"I count six or eight, but never mind. Is the reward money all set?"
"It is on deposit with my personal attorney, Milton Hahn. A public announcement will be made when you and the police have authorized me to proceed with it. I spoke with the chief after you phoned me today, and he concurs that this is the proper approach."
"Glad to hear it. The chief and I have never agreed on much."
"He alluded to that."
"Here comes your food," I said. "And your receptionist. She seems quite… receptionable."
"You notice such things? You're even more versatile than I've been told, Strachey."
"It's an old habit I picked up in the seventh grade. But it never amounted to much."
"You boys through with your man talk?" Marlene said. "God, I could eat a horse."
The waiter, standing by a serving trolley and causing flames to break out all over a chunk of dead animal, winced.
"See ya in church, Crane," I said.
He laughed.
Heft.
I turned the corner from Green and headed back up State. I picked up a Coke, a burger, and three large fries at McDonald's and walked back to my car in a lot on South Pearl. I ate and drank and went over the whole thing in my mind. My eyes ached. I wanted to close them, but I didn't. I knew I'd missed something already, and I couldn't risk missing anything more.
I stuffed the bag of McDonald's debris under the car seat and drove back toward Central through the reeking heat. I wished I'd paid the extra eight hundred three years earlier and gotten a car with air conditioning, and the hell with Jimmy Carter, wherever he was. Though Timmy, of course-Timmy the eco-freak-with-a-vengeance-would have disapproved.
Timmy. That bastard. Timmy. end user
14
I tracked down Mel Glempt at his apartment on Ontario Street. He repeated to me what he had told me on the phone earlier in the day, that he had been leaving the Green Room just before midnight and saw a tall man in a policeman's uniform mug and deftly blindfold a smallish fellow, and then quickly shove him into the back seat of a large dark-colored car, which immediately sped away heading west. Glempt said that in the dimly lit parking lot he had not gotten a look at the cop's face, nor at the person in the driver's seat. Glempt came up with no additional details. He said he had told his story to two police detectives who had come by, and that they had been "polite."
On out Central, I pulled into Freezer Fresh and asked a pale, long-haired kid with bad skin if Joey Deem was on that night. The kid blinked, took a step sideways, and said, "I'm him."
"You kidnap anybody?"
This time he stepped back and looked at me as if I were batty. "What?"
"I didn't think so. But let's try another one. Did you paint rude slogans on Dot Fisher's barn?"
He took another step back and banged into the nozzle of the chocolate glop machine. His eyes darted about to see who might be overhearing our exchange. A line was forming behind me. The kid's mouth opened in an attempt to form words.
"How about the threatening phone calls and the 'you-will-die' letter? Those yours too?"
"I don't know what you mean," he blurted, his mind trying to get a message through to his lower body to settle down, quit spasming.
"You want a new transmission for the T-bird in your front yard. It'll take you two years of busting your ass at this place to save enough money to pay for one. Your dad told you he'd buy you one if Dot Fisher sold out to Millpond and he could sell his property too. Mrs. Fisher was uncooperative and you decided to urge her in your unmannerly way to cooperate. Have I got it right?"
Deem stood there white-faced and bug-eyed, dumb with fright. A round-headed man with beads 63 of sweat on his brow hove into view. "What's the problem?"
"This kid says you don't have any guanabana," I said. "What kind of ice cream stand you running here, mister, you can't offer a customer who's sweaty and pooped an icy, refreshing nice big scoop of guanabana-flavored non-dairy food product?"
"What? What kind?"
"It's okay, Jose. No sweat, Chet. Albany isn't Merida or San Juan, even though it sure as hell feels like it tonight. I know when I'm diddled, so forget the guanabana. You got any Bingo-bango-bongo-I'm-so-happy-in-the-Congo ice?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"Zat so? Well, it's not as if I'm being thrown out of the Savoy Grill, I suppose."
The queue behind me three-stepped neatly to the side as I turned and made my way back to the car.
"Say-hey, Crane! You owe me ten for locating the graffiti artist."
But now what?
Both Deem cars were gone, so I parked up the road and walked back to their house in the semi-darkness. I didn't find what I wanted in the garbage cans, so I grabbed a tire iron and pried open the trunk of the T-bird. There was the red spray paint. This was circumstantial, but Joey Deem seemed so shaky that he'd tell all once Ned Bowman dropped by, said boo, and asked for a sample of the kid's handwriting. Lacking a satchel of foam pellets, I tossed the can in the back of my car.
The tension at Dot Fisher's place had dissipated into a prickly listlessness. Bowman's unmarked car sat in the driveway by the barn, where the fresh white paint glistened stickily in the wet heat.
The red graffiti still showed through; another coat of white was going to be needed. A young sergeant in a sweatshirt and baseball cap sat in the passenger seat listening to the staticky jabbering of the police radio, to which he occasionally jabbered back. Above the house, stars were popping out across a blackening sky.
Dot was at the sink furiously scouring a pot as I went inside. Bowman gave me thumbs up.
I said, "What's that for?"
"We're set," he said, and winked.
Dot suggested I help myself to the mint tea, which I did.
"Where's McWhirter?"
"Asleep. Assaulting a police officer can wear you out."
"Maybe I'll do the same. Sleep, I mean. First things first."
He sniffed, tried to look surly.
I said, "Your people visited Mel Glempt. I saw him too. He struck me as a reliable witness."
"So I'm told. Except the man he saw was no police officer. I've looked into that. We're exploring other possibilities."
"Uh-huh. Maybe it was a bus driver. Has Timmy called?"
"Timmy?"
"Timothy J. Callahan. My great and good friend."
"No. You think I'm running a dating service around here, Strachey? Doing social work among the perverts?"
"I just asked if he'd phoned, Ned. Anyway, I'd never accuse the Albany Police Department of social work. Or even, in a good many cases, police work."
"Yeah, well, if you and all your fruitcake pals would Dot slammed down her pot and wheeled toward Bowman. "Officer Bowman," she said, looking 64 gaunt, overheated, deeply exasperated. "Officer Bowman, please. I realize you are helping us, and I do appreciate your being here and doing everything you can for us and for poor Peter. But, really! I must ask you not to make anti-homosexual remarks in my home. You have a right to your opinions. But sometimes you really can be such an extremely rude man!"
Bowman apparently had not in recent years been called "rude" by a grandmother scouring a pot.
He stood there for a moment looking uncharacteristically helpless, his mouth frozen in a little O.
I said, "Actually, rudeness is one of Detective Bowman's finer points, Dot. Don't knock it entirely. He has a foul mouth, but he's no hypocrite. There's a genuineness to his malice that some of us find intermittently refreshing in a city government full of burnt-out phonies."
Bowman glowered but just shifted about nervously. He would have liked to issue me a couple of obscene threats but didn't want to be called rude again by an old lady bent over a kitchen sink.
"Sorry, ma'am," he muttered to Dot. "When I talk like that, I certainly don't mean you, or your… or Mrs. Stout."