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"I think so"

"You don't sound so sure no more Or maybe you just sound tired You tired?"

"Yes"

"Knockin' on too many doors Wha'd this boyfriend of hers do besides buy her all these presents that don't exist?"

"He was going to take care of her"

"Well, shit," he said "That's what I did, irl but take care of her?"

I stretched out on the bed and fell asleep with my clothes on I'd knocked on too many doors and talked to too many people I was supposed to see Sunny Hendryx, I'd called and told her I would be co over, but I took a nap instead I drea, and I woke up bathed in sweat and with a metallic taste in the back of ed my clothes I checked Sunny's number in my notebook, dialed it from the lobby No answer

I was relieved I looked at my watch, headed over to St Paul's

The speaker was a soft-spoken felloith receding light brown hair and a boyish face At first I thought he yman

He turned out to be a ht in a blackout he had stabbed his lover thirty or forty times with a kitchen knife He had, he said quietly, faintin and out of blackout, co struck by the horror of it, and then slipping back into the darkness He'd served seven years at Attica and had been sober three years now on the outside

It was disturbing, listening to him I couldn't decide how I felt about hilad or sorry that he was alive, that he was out of prison

On the break I got to talking with Ji to the qualification,Ki about all the violence, all the criets toor other and it gets to me"

"You know that vaudeville routine? 'Doctor, it hurts when I do this' 'So don't do this!' "

"So?"

"So ave him a look "I'm serious," he said "Those stories bother me, too So do the stories about the world situation If the neas good they wouldn't put it in the paper But one day it struck ot the idea from so I had to read that crap"

"Just ignore it"

"Why not?"

"That's the ostrich approach, isn't it? What I don't look at can't hurt me?"

"Maybe, but I see it a little differently I figure I don't have toabout anyway"

"I can't see "

"Why not?"

I thought of Donna "Maybe I'm involved with mankind"

"Me too," he said "I come here, I listen, I talk I stay sober That's how I'ot so the discussion people kept telling the speaker how ht, Jesus, I never did anything like that And ans on the wall, gen netized read There But For The Grace Of God

I thought, no, screw that I don't turn race of God

When it was my turn I passed

Chapter 20

Danny Boy held his glass of Russian vodka aloft so that he could look at the light shine through it "Purity Clarity Precision," he said, rolling the words, pronouncing them with elaborate care, "The best vodka is a razor, Matthew A sharp scalpel in the hand of a skilled surgeon It leaves no ragged edges"

He tipped back the glass and sed an ounce or so of purity and clarity We were at Poogan's and he earing a navy suit with a red stripe that barely showed in the bar's halflight I was drinking club soda with li the way a freckled-faced waitress had infor I'd never ask for it by that name

Danny Boy said, "Just to recapitulate Her na blonde, early twenties, lived in Murray Hill, got killed teeks ago in the Galaxy Doner"

"Not quite teeks ago"

"Right She was one of Chance's girls And she had a boyfriend, and that's what you want The boyfriend"

"That's right"

"And you're paying for whoever can give you the skinny on this How ed "A couple of dollars"

"Like a bill? Like a half a K? How ain "I don't know, Danny It depends on the inforot a million dollars to play with but I'm not strapped either"

"You said she was one of Chance's girls"

"Right"