Chaucer’s was a friendly sort of neighborhood saloon with a famous shuffle bowling game, cheap paneling, stained-glass windows in the doors, and deep booths where groups of kids right out of college could sit and drink pitchers and gossip about other kids right out of college. When I first started going there it was filled with older, blue-collar types, with truck drivers, with lesbians who dressed like truck drivers, with college dropouts who ruefully discussed their dubious futures. But it no longer had that type of charm. Now the boys wore their baseball caps backwards, ponytails spilling out beneath the brims, the girls sheathed their long legs in black leotards, and they were all college graduates, discussing their dubious futures with pride. I still drank there, but now I felt too old to be a part and that was scary and sad both. I still remembered when it was a thrill just to be inside a bar, when the soft lighting and cigarette smoke and strangers on the stools whispered something so seductive I couldn’t believe I could just walk in, sit down, and order a beer. But now I was one of the older and the sadder and the people slipping in were younger, gayer, more vibrant than I. Now I knew what the older people in the bars used to think of me because I knew what I thought of this new generation. I wished they all would just go home to their mamas.
Slocum and I were sitting in one of those deep booths toward the rear of the bar. The waitress had given us each a bottle of Rolling Rock and a glass and each of us had ignored the glass. I almost liked Slocum. He took it all very seriously, as one would want a public prosecutor to take it all very seriously, but he had a sense of humor, too. It was a weary sense of humor, that was the only type a prosecutor would ever allow himself, but even a weary sense of humor put him leagues ahead of the rest. I told him the whole story of my meeting with Raffaello, although I left out the part where he called his daughter a slut. I still remembered that Jasper and Dominic believed nothing was as important as keeping one’s word, and though I almost liked Slocum, I wasn’t willing to bet my life on whether or not he had a connection to Raffaello. Everyone else seemed to in this burg.
“He said it was a jealous husband?” asked Slocum.
“He didn’t give me specifics.”
“So right now it’s just a mystery girl.”
“Right,” I said.
“And you want me to check it out?”
“Yes.”
“To send out my detectives to find that girl?”
“That would be terrific.”
“You want me to send out my detectives to find this mystery girl, the existence of whom was disclosed by the biggest criminal in the city, all in an effort to destroy my murder case against your client.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Larry, an innocent man is getting railroaded here.”
“Or maybe Raffaello’s lying. You ever consider that gangsters sometimes lie? Nothing happens in this town without him getting a cut. Maybe he was part of the whole thing and now he’s throwing out false leads to take the heat off his compares.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “Not for a minute. What I believe is that you’ve got the wrong guys facing death row and you don’t want to admit it.”
He shrugged, like he wasn’t certain that I was wrong. “Maybe, Carl. It happens. But you’re going to have to do your own investigating. How much you getting an hour for this case? No, don’t tell me, it’ll just make me ill. Earn your money, find the girl yourself.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked at me for a moment. “But maybe I can help.”
I just stared at him and waited.
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “All right, I’m going to tell you something. I’m telling you this because I think there’s a chance, small, but a chance you may be right. But if it comes back in my face in some motion or in a newspaper article I’m going to be very disappointed, do you understand? And you don’t want to disappoint me.”
He paused and took a drink from his beer.
“When we showed you the physical evidence,” he continued, “we didn’t show you everything. There was a book.”
“Shakespeare?” I asked.
“More like Ma Bell.”
“A phone book?”
“A personal phone book.”
“You withheld Bissonette’s little black book?”
“Now don’t get like that,” he said, raising a hand in protest. “The office made a determination that it wasn’t appropriate to release Bissonette’s personal phone book, as it might tend to embarrass certain, how should I phrase this, certain well-known and highly placed women in the city. These women and their families have privacy rights. This wasn’t like a hooker’s book with the names of her johns. There were no crimes committed here.”
“So there’s this book.” I pressed on.
“You want another beer?”
“Tell me about the book.”
“I’d like another beer.”
I raised my hand for the waitress like I was in grade school and ordered two more Rocks when she came. “All right,” I said. “Tell me about the book.”
“Well, this book has the names of the usual suspects, a lot of women with reputations.”
“Let me see the book.”
“Are you listening to me, Carl? I said we’re not disclosing the book. There are names in there that if you saw them your jaw would drop to your knees, world-famous singers, athletes, wives of heavy politicians.”
“Like Councilman Fontelli’s.”
“This was his book. But there aren’t just phone numbers there. He rated them, gave them stars, one to five, like a damn critic.”
“Just like a baseball player to be obsessed with statistics. But that’s good, then,” I said. “We can use that book to find the girl he fell in love with. She was a five-star for sure.”
“There’s more than one five-star name.”
“Just give me the five stars to check on, then.”
“Some are just initials, some without numbers.”
“Well, whoever this mystery woman is, it’s someone in the book,” I said. “A man falls in love, he puts the number in his book.”
“You sound like you have a book of your own, Carl.”
“More like a few paper slips with hand-scrawled numbers.”
“You ever find a number you don’t know whose it is?” asked Slocum, taking a long gulp from his beer, his eyes, behind his thick glasses, showing amusement.
“All the time.”
“What do you do then?”
“I call it. ‘Hello, anyone there single and under fifty-five?’”
“Oh man,” he said. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to be married.”
The waitress came with two more Rolling Rocks, the green long-necked bottles fogged with cold. “Two more,” I said.
“So this is what I’m offering here,” said Slocum after the waitress left. “You give me the name of any women whose possible involvement you’re investigating and I’ll tell you if she’s in the book and her rating. You can take it from there.”
“Linda Marie Raffaello Fontelli.”
“Three stars,” he said. “I would have figured more with all that practice…”
“How about Lauren Amber Guthrie?” I said quickly.
“Where did that name come from?”
“I recognized her photograph in the love box.”
“And you withheld relevant information about a homicide from me?” He shook his head at me sadly. “I’ll let you know if she’s in there tomorrow. Any others, you just give me a call.”
“Tell me something else,” I said. “Tell me what you know about a drug dealer named Norvel Goodwin.”
He stared at me for a long moment, took a drink from his beer, and then stared at me some more. “What the hell are you into?” he asked finally.