A Ticket to the Boneyard by Lawrence Block

“Can I expect you tomorrow?”
    “I’m not sure. Probably not.”
    “Probably not. What’s the story, you working a case of your own?”
    “No, it’s something personal.”
    “Something personal. How about Monday?” I hesitated, and before I could reply he said, “You know, there’s a lot of guys out there can do this kind of work and are glad to get it.”
    “I know that.”
    “It’s not a regular job, you’re not on the payroll, but all the same I need people I can count on to come in when I got work for them.”
    “I appreciate that,” I said. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to count on me for the next little while.”
    “The next little while. How long is that?”
    “I don’t know. It depends how things work out.”
    There was a long pause, then a sudden bark of laughter. He said, “You’re drinking again, aren’t you? Jesus, why didn’t you just say so in the first place? Give me a call when you’ve got it out of your system and I’ll see if I’ve got anything for you.”
    Rage boiled up within me, immediate and volcanic. I choked on it until I heard him break the connection, then slammed the receiver down. I stalked away from the phone, my blood singing with the implacable fury of the falsely accused. I thought of a dozen things to tell him. First, though, I’d go over there and throw all his tables and chairs out the window. Then I’d tell him how he could change my per diem into nickels, and just where he could put it. And then—
    What I did was call Jim Faber at work. He heard me out, and then he laughed at me. “You know,” he said reasonably, “if you weren’t an alcoholic in the first place, you wouldn’t give a shit.”
    “He’s got no right to think I’m drunk.”
    “How is it your business what he thinks?”
    “Are you saying I haven’t got a right to be angry?”
    “I’m saying you can’t afford it. How close are you to picking up a drink?”
    “I’m not going to pick up a drink.”
    “No, but you’re closer than you were before you talked with the son of a bitch. That’s what you really felt like doing, isn’t it? Before you called me instead.”
    I thought about it. “Maybe,” I said.
    “But you picked up the phone, and now you’re starting to cool off.”
    We talked for a few minutes, and by the time I hung up my anger had lost its edge. Who was I really angry at? The guy at Reliable, who’d as much as said he was willing to hire me again after my bender had run its course? Not likely.
    Motley, I decided. Motley, for starting all this in the first place.
    Or myself, maybe. For being powerless to do anything about it.
    The hell with it. I picked up the phone and made some calls, and then I went over to Midtown North to talk to Joe Durkin.
     
     
    I never met Joe Durkin while I was on the job, although our years of service overlapped. I’d known him now for three or four years, and he’d become as good a friend as I had in the NYPD. We’d done each other a little good over the years. Once or twice he’d steered a client in my direction, and a few times I’d turned up something useful and passed it on to him.
    When I first met him he was counting the months toward his twenty years, figuring to put in his papers the day he hit that magic number. He couldn’t wait, he always said, to get off the job and out of the goddamned city. He was still saying the same thing, but the number had changed to twenty-five, now that he’d passed the twenty-year mark.
    The years have packed meat around his middle and thinned the dark hair that he combs flat across his head, and his face shows the florid cheeks and broken blood vessels of the heavy hitter. He had quit cigarettes for a while, but now he was smoking again. His ashtray overflowed onto the desktop, and he had a fresh cigarette burning. He put it out before I was halfway through with my story, and he had another one going before I was finished.
    When I was done he tilted his chair back and blew