Ice Blues

TWENTY

I sped over to Troy through the slush and parked in front of Flo Trenky's place. The green pickup truck was nowhere in sight, so I trotted around the corner and down the alley to see if Fay had parked out back. He hadn't. Workmen were removing the debris of the collapsed back porch and using a power shovel to load the splintered lumber into a dump truck. I went back out front and pressed the door buzzer.

"Yeah? What can I do you for?"

"Mr. Mack Fay, please?"

"Mackie ain't in right now. Who should I tell him dropped by?"

"I'm Phil Downey, Mr. Fay's parole officer. When do you expect him back?"

She had a pretty cracked face under a load of rouge and purple eye shadow. Her orange wig had bangs combed up like eyelashes, and her actual eyelashes were thick with some type of black muck. Broad-hipped and ample-bosomed, she stood facing me in chartreuse pedal pushers and a low-cut yellow sweater. On the side of her neck was what appeared to be a twelve-hour-old red-and-purple hickey.

She looked at me suspiciously and said, "You got some ID?"

"Are you Mrs. Fay?"

"No, I'm Flo Trenky, Mack's fiancee. Mack didn't say nothin' about no parole officer stopping in."

"This is a routine check. Could you show me his room, please?"

Her look hardened. "You got a search warrant? I need to see papers. If you got an ID and you got papers, you can come in. If you don't, you better talk to Mackie first. But Mackie ain't here."

"Look, I like Mack and I don't want to make any trouble for him. Tell me where I can locate him, I'll go there and fill out my report and that will be that. If I have to call in that Mack can't be located and might have left the state, it'll be his neck, not mine. I've just got a job to do."

She hesitated and seemed to loosen up, then got a puzzled look. "Where's your briefcase?"

"At the office. This is my lunch hour."

"Listen, wiseass, I never saw a parole officer without he had a briefcase glued on his arm. You're no parole officer, buster. What if I told you where Mackie went is none of your beeswax? What if I told you to scram? What if I told you you'd be in hot water if you didn't move your butt offa my premises?"

I sighed. "Flo, I have a confession to make."

"Come again?"

"Could we just step inside? You're going to catch a chill standing out here without a coat on and-well, this is going to shock you, but-my relationship with Mackie is kind of personal, and I think now is as good a time as any for you to hear about it." I took out my wallet and presented her with my membership card in the National Gay Task Force.

"What? What's that there?"

"Mackie has stolen my man, Flo. I want him back. Maybe between the two of us we can make Mackie see the light and then he'll come back to you and give me my man back. Down at Sing Sing Mackie stole my honey away from me."

She blinked hard and a chunk of something black fell off one eyelash, ricocheted off her left cheek, and plummeted into her cleavage. "You shittin' me? Mackie ain't that way. You're shittin' me."

"I think we should have a tete-a-tete, Flo-get to know each other. And see if we can figure out a way to get Mackie back on the straight and narrow.

Maybe it's just a phase he's going through, but you never can tell."

This did not fit with what she knew and she didn't want to believe it. But here was a woman who had been lied to by men before and her fund of mistrust was ready for tapping. I was not proud of myself for being the four hundredth man to mislead and abuse Flo Trenky. But I had to do what I had to do. In a shaky voice she said, "I'll kill that Mackie," and led me into the house.

The living room, overlooking the street, had a worn couch and a couple of electric-blue easy chairs with doilies on the arms and a coffee table with two Schlitz empties and a glass ashtry full of butts. A big Sears TV set with a vase full of paper geraniums atop it occupied one corner, but the focus of the room was a large cardboard fireplace with bricks painted on it and a cellophane fire that turned over a spit on a red light bulb.

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 both-erin'

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 made 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.