Ice Blues ds-3

by Richard Stevenson

  “Are you trying to tell me how the Albany police department should conduct an investigation?”

  “I’ve been trying for years with scant success. But think it over. It makes sense, Ned. Have you traced Lenihan’s movements in the days before he was killed? I’ve been curious about that.”

  “He was in Los Angeles,” Bowman said. “One of my officers found it on some flight manifests, and we assume Lenihan was visiting his mother, but I haven’t been able to get Joanie to come to the phone. Of course, I’m sure you already know all about that, you being my superior officer in this investigation. Am I right, huh? Am I right?”

  “I did hear something about Los Angeles. Or was it Salt Lake City?”

  “I might be flying out there tomorrow if the chief okays it, so you be here bright and early, no later than eight. You got that?”

  My heart sank. “Why are you going to LA? To question Lenihan’s mother?”

  “That, and to find out who this Al Piatek character is who’s supposed to have left Lenihan a lot of money. Hell, I’m beginning to have my doubts about whether these famous millions even exist.”

  I glanced at the suitcases, which Timmy had an ankle propped up on again.

  I said, “Have a nice flight.”

  “And I’ll see you at eight.”

  “Sure you will.” I hung up.

  “That’s an interesting idea,” Timmy said. “But I don’t think it holds up.”

  I said, “Crap. Bowman might be going to LA tomorrow. We’ll have to leave tonight and get there first, or he’ll just send everybody running for cover.

  What’s an interesting idea?”

  “About some other pol Lenihan might have approached whose name was removed from Jack’s belongings. Except, who would it be? There’s nobody else running a mayoral candidate who’s even vaguely reformist.”

  “What about the Liberal party?”

  “They’re not putting anybody up in local elections. Anyway, who ever heard of a liberal beating somebody over the head with a tire iron? We’re more subtly insidious than that.”

  “True, Lenihan wasn’t mollycoddled to death.”

  “What did you mean when you said you were ‘not exactly’ meeting Hankie-mouth tonight?”

  “I’ll show you if you feel like accompanying me out into the winter air which you find so bracing. It’s eleven-twenty, time to get going.”

  “You’re going out now?”

  “Just down the hill. I want to watch something happen.”

  “The weather twinkie on Channel 12 just said it was three below out. I’m not going out into that.”

  “And you’re the one who finds this arctic purity so invigorating,” I said, and dropped an ice cube down his back.

  Using the deserted side streets north of the Hilton, I walked down the hill toward the river, the snow underfoot grabbing my boot soles with its tiny fangs. I scraped it away at each curb I came to. At 11:40 I fiddled the lock of a rear door on an old four-story business building at Clinton and Pearl. Inside the darkened top-floor front office of Nardia Prosthetic Technicians I found a quietly sighing radiator beneath a clean-enough window overlooking the intersection. I pulled up a wheelchair, applied the brakes, and waited.

  Traffic below was light and sporadic. From time to time a car cruised down the I-787 exit ramp and turned onto Pearl or ground on up Clinton on the hardpacked snow. A few lights burned in the Federal Building, catty-corner from where I sat. Across Clinton the old Palace Theater was dark; the marquee said GIV NOW TO THE UN TED AY.

  At 11:56 a large station wagon rolled down from the expressway in the left-turn lane and paused. It made an illegal left through a red light and moved slowly south on Pearl. The wagon left my field of vision but reappeared a minute later heading north. This time it made a U-turn in the intersection and pulled into the no-parking zone in front of the Palace. The wagon was a black late ’70s model Ford with New York plates, possibly number ATX-947, though the numbers and letters were partially covered with winter road grime, so I wasn’t certain.

  The station wagon waited in front of the theater, its lights off but engine idling, for just under half an hour. The front seat was occupied only by the driver, whose face was obscured by the glare of a streetlight on the car’s windshield. When the wagon had been maneuvering earlier, no passengers had been visible in it.

  Eight other cars, including an Albany PD black-and-white, passed through the intersection during the period the wagon stayed there. None stopped or slowed down in any way not dictated by the changing traffic signals. At 12:26 the wagon’s lights went on. The driver waited for another thirty seconds before suddenly sending up a shower of sand and snow, then roaring through a red light and on up to the interstate, where it turned north toward either Troy or the I-90 east-west interchange.

  No other cars appeared below, and I sat for a time warming my hands over the friendly radiator. I wheeled over and used Nardia Prosthetics’ telephone to wake up an acquaintance who worked for the Department of Motor Vehicles. He agreed to track down the ownership of the station wagon the next day and leave the information with my answering service. I called the service-which reported no messages other than many urgent requests to contact Lieutenant Ned Bowman-and told them I would continue to be out of touch over the weekend but that I would check in periodically.

  For a while longer I sat in the wheelchair warming my hands and watching the traffic signals change. At one o’clock I pulled my cap down over my ears and went back out into the cold, locking several doors behind me, and wondering why Hankie-mouth had been so certain that I would not show up for our rendezvous with the cops on my side and accompanying me.

  “I’m packed,” Timmy said. “Will they let us on the plane with just a Macy’s shopping bag?”

  “You’re really coming? I’m glad. I like to travel with you. Except for your psychopathic insistence on clean sheets wherever you sleep, you travel well. You’re open to the vicissitudes.”

  “I woke up the boss and told him I wouldn’t be in tomorrow. But I’m counting on you to keep the vicissitudes to a minimum on this trip.”

  “That’s always my firm intention.”

  “You have cash, I hope. I’ve only got about twelve dollars.”

  “Do I have cash? Do I have cash?” I took out the five small numbered keys Jack Lenihan had sent me, flopped a suitcase onto the bed, and unlocked it. I undid the latches and raised the lid. We stared silently at the contents.

  After a moment, Timmy said, “That’s one.”

  “One what?”

  “Vicissitude.”

  The suitcase was full of newspapers.

  “Let’s try another one.”

  With my pulse rumba-ing in my ears, I opened the second bag.

  “That’s two.”

  “Oy.”

  We opened the three remaining bags and sorted through the contents. All five contained copies of the Los Angeles Times dating back over the past nine months. The most recent was the previous Saturday’s, January 12.

  “You have been diddled,” Timmy said.

  “Somebody has. Bloody hell.”

  “Are we still going?”

  “Hell, yes, we’re going. We’ll pick up some cash from a machine at Kennedy. Hell.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Maybe Lenihan was nuts, and he created this furor out of nothing. This is insane.”

  I took out Lenihan’s letter and reread it carefully. I said, “No. I don’t think so, no. Lenihan had a history of erratic behavior but not of mental illness.

  This letter is not only sincere, it shows every sign of his having a firm grip on a quixotic but plausible reality. No, Lenihan shipped these suitcases believing the money was inside them-the two and a half million legally passed on to him by Al Piatek. The money was removed from the bags between the time Lenihan locked them and the time we opened them. Now it’s just a matter of following the track backwards. Look, I know you think I’ve lost my marbles on this one. That I’ve bee
n bewitched by the possibility of defanging the municipal werewolves of Albany. I admit that I am salivating at the thought. But there is something genuine going on here.

  Something so real to somebody that Jack Lenihan was killed over it. And that’s real enough for me.”

  He sighed resignedly, one of his sighs that originate down around his knees and work their way up through his thighs, groin, midsection, chest, trachea, and out his mouth, nose, ears and hair follicles. “Maybe you’re right. I’ve got to try to open my mind and keep it that way a while longer. My own objectivity has been clouded somewhat by the fact that what I really want right now is to go home and set the electric mattress pad on high.

  Maybe I’m getting too old for vicissitudes this messy. But I have to admit that now I’m almost as curious as you are, so let’s go. Let’s get it over with.”

  “Now you’re talking-showing the trust and generosity of spirit that I’ve come to expect of you, and which you’ve hardly ever regretted. Could I borrow some of the underwear and socks you bought? I’ll take a quick shower and then we’ll hit the road. Is your new toothbrush in the bathroom?”

  “You didn’t pick one up? God, you know I hate it when you use my toothbrush.”

  “I can put your cock in my mouth, but not your toothbrush.”

  “I don’t brush my teeth with my cock.”

  “That’s not what they say about you in Poughkeepsie.”

  TEN

  Two hundred twelve people with bloodshot eyes and winter coats over their arms hiked down a series of long pastel corridors punctuated by ramps, belts, moving stairways, and tombstone-like inscriptions of welcome from Thomas C. Bradley, mayor.

  Timmy said, “I accept the airline’s word that this place is Los Angeles, but it feels like a subway station in Philadelphia.”

  “You’ll like LA a little better once we’re outside. Think of New Jersey with palm trees.”

  “I’ll bet it’s not as simple as that.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t.”

  Luggage-less except for Timmy’s shopping bag, we moved directly to the car-rental agency and picked up a Ford Escort identical to the one we’d left at JFK.

  Timmy said, “I thought everybody out here drove a Rolls. Or is there a thirty-day waiting period?”

  “You’re thinking of Beverly Hills. We’re going to West Hollywood, where people still ride buses, or even walk on their feet. Another popular mode of transportation there is the skateboard with silver sparkles on the wheels.”

  “I saw one of those in Albany once, last summer in Washington park.”

  “What you saw in Albany was an individualist. In Los Angeles you’ll witness the future of us all.”

  “What if I don’t like it?”

  “I guess you can always emigrate to Belgium.”

  “I don’t believe it. Back east, people will shop in shopping malls, but in the end they’ll refuse to live in them.”

  “Poughkeepsie will be under a big plastic dome, like the lid from a can of underarm deodorant, and underneath it’ll look and feel just like this. Take it or leave it. It’s this or Belgium.”

  “Well, I’ve always enjoyed powdered waffles.”

  A breeze from the mountains had shoved out to sea the gaseous tumor that often hangs over the LA basin, and the air was clean and pleasingly warm in the bleached winter sunlight. We drove north, then east on the San Diego and Santa Monica freeways, then over to Sunset Boulevard and checked into a motel in a neighborhood where the economy appeared to be based on service industries.

  “How long will you be staying?” asked the desk clerk, a middle-aged man with sea-green hair growing out of both ears and all three nostrils.

  “Two, three days.”

  “Want a woman?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “A man?”

  “We’re here for the Moral Majority convention,” Timmy said, “so watch your tongue, mister.”

  “I can get you a nice religious boy who likes to be hit with a palm frond.”

  I said, “What about a pair of secular humanist twins who’ll recite Rousseau in our ears while they bang it at home? Can you get us that?”

  “I’d have to make some calls.”

  “We’ve only got a few days, so get to work. We’ll make it worth your while.”

  “I can get you Mormons in ten minutes. You don’t want a nice clean Mormon?”

  “Secular humanists, pops. You send over a couple of Augustinian friars, and we take our business elsewhere, got it?”

  “Sure, but I’ll have to make some calls.”

  Out back in our room, Timmy said, “I know the Beverly Hills Hotel is expensive, but do we have to cut corners this closely?”

  “It’s not that Michelin recommends this particular motel, but this is the neighborhood we’ll be operating from. It’s convenient. Al Piatek’s address, as listed on his probated will, is not far from here, and so is the address on the Greyhound waybills for the five suitcases. My guess is, that’s Joan Lenihan s address.” I hauled out the five-pound LA phone book and found J. Lenihan at the address on the waybills. “That’s it. We’re here. We’re getting close to finding out a few things.”

  “We’re getting close to people who know a few things, but how can you be sure they’ll tell you what they know?”

  “I’m not. But it sure is great to be out of Albany, isn’t it?” He gave me a look, then went about emptying his shopping bag and neatly placing its meager contents in a drawer. He had removed his thermal underwear in the airliner’s lavatory-when I’d knocked on the door and asked if I could come in and watch how he went about this, he refused me-but we were both overdressed for the seventy-degree temperature, so we walked several blocks up to a slightly tonier neighborhood closer to Beverly Hills, found a men’s store and bought chinos and polo shirts. All the shirts had the manufacturer’s little logos on the front-small mammals, reptiles, amphibians. I asked for one with an invertebrate, but the clerk said he’d never heard of that company.

  Timmy took the car, studied the rental agency’s map of Greater Los Angeles, and headed downtown toward the LA County courthouse to further verify the authenticity of Al Piatek’s will. Just before noon I walked up into the hills east of Sunset Boulevard to call on the woman I had been told was made of iron but was now prostrate with grief.

  The apartment building was a well-preserved relic of ancient Los Angeles, about 1927. It was gray stucco with Spanish colonial grillwork, but it had Elizabethan exposed crossbeams and tile-roofed gables, like some bastard offspring of Queen Isabella and the Duke of Kent. The place was weird but imposing, a sturdy eccentric survivor that said patronize me if you want, but I am beyond the reach of your niggling aesthetic purity. A walkway of small raspberry-colored concrete squares led past a narrow expanse of shadowy green lawn that was clipped nearly to the roots, like a gay haircut in 1978, and up to a high arched entryway with mailboxes and door buzzers. I pressed the button for 5-H, under which the nameplate read

  Lenihan ��� Tesney. She was a nurse, so she might be home. If she worked eight to four, I’d come back at four-thirty.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Lenihan?”

  “No, Mrs. Lenihan is-to whom am I speaking, please?”

  “I’m Don Strachey, a friend of Jack’s, and I’d like to talk to Mrs. Lenihan about him.”

  Her mike remained open, but no sound came forth.

  I said, “Before he died Jack asked me to help him with a project that was important to him. I’m now attempting to complete the project, but I need help. I’d just like to sit down with her for a few minutes, if I may. I’ve flown all the way out here from Albany.”

  More empty static. Then: “Just a minute, please.” The tone was hesitant but not hostile. The static clicked off. I checked my watch and it was nearly three minutes before the voice returned. “Joan says it’s all right for you to come up. Just for a few minutes.” The door buzzed open.

  I took the elevator to th
e fifth floor and followed a carpeted high-ceilinged corridor to 5-H, where the door stood open and a woman too young to be Jack Lenihan’s mother extended her hand and said, “I’m Gail Tesney, a friend of Joan’s. Please come in.”

  I guessed her age to be forty-one or ��� two. She was tall and slender in white shorts and a red halter, with small breasts and the type of lithe but firm musculature that suggested her tan came from regular tennis and not from lying by the pool with the latest Cosmo. Her black hair was lustrous even in the half-light and I felt a faint stirring, a kind of nostalgia for something that had never been more than an enforced experiment in social conditioning with me, a vestigial twitch. She had a wide mouth, lively and slightly asym-metrical black eyes, and she looked relieved to see me, as if a burden she had been under finally was going to be shared.

  “Sit down, please. Joan worked eleven to seven last night, but she hasn’t been sleeping well lately and she’s been up for half an hour. This past week has been very hard on her. I’m sure you understand that.”

  “You mean the past three days, don’t you? Mrs. Lenihan learned of Jack’s death on Wednesday and today is Friday. Or had there been other bad news too?”

  A good bit of the warmth went out of her smile. She said; “Perhaps you and Joan should talk this out.”

  The room was bright and comfortable in the California way, with white walls and a low orange-and-blue couch, bamboo shades on the ceramic lamps, an assortment of current Book-of-the-Month Club fiction on rosewood shelving and a good stereo setup with an Oscar Peterson LP propped in front of one speaker. An archway on the right led into a formal dining room with a glass-topped steel-tube table and a blond wood sideboard, beside which were stacked five suitcases of identical size, color and design, and which looked new.