Ice Blues ds-3

by Richard Stevenson

  Leaning in a stand next to the electric fire were a brush, a shovel, and a cast-iron poker. The brush and shovel looked as if they had stood undisturbed for a long time-like Timmy’s and mine, Flo’s fire produced no ashes-but the poker appeared to have been recently cleaned and polished.

  “My friend’s name is Jack,” I said. “Perhaps you’ve met him. It’s possible Mackie even brought him here. ltd be just like him, that wild and crazy guy.”

  She flinched. I thought about spitting it all out, telling her who I really was and why I had come into her home, and why I was now so desperate to locate Mack Fay. But she might have panicked and thrown me out-I had no way of judging how much she knew or didn’t know-and I had to do what would work.

  “Last week,” she said in a tremulous voice. “That must’ve been the fella Mackie brought over last week. Him and Terry.”

  “Terry Clert?”

  “They was buddies in the correction facilities. Mackie and Terry came in with this fella and said they need my place for some private business. Why, Holy Mother-is Terry a fruit too?”

  “Yes, but he and Mack are just pals. ‘Sisters,’ people used to say and I suppose some still do. But it’s my Jack who’s the one Mackie’s got the crush on. You say they might have been together here last week. Was the man you saw slim, about five-ten, going bald, wearing glasses, dressed in jeans and a dark-blue pea coat?”

  “That’s him. Oh my God.”

  “What night was that?”

  She bit her lip and said, “Tuesday night. I had to miss part of Riptide, but June filled me in. They came in and said could they use my place to talk business, it was private, and I says sure, why not, so I went over to June’s, my sister’s, and watched my programs over at her place. Mackie said it was business, but-are you tryin’ to tell me Mackie and that guy Jack was in here-doin it?”

  “Yeah, the rotten creeps, they probably were. I was home Tuesday night, so they knew they couldn’t use our place. Usually I work nights, but last Tuesday I was at home, so they must have come over here for their lousy cheating. So, you were gone for how long?”

  “I went out about nine o’clock and got back about a quarter to twelve. June and I had a couple of drinks and chewed the fat for a while. When I got home Mackie had gone out and didn’t get back till God knows what hour.

  Why, that two-timing so-and-so! He must have been ashamed to look me in the face! Why, that-Mackie never even told me he was AC-DC. He must’ve picked it up in the facilities, that’s all I can figure. Why, that-right under my roof he does it! Wait’ll I get my hands on that lying son of a bee!”

  “I hope none of your other tenants saw what was going on and are laughing at you behind your back. Was anyone else in the house that night?”

  She fumbled with a pack of L amp;Ms and managed to insert one into the side of her mouth. “Unh-unh. There was a salesman here for a while on Sunday, Jim O’Connor, but he left when the back porch fell off. My back porch broke down on account of all the snow, but that was Sunday. Last Tuesday the only other person in the house was Mr. Frye in 2-B, and he never goes out of his room, just to the mental health on Monday morning and then pick up a box of sandwiches and root beer for the week over at the store, so he wouldn’t’ve seen any funny business that was going on.

  “Why, that Mackie! I should’ve known. In the morning the place looked like they had a party in here and cleaned it up. I just should’ve known. Men! You gotta keep an eye on em every minute. Though let me tell you, mister, this is a new one. This is a real big surprise. I’d’ve never believed it if you hadn’t told me. Not Mackie.” She lit the cigarette with a butane lighter and shook her head in nauseated disbelief.

  “What made you think they had had a party?” I said. “I’m surprised, because Jack is a Jehovah’s Witness and doesn’t drink or smoke.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t much,” she said abstractedly. She was having trouble keeping her thoughts focused on this minor matter. “Back in the bedroom they must’ve spilt something on the rug and then tried to wipe it up, but it left a stain I can’t get out. Wine or something. Busted the bottle too, I guess, cause there’s still glass slivers. I got one stuck in my big toe yesterday. I mentioned it to Mackie, but he just said never mind the rug, he was gonna get me out of this dump anyway, take me to Atlantic City and put me in a condo. But that’s just bull. Mackie can’t even leave Troy till his parole is up in ‘87. Hell, he don’t even have a job except driving some old coot around.

  “Say, lookit-” She dragged on the cigarette and her expression had turned quizzical. “Tell me somethin’ then. If you think Mackie’s playin’ around with your boyfriend, why don’t you just give your boyfriend a piece of your mind? Tell him to shape up or ship out. What do you want to go botherin’

  Mackie for? Jeez, you might get him in trouble with the parole office for perversions. Listen, fella, I can handle Mackie. If he’s gonna keep gettin’ between my legs he’s gonna have to quit foolin’ around with degenerates who might give out that new disease that came up from Hades. What’s it called?”

  “AIDS.”

  “That’s the one. I heard it can make you awful sick.”

  “That’s why I want to find Mack today, Flo. I think Jack is with him right now, and I want to find them and talk some sense into Jack before it’s too late. Do you think they might be at Terry Clert’s house? Terry lives over on Third Street in the North End of Albany, I’ve heard.”

  “Yeah, they might be. Mackie went out early this morning and said he was picking up Terry and they had some work to do. But maybe that was just a line. Do you think?”

  “Yes, I do. I think that was just a line.”

  “Men! You can’t believe a word they say.”

  “No. No, I guess you can’t.”

  I parked in front of the Clert house on Third Street at ten till two. The green pickup truck was nowhere in sight, nor was any other vehicle I had ever seen before. I watched the house for fifteen minutes and saw no sign of life. I knew Mrs. Clert would still be at Pug Lenihan’s, though Corrine had mentioned a Kevin Clert who stayed with Pug overnight, and he could have been asleep inside the ramshackle frame carton I was looking at.

  Slogging through the melting snow, I moved to the rear of the house and popped the lock on the back door with a credit card. I walked in with my revolver drawn. I’d never shot a human being and didn’t want to now. But I knew I would do it if it meant saving Timmy or myself, both of whose lives I valued more highly than Mack Fay’s or Terry Clert’s. I knew now the kind of people I was dealing with, and if they were badly hurt and suffered exquisitely during whatever was coming next, I could learn to live with it.

  The house was silent except for a dripping faucet and a humming refrigerator in the kitchen where I stood. If Timmy was in the house the leaky faucet would be driving him crazy, so I gave the handle a hard shove.

  The drip-drop-drip continued. The washer was shot but I didn’t take the time to replace it.

  Finding no person, awake or asleep, in the downstairs rooms, I climbed the stairs and checked the bedrooms. There were three, each recently having been slept in, all unoccupied at the moment. One room, neat, feminine and freshly Airwicked, was obviously Mrs. Clert’s. The other two, malodorous and chaotic, with pants flung over chairs and soiled twisted sheets on the beds, apparently belonged to the two male Clerts. I poked through the debris but found nothing incriminating or helpful.

  Back downstairs I went to the telephone on the kitchen counter hoping to find an address scrawled on a notepad, as in Boston Blackie or Martin

  Kane, Private eye, but there wasn’t any.

  I did not know where to look next for Timmy. A jar of instant coffee was next to the teakettle on the gas range, so I fixed myself a cup and sat at the kitchen table drinking it in the trapezoid of dusty sunlight that shone in the back window. I did not at all want to do what I decided to do next, but it seemed that both survival and neatness required it.

  Back at the Hilton, I m
ade nine telephone calls to acquaintances in New York City before I was able to complete the arrangements I had in mind. I skimmed off fifty thousand dollars from the two and a half million in the closet, stuffed it in my coat pockets, went down and picked up the car, and headed south.

  I was in Manhattan by six, out by six forty-five, back in Albany just before ten. That gave me two hours before I was to meet Timmy and his captors at our house on Crow Street. From the hotel room I placed several more phone calls, the first of which was to my friend the narc.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The temperature had dropped back to three degrees and was headed, the radio said, down to eight below. For once, that was good. I picked up two friends at their house on Chestnut Street and drove them over to Rensselaer and back. Then I drove them over to Rensselaer and back a second time.

  “On the phone you said you needed our help, but all we’re doing is riding back and forth across the river. What is it we’re supposed to do?”

  “Pant.”

  “No, really.”

  “I want rapid breathing. Pant for me.”

  Casting nervous glances at each other, they panted until I dropped them back at their house.

  “Thanks for your moisture.”

  “Don, are you okay?”

  “My feet are cold, but my faculties are intact.”

  “Why don’t you try turning the heater on?”

  “Ah, but then I wouldn’t have your frozen breath preserved on my window glass.”

  “You aren’t going to go somewhere and lick it off, are you? I would consider that low-risk sex, but I suppose the ultra-cautious might insist it constituted an exchange of body fluids.”

  I shoved them out into the cold night and drove over to Crow Street, peering through the peepholes I had scratched in the film of ice. No lights were on in the house and Mack Fay’s truck was nowhere on the street. With one window rolled down I backed into a space half a block from the house.

  I turned off the ignition, shut the window, and waited invisibly. It was 11:26.

  Two cars rolled by in the next twenty-four minutes, their headlights brightening the icy opalescence in front of me, but neither car stopped nor even slowed. At ten till twelve a third vehicle moved slowly up the street with a fourth close on its tail. Through the peepholes I made out Fay’s green pickup, which backed into the last available space on the block, forcing the car behind it-the beige Buick I’d seen in front of my office the week before-to park alongside a fire hydrant.

  One man emerged from the truck and three from the car. Of the three, the one in the middle-Timmy’s height and build, and wearing Timmy’s coat wore something that covered his face and head, possibly a pillowcase. The two others were leading him by the arms. The party of four met in front of the house and moved up the front steps. The door was unlocked and they entered, shutting the door behind them. After a moment, lights went on behind the living room draperies.

  At three minutes till twelve I retrieved a bundle from under the car seat and, moving quietly, attentively, walked down the block. I opened the door of Fay’s truck and inserted the bundle under the driver’s seat. I thought, this is not perfect justice, but in an imperfect world, it will serve, it will serve.

  At midnight precisely I walked up the front steps of my home and stomped the snow off my feet. I glanced up and down the street and, satisfied that no one had observed my recent odd actions, entered the house.

  The four of them were seated around the picture of the fire. Two stood up as I entered. “I’m glad you got my message,” Timmy said, remaining seated. “It’s been an unusually long day.” His smile was sincere but lacking in joie de vivre.

  “Did they mistreat you?”

  “Not to any lasting effect. I’ll have to have these pants cleaned and pressed.”

  “We didn’t want to mess him up too bad,” Fay said. “Not with him being worth two and a half million. You got an expensive little girlfriend here, Strachey. Hey, you didn’t know that before, did you?”

  Fay had a two-day stubble of beard, nicotine-stained teeth, and dead black eyes. He grunted smugly and glanced at the other two to see if they were having a good time too. The younger Clert, Kevin, I figured, was a chunky gimlet-eyed youth who closely resembled a kid I knew in the eighth grade who sat in the back row sticking a pencil in his ear. The older Clert, Terry, was taller, rangier, better-looking and twitchier, and he kept his finger on the trigger of a sawed-off shotgun aimed at Timmy’s midsection.

  “You two must be the Clert brothers,” I said, “Bert and Ernie. And I guess you’re Mack Fay. It was hard to recognize your voice without a six-pound pile of shit stuffed in your mouth.”

  They all made stunned, ugly faces at me, and Timmy winced.

  “What’s in your coat pocket?” Fay snarled. “Kevin, shake him down.”

  I lifted my arms as Kevin removed my Smith amp; Wesson and examined it as if it were a moon rock. He carried it away dumbstruck.

  “See,” I said, “I didn’t have an erection, I was just glad to see you guys.”

  More stunned, ugly faces. Timmy gave me a pleading look.

  “Where is it?” Fay snapped.

  “Not far from here.”

  “For your girlfriend’s sake, hopefully it’s in your car.”

  “The money is in a hotel room downtown.”

  “This asshole told you to bring it with you, you dumb fuck! I was right there when he said it on the phone. Now you get your ass downtown and bring it back here! You got fifteen minutes, you hear me?”

  I checked my watch. Timmy was looking increasingly distraught, but this wasn’t going to last much longer. I said, “I can have it back here in ten minutes. But first I want an explanation in return for the money. Why did you have to kill Jack Lenihan?”

  A dumb coy look. “Who says I did?”

  “You found out about the existence of the money in Pug Lenihan’s house from Mrs. Clert-or was it from your father? ��� and you were planning to make off with it, but Jack stole it first. You grabbed him when he came back from LA, but he didn’t have the money with him. You took him over to Flo Trenky’s place Tuesday night to try to force him to get it for you. But why did you have to kill him? I want to know that.”

  Fay shrugged and grinned stupidly. “He told us you had it,” he said mildly.

  “The dumb fuck wasn’t gonna tell us anything, but he changed his mind when we told him some things we knew about his mom-some interesting shit I picked up over on Pearl Street. Then he spit it out real fast, oh yes, he sure did. He told us you had the money. And then he started thinking and putting two and two together and getting very pissed off and mad at the world and going kind of nuts on us and-shit, we had to protect ourselves, didn’t we? I mean, shit, that guy was fuckin’ apeshit. I suppose you could say it was too bad what happened had to happen, but I think you have to admit, Jackie was kind of a weirdo anyways. He could have been a real pain in the ass if he was around. So, what can I tell you, good buddy?” He shrugged again and looked at me with his lifeless eyes while the other two stood around looking bored. Kevin was picking his nose and sticking the produce behind his ear.

  I said, “How did you know I wouldn’t arrive here with the cops? Why were you so sure of that?”

  The dead eyes watched me. ‘“Cause then the cops would know you had the money and you wouldn’t get to keep it. You’d lose it too.”

  “Maybe I’d rather see it go back to Pug than turn it over to you.”

  “Hey, did you hear that one, Terry? Shit, Pug can’t take that money back from the cops, and you know it. Old Pug can’t say it’s his cause old Pug can’t explain where it came from, right? The state would keep it. You aren’t such a dip-shit you didn’t figure that one out the same as we did. And if you were gonna bring in the cops, you’d’ve done it right away. But you didn’t, did you, Strachey? Shit, mister, I had your number from the day one.”

  I said, “The money properly belongs to Jack Lenihan’s estate. He inher
ited it from Al Piatek. There’s a legal will. The money is Jack’s, and with him gone, his mother, his legal heir, gets it. The cops would have to turn it over to her.”

  He sneered. “Shit, Joanie’d just give it back to Pug. He’d end up with it for damn sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Hey, just ask her, good buddy. My dad told me the dirt on Miz Joanie. Oh yes, Miz Joanie would have that two and a half million back on Pearl Street in no time at all. Hey, just ask her if she wouldn’t do that.”

  I looked at my watch again. “The money is in a room at the Hilton. The desk clerk will hand over a key to either Timmy or me. One of us can drive over and pick it up, or we can all go over there together. However you want to do it.”

  “We’ll just hang around here,” Fay said. “You got fifteen minutes. Miss Timothy here can bring out some liquor if you got any in the house, and when you get back we can all celebrate.”

  “And then what happens to Timmy and me?” I said.

  “Hey, friend, what can I tell you? Look at some TV? Call an ambulance? It’s none of my business, right?”

  My watch now said it was twelve-fifteen. I walked to the front door and opened it. Six clean-shaven men in flak jackets strode in wielding automatic weapons of assorted shapes and sizes. Two others came in the back door simultaneously and moved rapidly across the kitchen, through the dining room, and up behind Terry Clert, who spun around a couple of times but didn’t shoot anybody. Fay and the Clerts made more ugly faces, out of which came vulgar protestations. Shiny DEA badges flashed in the light of the picture of the fire.

  “What the fuck is this?” Fay whined. “Narcs? You guys are fuckin’ narcs?

  What is this fuckin’ shit?”

  Someone read Fay his rights and made reference to a glassine bag of white powder under the seat of a truck parked outside and registered in Fay’s name. The discovery was made, Fay was told, as a result of an anonymous tip. Fay’s parole officer-one of the six armed men who had entered through the front door-had a legal right to enter Fay’s vehicle to investigate, and he had done so. He said he was surprised and disappointed that Fay had taken up this new line of criminal endeavor, but there it was.