If only I’d put on different clothes. I’ve never paid much attention to what I’m wearing, I generally grab the top shirt off the stack. This time the shirt happened to be red, and so did his.
Whoever tagged me from the Parc Vendôme to the Lucky Panda was following a man in a red polo shirt and khaki slacks and a tan windbreaker. And when he (or whoever he called) entered the restaurant himself, he saw a man in those very clothes sitting alone at a table, the only person around who came close to fitting the description. He didn’t need to ask to see some ID. He did what he’d come to do and dropped the gun on the floor and took off.
If only he’d taken a good look at Jim first.
If only I’d worn my blazer. So what if it bulged a little over the shoulder holster? I wasn’t posing for a layout in GQ.
If only I’d taken a minute to empty my goddamn bladder before I left the house. I’d never have left the table, I’d have been sitting across from Jim when the shooter walked in. Son of a bitch would have thought he was seeing double. He might well have decided to shoot both of us and let God sort us out, and he might have managed it, too, but he’d have had a moment’s confusion, a few seconds while he paused and figured it out, and maybe that would have been time enough for me to spot him and go for my own gun.
If only I’d resisted his suggestion to change seats. Jim might have seen the guy walk in, might have had a chance to react. And the shooter, seeing his face instead of the back of his head, might have realized he had the wrong man.
If only I’d skipped washing my hands. Or wiped them on my pants instead of wasting time at the hot-air dryer. I’d have been emerging from the men’s room right around the time the shooter was approaching Jim’s table. I could have called out a warning, could have drawn my own gun, could have dropped the bastard before he shot my friend.
If only . . .
If only I’d stood there and taken my beating like a man the other night. It wouldn’t have killed me, and that would have been the end of it. I’d have learned my lesson, or seemed to, and they’d have left me alone. But no, I had to be a hero, I had to show off and fight back.
If only I’d been wearing sneakers that night. I was wearing them now. Why couldn’t I have been wearing them then? When I stomped the foot of the guy behind me, he’d have grunted and held on, and I’d have earned an extra wallop for my troubles.
If only I’d followed through. If I insisted on fighting back and if I was lucky enough to come out ahead, why couldn’t I have finished the job? If only I’d acted on my impulse and kicked the slugger in the head, and kicked him again, and kept at it until I kicked his fucking head in. And put a bullet in the other one’s chest while I was at it, and pressed the gun into his buddy’s fist. Let the cops figure that one out. With a couple of lowlife skells like that, they wouldn’t kill themselves trying.
Oh, hell. If only I’d passed on the case in the first place. Told Mick I didn’t want to get involved. I’d wound up telling him that anyway just a day later.
Story of my life, always a day late and a dollar short.
If only I’d fired him as a sponsor. I’d been sober for years, I’d evidently long since mastered the subtle art of not drinking a day at a time, so what did I need with a sponsor? Why prolong the relationship, and why maintain the silly tradition of Chinese Sunday night dinners?
Elaine could have reminded me that I was a married man, that I ought to be having dinner every Sunday with my wife. She’d never do that, it wasn’t like her at all, but if only she had.
If only I’d never picked him as a sponsor in the first place. He’d been the obvious choice, the only person who paid any real attention to me when I started coming to meetings at St. Paul’s. I was still drinking on and off at first, not at all sure I wanted to be there and apparently incapable of declaring myself an alcoholic, or indeed of saying anything more than I absolutely had to. When it was my inescapable turn to speak, I’d say, My name is Matt, and I think I’ll just listen tonight. I didn’t think anyone noticed me, and it was months later before I learned that I’d had an AA sobriquet for a little while there. People referred to me as Matt the Listener.
But he took an interest, always said hello, always passed the time of day. Invited me to join a couple of them for coffee after the meeting. Listened respectfully when I spouted nonsense in the manner of the newly sober. Offered the occasional suggestion, so gently put that I rarely realized I hadn’t thought of it myself.
I keep hearing I ought to get a sponsor, I said offhandedly one night. Said it after having rehearsed it for two days. What do you think? I said.
It’s probably not a bad idea, he said.
No, I said, about you being my sponsor. What do you think about that?
I think I probably already am, he said. But, he said, if you’d like to make it formal, I’d say it sounds okay to me.
He was just this guy in an old army jacket. For a long time I didn’t know what he did for a living, or what life he had outside the AA rooms. Then he led a meeting and I heard his story. And then we got to know each other, and drank gallons of coffee at meetings and after meetings, and sat across the table from each other on hundreds of Sunday nights.
If only I’d picked someone else to be my sponsor, or no one at all. If only I’d looked around that basement room and said thanks but no thanks and gone back out for a drink.
He’d never let me get away with crap like that. You must have one hell of an ego, he told me more than once, to be that hard on yourself. Where do you get off setting yourself such impossibly high standards? Who do you think you are, anyway? The piece of shit the world revolves around?
I said, You mean I’m not?
You’re just a man, he said. You’re just another alcoholic.
That’s all?
That’s enough, he said.
If only the past were subject to change.
When TJ has second thoughts at the computer, he can press certain keys and undo the previous action. But, as a pinball addict told me years ago, the trouble with life is there’s no reset button.
What’s done can never be undone. It’s set in concrete, carved in stone.
Omar Khayyam wrote it ages ago, and put it so well that even I can remember the lines:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on, nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
If only that were not so.
If only . . .
I was questioned at length at the crime scene, first by the uniforms who responded to the 911 call, then by somebody in plainclothes. It’s impossible to remember the questions and answers because I was only dimly aware of the procedure while it was going on. A portion of my mind was struggling to pay attention, taking in what was being said by others within earshot, monitoring the questions I was asked and the answers I gave. The rest of me was somewhere else, wandering aimlessly through corridors of the past, sending out forays into an alternate future. An if-only future, a future in which, because I’d done something differently, Jim was still alive.
When I was eleven or twelve I got hit in the forehead with a baseball and walked around all day with a concussion. This was like that. As if I’d been swathed in cotton wool, enveloped in fog. I wasn’t really taking anything in, and it would all imprint on my memory like dream time, soft and hazy and out of focus, with pieces missing.
It was a quarter to ten when the fog cleared, or lifted, or whatever it does. I noted the time on the wall clock in the squad room upstairs at Midtown North, where I dimly recall being taken in the back of a blue and white police cruiser. We could have walked; the station house was on Fifty-fourth west of Eighth, literally a stone’s throw from the Lucky Panda.
I suppose the whole precinct house knew the restaurant. Cops have a legendary appetite for doughnuts, but they also put away a lot of Chinese food, and some of Midtown North’s Finest were likely to b
e at least occasional patrons of the Lucky Panda. That gave me one more entry in the If-Only sweepstakes. Why couldn’t there have been a couple of uniforms at a front table? The shooter would have taken one look and gone home.
A quarter to ten. I hadn’t even noticed the time until now. I’d met Jim around six-thirty. We talked for a minute or two. I went to the lavatory, I used the lavatory, I came rushing out of the lavatory . . .
Three hours gone since then, and gone in no time at all. I must have spent a lot of it sitting or standing around, waiting for something to happen, waiting for somebody to tell me what to do. I must have been in a very tractable state. Unaware as I was of the passage of time, I hadn’t grown bored or impatient.
“Matt? Here, whyntcha have a seat? We’ll go over this one more time and then you can go home and get some rest.”
“Sure,” I said.
This detective’s name was George Wister. He was lean and angular, with a sharp nose and chin and a carefully trimmed little mustache. His beard was dark and heavy, and I suppose he’d shaved when he got up that morning but he needed to shave again and knew it. He had a habit of touching his cheek or chin, running a finger against the grain of his whiskers, as if to check just how urgent was his need for a shave.
He was around forty, 5’10”, dark brown hair, deep-set dark brown eyes. I registered all this and wondered why. Nobody would be asking me to describe the investigating officer. What they’d have liked from me was a description of the killer, and I couldn’t help them with that.
“I’m sorry to have kept you so long,” Wister was saying. “But you know how these things work. You were on the job yourself.”
“Years ago.”
“And it seems to me I’ve seen you around the house. You’re tight with Joe Durkin, aren’t you?”
“We’ve known each other awhile.”
“And now you’re working private.” I dug out my wallet and started to show him my license. “No, that’s all right,” he said. “You showed me before.”
“It’s hard to keep it straight. What I showed and who I showed it to.”
“Yeah, and everybody wants to go over the same ground, and the whole experience takes it out of you to begin with. You must be dead on your feet.”
Was I? I didn’t even know.
“And anxious to get home.” He touched his chin, his cheek. “Deceased is James Martin Faber,” he read off a clipboard, and went on to read Jim’s address and the name and address of his place of business, looking at me each time for confirmation.
I said, “His wife is—”
“Mrs. Beverly Faber, same address. She’s being notified, in fact they’ve probably been over to see her by now. Get her to make a formal ID.”
“I’ll have to see her myself.”
“You want to get some rest first, Matt. You’re in shock yourself right now.”
I could have told him it was wearing off. I was myself again, whatever that amounted to. But all I did was nod.
“Faber was a friend of yours.”
“My sponsor.” The word puzzled him, and I was sorry I’d used it because now I had to explain it. Not that there was any reason not to explain. There’s a tradition against breaking the anonymity of another AA member, but it’s a courtesy extended only to the living. “My AA sponsor,” I said.
“That’d be Alcoholics Anonymous?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought anybody could join. I didn’t know you had to be sponsored.”
“You don’t,” I said. “A sponsor’s something you get after you’ve joined, more a combination friend and adviser. Sort of like a rabbi on the job.”
“A more experienced guy? Pulls strings for you, helps you keep your nose clean?”
“It’s a little different,” I said, “in that there are no promotions in AA, and the only way you can get in trouble is by picking up a drink. A sponsor is someone you can talk to, someone who’ll help you stay sober.”
“Not a problem I’ve got,” he said, “but a lot of cops do, and no wonder. The stress you got to deal with day in and day out.”
Every job’s stressful when you need a drink.
“So the two of you met for dinner. You have something special on your mind, something you needed to talk about?”
“No.”
“You’re married, he’s married, but the two of you left your wives home on a Sunday night and went out for Chinese.”
“Every Sunday night,” I said.
“That so?”
“With rare exceptions, yes.”
“So it was a regular thing. Is that standard procedure in AA?”
“Nothing’s standard in AA,” I said, “except not drinking, and even that’s not as standard as you might think. Our Sunday dinners started as part of the sponsorial relationship, a way to get to know each other. Over the years it became just a part of our friendship.”
“’Over the years.’ He was your sponsor for a long time?”
“Sixteen years.”
“You’re kidding. Sixteen years? And you haven’t had a drink in all that time?”
“Not so far.”
“And you still go to the meetings?”
“I do.”
“What about him?”
“He did.”
“Meaning he stopped?”
I was trying to figure out how I was supposed to answer that when he got the point and his face flushed. “Sorry,” he said. “Been a long day.” He looked down at the clipboard. “Every Sunday night. Always the same restaurant?”
“Always Chinese,” I said. “Different restaurants.”
“Why Chinese? Any particular reason?”
“Just a habit we got into.”
“Well, you could pick a new Chinese restaurant every week and it’d be awhile before you ran out. What I’m getting at, who knew the two of you were going to be there tonight?”
“Nobody.”
“I take it you didn’t make a reservation.”
“At the Lucky Panda?”
“Yeah, I wonder did anybody ever make a reservation there. At lunch, maybe, because they’ll fill up noontime during the week, but on nights and weekends you can shoot deer in there.”
“Or people,” I said.
He looked at me, unsure how to respond. He drew a breath and asked me who picked the restaurant.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Let me think. He’d suggested a place on Fifty-eighth, but they’d gone out of business. Then I suggested Chinatown and he said that was too much trouble, and I think he was the one who thought of the Lucky Panda.”
“And when was this?”
“Yesterday, it must have been. We talked on the phone.”
“And picked the time and the place to meet.” He wrote something down. “And the last time you actually saw him was . . .”
“Friday night at the meeting.”
“That’d be an AA meeting, right? And you spoke on the phone yesterday and met for dinner tonight as arranged.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you mention to anybody where you’d be having dinner?”
“I may have said something to my wife. I don’t even know.”
“But nobody else.”
“No.”
“And he’d have told his wife?”
“Possibly. He’d probably have told her he was having dinner with me, but I don’t know that he’d have bothered telling her where.”
“You know his wife?”
“To say hello to. I doubt I’ve seen her twenty times in sixteen years.”
“You didn’t get along?”
“He and I were friends, that’s all. Elaine and I had dinner with Jim and Beverly a couple of times, but that’s literally all it was. Two or three times.”
“Elaine being your wife.”
“Right.”
“How were they getting along?”
“Jim and his wife?”
“Uh-huh. He ever talk about that?”
&nb
sp; “Not lately.”
“So as far as you know . . .”
“As far as I know, they were getting along fine.”
“He’d have said if they weren’t?”
“I think so.”
“Who can you think of that he wasn’t getting along with?”
“Jim got along with everybody,” I said. “He was a very easygoing guy.”
“Didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
He sounded skeptical, the way cops do. “If he did,” I said, “I didn’t know about it.”
“How about his business?”
“His business?”
“Uh-huh. He was a printer, right? Had a printshop here in the neighborhood?”
I got out one of my business cards. “He printed these for me,” I said.
He ran his thumb across the raised lettering. Maybe he wanted to see if it needed a shave. “Nice work,” he said. “Okay if I keep this?”
“Sure.”
“Know anything about his business?”
“It didn’t come up in conversation a lot. A couple of years ago he was talking about packing it in.”
“Getting out of the business?”
“He was tired of it and I guess business was slow enough to be discouraging. For a while he was looking into buying a coffee bar franchise. This was back when there was a new one opening every time you turned around.”
“My brother-in-law bought one,” Wister said. “It’s been a pretty good thing for him, but they’re working every minute, him and my sister both.”
“Anyway, he decided against it and stayed with the printshop. Sometimes he talked about retiring, but I never got the impression he was ready to do it.”
“It says here he was sixty-three.”
“That sounds about right.”
“He in a position to retire?”
“I have no idea.”
“He didn’t talk about investments or debts, anything like that?”
“No.”
He probed his chin stubble. “Anything about a criminal element?”
“A criminal element?”