Ice Blues

"Are all private investigators from Albany supposed to be gay? So far as I know, I'm it."
"Al told me Jack Lenihan used to deal dope. And the people he was involved with in that were straight. I thought you might be one of them."
"Why?"
"The money. They'd want their money back. They probably killed Jack trying to get it."
"What money is that?"
"The two and a half million Jack Lenihan gave to Al in October and then asked Al to leave to Jack in his will. Jack was laundering his own money.
The story they cooked up was, Janis Joplin had given it to Al when she was stoned one time, and then Al-who was afraid to spend the money and kept it in the trunk of his car-left it to Jack. You didn't know that? I thought that's why you were here."
"I knew Al had left Jack the money. But I didn't know Jack had given it to Al first. That's what I came out here to find out. Where Al had gotten the two and a half million. Jack told Al it was doper's money?"
"No, that was Al's theory. Where else would Jack have gotten it? Jack asked Al to take it and then leave it to him, and Al agreed. Originally it was closer to three and a quarter million, but the estate tax and Al's back income tax plus penalties were something terrific. Jack said he knew he'd lose a lot of it to the tax guys, but that was the price he was willing to pay, he said, to make the cash legitimate. Naturally Al asked Jack where he got the money, but Jack couldn't say. He just kept insisting that what he was doing was not at all immoral, and Al took his word for it. He knew Jack well enough to understand that Jack was sincere, that his word on that score was good. By then, Al had accepted the fact that he was going to die soon, so it gave him something useful to do for an old friend."
"They'd known each other in Albany?"
Toot smiled sadly. "You are in the dark, aren't you? Haven't you spoken with Joan Lenihan? She's here in LA. If you found me, you must have found her."
"Mrs. Lenihan was not overly forthcoming. She's upset about Jack and she's got problems of her own."
Toot looked at me and said, "Al and Jack were lovers in high school. Each was the other's first. The two families didn't know about it-they thought Al and Jack were assembling model airplanes up in the Piateks' attic. What they were really doing was sniffing the glue and fucking each other silly. Al once told me he would remember and fantasize about those hours up there on an old mattress until the day he died. Which I'm sure he did.
"Al said it was never quite as good after those first attic trysts with Jack Lenihan. But it didn't last. One day, while Al was up working on his airplanes' with Jack, the senior Piateks and Al's two younger sisters were killed in a car crash outside Albany. Al was brought to LA to live with his grandparents-who died a couple of years ago-and Al and Jack never saw each other again until Joan Lenihan reunited them last October. Some years ago, Jack had told his mother about his first love, so when she met Al out here she arranged a reunion. She thought it might be therapeutic for Al. You see, when Al first went into the hospital and got the news of a positive diagnosis, Joan Lenihan was his nurse."
"She's obviously a kind and sensitive woman."
"She is, and that's not all she is."
"I know."
"Her humanitarianism is not entirely disinterested. She's protecting the tribe. She's lesbian and her son was gay. She's as aware as anybody that under the best of circumstances it ain't easy being puce, and the present circumstances are far from the best. When the AIDS unit opened up at the hospital, Joan Lenihan was the first nurse to volunteer."
I said, "I think I will have a glass of that stuff. Have you got a beer?"
Toot brought me a Bud from the Frigidaire and said, "I keep it around for tricks."
"Tricks? No."
"Sure. Haven't you heard of safe sex? The AIDS council put out a pornographic pamphlet on minimum-risk sex. It's a real turn-on, and I've got one."
"A pamphlet, eh? Well, here I am in kinky LA"
"Wanna see it? It's in Spanish too, if your English is not too good."
"I'll pass. I loathe safe sex. Safe sex is to erotic communion what the Salisbury steak in a restaurant on the New Jersey Turnpike is to food. I do it because it's what there is, but I don't want to think about it any more that I have to." I slugged down some of the beer. Toot's house was cool and the cold beer warmed me up.
With a little smile he said, "I wasn't trying to seduce you. I'm sure you have your professional ethics."
"And my lover in a motel over on Sunset. Whether you were trying to seduce me or not, two or three years ago I would have loved a quick tumble in the sack with you and probably would have initiated it. But that's over.
That life has gone the way of cheap gas and free air for your tires. If the two alternatives to monogamy are death and Salisbury steak, I choose monogamy, even though as I speak the words aloud the sound of them makes me a little dizzy."
"Actually there's a third alternative," Toot said with a grin. "If you're rich, that is. I have an actor friend who made a lot of money several years ago and now he spends every third month in Patagonia."
"Patagonia? Patagonia in southern Argentina?"
"There is no AIDS in all of Patagonia, and he found some hotel down there where gay cowboys hang out. He says it's terrific, just like in the olden days-'78, back then. Last summer he spent eleven thousand dollars on airfare. He hasn't had sex with anybody in North America since 1981. He saves it all for the gauchos. Or in Patagonia is it penguins?"
"My God."
"Ernie has Patagonia, but I've at least got my pamphlet. I do what works. I guess you're more of a purist. Like Ernie, except without the cash to act on it."
"I certainly do envy your wealthy and highly imaginative friend," I said.
"And I guess I envy you the apparently satisfying erotic existence that your pamphlet has provided you. But I've never been able to do anything halfway. Like Jack Lenihan. Once Jack decided what he wanted to do, he went all the way with it." While Toot watched me bug-eyed, I described Jack's two-and-a-half-million-dollar political project in Albany. "Did he tell you about this?" I asked.
Toot's mouth hung open. "No. No, he didn't. Jesus!"
"Did he tell Al?"
"Not that I know of. No, Al would have told me. Where's the money now?"
"I don't know. Joan Lenihan may have it, I'm not sure. Jack was about to ship the money to me in Albany for safekeeping, but Joan kept him from doing that. She was against the project for reasons that are not at all clear to me. My plan is to find the money, take it and carry out Jack's project for him. Will you help me?"
He swallowed hard. "Well-maybe. But Jack was killed, you said. Doesn't that probably mean the owners of the money are trying to reclaim it? Maybe they already have."
"I don't think so. I think it's here in Los Angeles. How well do you know Joan Lenihan? Somebody has to reach her, but it looks as if it's not going to be me."
"I've met her a few times, but that's all. She wouldn't trust me any more than she'd trust you."
"Who does she trust?"
"Gail Tesney, her lover."
"She's been shut out too. She doesn't like it, but she can't seem to do anything about it."
"Then forget it. If Gail can't get Joan to open up, nobody can."