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I wondered if he was praying I wondered what prayer was like, and what people got out of it Sometimes, in one church or another, it occurs to o about it

If there'd been candles to light I would have lit one, but the church was Episcopalian and there weren't

I went to the ht at St Paul's but couldn't keepthe discussion the kid fro told how he'd reached his ninety days, and once again he got a round of applause The speaker said, "You knohat comes after your ninetieth day? Your ninety-first day"

I said, "My naht I fell asleep easily but kept waking up out of dreaht as I tried to catch hold of theht a paper and brought it back to the roo distance I'd never been to it but I had seen it listed in the , it was already half over I stayed inused to fill up the hours I used to be able to sit in Aretting loaded, just sipping one cup after another while the hours went by You try and do the sa without the booze and it doesn't work It just doesn't work

Around three I thought of Kim I reached for the phone to call her and had to stop ift she kne to bestow and one I didn't kno to reject, but that didn'tto one another, and whatever business we'd had with each other was finished

I reht of calling Jan And ould the conversation be like?

I could tell her I was halfway through my seventh sober day I hadn't had any contact with her since she started going to s herself They'd told her to stay away fros associated with drink, and I was in that category as far as she was concerned I wasn't drinking today and I could tell her that, but so what? It didn't mean she would want to see me For that matter, it didn't mean I would want to see her

We'd had a couple evenings e had a good tiether Maybe we could have the sa in Ar's for five hours with no bourbon in the coffee

I got as far as looking up her number but never made the call

The speaker at St Paul's told a really low-bottom story He'd been a heroin addict for several years, kicked that, then drank his way down to the Bowery He looked as though he'd seen hell and re the break, Ji I told hi I'd been sober now

"Today's reat," he said "That's really great, Matt"

During the discussion I thought maybe I'd speak up when it was my turn I didn't know that I'd say I was an alcoholic because I didn't know that I was, but I could say solad to be there, or soot toJi my folded chair to where they stack theenerally stop over to the Cobb's Corner for coffee after theout and shoot the breeze Why don't you co?"

"Gee, I'd like to," I said, "but I can't tonight"

"Soood, Ji else to do Instead I went to Arer and a piece of cheesecake and drank a cup of coffee I could have had the identical meal at Cobb's Corner

Well, I always like Arht crowd then, just the regulars After I was done with my meal I carried my coffee cup over to the bar and chatted for awhile with a CBS technician named Manny and a

I went ho with a sense of dread and wrote it off as the residue of an unremembered dreaot dressed, went downstairs, dropped a bag of dirty clothes at the laundry and left a suit and a pair of pants at the dry cleaners I ate breakfast and read the Daily News One of their coluht the shotgun blast in Gravesend They'd just moved into that house, it was their dreahborhood And then these two gangsters, running for their lives, had picked that particular house to run to "It was as if the finger of God had pointed to Clair Ryzcek," the columnist wrote

In the "Metro Briefs" section, I learned that tery derelicts had fought over a shirt one of them had found in a trash can in the Astor Place BMT subway station One had stabbed the other dead with an eight-inch folding knife The dead man was fifty-two, his killer thirty-three I wondered if the iteround When they kill each other in Bowery flop-houses, it's not news

I kept thu, and the vague feeling of foreboding persisted I felt faintly hungover and I had to reht before This was hth sober day

I went to the bank, put soed the rest into tens and twenties I went to St Paul's to get rid of fifty bucks but there was aon I went to the Sixty-third Street Y instead and listened to thequalification I'd heard yet I think the speaker e of eleven on He droned on in a monotone for forty solid ht a hot dog froot back to the hotel around three, took a nap, went out again around four-thirty I picked up a Post and took it around the corner to Arht the paper but soister I sat down and ordered coffee and looked at the front page and there it was

call girl slashed to ribbons, it said

I knew the odds and I also knew that the odds didn't matter I sat for a moment withto alter the story by sheer force of will Color, the very blue of her northern eyes, flashed behind ht and I could feel that pulse of pain again at the back of e and there it was on page three just the way I kneould be She was dead The bastard had killed her

Chapter 6

Kim Dakkinen had died in a room on the seventeenth floor of the Galaxy Doner, one of the new high-rise hotels on Sixth Avenue in the Fifties The room had been rented to a Mr Charles Owen Jones of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who had paid cash in advance for a one-night stay upon checking in at 9:15 p phoned ahead for a room half an hour earlier Since a preliminary check revealed no one of Mr Jones's name in Fort Wayne, and since the street address he'd entered on the registration card did not seeiven a false name