Ice Blues ds-3

by Richard Stevenson

  They had just come in from taking the Universal Studios tour, where Timmy said he had witnessed Hump Finkley of Chompin Choppers drinking from a carton of chocolate milk. I said I was sorry I’d had to leave early and miss it.

  It took me twenty minutes to convince the two of them to drive to the LA airport and get on the first flight with an O’Hare connection to Albany. But after I described my own plans for the night and promised to cover all expenses from a special account I planned to open soon, they took mild grudging pity and agreed to do it.

  I shut off the car, locked it, and explored the neighborhood, which was quiet except for the plop of wet snow plummeting from utility lines. I glanced up at Flo Trenky’s heavily curtained front windows, then went around the block and down an alley, counting houses as I went. The snow in the alley was heavy and deep. My feet were cold. I kept wiping my nose and wished Timmy were there to produce a hanky from his sleeve, stitched with the seal of the New York state legislature.

  The Trenky property, like its neighbors, had a crumbling board fence walling off the alley from a narrow yard. The gate of the Trenky fence was ajar, lodged in a snowdrift, which I was glad to take note of. I entered the yard, slogged through the drifts, and crouched below the decrepit three-story back porch, which clung to the rear wall of the house feebly, as if it would soon lose its benumbed grip and tumble away. Stairs ran up to the second floor of the porch and on to the third.

  I now knew how I could distract Fay and get inside the house. It seemed to me he was making it too easy for me, but I had to admit to myself that I did not know what kind of awful security devices Fay might have arranged for the two and a half million inside the house.

  For just an instant it went through my mind that maybe the five suitcases contained no millions at all, but actually held Fay’s summer wardrobe or his leather-bound indexed complete set of Hustler magazine, or fifty stolen car stereos, or-could it be? ��� three hundred copies of Fridays edition of the Los Angeles Times. I tried hard to push these pessimistic and additionally confusing thoughts out of my head.

  I moved rapidly back to the Cumberland Farms store, bought another cup of black vinegar along with four plain yogurts and a packet of plastic spoons, and climbed back into the car. I set the heater on medium and tuned in The Jazz Decades on WAMC. I watched Flo Trenky’s front door. If Mack Fay went any place, I wanted to know what he was taking along. If he had the bags, I’d follow. If he didn’t, I’d stay put. I cranked my seatback down a couple of notches and sat there watching, waiting for help to arrive from across the continent.

  FIFTEEN

  Fay came out the door and down the front steps at 1:12

  Sunday afternoon. The sky had cleared again, and despite my blurred vision resulting from lack of sleep, I got my first good look at him. The hood of his parka was down and he wore a black watch cap in its place.

  He had on dark-blue dress pants and what looked like the bulk of a suit jacket or sport coat under the parka. Cleanshaven now, his face was wide and incipiently jowly with a set, turned-down mouth and hard dark eyes. He glanced at the bright sky, then up and down the street. The five bags were nowhere in sight.

  Muttering, Fay kicked at the snow heaped up alongside his truck. He climbed into the pickup, started it up, and rocked it around until it bounced clear of the frozen ruts. I slid down in my seat as he made another U-turn in the intersection and drove south on Third Avenue. I edged up and watched him go. This time I did not follow.

  Instead I drove over to a gas station on First Avenue, filled the gas tank, used the men’s room, and went back to Cumberland Farms, where I purchased a hearty breakfast of the store’s famous dark brew, a Frooty-Tooty pie-baked with the fresh-picked produce of the frooty-tooty tree and a side of six Twinkies. Civic reform is not for finicky eaters.

  At 11:55 another Ford, a sibling of the one I was sitting in, moved slowly up Third Avenue, then swung in beside me. They both climbed into my car and I said, “Howdy.”

  “Have you really been sitting here since you called yesterday?” Timmy leaned toward me for a greeting but caught a whiff of my frooty-tooty breath and gave me a gentlemanly handshake.

  Toot said, “How come you didn’t freeze to death? This place is some kind of no-man’s land!” He was wearing an old heavy topcoat of Timmy’s and had a red knit scarf wrapped around his neck and lower face. His rubber galoshes, mine, were three sizes too big.

  “Hasn’t Timmy explained to you how the climate here enriches character and hones intelligence? For instance, you might have noticed how Reagan, since he moved east, seems to have grown wiser and wiser. He used to be a real bub-blehead in California. But back here-hell.”

  Timmy said, “We got here as fast as we could. We made it to Chicago, then had to sleep on the floor at O’Hare until the Albany plane left at ten this morning. We stopped at the house to pick up some warm clothes for Kyle along with the other things you said we should bring. Incidentally, our house-”

  “Your face is the color of iceberg lettuce. I’ve never seen you do that before.”

  “It’s probably gangrene,” Toot said, and peered in awe at the landscape around him.

  “Who did it?” Timmy asked gravely. “Who was the person who entered my home and did that?”

  “Hankie-mouth. His name is Mack Fay, the guy I told you about on the phone. He lives over there. Are you two ready to make his life miserable?”

  Timmy, his jaw tight, nodded.

  Toot said, “Will we have to get out of the car and walk around outside?”

  Timmy sat beside me and watched as Toot drove the other rental car over to Flo Trenky’s house, parked, went up the front steps, and rang the bell.

  The door was soon opened and after a moment Toot went in, shutting the door behind him. Five minutes later he emerged, glanced our way, opened the car’s hatch, and took out five gray canvas suitcases that belonged to Timmy and carried them into Mrs. Trenky’s rooming house.

  “How long are we going to sit here?” Timmy said. “However long it takes. If Toot locates Fay’s room in ten minutes, I’m all for it. But it might take longer. Hours, days, weeks. I hope you brought your toothbrush.” “I wish you’d brought yours. God.” “How was the Chicano Krapp’s Last Tape?”

  “We never got there. We came here instead.”

  “Well, you missed out on another day of warm sunshine, but you still get the theater of the absurd.”

  “You’re telling me. Kyle’s a little nervous about this, so I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I’m sure he’s done improvisational theater before. He’ll shine in the part. I can tell.”

  “He says he prefers the classics. Moliere, Ibsen, Chekhov. “

  “How about Willy Loman? That would stand him in good stead.”

  “This feels more like the Ritz brothers. The Ritz brothers with a social conscience, of course.”

  “I see that you remain skeptical of my efforts toward civic improvement.

  You think I’m a loony, a deranged visionary, a crackpot.”

  He shook his head. “No. As much as anybody could, I admire your intentions. And I have to admit I admire Jack Lenihan for getting it all started. It’s just that it won’t have been worth it if you-or all of us-are hacked to bits by crazed dope fiends. Martyrdom interests me only when it’s somebody else’s, preferably having taken place in the fourteenth century. The pain is eased by chronological distance, and if you haven’t slept with the person.”

  “I think I can work it out so that you won’t become Poughkeepsie’s first saint. Not that Aunt Moira wouldn’t be real proud of you if you did.”

  “How? How will you work that out?”

  “I’m giving it a lot of thought.”

  He said, “I’ll be right back. They’d have toothbrushes in there, wouldn’t they? And Saratoga water?”

  “Probably.”

  “In this diocese there is no canonization for the orally unkempt.”

  At 5:25 P.M., und
er a frozen black sky, Mack Fay returned. He parked the pickup behind the Ford Toot had left in front of the Trenky house and let himself in the front door with a key. Twenty minutes later Toot came out and walked toward the convenience store. I pulled around the corner and out of sight of the house, and Toot climbed in the back seat.

  “Fay is in 2-C, second floor rear, next to the bathroom. I’m in 2-A, and I think somebody is in 2-B-I can hear a radio in there playing Jerry Falwell’s top hits. If anybody’s on the third floor they don’t talk or walk. It looks as if the third floor is empty. There’s a locked door at the entrance to the stairwell leading up to it.”

  “Where is Fay now?”

  “He came upstairs and went into his room. As soon as I heard footsteps outside my door, I made for the bathroom and passed him while he unlocked the door. I got one quick glimpse of his room but I didn’t see any suitcases. After I peed, I went back to my room and listened. A couple of minutes later Fay left his room and went down the stairs. He didn’t come outside, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Then he must be in Mrs. Trenky’s apartment. Both doorways from the front hallway lead into it. I wish you could meet her. She’s a sweetheart-Pert Kelton doing Carole Lombard.”

  “She bought your ‘salesman’ story?”

  “I’m Jim O’Connor the Third and I sell designer fan belts to fashion-conscious yuppies who might have to open the hoods of their Volvos in front of strangers.”

  “No. Tell me you didn’t tell her that.”

  Toot grinned. “No, just ordinary fan belts. I picked something I figured she wouldn’t want one of.”

  “Does Flo serve meals?”

  “Not to tenants like me. To Fay maybe. They appear to be good friends, at least.”

  “Why don’t you grab a sandwich and a Sunday paper inside the store, then go back and relax? If Fay goes out without the bags, we’ll move in right away while you distract Mrs. Trenky. If he stays put, it’s Plan B at nine-thirty tonight.” I explained Plan B.

  Timmy sat goggle-eyed and Toot looked a little queasy too. We tried to synchronize Toot’s watch with mine, but we couldn’t figure out which of the tiny holes to push a pin into-and we had no pin-so I synchronized my watch-which had a stem, a big hand, and a little hand-with Toot’s and we agreed that Plan B would go into effect precisely at 6:30 P.M., Pacific Standard Time.

  Through the evening and into the night Mack Fay did not leave the Trenky rooming house. At 6:30 PST, right on schedule, Toot emerged from the house, got into his rental car, and pulled around the corner. Timmy climbed in with him and they drove off. I waited and watched. Lights burned in the Trenky front windows, but none were lighted on the second or third floors.

  An hour and fifteen minutes later Kyle and Timmy returned. They had traded in the little Ford Escort for a Thunderbird, whose trunk contained objects I had instructed them to pick up from the basement of our house.

  Kyle walked back to Trenky’s, and Timmy and I went to work. It took half an hour to get the snow chains on the T-bird’s big wheels, and as soon as we had finished that job I drove the car over to the alley behind Mrs. Trenky’s house and backed down it. The alley had been plowed earlier in the day and maybe the chains wouldn’t have been necessary, but better safe than sorry, and sorry in this case could have been sorrier than I had ever been.

  While Timmy slid behind the wheel of the T-bird, I removed the two hundred feet of nylon rope from the trunk, looped one end around the car’s bumper, and tied it in a sheep shank. The other end I dragged through the snowy darkness of Flo’s backyard and ran it around the two main supporting posts of Flo’s old three-story back porch. I pulled the rope taut, tied it, and trudged back to Timmy.

  “Three minutes.”

  “What if somebody drives up the alley? There are garages back here.”

  “Then don’t wait. Go.”

  “He bent down and rested his head against the steering wheel. “This is a crime and probably a mortal sin. I can’t believe I am doing this.” He was genuinely distressed.

  “Do you want me to do it? I’m Presbyterian. I could do it myself and still get out to the front door in time.”

  He stared glumly at the windshield and thought this over. “No. Go ahead.

  The worst that can happen is I’ll burn in hellfire for eternity.”

  “If that’s what happens, thanks for the favor. I guess I’ll owe you one.”

  His shoulders shook with a little laugh, or sob, and he said, “Okay. Three minutes.” We checked our watches.

  I had taken the Thunderbird’s tire iron out earlier and now I stuck it up my sleeve. I ambled around the corner onto the side street and then down Third. I passed the Trenky house, where a raised shade on the second floor was quickly lowered and raised again, a signal from Toot that he had seen me pass by. The street was quiet in the frigid night. I heard only the muffled gabble of TV sets inside the houses I crunched past. At the end of the block I turned and moved back north, pacing myself so that I would arrive in front of the Trenky house at exactly 8:27 P.M., Pacific time, 11:27 Eastern.

  The roar was impressive, like Alec Guinness’ bridge dropping into the river Kwai. My heart hopped twice in my rib cage. A loud yelp came from inside the Trenky living room and I pressed hard against the wall as a curtain was yanked aside. Then a raised voice, male, and pounding footsteps moved away from me. I dashed up the wooden steps and as I went caught a quick sideways glimpse of the T-bird clanking across the intersection and past the convenience store, the car trailing odds and ends of nylon and splintered lumber behind it.

  Toot yanked open the front door and gestured toward the stairs. I went up them as he headed toward the door to Flo’s kitchen. It took me ninety seconds to fiddle the lock on 2-C-too long, I was afraid, but there I was and another ninety seconds to ascertain that the suitcases were not in Fays room. Not in the closet, not under the unmade bed, not amidst the paperback novels on the floor by the bedside with titles like The Sultan of

  Twat.

  The door to the third-floor stairway was secured by a padlock. I used the tire iron to rip off the U-bolt. The stairwell was dark and I hadn’t brought a flashlight, so I risked the wall switch, which illuminated a ceiling fixture in the third-floor hall. I sped upward.

  Groping through the three third-floor rooms and their closets, I found nothing but old odds and ends of furniture. Below me were sounds of increasing commotion, and other excited voices came from Third Avenue. I checked the third-floor bathroom. Nothing.

  I had just about concluded that the five suitcases were either in Flo Trenky’s apartment or in the basement and that I would somehow have to come up with a Plan C, when I spotted the attic entry hatch panel on the ceiling. An old wooden kitchen chair rested nearby-not for sitting on, it appeared. Standing on the chair, I unlatched the hook and eye that held the panel in place and lowered the unhinged side. I reached up, groped, and found them.

  I chinned myself up into the black hole, memorized the approximate location of each bag, then-being unable to hand them down to myself dropped them to the floor be low one by one. The sound of the falling bags was lost, I hoped, among the noise of a rapidly gathering crowd outside and the approaching police and fire sirens.

  The bags were maroon with black bands around them, the ones I’d seen in Joan Lenihan’s dining room. I dashed down the stairs with two of them, flung them into 2-A, Toot’s room, then ran up and brought two more, then finally the fifth and last. When I came down the stairs the third time, the door to 2-B was wide open and a man stood staring at me.

  The man was somewhere between thirty and seventy, potbellied, and wore a flannel bathrobe over his pajamas. His slippers had bunny faces on the toes. In flattened tones but with great fervor, he said to me, “I am Dover Clover. I know Dover Clover. I know all eternity in hell. Satan is a fool, but I know fate gave me power over parable. I am Doctor Who.”

  I said, “The back porch fell down. It will be repaired. The appropriate behavior is
, please go back in your room.”

  The man turned away instantly and shut the door in my face. Inside Toot’s room, with the door shut and bolted, I used my lobster pick on the lock of the first of the five suitcases. I lifted the lid and gazed down. No newspapers this time, or dirty socks, just US currency. The old bills-twenties, fifties, hundreds-were stacked but not bound. I stuffed a bundle of fifties into my coat pocket, then opened the other four bags. Toot had left Timmy’s five canvas bags open on the bed, as instructed, and I dumped the cash into them and zipped them shut. Kyle had also left a bundle of old

  Times Unions on the floor nearby. These I placed in the maroon bags, shut and locked them, and carried them in three swift trips up to the attic. I placed the bags where I had found them and closed the hatch.

  From down below came the sound of raised voices and other signs of frantic coming and going. I went back to Toot’s room, shut the door, and waited inside. Out on Third Avenue a crowd had gathered, as well as a fire engine, red lights turning and flashing and radios barking, and a Troy PD patrol car.

  Footsteps thudded up the stairs, and my heart played an interesting short piece by Poulenc. Two sharp raps on the door. “It’s me.”

  I let him in. Toot had on jeans and Timmy’s old Georgetown sweatshirt and was dripping like Lear on the moors. I said, “Nice performance. Would you autograph my program?” and held out a stack of fifties.

  “You gotta get out of here now! The building inspector’s on his way and they’ll be coming up here.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Mack and Flo are both out back with two policemen and some firemen.

  You gotta move now.”

  I followed him quickly down the stairs and out the front door. We walked casually past the fire engine and cop car on the corner. “Did you tell her you were moving out?”

  “Yeah, I said I was afraid the whole place was unsafe, and she said oh, no, honey, why don’t you wait for the building inspector, but I was shaking like crazy-from the cold, mostly-and she thinks I’m really scared. Of course, I am that, too.”