Beware the Solitary Drinker by Cornelius Lehane

because I couldn’t bring myself to say it. As for not telling her about Danny, I was pretty sure no one else saw him with Angelina, so I wasn’t going to be the one to blow the whistle. The cops would pick him up as soon as they knew. Black junkies make good suspects. They’re always guilty of something.
    Janet talked with Danny and Max for five or ten minutes before I wandered over. Max made room for me. I didn’t interrupt, just listened. Max did the talking. Angelina would have been great with the band, he said. They’d even worked out a couple of arrangements that night. They’d smoked a joint and had some beer. But nobody got wasted. He didn’t think Angelina even drank anything. Danny said she didn’t.
    â€œWhen did she leave your place?” Janet asked. Max looked at Danny. Maybe Max didn’t stiffen. Maybe Danny didn’t look at me. I was on my fourth cup of the Greek’s coffee, which is about the hallucinating level anyway. I could have imagined it all. Danny looked back down at his uneaten eggs. Max said she left around five. Maybe four thirty.
    â€œDid she say where she was going?” Janet asked.
    â€œI thought she was going home,” Max said. Danny began eating his eggs but he looked at me once more. He chewed his eggs like they were alive and he had to wrestle them down before he could swallow. It might have been my imagination, too, but I thought Janet listened most intently to Danny Stone, who had only spoken a few words.
    ***
    While we stood waiting for a cab on Broadway, Janet took my arm in her hands and made me look at her. Her face was tired and soft. In her weariness, she resembled Angelina again; some of her little sister’s vulnerability showed through. “I know you were kind to Angelina, and I’m very grateful.” She didn’t let go of my arm, just stood there while her eyes filled with tears again. “I know you think there’s nothing you can do…
    â€œBut you could…I know it’s terrible to ask when you’ve already said no…but I have to go back to Massachusetts to work tomorrow…” She stopped talking to get her voice under control again. She steeled herself. I could see the resolve flow into her eyes pushing the tears aside. “The men in the restaurant…the band. They weren’t telling me everything. I could see it in their eyes.…In the bar, too, I could tell.…Those men knew things about Angelina they wouldn’t tell me.…I’m sure they wouldn’t tell the police either—but they’d tell you.”
    â€œMaybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t. What good would it do?”
    â€œIt would mean someone cared enough to find out what happened to Angelina, that everyone didn’t forget she existed, like her life meant nothing—that whoever did this would pay.”
    â€œLike in vengeance?”
    â€œYes, vengeance—” She tried to spit the word out so it sounded bitter and hate-filled, so it would carry her rage and hate out into the night. But it didn’t work. The word sounded flat and empty to me.
    Again, I said, “Angelina will still be dead.”
    She stared at me while her own eyes went empty in her head. I wanted her to say something. This wasn’t how I wanted this to end up. I started to speak, but it wouldn’t do any good. She held back her tears but didn’t trust her emotions enough to say anything, just stuck out her hand for another banker’s handshake and walked away.
    ***
    After I watched her cab head downtown into what was left of the Broadway night, I walked uptown on my way home. Near 110th Street, I noticed a group of men on one of the benches in the island in the middle of Broadway. I thought they were the usual bag people and bums who hung out on the streets panhandling, so I fished around in my pockets for some quarters for when they came upon me.
    Instead, this voice from the