Ice Blues

EIGHTEEN

"You're late, you're ten minutes late, but you're here. I was worried about you."

"No need to worry. Everything's under control."

"It is?"

"Not my control, but somebody's. We do not live in a coldly mindless and anarchic universe. There is a plan to all of this."

"Whose?"

"I don't know. But I'm more certain than ever that it's not Adlai Stevenson's.

Is the money still in the closet?"

"Sure, I checked when I came back this evening."

"Did anyone phone or knock at the door?"

"No, it looks as if I wasn't followed here. Or if I was, maybe they were waiting for you to show up. Now we're both here along with the money, so I suppose that means the end is near. Couldn't we just go home now and die in our own bed? I'm so sick of restaurant food."

"Not yet. Soon." I sprawled on the bed and dragged the phone onto the pillow beside me.

"Did you find out what Pug Lenihan wants with you?"

"I'll know in the morning when I meet him. Just a second." I dialed the number of my friend at New York Telephone, reached him at home, and asked for a list of toll calls made from Pug Lenihan's number during the previous week. He said he'd have them by noon the next day.

"What's that all about?" Timmy asked. "If Pug Lenihan's mixed up in this, it's only the machine using him to warn you away from turning the money over to Kempelman. Isn't that the way you figure it?"

"That was three hours ago. My perspective has since broadened." I explained to him Pug Lenihan's connections with Mack Fay as Corrine McConkey had described them to me.

As I told it, Timmy's face went through its wide repertoire of pale pastels.

He said, "So Pug might actually have been involved in his own grandson's murder? Jesus!"

"I don't want to believe that. But it's possible. Maybe I'll ask him about it tomorrow."

"Or maybe you won't show up."

"I'm considering that."

Shakily, he said, "Call Bowman. Or the state police, or the FBI. Don, this is no longer just you against some half-assed dope fiends. It's you against history."

As the words came out, I knew I shouldn't have spoken them in front of him. I said, "Maybe history is about to change. And I am its agent." He shut his eyes tightly and actually clutched his head. "I take it you continue to find my hopes and dreams wackily presumptuous."

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I do."

"Well, as I see it, I can either bring about the dawn of a golden age in Albany, or I can take the money and run. I can't honestly see any middle ground at this point."

"You can give the money back, and we can go home and resume our good lives. That is one alternative."

I looked at him carefully. "You can't mean that. Just quit, just like that?

With Jack Lenihan still warm in his grave, and after all we've gone through?

You'd hate yourself. I'd hate myself. And I wouldn't be too crazy about you for a while."

He twitched with ambivalence, a state of mind that always got his juices flowing. "You're turning it into a moral dilemma when in fact what we are talking about here is the highly practical question of surviving or not surviving. Yes, of course I'd like to see the machine zapped. And yes, Jack's killer should be identified, tried and convicted. The last part you might be able to accomplish with the help of Ned Bowman and maybe the feds. But not singlehandedly."

"You mean, you can't fight city hall. That does not sound at all like the Tim Callahan I know."

"You can fight city hall but you can't bulldoze it. Not by yourself if you hope to live to see what replaces it."

I took this all in, considered it, and gave his thigh a squeeze. "This is getting too theoretical for me. Let's take our clothes off and get practical.

It's been awhile. Shrieking with ecstasy always restores your perspective."

He had an argument for that too, but he only belabored his thesis for about twenty minutes. We sometimes went our separate emotional and philosophical ways, but we always remembered one place where the twain met, and this handy and inherently satisfying way of connecting served to remind us of all the other lovely ways we had of connecting, usually.

At seven Tuesday morning I checked my answering service, which had six messages. Three were social and could wait, and one was from Timmy's mother in Poughkeepsie, inquiring as to why we were not answering our home telephone. She asked that I relay the message to Timmy that Father Frank Merrill had been injured by a Molotov cocktail tossed from the St. Vincent's school roof by a fourth grader, and it would be nice if Timmy sent Father Frank a get-well card.

The fifth message was from Ned Bowman, instructing me to report to his office promptly at 3 P.M. Monday-too late for that-and the sixth message was from an anonymous caller with a muffled voice. The voice had said:

"Tell Strachey, 'You are dead."

I gave Timmy the message from his mother and suggested that he call in sick at the office, then drive down and pay a personal call on the ailing Father Frank. He thought that would be unnecessary until I told him about

"You are dead," and then he agreed. He said he would spend a night in Poughkeepsie, maybe two.

Room service brought Timmy his porridge and me my pitcher of orange juice and two eggs, which were not raw, as I had requested, but fried. To Timmy's relief, I did not stir them into the juice. Timmy left for Poughkeepsie, saying he would first stop by the house to pick up a clean shirt-Mom would be surreptitiously checking his collar-and would either meet me or phone me at the hotel that night. I said sure, I figured I'd be back at the Hilton that night, and he looked at me a little funnily.

Before I went out, I checked the money. It was intact, undisturbed, unspent.

It was beginning to look restless, though, as if it wanted spending soon on a good deed. I told it, maybe today.

When I walked into Ned Bowman's office just after eight, he was already at his desk looking miserable and besieged, though the room was empty except for the two of us. His nose was heavily bandaged, with a large dirty gauze pad housing the appendage itself and six long strips of adhesive tape holding the gauze in place, as if he were under attack by a panicked sea animal.

"It looks worse, Ned. I hope amputation is not the next step."

"When did you get back from LA? You never showed up at that den of Sodom Friday night-not that I stuck around to wait for your appearance.

So, where have you been? Tell me now. This minute."

"Seriously, I'm worried about your physical condition. I'd be happy to see you retire to a hot, cramped trailer in Sarasota, but I wouldn't want to lose you by watching you slowly rot from the top down."

He shook his head glumly. "It's a hereditary skin condition, Slotz-Planckton's disease. The cold weather aggravates it. It started to clear up in LA, but when I got back here it took a turn for the worse. It is aggravated by severe weather and by stress, my doctor tells me. Stress, Strachey. I am experiencing stress. Do you know why?"

"Financial problems? Worrisome moisture on your basement walls?"

"You know goddamn well it's you and this goddamn Lenihan thing. It's as plain as can be that everybody and his Uncle Eddie is holding out on me in this thing, and the time is close at hand when I'm going to have to start playing hardball with the likes of you. Do you catch my meaning or do I have to draw you a picture?"

"You can skip the lurid visual effects, but you can tell me who else has been holding out. I'm not admitting that I have, but who else?"

He gave me his fish eye. "You know as well as I do who else. The woman you visited in LA Friday night, before I could get there first, Mrs. Danny Lenihan. The broad went all weepy on me, which is understandable, I guess, considering, but in a full two hours of blubber and boo-hoo she didn't tell me diddly-shit about what her son was doing out there last weekend and how come this Piatek had left her boy two and a half million, and where was the two and a half million now? So, what'd she tell you? Plenty, I'll wager. You people all stick together, don't you?"

"We people?"

"I've always figured Joanie for a lez. Or maybe I heard it somewhere. You can't tell me she and that Tesney woman aren't playing doctor with the shades pulled down. So, what'd she confide in you? Come on, Strachey, make this easy for the both of us, huh?"

"'Playing doctor with the blinds pulled down.' Ned, you're the consummate romantic. No, she did not confide in me either. She just let loose with a lot of confused ill will toward Albany and its citizenry. She detests this place so much, she wouldn't even set foot in it to attend her son's funeral. It sounds as if you'd met Joan Lenihan before or know quite a lot about her."

He looked thoughtful and said, "I was the investigating officer when Dan died. It was me who took Joanie's statement back in-fifteen, sixteen years ago, it must be. Joanie wasn't a bad-looking cookie back then. Great knockers, a real pretty woman even with her buck teeth. Out in LA, Jesus, she looked like she'd been through the wringer. Or maybe she's just getting old. Hell, Joanie's older than I am, must be closing in on sixty.

"That was a sad time for the old man, let me tell you. Danny was Pug's only son, and while I can't say that Dan ever did his pop proud, even so he was all Pug had left in the world-Pug's missus passed away back in the fifties- and it was just like the bottom fell out when Dan bought the farm. I think the North End must have been draped in black for a month after that one."

Again, I was confused. "Why were the police involved in Dan Lenihan's death? I had the impression he'd died as a result of his alcoholism."

Bowman shrugged mildly, as if to recite a commonplace. "Indirectly, yeah, it was the booze. What happened was, Danny froze to death on the street.

At two or three in the morning in January he passed out on the way home from Mike Shea's tavern down on Broadway. A paper boy found him at six in the morning on Second Street across from Sacred Heart, stiff as a board.

"Of course, I think Dan was stiff as a board from the time he was about eleven. How Joan put up with him all those years, I'll never know. They say she married him because Joanie was a drinker herself when she was a kid, and the two of them tied one on one night and ended up in Dan's bed, and old Pug caught em and made em make it legal. The story was, Pug had pretty much given up on Danny by then, and he wanted grandchildren.

"Well, he got em. Conine's barren and Jack was a faggot, if you'll pardon the expression, which I know you won't, you being one yourself. I don't know what went wrong in that family. Pug Lenihan was one of the finest men this town ever produced, and then it all just went to hell for him. How does that happen? You tell me."

I did not offer an opinion, which would have been uselessly inflammatory. I said, "It's a sad history, but I'm more interested in the present state of the Lenihans. Jack in particular, who's been bludgeoned to death. Where does the investigation stand?"

He gave me his incredulous imbecile look, which was unusually imbecilic owing to the albino squid clinging to his face. "I can't tell you that. That is official police information. It is you, Strachey, who are in possession of information that could wrap this thing up in two days. I can smell it all over you. You reek of withheld evidence. The question is, do you give it to me voluntarily, or do I turn this simple process into something ugly and complicated for both of us? Which is it, huh?" He glared at me across his little friend.

I said, "You're up against it, Ned, am I right? You spent seven hundred dollars of the department's two-grand travel budget and you came up empty-handed. You've got nothing to show for your junket and little to go on otherwise. You're frustrated and you think your frustration will be relieved if you beat up on me. Well, forget it. I'm not interested. I can spend my time more profitably elsewhere, and so can you."

He remained calm, maybe at the urging of his physician. "Do you want to be dragged down to the lockup? Right now?"

"You could arrange that, I guess, but you won't. You're only guessing that I've got information pertinent to your investigation, and your guess is no legal basis for an arrest. Lock me up and I'll be on the streets in forty-five minutes, and you'll end up with egg on your face. I mean, if there's room for it on there."

He flinched, but remained seated, not moving, tight-lipped.

I said, "There is, however, a way we might be able to get together on this thing. Pool our resources in the interests of justice, civic improvement, and a nice commendation for you from the chief. As you have figured out, my aims in this case are broader than yours. I want Jack Lenihan's killer locked up and punished, yes, but I also want Sim Kempelman's outfit to have the two and a half million so they can run the thieves and knuckleheads out of city hall and replace them with save-the-whales, anti-nuke, ACLU goo-goos."

Bowman gripped his desk tightly, but still he said nothing. He seemed to be losing strength.

"As it happens," I said, "there is a way for both of us to accomplish everything we want to accomplish. With your assistance, I think I can hand you Jack Lenihan's killer. Notice I said 'assistance.' What I'm saying is, I'll take the risks and do most of the real work, and you'll get the credit."

After a moment, he stood calmly, walked to the door, and closed it. Seated again, he said, "I can listen. I want Lenihan's killer tried and convicted. What do you want from me? What does this so-called assistance entail?"

"First, Ned, one thing. If we work together on this, are you willing to follow the trail wherever it leads? No matter who's involved?"

He leaned back in his swivel chair and clutched the arms. "What the fuck are you talking about, Strachey? What's a remark like that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not sure yet myself. Just answer the question. I know you're a blowhard and a narrow-minded jackass, but I've always thought that despite your obvious limitations you were also an honest cop. Correct me if I'm wrong."

"My entire career has been devoted to enforcing the law. You break the laws of the state of New York or the city of Albany and you reckon with Ned Bowman, whoever you are, period."

I knew that it got more complicated than that with Bowman, a man of his time and place. Yet he did have his own warped but sturdy personal integrity. Lacking alternatives at the time, I decided to place my trust in it. I said, "I want you to put a tail on me. A reliable, experienced team of plainclothes guys who will grab Jack Lenihan's killer when he tries to kill me. There is reason to believe he is going to do that, probably this morning. Just prior to that, I think, his intention is to force me to lead him to the two and a half million. He's under the impression that I've got it, though I don't want to comment on that.

"My informed opinion is that this man will make his move against me in the presence of, or more likely the close proximity of, the man he's working for, who, by the way, is a considerable personage in this town who might-I emphasize might — be dealing dope in a big way, though that would be out of character for him and I have deep doubts about that part.

"It's possible that when this man's employee, an ex-con, makes his attempt on me and you nail him, you will not find direct evidence linking him to the Lenihan homicide. Once you've got him on the attempted-murder charge, however, it is highly probable that he'll deal-there's a parole violation involved as well-and he'll implicate his employer, truly or falsely, in return for a reduced charge. The employer will then try to stick his employee with the Lenihan murderoffering, I hope, solid evidence-in order to save what's left of his own neck. That's all slightly chancy, but I think we can make it work. In any event, as you can see it's me who's taking all the real risks in this, and all you and your guys have to do is tag along and pick up the pieces, one of which will be me. Will you do it?"

He squinted across his septopus at me and drummed his fingers on the desktop. "I don't know enough," he said after a moment. "Tell me more. I want to hear names, places, dates."

"Can't."

"Why?"

I knew that if I mentioned Pug Lenihan's name, Bowman would choke on his own incredulity and send me back out into the cold-and possibly phone city hall the second I was out the door. The question of how much or little city hall knew was already problematic, and I wasn't about to erase all doubt by presenting myself quite so boldly. I wanted the confusion and unanswered questions that were working to my disadvantage to work to theirs too for a little while longer.

I said, "If I told you why I can't tell you, then you'd know what it was I couldn't tell you. You'd understand why I couldn't tell you it in the first place, but then it would be too late. See my problem?"

He waved that away disgustedly and thought about it some more. Beads of sweat broke out around his adhesive tape. More finger drumming and shifting about. "Twelve hours," he said then. "I'll cover you for twelve hours and not a minute more. You come up with a goose egg on this, Strachey, and you are a nonperson in this department. Except, of course, if you are caught committing a crime, like passing around two and a half million dollars that doesn't belong to you. In that case, you'll become a person again. A person in the lockup on the way to Sing Sing for so many years, you'll only be fit for the county nursing home by the time you hobble out of there."

I told him I appreciated his warm confidence in me, and we worked out the details. From a pay phone downstairs I called Corrine McConkey and confirmed my ten-thirty appointment with Pug Lenihan. Corrine said her grandfather sounded very eager to meet me but had stipulated that I arrive at his house alone.