Текст книги "Ice Blues "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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Timmy said, "He'll never believe that."

Toot had a better idea. "I'll tell him you'll be showing up later at the Compost Heap and maybe he'd like to meet us there."

I said I thought that was a lovely idea and I was almost tempted to hang around just to watch Bowman's face when he walked in and realized there were places that made Albany's Central Avenue look like an evening in Patagonia? Not that, I guessed.

FOURTEEN

The DC-10 toured the storm-cloud layer above Long Island for an hour and twenty minutes before we banged down an electronic chute and onto the snowy runway. The Kennedy terminal buildings were not visible through the blizzard, though after a while the pilot found them. I had hoped to be back in Albany by ten Saturday morning, but by the time I'd crawled up the snow-clogged Thruway and fishtailed down the exit ramp, it was after noon. I drove directly to the Air Freight office at Albany County Airport.

"I have some bags coming in from LA. They were shipped from there late yesterday afternoon. Any idea when they might arrive?"

"They should have gone out first thing this morning, but they'd be coming through O'Hare, and it's closed. Chicago's completely socked in, so I don't know what to tell you. Tonight, tomorrow morning-it's hard to say. It's touch and go anyway. We might be shutting down ourselves. Why don't you leave your name and somebody can give you a call when the stuff comes in?"

"No, that's okay, I won't be near a phone, but I'll check back later."

"Were the bags for delivery or pickup here?"

Mumble, mumble.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" He was squinting so he could hear me better, but by then I had turned and sped off. So, now what?

I drove toward my office on Central. The odd snowplow was to be seen here and there, but the wind kept whipping snow back onto the roads, which were slick in the eight-degree wet air. An old Ford Fairlane turned out too fast from the Westgate shopping plaza, hula-hula-ed into a new Mazda in the lane next to mine, and the Mazda's front end tinkled to the pavement. When both drivers emerged intact from their crumpled machines, I drove on.

The door to my office was off its hinges and leaned against the wall. Before I surveyed the mess beyond, I re-hung the door. The damage in the office was slight; the intruders were after five good-sized suitcases, not a microdot. So when they hadn't found them readily they'd given up and left.

The pie tin under the leaky radiator valve had been kicked aside, and the puddle of rusty water on the floor looked like about forty-eight hours' worth, which meant Thursday afternoon or thereabouts, back when Hankie-mouth still thought I had the money. I wanted to move about Albany freely now and was counting on Hankie-mouth's having been in touch with Joan Lenihan and lost interest in me-provided, of course, that that part (or any part) of her story had been true and that she hadn't kept the money, if she'd ever had possession of it in the first place. I, among many, had never actually set eyes on the cash.

I parked up the street from the house on Crow Street and slogged homeward for the first time in three days. The front door was ajar. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, the door occasionally falls in.

It did. The hinge bolts were on the floor nearby, so I completed my second door-hanging job of the afternoon. I brushed the blown snow off the hall table and toured the untidiness beyond. Timmy surely would reprimand me for carelessly leaving an overstuffed chair atop the couch, so I lifted it off.

Actual breakage was minimal but the disorder was spectacular, and I spent half an hour setting pieces of furniture upright, returning drawers to their chests and cabinets, and putting books back on their shelves in an order probably not recommended by the Library of Congress. With the front door shut now the place was starting to warm up. I gave the picture of the fire a poke and sat by it for a time.

I thought about the meaning of the housebreaking. Bowman had agreed to have his cops search the place on Thursday. This was a charade to discourage Hankie-mouth from a fruitless-to-him but aggravating-to-me break-in, and to leave the impression that I'd brought in the authorities and the law was on my side. Bowman perhaps had failed to carry out his duties.

Or, it occurred to me, the cops themselves had made this mess, though I doubted that; their sensitivity to property was higher than it was to people.

The other possibilities were: Hankie-mouth had simply gotten there before Bowman did; or Hankie-mouth was utterly unimpressed by the presence of the Albany police department and went in after the cops had left, believing– or perhaps knowing from experience-that the cops' skills as searchers were imperfect and they were likely to miss something. Or Hankie-mouth had been privy to inside police information and knew full well how meaningless and perfunctory the cops' visit had been. That one bothered me.

I showered, got into clothing appropriate for tramping around on the face of a glacier, fixed a plate of eggs, ate them, and made some phone calls.

The first was to Los Angeles, where I learned from my investigative contact there that three toll calls had been placed from Joan Lenihan's number during the period Tuesday through Friday night. Two of them-Thursday at 9:11 A.M. and again Thursday at 11:55 P.M.-had been lengthy calls placed to a number listed under the name Edward McConkey in Albany. I guessed that was Joan speaking to Corrine and reacting to the news of Jack's death. I'd find out. The third call had been placed on Friday at 4:36 P.M., Pacific time, to the same number in Troy, New York, to which a call had been placed on Monday, when Jack had been alive and still in LA. The phone company subscriber at that number was Florence Trenky. More and more, Flo seemed like a person worth getting to know.

Stevenson, Richard

Stevenson, Richard – [Donald Strachey Mystery 03] – Ice Blues

I dialed the Troy number.

"Yes?"

"This is Air Freight calling. Did one of our employees call you a short while ago? There's a lot of confusion down here, what with the snowstorm."

"No, but Mackie's upstairs waiting for you guys to call, been down here every five minutes. Did his delivery come in?"

"To whom am I speaking?"

"Flo Trenky. You the fella Mackie talked to this morning?"

"No, that must have been Bill."

"You want me to get him? Mackie's delivery come from LA?"

"I'm sorry, it hasn't. I just wanted to let him know that there are delays through Chicago, but we're doing everything we can under extremely difficult circumstances. Mr. Mackie is planning to pick up his parcels, have I got that right?"

"That's what he told me. It's Fay-Mack Fay's his right name."

"Oh, yeah, I see it here now. Well, if we haven't called yet, I suggest Mr. Fay check back with us early this evening. Could you relay that message, please?"

"Yeah, I'll tell 'im."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Okay, sure."

I wrote the name in my notebook, Mack Fay, dug out my Troy phone directory, and copied down Flo Trenky's street address. I checked, but no Mack Fay was listed in the Troy, Albany or Schenectedy phone books.

When I called the Federal Building I was told by the duty officer in the drug-enforcement office that my friend the narc wouldn't be in until Monday morning but that I might reach him at home in Clifton Park. When I called there a tiny voice said to try again around six. I said I would and left my name.

I called American Airlines and was informed that O'Hare was expected to reopen in midafternoon and the first flight into Albany would arrive around 7:30 P.M., provided that Albany Airport itself didn't shut down. This was good. I had a few hours, at least, to get organized.

Except for the occasional lunatic, traffic crept along at a realistically fainthearted thirty-five in the fast lane of the interstate going north along the river. Near Menands a car had slid off the roadway into the median gulley and the tow truck trying to pull it out looked stuck in a drift. I eased in behind a plow and sand truck and followed it to the Green Island bridge.

The snow was still coming down in flakes the size of pages from the Farmers' Almanac.

Florence Trenky's place on Third Avenue was an old three-story row house with white aluminum siding on the flat front wall and a sign in the window that said ROOMS. I cruised four houses up to the end of the block and parked across the street at a Cumberland Farms convenience store. I bought eight dollars' worth of gas, a sodium-nitrite sub made with a stale bun, a foam cup of black vinegar the clerk casually referred to as coffee, and dined in the car with the engine idling, the lights off and the heater humming. The snow had begun to let up a bit by then, and I had a clear view of Florence Trenky's front door and the vehicle parked in front of it the green pickup truck that had followed me from Crow Street to the Albany main post office on Thursday.

I watched the lighted windows of the Trenky house, ate, drank, and listened to Garrison Keillor's good jokes about the weather in Minnesota. Whenever anybody began to play a dulcimer, I switched over to the six-o'clock jazz show on WMHT. At 6:40 I phoned my DE A contact from the pay phone in front of the store.

"Mack Fay. Name ring a bell?"

"Not offhand. I can check. Give me twenty minutes. I'll have to call in."

"Also, Robert Milius and the other entrepreneurs who were busted along with Jack Lenihan in '82. Present place of incarceration and known associates who might still be in the Albany area."

"Twenty minutes."

Back in the store I bought a pint of grapefruit juice and sloshed it around inside my head to mask the taste of the cold cuts, which in fact had been cold and cut off something. With a pocket full of quarters for the pay phone, I went back to the car and watched the Trenky house until a little after seven, when I made my call.

"Robert Milius, Jacob Farnum, Alton 'Boo' Waggoner, and Leonard 'Ringo'

Romeo will remain in Sing Sing State Correctional Facility until the year 2002 at the earliest. Mack Fay, born Albany, 1931, convicted of felony auto theft in 1976, paroled from Sing Sing November seven of last year, currently residing Troy, New York. No previous convictions." He gave me Fay's address on Third Avenue while I watched its front door. "No known associates of Milius and company remain in the area. The rest of them took off for parts unknown in '82, and of course Jack Lenihan is dead. Anything else?"

"Can you find out if Fay knew Milius or any of the others at Sing Sing?"

"That'll take a little longer. Why do you ask? It's time I found out what you were mixed up in, Strachey."

"No, it's not time, yet. Soon."

"Uh-huh. I think you owe me, however. I've been more than generous. Give me a simple explanation and we'll call it even."

"A simple explanation is too much to ask. How about if I sent you four dollars?"

"Are you in trouble?"

"Sure."

"I hope whatever you expect to get out of this is worth it?"

I said, "You can't put a price tag on good government," and, before he could call me a pompous fool, hung up. I had no time for cynics.

I'd missed Keillor's monologue but got back in the car in time for some good stride piano playing, to which I tapped my sweating feet. I tapped them off and on for another forty minutes, at the end of which time the front door opened at the Trenky residence and a man emerged.

Stocky, fiftyish, wrapped in a heavy green parka, the man quickly wiped the snow from the roof and windshield of the pickup truck, started it, waited half a minute for it to begin to warm up, and pulled out onto the avenue. He made a U-turn in the intersection in front of me and headed south. I followed.

Traffic was light on account of the storm, and I stayed well behind the truck through Troy, across the river, out Route 7, down the Northway, and into the Albany County Airport access road. When the pickup slowed and turned right by the AIR FREIGHT sign, I went on by, circled past the main terminal, and parked on the verge along the exit road. Ten minutes later the pickup passed me, moving back east again, and I followed.

When the pickup stopped for a red light on Route 7, I pulled up close behind it. Its bed appeared to be empty except for two feet of snow, but through the rear window I could make out what looked like suitcases stacked on the seat beside the driver. So much for any attempts at sleight of hand from the truck bed.

I let the truck move ahead of me again, pulled into a McDonald's, drove around the building to an exit, then followed the taillights of the pickup through the light snow back into Troy. I turned up First Avenue, went three miles an hour faster than I should have, and was parked in the Cumberland Farms lot when Mack Fay came up Third and pulled up in front of the Trenky house. He got out and hollered something in the front door and, one by one, handed the five bags up to a middle-aged blond woman who stood in the entryway in a pink housecoat. Fay followed the woman into the house then and shut the door.

I sat. I thought about calling APD and spilling it all to whoever Bowman had left in charge of the murder investigation during his trip west. Fay's possession of the five suitcases, presumably from Joan Lenihan and presumably containing the two and a half million, would be circumstantial but powerfully so. As a parolee, Fay could be asked to account for his sudden vast wealth, and other relevant information might be made to shake loose.

On the other hand, if Fay was in fact Jack Lenihan's killer, anything short of an immediate arrest and incarceration without bail might set him running in the company of the suitcases-and the DA might consider the circumstantial evidence too flimsy to justify holding Fay. I had seen that happen.

What I needed was more evidence connecting Fay to Jack Lenihan. There had been the phone call from LA to Flo Trenky's number on Monday, when Jack was alive-this, I thought, was Jack notifying Fay of his flight number and arrival time on Tuesday. And there had been the call from LA to Flo Trenky's number Friday afternoon-this presumably was Joan notifying Fay that she was returning the cash via Air Freight. But it was all so circumstantial that it seemed possible Fay might cook up an explanation and a set of alibis that would get him off the hook just long enough for him to bolt with the five suitcases, whose contents I intended to possess.

Two questions nagged. Why had Jack Lenihan trusted Mack Fay to the extent that Lenihan could phone Fay from LA and ask him to meet his plane? And why, if she knew that Fay could well have been the man who killed her son– and she must have suspected him-did Joan Lenihan turn over the money to Fay instead of notifying the police? She had been vague and unconvincing on that topic, giving me opinions about the wickedness of Albany that lacked illuminating specifics.

I decided there was a lot more I had to find out before I went to Bowman.

He might conceivably identify and even arrest, charge, and convict Jack Lenihan's killer, but the two and a half million might end up in the state's coffers and get spent on bridge repairs and new hats for fish wardens, both worthy expenditures, but Jack Lenihan had a better idea and I was high with the fever to carry it out. I was going to change history, make improvements on it.

I made a plan of action and set out. First, I went back to the pay phone. It was just after six in Los Angeles and I caught Timmy at Kyle Toot's place.

They had just come in from taking the Universal Studios tour, where Timmy said he had witnessed Hump Finkley of Chompin Choppers drinking from a carton of chocolate milk. I said I was sorry I'd had to leave early and miss it.

It took me twenty minutes to convince the two of them to drive to the LA airport and get on the first flight with an O'Hare connection to Albany. But after I described my own plans for the night and promised to cover all expenses from a special account I planned to open soon, they took mild grudging pity and agreed to do it.

I shut off the car, locked it, and explored the neighborhood, which was quiet except for the plop of wet snow plummeting from utility lines. I glanced up at Flo Trenky's heavily curtained front windows, then went around the block and down an alley, counting houses as I went. The snow in the alley was heavy and deep. My feet were cold. I kept wiping my nose and wished Timmy were there to produce a hanky from his sleeve, stitched with the seal of the New York state legislature.

The Trenky property, like its neighbors, had a crumbling board fence walling off the alley from a narrow yard. The gate of the Trenky fence was ajar, lodged in a snowdrift, which I was glad to take note of. I entered the yard, slogged through the drifts, and crouched below the decrepit three-story back porch, which clung to the rear wall of the house feebly, as if it would soon lose its benumbed grip and tumble away. Stairs ran up to the second floor of the porch and on to the third.

I now knew how I could distract Fay and get inside the house. It seemed to me he was making it too easy for me, but I had to admit to myself that I did not know what kind of awful security devices Fay might have arranged for the two and a half million inside the house.

For just an instant it went through my mind that maybe the five suitcases contained no millions at all, but actually held Fay's summer wardrobe or his leather-bound indexed complete set of Hustler magazine, or fifty stolen car stereos, or-could it be? – three hundred copies of Fridays edition of the Los Angeles Times. I tried hard to push these pessimistic and additionally confusing thoughts out of my head.

I moved rapidly back to the Cumberland Farms store, bought another cup of black vinegar along with four plain yogurts and a packet of plastic spoons, and climbed back into the car. I set the heater on medium and tuned in The Jazz Decades on WAMC. I watched Flo Trenky's front door. If Mack Fay went any place, I wanted to know what he was taking along. If he had the bags, I'd follow. If he didn't, I'd stay put. I cranked my seatback down a couple of notches and sat there watching, waiting for help to arrive from across the continent.

FIFTEEN

Fay came out the door and down the front steps at 1:12

Sunday afternoon. The sky had cleared again, and despite my blurred vision resulting from lack of sleep, I got my first good look at him. The hood of his parka was down and he wore a black watch cap in its place.

He had on dark-blue dress pants and what looked like the bulk of a suit jacket or sport coat under the parka. Cleanshaven now, his face was wide and incipiently jowly with a set, turned-down mouth and hard dark eyes. He glanced at the bright sky, then up and down the street. The five bags were nowhere in sight.

Muttering, Fay kicked at the snow heaped up alongside his truck. He climbed into the pickup, started it up, and rocked it around until it bounced clear of the frozen ruts. I slid down in my seat as he made another U-turn in the intersection and drove south on Third Avenue. I edged up and watched him go. This time I did not follow.

Instead I drove over to a gas station on First Avenue, filled the gas tank, used the men's room, and went back to Cumberland Farms, where I purchased a hearty breakfast of the store's famous dark brew, a Frooty-Tooty pie-baked with the fresh-picked produce of the frooty-tooty tree and a side of six Twinkies. Civic reform is not for finicky eaters.

At 11:55 another Ford, a sibling of the one I was sitting in, moved slowly up Third Avenue, then swung in beside me. They both climbed into my car and I said, "Howdy."

"Have you really been sitting here since you called yesterday?" Timmy leaned toward me for a greeting but caught a whiff of my frooty-tooty breath and gave me a gentlemanly handshake.

Toot said, "How come you didn't freeze to death? This place is some kind of no-man's land!" He was wearing an old heavy topcoat of Timmy's and had a red knit scarf wrapped around his neck and lower face. His rubber galoshes, mine, were three sizes too big.

"Hasn't Timmy explained to you how the climate here enriches character and hones intelligence? For instance, you might have noticed how Reagan, since he moved east, seems to have grown wiser and wiser. He used to be a real bub-blehead in California. But back here-hell."

Timmy said, "We got here as fast as we could. We made it to Chicago, then had to sleep on the floor at O'Hare until the Albany plane left at ten this morning. We stopped at the house to pick up some warm clothes for Kyle along with the other things you said we should bring. Incidentally, our house-"

"Your face is the color of iceberg lettuce. I've never seen you do that before."

"It's probably gangrene," Toot said, and peered in awe at the landscape around him.

"Who did it?" Timmy asked gravely. "Who was the person who entered my home and did that?"

"Hankie-mouth. His name is Mack Fay, the guy I told you about on the phone. He lives over there. Are you two ready to make his life miserable?"

Timmy, his jaw tight, nodded.

Toot said, "Will we have to get out of the car and walk around outside?"

Timmy sat beside me and watched as Toot drove the other rental car over to Flo Trenky's house, parked, went up the front steps, and rang the bell.

The door was soon opened and after a moment Toot went in, shutting the door behind him. Five minutes later he emerged, glanced our way, opened the car's hatch, and took out five gray canvas suitcases that belonged to Timmy and carried them into Mrs. Trenky's rooming house.

"How long are we going to sit here?" Timmy said. "However long it takes. If Toot locates Fay's room in ten minutes, I'm all for it. But it might take longer. Hours, days, weeks. I hope you brought your toothbrush." "I wish you'd brought yours. God." "How was the Chicano Krapp's Last Tape?"

"We never got there. We came here instead."

"Well, you missed out on another day of warm sunshine, but you still get the theater of the absurd."

"You're telling me. Kyle's a little nervous about this, so I hope you know what you're doing."

"I'm sure he's done improvisational theater before. He'll shine in the part. I can tell."

"He says he prefers the classics. Moliere, Ibsen, Chekhov. "

"How about Willy Loman? That would stand him in good stead."

"This feels more like the Ritz brothers. The Ritz brothers with a social conscience, of course."

"I see that you remain skeptical of my efforts toward civic improvement.

You think I'm a loony, a deranged visionary, a crackpot."

He shook his head. "No. As much as anybody could, I admire your intentions. And I have to admit I admire Jack Lenihan for getting it all started. It's just that it won't have been worth it if you-or all of us-are hacked to bits by crazed dope fiends. Martyrdom interests me only when it's somebody else's, preferably having taken place in the fourteenth century. The pain is eased by chronological distance, and if you haven't slept with the person."

"I think I can work it out so that you won't become Poughkeepsie's first saint. Not that Aunt Moira wouldn't be real proud of you if you did."

"How? How will you work that out?"

"I'm giving it a lot of thought."

He said, "I'll be right back. They'd have toothbrushes in there, wouldn't they? And Saratoga water?"

"Probably."

"In this diocese there is no canonization for the orally unkempt."

At 5:25 P.M., under a frozen black sky, Mack Fay returned. He parked the pickup behind the Ford Toot had left in front of the Trenky house and let himself in the front door with a key. Twenty minutes later Toot came out and walked toward the convenience store. I pulled around the corner and out of sight of the house, and Toot climbed in the back seat.

"Fay is in 2-C, second floor rear, next to the bathroom. I'm in 2-A, and I think somebody is in 2-B-I can hear a radio in there playing Jerry Falwell's top hits. If anybody's on the third floor they don't talk or walk. It looks as if the third floor is empty. There's a locked door at the entrance to the stairwell leading up to it."

"Where is Fay now?"

"He came upstairs and went into his room. As soon as I heard footsteps outside my door, I made for the bathroom and passed him while he unlocked the door. I got one quick glimpse of his room but I didn't see any suitcases. After I peed, I went back to my room and listened. A couple of minutes later Fay left his room and went down the stairs. He didn't come outside, did he?"

"No."

"Then he must be in Mrs. Trenky's apartment. Both doorways from the front hallway lead into it. I wish you could meet her. She's a sweetheart-Pert Kelton doing Carole Lombard."

"She bought your 'salesman' story?"

"I'm Jim O'Connor the Third and I sell designer fan belts to fashion-conscious yuppies who might have to open the hoods of their Volvos in front of strangers."

"No. Tell me you didn't tell her that."

Toot grinned. "No, just ordinary fan belts. I picked something I figured she wouldn't want one of."

"Does Flo serve meals?"

"Not to tenants like me. To Fay maybe. They appear to be good friends, at least."

"Why don't you grab a sandwich and a Sunday paper inside the store, then go back and relax? If Fay goes out without the bags, we'll move in right away while you distract Mrs. Trenky. If he stays put, it's Plan B at nine-thirty tonight." I explained Plan B.

Timmy sat goggle-eyed and Toot looked a little queasy too. We tried to synchronize Toot's watch with mine, but we couldn't figure out which of the tiny holes to push a pin into-and we had no pin-so I synchronized my watch– which had a stem, a big hand, and a little hand-with Toot's and we agreed that Plan B would go into effect precisely at 6:30 P.M., Pacific Standard Time.

Through the evening and into the night Mack Fay did not leave the Trenky rooming house. At 6:30 PST, right on schedule, Toot emerged from the house, got into his rental car, and pulled around the corner. Timmy climbed in with him and they drove off. I waited and watched. Lights burned in the Trenky front windows, but none were lighted on the second or third floors.

An hour and fifteen minutes later Kyle and Timmy returned. They had traded in the little Ford Escort for a Thun-derbird, whose trunk contained objects I had instructed them to pick up from the basement of our house.

Kyle walked back to Trenky's, and Timmy and I went to work. It took half an hour to get the snow chains on the T-bird's big wheels, and as soon as we had finished that job I drove the car over to the alley behind Mrs. Trenky's house and backed down it. The alley had been plowed earlier in the day and maybe the chains wouldn't have been necessary, but better safe than sorry, and sorry in this case could have been sorrier than I had ever been.

While Timmy slid behind the wheel of the T-bird, I removed the two hundred feet of nylon rope from the trunk, looped one end around the car's bumper, and tied it in a sheep shank. The other end I dragged through the snowy darkness of Flo's backyard and ran it around the two main supporting posts of Flo's old three-story back porch. I pulled the rope taut, tied it, and trudged back to Timmy.

"Three minutes."

"What if somebody drives up the alley? There are garages back here."

"Then don't wait. Go."

"He bent down and rested his head against the steering wheel. "This is a crime and probably a mortal sin. I can't believe I am doing this." He was genuinely distressed.

"Do you want me to do it? I'm Presbyterian. I could do it myself and still get out to the front door in time."

He stared glumly at the windshield and thought this over. "No. Go ahead.

The worst that can happen is I'll burn in hellfire for eternity."

"If that's what happens, thanks for the favor. I guess I'll owe you one."

His shoulders shook with a little laugh, or sob, and he said, "Okay. Three minutes." We checked our watches.

I had taken the Thunderbird's tire iron out earlier and now I stuck it up my sleeve. I ambled around the corner onto the side street and then down Third. I passed the Trenky house, where a raised shade on the second floor was quickly lowered and raised again, a signal from Toot that he had seen me pass by. The street was quiet in the frigid night. I heard only the muffled gabble of TV sets inside the houses I crunched past. At the end of the block I turned and moved back north, pacing myself so that I would arrive in front of the Trenky house at exactly 8:27 P.M., Pacific time, 11:27 Eastern.

The roar was impressive, like Alec Guinness' bridge dropping into the river Kwai. My heart hopped twice in my rib cage. A loud yelp came from inside the Trenky living room and I pressed hard against the wall as a curtain was yanked aside. Then a raised voice, male, and pounding footsteps moved away from me. I dashed up the wooden steps and as I went caught a quick sideways glimpse of the T-bird clanking across the intersection and past the convenience store, the car trailing odds and ends of nylon and splintered lumber behind it.

Toot yanked open the front door and gestured toward the stairs. I went up them as he headed toward the door to Flo's kitchen. It took me ninety seconds to fiddle the lock on 2-C-too long, I was afraid, but there I was and another ninety seconds to ascertain that the suitcases were not in Fays room. Not in the closet, not under the unmade bed, not amidst the paperback novels on the floor by the bedside with titles like The Sultan of

Twat.

The door to the third-floor stairway was secured by a padlock. I used the tire iron to rip off the U-bolt. The stairwell was dark and I hadn't brought a flashlight, so I risked the wall switch, which illuminated a ceiling fixture in the third-floor hall. I sped upward.

Groping through the three third-floor rooms and their closets, I found nothing but old odds and ends of furniture. Below me were sounds of increasing commotion, and other excited voices came from Third Avenue. I checked the third-floor bathroom. Nothing.