1 When I got there, Joe Durkin was already holding down a corner table and working on a drink—vodka on the rocks, from the looks of it. I took in the room and listened to the hum of conversation at the bar, and I guess some of what I was feeling must have found its way to my face, because the first thing Joe asked me was if I was all right. I said I was fine, and why? “Because you look like you saw a ghost,” he said. “Be funny if I didn’t,” I said. “The room is full of them.” “A little new for ghosts, isn’t it? How long have they been open, two years?” “Closer to three.” “Time flies,” he said, “whether you’re having fun or not. Jake’s Place, whoever Jake is. You got a history with him?” “I don’t know who he is. I had a history with the place before it was his.” “Jimmy Armstrong’s.” “That’s right.” “He died, didn’t he? Was that before or after 9/11?” That’s our watershed; everything in our lives is before or after that date. “After,” I said, “by five or six months. He left the place to a nephew, who tried running it for a few months and then decided it wasn’t the life