was very small-time, and it’s no surprise you didn’t hear about the homicide. If there was anything in the papers, I didn’t see it myself.”
    He was frowning in concentration. “Jack, Jack, Jack. Did he have a sobriquet?”
    “Come again?”
    “A nickname, for Christ’s sake. And don’t tell me you didn’t know the word.”
    “I knew it,” I said. “I’ve come across it in print, but I’m not sure I ever heard anyone say it before. I certainly never heard anyone say it in Poogan’s.”
    “It’s a perfectly fine word. And it’s not exactly the same as a nickname. Take Charles Lindbergh. His nickname was Lindy—”
    “As in hop,” I suggested.
    “—and his sobriquet was the Lone Eagle. George Herman Ruth, nickname was Babe, sobriquet was the Sultan of Swat. Al Capone—”
    “I get the idea.”
    “I just wanted to keep on saying it, Matthew. Sobriquet. I know it from reading, and
I
don’t think I ever heard it before,and I know for certain I never
said
it before. I wonder if I’m pronouncing it correctly.”
    “I’m the wrong person to ask.”
    “I’ll look it up,” he said, and he picked up his glass and put it down without drinking. “High-Low Jack,” he said. “Wasn’t that his fucking sobriquet? Isn’t that what they called him?”

X
     
    H IGH - LOW JACK, ” Greg Stillman said.
    “They didn’t call him that in the rooms?”
    “They just called him Jack, which is what he called himself. Oh, and Jailhouse Jack or Jack the Jailbird, but not to his face.”
    One result of anonymity is that we mostly know each other by our first names, so we come up with handles to distinguish one Jack from another. At St. Paul’s, we’ve got Tall Jim and Jim the Runner and my own sponsor, Army Jacket Jim, because of the beat-up