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?"