me with the name and address of Jack Lenihan's sister in the North End. I phoned my service and was informed that the three pols who had tried to reach me earlier had been calling repeatedly and were becoming a nuisance. I left instructions on when and where they could meet me that evening.
Hankie-mouth had phoned, the service operator told me, but had declined to leave a number. I said if he called again to tell him yes, okay, I'd meet him that night at midnight at Clinton and Pearl. One other message had been left for me. The Greyhound station had called to notify me that my bags had arrived from Los Angeles and I could pick them up anytime. I rented a Hertz car and drove it south just four blocks.
The Greyhound station was the usual winter wonderland of wet footprints, cold drafts, college kids with backpacks, bag ladies dozing, and garbled announcements-'Bah number ploot now boarding at gay nake for Nansimer, Bumppo, Pootiton and Garkfark'-causing travelers throughout the waiting room to crane their necks and squint at the disembodied sounds futilely.
I showed my driver's license as an ID to the clerk at the freight window, and he called for a young lackey who trundled out five good-sized suitcases.
They were not chic and new but they looked sturdy enough. I signed for the bags, left three with the clerk while I carried two out and locked them in the trunk of the rental car, then made two more trips back for the remaining suitcases.
No one watched me or followed me, so far as I was aware, and I was plenty aware. As I eased the last bag into the car I noted on the waybill it had been sent from Los Angeles on Monday, January 14, the day Lenihan had mailed his letter to me. The return address was a street in West Hollywood, and the sender was J, Lenihan. I ripped the waybills off each of the bags and stuffed the papers in my coat pocket.
At the Hilton main entrance I left the bags with the bell captain-'My damn bags didn't make the connection in St. Louis'-and tipped him, with instructions to deposit the suitcases in room 1407. He barked for an underling and I drove off.
The old Irish North End of Albany is full of ghosts for the natives, but I'm from New Jersey, so the spirits kept mum as I headed up North Pearl. The snowplows were out in force now, tidying up the landscape for the electorate. Jefferson was right that compulsory free education is a bulwark of democratic civilization, ranking near the top of any list of essential institutions, not too far below snow removal. Albany city government understood this every four years.
I passed under I-90, which since the 1960s flew across the Hudson on concrete pillars and sliced up a valley separating the North End from the rest of the city. The old neighborhood of double-deckers and single-family frame houses set close together was not quite decrepit, but verging on it, despite obvious spunky efforts to patch, paint over, prop up, and adorn.
The parochial school was boarded up, but Sacred Heart Church looked humbly enduring behind a little plaza of snow-covered maples and oaks. A snowman wearing a red knit cap stood at the edge of the park, though I saw few children out. The sons and daughters of the old-neighborhood Irish had made it into Super America and gone off to the suburbs, except of course for those few who hadn't, and the old people who chose to stay behind or hadn't been invited anywhere else.
The home of Corrine and Ed McConkey on Walter Street was a two-story box with flaking tan shingles and dark-green wood trim. The front walk had not been shoveled, but what looked like a considerable amount of foot traffic had cleared a narrow path. I walked up it and onto the porch, where a chain swing suspended from the ceiling was coated with blown snow.
The wooden storm door had a plastic sheet stapled into the place where the glass used to be, and the only doorbell was a brass contraption, like an old faucet handle, which I twisted, causing a bell to rattle on the other side of the door. As Timmy had pointed out, the Lenihan clan had seen palmier days.
A lace curtain was jerked aside and a male face glared out at me. The door opened.
'Are you the undertaker?' His tone was surly, abrupt.
'I'm Don Strachey, a friend of Jack's. Is Corrine here? I'd like to say hello.'
'Yeah, she's here. You're one of Jack's friends, you said?'
'I hadn't known him long, but we were close.'
'Oh yeah? How close?'
A voice from within: 'Ed, who is it? You're letting all the cold air in, Ed.'
'A friend of Jackie's.'
'Well, for heaven's sakes, Ed, ask him to come on in.'
He gestured for me to enter, but he didn't look happy about it.
'You must be Ed McConkey, Jack's brother-in-law.'
'Yeah.'
As I shut the door behind me, a woman appeared, smiling feebly.
I said, 'I'm Don Strachey, a friend of Jack's. I feel very bad about what happened to him.'
'How do you do, Mr. Strachey, I'm Corrine. Yes, it's awful, isn't it? And so out of the blue. Jack had a troubled life, but I never dreamed.
… I just never dreamed…'
Both McConkeys were small thin people with a bruised look whose source seemed deeper than a recent death in the family. Corrine's eyes were red, and Ed's were dull from the kind of fatigue that comes not from exercise or passionate feeling but the lack of either. He wore khaki work clothes that were clean and freshly ironed, and Corrine had on powder-blue slacks and a white turtleneck sweater of a shiny fabric that only drew attention to the dark rings around her eyes. Her smile, though weak, was warm and natural.
I left my boots on a plastic mat in front of the leaky radiator in the front hall.
Corrine took my coat and draped it over the radiator itself. The odor of frying Orion mixed with the kitchen smells-meat loaf under a tomato sauce-as she led me into the dim, heavily knick-knacked living room. Ed remained standing in the archway, Corrine perched on a straight-backed chair next to the black-and-white TV, and I seated myself on an old brown 1930s davenport whose surface had the texture of a Nigerian's beard. I thought of a happy weekend I had once spent in Lagos and felt funny sitting on this thing.
'Could I get you a cup of hot coffee, Mr. Strachey? Ed's sister Patsy was here a little bit ago and she made enough for an army.'
'No, thank you.'
'People are so nice when tragedy strikes. Grace Toomey from next door made a wonderful meat loaf that's keeping warm for supper. It's big enough for ten people, and I know Grace lives on Social Security and can no more afford all that hamburg than she can afford to fly to the moon. It makes you thankful for what you've got.'
'Mrs. McConkey, I'm a private investigator.'
'Oh my goodness.'
Ed, from the doorway: 'You said you were a friend of Jackie's, I thought.
Huh?'
'We knew each other, and it was my car Jack's body was left in.'
'Oh, that's awful!'
'Yeah, I thought I heard that name before. What do you know about all this bull, anyway?'
'Not much. That's one reason I came here. I'm as interested in finding Jack's killer as you and your wife are. I'm assisting the police with their inquiries.'
'They didn't say nothin' about that to me and Corrine.'
'That nice Mr. Bowman was out,' Corrine said. 'He's a gentleman of the old school.'
'I know Ned well,' I said. 'We go way back.'
'He asked all these questions about who Jack's friends were, and did Jack have a lot of money and give us presents. He was nice about it, but I'm sure he thought Jack was mixed up with drugs again. But I don't believe that for a minute. Jackie learned his lesson that other time, and I know he was staying out of trouble. Didn't he seem that way to you?'
'That's my impression.'
'Anyhow, I know Mom asked Jack straight out if he was selling dope and he said no, absolutely not. Jack never lied to Mom, he just never could.
They've always been close. Even after Mom moved to California they'd gab on the phone all the time. Mom is so broken up over losing Jack, she doesn't even think she can come to the funeral. She's been in bed since
