Finally I phoned the airline and made reservations for Timmy, LA to Albany, on Sunday afternoon, and for me, LA to JFK, where we'd left a rental car, at 10:15 that night.
Ten minutes later I bade farewell to the Golden Grapefruit. Timmy and Kyle watched me stuff my face at a taco joint on Wilshire before I drove them over to Funston Lane.
A big Buick with a rental agency insignia was parked in front of Toot's little house, and Ned Bowman was standing on the lawnlet peering in a front window.
I cruised on by, parked down the block, and explained to Toot who was waiting for him. "Tell Bowman about Jack's using Al as a conduit to launder the two and a half million. He'll check up on Piatek's financial situation and figure it out anyway. But don't tell him more than that-Joan Lenihan's story about dopers, or anything else that came from her. She wants it that way for her own reasons, which are still unclear to me, but she doesn't need Bowman going at her with a rubber hose right now. He'll probably recognize Timmy and deduce that I'm in LA, but don't tell him I've gone back to Albany. Tell him-tell him I've driven down to check out a lead in the mountains of central Mexico."
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?"