*
The stout tar-black cigar was mounted reverentially in a bottle bearing the plaque The Mad Cigar. Assistant District Attorney Errol Jones was handling it carefully by its wooden base. ‘Of all the artifacts on display in the club, this is the only one that truly belongs to the Underhill. It is the remaining member of twins concocted in a backroom over a week of intense experimentation. Doctor Marco Santino had just returned from an expedition to the Borneo jungles and was seeking to blend the finest tobacco with a swath of the herbs he had gathered in his forays. He knew what he was doing bore risk and so stuffed his clothes in every crack in the room through which smoke might escape. That is why he was naked when the insanity struck.’
George Hope smirked and dropped some ash into the brackish brown crystal ashtray and with a similar flick, this time from the chin murmured, ‘The man who ran naked into the Hudson?’
‘Never to be seen again.’
‘The search found nothing but his meticulously kept notebook. It had become snared in a fallen branch.’
‘So you have heard the story?’
‘Yes, I believe I have.’
‘The widow has the notebook now. And it is said the recipe for the Mad Cigar is clearly laid out on its final page. Remarkable, I would say.’ Jones carefully put the bottled exhibit down on the settee table and both men took a draft of their own cigars. Hope held his smoke a little longer and he realised he had been missing the place. The luxurious chairs, the air of power and high living, the conversation with the city’s heavy hitters, the Underhill Cigar Club did not permit itself to be easily replaced in an evening.
Jones seemed to read his mind and said in a voice as silky as the cigar smoke, ‘It’s been a couple of months into our own little experiment and the results I would say are clearly in. You have got more arrests to your name than any cop on the force. Big arrests. And I hear there is more to come.’ He exhaled slowly and deeply. ‘Which warrants the question, is there anything left to be achieved? Sure you could go on battling crime from the inside out, but this was just a testing ground. A social experiment. A carefully concocted treatment for the scourge of crime – one too delicate and fragile to be mass produced, but at least we succeeded once. That in itself is something of a miracle. A triumph among gentlemen. I wonder though if now might not be the right time to cash in our chips and move on to other things. Despite all the successes, you cannot keep courting danger and remain unscathed. If you lose your head, get sucked into the dark world like a ship foundering on rocks, it would recast the whole episode as a tragedy.’ Jones frowned as smoke leaked out of his nostrils. ‘I’d suggest we just put a frame around this work we have created and hang it up with all the other cocktail yarns.’
‘The Buster and the Treatment wouldn’t be pleased. Smoking their cigars and talking about putting an end to their gravy train.’
Jones shrugged. ‘If they take Lance Shipton down right, they’ll be able to write their own meal ticket for a long while to come.’
One of the club’s regulars, a banker nearing retirement age - whatever age that might be when it came to overindulged bankers - approached them enthusiastically, complimenting the flavour of the smoke drifting his way; Jones, with the thin veil of politeness just barely clinging to the rough edges of his voice, recommended he return to his seat and settle for whatever smoke drifted his way. He then looked to Hope, waiting for a response.
What he received was a shrug of indifference.
‘I’ll give it some thought,’ Hope murmured.
Jones nodded earnestly. ‘I’m not going to try manipulating the result of the experiment by shutting it down prematurely. If you have become so hooked on the thrill that you cannot pry yourself away from your own downfall, it is clearly a result.’ He smirked and looked away and back. ‘Not that you, my friend, would much notice the difference between success and failure. From all our long evening’s spent over scotch whiskey and ashtrays, I’ve realised you are blessed with an inability to regret or concede. No matter how deep or murky, with the absence of a qualm the light seems to always come back on. I don’t know the word for someone like that, but you make a better friend than an enemy.’ He inspected the remaining chunk of his cigar and nodded to himself. ‘If there isn’t a word for it, maybe it’s because it doesn’t happen often enough. The only officers in my department who might qualify, you have working overtime.’ He returned to puffing on the cigar. ‘Although I have used such people to break this city wide open, it certainly doesn’t mean I include myself in that number. That’s why I am warning you now, despite myself. I can certainly foresee feelings of regret in the future – every time I light up a cigar alone.’
He had not made eye contact with Hope for some time, but as he moved to do that now, he was distracted by a flustered steward in from the side.
‘Maxwell, are you perspiring?’
The steward, a short, thin faced, grey haired man, who had gambled away a club of his own, nervously addressed Hope: ‘Sir, there is a young woman, a non-member, asking for you in the foyer. I enquired as to her name but all she was willing to give me was this.’ He carefully unfolded a napkin with a kiss of lipstick upon it. The hand was trembling. ‘She said this was the message she wanted to leave.’