Ice Blues

Maybe you should talk to her."
"You're right. Maybe I should."
I had four eggs with sausage and home fries, and then Annie let me use the phone to call my service, which had four messages, all "urgent." Three were from Creighton Prell, Larry Dooley, and Sim Kempelman, each of whom had left a number and asked that I call back as soon as possible regarding a matter of the utmost importance. The fourth was from an unnamed caller who said the "delivery" should take place that night at midnight at the corner of Clinton and South Pearl, and that there would be
"no hassle."
"If the mysterious one calls back," I told the service's operator, "tell him to leave a number where he can be reached, that I'm willing to talk about it."
Next I phoned Alex at American Airlines.
"I'm awfully busy, Don. We had to cancel two flights last night on account of the storm, and I'm up to here with people who'll die if they don't get to Chicago, though God knows why."
'"When you've got a free minute, I need dates and times on an October trip that John C. Lenihan took to LA and back."
"When in October?"
"Right, when in October?"
"I mean, early, late, what?"
"I'm not sure. Early to mid, I think."
"Do you realize that could take me two hours? It's one thing to violate FAA regulations, something else to stay late doing it. Like I say, we've got problems out here."
"So you'll miss 'One Hundred Thousand Dollar Name
That Tune' this evening. Listen, I'll buy you a Molson next time I run into you on the avenue."
He fumed amiably for another minute before we struck a deal: two Molsons and a plate of the peppered beef with black mushrooms at the Peking in return for the flight information. Airlines never give you anything without a lot of conditions attached.
The thermometer in Annie's doorway read eleven degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind speed had dropped, so I donned my shades against the glare and pretended I was at St. Kitts on an off day.
"You lied to me, Strachey, you bald-faced lied. You acted like you didn't even know who Lenihan was, which made me suspicious right away, because it wasn't like whoever killed Jack Lenihan dumped him in just any citizen's car. No, it had to be yours, and you put on your 'What? Who, me?' innocent bullshit performance like you're goddamn Mother McRae."
"Carmen?"
"You're up to your pouf eyeballs in this thing, Strachey. You know it and I know it, and now I am going to hear all about it-how, and why, and what for, and no more bullshit-horseshit-crap out of you, or believe me, you are not going to walk out of this building today. I'll see to that."
Bowman still had his hideous nose disease. This might have affected his outlook, which never had been sunny, though I had seen him less fatuously airheaded on one or two previous occasions. As he spoke, Bowman's hand kept coming up toward his nose, but apparently he had been instructed to avoid scratching the gruesome appendage, because the hand always made a quick frightened detour of his face, then went restlessly back to his lap or over to his desktop, where it fingered what looked like a glass of iced prune juice.
I said, "Are you finished venting? May Harrisburg residents return to their homes now?"
"Of course not, no. Now then, Strachey. Last night I thoroughly examined Jack Lenihan's apartment. The place had already been tossed real good by somebody who got there first. It was you, wasn't it?"
"No."
"I thought probably it wasn't. You know why? Because in amongst Lenihan's effects I found this."
"That's my business card."
"Yeah, isn't it, though. Your business card — 'Donald Strachey, Private Investigations'-in amongst the papers of the man who died by murder in your car. Now then. You are about to assist with this homicide investigation instead of obstructing it. You are going to explain to me what was your connection with John C. Lenihan. I'm all ears. Go."
I said, "When I met Lenihan last summer I must have given him my card and he kept it-for whatever reasons. And lately he's been throwing my name around without my knowledge or consent-also for reasons unknown. Lenihan apparently told somebody that I have something of his.
Or theirs. But I don't."
He shifted irritably, the hand leaving the prune-juice glass and making a quick pass at the nose. "Something of whose? Who told you that?"
"I received an anonymous telephone call last night from a man with a tablecloth in his mouth who said I had something that didn't belong to me and he wanted it."
"Dope?"
"I don't know. The caller offered no specifics. He said I could see how serious he and his people were, and I took this to mean that they had killed Jack and left him in my car."
"Keep talking."
"That's it. I'm trying to figure it all out myself. Lenihan must have gotten me confused with someone else. There's been a misunderstanding apparently."
"A pack of stinking lies from beginning to end. Anonymous caller my ass."
"Not at all. Ned, do us both a favor and search my house. And my office too. Here are my keys, you wont need a warrant. Maybe I do have something of Lenihan's-some stuff that was left in my house when we bought it last year, or whatever. Send some of your guys out there and turn the place inside out-not too crudely, please-and see what you can turn up. If you can find a connection between me and Jack Lenihan, I'm the one who'd most like to hear about it. Will you do it?"
As I spoke, Bowman scratched energetically away on a legal pad, his nose substitute. He said, "You're setting me up, aren't you?"
"For what? What would the point be?"
"Maybe waste my time, buy time for yourself."
"I've got all the time in the world. I'm thirty-six years old and have most of my life ahead of me."
"You're no friggin' thirty-six. You're older."
"I meant forty-six, whatever. The point is, I want this craziness cleared up as badly as you do. If I have become inadvertently involved with criminals, I want to extricate myself. I have to, I have a license to keep. I know I've behaved pretty shittily with you on a couple of occasions, Ned, and you don't owe me a damn thing. But I also know that in spite of everything you still believe that people are basically good at heart, and I'm a person."
"Huh?"
"Help me out. Help me get out of this."
"And search your house?"
"If there's something there, I want to know what it is."
"Why don't you search it yourself?"
"Because I'm not going home for a while. I don't want to risk being spotted by the anonymous caller. Timmy and I are staying at the Americana."
"You want me to go over to your place and put on a big show, is that it?"
"Yes."
"You're scared, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am."
He tried to suppress a sneer. "When push comes to shove, you people just haven't got what it takes, have you? It looks to me like you're finally going to have to admit that, Strachey."
"If by 'you people' you mean Presbyterians, Ned, I have to warn you that it might not be a good idea to generalize from my particular situation.
Eisenhower was a Presbyterian, and I think MacArthur too. I don't know about Patton. Or McGeorge Bundy."
He scratched at the pad, sniffed with his nose. "Sure, I'll search your house. Maybe I'll find more than you think I'm going to find."