was that I was about to call on a man up to his aged neck in criminally minded Fays and Clerts, whose connection with him was unlikely to turn out to be a funny coincidence.
At 10:10 I passed through the intersection of State and Pearl and turned north. A blue Dodge parked in a bus stop edged in behind me and tagged along. Two blocks later a second Dodge joined the procession, and I thought about skimming off a small bundle of the money in the suitcases to pick up a block of Chrysler stock. At 10:25 I turned up Walter Street and parked. The two unmarked cop cars drove on by.
Dreadful Ed answered the door at the McConkeys. I could hear The $25,000
Pyramid squealing in the background, and McConkey seemed put out that I had interrupted his morning leisure. He had beer on his breath. He testily informed me that I was to proceed to Dad Lenihan's house on my own, that Mrs. Clert was expecting me. I drove around the block to Pug Lenihan's cottage on Pearl and parked. The two Dodges maneuvered this way and that, one of them ending up thirty yards down the block, the other one around the corner on Second Street.
The Pontiac I'd seen in Lenihan's driveway a week earlier was back. I walked up to the front porch, stamped the slush off my feet, and rang the bell. The door was opened almost immediately by a plump round-faced woman in a pale pink pants suit. She studied me with cool gray eyes and flashed a practiced institutional smile.
'Are you Mr. Strachey?'
'Yes, I am.'
'I'm Miriam Clert. It's nice of you to drop by and see Dad. Come right in, please.'
'Thank you.'
I wiped my feet on the worn welcome mat and followed her through the bare front hall into a small, low- ceilinged living room with lace curtains and a threadbare brown rug. The furnishings consisted of what used to be called a 'living room suit'-squat tan easy chair and couch to match, with shiny acrylic pillows, their manufacturer's tags unremoved under penalty of law. Arranged atop a table by the front window was an assortment of framed photographs showing various members of the Lenihan family in formal poses and tinted to the point of herpes zoster. In the one non-studio shot, Jack, Corrine, Joan, and a puffy-faced man I took to be Dan Lenihan were standing on a lawn in what must have been their Easter finery, circa 1963. Their smiles were forced and wan, and no one was touching anyone else. Except for the daffodils in the background, it could have been a police lineup.
I seated myself on the couch while Mrs. Clert went to bring Dad Lenihan to the room. In this quiet plain house, with the winter sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains, I began to feel a little silly checking out entrances and exits and rearranging my Smith amp; Wesson, which was stuffed in my coat pocket on the couch beside me. The house shuddered briefly as somewhere beneath me the oil burner clicked on. A radiator sighed and I sighed back.
An accordion door leading to the room on the other side of the front hall was jerked aside. Standing in the entrance to what once must have been a dining room-a hospital bed now occupied its far wall-was the most enormous infant I had ever seen. Pug Lenihan was as shiny and pink and hairless as a Florida tomato. Though slumped and bent, he was a good six-two, and formidable even in a faded cotton bathrobe and Naugahyde slippers. His mouth was set hard, his ice-blue eyes wary under a broad, smooth forehead. My first thought was, here is Rosemary's baby at ninety-six. I checked the exits again.
Miriam Clert led Lenihan by the elbow to a chair across from me. When he was seated he shook her hand away and snapped, 'Now you go on out. Go on out back.' It was a once-forceful voice that came out soft and cracked, like a recording of a 1930s radio show.
'You might need something, Dad. You might have to make wee-wee.'
'Go on out back and shut the door! You heard me.'
Her face tightened and she turned away. 'I'll be in the kitchen if you need me,' she said to me. 'If Dad has to go potty, come fetch me. Ill be having my cup of tea.' She disappeared down the hall, though I did not hear a door close.
Lenihan arranged his bathrobe over his skinny legs. 'You Strachey?'
'Yes, Mr. Lenihan, I am. Sim Kempelman said you wanted to talk to me.'
With sarcasm he said, 'Ohhh, Kempelman, yes-s-s, Kempelman. That man doesn't know a turd from a toadstool! Do you?'
'Sure. Early on a summer morning, toadstools have little sprites sitting on them. Turds don't.'
He glared at me with disgust. Everything seemed to disgust him. 'You're a wiseacre, aren't you?' I shrugged. 'Well, don't you wise-guy me, mister!'
I said, 'What was it you wanted to see me about, Mr. Lenihan?'
His little mouth bent down and the blue eyes narrowed. One fist clenched and unclenched repeatedly. After a moment, he said, 'You gimme my money back! You know what I want. I want my money back. You got it with you?'
'What money are you referring to?'
The fist hit the arm of the chair. 'Don't you play games with me, mister! You bring it along? You better've.'
I watched him watching me. The oil burner quit running and the house was quiet. Mrs. Clert was not drinking her tea noisily. I said,
'Are you referring to the five suitcases stuffed with US currency? If so, I was under the impression that that money belonged to your late grandson Jack. That it had been left to him by a wealthy friend in Los Angeles. Or did Jack leave a will naming you as beneficiary?'
His look of intense disgust intensified. 'What the hell are you talkin' about, you god damn chiseler? Jackie stole that money. He took it right out of my house last October from right under my nose. Know how I know it was him? Because he told me he took it, just like he was proud of it. That's where that money came from, and anything else you hear is a lotta bull.
Now I want that money back, mister, do you understand me?'
'That's hard to believe,' I said. 'You don't look like a man with several million dollars to his name. If it's yours, where did you get it?'
A blue vein slithered up the inside of his pink head and throbbed. I was afraid he would keel over dead, and I didn't want that to happen while I was there. Trembling, he said, 'Who-in-the- hell — do you think you are?'
I waited and listened for other sounds in the house. I heard none. 'What makes you think I've got the money?' I said.
'My daughter-in-law told me you were the one who was after it. And Joanie don't lie to me, oh no, she don't. She sent the money back to me on a plane, and Howie's boy told me you took it. Mack Fay said he went out to the airport to get it for me, and he saw you take it out there. Howie's boy wouldn't lie to me, and don't you lie to me either. Where's my money?'
'What if I have it and I refuse to turn it over to you, Mr. Lenihan? Will you have me arrested? Why haven't you called in the police?'
Another vein ran up his skull, like a line of blue air moving inside a pink beach ball. He leaned toward me, his fist clenching and unclenching, and said, 'You aren't from around here, are you?'
'I live on Crow Street.'
'Ward six!' He turned his head and spat, though nothing came out.
I said, 'You haven't answered my question. Why don't you pick up the phone, call the police, and have me arrested for grand larceny?'
He stuck out his chin and smirked. 'Don't have to.'
'Why?' I glanced toward the hallway to see if Mack Fay and Terry Clert were bounding toward me wielding tire irons. They were not.
'You were a friend of Jack's,' Lenihan said. 'The word I hear is, you were a friend of my grandson's.'
'He was a client of mine. I'm a private investigator and Jack hired me for a particular job. We were not friends while he was alive, but I feel that I know him well. I admire a lot of things I've heard about him, his ideals especially.
I didn't have the chance to be his friend, but I would like to have been.'
The fist still opening and closing, he said, 'Joanie your friend too?' Now a tense sly grin had formed across his face.
