“Follow me,” Herbie said, tossing two twenties on the bar and leading the way aft. A moment later they were wedged into a corner of the crowded dining room. She polished off her drink and raised her glass. “Join me in another?”
Herbie instructed a waiter, and the drinks appeared. He raised his glass. “I know that single-malt scotch is delicious,” he said, “but it will eventually eat your liver.”
“You worry about your liver, I’ll worry about mine,” she replied. “What else do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with your name.”
“Harp O’Connor,” she said. “Call me Harpie or Harpo and I’ll show you that kick of mine in a painful place.”
“I perceive that you are Irish.”
“You are very perceptive. Both sides. I’m first generation. My mother is a nurse, my father, a bartender who owns the bar.”
“Why aren’t you drinking in his place?”
“The surveillance there is intrusive, and the old man won’t let me have more than one drink. And he’ll eighty-six any man I talk to.”
“All good reasons for drinking somewhere else,” Herbie said.
“Your turn, Herb.”
“Fisher, and I don’t like extensions of my first name, either. Born in Brooklyn thirtyish years ago, played hooky from the public schools, followed by NYU Law School.”
“What happened to college?” she asked.
“I finessed that.”
“How’d you get into law school without pre-law?”
“I passed the bar. That impressed the admissions committee enough to allow me to enter. I finished in two years with a three-point-nine GPA.”
“Okay, so you’re smart. Are you employed?”
“I’m a senior associate at the firm of Woodman amp; Weld.”
“Do they give you anything responsible to do there?”
“One of my clients is your former employer, Strategic Services, whose CEO, Michael Freeman, gave me the business.”
“Mike Freeman is a smart guy,” Harp said. “One of the reasons I left was that I couldn’t get anywhere near him.”
“You seem to have a history of quitting when your employers won’t give you responsibility quickly enough.”
“Well put. I decided I’d be happier if I had all the responsibility. That’s what being self-employed is all about.”
“Why a P.I.?”
“Because that’s what people were willing to pay me to do. One of Strategic’s clients asked me to investigate a couple of his employees in my spare time. As a result, both employees were fired, and I was hired. Word about me somehow got around that hiring me more than paid for itself, and other work appeared. Now I’m well afloat.”
“Admirable,” Herbie said.
They both ordered steaks and onion rings, and Herbie picked out a good red from the list.
Well,” Harp said, when they had finished dinner and reduced the bottle to half a glass. “I’m not tired, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Show me where you live,” she said.
“That’s direct.”
“Saves time. One of the ways I judge people is by how they occupy the spaces they live in. If you live in a rat hole, tell me now, and I’ll be on my way.”
Herbie signed the check and pulled the table out for her. “Come with me,” he said.
They took a cab over to Park Avenue, to Herbie’s building. They took the elevator up, and when they walked into his apartment she didn’t take her coat off until she had had a look around. Finally, she handed him her coat. “You’ll do, Herb,” she said.
7
Herbie was awakened by the smell of bacon frying. He pried open an eye, stumbled into the bathroom, brushed his teeth and hair, and got into a robe.
He was salivating as he arrived in the kitchen and found her setting the table by the window. “Good morning,” he said.
“First kitchen I’ve seen in New York that has a window that doesn’t overlook an air shaft,” she said, raking eggs out of a skillet onto the plates as two English muffins popped out of the toaster.
“It’s a penthouse,” Herbie said. “The air shaft surrounds the apartment.”
She recovered the bacon from the microwave, buttered the muffins, poured orange juice, set the coffeepot on the table, and sat down. “Join me?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Herbie sat down and tasted the eggs. “Wow,” he said. “What’s your secret?”
“If I told you my secrets, they wouldn’t be secret.”
Herbie was eating too fast to talk.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.
“Mmmmf?”
“You’re thinking, as my father would put it, ‘How did I fall into this pot of jam? How could I meet such a beautiful woman, experience the best sex of my life, and have the best breakfast ever, all in such a short time and with so little effort?’”
Herbie swallowed. “You’re a witch,” he said, then filled his mouth again.
Harp smiled. “There you have it. Tell me, how did you get rich enough at the age of thirtyish to live like this? Inherited wealth?”
“I inherited it from the New York State Lottery.”
Her mouth fell open.
“I kid you not.”
“So, you blew it on fast living, the way lottery winners always seem to?”
Herbie shook his head. “I got smart before it was all gone. Now I actually make more than I spend.”
“A good practice,” she replied, sipping her coffee. “I’m there, myself, and I like it.”
“Are you getting interesting work?” Herbie asked.
“I am. I like investigation, especially when people are trying to hide things, which they usually are. I’m a whiz on the computer, and that helps. I’m an urban girl, and I don’t really like fresh air all that much.” She cocked her head. “Ever been married?”
“Once,” Herbie said.
“How long?”
“Let’s say it was counted in months, not years. She and her brother ran off with a huge sum of money stolen from their father’s business and moved to a safe haven in the Pacific.”
“Didn’t she invite you?”
“Yes, but I have this thing: I can be sneaky, but I’m not dishonest. I wouldn’t live on money stolen from somebody else. Mind you, I got a very nice divorce settlement, and I don’t mind having that in the bank.”
“How do you get a divorce settlement after being married only a few months?”
“By getting it before no-fault divorce was signed into law in New York State. She didn’t really mind signing the money away, since it had already been sequestered by the feds, pending settlement of the firm’s losses. My attorney managed to get it unsequestered. You ever been married?”
“Yeah. I married a guy I met when we were both at the Police Academy. Lasted a little over two years. We were working different shifts in different precincts and hardly ever saw each other. He was a sweet guy, but not smart. He was on the take a week after he got his shield, and I couldn’t live with that.”
“You were smart to get out.”
She shrugged. “I guess. He’s doing time now, along with a dozen other guys who got caught when Internal Affairs busted them. I had to loan him money for a lawyer.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Herbie said.
Harp shrugged. “I just chalked it up as life experience. I decided to make more objective judgments of people, instead of being hooked on charm.”
“I noticed that last night,” Herbie said. “I didn’t have time to be charming.”
She smiled. “You were more charming than you realized. Honesty is charming. Beats bullshit every time.”
Not far away, Dino Bacchetti and Vivian DeCarlo were sitting up in bed, naked, eating toast and drinking coffee.
“Viv,” Dino said, “how many nights have you spent here in the past three months?”