Текст книги "Ice Blues "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

"Don't worry, I'll come across as an Olympic gold medalist. Though not one of the gymnasts, of course. Is your grandfather in good health?"

"Strong as an ox. I mean an ox that's ninety-six, ha ha. No, seriously, Dad is showing his age lately. His hearing and eyesight are going, and he tires out. He can't walk across the room without sitting down for a minute. That's the emphysema. But when he wants to be, he can be a real hellion. We weren't going to take him to the funeral yesterday, but he wasn't about to put up with that, oh no. Dad never misses a funeral, especially family. So Mr. Fay carried him out to the car and into the funeral parlor, and you'd've thought Dad was a kid again. He always liked being around people. It really perks him up and I was glad to see it, even on such a tragic occasion."

I glanced at Ed, saw that he was absorbed in an electric-shaver commercial, and said, "Who is Mr. Fay?"

"Mack Fay is Howie Fay's boy. Howie Fay lived over by the Hainses when he was alive, and he and Dad were friends from way back. Thick as thieves, those two were. Howie Fay dropped in on Dad every day until he slipped on the ice in front of Evelyn Collins' and broke his backbone. Howie Fay passed away last March, but old lady Fay-she's kind of a sourpuss-she's still over there but she never goes out. Their boy Mack Fay was working out of town for many years, but he's back now and he and Dad seem to have hit it off. Mack visits him and they shoot the breeze just like Dad and Howie Fay did, and if Dad has to go out to the doctor or something, Mr. Fay drives him wherever he has to go. Mack Fay is not the friendliest man you'll ever meet with Ed and I, but I have to say he's been a godsend for Dad.

Maybe you'll see him tomorrow if you stick around long enough. He usually drops in around noontime and they have their sandwich together.

The two of them and Mrs. Clert."

"Mrs. Clert is Mr. Lenihan's nurse?"

"Days she is. Nighttime there's just an aide, Kevin, Mrs. Clert's boy. He'd be over there now. Mrs. Clert is strictly no-nonsense, but she knows how to keep Dad contented. He's a man, so he can be fussy. But she handles him.

You'll see."

When I left the McConkeys, I drove over to Pearl and past Pug Lenihan's bungalow. It was ten till nine and a single light burned in a downstairs window. An old brown Olds Cutlass was parked in the driveway. I slowed briefly, then sped up and drove straight south toward the center of the city.

EIGHTEEN

"You're late, you're ten minutes late, but you're here. I was worried about you."

"No need to worry. Everything's under control."

"It is?"

"Not my control, but somebody's. We do not live in a coldly mindless and anarchic universe. There is a plan to all of this."

"Whose?"

"I don't know. But I'm more certain than ever that it's not Adlai Stevenson's.

Is the money still in the closet?"

"Sure, I checked when I came back this evening."

"Did anyone phone or knock at the door?"

"No, it looks as if I wasn't followed here. Or if I was, maybe they were waiting for you to show up. Now we're both here along with the money, so I suppose that means the end is near. Couldn't we just go home now and die in our own bed? I'm so sick of restaurant food."

"Not yet. Soon." I sprawled on the bed and dragged the phone onto the pillow beside me.

"Did you find out what Pug Lenihan wants with you?"

"I'll know in the morning when I meet him. Just a second." I dialed the number of my friend at New York Telephone, reached him at home, and asked for a list of toll calls made from Pug Lenihan's number during the previous week. He said he'd have them by noon the next day.

"What's that all about?" Timmy asked. "If Pug Lenihan's mixed up in this, it's only the machine using him to warn you away from turning the money over to Kempelman. Isn't that the way you figure it?"

"That was three hours ago. My perspective has since broadened." I explained to him Pug Lenihan's connections with Mack Fay as Corrine McConkey had described them to me.

As I told it, Timmy's face went through its wide repertoire of pale pastels.

He said, "So Pug might actually have been involved in his own grandson's murder? Jesus!"

"I don't want to believe that. But it's possible. Maybe I'll ask him about it tomorrow."

"Or maybe you won't show up."

"I'm considering that."

Shakily, he said, "Call Bowman. Or the state police, or the FBI. Don, this is no longer just you against some half-assed dope fiends. It's you against history."

As the words came out, I knew I shouldn't have spoken them in front of him. I said, "Maybe history is about to change. And I am its agent." He shut his eyes tightly and actually clutched his head. "I take it you continue to find my hopes and dreams wackily presumptuous."

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I do."

"Well, as I see it, I can either bring about the dawn of a golden age in Albany, or I can take the money and run. I can't honestly see any middle ground at this point."

"You can give the money back, and we can go home and resume our good lives. That is one alternative."

I looked at him carefully. "You can't mean that. Just quit, just like that?

With Jack Lenihan still warm in his grave, and after all we've gone through?

You'd hate yourself. I'd hate myself. And I wouldn't be too crazy about you for a while."

He twitched with ambivalence, a state of mind that always got his juices flowing. "You're turning it into a moral dilemma when in fact what we are talking about here is the highly practical question of surviving or not surviving. Yes, of course I'd like to see the machine zapped. And yes, Jack's killer should be identified, tried and convicted. The last part you might be able to accomplish with the help of Ned Bowman and maybe the feds. But not singlehandedly."

"You mean, you can't fight city hall. That does not sound at all like the Tim Callahan I know."

"You can fight city hall but you can't bulldoze it. Not by yourself if you hope to live to see what replaces it."

I took this all in, considered it, and gave his thigh a squeeze. "This is getting too theoretical for me. Let's take our clothes off and get practical.

It's been awhile. Shrieking with ecstasy always restores your perspective."

He had an argument for that too, but he only belabored his thesis for about twenty minutes. We sometimes went our separate emotional and philosophical ways, but we always remembered one place where the twain met, and this handy and inherently satisfying way of connecting served to remind us of all the other lovely ways we had of connecting, usually.

At seven Tuesday morning I checked my answering service, which had six messages. Three were social and could wait, and one was from Timmy's mother in Poughkeepsie, inquiring as to why we were not answering our home telephone. She asked that I relay the message to Timmy that Father Frank Merrill had been injured by a Molotov cocktail tossed from the St. Vincent's school roof by a fourth grader, and it would be nice if Timmy sent Father Frank a get-well card.

The fifth message was from Ned Bowman, instructing me to report to his office promptly at 3 P.M. Monday-too late for that-and the sixth message was from an anonymous caller with a muffled voice. The voice had said:

"Tell Strachey, 'You are dead."

I gave Timmy the message from his mother and suggested that he call in sick at the office, then drive down and pay a personal call on the ailing Father Frank. He thought that would be unnecessary until I told him about

"You are dead," and then he agreed. He said he would spend a night in Poughkeepsie, maybe two.

Room service brought Timmy his porridge and me my pitcher of orange juice and two eggs, which were not raw, as I had requested, but fried. To Timmy's relief, I did not stir them into the juice. Timmy left for Poughkeepsie, saying he would first stop by the house to pick up a clean shirt-Mom would be surreptitiously checking his collar-and would either meet me or phone me at the hotel that night. I said sure, I figured I'd be back at the Hilton that night, and he looked at me a little funnily.

Before I went out, I checked the money. It was intact, undisturbed, unspent.

It was beginning to look restless, though, as if it wanted spending soon on a good deed. I told it, maybe today.

When I walked into Ned Bowman's office just after eight, he was already at his desk looking miserable and besieged, though the room was empty except for the two of us. His nose was heavily bandaged, with a large dirty gauze pad housing the appendage itself and six long strips of adhesive tape holding the gauze in place, as if he were under attack by a panicked sea animal.

"It looks worse, Ned. I hope amputation is not the next step."

"When did you get back from LA? You never showed up at that den of Sodom Friday night-not that I stuck around to wait for your appearance.

So, where have you been? Tell me now. This minute."

"Seriously, I'm worried about your physical condition. I'd be happy to see you retire to a hot, cramped trailer in Sarasota, but I wouldn't want to lose you by watching you slowly rot from the top down."

He shook his head glumly. "It's a hereditary skin condition, Slotz-Planckton's disease. The cold weather aggravates it. It started to clear up in LA, but when I got back here it took a turn for the worse. It is aggravated by severe weather and by stress, my doctor tells me. Stress, Strachey. I am experiencing stress. Do you know why?"

"Financial problems? Worrisome moisture on your basement walls?"

"You know goddamn well it's you and this goddamn Lenihan thing. It's as plain as can be that everybody and his Uncle Eddie is holding out on me in this thing, and the time is close at hand when I'm going to have to start playing hardball with the likes of you. Do you catch my meaning or do I have to draw you a picture?"

"You can skip the lurid visual effects, but you can tell me who else has been holding out. I'm not admitting that I have, but who else?"

He gave me his fish eye. "You know as well as I do who else. The woman you visited in LA Friday night, before I could get there first, Mrs. Danny Lenihan. The broad went all weepy on me, which is understandable, I guess, considering, but in a full two hours of blubber and boo-hoo she didn't tell me diddly-shit about what her son was doing out there last weekend and how come this Piatek had left her boy two and a half million, and where was the two and a half million now? So, what'd she tell you? Plenty, I'll wager. You people all stick together, don't you?"

"We people?"

"I've always figured Joanie for a lez. Or maybe I heard it somewhere. You can't tell me she and that Tesney woman aren't playing doctor with the shades pulled down. So, what'd she confide in you? Come on, Strachey, make this easy for the both of us, huh?"

"'Playing doctor with the blinds pulled down.' Ned, you're the consummate romantic. No, she did not confide in me either. She just let loose with a lot of confused ill will toward Albany and its citizenry. She detests this place so much, she wouldn't even set foot in it to attend her son's funeral. It sounds as if you'd met Joan Lenihan before or know quite a lot about her."

He looked thoughtful and said, "I was the investigating officer when Dan died. It was me who took Joanie's statement back in-fifteen, sixteen years ago, it must be. Joanie wasn't a bad-looking cookie back then. Great knockers, a real pretty woman even with her buck teeth. Out in LA, Jesus, she looked like she'd been through the wringer. Or maybe she's just getting old. Hell, Joanie's older than I am, must be closing in on sixty.

"That was a sad time for the old man, let me tell you. Danny was Pug's only son, and while I can't say that Dan ever did his pop proud, even so he was all Pug had left in the world-Pug's missus passed away back in the fifties– and it was just like the bottom fell out when Dan bought the farm. I think the North End must have been draped in black for a month after that one."

Again, I was confused. "Why were the police involved in Dan Lenihan's death? I had the impression he'd died as a result of his alcoholism."

Bowman shrugged mildly, as if to recite a commonplace. "Indirectly, yeah, it was the booze. What happened was, Danny froze to death on the street.

At two or three in the morning in January he passed out on the way home from Mike Shea's tavern down on Broadway. A paper boy found him at six in the morning on Second Street across from Sacred Heart, stiff as a board.

"Of course, I think Dan was stiff as a board from the time he was about eleven. How Joan put up with him all those years, I'll never know. They say she married him because Joanie was a drinker herself when she was a kid, and the two of them tied one on one night and ended up in Dan's bed, and old Pug caught em and made em make it legal. The story was, Pug had pretty much given up on Danny by then, and he wanted grandchildren.

"Well, he got em. Conine's barren and Jack was a faggot, if you'll pardon the expression, which I know you won't, you being one yourself. I don't know what went wrong in that family. Pug Lenihan was one of the finest men this town ever produced, and then it all just went to hell for him. How does that happen? You tell me."

I did not offer an opinion, which would have been uselessly inflammatory. I said, "It's a sad history, but I'm more interested in the present state of the Lenihans. Jack in particular, who's been bludgeoned to death. Where does the investigation stand?"

He gave me his incredulous imbecile look, which was unusually imbecilic owing to the albino squid clinging to his face. "I can't tell you that. That is official police information. It is you, Strachey, who are in possession of information that could wrap this thing up in two days. I can smell it all over you. You reek of withheld evidence. The question is, do you give it to me voluntarily, or do I turn this simple process into something ugly and complicated for both of us? Which is it, huh?" He glared at me across his little friend.

I said, "You're up against it, Ned, am I right? You spent seven hundred dollars of the department's two-grand travel budget and you came up empty-handed. You've got nothing to show for your junket and little to go on otherwise. You're frustrated and you think your frustration will be relieved if you beat up on me. Well, forget it. I'm not interested. I can spend my time more profitably elsewhere, and so can you."

He remained calm, maybe at the urging of his physician. "Do you want to be dragged down to the lockup? Right now?"

"You could arrange that, I guess, but you won't. You're only guessing that I've got information pertinent to your investigation, and your guess is no legal basis for an arrest. Lock me up and I'll be on the streets in forty-five minutes, and you'll end up with egg on your face. I mean, if there's room for it on there."

He flinched, but remained seated, not moving, tight-lipped.

I said, "There is, however, a way we might be able to get together on this thing. Pool our resources in the interests of justice, civic improvement, and a nice commendation for you from the chief. As you have figured out, my aims in this case are broader than yours. I want Jack Lenihan's killer locked up and punished, yes, but I also want Sim Kempelman's outfit to have the two and a half million so they can run the thieves and knuckleheads out of city hall and replace them with save-the-whales, anti-nuke, ACLU goo-goos."

Bowman gripped his desk tightly, but still he said nothing. He seemed to be losing strength.

"As it happens," I said, "there is a way for both of us to accomplish everything we want to accomplish. With your assistance, I think I can hand you Jack Lenihan's killer. Notice I said 'assistance.' What I'm saying is, I'll take the risks and do most of the real work, and you'll get the credit."

After a moment, he stood calmly, walked to the door, and closed it. Seated again, he said, "I can listen. I want Lenihan's killer tried and convicted. What do you want from me? What does this so-called assistance entail?"

"First, Ned, one thing. If we work together on this, are you willing to follow the trail wherever it leads? No matter who's involved?"

He leaned back in his swivel chair and clutched the arms. "What the fuck are you talking about, Strachey? What's a remark like that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not sure yet myself. Just answer the question. I know you're a blowhard and a narrow-minded jackass, but I've always thought that despite your obvious limitations you were also an honest cop. Correct me if I'm wrong."

"My entire career has been devoted to enforcing the law. You break the laws of the state of New York or the city of Albany and you reckon with Ned Bowman, whoever you are, period."

I knew that it got more complicated than that with Bowman, a man of his time and place. Yet he did have his own warped but sturdy personal integrity. Lacking alternatives at the time, I decided to place my trust in it. I said, "I want you to put a tail on me. A reliable, experienced team of plainclothes guys who will grab Jack Lenihan's killer when he tries to kill me. There is reason to believe he is going to do that, probably this morning. Just prior to that, I think, his intention is to force me to lead him to the two and a half million. He's under the impression that I've got it, though I don't want to comment on that.

"My informed opinion is that this man will make his move against me in the presence of, or more likely the close proximity of, the man he's working for, who, by the way, is a considerable personage in this town who might-I emphasize might – be dealing dope in a big way, though that would be out of character for him and I have deep doubts about that part.

"It's possible that when this man's employee, an ex-con, makes his attempt on me and you nail him, you will not find direct evidence linking him to the Lenihan homicide. Once you've got him on the attempted-murder charge, however, it is highly probable that he'll deal-there's a parole violation involved as well-and he'll implicate his employer, truly or falsely, in return for a reduced charge. The employer will then try to stick his employee with the Lenihan murderoffering, I hope, solid evidence-in order to save what's left of his own neck. That's all slightly chancy, but I think we can make it work. In any event, as you can see it's me who's taking all the real risks in this, and all you and your guys have to do is tag along and pick up the pieces, one of which will be me. Will you do it?"

He squinted across his septopus at me and drummed his fingers on the desktop. "I don't know enough," he said after a moment. "Tell me more. I want to hear names, places, dates."

"Can't."

"Why?"

I knew that if I mentioned Pug Lenihan's name, Bowman would choke on his own incredulity and send me back out into the cold-and possibly phone city hall the second I was out the door. The question of how much or little city hall knew was already problematic, and I wasn't about to erase all doubt by presenting myself quite so boldly. I wanted the confusion and unanswered questions that were working to my disadvantage to work to theirs too for a little while longer.

I said, "If I told you why I can't tell you, then you'd know what it was I couldn't tell you. You'd understand why I couldn't tell you it in the first place, but then it would be too late. See my problem?"

He waved that away disgustedly and thought about it some more. Beads of sweat broke out around his adhesive tape. More finger drumming and shifting about. "Twelve hours," he said then. "I'll cover you for twelve hours and not a minute more. You come up with a goose egg on this, Strachey, and you are a nonperson in this department. Except, of course, if you are caught committing a crime, like passing around two and a half million dollars that doesn't belong to you. In that case, you'll become a person again. A person in the lockup on the way to Sing Sing for so many years, you'll only be fit for the county nursing home by the time you hobble out of there."

I told him I appreciated his warm confidence in me, and we worked out the details. From a pay phone downstairs I called Corrine McConkey and confirmed my ten-thirty appointment with Pug Lenihan. Corrine said her grandfather sounded very eager to meet me but had stipulated that I arrive at his house alone.

NINETEEN

Under a bleached-out sun a southerly breeze had dragged the temperature up to three degrees above freezing and the city was beginning to soften and melt. Fat crescents of filthy ice dropped out of motorists' wheel wells. Acids from midwestern power plants dripped off trees. The main roads were drying up, leaving a film of gray salt, but the side streets were ankle-deep in frigid slush. To step off a curb, or to breathe the air, was to risk pneumonia.

I didn't want to live in it anymore and imagined half the population of the Hudson Valley arriving simultaneously at the same sensible conclusion and suddenly making a break for it, the Thruway clogged from Selkirk to the Tappan Zee Bridge with an unbroken southward stream of sullen refu-gees yearning for a place in the Sunbelt where they could dry out their socks.

It didn't happen though. All the others must have had their own reasons for staying, and for the moment I had mine, which seemed to me quite grand.

"Quite grandiose," Timmy would have corrected me. To make it even grander, all I had to do was stay alive.

Bowman had refused to lend me a firearm, so I drove up Washington, waded through a couple of backyards, and climbed the rear stairs to my office. The door was off its hinges again and the general disorder more general than normal. Mack Fay had been looking for his wayward luggage. I removed the loose brick from the wall where the plaster had fallen off, took my Smith amp; Wesson out of the bread bag that kept it dry and dustless, and stuck the gun in my coat pocket.

The telephone was working, so I called my friend the narc. "This is Strachey again. What else have you come up with on Mack Fay?"

"Are you about ready to let me in on this, my friend? That would be a reasonable condition for my passing on privileged information to you."

"No, that would be an unreasonable condition. Look, don't be offended, but I'm working with the Albany cops on this one on account of how incompetent they are. When this thing is over and the smoke clears, there's something I want to come out of this with. You guys might be smart enough to take it away from me, but Bowman's crew isn't and won't. I thought of calling you first but decided that my worthy ultimate goals in this would be jeopardized by your competence, so I went to Bowman. You understand that, don't you?"

"I appreciate what you're saying, but you understand that if you violate a federal statute I'll have to do what I'll have to do."

"No, you won't. You could, but you won't have to. You've told me yourself discretionary blindness is a major federal crime-fighting tool. The smelliest sleazebags in North America get a pat on the back and a trip to the Bahamas if they help you convict a major doper. So don't give me a hard time on this. Next to most of the people you do business with, I'm Mother Theresa."

"Strachey, you are missing the point entirely. The point is, what have you done for me lately?"

"Nothing yet, that's true. But soon. I can't elaborate. Trust me."

He didn't hesitate. His organization had a $290 billion annual budget and a trillion-dollar deficit, so he felt confident making decisions. He said he'd give me another day or two, and then he reeled off the information I had asked him for. "Mack Fay, I am reliably informed, was not close to Robert Milius and the rest of the Albany narcotics crowd at Sing Sing. They may have known each other, but they were in no way tight."

"They weren't?"

"Fay's best buddy was a Terry Clert, paroled in October after doing seven years of a twelve-to-fifteen for armed robbery and assault with intent to kill.

He held up a liquor store in Syracuse in '77 and shot the manager who, lucky for Clert, lived. Clert now resides in this area." He gave me the address on Third Street in the North End of Albany. "It's interesting that Fay and Clert are both in the area. Clert's originally from Gloversville and never lived in Albany be-fore."

More confusion. "Are you telling me there aren't any narcotics in either Clert's or Fay's background? And they weren't hooked up in any way with the Albany dopers in Sing Sing?"

"That's the information I have. I'm willing to bet that it's good."

I thanked him and said I'd be in touch, though now I wasn't so sure anymore. The only thing I was certain of was that I was about to call on a man up to his aged neck in criminally minded Fays and Clerts, whose connection with him was unlikely to turn out to be a funny coincidence.

At 10:10 I passed through the intersection of State and Pearl and turned north. A blue Dodge parked in a bus stop edged in behind me and tagged along. Two blocks later a second Dodge joined the procession, and I thought about skimming off a small bundle of the money in the suitcases to pick up a block of Chrysler stock. At 10:25 I turned up Walter Street and parked. The two unmarked cop cars drove on by.

Dreadful Ed answered the door at the McConkeys. I could hear The $25,000

Pyramid squealing in the background, and McConkey seemed put out that I had interrupted his morning leisure. He had beer on his breath. He testily informed me that I was to proceed to Dad Lenihan's house on my own, that Mrs. Clert was expecting me. I drove around the block to Pug Lenihan's cottage on Pearl and parked. The two Dodges maneuvered this way and that, one of them ending up thirty yards down the block, the other one around the corner on Second Street.

The Pontiac I'd seen in Lenihan's driveway a week earlier was back. I walked up to the front porch, stamped the slush off my feet, and rang the bell. The door was opened almost immediately by a plump round-faced woman in a pale pink pants suit. She studied me with cool gray eyes and flashed a practiced institutional smile.

"Are you Mr. Strachey?"

"Yes, I am."

"I'm Miriam Clert. It's nice of you to drop by and see Dad. Come right in, please."

"Thank you."

I wiped my feet on the worn welcome mat and followed her through the bare front hall into a small, low-ceilinged living room with lace curtains and a threadbare brown rug. The furnishings consisted of what used to be called a "living room suit"-squat tan easy chair and couch to match, with shiny acrylic pillows, their manufacturer's tags unremoved under penalty of law. Arranged atop a table by the front window was an assortment of framed photographs showing various members of the Lenihan family in formal poses and tinted to the point of herpes zoster. In the one non-studio shot, Jack, Corrine, Joan, and a puffy-faced man I took to be Dan Lenihan were standing on a lawn in what must have been their Easter finery, circa 1963. Their smiles were forced and wan, and no one was touching anyone else. Except for the daffodils in the background, it could have been a police lineup.

I seated myself on the couch while Mrs. Clert went to bring Dad Lenihan to the room. In this quiet plain house, with the winter sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains, I began to feel a little silly checking out entrances and exits and rearranging my Smith amp; Wesson, which was stuffed in my coat pocket on the couch beside me. The house shuddered briefly as somewhere beneath me the oil burner clicked on. A radiator sighed and I sighed back.

An accordion door leading to the room on the other side of the front hall was jerked aside. Standing in the entrance to what once must have been a dining room-a hospital bed now occupied its far wall-was the most enormous infant I had ever seen. Pug Lenihan was as shiny and pink and hairless as a Florida tomato. Though slumped and bent, he was a good six-two, and formidable even in a faded cotton bathrobe and Naugahyde slippers. His mouth was set hard, his ice-blue eyes wary under a broad, smooth forehead. My first thought was, here is Rosemary's baby at ninety-six. I checked the exits again.

Miriam Clert led Lenihan by the elbow to a chair across from me. When he was seated he shook her hand away and snapped, "Now you go on out. Go on out back." It was a once-forceful voice that came out soft and cracked, like a recording of a 1930s radio show.

"You might need something, Dad. You might have to make wee-wee."

"Go on out back and shut the door! You heard me."

Her face tightened and she turned away. "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me," she said to me. "If Dad has to go potty, come fetch me. Ill be having my cup of tea." She disappeared down the hall, though I did not hear a door close.

Lenihan arranged his bathrobe over his skinny legs. "You Strachey?"

"Yes, Mr. Lenihan, I am. Sim Kempelman said you wanted to talk to me."

With sarcasm he said, "Ohhh, Kempelman, yes-s-s, Kempelman. That man doesn't know a turd from a toadstool! Do you?"

"Sure. Early on a summer morning, toadstools have little sprites sitting on them. Turds don't."

He glared at me with disgust. Everything seemed to disgust him. "You're a wiseacre, aren't you?" I shrugged. "Well, don't you wise-guy me, mister!"

I said, "What was it you wanted to see me about, Mr. Lenihan?"

His little mouth bent down and the blue eyes narrowed. One fist clenched and unclenched repeatedly. After a moment, he said, "You gimme my money back! You know what I want. I want my money back. You got it with you?"

"What money are you referring to?"

The fist hit the arm of the chair. "Don't you play games with me, mister! You bring it along? You better've."

I watched him watching me. The oil burner quit running and the house was quiet. Mrs. Clert was not drinking her tea noisily. I said,

"Are you referring to the five suitcases stuffed with US currency? If so, I was under the impression that that money belonged to your late grandson Jack. That it had been left to him by a wealthy friend in Los Angeles. Or did Jack leave a will naming you as beneficiary?"