Phil pretended angry but it didn’t wash. “Twice in a couple of weeks. When it rains, it pours.” “Think of it as monsoon season.”

“Let me guess—you’re working.” “Eating your food is never work.”

“The last time you ate here regular you were working. Then you wound up in the hospital.” Phil rubbed his face and wiped his hand on his apron. “What do you want me to dig up now?”

Before Phil bought into Charley’s, he’d been a cop. In the old days the restaurant was always packed with uniforms. Phil still had his connections, but I’d never learned why they’d stopped eating here.

“Musta been your fault,” I joked. “I curse you out every time the bullet hollers.” He looked at me quizzically. “They left the bullet in?”

“Yeah. They said it was easier to leave it where it was.”

He shook his head incredulously. “Fucking quacks. They just wanted the bed. Faster turnover, more money.”

“Come on, Phil, not hospitals.”

He started to bluster then noticed my smile. “Ahh, you’re yanking my chain.”

I nodded, but my mind was on his question. I hadn’t intended to ask him to locate Peter’s death report; but it wasn’t a bad idea. I didn’t think I could learn much. Though, if I kept it to myself, it couldn’t disturb Melanie. Maybe I’d get some background. Then I questioned whose background I wanted—Peter’s, Melanie’s, or my own. Before I could decide, Phil brought me back to the present. Hard.

“Your friend was in yesterday for breakfast.” “Say what?”

Red piped up, “Miss New York was here with her father.”

My appetite fell with a thud. “Oh yeah,” I said tentatively, caught in the intersection of their stares.

“Not her father, huh?” Red asked gently. “Not her father.”

Phil put my food down in front of me. “Ruined your breakfast, didn’t I?” “A little,” I admitted. “How about some coffee? Black.”

“I know how you like it.” He glanced at me while he poured. “I wouldn’t worry. He don’t look like much.”

I sipped at the steaming liquid. “Money don’t have to look like much.”

Phil walked to the booth and sat down next to Red. Every once in a while I felt their eyes on the back of my neck. To reduce everyone’s discomfort I spun my stool around. “Listen, maybe you could help me out.”

I told him what I wanted and he mulled over my request. “Twenty-year-old records, I don’t know. Shit, cops ain’t that anal. Anyhow, what the hell are you doing poking around The End? That place is a hellhole. Someone could put a bullet in a lot more critical location than where you got one now.”

“‘Anal’? Phil, you been closet-reading?” I tried to ignore the meat of his comment, especially since I already believed Blackhead’s case involved the drug world. It was one thing to poke into people’s lives, another to mess with fast-triggered AK47s.

“I was hoping they might put old records on microfilm or something. Like libraries.”

He shook his head. “How come you always sound like you just woke up after a long sleep? If the file is anywhere it’s on a computer, not microfilm. And I wouldn’t bet on the computer. Where the hell have you been?”

I just shrugged. Phil walked past me and went to work cleaning his grill. I sat and wondered how this broad, bald, short-order cook had come to represent modernity. It made me anxious to think of myself as that much of an anachronism.

He looked back over his shoulder. “What about the Black Avenger?” “Julie?”

A disgusted look crossed his face. “No, not Julius. Clifford. He could get what you want easier than me.”

“Oh no. No thanks, I’ll take a pass.”

He walked back over and leaned across the counter. Before he spoke, he looked past my shoulder. I turned, but the place was still empty except for Red, who sat in her booth reading the paper and playing with a teaspoon.

He looked down at me. “I don’t understand your reaction to Clifford. Word had it he thought you did a good job.”

I shook my head. “Hard to trust a cop who beats the living shit out of you.” “So you want me to poke around and jostle cobwebs?”

“‘Jostle cobwebs’?” I turned and called to Red, “Have you been reading to him, or has he been spending time with Julius?”

Red stood and stretched, her white waitress uniform pulling tight across her body. “You like that my honey is improving himself?”

She walked across the room and stood behind me. I felt a layer of heat between her chest and my back, and quelled a sudden impulse to rest my head on her shelf. Phil turned away, shaking his head. “Cut the crap, I’ve always read.”

I popped off the stool and stood alongside his lipsticked lady friend. “Yeah, but never talked like you did.”

Red looked at me and said with obvious pride, “Phil’s never been a dummy and now he doesn’t feel like he has to hide it.”

I smiled my agreement. I never knew whether she was going to rip at his balls or inflate them. Red sauntered back to her booth knowing full well what the two of us were watching. Almost sadly Phil switched his attention back to me. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be hanging around that cesspool, but I’ll talk to a few friends. What do you think you’re going to discover from a twenty-year-old police report, anyway?”

“Nothing, really. I’m actually more interested in what’s up my ex-client’s sleeve, but I gotta start somewhere.”

“You mean I gotta start somewhere.” He saw my face and added, “Don’t look like that, it was a joke. Like I said the last time, just keep eating here.”

Not surprisingly, it felt good to be out of the diner. The mention of Boots and Hal, then Clifford, submarined any desire to be out of the house. I like my humiliations private.

But privacy was rapidly becoming a premium. And would become more so, I discovered, when I found myself at home on the short end of a conversation with Lou.

“I thought I might visit over the holidays if that doesn’t interfere with your plans,” he said, already resentful, as if I could say no.

“Great,” I lied, then grew momentarily confused. The Jewish New Year had long since passed. “What holidays?”

“Thanksgiving. The celebration with the turkey, Turkey.”

It had been a long time since I’d celebrated anything, much less running Indians off their land. With a sinking stomach I lightened my voice and said, “It’s a fine time, Lou. I don’t have any plans.”

“Maybe you could invite some people. Between me and Mrs. Sullivan, we might give your oven a trial run?”

I hadn’t had a Thanksgiving party since Chana and Becky had died. The picture of Lou furiously slashing up a turkey, surrounded by Mrs. S and the rest of the building’s misfits, tightened my throat. But this was Lou’s first Thanksgiving without Martha. I swallowed. “You want people, Lou, I’ll get people. You have tickets?”

“Not yet. It won’t be a problem.”

“That’s good enough for me,” I said, working to keep apprehension out of my voice.

I heard his laugh boom through the wire. “Don’t bullshit me, Boychick. Nothing is ever good enough for you.”

I hung up the telephone, tried the television, but couldn’t sit still. A Thanksgiving celebration in this apartment seemed like a cruel joke, if not an oxymoron. But, like a moronic ox, I did what I was supposed to.

I got high and went upstairs to chat about killing a bird. Mrs. S was delighted by the idea. She had planned to cook for Charles and Richard anyway, and she adored Lou. His visits were often the highlight of her year. I was glad someone was happy. Then she insisted on a formal guest list, and our only acknowledged disagreement centered around Gloria.

I knew Mrs. S wasn’t thrilled about inviting Julius, so I gave in on Gloria. I didn’t think my first client, aka my ex-shrink, had any more desire to boogie with me than I with her. But Mrs. S would find that out for herself. I left when she started to talk about the menu and rejected my idea of pizzas: she didn’t think I was serious.

Back inside my apartment I hit the couch. I needed a new one but didn’t want to spend the time to break it in. The old one had the indentations of my body already memorized.

I’d have done the rest of the twenty-four in my personal version of fetal—on my back, eyes glued to the TV—but the telephone rang. Good doobie once begat good doobie twice. When I heard her voice I grew momentarily pleased, but the pleasure vanished as soon as I remembered her “father.”

“Boots, how are you?” I kept the enthusiasm in my tone. “I’m all right. What’s the matter with your voice?” “What do you mean?”

“You sound like you’re underwater, and we haven’t even begun to talk.” “‘Oh ye of little faith.’”

“Right. Maybe I should call you Rabbi?”

“Wrong religion for the quote.” I was running out of one-liners. Maybe I could just run out. I pictured Melanie on the other end of the wire but came back to reality in time to hear Boots’ question.

“How about supper?”

“Me or you?” I regretted my rejoinder as soon as I made it.

“Both of us, but after we eat.”

It sounded a lot better than it felt. What was the matter with me? The walls of my apartment were closing in, and I’d always welcomed her invitations before. What had happened to my desire to put our lousy breakfast behind us?

“I can’t Boots, I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t realize you booked in advance.” She kept her tone light, but there was no mistaking her displeasure.

“I’m sorry, hon, I’m working.” “Why don’t you stop by after?”

“I don’t know what time I’ll be finished.”

There was a pause at the other end. “What’s the matter, Matt?” Boots asked. “Are you still angry about Hal?”

“Of course not, Boots. It’s not part of the bargain.”

There was another long pause and I steeled myself for a waspish onslaught. All I got was a very soft, “It would be nice to see you, Matt.” Then I got a very dead telephone.