Downstairs in the back room of the one-time pool parlor that served as living quarters, Martin stripped off the jumpsuit and, throwing it on the unmade Army cot, fixed himself a whiskey, neat. He selected a Ganaesh Beedie from a thin tin filled with the Indian cigarettes. Lighting up, dragging on the eucalyptus leaves, he settled into the swivel chair with the broken caning that scratched at his back; he’d picked it up for a song at a Crown Heights garage sale the day he’d rented the pool parlor and glued Alan Pinkerton’s unblinking eye on the downstairs street door above the words “Martin Odum—Private Detective.” The fumes from the Beedie, which smelled like marijuana, had the same effect on him that smoke had on bees: it made him want to eat. He pried open a tin of sardines and spooned them onto a plate that hadn’t been washed in several days and ate them with a stale slice of pumpernickel he discovered in the icebox, which (he reminded himself) badly needed to be defrosted. With a crust of pumpernickel, he wiped the plate clean and turned it over and used the back as a saucer. It was a habit Dante Pippen had picked up in the untamed tribal badlands of Pakistan near the Khyber Pass; the handful of Americans running agents or operations there would finger rice and fatty mutton off the plate when they had something resembling plates, then flip them over and eat fruit on the back the rare times they came across something resembling fruit. Remembering a detail from the past, however trivial, gave Martin a tinge of satisfaction. Working on the back of the plate, he deftly peeled the skin off a tangerine with a few scalpel-strokes of a small razor sharp knife.
