Ice Blues - Stevenson Richard - Страница 40

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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."

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