Ice Blues ds-3

by Richard Stevenson

  “For a year and a half.”

  “Lovers?”

  He shook his head and shuddered. “No. Thank God, no. We’d tricked once a long time ago, but that was years ago, when he first came out here from Albany. No, Al and I were not lovers. I want to make that clear. As it is, a lot of people won’t get within ten feet of me. I seem to run into two types these days, guys who think nothing’s changed, that we’re still back in ‘77 and Donna Summer’s in her heaven and all’s right with the world, and guys who think the plague’s waiting for them on the rim of every drinking glass. But you don’t get AIDS from sharing the rent. There’s just no known instance of it.”

  I said, “I didn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “How Al Piatek died.”

  “Oh well, it lasted eight months, and it was inhuman, grotesque.”

  “He was here with you?”

  “Of course. This was his home.”

  “You two must have been close.”

  He shrugged. “No. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even like Al very much. His interests were in rock music-he was a recording engineer at Zimmer Studios-and was into the musicians and their dope. I like baroque music and I’m indifferent to most pop stuff, except to dance to. In fact, Al wasn’t even here very much until he got sick. Mostly, Al went his way and I went mine.”

  “But you took care of him through the illness?”

  “About half the time he was in the hospital. When he was here, I did what I could. People from the AIDS support group came by, and I helped out. I was able to do it because-well, because I knew it wasn’t going to last. That Al wasn’t going to last. That’s cynical, I know, but it was better I did that than cutting out, don’t you think?” I nodded. “I did what I could. Al went back to the church toward the end. I took him to Mass the few times he could get out of bed and walk, and I know it helped. I even pretended to regain my own faith. He seemed to want me to. It was phony as all get-out, but I’m a good actor. I sometimes feel guilty about that-that I demeaned Al by pretending. But the alternatives seemed even worse. I think I did the right thing.”

  “It’s complicated, but I think you did too.”

  “It’s a horrible way to die. You’re gay, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Oh, puh-leez, Mary!”

  Twenty years earlier my indignation would have known no bounds, but I’d been carried gasping for air along with the times, so I smiled sweetly. I wasn’t wearing an earring or hot hankie, however, so I wondered what the devil he meant. I supposed he had some uncanny sixth sense. Or maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t flinched when, as he was speaking, he leaned across the table and placed his hand on mine.

  I said, “Your palm is sweating.”

  He withdrew the hand. “I wanted to see if you were who you said you were.”

  “Are all private investigators from Albany supposed to be gay? So far as I know, I’m it.”

  “Al told me Jack Lenihan used to deal dope. And the people he was involved with in that were straight. I thought you might be one of them.”

  “Why?”

  “The money. They’d want their money back. They probably killed Jack trying to get it.”

  “What money is that?”

  “The two and a half million Jack Lenihan gave to Al in October and then asked Al to leave to Jack in his will. Jack was laundering his own money.

  The story they cooked up was, Janis Joplin had given it to Al when she was stoned one time, and then Al-who was afraid to spend the money and kept it in the trunk of his car-left it to Jack. You didn’t know that? I thought that’s why you were here.”

  “I knew Al had left Jack the money. But I didn’t know Jack had given it to Al first. That’s what I came out here to find out. Where Al had gotten the two and a half million. Jack told Al it was doper’s money?”

  “No, that was Al’s theory. Where else would Jack have gotten it? Jack asked Al to take it and then leave it to him, and Al agreed. Originally it was closer to three and a quarter million, but the estate tax and Al’s back income tax plus penalties were something terrific. Jack said he knew he’d lose a lot of it to the tax guys, but that was the price he was willing to pay, he said, to make the cash legitimate. Naturally Al asked Jack where he got the money, but Jack couldn’t say. He just kept insisting that what he was doing was not at all immoral, and Al took his word for it. He knew Jack well enough to understand that Jack was sincere, that his word on that score was good. By then, Al had accepted the fact that he was going to die soon, so it gave him something useful to do for an old friend.”

  “They’d known each other in Albany?”

  Toot smiled sadly. “You are in the dark, aren’t you? Haven’t you spoken with Joan Lenihan? She’s here in LA. If you found me, you must have found her.”

  “Mrs. Lenihan was not overly forthcoming. She’s upset about Jack and she’s got problems of her own.”

  Toot looked at me and said, “Al and Jack were lovers in high school. Each was the other’s first. The two families didn’t know about it-they thought Al and Jack were assembling model airplanes up in the Piateks’ attic. What they were really doing was sniffing the glue and fucking each other silly. Al once told me he would remember and fantasize about those hours up there on an old mattress until the day he died. Which I’m sure he did.

  “Al said it was never quite as good after those first attic trysts with Jack Lenihan. But it didn’t last. One day, while Al was up working on his airplanes’ with Jack, the senior Piateks and Al’s two younger sisters were killed in a car crash outside Albany. Al was brought to LA to live with his grandparents-who died a couple of years ago-and Al and Jack never saw each other again until Joan Lenihan reunited them last October. Some years ago, Jack had told his mother about his first love, so when she met Al out here she arranged a reunion. She thought it might be therapeutic for Al. You see, when Al first went into the hospital and got the news of a positive diagnosis, Joan Lenihan was his nurse.”

  “She’s obviously a kind and sensitive woman.”

  “She is, and that’s not all she is.”

  “I know.”

  “Her humanitarianism is not entirely disinterested. She’s protecting the tribe. She’s lesbian and her son was gay. She’s as aware as anybody that under the best of circumstances it ain’t easy being puce, and the present circumstances are far from the best. When the AIDS unit opened up at the hospital, Joan Lenihan was the first nurse to volunteer.”

  I said, “I think I will have a glass of that stuff. Have you got a beer?”

  Toot brought me a Bud from the Frigidaire and said, “I keep it around for tricks.”

  “Tricks? No.”

  “Sure. Haven’t you heard of safe sex? The AIDS council put out a pornographic pamphlet on minimum-risk sex. It’s a real turn-on, and I’ve got one.”

  “A pamphlet, eh? Well, here I am in kinky LA”

  “Wanna see it? It’s in Spanish too, if your English is not too good.”

  “I’ll pass. I loathe safe sex. Safe sex is to erotic communion what the Salisbury steak in a restaurant on the New Jersey Turnpike is to food. I do it because it’s what there is, but I don’t want to think about it any more that I have to.” I slugged down some of the beer. Toot’s house was cool and the cold beer warmed me up.

  With a little smile he said, “I wasn’t trying to seduce you. I’m sure you have your professional ethics.”

  “And my lover in a motel over on Sunset. Whether you were trying to seduce me or not, two or three years ago I would have loved a quick tumble in the sack with you and probably would have initiated it. But that’s over.

  That life has gone the way of cheap gas and free air for your tires. If the two alternatives to monogamy are death and Salisbury steak, I choose monogamy, even though as I speak the words aloud the sound of them makes me a little dizzy.”

  “Actually there’s a third alternative,” Toot said with a grin. “If you’re rich, that is.
I have an actor friend who made a lot of money several years ago and now he spends every third month in Patagonia.”

  “Patagonia? Patagonia in southern Argentina?”

  “There is no AIDS in all of Patagonia, and he found some hotel down there where gay cowboys hang out. He says it’s terrific, just like in the olden days-‘78, back then. Last summer he spent eleven thousand dollars on airfare. He hasn’t had sex with anybody in North America since 1981. He saves it all for the gauchos. Or in Patagonia is it penguins?”

  “My God.”

  “Ernie has Patagonia, but I’ve at least got my pamphlet. I do what works. I guess you’re more of a purist. Like Ernie, except without the cash to act on it.”

  “I certainly do envy your wealthy and highly imaginative friend,” I said.

  “And I guess I envy you the apparently satisfying erotic existence that your pamphlet has provided you. But I’ve never been able to do anything halfway. Like Jack Lenihan. Once Jack decided what he wanted to do, he went all the way with it.” While Toot watched me bug-eyed, I described Jack’s two-and-a-half-million-dollar political project in Albany. “Did he tell you about this?” I asked.

  Toot’s mouth hung open. “No. No, he didn’t. Jesus!”

  “Did he tell Al?”

  “Not that I know of. No, Al would have told me. Where’s the money now?”

  “I don’t know. Joan Lenihan may have it, I’m not sure. Jack was about to ship the money to me in Albany for safekeeping, but Joan kept him from doing that. She was against the project for reasons that are not at all clear to me. My plan is to find the money, take it and carry out Jack’s project for him. Will you help me?”

  He swallowed hard. “Well-maybe. But Jack was killed, you said. Doesn’t that probably mean the owners of the money are trying to reclaim it? Maybe they already have.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s here in Los Angeles. How well do you know Joan Lenihan? Somebody has to reach her, but it looks as if it’s not going to be me.”

  “I’ve met her a few times, but that’s all. She wouldn’t trust me any more than she’d trust you.”

  “Who does she trust?”

  “Gail Tesney, her lover.”

  “She’s been shut out too. She doesn’t like it, but she can’t seem to do anything about it.”

  “Then forget it. If Gail can’t get Joan to open up, nobody can.”

  “Then Gail will have to do it. She has no choice.”

  He peered at me, looking a little queasy. “You’d interfere in Gail and Joan’s relationship just so you might influence an election in some fur-trading outpost in upstate New York?”

  I thought about this, then said lamely, evasively, “It’s what Jack Lenihan wanted. It’s what he would have wanted me to do.”

  Eyeing me evenly, Toot said, “Maybe in that respect Jack Lenihan was a heartless creep. Did you ever consider that?”

  I had to admit that I hadn’t. I had been careful not to. Where was Timmy? He was my moral guardian, not this raffle-ticket-stapling Uncle Vanya. I said,

  “Why don’t you come over to the motel and meet Timmy? Maybe he can make this whole business clearer than I’ve been able to. Bring your raffle tickets along and a couple of extra staplers. This evening we can have a wild threesome-click-shoosh, click-shoosh. The motel we’re staying in can probably even come up with a couple of extra stapling artists. Though I don’t know that they’d necessarily be the safe-stapling type.”

  “What’s the name of the place?”

  “The Golden Grapefruit.”

  “Oh, that guy can get safe-staplers. He can get you anything you want.”

  “He can? Uh-oh.”

  Toot followed me into my room at the motel.

  “Hi, sake-zy.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Ramon, and this is my friend Juan. Hey, your friend is very cute too, but I wan chu.”

  They were propped up on pillows on the bed watching Sale of the Century.

  Ramon was in red briefs, Juan in tiger stripes. Their clothes were heaped on a chair. Toot tried to look bemused.

  I said, “Who let you in here? This is my room.”

  Ramon winked. “We the sexular human boys. We gonna have a good time, sweetheart, you will see. Hey, you want me go out and pick up some booze? We gonna get thirsty, I’m thinking.”

  I said, “Out,” and pointed to the open door.

  Juan looked worried, but Ramon stood up, slithered out of his briefs, walked over and placed my hand on his unexceptional erection. “I gone fuck you till you blow up, man. I gone fuck you till you the happiest man in LA. I gone���”

  I led him away. He resisted when we came to the door-sill, but I had a firm grip and he yielded soon enough. As we emerged into the parking lot Timmy pulled up in the rental car, got out, and said, “My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near.”

  “I found him and his friend in the room. They’re just on their way out. They claim to be secular humanists, but I know a couple of Alexandrian Copts when I see them. I told that guy.”

  Juan sidled out the door wearing pants now and carrying a distressed bundle of clothing and shoes. I released Ramon, who dressed rapidly, muttering and hurling imprecations at me in two languages. “I gonna talk to Teddy, man! I don’ like getting fucked over, and somebody gonna pay for this, man!”

  I introduced Timmy to Kyle Toot, then went in and rang the desk. “Is this Teddy?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Donald Strachey in one-oh-six. I said secular humanist twins and you sent me a couple of Aztec Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now if you can’t even come up with a pair of certified Unitarians, just forget it. I’m warning you, I’ll want to see their ACLU membership cards. Do you understand what I’m saying? My friend and I have very specific tastes.”

  “I’ll have to make some more calls.”

  “If we have to go back to Lynchburg horny, it’ll be your fault.” I slammed down the receiver.

  Timmy was shaking his head. “Don, really.”

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Toot said. “He’ll have a set of hot Unitarians in here inside of an hour. This is LA.”

  I said, “No. It isn’t possible.”

  “You’ll see.”

  I rang Teddy back and said, “This is Strachey in one-oh-six again. Cancel the Unitarians. We just heard about a Trivial Pursuit tournament at a bar in Westwood, and it’s first things first.”

  “Fuckin’ eastern kooks!” Teddy said, and hung up on me.

  TWELVE

  We sat in the motel.Stapling Raffle tickets for an American Legion post in Pomona that was selling chances on a VCR, two cases of Johnnie Walker, and eighteen frozen turkeys. I brought Timmy up-to-date on the day’s events, and he described his visit to the LA County courthouse, where he verified the legitimacy of Al Piatek’s will. Kyle Toot told us more about Piatek’s last days, including his dipping into Lenihan’s millions-with Jack’s permission-to throw a good-bye party for himself.

  He invited twenty-three friends in the recording business; five showed up.

  They consumed thirty-seven ounces of Beluga caviar spread on Nabisco saltines and six bottles of Clos Vougeot ‘64. At two in the morning Piatek passed out in his chair by the stereo, where he had been selecting the tapes to be played. He never regained consciousness and died in a hospital bed three days later. His last words, as far as anyone could recall, had been, “My feet are cold.”

  At 4:45 my contact at the investigating agency downtown phoned with the news that two toll calls had been placed from Joan Lenihan’s phone the previous weekend. One, on Saturday, at 5:43 P.M., was to Jack Lenihan’s Albany number, and the conversation had lasted for just three minutes. The other call, on Monday, at 9:12 A.M. was to a number in Troy, New York, listed under the name Florence Trenky. That call lasted twenty-two minutes. I thanked my friend and told him to bill me at my Albany address, thinking he’d say forget it, but he didn’t.

 
; I told Timmy and Kyle Toot what I had learned, and asked Toot, “Did Jack ever mention a Florence Trenky?”

  “No, I’d remember that one. Though Jack didn’t talk much about his current life in Albany. He and Al mostly talked about the old days there, growing up and their secret life in the Piateks’ attic. When he came here in October to bring the money out to Al, Jack did tell me about his recent separation from his lover, Warren something-or-other.”

  “Slonski.”

  “He didn’t really want to leave Slonski, he said, but there was something important he said he had to do that Slonski wouldn’t approve of and wouldn’t want to be mixed up in. I guess that was the big money and the political wheeling and dealing, right?”

  “Right. And he never gave you any clue about where he’d gotten the two and a half million?”

  “He joked about being afraid the suitcases containing the money might break open in the plane’s baggage compartment, though that hadn’t happened. Otherwise, all he said was that what he was doing was completely moral. He kept repeating that to both me and Al, trying to reassure us.”

  “Maybe he was trying to reassure himself too. Did you ever get that impression?”

  Toot put down his stapler and considered this. After a moment, he said,

  “No. I don’t think there was any doubt in Jack’s mind at all about the ethical correctness of what he was doing. In fact, he once said, ‘Two wrongs can make a right.’ He seemed to be certain of this, and very determined to right some kind of wrong. Whatever it was. Maybe Joan Lenihan knows all about it. I got the impression thajt they were quite close, that they confided in each other. Do you think she knows the whole story?”

  “I think so, yes. The essentials, anyway. The question is, will she ever tell a living soul?”

  “If she does,” Toot said, “it will be Gail Tesney, not any of us.”

  “We’re back to Gail. I’d like to talk with her alone. Does she work on the AIDS unit too?”

  “No, on the next floor up, cardiac care.’

  “Can you find out when she’s on today?”

  Toot phoned the hospital where Lenihan and Tesney worked and learned that Gail had come on duty at four o’clock. “She’ll probably have her dinner break at seven or seven-thirty. If you go out there, I’d like to come along to keep you from asking too much of Gail, or pressuring her into something that’ll make trouble between her and Joan.”