Ice Blues ds-3 Read online

  ”What? What’s that you say? You want me to periodically hide your precious inner feelings? As if after all these years Dr. Joyce Brothers’ column turned out to be simpleminded charlatanry?”

  “Yes, bottle up your negative emotions in a neurotically unhealthy way. For my sake. Just off and on until spring. Your springtime emotions I like a lot.”

  I took a long swig of beer. “I don’t know, Timothy. I have to tell you, this is a bolt out of the blue. Your proposition is not something I ever dreamed I’d be faced with when we began sharing hearth and home and Vaseline jar.

  I’m going to have to give this one a lot of thought.”

  “Don-I’m serious. Really.”

  I ate the chili and drank the beer and grimly considered what he had said.

  As usual, he had me. A student of Jesuits, Timmy could play fast and loose on the larger matters, up to a point, but on the conduct of human affairs he was pathologically astute and rational.

  I said, “Look, I know you’re right. I hate this town in winter with its wind and cold and sooty snow, and all those moral pygmies in charge of the place. But taking it out on you is unfair, and I’ll try moderately hard not to do it anymore. Try, I said. A small maniacal outburst once in a great while is still okay, right?”

  “Of course. It’s all right with me if we both remain human. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now get me another beer.”

  “Get it yourself, Kramden,” he said, and laughed but didn’t get up. I got myself another beer.

  “Where were you this evening anyway? Were you really out at Faxon’s all that time? You let on as though you were at the Watering Hole.”

  “Unh-unh. You drew that demeaning inference, but what I said on the phone was the truth. That I was at Faxon’s waiting for Ned Bowman to show up because there was a corpse in my car. Which there was.”

  “What? You’re not really serious. You look serious.” I was loading the last of the chili onto a slice of George’s famous whole-grain wheat bread, using a second slice of George’s famous whole-grain wheat bread as a bulldozer.

  I said, “This stuff is good and good for you.”

  Timmy’s mouth was open but he wasn’t eating. “Who was it?”

  “Jack Lenihan.”

  “No.” It was.

  “Mother of God!”

  “That was my thought, or the Presbyterian equivalent thereof.”

  “He was dead?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “How did he die?”

  “On purpose, though not his own, I think. He’d been conked with a tire iron or something.”

  “Holy Jesus! And he was in your car when you went to pick it up?”

  “In the back, atop the lowered backrest.”

  “But-how did he get there?”

  “I have no idea. Ned Bowman is handling the investigation.”

  “Is there more to this than you’re telling me?”

  “A lot, no doubt. But I don’t know what it is, and my interest in it is only a little more than academic. Nobody has paid me money to look into the matter, and anyway I’m not taking on any job-especially a cop case-that would require my moving around out of doors any time before Easter. I’ve been thinking about it, and I might do some security stuff to pay my share of the mortgage and distract me from morbid self-absorption. Maybe sit behind a mirror in a drugstore rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude with one eye and spotting elderly shoplifters with the other. But that poor guy in my car is Bowman’s problem. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “But you knew Jack Lenihan.”

  “I met him once. I remember him vaguely.”

  “Herb’s pool party, the Fourth of July.”

  “Right. We talked for a few minutes. About politics, I think.”

  “Really? I thought Jack never discussed politics. He was embarrassed about his family and its sordid past.”

  I cleared the table while he ground the coffee beans. Until I met Timmy I’d always thought coffee was a mineral that occurred in nature as tiny crystals and was mined like coal. I said, “Who’s his family?”

  “The Lenihans-the Lenihans of Albany. Pug Lenihan is his grandfather.

  You didn’t know that?”

  “Pug Lenihan, the Boyle brothers’ bagman? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “He’s in his nineties and still lives in the North End somewhere. But I doubt whether Jack has anything to do with him-had. Jack was a notorious druggie for a while, using and dealing, and the Lenihans were as unfond of him as he was of them. Did he mention Pug to you?”

  “As I recall, it was just before the Democratic convention and we talked national politics. What was he, a rich kid snorting the family fortune away up his nose?” I set the dirty dishes in steaming water and made a plastic bottle spurt something pink into it.

  “No, the Lenihans are bust. Pug lives like a pauper, and his only son Jack’s dad-died a drunk twenty years ago. Jack has a sister, I think, but the money’s gone. The Boyles must have accumulated plenty, but what they didn’t hand out at the polls they gave away to charity and North End down-and-outs. Jack must have seen a lot over the years, or smelled it, and he hated the Boyle machine with a cold passion. God, Jack was the last of the Lenihan men. Talk about a famous family going out with a whimper.” He dumped the ground coffee in a paper filter and poured hot water over it.

  Lenihan may have hated the machine,” I said, “but he did not avoid all contact with political personages. His wallet had three slips of paper in it with a name and phone number on each one. What would Lenihan have had to do with Creighton Prell, Larry Dooley, or Sim Kempelman?”

  Timmy looked perplexed. “That’s a pretty weird combination. Politically those three have nothing in common. Prell is the Republican county chairman and the mayor of Handbag. Larry Dooley, as you know all too well, is an Albany city councilman and a real ambitious pain-in-the-neck nitwit. The word is Larry’s going to buck his machine pals and run in the mayoral primary as a populist reformer, which is a bizarre joke. And Sim Kempelman is head of Democrats for Better Government in Albany. You know about them, don’t you? Sort of a local Common Cause, except with half the balls Common Cause has.”

  “That would be about one eighth of one ball. Why would Lenihan be carrying their phone numbers around? Could they be tricks?”

  “That’s doubtful. They’re all straight, so far as I know. Maybe it’s something else personal. It’s odd.”

  “What about Lenihan’s lover, what’s-his-name? Have I met him?”

  “Warren Slonski, sometimes known as the irresistible Warren Slonski. He wasn’t at Herb’s with Jack, so you might not have met him. Maybe they were on the outs last summer. They’ve had their ups and downs, I know.

  Slonski’s very straight, nonsexually speaking. He’s a chemical engineer of some kind at Schenectady GE. You’d remember him if you’d met him.”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because, as I said, he’s irresistible. Or so it is told.”

  “I wonder if he’s been notified of Jack’s death. The cops are often sloppy about that sort of thing.”

  He poured more water over the coffee, making slow circles around the inside of the filter, washing it down so as not to waste any. “I suppose you’re thinking of driving out to break the news and offering whatever consolation seems appropriate.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking. Not exactly.”

  “Right. These are new times. No more of that.”

  “Absolutely. Out where? You said drive out. “

  “Colonic They live in some development out on Shaker Road, I think.”

  “Jack’s last address was on Swan Street. It’s on his driver’s license.”

  “Maybe they moved. Or split up.”

  “What did Jack do for a living?”

  He served the coffee and proceeded to dump half a cup of skim milk in his.

  “The last I knew he was working at an all-night quiche parlor on Lark Street and
going to business college in the daytime-computers probably. If the abacus ever returns, twenty thousand Albany twenty-five-year-olds are going to be back dropping buns on the belt at Burger King.”

  “Lenihan was a few years beyond twenty-five. You said he dealt drugs. How recently and in how big a way?”

  “Big enough. Two or three years ago he was hauled in on a coke bust that involved mid-level wholesalers. Three other guys went to Sing Sing, but Jack was acquitted for lack of evidence. He escaped by the skin of his nasal passage. Jack was really a very smart and decent person, and I think the drug stuff was probably some anti-Lenihan-family acting out. But I didn’t know him well enough to know exactly what went on in his head. I suppose you could say that after a certain age you don’t call it acting out anymore.”

  I drank my coffee and tried not to look at Timmy’s, which resembled the water in a creek below a paper mill. “He must have been dealing again,” I said. “He must have diddled a supplier, who had him killed. All the earmarks are there. Those people are savages. Awful.”

  Timmy screwed up his face. “I don’t know. Jack seemed pretty straight that last time I saw him. But you never know when people are going to revert.”

  “P eople do it.”

  “Why your car, do you think? Coincidence?”

  “Sure. I suppose so, yeah.”

  “When was the body put there? Out at Faxon’s?”

  “No, on the street, it looks like-last night, before the car was towed. Or maybe the road crews were involved. Though that’s unlikely, because Bowman is sure to bang their heads around, and big-dope entrepreneurs aren’t that dumb. Hell, I should have moved my car when you told me to.”

  “You got distracted and forgot.”

  “Then fell asleep. In fact, I wouldn’t mind sleeping right through until April.

  The bears have the right idea. They’re the only mammals who know how to live in this dreary, desolate place.” He grimaced. “Sorry-I backslid. There I go again. Sorry. Really.”

  “Maybe if you’d make an effort to enjoy winter, you’d do better. There are alternatives to cabin fever. For example, let’s both learn to ski. How about that? It’d be fun and it’d be healthful.”

  “That would require my moving about out of doors. My idea of a winter sport is knocking around on a sunfish off Virgin Gorda.”

  He sighed very deeply. “I’m going in and sit by the picture of the fire and read. How much more snow are we suppose to get? Have you heard?”

  The “picture of the fire” was a framed photograph of the San Francisco fire given to us by a friend as a housewarming gift a year earlier when Timmy and I picked up our tiny Federal-style town house on Crow Street for something in the neighborhood of two-point-six billion dollars and discovered that the “working fireplace” described by the realtor didn’t.

  I said, “We’re supposed to get another five inches or so. That will bring the season’s total to four hundred feet, five inches.”

  “You’re exaggerating slightly.”

  “But not much.”

  We cleaned up the kitchen, went in and saw the snow sloshing down the living room windowpane, put on some Thelonius Monk, and spent the evening by the picture of the fire. At eleven-fifteen the bright-eyed man who soft-shoed in front of the Channel 12 weather map said it now looked as if the earlier snow forecasts had been too conservative and “a lot more of the white stuff” was on the way. Timmy shrugged.

  “I hear bells, ringing and ringing.”

  “I’d better get it, it’s after one. Shift, this way.” I groped for the phone.

  “It’s never been this way for me before. The electric mattress pad moved.”

  “Don’t give me quotes from Wings of the Dove at a time like this.” I found it.

  “This is Strachey.”

  “You got something that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Come again?”

  “Who is it?”

  “Shhh.”

  “I think you can tell that we are serious people, Strachey.”

  “No, I can’t tell that at all. Rude presumption is not the same as seriousness. May I ask who is calling, please?”

  “We’ll be in touch tomorrow about the delivery. We just want you to know that we know you got it. Keep yourself available and do not leave Albany.”

  “Mr. Strachey isn’t here. This is the chimney sweep. If you’d like to leave your name and number-” Click.

  With two fingers I shoved the receiver toward its cradle and it rattled down into it.

  “I sense that you are suddenly preoccupied. Who was that?”

  “He didn’t say. It was a man with a handkerchief over his mouth, or a large tablecloth. He said I have something that doesn’t belong to me.”

  “What is it?”

  “He didn’t mention that either.”

  “Public libraries are starting to crack down. Do you have a book overdue?”

  “He said I could see that he was a serious person. People’-he said

  ‘serious people.’ And he’d be in touch about the delivery.”

  “Floral?”

  “No, I think I’m the deliverer. Of this thing I have that doesn’t belong to me.

  He had a hard voice-nasty, even through the hankie.”

  “Hell, then give it to him.”

  “I haven’t got it. I think I haven’t.” I extricated myself and reached for an imaginary cigarette.

  “Maybe this has something to do with Jack Lenihan. Are you going to call Bowman?”

  I struck an imaginary match and took a deep drag. “In the morning. Ned���s unconscious at this hour.”

  He straightened out the covers, looking solemn. “This thing you’re supposed to have-maybe it’s what Jack Lenihan was killed for.”

  “That passed through my mind.”

  “Are you still interested in Guadeloupe? We could drive down to Kennedy and be there in time for an early morning flight, be on the beach by noon.”

  “No, now I’m curious.”

  “Nnn.”

  “Look, let me spend a few days clearing up this obvious misunderstanding, and then it’ll be the weekend and we can get the hell off this ice floe for a couple of weeks-fly away and really thaw out. Were you serious about that?”

  A little silence. Then: “I guess not. I can’t now. Not while the legislature’s in session. You know that.”

  I stared over at him for a few seconds, and then I physically assaulted him.

  He fought back, in his way, and I didn’t mind. Hudson Valley winters were not a total loss.

  THREE

  The schools were closed, the Capitol and state offices shut down. Eighteen inches of new snow had fallen overnight on top of the foot that had dropped the night before. WGY described a front that had stalled unexpectedly. I called them up and said it certainly hadn’t surprised me, and they thanked me for my interest. While Timmy fixed his Wheatena I ran my three eggs through the blender with a pint of orange juice. Each of us found the other’s early morning culinary habits nauseating, so we stayed on separate sides of the kitchen.

  I phoned Ned Bowman at Division 2 headquarters, where he’d just come in.

  “What have you come up with on Jack Lenihan’s death?”

  “No, no, Strachey, I’m the police officer, you’re the material witness. I want you in my office at one P.M. promptly. I want to run over this thing with you one more time at least. Lenihan was one of yours, you know, which gets me to thinking. Oh yes, he was definitely one of yours.”

  “I’m childless, so far as I know. Briget, my ex, liked to confide in me, in spite of everything, and she would have mentioned that.”

  “You know what I mean, damn well you do. You met Lenihan at some swish tea party last summer at Mr. Herbert Brinkman’s house in Niskayuna. You knew the body was Lenihan’s last night, but you didn’t mention it to me, and I demand to know why. One o’clock, on the dot.”

  “You’re wrong about my recognizing Lenihan, but otherwise
, Ned, you’ve been quick and you’ve been thorough. This is unprecedented and I’m impressed. Is there anything from the medical examiner yet?”

  “No, except that Lenihan is certifiably dead. Fucking geniuses look at a six-foot icicle and say, ‘That man will never bowl again.’ I’ll get a report later today that might have a little more in it to go on.”

  “Has Warren Slonski been notified? He’s Lenihan’s lover, or was as of last summer-which, incidentally, was the first and last time I ever saw Lenihan.”

  “You mean has Slonski been questioned, and the answer is yes. I caught him early before he left for work this morning. Of course, he’d already heard about it on the media, he says. Sort of a stuck-up prick, this Slonski-Mr. Pretty Boy. He claims he hasn’t seen Lenihan since Christmas, but I’ll be checking that out. He was not what I would call entirely cooperative.”

  Bowman’s idea of “entirely cooperative” was a man who brought along a certified stenographer to take down his own confession. I thought, I should have gotten there first. To break the news in a decent way, to find out what I could before Slonski got turned off by the clubfoot crew, and of course to cast eyes on “Mr. Pretty Boy.”

  I said, “I received a phone call that might be connected to Lenihan’s death.

  I’ll tell you about it when I see you at one.”

  “You’ll tell me now.”

  “No, it can wait. Are the roads passable? I might need to do some moving around today. When can I get my car back? If the city of Albany wants to lease it for five bills a week that’s one thing, but-”

  “What do you mean, you got a phone call? This is a criminal-”

  “One o’clock.” I hung up. The phone rang fifteen seconds later. “It’s Bowman, but don’t answer it. I don’t want to talk to him again until I’ve checked on a couple of things.”