“In the days that followed, I tried to tell myself that it was all a nasty coincidence, best forgotten. I did not sleep well, even with the help of my good friend Mr. Cutty Sark. I told myself that the thing to do was divide that night’s last pot between the three of us and forget that Henry Brower had ever stepped into our lives. But I could not. I drew a cashier’s check for the sum instead, and went to the address that Greer had given me, which was in Harlem.
“He was not there. His forwarding address was a place on the East Side, a slightly less-well-off neighborhood of nonetheless respectable brownstones. He had left those lodgings a full month before the poker game, and the new address was in the East Village, an area of
ramshackle tenements.
“The building superintendent, a scrawny man with a huge black mastiff snarling at his
knee, told me that Brower had moved out on April third — the day after our game. I asked for a
forwarding address and he threw back his head and emitted a screaming gobble that apparently served him in the place of laughter.
” ‘The only forradin’ address they gives when they leave here is Hell, boss. But
sometimes they stops in the Bowery on their way there.’
“The Bowery was then what it is only believed to be by out-of-towners now: the home of the homeless, the last stop for the faceless men who only care for another bottle of cheap wine or another shot of the white powder that brings long dreams. I went there. In those days there were dozens of flophouses, a few benevolent missions that took drunks in for the night, and hundreds of alleys where a man might hide an old, louse-ridden mattress. I saw scores of men, all of them little more than shells, eaten by drink and drugs. No names were known or used. When a man
has sunk to a final basement level, his liver rotted by wood alcohol, his nose an open, festering sore from the constant sniffing of cocaine and potash, his fingers destroyed by frostbite, his teeth rotted to black stubs — a man no longer has a use for a name. But I described Henry Brower to every man I saw, with no response. Bartenders shook their heads and shrugged. The others just looked at the ground and kept walking.
“I didn’t find him that day, or the next, or the next. Two weeks went by, and then I talked to a man who said a fellow like that had been in Devarney’s Rooms three nights before.
“I walked there; it was only two blocks from the area I had been covering. The man at the desk was a scabrous ancient with a peeling bald skull and rheumy, glittering eyes. Rooms were advertised in the flyspecked window facing the street at a dime a night. I went through my
description of Brower, the old fellow nodding all the way through it. When I had finished, he said:
” ‘I know him, young meester. Know him well. But I can’t quite recall… I think ever
s’much better with a dollar in front of me.’
“I produced a dollar and he made it disappear neat as a button, arthritis notwithstanding.
” ‘He was here, young meester, but he’s gone.’
” ‘Do you know where?’
‘I can’t quite recall,’ the desk clerk said. ‘I might, howsomever, with a dollar in front of me.’
“I produced a second bill, which he made disappear as neatly as he had the first. At this, something seemed to strike him as being deliciously funny, and a rasping, tubercular cough came out of his chest.
” ‘You’ve had your amusement,’ I said, ‘and been well paid for it as well. Now, do you know where this man is?’
“The old man laughed gleefully again. ‘Yes — Potter’s Field is his new residence;
eternity’s the length of his lease; and he’s got the Devil for a roommate. How do you like them apples, young meester? He must’ve died sometime yesterday morning, for when I found him at
noon he was still warm and toasty. Sitting bolt upright by the winder, he was. I’d gone up to either have his dime against the dark or show him the door. As it turned out, the city showed him six feet of earth.’ This caused another unpleasant outburst of senile glee.