The Last Minute’s lights were low when Braun stepped through the antique doors. He scanned the room. A dozen people at the bar, mostly corporate types in suits having a drink at the end of the day. One knot looked like financial types, another like publishing types. The financial suits were stiffer and all the way across the room he heard a woman bray a laughing comment about how to get kids to read. Fifteen tables, half of them occupied. An old lady sat at a piano, playing languid, soft versions of Louis Armstrong standards.
No sign of Sam Capra. Or the woman Mila. He noticed a tall black man in an impeccable suit, behind the bar. Manager on duty, he decided. Or, considering the man’s stately authority, a partner in the business.
He could play this two ways. Either march up and announce he was looking for Sam Capra, or sit and wait. But he had no other lead, and he had no one else in New York to send against his enemies. Sam Capra had killed them all.
Braun sat down at the bar, in the dead zone between the two loud groups. He ordered a Harp lager. He took one sip of it, didn’t touch it again. He didn’t much like alcohol and he didn’t often drink. It was a waste; a lowering of necessary defenses.
He could see the range of tables, the front door, if he kept his eyes to the mirror at the bar. He sat and he looked ahead, in his particular quiet. The groups on both sides laughed and talked and for an odd moment his own loneliness made him sad. It was strange to watch people with friends; their laughter, their openness filled him with unease. He had long resigned himself to his own company. He got up from the bar and retreated to a corner table. He watched the laughing women and silently hated them. Anyone you let close might have had a knife ready to slide along your throat.
Lindsay, for instance. She’d tired of him, she’d left him. She’d run away, and after all he’d done for her. Bad, bad girl. Friends were too much trouble.
‘Is everything all right, sir?’ The tall black man in the suit stood at his table. He had a very slight Haitian lilt to his voice.
Braun brought a polite smile to his face. ‘Yes, fine.’
‘I just noticed you took one sip of your beer and then left it. Does it taste all right?’
Awfully observant for a bar manager, he thought. ‘Yes, it’s fine. Thank you. I just got lost in thought.’
‘Is there anything else I may get you, sir?’
‘Uh, perhaps some food. Is there a menu?’
‘Of course, one moment.’ The tall man smiled and left him to his beer while he got a menu.
Braun waited. He wasn’t hungry but food was good camouflage. He watched the door.