The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
pick a reporter’s lock, probably ruining whatever chance he had of a pleasant
evening with a beautiful woman in the process?” I asked.
“She really is lovely,” said Gomes. “You’ve done well. But isn’t involvement
with a source some sort of violation of journalistic ethics?”
“Yeah,” Joe picked up, “the desk sergeant just gave me a sheet about
something like that in our department the other day, too. No more sex with
suspects’ girlfriends. From now on only blow jobs.”
“Shit, listen to him,” said Gomes, chuckling along with me. “I’m a family
man, and you’re probably too young to hear that kind of talk.”
Joe put a bearish arm around me and leaned over. “Paulie, does she—”
“Hey, leave the kid alone,” said Gomes. I’m not sure if he noticed, in the
dark, that I was blushing. Joe’s expression wavered between shamefaced and
devilishly pleased. I grinned in spite of myself. “We went to see your dead
man’s bar, is why we’re here. The Lone Wolf. We figured we’d stop by as long
as we were out for a country drive.”
Joe said, “Strange place, that one. Every town’s got a morning-andafternoon
bar or two, but I’ve never seen one as all-over sad as that one. I mean,
it’s got the patchy linoleum, the Salvation Army couches, the little black-andwhite,
no-reception TV behind the bar. A real no-hoper kind of joint.”
We arrived at their car: an unmarked blue Crown Vic that, in fact, could
not have been any more marked if someone had spray-painted fuzz across
the hood.
“Yeah, this Albanian Eddie guy’s a real charmer,” Joe continued. “One
thing, though: I don’t think he’s Albanian.”
“He’s not? How do you know?”
“Well, Uncle Abe, he speaks God knows how many languages. I think he
speaks like ten, maybe twelve, fluently and then can hack around in another
ten or so. Anyway, when we were kids, me and all the cousins, he taught us
two sentences in every language in Europe. Well, not every single language,
naturally, but what he said was, ‘Every language worth knowing, even Albanian.’
That was the kicker for him—‘even Albanian.’”
“What were the sentences?”
“‘This is a beautiful country’ and ‘He’s buying.’”
“And so . . .”
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