Текст книги "Death Trick "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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"Good. Stay with your friend until I've been in touch again, okay? You could be in danger if you're anywhere near that house, so will you stay away from the house until you've checked with me?"

"Yes, but—who's doing this?"

"I don't know. I think I know, but I'm not sure. When I know for sure, I'll tell you. And I'll let you know about Sunday."

"You can reach me at the office on Friday."

"I'll do that."

It was the goddamn phone book. Bowman should have

confiscated it. I should have taken it from Blount's apartment before some lunatic with a lethal contempt for Billy Blount's friends had gotten hold of it and used the listings-by-number directory to locate Chris, Mark, Huey, and—Zimka? He hadn't been bothered. I guessed I knew why.

I reached Huey Brownlee at his work number. "Huey, Don Strachey. Would you mind moving into my apartment for a couple of days?"

"Heh, heh."

"No, I won't be there. Sorry to say. It's all those phone calls you were getting—have you gotten any more?"

"Yeah, three last night. I was gonna call you. Fuckin' motherfucker. I'm just waitin' for him to show up, Donald."

"Huey, if you don't get out of there, you could be in for some trouble from a very dangerous screwball, the man who killed Steve Kleckner. Will you do it?"

"Say, you ain't shittin' me, Don?"

"I am not," I said, and he reluctantly agreed to move over to Morton Avenue. I gave him the address, told him where to find the key, and said I'd see him on the weekend.

I phoned Mark Deslonde at Sears. "Mark—Don Strachey, I have a funny question that isn't really funny. Have you gotten any weird phone calls in the last few days?"

"No, have you?"

"You haven't?"

"No, but I haven't been home. I moved in with Phil– Saturday night."

Another peripatetic gay male. The killer must have been having one hell of a time locating a victim at home in his own bed. I said, "Oh. It's that serious with you and Phil?"

"Yep."

"Well—I approve. Entirely."

"Entirely?"

I said, "Well, you know. But yes."

He said, "I know."

"Are you going to Trucky's tonight? I'll see you."

"We'll be there."

We'll. "Great. Us too. Look, do something for me. Whatever happens with you and Phil—and I do wish you all the best– whatever happens—I mean even if one of you has an attack of

second thoughts or whatever—do not move back into your apartment until you check with me. Will you do that?"

"Sure. I guess so. But why?"

"It has to do with the Kleckner killing. There's nothing to worry about if you just stay away from the apartment with your phone in it. Look, I'll explain it all in a few days. Will you just do what I say?"

Deslonde told me he would do what I said, although, as it happened, he did not.

I made coffee on my hot plate. I thought about going out for cigarettes. I went back to my desk. I looked up Frank Zimka's number and stared at it. I thought about calling him, but I concluded that I'd probably be tipping him off, so I didn't call. Instead I slit open the envelope Zimka had given me for Billy Blount.

The letter was handwritten on old, yellowing, three-ring notebook paper.

My Dear loving friend Billy,

I don't know where to get in touch with you, but the guy who is giving you this letter said he would give it to you. I miss you so much. Even though our relationship is quite strange, it has meant so much to me, as I told you many times. Is it an impossible dream that we will be together again one day? I don't think that is too much to hope for in this life, though sometimes I think it is, and I don't know what is going to happen to me. I guess I'm just a real crazy fuck-up. When I think about our relationship, I get depressed, but I am willing to continue it if the opportunity presents itself. I hope you are happy and healthy, and whatever befalls, remember that someone loves you. It makes me joyous just to be able to write that

With all my LOVE,

Frank

(Eddie, ha ha)

Eddie again. The name in the record shop and the name in the Blounts' letter to Billy. Zimka was Eddie? I had to talk to the Blounts, both senior and junior.

I phoned Timmy at his office.

It looks as if I am going to Denver tomorrow. I'll know for sure by the end of the day."

"Did your friend in L.A. call back?"

"Not yet. But he'll come through. Harvey is relentless."

"Have you ever been to Denver? You'll go for it."

"I spent twenty years in Salt Lake City one summer, but that's the extent of my acquaintanceship with the mountain states."

"Denver's a nice town. And it's not called the Queen City of the Rockies for no good reason."

"A mile-high San Francisco."

"Hardly that, but still—nice. Lots of opportunities for immorality."

"In your ear."

"I hope you've spent a moral morning. If so, you're on your way. Did you know that after twelve years your soul heals, like your lungs after you've quit smoking?"

"What about immoral thoughts? Do they count? I had one awhile ago."

"Hey, now you've got the idea! Yes, they count. But not as much as deeds."

I said, "By the way, Mark and Phil are now living together. I called Mark to find out if he'd been getting funny phone calls like Huey Brownlee's. Margarita Mayes has been getting them too, and somebody tried to break into her and Chris's house last night. I suggested they stay away from their apartments for a few days, and that's when Mark told me. I'm worried."

"They're a good pair—it should work. Is it Zimka you're worried about?"

"I think so, yes. The only thing I'm sure of is they're all connected in some messy, volatile way—Kleckner, Blount, Zimka, Truckman, Chris Porterfield, Stuart Blount, Jane Blount—the lot. And then there's this Eddie—the wild card." I told him about the two letters, from the Blounts to their son, and from Zimka to Blount. "I'm seeing the Blounts at one. Maybe they'll clear things up, out of character as that might be for them." Then I told him what I had decided to do that night.

"Do you want me to go with you? And bring the Leica?"

"Yeah. I do. Wear your track shoes."

"Am I gay, or am I gay?"

Soon after I hung up, the mail arrived. There was a thank-you note on a little engraved card from "Mrs. Hugh Bigelow." A lapsed feminist. That was depressing, but I guessed everybody found a way. Also among the bills and clutter was an envelope with a check for two thousand dollars from Stuart Blount. I signed it over to the Rat's Nest Legal Defense Fund and stuck it in my wallet along with Mike Truckman's check.

At a quarter to twelve Harvey Geddes called from Los Angeles. He'd spent most of the night, he said, trying to track down someone with a current address for Kurt Zinsser of the FFF, and after driving from West Hollywood to Santa Monica to Venice and back to Hollywood again, he'd found it. I wrote down the phone number and the building and apartment number on a street in Denver. I told Harvey I owed him one, and he agreed.

I trekked up Central to Elmo's in search of nourishment to gird myself for a visit with the Stuart Blounts, of State Street and Saratoga.

16

"Another thousand?" blount said, "well—i suppose.

You know your business, Mr. Strachey. Of course, I will be needing an itemized statement of expenses at some future point in time. For tax purposes, you understand."

We were seated in our customary places in the Blount salon, the missus sucking daintily on her long white weed, Blount pere eyeing me gravely across his early-American checkbook. I'd thought about asking for twenty-five thousand but concluded that that would be pushing it. He forked over the grand, and I snatched it up.

"May I ask," he said, "where you'll be flying to tomorrow, Mr. Strachey?"

I said, "Caracas."

His eyebrows went up. Hers did not. She said, "We're being taken for a ride."

"I beg your pardon?""

"Stuart, he's playing us for a fool, and you're not stopping him."

I said, "I have the address where your son is staying. I received it from a contact in Los Angeles an hour and twenty minutes ago. I'll be with Billy tomorrow night."

"Billy's not in Argentina!" she snapped. "What do you take us for?"

I said, "Venezuela. Caracas is in Venezuela."

Blount said, "Mr. Strachey, really—how on earth could Billy have—"

"Who is Eddie?" I said.

She gave Blount an I-told-you-so look. He sighed, not so much at my question, I guessed, as at her look.

"Mr. Strachey," Jane Blount said, "have you ever heard it said that gentlemen do not read other gentlemen's mail?"

"I've heard it said, yes. Henry Stimson is usually credited with the line, or is it Liz Smith? Anyway, who is Eddie? Billy will tell me when I see him, I expect, so why don't you save me a small expenditure of energy and yourself the financial expense of my remaining an additional ten minutes in—Caracas. Okay?"

"Why must you know about Eddie, Mr. Strachey?" Blount said. "It is, I'm sorry to say, a private family matter."

"Because Eddie is a part of the puzzle. I'll know which part when I know who or what he is. The safety of three or more people could depend on my knowing."

Jane Blount shot smoke in the air. Her husband shifted in his chair and made an impatient face. "Eddie is a separate matter, Mr. Strachey. Truly, he is. You must believe that. He's got nothing to do with this situation Billy's gotten himself into. You have my personal assurance on that. Can you accept that? Can you?" He looked at me imploringly.

I said, "I might have if it weren't for the fact that Eddie's name has cropped up elsewhere in my travels."

They looked at me. Jane Blount said, "Where?"

"Does the name Frank Zimka mean anything to you?"

He said, "No."

She said, "Lord, no! Zim-ka? It sounds Polish!"

I said, "He's a friend of Billy's. An acquaintance."

"And he knows Eddie?" she said, looking queasy.

I said, "I'm one of the few people left in Albany who knows nothing about Eddie—next to nothing. Now, who the bloody hell is Eddie?"

I startled them.

She said, "He's—he's Billy's favorite uncle."

What shit. I said, "Tell me more."

"Stuart's brother Eddie—Billy and he were so close when Billy was young, it was quite touching, really. And then Eddie went away. He's in shipping, you see." Mistah Kurtz. "Uncle Eddie lived in the Levantine for many years, but recently he returned to this country, and Stuart and I thought he might exert his good influence with Billy so that Billy could finally be straightened out. So to speak. Don't you think there's good sense in that, Mr. Strachey? Some sound counsel from a wise and sophisticated and much-loved uncle?"

Straightened out. I thought about dropping the Sewickley Oaks business on them, but that would have been showing off, and in any case I had my own plans for that particular side of the equation.

"Well, why didn't you just tell me that in the first place? Is Uncle Eddie a leper? a syphilitic? a Pole? What's the big secret?"

Blount was sitting with his head back and his eyes squeezed shut. I'd have felt sorry for him if I hadn't known what a dangerous man he was.

Jane Blount said, "Uncle Eddie is—a socialist."

"In shipping?"

"Yes."

"Well, he's no idealogue."

"No," she said. "At least he's not that."

They were hopeless. I'd find out what I had to from my own sources, including their son, for whom there was evidence of sanity, even good sense. That sometimes happened in families.

I said, "When I see Billy tomorrow, I'm sure he'll be happy to hear about Uncle Eddie's being back. The news should make my job that much easier."

She took on a confused look. Her husband appeared as if,

while his wife and I chatted, he'd slipped on his death mask. I waited.

In her embarrassment Jane Blount turned surly. "Just bring Billy back here to Albany, Mr. Strachey. That's what Stuart's paid you a good deal of money to do. Bring Billy to this house—our home and his—and you'll be paid a cash bonus. You haven't asked for that, I know, but I feel confident that you will accept it." She looked at me as if I were the Lindbergh kidnapper.

I got up to leave, and Stuart Blount sprang to life. The missus excused herself, swooped into the foyer, deposited her ashtray in the maid's waiting mitt, and ascended the stairs. Blount walked me to the front door and out onto the stoop. He closed the door behind us.

He breathed deeply and said, "Eddie is an old school friend of Billy's. From the Elwell School. They were quite close." I guessed what that meant. "The boys have been out of touch for a number of years, and now Eddie is back in the area and Jane and I thought Billy might be more eager to come back to us if he knew we would reunite him with Eddie. Call it blackmail if you like, Mr. Strachey, but remember that we're doing it for our only son, whom we love very much. Is it all right now? Have I reassured you?

"You have," I said. "I'd like to meet Eddie. Could you arrange it? He might be able to clear some things up for me in connection with the killing."

He put his arm on my shoulder and spoke in a fatherly way. "Mr. Strachey, I appreciate the special interest you've taken in this matter, I sincerely do. But, truth to tell, don't you feel that that end of the situation would best be left to our police department? There are detectives who are paid good salaries to carry out the work that you seem to have taken on– at my expense!" He shook with mirth and waited for me to join him.

"I've been in touch with one of those highly paid detectives," I said, "and although the man does, I suppose, have his virtues—dedication, cleanliness, perhaps thrift—he definitely is on the wrong track on this case. My sorting through this Eddie business just might point us all in the right direction, the

police included. And I can't put it to you too strongly, Mr. Blount, that a speedy resolution to all this lethal craziness could just possibly save people's lives. That has to be a part of what we're about here."

He gazed off into the park. I followed his eyes and saw a jogger stop and talk to a young man standing beside his bicycle.

Blount looked back at me and said, "No. I'm sorry, but I'll have to give you a firm no on that. It's Eddie's parents, you see. They've become friends of Jane's and mine, and I've given them my word. They are looking after Eddie's best interests, and I can certainly appreciate that. The boy has just moved back to this area and is working hard to establish himself, and his parents are quite insistent that Eddie not be brought into this extremely anxiety-provoking situation of Billy's. It is a separate matter, as I've pointed out, Mr. Strachey, and, I have to insist, an entirely private one. I'm sorry. The answer to your request is no."

The jogger and the bicyclist walked off together.

I said, "Eddie just moved back to this area recently? How recently?" I was confused again.

Blount said, "I simply am not at liberty to discuss Eddie's situation. I'm so sorry."

"All right, then," I said. "I'll do what I can with what I've got. I'll do it the hard way. I'll be in touch, Mr. Blount."

I left him standing there and walked up State Street.

I picked up the Rabbit on Central and drove down to the Dunn Bridge, across the river, and east on Route 20 toward Massachusetts.

The erratic weather had failed to bring out the colors of the foliage that year, and as I approached the Berkshires, the hills were drab even under the bright sky. When I reached Lenox after an hour's drive, a low cloud cover had slid in, and the place had a desolate November feeling to it, with Thanksgiving still more than a month away.

I got directions at a colonial-style Amoco station and found the Elwell School down the road from Tanglewood, which was shut down for the season, a chain across the gate with the big lions on posts. Like Tanglewood, the Elwell School was a

disused turn-of-the-century estate, its monumental-frilly Beaux Arts main building looking like a miniature Grand Central Station. Most of the Berkshire prep schools had gone under in recent years—Cranwell, Foxhollow, the Lenox School—and Elwell had the look of a place clinging to life. A fancy sconce beside the main door rested on the gravel driveway, smashed, and had been replaced on the stone wall above it with a vertical fluorescent tube of the type found beside motel bathroom mirrors. An oval window had been filled in with plywood.

In the headmaster's office, I showed my ID to a pleasant woman in a cardigan sweater and said I was trying to trace the whereabouts of a dear old friend of my client. She led me down a high-ceilinged corridor and unlocked a door which led into a small, windowless room the size of a storage closet. This, she said, was the alumni office. I wouldn't be allowed access to the alumni files, but I was welcome to look through the yearbooks and newsletters. And if I found the man I was looking for, the woman said, the school would forward mail, provided it had a current address on file. She switched on the ceiling light and left me there.

I went through the 1971 yearbook, making a list of all the Edwins and Edwards. There were seven, as well as one Eduardo. Billy Blount was neither pictured nor mentioned as a graduating senior or as an underclassman.

Blount did show up in the 1970 volume, grinning sleepily and a bit warily at the camera–not, however, among the graduating class photos, but on a separate page at the back of the book for seniors who had not completed the school year. There were two other boys as well who had dropped out. One was a Clarence Henchman, of Westfield, New Jersey, who looked as if he were coming down with mononucleosis. The other nongraduating senior was Edwin Storrs, of Loudonville, New York. There was a hurt, frightened look in his' eyes, and his blandly handsome teenage male model's face was that of a relatively fresh and unsullied Frank Zimka.

17

I WAS BACK IN ALBANY BY FIVE. I CONSIDERED SETTING UP

another quick meeting with the Blounts. Either they had concocted an elaborate lie and had fed it to me coolly and systematically, using their great goofy sense of theater, or their friends the Storrs of Loudonville had lied to them about the present whereabouts and condition of their son Eddie, or there was another explanation that might boldly present itself once I could sit down with Billy Blount, the one figure in the whole cast of characters who knew things the rest of us didn't. I'd be seeing Blount within twenty-four hours, and I decided to forgo another session of drawing-room farce with the senior Blounts and wait until I got to Denver.

I drove out to Timmy's on Delaware and let myself in, then phoned my service to let them know where I was. I'd had one call during the afternoon, from Sergeant Ned Bowman of Albany PD, with the message, "Not Trailways either, pal. See me."

I called my own apartment to see if Huey Brownlee had gotten in all right. He said he had and asked if I minded if he invited a friend over. I said I didn't mind. I felt a little spasm of jealousy in my thighs and frontal lobes, but nothing heavy and it didn't last.

Timmy came in just after six. I gave him the two checks, one from Truckman for two hundred and one from Stuart Blount for two thousand.

"Blount is the anonymous donor? Holy mother! Well, you never know."

I said, "Make sure he and the missus receive a thank-you note. They're attentive to the social niceties and expect others to respond in kind. Have the alliance mail it to his office."

"Done. This is terrific. They'll make a great addition to our fat-cat hit list."

"Mm."

"Before we go to Trucky's tonight, a bunch of us are

dropping by the Rat's Nest. Do you want to come along? Nordstrum needs the business—he's strung out and afraid he's not going to weather this thing financially. We can buy his booze and cheer him up."

"I don't know—oh, I guess so. That place is liable to grate on my Presbyterian sensibilities."

He'd been getting a beer from the refrigerator. He stopped and stood there with the refrigerator door open. "Tell me about your Presbyterian sensibilities," he said. "I want to hear this. How do they work? Describe them. First ethical, then esthetic."

"That's too fine a distinction for me to make. To me it's all one big ball of wax."

He said, "That's about it." He shut the door, popped the tab on his Bud. "You'll trick people and use people, Don, but when it comes to a little mindless fucking around, where everybody's motives are up front and nothing of emotional consequence gets invested, you put on your big moral floor show for the uplift and edification of the sinners." A swig of beer and a muttered, "Damn Protestants."

"Oh, is that what I just did? I must have missed it. I would have described what I just said as an expression of mildly queasy indifference. Anyway, I haven't seen you trotting out there to Nordstrum's blurry grotto to get your pants pulled down by some inky form with trench mouth and cold hands– somebody's idea of a fun evening in the suburbs. Or have you?"

"Of course not. I might go to hell."

"Ahhh."

"But that's not the point. We were talking about you and your bizarre double standard."

"You mean Harold Snyder. He's what this is all about. That really got to you, didn't it? I'm never going to hear the end of it, never. When you're seventy-seven and I'm seventy-nine—"

"Eighty."

"—whatever. When we're both tottering on the brink, you're going to be reminding me, aren't you? You'll have it put on my goddamn gravestone: 'Donald Strachey—1939-2009– Once Fucked a Drag Queen.' If you're so worried about poor Harold's ass, go comfort her, take care of her. Put her in a convent, spend the night with her, get her a screen test. You

figure it out. You deal with her. Me, I'm sick of thinking about it."

"Don, it's not Harold's ass I'm concerned about, it's her mind you fucked. She's pathetic and vulnerable, and you used her in an extremely hurtful way. It's the worst thing I know of that you've ever done."

I said, "That's not the way it happened. Not exactly."

"What do you mean?"

I thought about it. I said, "I'm not telling you. But it's not exactly the way you think it was. I'll tell you about it– Christmas eve." I didn't know why I said that. He'd remember it, the bastard, and bring it up while we were trimming the tree; he had the memory bank of a Univac 90/60.

He said, "I'm prepared to take your word for it that the thing you did wasn't as cruel as it seemed—or as cruel as you seemed to think it was when you got home last night. It's you as much as Harold that I'm concerned about. I like you less when you don't like yourself."

"Timmy–I'll deal with this. I'll have to, I know. But you're not making it easier. You're coming on like Cardinal Cooke, and it's your least appealing side."

That got to him. He made a face and said, "Boy, could I use a shower." He went into the bathroom. Soon I heard the water running, and I decided that I could use one, too.

I'd been to the Rat's Nest once, just after it opened in midsummer. The place had been packed that night, with most of the revelers busy positioning themselves for a better view of the spaced-out nude go-go boy—"Raoul, from Providence, R.I."—as if they'd never seen a male body before. Not much had gone on in the back room that night; there'd been an itchy-tittery who's-going-to-go-first atmosphere that Timmy and I had been even more uncomfortable with than news of the goings-on that got started the following weekend.

Now the mood was different. The dancer—"Tex, from Pittsburgh"—was wearing gym shorts and a tank top, and could have been just another local shaking off some tension on the dance floor on a Wednesday night. During Stephanie Mills's "Put Your Body In It," Tex yawned.

There were only about thirty people in the place when we arrived at ten-fifteen; twenty or so in the main room, another ten in the murky back room, standing around in their jeans, or leather, or preppie outfits, like dummies in a gay wax museum. Timmy went off to the men's room, and I ordered two bottles of Bud from the back-room bartender, who was wearing tight white pants and red suspenders. I asked him if he expected any more trouble from the Bergenfield police, and he said no, Nordstrum's lawyer had said they'd probably have a temporary restraining order by the next morning.

I said, "What about tonight?"

He shrugged.

An odd, deep voice from behind me: "Hi there, lonesome stranger. Buy you a drink?" A deft finger between my buttocks. Oh Christ. I turned.

Timmy, working his eyebrows like Groucho. I pulled his face toward mine, then stopped. "Oh, it's you. They've really gotta put some lights in this place. Never know who you might do in here."

He said, "I'm Biff from Butte. Or, is it Beaut from Biff? Or, Butt from Boeuf. Whoever I am, wanna dance?"

We did, to Ashford and Simpson's "Found a Cure" and then Jackie Moore's "This Time, Baby." As a third number was starting, the alliance crowd came in and moved in a kind of raggedy undersea school across the dance floor and into the back room. We joined them.

Two of them had just met with Jim Nordstrum, the Rat's Nest owner, and his lawyer, who had assured one and all that right was on their side.

Timmy said, "Fine, but what about Judge Feeney?"

They said the lawyer had been vague about him.

Lionel the truck driver stumbled in, already in his cups. Lionel was a notorious barrel-chested, middle-aged sex maniac in work pants, leather, and a Hopalong Cassidy hat with a Teamsters button stuck on it who ordinarily hung out at the Terminal Bar in the wee hours but somehow had made his way out Western Avenue to what he must have heard was his more natural habitat. He moved through the dim green light uttering his famous ungrammatical greeting: "Hey, anybody wanna get blowed?"

Timmy said, "Are we supposed to raise our hands, or what?"

He came our way, and there were a few faint-hearted "Hi, Lionels" as people turned away from him. He swayed over and maneuvered himself onto a barstool.

Timmy said, "I think we should arrange a public debate between Lionel and Lewis Lapham. It'd make a terrific fundraiser."

I looked at him. "Who's the cruel one among us now?"

Sheepishly he said, "Yeah. You're right."

I could see his mind working. I said, "Okay, spit it out. Then that's all. What were you thinking?"

He said, "Well then, how about a debate between Lionel and George F. Will?"

"I figured."

A man of around my age in tan pants and a windbreaker got up from the bar and walked past us. He pushed open the fire door to my right and a uniformed police officer stepped through the opening. He was followed by a man who looked like a fireman wearing an auxiliary policeman's badge, then two others in work boots and army fatigues.

Timmy said, "Oh, look, it's the Village People!"

A second uniformed officer appeared through the doorway from the main room and walked to the bar. Lionel the truck driver turned toward him and glared. The first officer who had entered stood in the center of the room and instructed us to face the walls and place our hands against them high up. His tone was not menacing. It was that of a coach or gym teacher. He clapped his hands a couple of times, and I half-expected him to yell, "Twenty laps!"

The one who frisked me was the plainclothesman, the customer in the windbreaker.

I said, "Am I accused of a crime?"

"Shut up, faggot!"

I concentrated on a spot on the wall in front of my face and thought, don't do it. There's nothing to be gained. Don't do it. Later.

Now I knew.

He yanked out my wallet and had me hold it open to my driver's license while he wrote down my name and address.

Over my shoulder I saw two big men being led away, the bartender and Lionel the truck driver.

Jim Nordstrum came in from the main room and leaned against the bar, watching. The officer in charge glanced his way, then ignored him. When everyone had been frisked and our IDs taken down, the officer announced, "Everybody outta here! Get moving!"

People moved toward the exits as if a bomb had been discovered. No rebellious Stonewall queens, these.

Several of us gathered around my car in the parking lot and watched as other customers hurried to their cars and drove off. Lionel and the red-suspendered bartender were sitting in the backseat of a Bergenfield police department cruiser. The bartender stared straight ahead; Lionel was slapping the side of his head as if he had a bug in his ear. A third man, who'd been carrying a joint in his shirt pocket, we later learned, was hustled into the backseat beside them.

The officer in charge came out; Jim Nordstrum walked beside him, in handcuffs. As the officer opened the door of an unmarked sedan and shoved Nordstrum in, I walked over and: said, "Jim, we'll call your lawyer." He looked at me with blazing eyes and nodded once. The cop, whose badge I could now see read Chief, said to me: "Your pal here attempted to bribe a police officer. That's a serious offense."

A minute later they were gone. We went inside, and one of the alliance officers phoned Nordstrum's lawyer. We rode back into Albany in charged silence.

18

Trucky's, just after midnight, was jumping—more like a Friday than a Wednesday night. I could never figure out how these people got up in the morning to go to work. Maybe they didn't; maybe they'd discovered a way to sleep for a living or

were independently wealthy. Though few looked as if they'd managed either. I saw several faces of people who'd been at the Rat's Nest earlier.

Mike Truckman was at the door, just barely upright. As we came in, he pumped my hand and said, "Don, I wanna 'pologize about the other day, really I do. I'm under one hell of a lot of pressure, and sometimes I fly off the handle when I shouldn't. You won't hold it against me, right, buddy? Let's get together one day real soon. We'll chew this thing over and straighten it out. Real soon, you hear?"

I said, "How about if we talk right now?"

"Whazzat? Beg pardon?" Freddie James's "Hollywood" was banging out of the speakers at the far end of the bar. I saw Timmy move toward the dance floor with Calvin Markham. I leaned closer to Truckman and shouted, "How about right now, tonight?"

Ignoring this, he leaned into my ear and said, "The Rat's Nest was hit again tonight, j'hear that?"