Ice Blues

NINETEEN

Under a bleached-out sun a southerly breeze had dragged the temperature up to three degrees above freezing and the city was beginning to soften and melt. Fat crescents of filthy ice dropped out of motorists' wheel wells. Acids from midwestern power plants dripped off trees. The main roads were drying up, leaving a film of gray salt, but the side streets were ankle-deep in frigid slush. To step off a curb, or to breathe the air, was to risk pneumonia.

I didn't want to live in it anymore and imagined half the population of the Hudson Valley arriving simultaneously at the same sensible conclusion and suddenly making a break for it, the Thruway clogged from Selkirk to the Tappan Zee Bridge with an unbroken southward stream of sullen refu-gees yearning for a place in the Sunbelt where they could dry out their socks.

It didn't happen though. All the others must have had their own reasons for staying, and for the moment I had mine, which seemed to me quite grand.

"Quite grandiose," Timmy would have corrected me. To make it even grander, all I had to do was stay alive.

Bowman had refused to lend me a firearm, so I drove up Washington, waded through a couple of backyards, and climbed the rear stairs to my office. The door was off its hinges again and the general disorder more general than normal. Mack Fay had been looking for his wayward luggage. I removed the loose brick from the wall where the plaster had fallen off, took my Smith amp; Wesson out of the bread bag that kept it dry and dustless, and stuck the gun in my coat pocket.

The telephone was working, so I called my friend the narc. "This is Strachey again. What else have you come up with on Mack Fay?"

"Are you about ready to let me in on this, my friend? That would be a reasonable condition for my passing on privileged information to you."

"No, that would be an unreasonable condition. Look, don't be offended, but I'm working with the Albany cops on this one on account of how incompetent they are. When this thing is over and the smoke clears, there's something I want to come out of this with. You guys might be smart enough to take it away from me, but Bowman's crew isn't and won't. I thought of calling you first but decided that my worthy ultimate goals in this would be jeopardized by your competence, so I went to Bowman. You understand that, don't you?"

"I appreciate what you're saying, but you understand that if you violate a federal statute I'll have to do what I'll have to do."

"No, you won't. You could, but you won't have to. You've told me yourself discretionary blindness is a major federal crime-fighting tool. The smelliest sleazebags in North America get a pat on the back and a trip to the Bahamas if they help you convict a major doper. So don't give me a hard time on this. Next to most of the people you do business with, I'm Mother Theresa."

"Strachey, you are missing the point entirely. The point is, what have you done for me lately?"

"Nothing yet, that's true. But soon. I can't elaborate. Trust me."

He didn't hesitate. His organization had a $290 billion annual budget and a trillion-dollar deficit, so he felt confident making decisions. He said he'd give me another day or two, and then he reeled off the information I had asked him for. "Mack Fay, I am reliably informed, was not close to Robert Milius and the rest of the Albany narcotics crowd at Sing Sing. They may have known each other, but they were in no way tight."

"They weren't?"

"Fay's best buddy was a Terry Clert, paroled in October after doing seven years of a twelve-to-fifteen for armed robbery and assault with intent to kill.

He held up a liquor store in Syracuse in '77 and shot the manager who, lucky for Clert, lived. Clert now resides in this area." He gave me the address on Third Street in the North End of Albany. "It's interesting that Fay and Clert are both in the area. Clert's originally from Gloversville and never lived in Albany be-fore."

More confusion. "Are you telling me there aren't any narcotics in either Clert's or Fay's background? And they weren't hooked up in any way with the Albany dopers in Sing Sing?"

"That's the information I have. I'm willing to bet that it's good."

I thanked him and said I'd be in touch, though now I wasn't so sure anymore. The only thing I was certain of was that I was about to call on a man up to his aged neck in criminally minded Fays and Clerts, whose connection with him was unlikely to turn out to be a funny coincidence.

At 10:10 I passed through the intersection of State and Pearl and turned north. A blue Dodge parked in a bus stop edged in behind me and tagged along. Two blocks later a second Dodge joined the procession, and I thought about skimming off a small bundle of the money in the suitcases to pick up a block of Chrysler stock. At 10:25 I turned up Walter Street and parked. The two unmarked cop cars drove on by.

Dreadful Ed answered the door at the McConkeys. I could hear The $25,000

Pyramid squealing in the background, and McConkey seemed put out that I had interrupted his morning leisure. He had beer on his breath. He testily informed me that I was to proceed to Dad Lenihan's house on my own, that Mrs. Clert was expecting me. I drove around the block to Pug Lenihan's cottage on Pearl and parked. The two Dodges maneuvered this way and that, one of them ending up thirty yards down the block, the other one around the corner on Second Street.

The Pontiac I'd seen in Lenihan's driveway a week earlier was back. I walked up to the front porch, stamped the slush off my feet, and rang the bell. The door was opened almost immediately by a plump round-faced woman in a pale pink pants suit. She studied me with cool gray eyes and flashed a practiced institutional smile.

"Are you Mr. Strachey?"

"Yes, I am."

"I'm Miriam Clert. It's nice of you to drop by and see Dad. Come right in, please."

"Thank you."

I wiped my feet on the worn welcome mat and followed her through the bare front hall into a small, low-ceilinged living room with lace curtains and a threadbare brown rug. The furnishings consisted of what used to be called a "living room suit"-squat tan easy chair and couch to match, with shiny acrylic pillows, their manufacturer's tags unremoved under penalty of law. Arranged atop a table by the front window was an assortment of framed photographs showing various members of the Lenihan family in formal poses and tinted to the point of herpes zoster. In the one non-studio shot, Jack, Corrine, Joan, and a puffy-faced man I took to be Dan Lenihan were standing on a lawn in what must have been their Easter finery, circa 1963. Their smiles were forced and wan, and no one was touching anyone else. Except for the daffodils in the background, it could have been a police lineup.

I seated myself on the couch while Mrs. Clert went to bring Dad Lenihan to the room. In this quiet plain house, with the winter sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains, I began to feel a little silly checking out entrances and exits and rearranging my Smith amp; Wesson, which was stuffed in my coat pocket on the couch beside me. The house shuddered briefly as somewhere beneath me the oil burner clicked on. A radiator sighed and I sighed back.

An accordion door leading to the room on the other side of the front hall was jerked aside. Standing in the entrance to what once must have been a dining room-a hospital bed now occupied its far wall-was the most enormous infant I had ever seen. Pug Lenihan was as shiny and pink and hairless as a Florida tomato. Though slumped and bent, he was a good six-two, and formidable even in a faded cotton bathrobe and Naugahyde slippers. His mouth was set hard, his ice-blue eyes wary under a broad, smooth forehead. My first thought was, here is Rosemary's baby at ninety-six. I checked the exits again.

Miriam Clert led Lenihan by the elbow to a chair across from me. When he was seated he shook her hand away and snapped, "Now you go on out. Go on out back." It was a once-forceful voice that came out soft and cracked, like a recording of a 1930s radio show.

"You might need something, Dad. You might have to make wee-wee."

"Go on out back and shut the door! You heard me."

Her face tightened and she turned away. "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me," she said to me. "If Dad has to go potty, come fetch me. Ill be having my cup of tea." She disappeared down the hall, though I did not hear a door close.

Lenihan arranged his bathrobe over his skinny legs. "You Strachey?"

"Yes, Mr. Lenihan, I am. Sim Kempelman said you wanted to talk to me."

With sarcasm he said, "Ohhh, Kempelman, yes-s-s, Kempelman. That man doesn't know a turd from a toadstool! Do you?"

"Sure. Early on a summer morning, toadstools have little sprites sitting on them. Turds don't."

He glared at me with disgust. Everything seemed to disgust him. "You're a wiseacre, aren't you?" I shrugged. "Well, don't you wise-guy me, mister!"

I said, "What was it you wanted to see me about, Mr. Lenihan?"

His little mouth bent down and the blue eyes narrowed. One fist clenched and unclenched repeatedly. After a moment, he said, "You gimme my money back! You know what I want. I want my money back. You got it with you?"

"What money are you referring to?"

The fist hit the arm of the chair. "Don't you play games with me, mister! You bring it along? You better've."

I watched him watching me. The oil burner quit running and the house was quiet. Mrs. Clert was not drinking her tea noisily. I said,

"Are you referring to the five suitcases stuffed with US currency? If so, I was under the impression that that money belonged to your late grandson Jack. That it had been left to him by a wealthy friend in Los Angeles. Or did Jack leave a will naming you as beneficiary?"

His look of intense disgust intensified. "What the hell are you talkin' about, you god damn chiseler? Jackie stole that money. He took it right out of my house last October from right under my nose. Know how I know it was him? Because he told me he took it, just like he was proud of it. That's where that money came from, and anything else you hear is a lotta bull.

Now I want that money back, mister, do you understand me?"

"That's hard to believe," I said. "You don't look like a man with several million dollars to his name. If it's yours, where did you get it?"

A blue vein slithered up the inside of his pink head and throbbed. I was afraid he would keel over dead, and I didn't want that to happen while I was there. Trembling, he said, "Who-in-the- hell — do you think you are?"

I waited and listened for other sounds in the house. I heard none. "What makes you think I've got the money?" I said.

"My daughter-in-law told me you were the one who was after it. And Joanie don't lie to me, oh no, she don't. She sent the money back to me on a plane, and Howie's boy told me you took it. Mack Fay said he went out to the airport to get it for me, and he saw you take it out there. Howie's boy wouldn't lie to me, and don't you lie to me either. Where's my money?"

"What if I have it and I refuse to turn it over to you, Mr. Lenihan? Will you have me arrested? Why haven't you called in the police?"

Another vein ran up his skull, like a line of blue air moving inside a pink beach ball. He leaned toward me, his fist clenching and unclenching, and said, "You aren't from around here, are you?"

"I live on Crow Street."

"Ward six!" He turned his head and spat, though nothing came out.

I said, "You haven't answered my question. Why don't you pick up the phone, call the police, and have me arrested for grand larceny?"

He stuck out his chin and smirked. "Don't have to."

"Why?" I glanced toward the hallway to see if Mack Fay and Terry Clert were bounding toward me wielding tire irons. They were not.

"You were a friend of Jack's," Lenihan said. "The word I hear is, you were a friend of my grandson's."

"He was a client of mine. I'm a private investigator and Jack hired me for a particular job. We were not friends while he was alive, but I feel that I know him well. I admire a lot of things I've heard about him, his ideals especially.

I didn't have the chance to be his friend, but I would like to have been."

The fist still opening and closing, he said, "Joanie your friend too?" Now a tense sly grin had formed across his face.

"I've met Jack's mother. Yes, I liked her too and wish that she wasn't so full of bitterness about so many things."

"She's a cheap slut!" His look was smug as he said it. "You want to know why I'm not gonna call the cops, and you're still gonna give me my money back, and you're not gonna ask me any more nosy questions, and then you're gonna keep your mouth shut? You know why? Huh?"

"No. You tell me, Mr. Lehihan."

"You ask Joanie. You go home and you call her up, and then you bring me my money. You'll do it. Oh yes, you will. You'll do as I say, all right." His eyes got big and he sat smirking and making fists. My impulse was to walk over and pull his plug, but his vital malevolence was fueled only from within, so that was not possible.

I said, "Who killed Jack? Who bludgeoned your grandson and placed his dying body in my car?"

The clenched fists opened and stayed open. He stared at me blankly for a moment, and then his face collapsed and trembled violently. A surge of rage went through him, and he bleated, "Perverts! Pansies and perverts!

Jack laid down with perverts and one of those filthy animals killed him.

Wipe em out! That's the only way our boys are gonna be safe! Castrate 'em!

Gas 'em! Lock 'em up and fry 'em!" His whole body shook.

I said, "Is that what you wanted to happen to Jack? Jack was gay. Is that what you wanted? For Jack to be wiped out?"

Suddenly deflating, Lenihan slumped in his seat and looked confused.

"No," he said after a moment. "No, not Jackie. Jackie was a good, strong boy. Jackie had spunk. Jackie had a head on his shoulders. Jackie could have amounted to something. Jack was-oh, my Jesus, how I miss that boy!" Tears flowed. With a sudden jerk, he wiped them away with his sleeve and said, "G'wan, get outta here. And gimme my goddamn money back!"

He covered his eyes with one hand and waved me away with the other.

"Jack had good plans for that money," I said. "I think he would have wanted me to carry them out."

In a split second, the woe and tenderness vanished and the harsh anger came back. Giving me the evil eye again, he said, "You talk to Joanie, mister. And then you bring me my money. Today. You hear what I'm telling you?"

I stood up. "Is city hall in on this with you? Do they know what you're doing?"

He grunted. "City hall knows what city hall knows, and I know what I know.

Now get outta here and get me my money."

Unsummoned, Mrs. Clert promptly appeared. "It looks like you've ruffled Dad's feathers, Mr. Strachey. Is that right, Dad, did the gentleman get your feathers mussed?"

"Don't you start in on me," he snapped, as she led me to the front door.

"Maybe we'll see you again sometime," Mrs. Clert said with her blank smile.

"I think Dad would like that."

"That's the impression I have," I said, zipping up my coat in the doorway.

"In fact, he mentioned specifically that he'd like me to visit again soon."

"Oh, did he? Well, that would be nice. Oh, it's so cold and damp out there.

Don't catch your death now."

She shut the door and I stood looking at the abandoned Immaculate Conception School across the street. The chain-link fence around it had been ripped from its steel posts in three places and most of the windowpanes had been smashed. One of the fading graffiti on the red brick wall of the building read simply IMAGINE. I gazed at the word for a minute or so, and I began to imagine. As I did so, I knew that I had to speak with Joan Lenihan fast.

As I headed south on Pearl, the two Dodges trailed along a block behind me. When it became clear that I was not being followed by anyone else, I pulled over, got out, and signaled for the cop cars to pull alongside.

Bowman, being chauffeured in the front car, rolled down his window.

"Jumpin' Jesus, Strachey, was that Pug Lenihan s house you went into back there?"

"Yeah."

"Well, what kind of half-assed stunt is this anyway? Criminy, man. If word got back I was up here poking into Pug Lenihan's business without him asking, I'd be hung by the gimmeys in Capitol Park at high noon. Now goddamn it, when and where is this attack on you supposed to happen? If you want my cooperation on this, you're just gonna have to fill me in before you get a single 'nother iota of my valuable time."

I said, "Forget it."

"What?"

"Let's skip it for now. I have to check on a couple of things and then I'll get back to you."

"Don't bother," he said, thrusting his gray squid up at me. "The next time we meet, I'll be bothering you- plenty." He rolled up the window and they left me standing in the slush.

I drove back toward the Hilton. I was not being followed and I could not understand why. Mrs. Clert certainly would have notified Terry Clert presumably her son, or husband, or great-nephew twice removed-as well as Mack Fay of my appointment at Pug Lenihan's. It would have been their first certain knowledge of my whereabouts since Timmy and I had abandoned our house the previous week. Why would they let the opportunity to get at me slide by? Had they been tipped by someone in Bowman's crew that the cops would be surveilling me? That possibility made me unhappy.

Or did Fay and Clert know that Pug would insist that I return to his house with the money later in the day, and that after I spoke with Joan Lenihan I was sure to do as I was told? Although Pug had seemed genuinely unaware of Fays recent efforts to retrieve the money for him- if those efforts had been on Pug's behalf at all. Fay and Clert, it now appeared, had been running their own scam to make off with the two and a half million diddling Pug while he thought they were helping him.

But if that was the case, how could they hope to snatch the money from me if not at Pug's house? If they had been tipped that I would arrive with the cops in tow on my first visit, how could they be sure that I wouldn't also have Bowman with me on any subsequent visit? Mrs. Clert had seemed relaxed, confident, secure-not the demeanor of a woman whose family's elaborate act of larceny was in serious jeopardy.

In room 1407 I bolted the door, dragged the five bags out of the closet, unlocked each one, and opened them. The two and a half million was intact. I locked the bags and stacked them back in the closet.

I dialed Joan Lenihan's number in Los Angeles. After twenty rings there was no answer. I called my New York Telephone contact, who told me that three calls, each lasting approximately four minutes, had been made from Pug Lenihan's number to Joan Lenihan's phone in LA during the previous thirty-six hours. The most recent call had been at 6:15 the evening before. I hung up and tried LA again. No answer.

It was just after noon in Albany, nine in LA. I figured both Joan and Gail were working seven to four, or they'd worked the night before and had unplugged the telephone and gone to bed. I'd try again in the late afternoon, and if that didn't work, ask Kyle Toot to track Joan down and ask her to call me. I figured I now knew what the key was to trigger Joan Lenihan's cooperation, and the thought of it made me sick.

Before heading out for lunch, I checked my answering service, which had what was described as "an extremely urgent" message from Timmy. The message was: I am in the company of Messrs. Fay and Clert involuntarily.

Bring the you-know-what to our house at midnight tonight, but do not come accompanied by you-know-who. This is no joke. I repeat, this is no joke.

Sorry about this.

Now I had done it. They had done it. And I had done it. "Did he say where he was calling from?"

"All he said was to take down his message carefully and to get it to you as soon as possible. But you didn't leave a number. We didn't know where to reach you."

Timmy knew though. And he hadn't told them about our room at the Hilton.

They didn't have to have the information, because they had him, which they knew was as good as having me and the money. Still, he hadn't told them.