Ice Blues

SEVEN

The landscape along I-90 was an eye-aching white under the January ice ball of a sun, but as I drove west through gray slush, the traffic charging up and down the roadway around me was filthy. I could sense the road salt eating away at my axle beam and remembered a newspaper story about a man tooling along at sixty when the driver's seat dropped out the bottom of his '71 Honda. Eyewitnesses were said to have screamed, then laughed, then screamed again. I held on to the steering wheel hard.

From the Northway I headed east on Albany-Shaker Road and made my way past the new residential developments that catered to a mix of yuppies and retirees from the state bureaucracies who'd opted for the high rentals and maintenance fees out in nature's neatly bulldozed bosom, where they hoped to find a life of quietude and cleanliness, not that I didn't know people who lived noisily and dirtily in the suburbs.

A mile and a half down the highway no heather was in view in front of La Casa Heatherview, just a large wood sign that said LA CASA HEATHERVIEW-A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, and a snowy field bisected by a long drive leading up to two twisting configurations of stucco-and-stained-wood town houses that from the air must have looked like a set of Spanish question marks. I thought maybe it was a clue, but I doubted it. I parked the car and walked up to 2-C.

"You can leave your boots there on the rug," the irresistible Warren Slonski said, looking me over noncommittally. I gave him an equally noncommittal handshake and performed as instructed. In the age of AIDS I had been making it a practice to imagine a skull and crossbones on the forehead of every possibly available comely gay man I found myself alone with, but Slonski's kept fading in, fading out. I unlaced my scuffed Sears clodhoppers and placed them alongside Slonski's gleaming black Frye boots. In our stocking feet we moved into the living room, where I sank into the navy-blue velvet plush sofa while Slonski ambled on to the kitchen.

"What will you drink? Heineken? Beck's?"

"Beck's would be nice."

The white draperies covering the sliding glass doors were closed but fluttered in one corner where the wind leaked in. The magazines on the butcher-block coffee table were Newsweek, High Fidelity, and Opera News.

On one wall were hung plastic-encased posters from the Met; the other was taken up by polyurethaned pine record shelves filled with what looked like every opera ever composed, from Monteverdi to Einstein on the Beach, and a sound system which resembled the electronic paraphernalia that accompanied the Jacksons on their Victory tour.

"Nuts? Cheese? A sandwich?" Slonski said, delivering the beer along with a chilled pewter mug.

"No, thanks, I'm meeting some people for dinner later. The Beck's will hold me for now."

He went back to the kitchen and brought out his own bottle and mug.

I said, "Nice sound system. Nice couch. That's a nice vest you've got on too. Pucci?"

"Gucci. Gucci makes vests. Pucci makes underwear."

"Ahh." I sipped my beer.

Slonski was close to flawless in appearance. In form-fitting black slacks and a loose cotton off-white shirt, over which he wore the vest, he was neat and elegantly formed. A silky black stream curved up and out of his well-toned cleavage like a fine hair undershirt. A gift from nature, or hirsucci.

His clean-shaven face had the thickness of central Europe in it but with pleasing proportions and alert gray eyes under short blue-black hair with just a touch of punk in the styling. Slonski looked like an advertisement for himself. His only visible defect was a small wartlike discoloration, presumably not venereal, on the left side of his nose. And, of course, the skull and crossbones on his forehead.

He looked at me and said, "I know about you."

"What do you know?"

"That you were at Herb Brinkman's pool party last summer. With your lover.

You made a big impression on Jack."

I said, "I'm very sorry about Jack."

He gazed at me levelly for a few seconds, then said, "Yes. I am too." He sipped his beer.

"You never expect someone you've been close to to be killed."

Watching me steadily, he said, "What do you have to do with this?"

"I'm not sure. I'm trying to find that out myself. That's why I've come out here to talk with you. At first I thought Jack's body being left in my car was just possibly a coincidence. But I don't believe that anymore." I thought, should I show him the letter, tell him about the suitcases? I decided no, I would spare Slonski my guilty knowledge for the time being in order to protect him-or myself-from-I didn't yet know what.

"I didn't believe for a minute that Jack's dying in your car was a coincidence," Slonski said. "In July Jack told me you were a private detective. He seemed unusually interested in that-as if he might have occasion one day to employ your services."

"Did he say why?"

"He never actually said even that much. Now that he's been killed I can see that that's what he must have meant. That he was in some kind of trouble that a private detective might help him get out of. Trouble with-I can't imagine who, if it's not dope sellers, which I am certain it is not. But that's hindsight. Last summer I was sure Jack's interest in you must have been sexual." He watched me.

"No. Not that I was aware of. And I usually pick right up on that."

"Do you?"

"Oh, sure."

More beer. "Jack was the most important person in my life for almost two years. In many ways, the only important person in my life. I don't see my family anymore, and before I met Jack I had always been largely self-sufficient emotionally."

"Some people manage to pull that off."

He shook his head. "I regarded my self-sufficiency as a character flaw. I worked systematically to overcome it and I succeeded. That's the way I do things, logically and systematically. "

"I understand that you're a chemical engineer at GE. What kind of stuff do you work on?"

He kept studying me. He hadn't looked away once. The tension in the room was terrific and I wasn't sure where he was heading. He said, "It was very hard for me when Jack left."

"I'm sure it was."

Now he gazed down at the mug in his fist and said, "Were you sleeping with Jack?" No.

His face came up with a hard quizzical look. "Then what were you doing with him?"

"Nothing. Until Wednesday evening, when I discovered his body in my car at Faxon Towing and Storage, I hadn't seen Jack since the Fourth of July.

When I first saw his body I didn't even realize who he was. Was sexual jealousy the reason you and Jack split up?"

He sighed, shook his head, and looked perplexed but a little less tense. He swigged down more beer, which he was taking in a little faster than he might have. "No, that wasn't the problem," he said. "That's just an idea I came up with at the time. It was an explanation that made sense."

"Explanation for what?"

"Jack's behavior. His brooding, his quitting school, his shutting me out.

This is getting crazier and crazier. You don't know anything about this, do you? You really don't."

"Not much, no. I have my own reasons for gathering the facts about Jack's final months, some obvious, some not. You thought maybe there was another man who was affecting Jack's life?"

He took another drink and slung a shapely thigh over the arm of his chair.

"Jack was so irritable and hard to get along with. Naturally I thought it was guilt. I arrived at that naive conclusion because in my other past relationships-the few brief ones I'd had-that's the way I acted when I was feeling guilty about something. Men, usually. Except, Jack swore there were no other men. He said his sex life with me was everything any man could possibly ever desire."

He spoke these words as though they comprised a mere point of information. I said, "Uh-huh."

"And then I–I shouldn't have brought it up, but I asked him if he was dealing drugs again. I suppose you know, he used to."

"I know."

"Jack went right through the roof when I mentioned drugs, because he'd promised me when we moved in together that he wouldn't do that, and Jack's word was important to him. I think I can say that Jack valued honesty above all else. It's probably because of his grandfather's shady past, but he had what I would consider an almost neurotic need to be open and direct about the most important things in his life. And when I asked about drugs-and all I did was ask — Jack was terribly, terribly hurt."

"And he explicitly denied it?"

"Oh, he denied it, all right. You know, I've built a career, I've worked hard for what I accomplished, and I value that. Work isn't everything-I think that's one of the valuable lessons I learned from Jack. No man on his deathbed ever said, 'I wish I'd spent more time at the office.' Jack had broader values and that's one of the things that attracted me to him, the way he could put our life together in a larger perspective. I even went to a gay-lib type of meeting with him one time. But the thing was, I just couldn't afford to become connected in any way with illegal drug activity. So, stupidly I asked Jack about the drugs. I should have known better. I knew Jack's word was good, and I shouldn't have asked. But I did."

Slonski sat there squirming in his regret. He had made a mistake of a not uncommon type in human relations and now the hurt was deepened because he knew he would never be able to undo it. I said, "And that's when you and Jack broke up?"

"It was the beginning of the end. That was midsummer, and Jack stayed with me until mid-October-October sixteenth, to be precise. But he was moody and difficult all summer and fall, and he refused to tell me what the real problem was. He said I was too conventional-too 'straight arrow' was how he put it-to understand. And that hurt me."

"In some circles it's a dreadful thing to accuse a person of. Anyway, if Jack prized openness and honesty as much as you say, he must have been feeling guilty himself for not confiding in you, not trusting you, and that would have accounted in part for his rotten state of mind. Maybe his conscience was bothered by the thing itself-whatever it was he was involved in."

He sipped at the beer and thought this over. "I doubt it. Jack had his own moral code. He was arrogant that way. He could break the law with no compunction if he thought the law was wrong. He was a child of the sixties in that respect. I stayed out of Vietnam by getting an essential job in a defense industry while Jack was out in the streets burning his draft card.

That's how he could rationalize the drug dealing he'd done. He said as long as you didn't sell it to the kids, it was just another popular consumer item you were providing."

"Right. Like alcohol-which killed his father and must have made Jack's young life miserable."

"That's what I said," he said, and set the beer mug on the floor. "But Jack just said any habit could be abused, and then refused to discuss it any further. He didn't like talking about his father. It was just too loaded a subject for him. Though I think he thought about his family a lot. They were always a strong presence in his mind and could set off some powerful feelings."

"Right. Family has always been important to the Lenihans."

"When I look back to last summer and fall, I keep thinking there must have been some point where I missed something, where something happened to Jack and I didn't recognize its importance. Or that I'd closed myself up, or been preoccupied with work. We'd had such a good thing going, and I just can't understand what I might have done to foul it up."

"Maybe nothing. Nothing at all."

"One of the characteristics that attracted me to Jack when we met was his ambition, the way he was working so hard to put some order in his life.

Enrolling in business school, planning for the future, putting his past behind him, even getting close to his family again. What happened that changed all that so suddenly? I've racked my brain, but I cannot for the life of me put my finger on what it might have been. Of course-it's all academic now. Even if somehow the misunderstanding could be cleared up-if that's what it was-Jack's not coming back. That's a fact I'm trying to face, and I'm having a very hard time with it."

"Had you thought he might come back?"

"Of course," he said with a little shrug. "No one had ever left me before. I've always been the one to do the leaving. I'm known as the irresistible Warren Slonski.' People call me that."

"What a nice compliment."

"So, the thing is, I wasn't used to a situation like that. Men are usually trying to get into my bed, not out of it."

I said, "Hell, I know exactly what you mean." If he'd looked suddenly queasy, I'd have shot him through the heart. But he didn't blanch, or laugh.

He just put his hands behind his head, gazed at the ceiling tragically, and flexed his biceps.

I said, "Maybe Jack's volatile reaction to your question about drug dealing was a result of his being confronted with the awful truth. Maybe he was back in the business and exploded out of guilt. Isn't that a possibility?"

He shook his head. "No. I knew Jack. He would have admitted it. I was wrong to suspect him and wrong to bring it up. It had to have been something else. I knew Jack."

"You mentioned that Jack was getting close to his family again. Was he seeing a lot of them?"

"For a while he was, and they all seemed to be hitting it off fairly well.

During the summer and into the fall Jack was even doing some work around the house for his grandfather in the North End. And he'd see his sister Corrine while he was out there. I went with him a couple of times and Corrine was nice to me, even though we had a hard time finding things to talk about. Her husband wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs though. 'Dreadful Ed,' Jack and I called him."

"Did you meet Jack's grandfather?"

"No, but I was curious about him. He's apparently some type of famous political figure in Albany-I'm from Water-town and don't know much about that. I know he was part of the Boyle brothers' machine here for fifty years, and it would have been fascinating to meet him. But Jack never offered and I didn't push it." He picked up his empty mug. "Say, how about a refill on the Beck's? It looks as if the well is about to run dry."

"I'll pass, but you go ahead."

He did and returned with another beer for me too. "Just in case," he said.

"Thank you."

He flopped back in his chair, throwing one leg over the arm again.

"I understand Jack was close to his mother," I said. "Did he see her often?"

"They talked on the phone once a week, and that's where Jack went when he first left me, out to LA. By the time he actually packed up and moved out, he was in bad shape, a real nervous wreck. I guess he went out to his mom's to wind down. She and Corrine were really the only people in the family who never gave Jack a hard time about being gay, and his mom had been supportive in a lot of other ways over the years. She had her own troubles, of course, raising two kids with an alcoholic husband who couldn't hold a job more than a day. I think she left Albany behind a long time ago, but she did stay close to Jack and Corrine. She kept trying to convince Corrine to move out there, or at least to visit, and offered to pay her way, but Corrine seemed unable to make any kind of break from the North End, even for a week. I never met Mrs. Lenihan, but Jack made her sound like a very strong and exceptional person."

"What about you? When did you last see Jack?"

He grimaced. "As I told that idiot Bowman from the Albany police department this morning, I've seen Jack once in three months. On Christmas Day we had dinner at the Quackenbush House. It was my stupid idea. The afternoon was so tense and Jack was so uncommunicative we skipped dessert and went our separate ways, and I never really expected to see him again. Of course, now I won't."

"Then I suppose Jack didn't mention-either then or last fall-a particular project he was working on?"

He frowned across his beer mug. "Project?"

"Something that might be considered immoral by some people but not by others. Something that would right a wrong."

"No, I'm sure I'd remember. Why do you ask that?"

"It's come up, but specifics are lacking. There might be a connection between this project and Jack's death."

"I can't imagine what. No, business school was Jack's only project until he quit last fall. That and learning about opera. I was helping Jack gain access to the very considerable pleasures of opera, and I think he was really beginning to love it. Opera has been important to me since I was fifteen. It's been a way to experience the passion of human life without getting my own hands too dirty, if you know what I mean. Opera has always been my chief emotional release. Along with sex, of course."

"Of course."

"But Jack never mentioned any other project, no. Could that have been what was eating away at him?"

"I think so, yes."

"Something some people might consider immoral? I suppose I was one of those people. Is that what you're thinking?"

"There's a good chance that that's the case. What could Jack have been involved in that you would have found immoral?" He thought this over, then shook his head. I said, "Run through the Ten Commandments. Which ones do you feel most strongly about?"

He smiled sheepishly. "This is embarrassing. I can only remember a few.

It's been a while."

"Go for the hard-core stuff, the foundations of Judeo-Christian ethics."

Without hesitation he said, "Stealing."

"Thou shalt not steal."

"I've always believed strongly that people should earn anything of value they received, or be given it because they need it or deserve it. For a person to take something that doesn't belong to him disgusts me. It's the beginning of anarchy. Jack knew how deeply I feel about that. Is it possible? Do you think Jack stole something?"

"Could be," I said. "Though if he did, he didn't consider it stealing, I think.

Not in the usual strict sense of the word."

"But I would have. And he knew it."

"There's a good possibility of that."

"What was it that you think he stole?"

"Money. There is evidence that it was money." Now he placed both feet on the floor and leaned forward. "But how could that be right? How could Jack consider stealing money a moral act?"

"I don't know yet. I'm curious too. Did Jack know anyone who owned a lot of money, or had access to it?"

"How much money?"

"A vast amount. A fortune."

"Not that I can think of-no one in Albany. Except drug dealers perhaps.

But it wouldn't be that, I'm sure."

"Did any of Jack's former business associates ever come here, or phone?"

"Absolutely not. I was firm about that. Anyhow, I think they were all in jail."

"All of them?"

"As far as I know. According to Jack, he was the only one of that bunch who wasn't convicted. The rest of them were locked up for twenty years."

"Jack must have had a terrific lawyer."

"Oh, he did-the best. Thomas Pelligrinelli came up from New York to handle his case."

"Really? Pelligrinelli has to be one of the most expensive criminal lawyers in the state of New York. Jack must have been paying him off right up to the day he died."

"Oh no, Jack's mother paid for the lawyer. He told me that. I think it was one of the reasons he never intended to get in trouble with the law again.

His acquittal had cost his mother so much."

"Is she wealthy? What does she do?"

"Mrs. Lenihan's a nurse. I don't know, maybe she took out a loan, or has rich friends. Jack never went into that. But the day after the trial ended she wired him twenty thousand dollars and he paid off Pelligrinelli."

"She didn't attend the trial?"

"No, Jack said she detested Albany and never intended to set foot in it again. Her life here was awfully unhappy. Though I got the idea she's doing much better now."

"It sounds that way."

"She must be taking Jack's death very hard."

"Corrine told me she was, yes."

"I guess Ill finally meet her at the funeral," Slonski said, and lifted his mug.

I said, "She's not coming."

"She isn't?" The mug hung in the air.

"She's gone to bed, sick with grief."

"That's terrible, just terrible. Jack told me his mother had never been sick a day in her life. She never missed a single day of work. He said she was made of iron."

"She sounds like quite an unusual lady."

"The Lenihans are an unusual family," Slonski said, and I was only just beginning to understand that that was putting it mildly.

I told him I had to leave for my dinner engagement, thanked him for his candid remarks about Jack and their relationship, and said I understood his initial skepticism about me.

"Oh, no problem. But you still haven't explained to me exactly what your connection with Jack was."

"It was professional on my part, which makes it confidential. I'm sorry I can't tell you more."

"You know, I miss him more than ever," Slonski said in a shaky voice. "I still can't quite believe that he actually left me. And that he's never coming back."

"I'm wondering about something, Warren. What was it about Jack Lenihan that evoked such an emotional response in you? He was sweet-natured and had his other virtues, but he wasn't a particularly attractive man physically. You seem to have a keener than normal appreciation for that which appeals to the senses. I would have expected you to bed down with a man who was-well, more like yourself."

He flushed and looked away. "The thing is," he said after a moment, "I've always gone for men who are less attractive than I am. I guess they-make me look better. And feel better. And the chances are, they're not going to leave me. It's a way of controlling the situation, I suppose you could say, of protecting myself. For instance, you really turn me on. But I would never make a direct move with somebody like you. You might turn me down."

Now it was out in the open, a slight relief. "But if I did turn you down-and reluctantly I would-it wouldn't have anything to do with you. It would be the fact that I have a lover, my deep and entirely rational fear of AIDS, and my already-too-elastic professional ethics. It wouldn't be personal at all."

His face fell. "There. You see what I mean?"

I started to laugh, but didn't when he didn't. I would have liked to hang around and attempt first aid on Slonski's damaged soul. Five years earlier, such acts of warmhearted crisis intervention were not uncommon for me, and I always got as much as I gave, often more. But my life had its complications now, and Slonski's needed a few, none of which I was in a position to provide.

He put some Wagner on the stereo, and I went out and rubbed snow on my face before driving off. The islands beckoned again briefly, but that was not where I was headed. From a pay phone I reached a friend at the Times

Union who provided me with background information on the three men I was about to dine with. By the time I hung up, I thought I had figured out what Jack Lenihan's morally ambiguous project was.

If I was right, then Lenihan had been correct in his prediction that I would approve of it. We had spent only ten minutes together one summer afternoon, yet he knew me that well. I would have liked to ask him how he'd done that.