Ice Blues

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 the 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.

Gail Tesney saw me catch sight of the suitcases as she turned toward a doorway leading to the other end of the apartment. She did a quick double take but said nothing and passed out of sight as I seated myself on the couch. The American Journal of Nursing on the end table was addressed to Ms. Gail Tesney, Apartment 5-H, 714 North Scotsmont, which was the apartment I was in.

Muffled voices came from behind a closed door. After several minutes of this I heard a door open-but not close- and Gail Tesney returned. She sat looking tense on a chair facing me and said, "Joan is lying down. She's really not feeling up to talking to anyone about Jack. I'm sorry. I really am. I appreciate that you've come all the way from Albany, and you're disappointed. But-what can I say? I hope you'll understand. Is there some message I can give Joan?"

I said, "Where's the money?"

Her mouth snapped shut and her black eyes flashed, but it wasn't all anger.

She seemed frustrated and unable to make up her mind about something. It was also evident that

I was not the sole cause of Gail Tesney's unsettled conflicting emotions.

Working hard not to glance in the direction of the dining room, she said,

"What money are you referring to, Mr. Strachey?"

I laid it all out for her-them. How Jack's body had been left in my car; the menacing calls from Hankie-mouth and his assumption that I had the money; my tracing Jack's visits to Joan Lenihan in October and again the weekend before he died; Jack's negotiations with the Albany pols; the letter from Jack asking my help and the arrival of five suitcases full of newspapers with Joan Lenihan's return address on them.

I said, "My aim is to recover the two and a half million, deduct a relatively modest sum to cover my fee and expenses as per Jack's instructions, and then carry out his project-provided, of course, that I can verify to my satisfaction that the money was legitimately obtained in the first place.

Who is this Al Piatek anyway?"

Tesney sat poised on the edge of her chair looking stricken throughout my monologue. When I'd finished, she just stared at me. Finally, she said, "I am going to tell you something in confidence."

"All right."

"This is not to be repeated in Albany."

"Is it illegal?"

"Not in California anymore. Texas, I think."

"Then as far as I'm concerned, mum's the word."

"You're gay, aren't you? Jack mentioned that."

"Yes."

"Then you'll understand. Joan and I are lovers."

"I thought you might be. But why the secrecy? This is West Hollywood, where the city hall probably has a statue of Sappho on the roof. Sappho and Montgomery Clift with raised fists."

She wanted to smile but couldn't quite. "Joan and I are in the medical profession, which is not as consistently enlightened as you might think it is, even in California. There are certain administrators closeted dykes themselves in two cases-who would make our lives a lot more difficult if we were as open as we'd like to be. Nothing we could sue over, but a lot of petty meannesses we would prefer to avoid. We saw it happen to another couple once who were so brazen as to kiss each other good-bye one morning in the hospital parking lot."

"I understand that."

"But I am mainly talking about Albany. Joan has her own reasons for not wanting it known that she's a lesbian, and although I don't agree with her that it should matter anymore, I do respect her wishes absolutely. I am asking- insisting-that you do the same."

"I will. But what has that got to do with the problem we're all facing here?"

"You just said it, Mr. Strachey. The problem we're all dealing with here. I want you to understand that any problem of Joan's is my problem too. In fact, Joan wanted to keep me out of this. And I agree that there are some things that each of us has to handle on our own. But this is not one of them. It's too big."

"I agree. Murder is an event that has to command everybody's full attention."

She blanched, then opened her mouth to speak. No words came out and her chin trembled.

I said, "Who do you and Joan think killed Jack?"

"Why-why, one of those politicians. Isn't that obvious? Joan has told me all about what Albany politicians are like. And the horror of it is, they'll probably get away with it. The police will cover it up. It's sickening."

"And Joan is prepared to let that happen by not telling them what she knows?"

With a puzzled shake of the head, she said, "I really don't understand her thinking about that. I just can't get it into my head.

She says she simply doesn't want to have anything to do with Albany-that nothing but disaster could ever come of it. Yet-oh, I don't know. I wish I could understand. I'm trying to understand."

Here was some serious strain on a relationship that I guessed was unaccustomed to it. I said, "Please tell me about Al Piatek."

A sound came from the hallway and we both looked up as Joan Lenihan entered the room. She calmly leaned down and kissed Gail on the cheek, squeezed her hand, then sat on the other end of the couch and gazed at me with pained, resentful eyes.

"You did not have to do this," she said. "None of it. I read the letter Jack wrote to you. You could have turned it over to the police and left Albany until the whole thing blew over. But here you are, aren't you? Big as life and twice as persistent." She slipped a cigarette from the pack on the end table and lit it. "Jack was a true Lenihan in some ways-a brooder, sometimes vindictive, often a little too footloose and fancy-free for his own good. But he was always a superb judge of character."

"Not always," I said. "Someone he trusted killed him."

She didn't flinch, just stared at me with eyes full of suppressed rage, the cigarette poised in the air, smoke curling around the feathery close-cropped hair, which was the color of the smoke. She was sixtyish, small-boned but full-breasted, with a long worn face and a slight overbite. She wore jeans and a brown UCLA sweatshirt and was not so tanned as Gail Tesney, though her slight body gave off an aura of tensile strength. She came across as a woman capable of remarkable feats of work or pleasure, and a woman not to be messed with.

She said, "I'll pay your expenses. But there is no fee, Mr. Strachey. I'm sorry, but your client is dead."

"Who killed him?"

"I don't know. Nothing anyone in Albany does surprises me.

"You think it was one of the politicians he was bargaining with?"

"I suppose."

"But not dope dealers?"

"Jack wasn't doing that anymore. He told me. And he never lied to me. He didn't have to. We were like that."

"His death must be very hard for you to accept."

She blew smoke out the side of her mouth, turned to watch it trail away, and said, "Yes. It is."

"Did Jack know he was in danger? Did you?"

A faint shiver passed through her. "No. No, not that kind of danger."

"In his letter to me, Jack said someone was very angry with him. You said you read the letter before he mailed it. Who was he referring to?"

She sat there seeming to work at manufacturing a careful response in her mind. "Perhaps he meant me," she said.

"Why you?"

"Because I was against this whole business from the very beginning. Jack was like a giddy child with it, and I was the mother telling him it was foolish and irresponsible. There is no way to save Albany. I told him that. The place is rotten to the core, and Jack was wasting his time. There are people in Albany who can kill you just by touching you. The only thing you can do is stay away from them. I know this."

"I take it your own experience there was not a happy one."

A hard look. "Not happy? Don't trivialize what I am telling you, Mr.

Strachey. Yes, I was a young Catholic lesbian on Walter Street married to a drunk, and there was not a day that passed from my twenty-third year to my forty-first year when I did not consider sticking my head in the oven and letting the Lenihans try to explain it to the neighborhood. If it hadn't been for Jack and Corrine-for their needing me, and for the love they gave to me-I would have done it. Except for my children, I detested my life in Albany, and until my husband died I was too weak a person to change it.

But my own experience was my own doing. It was all I knew at the time, and I would have done the same thing in any town. Albany's rottenness is bigger than that."

Tesney was sitting with her chin in hands, listening hard, trying to make sense of what we were hearing, as was I.

I said, "I think I get the drift of what you're saying, but I'm not sure. Can you elaborate?"

She said, "No. I can't. It's not worth it."

"All right. For now, then, who is Al Piatek?"

She blew smoke toward a half-open window where the breeze made the smoke shudder suddenly and vanish. "Albert Piatek was a very sad young man. He should not have died. But he's gone now, and it's better that you let him rest. Can you understand that?"

"That can't be. You know it."

Her look was bitter. "Do I know that? I didn't know I knew that."

"An Albany police detective by the name of Bowman is on his way out here.

He'll want to question you, and he'll be checking on Piatek. It's better that I discover first whatever there is to know. I think you understand that."

Her face reddened and she abruptly stubbed out the cigarette. She stood, her whole body working, uncertain about whether to leave the room or smash a lamp over my head. She left the room suddenly and a door slammed down the hallway.

Gail Tesney sat gazing fiercely at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face. She looked over at me after a moment and said, "Please leave now.

Would you mind?"

"I'll have to come back. I'm sorry you're caught in the middle of this."

"It's all right. I choose to be where I am. I'm sick of it, but it's all right."

"The money is in those bags in the dining room, isn't it?"

She quickly shook her head. "No. No, those bags are empty."

"Joan said Jack showed her his letter to me. Five keys were taped to the bottom of it. It is my belief that just before Jack shipped the bags, his mother removed the keys from the letter, opened the bags, took the money, filled the bags with newspapers, locked them, and replaced the keys in the letter. Why?"

"I don't know! I don't know! I don't know! Please-" She snatched a Kleenex out of a box with one hand and gestured toward the door with the other. As I moved toward it, Tesney turned toward me and blurted, "I can only take so much of this. Wait." She went to the bookshelf, pulled down a copy of Michener's Space, and removed a newspaper clipping that had been stuck inside the jacket. This she handed to me and said, "If you can put an end to this damned confusion, please do it. I know I can't. I've tried and I just can't get through to her. You try. I've had just about as much of this insanity as I can take. "

I said, "I guess you know that you might have to take some more," and her look said she knew it.

Outside, I studied the newsclip, an obituary for Albert R. Piatek, Funston Lane, West Hollywood, who had died the previous October 28 "after a long illness."