Small Town

He put down the phone and went over to the window. Below his window, a black man in camo fatigues went through the blue garbage can, selecting aluminum cans for redemption. Recycling didn’t seem to work in New York, all the trash wound up in the same landfill, but the law requiring you to separate it at least made things easier for the can collectors.

Across the street, a man with a clipboard was leading a dozen people on a walking tour of the Village. Willa Cather had lived on this block, and maybe he’d tell them as much and point out the house. They shuffled on by, leaving Creighton with a view of the old man leaning in the doorway.

He’d seen him before, in his plaid shirt and the pants from an old suit. Homeless, he guessed, or the next thing to it, but too proud or not desperate enough to root around in garbage cans.

Maybe he’d go downstairs, take the old fellow to the Corner Bistro and buy him a burger. One point one, Jesus, he could damn well afford it.

He went back to the computer first, to tinker with the last sentence he’d written, and when he looked up an hour had gone by and he’d written a page and a half. He stood up, rubbed his eyes, yawned.

One point one. He ought to call somebody, but who was there to call? And what kind of conversation could he have with someone he hadn’t talked to since before Marilyn Fairchild’s death had changed his life?

He could call Karin, tell her her money was safe, tell her the kids weren’t going to have to worry about money for college. But shouldn’t he wait until after the auction?

He was hungry, he was thirsty, he’d done a good day’s work, and damned if he wasn’t on the verge of genuine success. Blair Creighton had managed to get by, and that was no mean accomplishment in the field he’d chosen, but John Blair Creighton...

Look out, Grisham. Not so fast, Clancy. And you better watch your ass, Steve King.

He grabbed his cigarettes, checked to make sure he had his wallet, and got the hell out of there. When he hit the street he looked around for the old guy he’d seen earlier, but he’d drifted off, missing out on his chance for a Bistro Burger. And the Bistro could wait, because why not take the bull by the horns?

He started walking, and when people looked his way he looked right back at them.

Eddie Ragan looked up when the door opened, and he figured his face showed about as much as it did when he played poker. All in all, he did pretty well at poker.

“John,” he said. “Been a while.”

“Well, I’ve been busy, Eddie. Better let me have a Pauli Girl.”

“You got it.”

And he sat where he always sat and got a cigarette going and looked at the TV, where Gene Fullmer and Carmen Basilio were duking it out on the classic sports channel. Basilio was bleeding so bad he must have needed a transfusion afterward, and even in black and white it was pretty gruesome. Nowadays they’d stop it, but this was from before the sport got so candy-ass.

Creighton drank some beer, looked around, saw Max the Poet. “Max,” he said.

Max looked up from his book, looked over the tops of his glasses at Creighton, said, “John. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“No, it’s been a while,” Creighton agreed.

“Well, you didn’t miss much,” Max said. “Everything jake with you, John?”

“Jake indeed. And with you, Max?”

“Oh, I can’t complain,” said Max the Poet.

I love this job, Eddie thought.

twelve

On the flight home from Dallas-Fort Worth, his seat companion in the front cabin was a ruddy-faced Texan with a GI haircut and intelligent brown eyes under a heavy ridge of brow. Buckling up, the man said, “If there was no other reason to hate the goddamn Arabs, and there’s plenty, what they’ve done to air travel would do for me. The airport security measures just drive a man crazy. Anything under five hundred miles, I get in the car and drive.”

“It’s a difficult situation,” Buckram said.

“I know, but it’d be comforting to think there was a guiding intelligence behind it all. I saw them pull a woman out of line for one of their random searches and I swear she was eighty years old and used an aluminum walker. Meantime how hard is it to get a gun onto an airplane? All you have to do is tuck it in your turban.”

“They’re afraid to get criticized for racial profiling.”

“There’s a difference between stopping cars because the drivers are black and paying extra attention to people who flat out look like terrorists. I’ll tell you, my doctor wanted to schedule me for an MRI last week. Don’t bother, I told him. I’m flying to New York in a few days, I’ll ask airport security to send you the results.”

He hadn’t heard that one, and laughed.

“Listen,” the man said, “I like to talk, but I hate to inflict myself on someone who’d rather read, so if you brought a book along...”

“It’s in my checked luggage, and I’d rather have human company anyway.”

“Well, I’m not sure I qualify,” the man said. “Some would argue otherwise. Name’s Bob Wilburn, from Plano.”

“Fran Buckram, from New York.”

“I already knew that.”