Strangled by Brian McGrory

host’s podium of Locke-Ober for forty years, which makes him a relative newcomer at the restaurant, but still an institution in the town. He has seated kings and Kennedys, tycoons and tyrants, always with a gracious demeanor and just the right amount of solicitude.
    “I hear you’ve gotten married,” he said. “That will always shake things up a bit.”
    I shook my head again and smiled with even more futility. “I walked to the brink of the altar before I realized I was standing in the wrong church,” I said.
    Tony nodded, looking away from me, not betraying even a hint of surprise.
    “Smart boy,” he said. “I’ve got three weddings behind me already, and I’m thinking of a fourth.”
    “How’s biz?” I asked.
    He looked behind him into the three-quarters-filled dining room and said, “Can’t complain.” And he didn’t. It wasn’t his style, even if he had something to complain about.
    I said, “I’m meeting a gentleman, which might be the most liberty that’s ever been taken with that term, by the name of Hank Sweeney. Tall, dark, and not particularly handsome. A retired member of our distinguished police force. Have you seen him?”
    Tony nodded back into the room. “He’s sitting near Yvonne, drinking on your tab as we speak.”
    I poked my head around the corner and sure enough, there was Hank Sweeney, with a lowball glass containing what looked like a Tom Collins in his hairy hand, lounging in a chair at a table pushed up against the wall beneath the famous portrait of a woman named Yvonne.
    As I previously mentioned, I hadn’t seen Hank in roughly a year, a fact I immediately regretted upon seeing him again. He pulled himself to his feet with a look that was equal parts appreciation and warmth, and as I walked toward him, he wrapped his arms around me in a long and wistful hug. When he finally spoke in that whiskeyed, raspy voice of his, he said, “Like it was only yesterday.”
    I replied, “We let too much time get away from us, Hank. Too much time.” He gave me a hard, final slap on the top of my back, and we both took our seats.
    Hank, for those keeping score, is one of my favorite people in life. About a year earlier, I wrote a story that led to the mayor’s resignation. In my reporting, I came to learn that Hank, my Hank, had been compromised many years ago in a scandal involving the FBI and the Boston Police. I conveniently left that part out of print. He conveniently helped me with key information. After I filed, I didn’t call him the next day, nor did he call me. A day turned to a week turned to a month turned to a year, two great friends floating foolishly apart. Maybe I was disappointed in him. Perhaps he had been angry at me or embarrassed by what I learned. Whatever it was, all of it washed away in the dining room of Locke-Ober in that split second when we came together again.
    Hank had thrown on a sport coat and a tie for this occasion, which I knew he would. I noticed he had slimmed down quite a bit, nearly to the point of being svelte, and I told him so.
    He laughed softly, that laugh that begins inside his chest, shakes his shoulders, and makes his head bob up and down a little bit. “Son, if I start looking and acting my age, then I might as well just hang the whole thing up and go back to that pit in Florida where you found me.”
    He was referring to the time I knocked on his door in some godforsaken retirement community in inland Florida a few years before because I figured he’d have some information on a story I was reporting. He did, and he helped me, but even better than the insight he provided, he gave me friendship. Hopefully, he was about to give me both of those all over again.
    The waiter, Luis, twenty-four years in the café, came over with menus, a fresh drink for Hank, and a Sam Adams for me. “Compliments of Tony,” he told me solicitously.
    “Please tell Tony that I thank him for the compliment,” I replied.
    Hank and I made some standard-issue