"You couldn't get him out from under those charges?"
"I never even tried. He had other counsel. And I wouldn't have wanted the case. Killing a drug dealer is murder for profit, and there are plenty of other lawyers who can represent you. Shoot a cop and you're making a political statement. That's when a guy named Gruliow can do you some good."
"Somehow no one remembers that Madison's serving time."
"Of course not. All they remember is Hard-Way Ray got him off. And the cops don't care whether he's locked up in Green Haven or out in Hollywood fucking Madonna. Their take on it is the same as yours, that I put the department on trial. I didn't, I put the system on trial, which is what I always do, in one sense or another. Whether it's civil-rights workers or draft resisters or Palestinians or, yes, Warren Madison, I put the system on trial. But not everybody sees it that way." He pointed at his plastic window. "Some of them take it personally."
I said, "I keep seeing that picture of you and Madison after the trial."
"Embracing."
"That's the one."
"You figured what? Bad taste? Theatrical gesture?"
"Just a memorable image," I said.
"Ever hear of a criminal lawyer named Earl Rogers? Very flamboyant and successful, represented Clarence Darrow when the great man was brought up on charges of jury tampering. In another case his client was charged with some particularly odious murder. I forget the details, but Rogers won an acquittal."
"And?"
"And when they read the verdict, the defendant rushed to shake hands with the man who got him off. Rogers wouldn't take his hand. 'Get away from me,' he cried out right there in the courtroom. 'You son of a bitch, you're as guilty as sin!' "
"Jesus."
"Now that's theatrical," he said with relish. "And bad taste, and ethically questionable at the very least. 'You're guilty as sin!' They're almost all of them guilty, for God's sake. If you don't want to defend the guilty, find another line of work. But if you do defend them, and if you're lucky enough to win, you can damn well shake their hands." He grinned. "Or give 'em a hug, which is more my style than a handshake. And I felt like hugging Warren, I didn't have to fake it. It's goddam exhilarating when they say 'Not guilty.' It's moving. You want to hug somebody. And I liked Warren."
"Really?"
He nodded. "Very charming man," he said, "unless he had reason to kill you."
13
"I'm hungry," he announced around six. He called up a Chinese restaurant. "Hi, this is Ray Gruliow," he said, and ordered several dishes, along with a couple of bottles of Tsing-tao, telling them not to forget the fortune cookies this time. "Because," he said, "my friend and I need to know what the future holds."
He hung up and said, "You're in the program, right?"
"The program?"
"Don't be coy, huh? You asked me in my own house if I was a fucking serial murderer. I ought to be able to ask you if you're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous."
"I wasn't being coy. People outside of AA don't generally call it 'the program.' "
"I went to a few meetings a couple of years ago."
"Oh?"
"Right here in the neighborhood. The basement of St. Luke's, on Hudson, and a little storefront on Perry Street. I don't know if they still have meetings there."
"They do."
"Nobody told me, 'Gruliow, get your ass out of here, you don't belong.' And I heard things I identified with."
"But you didn't stay."
He shook his head. "It was more than I wanted to give up. I looked at the First Step and it said something about life being out of control. I forget how they phrased it."
" 'We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that it made our lives unmanageable.' "
"That's it. Well, I looked at my life, and it wasn't unmanageable. There were nights I drank too much and mornings when I regretted it, but it seemed to me that was a price I could afford to pay. So I made a conscious effort to cut back on my drinking."
"And it worked?"
He nodded. "I'm feeling the drinks I had just now. That's why I ordered food. I don't usually have this much to drink before dinner. I've had some stress lately. I think it's only natural to drink more at times of stress, don't you?"
I said that sounded reasonable.
"I wouldn't have brought it up," he said, "but I didn't want to order beer for you if you were the nondrinker I understood you to be, nor did I want to appear inhospitable." He slurred the last word just the least bit, and stopped himself from taking another stab at it. Shifting gears, he said, "The woman you live with. How old is she?"
"I'll have to ask her."
"She's not thirty years younger than you, is she?"
"No."
"Then I guess you're not as much of a damned fool as I am," he said. "When the club first met, Michelle was still in diapers. Jesus, she was the age Chatham is now."
"Chatham's your daughter?"
"Indeed she is. I'm even beginning to get used to her name. Her mother's idea, as you no doubt assumed. A man in his sixties does not name his daughter Chatham. I suggested to Michelle that if she wanted to name the kid after an English prime minister she should give some thought to Disraeli. It goes better with Gruliow than Chatham. Dizzy Gruliow. It has a nice ring, don't you think?"
"But she didn't like it?"
"She didn't get it. She's half my age, for God's sake, but God help me if I treat her like a child. I have to treat her like an equal. I told her, making a joke of it, that I don't treat anybody like an equal, young or old, male or female. 'Yes,' she said. 'I've noticed.' You know something? I don't think I'm going out to Sag Harbor tomorrow. I think the pressures of work are going to prove too great for me."
We ate in the front room, with the plates balanced on our laps. He found a Coke for me and drank his two bottles of Chinese beer.
He said, "It's funny. It was Homer's death that shocked me. He was a very old man by the time he died, older than anybody I'd ever known, but I must have expected him to live forever. He wasn't the first to go, you know. He was the third."
"I know."
"It was a shock when Phil died, but a car crash, that's the kind of lightning that's always there. It's going to strike somebody sooner or later. Did you grow up in New York?"
"Yes."
"So did I. In the rest of the country you don't get through high school without having a friend or two die in a wreck. Every prom night you know there's going to be at least one car that doesn't make it around Dead Man's Curve. But kids don't drive in the city, so it's a form of population control we're spared here."
"We've got others."
"God, yes. There's always some form of attrition that thins out the ranks of the young males. Historically, war's always played that role, and did a fine job before the dawn of the nuclear age. Still, limited wars and local skirmishes take up the slack. In the ghettos, dope's the medium. Either they overdose on it or they traffic in it and shoot each other." He snorted. "But I digress. If I ever write my memoirs that'll be the title. But I Digress."
"You were talking about Kalish's death."
"It didn't scare me. That's what we're talking about, isn't it? Fear, fear of dying. They say man's the only animal that knows he's going to die. He's also the only animal that drinks."
"You think there's a connection?"
"I'm not even sure I buy the first part. I've had cats, and I always had the feeling they were as aware of their mortality as I've ever been of mine. The difference is they're fearless. Maybe they don't give a shit."
"I can't even tell how people feel about things," I said. "Let alone cats."
"I know what you mean. You know why I felt no fear when Phil died? It couldn't be simpler. I didn't own a car."
"So you couldn't-"