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"Pills"

"Pills?"

"But I couldn't find anything stronger than aspirin" I explained what Sternlicht had found, and the iht how to search an aparthly I didn't pry up floorboards or take the furniture apart, but I made a pretty systematic search of the premises If there was chloral hydrate there, I would have found it"

"Maybe it was his last pill"

"Then there'd be an eht have thrown it out"

"It wasn't in his wastebasket It wasn't in the garbage under the kitchen sink Where else would he have tossed it?"

"Maybe sole pill, or a couple of pills 'You can't sleep? Here, take one of these, they work every tioes, you said he was streetwise, didn't you? Not every pill sold in this neighborhood gets dispensed by a phar else on the street I wouldn't be surprised if you could buy coral hydrate"

"Chloral hydrate"

"Chloral hydrate, then Sounds like so a welfare mother would name her kid 'Chloral, now you leave off pickin' on yo' brother!' What's the h"

"Do I? Maybe I caught it upstairs And what you said about people living too long I was thinking last night that I don't want to wind up an oldalone in a hotel room And here I am, well on the way"

"Some old man"

I sat there and nursed my mood while she took a shower When she ca for ood would it have donethat myself"

"I just wish I knehat he wanted to tellon his mind and he was just about ready to unload it, but I told him to take his time, to think it over I should have sat doith him then and there"

"And then he'd still be alive?"

"No, but-"

"Matt, he didn't die because of what he said or didn't say He died because he did soerous and his luck ran out"

"I know"

"There was nothing you could have done And nothing you can do for him now"

"I know He didn't-"

"Didn't what?"

"Say anything to you?"

"I hardly knew him, Matt I can't remember the last time I talked to him I don't know if I ever talked to him, beyond 'How's the weather?' and 'Here's the rent' "

"He had so on his mind," I said "I wish to hell I knehat it was"

I dropped into Grogan's in the middle of the afternoon The dart board wasn't in use and I didn't see Andy Buckley anywhere, but otherwise the croas azine down long enough to drawabout the Mets, laot Jiave up Nolan Ryan Nolan Ryan!"

On the television screen, John Wayne was putting soh the swinging doors of a saloon, bellying up to the bar, telling the barkeep to bring him a Coke and a chloral hydrate

I nursed lass was aler for Tolass but I covered it with my palm He looked at me, expressionless as ever, and I asked if Mickey Ballou had been in

"There's people in and out," he said "I wouldn't know their nae to his speech I hadn't noticed it earlier "You'd know hian's Wouldn't it be Grogan that owns it?"

"He's a big man," I said "Sometimes he wears a butcher's apron"

"I'hts"

"Perhaps he does I'd like to leave word for him"

"Oh?"

"I want to talk to him Tell him, will you?"

"I don't know him And I don't know yourself, so ould I tell him?"

"My name is Scudder, Matt Scudder I want to talk to him about Eddie Dunphy"

"I may not remeood with naain around six-thirty The croas larger, with half a dozen after-work drinkers ranged along the bar Toone, his place taken by a tall felloith a lot of curly dark brown hair He wore an open cowhide vest over a red-and-black flannel shirt

I asked if Mickey Ballou had been in

"I haven't seen hiot on myself Who wants hiot out of there, had a sandwich by myself at the Flaht, which , and this ere on the sixth step, in the course of which one becomes ready on some inner level to have one's defects of character re in particular that you do to bring this about It's just supposed to happen to you It hasn't happened toto end but Ithe break I took Jim Faber aside and told him I wasn't sure whether or not Eddie had died sober, that the autopsy had found chloral hydrate in his bloodstream

"The proverbial Mickey Finn," he said "You don't hear about it iven us so s I only once heard of an alcoholic who used to take chloral hydrate for recreational purposes She went through a period of controlled solitary drinking; every night she took a dose of chloral, pills or drops, I don't remember, and drank two beers Whereupon she passed out and slept for eight or ten hours"

"What happened to her?"