Ice Blues ds-3

by Richard Stevenson

  Timmy shrugged and went back to meditating over his Wheatena.

  “May I use your car? You’re not going to work today. Nobody on the public payroll is.” He nodded. “Don’t answer the phone at all, if you don’t mind. I’ll call my service and they can pick up there. You deserve a day of peace and quiet. Or are you going out to play with your sled and enjoy winter?”

  “I might go for a walk in the park. It’ll be really lovely. Want to join me later?”

  “Sure, if you’ll pull my Flexie-Flyer.”

  “Yeah, I’ll pull your Flexie-Flyer. Isn’t that all we’re supposed to do these days?”

  “And look-if Hankie-mouth should show up at the house, tell him to leave a message with my service and I’ll make myself available later today.”

  Despite the Wheatena clogging his veins, his eyes grew alert. “He might come here? You think so?”

  “It’s possible, yes.”

  “Maybe I’ll just walk down to the office and spend the day clearing up a few things. It’ll be as quiet there as it is here.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I’ll shovel the walk first.”

  “Lift with your arms and not with your back. That’s what the radio said.

  You’re past forty now and might have a heart attack.”

  “Nah, I’m twenty-seven. I’ll always be twenty-seven.”

  I kissed him on the little bald spot on the back of his head and left him to his bowl of mush.

  The blizzard had moved off into northern New England, leaving a churning gray sky that still spit occasional teasing showers of snow. Cold sunlight broke through in a few places and I brought my shades along for when the sky cleared and the city turned into a million-watt icecap. Instead of digging out Timmy’s car, a white lump, I hiked over toward Central Avenue, crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch.

  Most of the cars out were blue Volvos with skis on racks heading toward the interstates and on to the Adirondacks and Berkshires-people who paid for their good times with numbed extremities and cracked lips, who finished off a day of fun by having to coat Vaseline on the wrong orifice. I’d always enjoyed the sweet variety of the human race in its pursuit of pleasure, however, and if a face full of ice was what turned on these LL

  Bean Vikings, who was I to care what they did in the privacy of their own mountains?

  I walked up the middle of Crow Street on the hardpacked snow. The city plows had been out early, maybe due to the fact that it was a mayoral election year, when the Democratic machine tends to become visible, providing the odd useful service. At Crow and Lancaster a disabled city snow-removal truck had been abandoned in the center of the intersection forcing the Volvos and delivery vans to detour carefully around it. One end of its steel plow rested on the street where it had gouged out a section of tarmac. The driver’s side door hung open, as if the driver had been driven off by attackers, maybe Republican terrorists, the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Brigades. Election years in Albany can be turbulent.

  I headed up Lark, where some of the boutiques and spinach-salad joints were opening up, their owners apparently hoping the state workers would occupy their sudden leisure with some recreational spending. The street was cleaner than I had ever seen it and the few people walking along it looked happy to be out and taking part in a harmless emergency.

  On Central Avenue I glanced through the frosted window of the Watering Hole, where a few of the regulars had already shown up for an early light brunch. I could hear the jukebox playing something pleasantly sordid, but it seemed a bit early in the day for that-or late in the decade-and I didn’t stop in.

  My office was locked up and unmolested. I turned the key and shoved the door open and nothing blew up. There was no evidence of forced or unforced entry, and I could see no sign of the “thing” that didn’t belong to me having been left there by Jack Lenihan or anyone else. I half wanted it to be there. If a man hadn’t been killed, I would have welcomed any distraction from my sour hibernation. As would Timmy, whose tolerance for lighthearted dishiness was high but for bitchiness low. I guess he’d learned from the Jesuits how to make distinctions like that.

  I slid the pie tin out from under the leaky radiator valve and dumped the rusty bilge that had accumulated into the plastic bucket resting nearby for that purpose. I spilled about a third of a cup on my boots and wiped them off with the old T-shirt that lay along the windowsill as a puny obstacle against the winter wind.

  Wednesday’s mail was still on the floor where it had been shoved through the door slot the previous afternoon, which I’d spent tracking down my car.

  There were three invitations to purchase a sewing machine and win a free trip to Las Vegas, and an envelope with a dollar bill in it from a former client who was paying me off a dollar a week for three thousand weeks. The fifth item was a slip from the postal service notifying me that a registered letter was waiting for me at the main post office. I slid the slip into my wallet.

  The Albany phone book showed a Colonie listing for John C. Lenihan. I called directory assistance and was given a new number for Lenihan on Swan Street, which I dialed. I let it ring for a full minute. Down on Central traffic was starting to build. Behind the beer truck double-parked in front of Jimmy’s Lounge a rusty beige Buick sat idling with a man in a baby-shit-brown leather jacket behind the wheel. He was smoking something and looked settled in.

  I hung up the phone, locked the office and went down the back stairs to the fire exit. Snow had drifted against the door, but I shoved it open far enough to angle my way out, then over a fence and through a backyard to Washington Avenue. Snow worked its way down into my boots, and I figured if I kept this up I’d have to stop off somewhere for a couple of bread bags and two rubber bands.

  Back on Crow Street I opened the passenger door of Timmy’s big snowball, retrieved the snow brush from the back seat-no body was on it-and went to work. The plastic handle snapped under the wet weight and I ended up swiping the rest of the car clean with my arms. Snow seeped into my gloves, and I thought again of the islands.

  I warmed up the Subaru, rocked it to and fro for a time, then shot onto the roadway and over toward State, trailing chunks of flying snow like James Bond firing at a pursuing nemesis. My pursuer, undeterred, was the green Chevy pickup that had been parked across from our house when I’d passed it ten minutes earlier. I sailed down State on the hardpack, then left on Broadway. I drove around to the back of the main post office, through the gateway, past the columns of mail trucks, up a ramp, and into a loading bay. The green pickup did not follow.

  “Hey, you can’t park there!”

  “Governor’s office,” I chirruped, and flashed my library card. “Special-delivery birthday greetings for Mario’s mom!” I fled on into the building, signed for the registered letter, pocketed it carefully, strode out, drove down the ramp at the far end of the loading dock, exited through the gateway opposite the one I’d come in through, lined up on the north side of a CDTA bus about to cross Broadway, then stayed with it through the intersection. The pickup truck was nowhere in sight.

  On Lodge Street I parked alongside the Hilton, went in and booked a double room under the name Hiram Nestlerode.

  “But that’s not the name on your credit card,” the clerk pointed out. I’d seen him around, at the Watering Hole, the Green Room, Uncle Charlie’s Far North.

  I winked. “Look, I’m really Engelbert Humperdinck, here for a sold-out concert at the Coliseum, and I’d just like a little privacy, that’s all, a little discretion on your part. You know how it goes.” I winked again.

  His experienced desk clerk’s eyebrow went up. “My dear, you don’t look the least bit like Engelbert Humperdinck. You look more like-Tom Selleck, except with a few years on him.”

  “That’s who I am actually-Tom Selleck with a few years on him. Now just give me a room, will you?”

  “Welcome to Albany, Mr. Selleck. If there’s anything I can do-anything at all-to make your stay more enjoyable, just let me know. Ask for Ma
lcolm.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “Have you any luggage?”

  “It’s en route from the airport.”

  “I’ll have it sent right up. Perhaps I’ll carry it up myself. Front!”

  The envelope, with no return address, was postmarked Los Angeles, the previous Monday, January 14, P.M. The letter inside was dated January 13 and was handwritten on two sheets of plain white inexpensive typing paper. Taped to the bottom of the second sheet were five tiny keys.

  Dear Mr. Strachey,

  We met one time last summer, and I am hoping you remember me. I was at Herb Brinkman’s pool party and we talked about the Democratic convention which was coming up soon. You might recall that I was a Jessie Jackson supporter for the Rainbow Coalition and you said you were for Morris Udall. I argued that your vote would be wasted because Udall was not running. Do you remember me now?

  Although I disagreed with your position on certain issues, I got the strong impression that you are a man of integrity who can be trusted to do the right thing when the chips are down. Other people I know said the same thing about you recently, even though you are rather weird in some ways, but I can relate to that.

  Mr. Strachey, I need your help very much right now, and I am in a position to pay for it. A large sum of money has come into my possession, and my request is that you keep it safe for me until I can dispose of it in an appropriate manner.

  You are probably wondering why I don’t deposit this “fortune” in a bank-is this money “hot” in some way? I just want to say that what I am doing might be illegal, strictly speaking, but it is not immoral. Not in the least way. On the contrary.

  I have heard about the way you think, and I’m sure you will agree with me.

  For the time being, it is in your interest if I do not explain the details of this project completely. This way you will be protected if anything goes wrong.

  Some people are very pissed off at me, but all you would have to do is show this letter bearing my signature to prove your lack of knowledge.

  If you ask anybody, you might get an earful from certain people that I am a rotten apple. Well, I have had my ups and downs, good times and bad, this is very true, I admit. But all that is in the past, and for the first time in my life I am taking a positive attitude toward certain things instead of negative.

  I have a chance to make up for a very great amount of evil, and don’t you think I would be a “real shit” and a coward if I did not embark on this project?

  You must be confused, but I am asking you as a gay friend and a concerned citizen to trust me!!

  I will be back in Albany as soon as I clear up some matters and I will contact you. Please take what you charge as your fee and for your expenses. I hope you don’t mind me doing it this way, but I don’t have any choice. You are the only person I can trust right now who is “street-smart” and not connected with me in an “obvious” way.

  When you find out the nature of the project you have participated in, you won’t be ashamed. You will be proud of yourself, just like I will be proud of myself for the first time in my fucked-up life.

  Your friend, (signed) Jack Lenihan

  I reread the letter, and then I began to forget about the weather.

  FOUR

  I phoned Timmy, who said he was alone in his office reading a book, probably Nanook of the North.

  “Don’t go back to the house.”

  “Why?”

  I described the morning’s events and read him the letter.

  “You talked me into it. I won’t go back to the house.”

  “I’ve got a room at the Hilton. Come over here when you’re ready to leave.

  I’m either Hiram Nestlerode or Tom Selleck, I’m not sure which.”

  “Your usual state of affairs.”

  “Or Engelbert Humperdinck.”

  “Nah.”

  I said, “What do you make of it?”

  “It’s obvious. Lenihan stole some big doper’s payoff boodle, and he was going to use it to finance-I don’t know what-blowing up the Federal Building?”

  “It wouldn’t require a ‘fortune’-Lenihan’s word-to do that. No, it’s something big but less loony, something that only a rigid mind would consider wrong or morally ambiguous. Maybe something with political implications-an act against the machine he’s known to loathe. He seemed so certain that I’d approve.”

  “It wasn’t morally ambiguous to him. But he might have been nuts.”

  “Yeah, but you can be nuts and be right. It’s happened in history.”

  “King of Hearts must have come around again. Are you going to show Bowman the letter?”

  “I guess not. No, that letter is confidential. It’s from a client.”

  “A dead client. Your contract with Lenihan-which didn’t exist when he was alive anyway because you’d never agreed to be a party to it-is breached upon his death.”

  “Is that the kind of so-called logic they taught you at Georgetown? I’d always thought the Jesuits had a finer appreciation for the moral potential in legalistic murk. Anyway, until I hear otherwise I’m going to consider Lenihan’s estate as my client. His estate, and his good intentions. He really sounds in the letter as if he was about to climb out of the grubby pit he thought he’d spent all his life in. Maybe I can still help him do that.”

  “Don, he’ll never know.”

  “Yeah, he won’t. I want to meet the people who prevented him from knowing it though. That has nothing to do with contracts.”

  “Well, you’re going to do what you’re going to do.”

  “Short of getting my head bashed in, yes. Or yours. If it looks as if it’s coming to that, the hell with it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll give them the money and fly to San Juan. If I have it.”

  “Who’s delivering the money to you?”

  “Lenihan didn’t say. I plan on asking the deliverer a few questions though.”

  “Maybe it’ll never show up. Maybe it’s on the way to San Juan or Bogota.

  Then where will you be?”

  “Room 1407 at the Hilton. For the rest of my life.”

  “Well, you’ll get to finish Proust.”

  I phoned a contact at the Federal Building and asked him if Jack Lenihan’s name had come up in any recent narcotics investigations.

  “Funny you should ask. Ned Bowman was just wondering about that too. I just got off the line with him.”

  “What frame of mind was he in?”

  “He was the usual charmer. Hey, Strachey, what do you think of all this snow? I figured you’d be off at Killington or Mount Snow. Half the younger guys in the office are out sick today-called in with the flu, but, hell, I know better than that.”

  “The snorkeling is poor at Mount Snow this time of year. So when Bowman asked about Lenihan, what did you tell him?”

  “Lenihan was clean as far as I know, and I’d know. Evidence can take a while to develop-forever in too many cases-but names I’ve got plenty of.

  They come up, and Lenihan’s is not one of them. I’d say he learned his lesson when he slipped away from us in eighty-two. That’s rare, but it happens.”

  “Isn’t it possible he’d just gotten back into it? Within the past couple of weeks?”

  “Possible, yes.”

  “His killing has the earmarks, right?”

  “From what little I know. But being clubbed on the brain is a real popular way of getting killed in America. Aunt Minnie, Cousin Bud-everybody does it. Don’t you read the Post?”

  “I’m just looking for a pattern here.”

  “I see it was your car Lenihan got dumped in. If it was dopers I’d say they were sending you a message, Strachey. Listen, pal, you got some kind of problem? You know what we’re here for.”

  I said, “No, no problems of mine. I’m just trying to clear my car’s good name.”

  “What’s its name?”

  “Rabbit.”

  “No investigator worth
shit is gonna have a car named Rabbit. My car’s called Fox. You really ought to get one of those, do your work a world of good. Look, if I can help out, let me know. And if you should hear about anything relating to my field of expertise that might interest me, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure, as always.”

  “Not always.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  I spent half an hour phoning Herb Brinkman and other people who had known Jack Lenihan socially. I learned that he had had no known close friends other than Warren Slonski and that no one had even seen him socially for the past three months. He had pretty much dropped out of sight in mid-October. Everyone who had known Lenihan had been shocked by the news of his death and couldn’t imagine that he had made such a lethal enemy-unless he was dealing dope again.

  I lay back on the bed I’d rented for a night-or longer-and thought about Lenihan’s letter. Outside, the gray sky over the Rensselaer hills was falling apart as if an icebreaker had chugged through it. White sunlight poured across my legs, was gone in an instant, then broke over me again. It was twenty till ten and I had time for one more quick call, to a friend at American Airlines.

  “Don Strachey. I need some flight information.”

  “Where to, Donald? To warmer climes, I’ll bet.”

  “I wish. But this isn’t for me-yet. A John C. Lenihan may have been in Los Angeles on Monday. I’d like to know when he went out there and when he came back.”

  “I don’t believe, sir, that you quite understand how our system works. What I will need is a flight number and a date.”

  “Listen, Alex, that’s why I’m calling you. You have that information. You’re the airline, I’m the inquiring consumer. Can’t you rummage around in your machine? Let’s say he went out Saturday and came back Monday or Tuesday. Try that.”

  “He might have gone United or USAIR.”

  “From Albany you’ve got the most flights and the best connections. Just shake that thing a couple of times and see what drops out, will you?”