Текст книги "Ice Blues "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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Richard Stevenson

Ice Blues

ONE

The attendant at Faxon Towing and Storage looked surprised to see me back so soon, and a little wary.

"You all set?"

"I need to use your phone."

"There's a pay phone over to the station."

"I haven't got a dime."

"It's a quarter now."

"I haven't got a quarter, and the Albany police department doesn't accept collect calls from people they don't want to hear from. I know, I've tried it."

He had a broad fatigued face with heavily bagged eyes, one blue and white, one blue and red, not the result of patriotism but of a burst blood vessel in the corner of the right one. He smelled of grease and cold sweat, and this mixed with the stench of the kerosene heater and the Mr. Coffee machine, whose crud-stained pot contained two cups of a substance the EPA probably had on a list somewhere. Wet snow was starting to thud sloppily against the windowpane.

"You want the cops? Somethin' wrong with your car?"

"Somebody left something in it," I said.

"Oh yeah? Well, you could leave it here, case somebody calls."

"That wouldn't work. It's too hot in here."

He looked at me as if I might be one of the deinstitutionalized, a new social class that merchants and tradesmen feel compelled to gingerly indulge up to a point.

Shrugging, he said, "Phone's yours. Just make it quick. I got calls coming in." He lifted the filthy apparatus-no Trimline-off a pile of oil-smudged documents and set it on the counter. I dialed.

"Detective Lieutenant Bowman, please. This is Donald Strachey."

"Hang on, I think he's still here."

The snow was pounding down hard now in the last light of the January afternoon. I said, "This entire section of the North American continent should be declared unfit for human habitation."

"Huh?"

"It's snowing again."

The attendant shook his head. "That's Albany for ya. Winter gets some people down. Me, I don't mind."

"You must be half penguin."

"English, Irish, German, Norwegian-yeah, there might be some penguin in there somewhere."

There were squawking and banging sounds at the other end of the line, then a voice: "This is Bowman. Who's this?"

"Don Strachey. I'm calling about a police matter."

"Hey, it's my least favorite fruitcake-the wimp of Washington Park, the Georgie Boy of Crow Street. I was heading out the door, but I'm always happy to wait around and accept a call from the only man I know who went to Kentucky for an artificial-wrist transplant." He chortled inanely.

I said, "This is not a social call, it's police business. I'm at Faxon Towing.

My car was hauled out here last night, and now there's a problem. You should drive out."

"What the hell are you talking about, Strachey? This is the homicide division, and you got a beef with traffic you won't get me involved, oh no, I'll not act as an impediment to those officers. Anyway, it was plainly announced on the medias which streets were gonna get plowed last night, and if you're too dumb or too contrary to move your car out of the way, I've got no sympathy. The snow removal crews have a job to do, and-"

I cut him off. "There's a man in it. He's dead."

"There's what? In what? What's there a dead man in?"

"In the back seat of my car. Timothy Callahan-you know Timmy-he drove me out here to pick up my car. Timmy dropped me off, I paid the extortionate towing fee, and I located my car. When I opened the door it caught my notice that the rear backrest had been lowered, and a man was curled up back there. His eyes were open wide, but he didn't say 'Cold enough for ya?' or 'What do you think of all this snow?' or 'Ciao, baby' or anything else at all."

"What man? This man was dead, you say?"

"Under the dome light I could make out little icicles of blood extending down from his mouth and nose and ears. I did not check his vital signs, but when the human body temperature falls below thirty-two degrees Farenheit, death ensues. He's gone. I thought you ought to know."

"Is this some stunt of yours?"

"No."

"It better not be. I'm driving out there."

"No rush. I shut the heater off. But I'll need my car, or a ride downtown."

"Don't you touch anything till I get out there, you got that?"

I hung up and handed the phone back to the attendant, whose blue-and-red eye was twitching.

"You shittin' me? There's a dead guy in your car?"

"Yep. Did you put him in there?"

"No! Holy Christ, no!"

"When was my car brought in?"

With a jittery hand he leafed through a stack of forms, leaving a black thumbprint on each one. "This here one's yours, ain't it?"

I examined the form, in the boxed spaces of which were handwritten my license number, the make and model of my car, and the notation that it had arrived at Faxon's at 3:20 A.M. and had been checked in by "Pert" or "Fert."

"This is it. Who's Fert, the truck operator? Or is there somebody here who checks them in?"

"That'd be Ferd. He was driving last night, I know."

"What's Ferd's last name?"

"Plumber. Frederick Plumber's his right name. Hey, you're not the cops.

Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this. Are the cops really on their way out?"

The door opened and a woman wearing a coat crafted from six endangered species strode in brushing snow from two of them. Atop the grimy counter she dropped a receipt from the traffic division showing that she had paid her fine, along with two fifties. In a voice as icy as the evening, she said,

"I – want – my – car."

"No problem," the attendant said, and started messing with some papers.

As I went out the door, the woman said to the attendant, "Don't you ever wash your hands?" If there was a reply, it was not immediate. Maybe he'd placate her by offering her some coffee.

I walked back to the car through the gobs of blowing snow. With a gloved hand I lifted the hatch where it had been jimmied. The body was frozen in a fetal position, and I reached up under its peacoat and pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of the man's faded Levi's. The driver's license belonged to John C. Lenihan, Swan Street, Albany. The other two cards showed that Lenihan had been a member of the Albany Public Library and was eligible for discounted admissions to the Third Street Cinema in Rensselaer. Otherwise he had not been a joiner. The portion of Lenihan's estate left in his wallet amounted to six one-dollar bills.

The wallet contained one photograph of a middle-aged woman. Also stuffed in a small slot in the wallet were three scraps of paper with names and phone numbers, each in a different script, presumably but not necessarily that of the person whose name appeared. The names were those of men prominent in Albany community affairs.

I got out my notebook and copied all this down and replaced the wallet in the pocket of the cold Levi's. I had thought the man's face looked familiar, and the name was one I'd heard before too, but I couldn't connect either of them to a time or place. I checked the front pocket of the man's Levi's and found some small change but no keys. Nor were there keys hung from his belt.

From the glove compartment I took out the flashlight, banged it against my palm, and shined the half-watt beam around John C. Lenihan's face and head. He had been a more-or-less young man-thirty-six, according to his driver's license-but prematurely bald, and the downy brown hair at the back of his head was caked with frozen black blood where the blows had been struck, repeatedly and with force. His face was unmarked except for the red-and-black stalactites and the wide-eyed grimace. There were two tiny mild abrasions on either side of the upper bridge of his nose. He'd worn glasses, but I didn't see them anywhere.

Back inside the office shed I asked to use the telephone again.

"Ain't the cops here yet?"

A CB radio on a shelf crackled and a voice came out of it. "What'd you say, Roy? Guy's got body damage? I was outta the truck and couldn't make out what you said."

Roy ignored this, and I said, "They're not here yet, but I have to get in touch with a friend."

"A lawyer?"

Crackle, crackle. "Hey, Roy, you in there yankin' yer wanger, or what? Roy, you there?"

"He's a lawyer, but kind of a cute one. Not a criminal lawyer. I won't need that."

"Cute?"

"The phone, please. If there's a charge for the call, Lieutenant Bowman will take care of it."

"You work with the cops?" he said, and hoisted the reeking appliance onto the counter.

Snap, crackle. "Hey, Roy, I'm comin' in after I get this Caddy out to Conklin's. Where's Pat, up to Route Seven? Roy? Hey, Roy?"

"No, I don't work with the cops. I don't work against them either, except a couple of times a year, but you don't want to hear about that."

He backed off, and I dialed.

"It's me. I'll be late."

"I just got home. The roads are a freezing mess again. Where are you?"

"Still out at Faxons. There's a dead man in my car."

"Right. I'm heating up some chili and I picked up some George's bread at Lemme's. How long will you be?"

"I don't know. Ned Bowman's on his way out here now. He'll want to fling some insults, twirl his truncheon around, maybe ask a few pertinent questions. Forty-five minutes to an hour, I'd guess."

"How did a dead man get into your car?"

Flashing blue lights appeared through the volleys of blowing snow.

Beneath them a blue Dodge materialized and halted outside the shed's window, on whose surface a finger had written CITY HALL SUCKS in the steam that came up from a pot of water on the kerosene heater.

"I don't know yet how he got there. I assume he was placed there by whoever killed him-he died violently, I think. Though he might have crawled in there on his own because the evidence suggests that he drew his last breath while curled up in the back of the car. If he did that though, first he would have had to jimmy the hatch lock and disengage and lower the backrest, and the man's wounds look as if he was in no condition to manage that. So far, it's all speculation on my part."

A pause. "Are you making this up? I wouldn't put it past you on a night like this. Or any night."

Roy the attendant had gone outside to meet Bowman, and I could see Roy shrugging and shaking his head through the uc in SUCKS.

"Bowman's here and I should go. It's his problem now, not mine. My only pressing problems are cabin fever alternating with cold feet. I'm sick of this snow. Let's get out of here-fly to Puerto Rico or the Dutch Antilles.

Tonight."

"You've been whining about winter since the first leaf dropped on Labor Day. But you'll have to suffer ignobly for another month. You know I can't leave now. The people of the State of New York need me."

"We can take out a second mortgage on the house and lease a beach cottage at Luquillo for a month. Just you and me and a houseboy named Fernando who's lackadaisical but has fifty-eight great teeth and the immune system of a steam locomotive."

A familiar silence-he was the only man I knew who could roll his eyes over the telephone. "You're at the Watering Hole, aren't you? Happy hour at Gloomy Gulch. Should I put on my WCTU sweatshirt and walk over and rescue you?"

Bowman was moving toward the door, followed by Roy and a uniformed cop.

"Gotta go now. Who's John C. Lenihan?"

"You mean Jack Lenihan? You know Jack Lenihan. He's Warren Slonski's lover-a friend of Herb's. They were at Herb's pool party last summer. Is he over there with you? I haven't seen Jack since-"

"Gotta go."

I hung up as Bowman shoved at the hinged side of the glass door. He remarked on this error in his terse, unequivocal way, then pushed at the unhinged side, which yielded him up into the stinking hut. Bowman was unchanged since I'd last seen him except that he was suffering from what appeared to be a severe case of athlete's foot of the nose.

"Ned, what's wrong with your face? I don't think you've been drying thoroughly between the folds and interstices."

He looked as if he would have liked to beat me severely about the face and head, and snapped, "Where's your car? You lead the way. Now. I was just on my way home for supper."

I led the way. The phone rang and Roy stayed behind. Flapping sheets of snow swooshed around under the floodlights as we moved up the rows of cars. We came to mine and I lifted the hatch.

"Do you know him?" Bowman said.

"No."

"Probably a wino or mental case. Crawled in to sleep one off, and died.

Poor slob."

"Look closer, at his head."

The uniformed cop shined his Rayovac at the dead man's face and head.

"Jiminy Christmas!"

"I'd say a lead pipe or maybe a tire iron did that."

"That will be up to the medical examiner to decide, not you or I. Holy Mother! So, where's your tire iron, Strachey?"

"Unless it was removed by the killer, it's under the rug beneath the body, with my spare."

"Well, I intend to have it examined and retained as possible evidence. You know I have to do that."

"What am I supposed to do if I have a flat, use my teeth?"

"It wouldn't be the first time you put something filthy in your mouth. In fact, I'm confiscating your entire car. You'll get it back when I say so. Now I have to make a couple of calls and get a crew out here to ID this guy, and then I'm going to interrogate you. I think you're in trouble, Strachey. Real bad trouble."

"No, you don't. But you'd like to think so."

"Well, you've got one hell of a lot of explaining to do, that's for damn sure."

"Let's make it quick. I've had enough of winter in this godforsaken outpost, and I'm leaving tonight for the Dutch Antilles."

"No, you're not. You're staying right here in Albany, Strachey. You're not going anywhere at all until I say you can."

"People I'm fond of keep telling me that."

TWO

I made my entrance with a shrieking wind hurling snow at my head and shoulders, like W. C. Fields in The Fatal Glass of Beer, then shut and locked the door behind me. Timmy was in his thermal underwear and was holding a steaming mug full of something that smelled like the mouth of the Brahmaputra at midday.

"You weren't there. Neither was Jack Lenihan." "Weren't where? How about a slug of that smelly stuff?" "The Watering Hole. I slogged all the way over there, and all I found were two pharmaceutical salesmen from Utica feeding gin to a pimply youth with staples in his ears and poster paint on his eyelids. I asked him if an art supply store had blown up, but his gentlemen friends told me to buzz off, so I left. The bartender said he hadn't seen 'Miss Donald' for days."

I removed my boots, which were making fog, and dumped them on The

New York Times Magazine spread out for that purpose in the front hall. "I didn't say I was at the Watering Hole, and anyway, that bartender is an idiot. I can't stand this town any longer. When are we leaving? Is the airport still open? We could be on the beach at Grand Cayman by dawn."

"Come on, you don't really hate Albany, except in winter, what with your having grown up in semitropical New

Jersey. We go through this every year, and then spring comes and you go chirp-chirp, Isn't the Northeast grand? How tedious it must be in those tepid places with no change of seasons.' You can't have it both ways, lover."

He led the way back to the kitchen and ladled out two bowls of chili.

"Of course I can have it both ways. I can spend November through March in Guadeloupe, then you wire me when the annual ice age alert has been lifted and I rush back to pick you a daffodil and unclog your frozen fuel lines. I'll be warm, and you'll be glad to see me."

"Generous of you."

"Why aren't we rich? Did you buy a lottery ticket today?"

"Yes, but you won't like it."

"Don't tell me. You played eighteen-eighteen again. This chili's good. I like it when my head sweats into my dinner." "That number's going to come up someday, and I'll be the only winner. A million flat, and no going halvsies with a corset manufacturer from Garden City."

"Tell me again what eighteen is-your Aunt Moira's shoe size?"

"On her eighteenth birthday Aunt Moira played number eighteen on a punch board at the Poughkeepsie Elks lodge and won a twelve-pound Spam. Since then eighteen has always been a lucky number for the Callahans. It's simple mathematical probability that eighteen-eighteen will come up sometime in the next five hundred years. Some Callahan is going to get stinking rich, and with a little luck it'll be me."

"Do we have any Molsons left?"

"The refrigerator is right over there."

"My question concerned inventory, your department. I wasn't suggesting we play Ozzie and Harriet."

"I never know with you. You have all these residual heterosexual inclinations."

"Male presumption of entitlement, Timothy, has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It is a characteristic of certain moody, confused men-homo or hetero-who never left their mommies. I am not one of them."

He got up and brought me a beer. I grunted benevolently. He sat down again and picked at his chili.

"Let's make a deal," he said after a moment. "You quit acting churlish with me and I'll quit acting churlish with you. I understand that you hate the cold weather, and you're between cases, and you're bored with Albany, and with me, and with yourself-and that the AIDS situation has put a crimp in your normal abnormal outlets. But all this tension is getting me down, and there's no point in both of us being miserable. I know you feel too rotten to act sweet naturally, or even just civil, but do me a favor and fake it part of the time. I'll be grateful, and I'll bet you'll feel better too."

''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."