There was still an hour of daylight left when Dill walked up the six steps to the screened wraparound porch. He crossed the porch to the locked door and rang the buzzer. A tinny voice, as irascible as ever, asked its usual one-word question: “What?”
“Ben Dill.”
“Jesus,” the voice said. A moment later the buzzer sounded, unlocking the door. A small foyer led into a room that, except for the kitchen in the rear, seemed to occupy the entire first floor of the large old house. Tables and banquettes were to the right. Near the foyer was a lounge area that focused on a huge bay window where, Dill thought, you could sit just like you could sit in private clubs all over the world and, as someone once said, watch it rain on the damn people. He felt it might even be why private clubs were invented.
Dill headed for the L-shaped bar that was to the left of the lounge area. He noticed it was the same mahogany bar they had used in the downtown location. They had even brought along the old brass rods that ran up above the bar. From them hung the salvaged leather trolley straps, providing convenient support for those who had nipped too long at the gin.
The man who stood behind the bar, leaning on it with both hands, had stood behind it for thirty years as both club manager and head bartender. His name was Christos Levides, or Christ, the Greek! or usually just the Greek. He was in his mid-fifties and looked not much different than he had at twenty-five. The black eyes were still as full of guile, the elegant mustache as trim, and the expression of faint disdain as crafty and Ulysses-like as ever. There were some new lines, of course, running in deep trenches down from the remarkable nose and in horizontal creases across the forehead. It was a carefully bored face that obviously had heard most of life’s lies and all of its excuses.
Levides didn’t move or speak until Dill settled himself on a stool and looked around to see if there was anyone else he still knew. There wasn’t. Two men were at the bar’s far end, but they looked like lawyers. A dozen or so diners were seated at tables.
“Well,” Levides said finally. “You’re back.”
“I’m back,” Dill agreed.
Levides nodded thoughtfully, as if Dill looked as awful as he had expected him to look. “I heard about your sister.” There was a long pause as Levides seemed to consider carefully what he should say next. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“Hell of a thing.”
“Yes.”
“I remember when you used to bring her down to the old place, when she wasn’t more than yea-tall.” He held up a hand at shoulder height to show how tall Dill’s dead sister had been. “Ten, maybe eleven then?”
“About that,” Dill said. “Not much older anyway.”
Levides nodded somberly and, his brief mourning over, said, “What’ll you have?”
“A beer. Beck’s, if you’ve got it.”
Levides nodded again, spun, whipped a bottle out of the case, snapped its top off, spun back around, and set it down on the bar along with a frosted glass. “Two bucks,” he said, “and you still owe thirty-eight eighty-two on your tab, which you sort of forgot about paying when you took off for Washington — when was it? Ten years back?”
“Around in there,” Dill said, took a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet, slid it across the bar, and told Levides to take it all out of that.
Levides turned to the cash register, rang up the sale, and turned back with Dill’s change. “How’ve you been?” Dill said.
“Same old shit.”
Dill glanced around. “Looks pretty nice.”
“Yeah, if you like dry rot.”
“The steaks still passable?”
Levides shrugged. “I ate one day before yesterday and I ain’t dead yet.” He looked away. “Who did it?”
“They don’t know.”
“Who they got on it?”
“I talked to the chief of detectives,” Dill said. “Strucker.”
“Him I know.”
“And?”
The Greek shrugged. “Smart. Not college smart exactly, but smart-cop smart. Been on the force twenty-five years at least. Maybe more. Went to night law school. Took Dale Carnegie public speaking lessons. Married a whole lot of money the second time around. Lives good, dresses nice. And not a blot on him.”
“Captain Colder,” Dill said. “Gene Colder.”
“Him.”
“Him.”
“Well, him I don’t know hardly at all. They brought him in a couple of years ago from back east — Kansas City or Omaha, I think, someplace like that. They’re grooming him, I hear.”
“For Strucker’s job?”
“If Strucker goes, and there’s talk about him running for something, Colder might take it, but he won’t even hardly get the seat warm. Colder’s going all the way up when old man Rinkler finally retires.”
“Rinkler’s still chief of police?” There was more than a touch of incredulity in Dill’s tone.
“Still.”
“Hell, it’s been thirty years. At least thirty.”
“Almost,” Levides said. “They tapped him for it when he was thirty-five and he’s at least sixty-four now. Anyway, he’ll go when he’s sixty-five. It’s the rule.”
Dill drank some of his beer and asked, “Who’s the Trib got on the police run now?”
“Who else?” Levides said. “Freddie Laffter.”
“Jesus, doesn’t anything change around here?”
The Greek seemed to give it some thought and then shrugged. “Not a hell of a lot.”
“Laffter still come in every night?”
“Eight on the dot — right after the bulldog.”
“He’d know about Colder, wouldn’t he?”
“If anybody does.” The Greek looked away before asking his next question. Dill remembered it as an affectation designed to make Levides’ questions seem offhand, even indifferent. “How come you’re so interested in Colder?” he asked in a bored voice.
“Because he claims he was going to marry my sister.”
The Greek looked back at Dill and smiled. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s a pretty good reason. You want another beer?”
“Why not?” Dill said.
Dill was still husbanding his second beer when the old man came in, seventy now at least, Dill thought, and perhaps even more. He was moving with a deceptively quick shambling gait that sped him toward the rear of the dining room. His eyes were fixed straight ahead behind steel-rimmed bifocals. On his head was a hat, a soiled Panama with a rippling brim, perhaps one of the four real Panamas in the city, or even the state, and he wore it with the brim turned down all the way around.
The old man’s striped summer suit appeared to be made out of bed ticking. He wore a white pongee shirt that was yellowing with age and whose collar was at least two sizes too large. His tie was old and gray and looked greasy. A reporter’s notebook peeped out of the suitcoat’s left-hand pocket. The bulldog edition of the Tribune was stuck down into the right-hand one. On the old man’s feet were a pair of new Gucci loafers. Dill assumed they were counterfeit.
“Hey, Chuckles,” the Greek called.
Fred Y. Laffter stopped his headlong flight toward the rear, turned, and looked at Levides with contempt. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Somebody here’d like to talk to you.”
“Who?”
The Greek nodded at Dill. “Him.”
Laffter turned his head. It was an egg-shaped head, the large end fortunately up, and pale pink in color, except for the nose, which was a button of near crimson. The brows were white and almost invisible above eyes that had faded from blue into something almost colorless. The mouth was a thin mean line and surprisingly prim. A fine web of old age had etched itself across the face, but the pale, pale eyes were still alert, curious, and they now examined Dill with interest.