Dooley and Prell went ashen, but Kempelman just shook his head sadly.
“Not funny, Mr. Strachey. Under the circumstances, I will not permit myself to laugh.”
“It was no joke, Sim. I figure Lenihan approached all three of you to find out which of you would provide a mayoral candidate who, if elected, would run Albany in a manner closest to Jack’s liking. One of you picked up the impression you were about to lose out to another group, and you killed Jack so that you could grab the money or, failing that, at least keep it out of the other organizations’ hands. Ned Bowman is not so dumb that this scenario won’t occur to him, so you should all consider yourself police suspects in Jack’s murder. Or is it possible that two of you haven’t yet been in to see Ned and own up, voluntarily or involuntarily?”
Prell went neon-red. He said, “Lieutenant Bowman came to visit me, in point of fact. My name and telephone number were found by the police in Jack Lenihan’s wallet.”
“Mine too,” Kempelman said placidly, and glanced at me. “But I didn’t wait for Mr. Bowman to call on me. I went to him.”
Dooley, who had sat stewing through all of this, aimed his cigar at me and said, “Bowman is after your ass, fella, you know that?”
“Did you tell him you were meeting me here tonight?”
He said, “Nah.”
“You want the money. You think I have it.”
Two plates of teriyaki were deftly slung in front of Kempelman and me.
“Would you gentlemen like to order now?”
“Scotch and soda,” Prell said.
Dooley waved the waitress away. He then leaned up to my face and snarled, “Now you see here, Strachey. I thought I was dealing with a man of integrity in a confidential tone of voice and now I come down here and I find this fucking fireman’s ball going on with half the politicians in the county waiting around for some broad to jump out of a birthday cake or some goddamn thing. Now you tell me, what is this, wise guy? Ya know, this is Albany, New York, not San Fran-pansy-town, USA, so you talk to me and you talk plain. I know all about you, Strachey, and you better not fuck with me or I’ll make plenty of trouble for you and I can do it. Now, what is this shit?”
I leaned close to him and said very quietly, “Of all the foul turds floating in the cesspool of Albany political life, you, Larry, are by far the most repulsive I have met so far.”
“Why, you-!”
“If you want a chance at the money, Larry, then shut your fat mouth.”
He shut up and sat back big-eyed. This was fun. I was buying an Albany pol, my second-or first if I didn’t count the dime I’d slipped Bowman that afternoon. Kempelman and Prell looked docile enough too.
I said, “Now here is what took place over the past two weeks. Please correct me, any of you, if I veer off the track at any point. Jack Lenihan felt each of you out on how you would spend the two and a half million he was dangling. He wanted to know what he would get in return, a time-honored tradition in Albany, though with a switch this time. It wasn’t city contracts Lenihan wanted, or insurance deals, or the toilet-paper concession for city hall. He was not interested in court-clerk positions, or commissionerships, or a contract for police uniforms. Uh-uh. That wasn’t Jack. He didn’t go for all that business as usual. In fact, he loathed it-for his own very personal reasons. That’s what this whole deal was about.”
They watched me, not moving, their pulses visible at a variety of pressure points.
“Jack’s plan was he wanted the opposite of business as usual. Let me guess-open bidding on all city contracts? Professionals instead of party hacks running the departments? Property tax rate equalization? More blacks on the city payroll? A police civilian review board? Maybe even a gay rights ordinance. Hey, I’ll bet that’s it. That’s where you began to hem and haw, Larry, am I right? Jack naively wanted all this in writing, and his agenda was a bit on the socially enlightened side for your tastes. So you hesitated over gay rights, and Mr. Prell, you couldn’t stomach the police civilian review board or any sort of quotas on minority hiring, and it was very likely the forward-looking Mr. Kempelman here who just about had it sewed up in the end.
“Except none of you knew where you stood. Each of you knew that Jack was bargaining with other factions, and one of you suddenly felt panicky, and you killed him to keep him from financing one of the other groups, and with the hope that you could then snatch the big money or pry it out of me.
The one of you who did it then arranged for me to be threatened into turning over the money to some thugs you hired, a matter that I am giving serious consideration to, on account of my wanting to keep my skull intact.
On the other hand, I might not. I’m thinking it over.”
Kempelman had sat sighing and shaking his head through all this. Prell’s alpaca was molting, his haircut down to $7.50. Dooley had barely contained his fury, and now he let loose. “Listen, you faggoty-maggoty sack of shit, I don’t have to put up with this type of insulting treatment! In fact, I’ve had about as much of your lip as I’m going to take! Screw the money, and I’m not through with you either!”
I said, “Larry, your demeanor here tonight represents a breach of protocol that is beyond my capacity to endure. Some of your dandruff dropped into my beer just now, and therefore there is no chance that you will ever receive the money.”
Dooley’s eyes went wild. He stood up and made for the exit, flinging voters aside hither and thither as he went. I called after him, “Have a nice evening, Councilman Dooley!”
“That man is a disgrace,” Prell muttered. “How he continues to be reelected is beyond my comprehension.”
Kempelman waved a forkful of chicken and green pepper. “Oh, come on, kid. You know exactly how he does it, and so do I. They got the dough, they got the jobs, they got the contracts. Larry’s on the outs with the machine boys this month, but after the primary he’ll be back in, for the simple reason that for a man like Larry there is no place else to go. It’s all he knows and all he wants to know. It was foolish of Jack Lenihan to approach Dooley, who is as much of a reform politician as I am a rock and roll singer.”
“Yes, Sim, you’re such an expert on firmly gripping the reins of government in Albany,” Prell said. “Is it true you’re planning on running a Unitarian minister for mayor this year on a nuclear-freeze platform?”
“That issue will come up,” Kempelman said mildly, mouthing a chunk of chicken. “What issue could possibly be more important than the survival of the human species?”
I listened for several minutes while they went at each other in their cordially disrespectful way, each of them a martyr keeping his martyrdom beautiful through distance from the other martyrs. Then I nailed them down on precisely when and where each had last spoken with Jack Lenihan, and exactly what was said by whom. I asked Kempelman when I could pick up the documents showing the legality of Lenihan’s “inheritance,” and he pulled a thick envelope out of his breast pocket.
“Use them in good health.”
Prell produced an identical set and handed it over. “Are you, by chance, the executor of Lenihan’s will?” he asked.
“No will has turned up yet. Informally, though, it looks as if I’m it.”
Prell’s Scotch arrived and he went at it with a shaky hand. He said, “Mr.
Strachey, you don’t really believe that Sim, Larry, or I killed Jack Lenihan, do you? That’s a horrible thing to suggest, you know.”
“Horrible questions often suggest horrible answers. Don’t be offended, Mr.
Prell. It looks as if I’m in this even deeper than you are.”
“Don’t forget to give Officer Bowman a call,” Kempelman said, wiping his mouth. “I promised him that if I ran into you I’d put you two sleuths in touch with each other.”
“Sure.”
“And don’t lose track of that two and a half million, will you? Is it in a good safe place, I hope?”
“None safer,” I said, and figured it was time to drop by the Hilton and find
out how reliable the bellhops were.
NINE
I exited Queequeg’s through the kitchen and went up a snowy alley to the side street where I’d parked the rental car. The night air was still now, frozen in place, it seemed, and a scattering of stars hung in a remote black sky. I had to remove a glove to insert the key in the Chrysler’s ignition, and when I did so the front seat did not explode, blowing my lower torso into disgusting pulpy fragments. That was a relief.
My breath froze on the windshield, so while the car warmed up I tuned in the all-news radio station and learned that Albany police had no suspect in the Tuesday slaying of a Swan Street man, but that they had developed a number of leads and were searching for the Albany private investigator in whose car the body had been found and who was now believed to be in possession of “additional information.” I also was informed that a gorilla in Woodside, California, had given birth to a single gray kitten, though by that time I was headed down Madison and on the lookout for cop cars, so I might have gotten the gorilla story wrong.
I left the rental car outside the Hertz office and dropped the keys through the night-return slot. Bowman would soon have a make on any car rented locally in my name, if he hadn’t already, and I wanted to steer clear of him a while longer. Like so many people I kept running into, he would have his nosy questions concerning the whereabouts of Jack Lenihan’s two and a half million, except Bowman’s manner of inquiry would be ruder than that of the others and I chose to avoid it.
Up in room 1407 Timmy had the TV on and was watching a 20/20 report on a chemical animal feed factory built in 1983 next to an army base where all the soldiers soon grew breasts. The feed company’s lawyers said it was a coincidence.
“We’re going to where it’s warm,” I told him, kissing his bare ankle, which was propped atop one of Jack Lenihan’s five fat suitcases.
“I don’t think so. What’s in these bags anyway? I just picked up a toothbrush, some underwear and a couple of shirts. You look as though you’ve settled in for the decade.”
“The bags are Jack Lenihan’s. They arrived by bus from Los Angeles and they contain two and a half million dollars.”
He removed his ankle. “Did you steal them?”
“No, they were addressed to me-sent by Jack on Monday. As it said in the letter, I’m supposed to keep them safe until I hear from Jack.”
He stared at the suitcases with his baby blues, which began to flutter arrhythmically.
“But you’re not going to hear from Jack,’
“No. I’m not.”
I flopped onto the bed as he sat on the edge of his chair shaking his head.
“It’s not yours,” he said. “I don’t know whose it is, but it’s not yours. I want no part of this.”
“Part of what? Of course the money’s not mine.”
“You said we were going somewhere warm. You didn’t mean Rio, did you, along with those five suitcases?”
“Nah.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“Los Angeles. It’s hardly Antigua, but it’ll do for now. If I can prove that Lenihan came by this money legitimately, I can go ahead and carry out the project he was planning that was so important to him. Take the day off you’ve got one coming-and we’ll leave in the morning.”
Timmy looked perplexed, so I described the afternoon’s and evening’s events.
He said, “Let me see the letter again.” I fished it out and he read it. “I don’t get it. Jack says right here that what he was doing was not immoral but it was illegal. That doesn’t square at all with this wild story he told the three pols about an inheritance from a godfather.”
I brought out the documents Sim Kempelman had given me. “Sim says it’s all on the up-and-up. Look at these.”
He perused the papers. “This stuff looks okay, but that still doesn’t explain the language in the letter. It doesn’t fit.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Superficially it doesn’t fit, that’s true. But there are larger forces at work here, larger truths. I’ll have to sort out the details as I go along.”
He gave me a strained look. “Don, please come off it and don’t give me that vague stuff you always come up with when it suits your current whim.
You’ve put aside your objectivity in this because you think you can give the Albany machine a kick in the groin. But it won’t be that simple, and you know it. Maybe this so-called godfather is a Mafia godfather, a big drug dealer, or some other god-awful thing.”
“A Mafia godfather named Al Piatek?”
“It’s true, the name doesn’t ring a bell. Maybe it’s an alias.”
“Sim Kempelman states unequivocally that these documents are genuine,”
I said, “and you can’t get papers like these under an alias.”
“Not unless you’re powerful enough to own a few government clerks in the right places. Really, I think you should stay clear of this crowd, whoever they are. Hankie-mouth obviously doesn’t work for the Department of Agriculture. Do you still plan on not meeting him tonight?”
“I’m not exactly meeting him, no. You’re determined to keep me from getting away to a warm place, aren’t you? But it won’t work, my friend.
Hang on.” I picked up the phone, got an outside line, and dialed the McConkeys’ number on Walter Street. Dreadful Ed answered and grudgingly called Corrine to the phone.
“Don Strachey, Corrine. How are you doing?”
“Not very well, Mr. Strachey. But some very nice people are taking good care of me, so I’m just trying to count my blessings and hang on. Oh, did you know Officer Bowman was looking for you? Maybe you better see what he wants. It sounded important.”
“I’ll give him a call when I get a chance. Tell me something, Corrine. Did Jack have a godfather?”
“Jack’s godfather was a real sweetie-Mike Tompkins, a friend of Dad Lenihan’s. He would have been just crushed by Jack’s passing, so maybe it’s best that Mike joined the majority himself last year.”
For a second I thought she meant the Moral Majority, but then it sank in.
“Mr. Tompkins died recently?”
“Oh, it’s been almost a year now. Last February or March, I think. I know there was snow on the ground. Mary Tompkins dropped by earlier tonight and we talked about Mike’s passing. It was merciful, she said, because the cancer had turned him into a little tiny thing not much more than a ghost.
He’d been suffering quite a bit. He lived down the street from Dad, and Dad misses him too.”
“Was Mr. Tompkins a wealthy man?”
“Wealthy? Oh, no, I wouldn’t think so. Oh, no.”
“Does the name Al Piatek mean anything to you?”
“Piatek?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t think of any Piateks. I’ve heard the name, I guess.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry to have bothered you and I hope I won’t have to do it again. But I might.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I was just having a cup of tea and a sticky bun.”
When I’d hung up, Timmy said, “So.”
“So? So what? This just makes it all the more imperative that I fly out there and sort this out.”
“The beaches won’t be any good. This time of year the water’s too cold.”
“You’re not coming along?”
“Of course I’m coming. It’s just for the weekend.”
“Good. Bowman wants to haul me in and might have the security people at the airport watching for me, so we’ll drive down and fly from Kennedy. Did you rent a car?”
“It’s down on Lodge Street. God, an Albany Lenihan who turned into a civic reformer. Who’d ever have thought it? If Jack hadn’t died, what an amazing historical event that would have been.”
“Will be,” I said. “An amazing historical event that will be.”
He’d had enough of me for a while and watched the eleven-o’clock news while I phoned my airline contact at home.
&n
bsp; “Don Strachey, Alex. What did you come up with?”
“Joe’s here for a few hours and he’s awake. I’m busy.”
“Give him my best-or yours, if that’s what he prefers-but in the meantime, go get that stuff on Lenihan I asked for, will you? I’m going to be out of touch for a couple of days and I need it before I leave.”
The phone hit something with a clunk. He came back rattling papers. “John C. Lenihan flew to Los Angeles via
O’Hare on Tuesday, October sixteenth, and returned to Albany on Sunday, October twenty-first, again changing at O’Hare. If he flew anywhere on any other dates during the month of October, it wasn’t with us. May I go now?”
“You may. And thanks-many thanks. You’ll be rewarded for this on some distant day.”
“Oh, it won’t be that long.”
I hung up and dialed Ned Bowman at home. “Fenton Hardy here. Is this Chief Collig of the Bayport police department?”
“You’re under arrest, Strachey!”
“Nope.”
“Well, you sure as hell will be if you don’t haul your ass down to my office at eight A.M. sharp. And you are not at the Americana. You lied.”
“Listen, Ned, I want to help you out, so don’t make it hard for me. Our separate efforts on this one can be complementary and beneficial.”
“You have it, don’t you?” he hissed.
“Have what?”
“The famous two and a half million bucks everybody and his brother keeps walking in off the street and telling me about. You know, Strachey, Larry Dooley is awful mad at you. When you make a mistake, it’s a pisser.”
“Dooley may have killed Jack Lenihan. Are you pursuing that?”
“Dooley, Kempelman, Creighton Pell-they’re all suspects until they can establish alibis, which naturally they’re all busting their asses to come up with real fast.”
“There’s a better suspect, I think.”
“What? Who do you mean?”
“Whoever killed Jack Lenihan was smart enough to dump him in my car instead of in a ditch somewhere. This served the purpose of frightening me into turning over the two and a half million-which, incidentally, I’ve never seen-and also of pointing a finger at me. It follows that the killer was also smart enough to go through Lenihan’s pockets and remove any paper with his own name and phone number on it, but leave behind any papers with Dooley’s, Prell’s and Kempelman’s names. I suggest you check out other reform-minded politicians whom Lenihan might have approached with his proposal. The ones who are not showing up are the ones who, I think, bear scrutinizing. I’d do it myself, but far be it from me to involve myself in an investigation that properly falls within your purview.”
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