Текст книги "On the Other Hand, Death"

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Dot was back in her car and turning east onto Western Avenue. Traffic was light and she swung out into the four-lane thoroughfare with no difficulty.

"You hear that, Conway?" Bowman barked into his microphone. "Boyce? Salazar? It's Price Chopper, back down Western."

"Got it, Lieutenant."

"We heard."

"On the way."

The parking lot of the all-night supermarket was practically deserted. Dot had pulled directly up to the pay phone near the brightly lighted entrance. Again she climbed out and stood by the telephone with her picnic basket. The phone rang.

"Yes, hello?"

Now we could hear only Dot's voice, the tap not yet completed.

"Yes, yes, I understand."

Bowman muttered, "Repeat it for us, lady. Repeat it."

"Yes," Dot said. "I'll do that right away."

Dot hung up and entered the supermarket, the basket dangling from her arm. Her voice came out of the radio speaker again.

"He told me—I hope you can hear me, Lieutenant Bowman. The man told me to go inside the store and

to ... to buy a chuck steak. That's what he said. And then to go back outside and wait by the telephone."

Bowman writhed in his seat. "A chuck steak. Shit. He couldn't have said a chuck steak. Strachey, is the old doll hard of hearing, or what?"

"Not that I know of. I'd say no, she isn't."

"Oh, my land!" Dot's voice again. "My word, I didn't bring a cent with me. All I have is the money in the basket! Well, that will just have to do. Let's hope they can't count."

Bowman squirmed some more, shook his head. "I don't believe this is happening."

"I've got the steak," Dot said after a minute. "It's a bit fatty, but fine for stew. The roasts look nice, but the man said steak, so steak it is."

From our position across the highway we watched a dark blue Dodge identical to Bowman's pull into the Price Chopper lot, come to a stop at the edge of the woods on the western side of the lot, and douse its lights.

A young, tired female voice said, "That's four sixty-seven."

There was a pause, during which Dot's heartbeat quickened.

"Don't you have anything smaller than a hundred?" the cashier asked wearily.

"No, I'm sorry– Oh! Aren't those nice little TV sets! Just what I need for the den. I believe I'll just take one of those along. How much are they?"

"Eighty-nine ninety-five. There'd be sales tax on that too."

"Oh. Yes. And how much would that make it?"

A silence. Then: "Ninety-five thirty-four for the TV. And four sixty-seven for the meat."

"Fine," Dot said. "That's just fine."

Click, click, ring.

"That'll be one hundred dollars and one cent."

The heartbeat again. I thought I detected a slight mitral valve prolapse.

"Oh, heavenly days, I seem to have only another—"

"Forget the penny," the young woman said.

"Oh, thank you. Thank you so much."

"Have a nice night."

"Yes. You too."

She came into view again, the picnic basket over her right arm, a grocery bag clutched in her right fist. Her left hand grasped the handle of a small portable television set.

Dot quickly placed the TV set in the back seat of her car, then went and stood by the phone again. She said, "Do any of you have a hundred dollars? What if they count it?"

Bowman froze, but Dot made no move away from the phone.

A minute went by.

"Where the hell are they?" Bowman rasped. "What kind of crazy goddamn treasure-hunt-of-a-stunt are they pulling this time?"

The phone rang, startling all of us.

"Hello?"

Then another voice on the police radio: "Phone company's got it, Lieutenant. We're patching."

"Do it."

"—and go home. And take all those fuckin' cops with you!

"But there are no policemen with me. As you can see– Can you see me? I'm alone. I wouldn't let them come."

"You just do like I said, missus!"

"Is Fenton nearby? Are you releasing him now?"

"Just do what I said."

"All right. I'm doing it now." Dot hugged the receiver between her neck and shoulder so that both hands were free. She bent down, took the package of meat out of the grocery bag and seemed to unwrap it. "I'm placing the meat in the basket," she said. "And now I'm putting the basket down on the pavement by the phone."

Bowman and I both said it at once—"A dog!"—as the form shot out of the woods on the eastern edge of the parking lot, snatched up the basket handle between its teeth, and hurtled back across the tarmac and into the deep woods.

"Oh, my stars!" we heard Dot shout. "Get back here with that! Get back here, you damnable mutt!"

She was exclaiming only to herself and to us. The phone line had gone dead.

"Salazar, around the block! Boyce, you follow me! There's a street on the other side of those woods!"

We sped down Western a third of a mile, then hooked sharply left onto a side residential street that paralleled the woods the dog had run into. The street dead-ended after a block, and the woods spread out to the left and right. We couldn't see the end of them in any direction.

We leaped from the car and stood listening. We heard peepers.

While Bowman and the eight or ten other patrol cars that suddenly materialized rushed pell-mell up and down the streets and back roads of Guilderland, I jogged back to the Price Chopper parking lot. Dot was seated in the driver's seat of her car, the radio on, tuned to WAMC. The midnight jazz show was on, with Art Tatum playing "Sweet Lorraine."

I climbed into the car and we sat and listened for a few minutes. Neither of us spoke. When the song ended, we exchanged seats and I drove us back to Dot's house. Edith

was waiting in the kitchen, and we all had a sandwich and a beer.

No one said much. Dot and Edith were exhausted, defeated. I was watching the clock, and waiting.

22

• At one-twenty the patrolman guarding the Fisher farmhouse received a call from Bowman inquiring whether Dot had gotten home safely. He was informed that she had. Bowman reported that no trace of the kidnappers, the dog, or the basketful of meat and money had been found, but that the woods and streets in a six-square-mile area were being combed. As the patrolman passed this information on to me, I heard a helicopter roar overhead.

At 1:25 a.m., with the temperature at 80 degrees, Dot and Edith went out for a dip in the pond. They wore bathing suits this time.

At exactly one-thirty I dialed Newell Bankhead's number. The line was busy. I got hold of the operator and informed her that Mr. Bankhead's grandmother had been killed when the bus she'd been riding in plunged over a cliff on the outskirts of Katmandu, and would the operator please interrupt Bankhead's conversation? She grilled me according to phone company protocol, duly noted my lies, was gone for a few seconds, and then put Bankhead on the line.

"Newell, I'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but your grandmother Ruby Gentry was killed when the bus she'd been riding in plunged over a cliff on the outskirts of Katmandu."

He chuckled. "My, my. Sorry to hear it."

"I thought you'd want to know. So, what did you find out?"

"Six people hung up on me, and several others hung up on some friends of mine who called around. But I've got a list that's pretty complete, I think. There are fifty-eight names. Do you want to write them down?"

"I'm set. All these people work in pathology or in ER, and they're all gay?"

"These are the ones we're sure of. I've got another list of eighteen deep closet cases we can't be certain about but would be willing to bet money on."

"I'll take them all, cat owners first."

"We came up with sixteen of those. There are sure to be more, but these are the ones we know about."

"Shoot."

Bankhead dictated the list and I copied it down in my notebook, filling five pages. Several of the names I recognized from the earlier list he'd given me at his apartment.

When he'd finished, I said, "I know I didn't ask you this before, Newell, but on the off chance you can help me out, what about dogs?"

He chortled lewdly. "Eight or ten of them are absolute dogs, honey, but I thought you wanted this list for a kidnapping case."

"Ha, ha. Dog owners, Newell. As with the cats."

"I really don't know a lot of these people, but hold on a sec." He hummed the theme from A Summer Place while he perused his list.

"Here's one," he said. "Martin Fiori has dogs and cats. I've been out to his place, and it's an absolute menagerie. "

"Oh, really? What kind of dogs? Are they trained?"

"Yes, I happen to know that they do do tricks. There are two poodles who can jump through a hoop, and a Pekinese who faints on command. Martin'll say, 'Have the

vapors, Patsy,' and the little pooch will roll right over and faint dead away. I'll tell you, it's an absolute scream."

"Martin doesn't sound promising. Who else have you got?"

"Let's see. Oh, here's one. Buddy Strunk has a dog. Some kind of mongrel, I remember. Real friendly. The sniffy type. Visitors to Buddy's apartment sit all evening with their legs locked together. But I don't think Buddy has a cat. No, no cat at Buddy's."

"Keep going."

"Dr. Vincent has a dog. And a cat."

"Who's he?"

"Dr. Charles Vincent. He's on the ER staff at Albany Med. He has a big bash once a year out at his place in Latham that I've gone to."

"What kind of dog? Do you remember his dog? A German shepherd maybe, or something else in the smart, mean department?"

"Gosh, I don't think so. I'd remember a big, ugly beast like that. I think Charles's dog is reddish. An Irish setter probably."

"Yeah, okay. I'll check that one. Who else?"

"Unn. I think that's about it, I'm afraid. There are probably lots of others. But you didn't ask about dogs. Just cats. So I didn't inquire."

"Crap. Okay. Well, this is something anyway."

"Oh, here's one more who doesn't have a dog or a cat that I know of, though he might. But his brother does. His brother trains dogs."

"Who's that? Tell me all about him."

"He's Duane Andrus, an aide in the Albany Med ER. His dad was a vet and used to run the Andrus Kennels out on Karner Road in Guilderland. The old man drank himself to death years ago, and then the brother—Glen, I think his name is—he's a security guard at Albany Med—"

"A security guard who wears a uniform?"

"Yes, he would."

"Go on. Tell me more."

"Well, Glen kept the kennels open for boarding after the old man died, until the place was shut down after the SPCA complained about bad treatment of the animals. The place was a real hellhole, from what I read. Filth, starvation, beatings. That was just last month, I think. Or late June maybe. It was in the papers. The only animal that came out of that place healthy was Glen's dog, the one he trains. Duane helped out out there, I know. Which doesn't surprise me. He's the type."

"The type for what?"

"Meanness, carelessness, flakiness. A real asshole."

"What else do you know about Duane?"

"That man is a criminal if there ever was one. Hustles his ass, and has a monumental coke habit, or so I hear. He's been in jail for assault, that I know for sure. Duane always seems to have money. He's got some sugar daddy in town, I'm told. He hangs around the pool table at the Watering Hole. He's mean, dumb, and ugly, but not nearly as ugly as he is mean and dumb, ha-ha. Hunky though, in his vulgar way. If that's the type you go for."

I let the tape play in my head again. I heard the voice, and the background noise. Friday night at the Watering Hole. The mean-looking cowboy whose pool shot McWhirter ruined. The one who smelled like the stockyards. Or a kennel.

I said, "You're a sweetheart, Newell. That's my man, I'm all but sure of it. Listen, is it possible that Duane Andrus would have been one of the people your friends called tonight? You didn't call him, did you?"

"Duane is really not my cup of tea, honey. I go for the strong silent type. Deep. Like Richard Gere. And no, I don't think anyone else would have called him either.

Duane is not exactly what you'd call approachable. Unless you've got a hundred-dollar bill in your hand."

"Newell, thank you. You've done something important tonight. If there's any justice, you'll get a shot at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall for this."

"Why, thank you, darlin'. I'll pack the place for sure if it's two-for-one on a Wednesday night."

I rang off and asked the patrolman guarding the farmhouse how I could get in touch with Bowman.

"The lieutenant said he was going up in the chopper. I hadn't better bother him now."

"Bother him," I said. "On this one, he'll have your ass if you don't."

I told the cop where I'd be and what I'd be doing and to relay the message to Bowman as rapidly as the department's bureaucracy could manage it.

I wanted a gun with me but couldn't take the time to drive all the way back to my office to pick up my Smith & Wesson. I dialed Lyle Barner's number. After ten rings I was about to hang up when he answered.

"Yeah? Who's this?"

"Don Strachey, Lyle. I need help. Now."

"Don– Oh. What's the problem, Don?" He sounded nicely relaxed and distracted. Too relaxed. I regretted doing this to him.

"I want you to meet me in fifteen minutes—ten, if you can—outside the Star Market at Western and Karner Road. Come armed."

"Hey, man, hey. I've got– There's someone with me.

"Get rid of him. I know who the kidnappers are and where they are. I'll need help. Bowman will turn up eventually. But I need a strong man who has experience with unruly types and can handle a gun, and I need him now."

"Oh, right, Don. Ten minutes. Star Market, Karner and Western."

The cop was in his car trying to raise someone on the radio when I pulled out of Dot's driveway and went pounding up Moon Road.

The lights were out at the Deem and Wilson households. I supposed they were all asleep, dreaming of untold wealth. The wealth that they would be within hours of collecting, were it not for my rushing out to Karner Road to take it away from them.

23

Lyle’s Trans Am roared into the Star

Market lot five minutes after I did. I was standing beside my car when he pulled up beside me.

"Listen, Don, let me explain something. It wasn't my idea—"

The passenger door on the other side of Lyle's car opened. A man stepped out and looked at me across the car roof. His face rang a bell.

"Hi, sport," I said. "Long time no see."

He gazed at me coolly.

"He insisted on coming," Lyle burbled on. "I mean, jeez, if I'd thought he was going to– I mean—"

My impulse was to flatten them both. Drag Lyle from the seat of his pretentious hotdogger's shitwagon and knock him the hundred yards over to Dunkin' Donuts and shove him into the artificial-vanilla-flavored cream machine. Then come back and kick the other one's ass down Western Avenue the six miles back to the apartment.

Instead, I strolled into Star Market, bought a gallon jug of spring water, brought it out, uncapped it, took a

swig, then poured the rest of it over my head. Ga-lug, ga-lug, ga-lug. The stuff wasn't particularly cooling, but it was wet and cooler than my body temperature, and it had its effect.

Lyle stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Timmy looked away, trying with everything he had not to laugh. Not that his newly hardened heart wasn't thudding inside his tank-topped chest.

Wiping my dripping face on my shirtfront, I said, "We'll go in my car. I'll explain on the way. Get in. Now."

They obeyed.

I drove past the kennels, a long, low white clapboard building with a pink and black closed sign stuck in the window of the main door. I parked a quarter mile down Karner Road, and the three of us hiked back toward the kennels. Twenty yards south of the building we entered the scrub pine woods and moved closer.

The front section of the building was in darkness, but from the woods we could see a light burning in a rear wing that had small slitlike windows running high up along its length.

With only one gun among us, we stayed together. We crept up to the side of an old dark green Pontiac parked in the rear yard, and then on to the wing, where we flattened ourselves against the wall.

Lyle and Timmy bent down and formed a two-sectioned platform with their backs, which I climbed up on and peered through the window. I saw no people, just a security guard's uniform hanging from a hook—that of the "cop" Mel Glempt had seen grabbing Peter—and a long row of metal cages lined against the wall opposite me.

The window I looked through was covered with rabbit wire but the glass was broken and half fallen away. The foulest stench I had smelled since south Asia hit me like an airborne sewage pit.

I climbed down.

Timmy whispered, "Catshit."

"Yeah. Catshit. And, even worse for Peter, cat fur."

Standing there, I had a picture burned into my mind of the filth-ridden cages I had just seen. I knew then how Peter Greco had died.

I doubled over and began to heave silently, but Timmy whispered, "Later! Later!" and I kept it down. It was a subject Timmy was such an expert on.

We moved to the rear corner of the wing and saw that thirty yards away a second one-story wing extended back from the main front building, and it too was lighted on the inside. We slowly crept toward it, and as we approached, the sound of voices came from one of the high windows. Lyle drew his revolver.

Again, I was raised up to peer inside, and I saw them. McWhirter, inside a stiff-wire dog cage, was bound with rope at his wrists and ankles, a gag in his mouth. Two men were just below me. I could see the bare right arm of one and heard the voice of the other, whose body was not within my visual range.

"Tell him they jewed us out of a hundred bucks," said the man with the arm. "Fuckin' dyke skimmed off a hundred. We oughtta go back there and bust her lip."

"Shut up, Glen. That don't matter!" said the voice of Duane Andrus. "Listen, baby, I want that fifty back within a week, or you are finished. You got that? I mean finished."

A long silence. Andrus apparently was speaking not to his brother but to someone on the telephone.

"Listen, I told you that was an accident, and I'm not gonna keep listening to you yap about that. The Greco guy was blindfolded and never would have recognized us, but this asshole's different—he's seen us—and what the fuck difference does it make? We're in it up to our tits now anyways, so you just shut your fuckin' pansy mouth!

Some big fuckin' help you've been anyways, so you just piss off! And you get me that fifty back, or your ass is fuckin' hamburger."

The receiver went down with a bang.

"He's such a worthless piece of shit, I don't know why ever—

"Shhhh!"

The low growl was no more than ten feet behind us.

"That's Brute," came a voice from inside the building.

None of us moved. None of them moved. The only sound was of the breathy, wet snarl, a pent-up animal rage gathering itself to explode. I turned my head slowly and saw it in the hazy moonlight. I knew they were usually trained to go for the neck, wrist, or groin, and I tried to decide which of those on me was expendable. I voted for wrist.

Focusing all my attention on the dog, I hadn't heard the movement inside the building, but suddenly a man I took to be Glen Andrus appeared around the back corner of the wing.

"Brute, kill!" he shouted, which was less original than "Have the vapors, Patsy," but more useful for the owner's purposes under the circumstances.

The beast hurtled toward our idiotic pyramid, and Lyle's gun thundered a bright charge into the night, its impact sending the dog cartwheeling through the air away from us. Our pyramid collapsed at the same moment, and Glen Andrus charged around the back of the other wing toward the Pontiac. Lyle took off after him. Timmy and I rushed around the corner of the wing where McWhirter was tied up inside.

I collided with Duane Andrus as he exploded out the door, and the two of us bounced off the door frame and found ourselves rolling together across the soft, warm, shit-littered earth. I wrestled him onto his back and was about to throttle him—not necessarily fatally, though it

could have happened—when his head came up and he clamped my left ear between his teeth. I worked my thumbs in hard against his esophagus. A continuous siren sounded inside my head and I heard a couple of sharp cracks that I thought might have been gunshots.

Andrus flailed at my lower back with his fists and bit harder with his teeth. Later, I could not remember feeling pain; there was just the sound, the shrieking of a siren a few inches outside my head, or a few inches inside it.

Timmy's hand hove into view. I knew that lovely a-little-too-well-manicured graceful thing with its soft blue veins as well as I knew my own. The hand was wrapped around a brick, which landed hard against Andrus's skull. He gagged, fell away from me, spit something bloody in my face, then lay moaning.

I stood up, felt sick, then squatted and lowered my head as Lyle came bounding around the corner of the building.

"You guys okay? I shot the other one in the ass. He's not going anywhere. Better call an ambulance."

McWhirter, whom Timmy had set free while I was tussling with Duane Andrus, staggered up to us, stooped and bent from having been tied up for eighteen hours.

He stammered, "They're not even cops! They're– they're worse."

"It can happen," Lyle said.

Timmy turned toward the kennels. "I'll call Bowman and the ambulance."

"You won't need to call anybody," I said, as the police helicopter roared into view above the woods off to the east. "But see if you can scare up a flashlight in there. I think I'm missing something."

Timmy was waiting when I was wheeled into my room at Albany Med. I was drugged up and didn't remember the conversation, but later he told me we had this exchange:

"I'll never leave you again," he said.

"I know, not for a minute. I was afraid of that."

"The doctor says you're going to be okay. He says it's back on. It'll look a little funny—not his words—but what the hell."

"Right. It'd be no fun for you trying to nibble at a hole in the side of my head."

"I told him that if the ear was too far gone, I knew where he could get hold of another spare appendage to sew onto your head in its place. When I said it, he didn't hoot with merriment."

"Plastic surgeons are not famous for their whimsicality. If they were, we'd all have faces like Valentino's. And cocks like Lyle's."

He laughed nervously and said, "In your left ear."

I said, "Yeah. Thank God."

"You'll be out of here in two days, the doctor told me. The bandage will come off in a week."

"Two days? No way. That might be too late."

"Too late for what?"

Most of all, I wanted my strength back then. So I didn't reply. I just shut my eyes, and slept.

Through the night, I dreamed over and over again about a conversation I'd had two nights earlier in the bar at the Albany Hilton.

24

• I opened the bedside drawer and took

out my watch, which a nurse or aide had thoughtfully left for me along with my wallet and keys. It was ten-fifteen. It had to be morning, because the sun was blazing in at me yet again.

Tossing aside the thin sheet that covered me, I swung

my legs over the side of the bed and let my feet touch the metal stool below as I pushed myself upright.

My head throbbed. I touched the bandage wrapped around my skull and the bulge of packing on the left side. I stood up, felt light-headed, blinked, and made the faintness go away. Holding on to the tubular sides of the other unoccupied bed in the room, I made my way to a narrow door. It was not the clothes closet, but I made use of the appliance therein nonetheless and then splashed tepid water on my face.

The clothes closet was behind the door next to the lavatory, but my clothes were not in it and I knew I was going nowhere in my hospital nightie with its little bow holding it together.

I removed the sheets from both beds and fashioned one into an East Indian dhoti, a kind of bulky loincloth, in the manner Timmy had once shown me. Whoever said nothing much tangible had ever come out of the Peace Corps was mistaken. Another sheet I wrapped around my waist skirt-fashion, and a third around my torso with a long flap hanging over my shoulder. I ripped the sewn-up end off a pillow case and made a crude skull cap to cover my bandages.

Snatching a long-stemmed plastic rose from the vase on the windowsill, I shuffled out into the corridor and down to the nurses' station.

"Hare Krishna," I said happily, and offered the rose.

"You people are not supposed to be up here! You're supposed to stay downstairs in the lobby, and you know it!"

I was ushered swiftly to the elevator.

Timmy, ever-dutiful peon to the tattered gentry in the legislature, was not in the apartment and evidently had gone to work. It was Monday morning.

I put on American clothes, had a quart of grapefruit

juice and two bowls of Wheat Chex, and phoned Dot Fisher.

"Get your money back?"

"Oh, Don, yes, yes, I did! I'm so relieved, I can't begin to tell you. I have an appointment with Mr. Trefusis at three o'clock, and I'm going over there to Millpond and just dump the whole gosh-darn bag of money right on his desk. And, let me tell you, I've never looked forward to anything this much in all my days!"

"Mind if I tag along?"

"But you're in the hospital, aren't you? Fenton said you injured your ear fighting with those dreadful men."

"It wasn't serious," I said. "I let a doctor use my head as a darning egg for an hour last night, but now I'm practically good as new. I'll pick you up at two-thirty."

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact, that would be lovely. But I've got to run now, Don. Fenton's out back holding a press conference."

"Sorry I'm missing it, but I'll catch it on the news tonight. I'm sure he's saying something quotable."

"Oh, he is, he is."

I reached Bowman at his office.

"Whozzis?" he snarled. The man hadn't had his weekend golf fix, or sleep.

"Strachey here. Those two lovelies locked up?"

"One's in jail, the other one's over there where you are, under guard. You just couldn't wait last night, could you?"

"You were up in the sky. The criminals were down on the ground where I was. But I knew you were with me in spirit, Ned. As is so often the case."

"That son of a bitch should've chewed your mouth off. What a service to the community that would've been. You okay?"

"I'll dance again. Look, what did the Andruses tell you. They spill it all?"

"Nothing but bullshit. Duane said they'd just come out to the kennel and found McWhirter there and were about to phone the department when you guys walked in and shot their dog. And Glen won't say a goddamn thing. They've got lawyers now, and before the day's done they'll all be in bed together making up the same stories. But we've got our case. It's tight. Duane's handwriting on the ransom notes, his voice on the tapes, and McWhirter's testimony will do it."

"Did they mention who put them up to it?"

"Whaddaya mean? Why do you ask that?"

I described the telephone conversation I'd overheard at the kennel window. I did not include my own speculation about who the third party was, nor the evidence that had led me to arrive at this thought.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?"

"I was unconscious. As you will recall, just as you dropped out of the sky last night, I swooned. At the sight of your descent from heaven, I guess."

"The way I heard it, you fainted when you found your ear in your pants cuff."

"Yeah, that might have been the way it happened. I forget. Did you recover all the money?"

"No. Just a hundred and a half. Tell me again about this phone conversation you heard. I want to write it down."

I recited it again.

"The third guy's got the rest of the money," I said. "That's why the Andruses are keeping mum. You've got to convince them that with kidnapping and manslaughter, even involuntary, they're going to be off the streets for a long, long time. And there's no point in their waiting to get out to collect the rest of the money. Tell them with the inflation rate what it is, by the time they're free the fifty grand will be worth about a dollar thirty-five."

"Thanks for telling me my business."

"No trouble. What else did you find out at the kennel?"

"A lot of crap, and I mean crap. Dope too. In the room up front where Duane lived we found an ounce of coke."

"Any papers, letters, addresses, phone numbers?"

"An address book with some names and numbers the department is already familiar with. The narcotic squad has been building a case against certain persons, and Andrus's list will come in handy. The boys over there are grateful to me."

"Right, Ned. You did such a bang-up job on this case. Incidentally, I ran across information that Duane Andrus was peddling his ass, and had some kind of sugar daddy who must have kept him in nose candy. Did you find any evidence to support that?"

"Andrus's room did look like some kind of fag brothel. Little bottles of that chemical you people stuff up your nose, dirty movies, and picture books full of male beaver. No offense, Strachey, but I have to tell you, it made me want to puke."

"For men, you don't say 'beaver,' Ned. If it's male you call it 'wombat.'"

"Oh."

"What else was out there?"

"Nothing incriminating or otherwise of interest. There were five bottles of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion. What the hell's that for?"

"Lotta dry skin, Ned. It's for people who work in air-conditioned places, like Albany Med."

"How long you gonna be laid up over there, anyway? Not more than six months, I hope."

"Don't know. I'm just taking it a day at a time. I'll watch the soaps, feel up the orderlies, follow doctors' orders."

"One true fact out of three. That's not bad for you, Strachey."

I gave him some improbable advice, then hung up. I was looking up an address in the phone book when the phone beside me rang.

"Yah-loo."

"Is this the . . . Donald Strachey residence?" She pronounced it "Strakey."

"Mista Strakey inna hospital. This-a his mamma."

"Uh . . . this is Annabelle Clooney at Albany Medical Center. I'm sure there's no need to be concerned, but we're having trouble locating Mr. Strakey. He has been admitted as a surgical patient here, yes, but he's . . . he's not in his room."

"Oh, that boy! I'm gonna take a strap to him! When you find 'im, you call me and I'm comin' over there and box his ears! One of 'em, anyway. The other one's still sore. You tell 'im that!"