Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) Read Online Free

bottle came as a relief. Even, he said, when the bottle was Thunderbird or Ripple. Darryl pounced on him.
    “Ripple still not good enough for you? Maybe our friend from uptown here can share with us what it’s like to be down and out. Maybe some of the homies can identify with the terrible life he’s had.” He bared his teeth in a wolfish sneer. The diamond chip glinted in the light. “Nome sane?” (“Do you know what I’m saying?” boiled down to two syllables on the street. Darryl used it almost as frequently as the F word.)
    God clenched his fists. He looked ready to start swinging, but he held onto the rags of his temper. If he got physical with Darryl, he’d get eighty-sixed in no time. And it was still midwinter out there.
    “Whatsa matter, white boy? What you know about losing shit? You make me sick, rich boy, nome sane? You never gonna stay clean. Go back uptown and diddle your little friends. You know they say some people too fucking smart to recover? Well, Mister God-damn, you might be one of them.”
    Next to me, I could feel God shaking with the effort not to react. Surprise kept the rest of us silent. Patients lost it all the time. But for a counselor, this attack was over the line. It was—I hate to sound like a counselor, but—inappropriate.
    Darryl kept goading him. “Not such a smart mouth now, huh? Still as sick as your secrets?” The AA phrase was supposed to encourage honesty. From Darryl, it came out a taunt.
    “You b-bastard,” God spat out. “Who are you to talk about down and out, you hypocritical pimp? Your losses, Mr. Candy Man? Don’t make me laugh! Why don’t you tell your brothers here about your bank accounts? The only way you’ll lose is if all your customers get clean. As long as some of us still need to score, you’re all right, Jack. Nice gig—counselor.” He got up so abruptly that his chair fell over and stalked out of the room.
    After group, I looked for God. I asked a couple of the counselors if they had seen him. Bark was meditating on the racing page in what must have been an out-of-town paper, Florida or California, at this time of year. Boris was communing with a little red and gold painting or icon of some kind that looked too good for the Bowery. Both looked startled when I popped my head in. Neither had seen God. I finally found him in the cramped laundry room both staff and patients used. He sat on a mound of dirty sheets, sulking. I tried to snap him out of it.
    “Don’t let him get to you, man. The guy’s an asshole.”
    “If he gets in my face again, he’s pulp.”
    “Hey, one day at a time.” I kept my tone light. “If you’ve got to kill him, wait till next year.” In fact, I doubt they would have thrown him out on New Year’s Eve. Turning us loose on Amateur Night would be like handing us the bottle themselves. “At least wait till Check Day.” What everybody here called Check Day passed for a holiday among the guys who got welfare, Social Security, or a VA pension. “You do have a check coming in, don’t you?”
    God said nothing. I took it for a yes. Some of the family money obviously still clung to him.
    “Don’t let him screw up your three hots and a cot.” The amenities provided motivation to come to detox even if you didn’t really want sobriety. “Say the short Serenity Prayer.” This was an in-joke. The short Serenity Prayer goes: “Fuck it.”
    God sat there pouring a cupful of laundry soap from one plastic container to another and back again.
    “And he’d better stop needling me about my name.”
    In AA they talk about the unreconstructed alcoholic as “His Majesty the Baby.” That’s just what he sounded like. I guessed petulant was better than ready to kill.
    “He says I have more grandiosity than any client he’s ever met. Ha! That’s a good one, coming from him.”
    I hated to agree with Darryl about anything.
    “Maybe you just have more class than any client he’s ever met,” I said.
    “I’d rather be