Page 30 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Logan

Logan sat at a bar in the St. Regis, wearing his Armani suit, Versace shirt, Ferragamo Oxfords and the Cartier wristwatch.

He had made a mental note to take off the watch if things turned dark later. He didn’t want to get blood on the timepiece.

He swirled the hand-cut cube of ice in his whiskey glass.

He drank Nikka Yoichi, twenty-year-old single malt.

Depending on the bar, you could pay between two hundred and three hundred and fifty dollars for a single pour.

The bottle was six grand, retail, if you could find one.

He only drank one glass, though. Not because he couldn’t afford it, but because he didn’t want the alcohol to dull his senses.

‘Hello, stranger,’ said a voice.

He got up off his barstool and smiled at his date.

Grace wore a little black dress, silver heels and a delicate silver chain round her neck.

The pendant was a heart-shaped locket. Scratched.

A little beaten up, but clearly treasured.

The dress was off the rack, and the color had faded slightly on the shoulders, as if it had been worn on many hot summer days.

Still, it fitted well. Her hair was up. She smelled sweet, like strawberries and lime.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said.

‘So do you,’ she said with a smile, a little out of breath, and not from the exertion of walking through the lobby. Logan noticed a vein pulsing in her long throat.

She was nervous.

He pulled out a barstool, and held it steady while Grace stepped up and shifted onto the seat.

It was then that Logan noticed the seam at the back of her dress, just to the right of the zipper.

The stitching was thicker for about two inches on this side of the seam, and some of the thread was a dark navy color instead of black.

This suggested the dress was not only cheap, but old, and had been repaired more than once.

She ordered a mojito and they talked a little about life in the city. As well as studying English Literature at NYU, Grace worked in a Starbucks in the Bronx five days a week and waited tables in a restaurant on the weekends.

‘When do you have time to study?’

‘I’m always reading. On the subway, on my break – b ooks for college and for me. Mostly I like dark romance.’

‘What’s dark romance?’

‘It’s like a romance novel, but it’s fantasy and the characters kinda hate each other at first, or sometimes the girl has sworn an oath to kill the guy, or the guy is a vampire or a monster or something, but they fall in love despite their differences .

. . that kind of thing. It’s cool. What do you read? ’

‘Mostly academic studies and non-fiction, for work.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I work in behavioral psychology and behavioral economics. I advise companies how to sell their products.’

‘And you do that through psychology?’

‘Yeah, once you understand why people buy something, then you can sell them anything.’

‘How does it work?’

‘Well, take you for example. You performed an act of kindness on the subway—’

‘Not the noodles again,’ said Grace, laughing.

‘Come on, you asked. You did that because you had the personal, environmental and situational capacity to do so.’

Clasping her hand to her forehead, Grace laughed again and shook her head.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said.

‘Okay, so there was a study done by John Darley and Daniel Batson. They took seminary students studying for the priesthood and asked them questions about why they wanted to be priests – was it about helping people or was it to do with their faith? Now, the questions had nothing to do with the study. The students were told after they had completed the questionnaire to go to another building on campus and give a presentation. Some were told they were already late for the presentation, and some were told they could take their time to get to the other building. This is the real part of the study: on their way across the campus, every student saw a guy lying in a doorway, coughing and groaning. Only ten percent of the students who were in a hurry stopped to help the guy. Sixty-three per cent of the students who were informed they could take their time getting to the next building stopped to help.’

With her elbow on the bar and her large blue eyes fixed on Logan, Grace smiled and listened, transfixed.

‘Here’s the kicker,’ said Logan. ‘Half of the students were on their way to give a talk about what they’d learned in seminary school and how that could be applied in later life, the other half were giving a talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan.’

‘The Good Samaritan?’

‘Yes, the story of the Samaritan who stops on the road to Jericho to help a wounded traveler, after a Jewish priest and a Levite had passed the wounded man on the road without helping.’

‘Okay, so the priests who were on their way to give a talk on the Good Samaritan, they all helped the guy lying in the doorway?’

‘No, it made no difference, even if that Bible story was right in the forefront of their minds. The only thing that made a difference was whether they had time to stop and help the man.’

‘Wow. So, most of the priests didn’t stop to help the stranger because they were worried they’d be late to give a talk on the Good Samaritan. That’s crazy.’

‘It’s how most people’s minds work. Kindness is relative to our capacity, which includes whether we have the time and the inclination to help others. So, getting back to the noodles—’

‘Not the noodles again ?’ she said. A flush of embarrassment painted her cheeks a darker shade of ruby.

‘Yes, the noodles. You had three choices on the subway. You could have ignored the situation and let the woman’s groceries fall on the floor.

You could have woken her up and told her about the bag spilling, but you did something else – you just helped her, not expecting any reward nor anyone else to see this small act of kindness.

What academics forget about that study with the trainee priests is that ten per cent of them who were in a rush to get somewhere still stopped to help.

I think you’re one of the ten per cent, Grace. And I like that.’

Logan hesitated, staring at Grace, a strange warmth flowing through him, suddenly embarrassed – worried that he had perhaps said too much.

‘I think you’re weird, Logan,’ she said with a smile, and added, ‘And I like that.’

That warm sensation became hot blood flushing his cheeks.

‘You’re very special,’ said Logan.

‘I’m not special,’ said Grace. ‘Where I grew up, you helped your neighbors.’

‘Where are you from originally?’

‘Just outside of Maysville, Georgia. My family worked the watermelon farms. Nobody in that area ever had very much, but what we had we shared with those who had nothing. It was just the way I was brought up. I remember one time old farmer Greggs went missing. He was the meanest old son-of-a-bitch in the whole county. But his wife was a gentle soul. Greggs treated everyone like they were dirt on his boots, but when he went missing everybody went out looking for him. We searched those fields all summer long. It was hot too, but we never gave up, because there was a woman in that farmhouse going crazy with worry. That’s where I come from.

That’s how I was raised. You help people, and you don’t expect anything in return. ’

‘Did they ever find the melon farmer?’

She laughed, said, ‘That’s the worst part. His wife got a letter from him a couple of months after he went missing saying he was living in Atlanta. He’d met a stripper named Candy and he wanted a divorce.’

‘So you all went through that for nothing?’

‘It wasn’t for nothing. His wife saw us out there every day. Looking for him. She felt the community’s arms fold around her. That’s what really mattered.’

This woman he had seen who had so intrigued him was now sitting enjoying his company.

She had an easy manner, but it was more than that.

When Logan was growing up, his family lived upstate, and there was a lake surrounded by woods not far from their house.

When his dark thoughts seemed overwhelming, he would ride his bike through the trail in the woods until he found the lake, and he would sit on an old tree stump and watch the autumn breezes rippling the water’s surface.

It was quiet and peaceful, and it soothed his troubled mind.

After an hour at the lake, Logan’s thoughts of murder were dulled. His desires cooled.

He had not been back to that lake in many years. He had missed it.

Being with Grace, he felt the same soothing sensation as when he had sat on that old stump by the lake. He didn’t want to kill her. Not yet at least. For now, he wanted more of this feeling. She was a cool balm on his wounded soul.

But more than anything else, for the first time in his life, Logan didn’t feel alone.

‘Do you want to go somewhere and get some food?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ said Grace with a smile, ‘as long as it isn’t noodles.’