Ice Blues

From the glove compartment I took out the flashlight, banged it against my palm, and shined the half-watt beam around John C. Lenihan's face and head. He had been a more-or-less young man-thirty-six, according to his driver's license-but prematurely bald, and the downy brown hair at the back of his head was caked with frozen black blood where the blows had been struck, repeatedly and with force. His face was unmarked except for the red-and-black stalactites and the wide-eyed grimace. There were two tiny mild abrasions on either side of the upper bridge of his nose. He'd worn glasses, but I didn't see them anywhere.
Back inside the office shed I asked to use the telephone again.
"Ain't the cops here yet?"
A CB radio on a shelf crackled and a voice came out of it. "What'd you say, Roy? Guy's got body damage? I was outta the truck and couldn't make out what you said."
Roy ignored this, and I said, "They're not here yet, but I have to get in touch with a friend."
"A lawyer?"
Crackle, crackle. "Hey, Roy, you in there yankin' yer wanger, or what? Roy, you there?"
"He's a lawyer, but kind of a cute one. Not a criminal lawyer. I won't need that."
"Cute?"
"The phone, please. If there's a charge for the call, Lieutenant Bowman will take care of it."
"You work with the cops?" he said, and hoisted the reeking appliance onto the counter.
Snap, crackle. "Hey, Roy, I'm comin' in after I get this Caddy out to Conklin's. Where's Pat, up to Route Seven? Roy? Hey, Roy?"
"No, I don't work with the cops. I don't work against them either, except a couple of times a year, but you don't want to hear about that."
He backed off, and I dialed.
"It's me. I'll be late."
"I just got home. The roads are a freezing mess again. Where are you?"
"Still out at Faxons. There's a dead man in my car."
"Right. I'm heating up some chili and I picked up some George's bread at Lemme's. How long will you be?"
"I don't know. Ned Bowman's on his way out here now. He'll want to fling some insults, twirl his truncheon around, maybe ask a few pertinent questions. Forty-five minutes to an hour, I'd guess."
"How did a dead man get into your car?"
Flashing blue lights appeared through the volleys of blowing snow.
Beneath them a blue Dodge materialized and halted outside the shed's window, on whose surface a finger had written CITY HALL SUCKS in the steam that came up from a pot of water on the kerosene heater.
"I don't know yet how he got there. I assume he was placed there by whoever killed him-he died violently, I think. Though he might have crawled in there on his own because the evidence suggests that he drew his last breath while curled up in the back of the car. If he did that though, first he would have had to jimmy the hatch lock and disengage and lower the backrest, and the man's wounds look as if he was in no condition to manage that. So far, it's all speculation on my part."
A pause. "Are you making this up? I wouldn't put it past you on a night like this. Or any night."
Roy the attendant had gone outside to meet Bowman, and I could see Roy shrugging and shaking his head through the uc in SUCKS.
"Bowman's here and I should go. It's his problem now, not mine. My only pressing problems are cabin fever alternating with cold feet. I'm sick of this snow. Let's get out of here-fly to Puerto Rico or the Dutch Antilles.
Tonight."
"You've been whining about winter since the first leaf dropped on Labor Day. But you'll have to suffer ignobly for another month. You know I can't leave now. The people of the State of New York need me."
"We can take out a second mortgage on the house and lease a beach cottage at Luquillo for a month. Just you and me and a houseboy named Fernando who's lackadaisical but has fifty-eight great teeth and the immune system of a steam locomotive."
A familiar silence-he was the only man I knew who could roll his eyes over the telephone. "You're at the Watering Hole, aren't you? Happy hour at Gloomy Gulch. Should I put on my WCTU sweatshirt and walk over and rescue you?"
Bowman was moving toward the door, followed by Roy and a uniformed cop.
"Gotta go now. Who's John C. Lenihan?"
"You mean Jack Lenihan? You know Jack Lenihan. He's Warren Slonski's lover-a friend of Herb's. They were at Herb's pool party last summer. Is he over there with you? I haven't seen Jack since-"
"Gotta go."
I hung up as Bowman shoved at the hinged side of the glass door. He remarked on this error in his terse, unequivocal way, then pushed at the unhinged side, which yielded him up into the stinking hut. Bowman was unchanged since I'd last seen him except that he was suffering from what appeared to be a severe case of athlete's foot of the nose.
"Ned, what's wrong with your face? I don't think you've been drying thoroughly between the folds and interstices."
He looked as if he would have liked to beat me severely about the face and head, and snapped, "Where's your car? You lead the way. Now. I was just on my way home for supper."
I led the way. The phone rang and Roy stayed behind. Flapping sheets of snow swooshed around under the floodlights as we moved up the rows of cars. We came to mine and I lifted the hatch.
"Do you know him?" Bowman said.
"No."
"Probably a wino or mental case. Crawled in to sleep one off, and died.
Poor slob."
"Look closer, at his head."
The uniformed cop shined his Rayovac at the dead man's face and head.
"Jiminy Christmas!"
"I'd say a lead pipe or maybe a tire iron did that."
"That will be up to the medical examiner to decide, not you or I. Holy Mother! So, where's your tire iron, Strachey?"
"Unless it was removed by the killer, it's under the rug beneath the body, with my spare."
"Well, I intend to have it examined and retained as possible evidence. You know I have to do that."
"What am I supposed to do if I have a flat, use my teeth?"
"It wouldn't be the first time you put something filthy in your mouth. In fact, I'm confiscating your entire car. You'll get it back when I say so. Now I have to make a couple of calls and get a crew out here to ID this guy, and then I'm going to interrogate you. I think you're in trouble, Strachey. Real bad trouble."
"No, you don't. But you'd like to think so."
"Well, you've got one hell of a lot of explaining to do, that's for damn sure."
"Let's make it quick. I've had enough of winter in this godforsaken outpost, and I'm leaving tonight for the Dutch Antilles."
"No, you're not. You're staying right here in Albany, Strachey. You're not going anywhere at all until I say you can."
"People I'm fond of keep telling me that."
 TWO 
I made my entrance with a shrieking wind hurling snow at my head and shoulders, like W. C. Fields in The Fatal Glass of Beer, then shut and locked the door behind me. Timmy was in his thermal underwear and was holding a steaming mug full of something that smelled like the mouth of the Brahmaputra at midday.
"You weren't there. Neither was Jack Lenihan." "Weren't where? How about a slug of that smelly stuff?" "The Watering Hole. I slogged all the way over there, and all I found were two pharmaceutical salesmen from Utica feeding gin to a pimply youth with staples in his ears and poster paint on his eyelids. I asked him if an art supply store had blown up, but his gentlemen friends told me to buzz off, so I left. The bartender said he hadn't seen 'Miss Donald' for days."