Rocket Science

by Jay Lake

  Even over the lousy telephone line, I could hear Deputy Morgan shuffling papers. “The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division brought him in.” The cadence of his voice changed as he read from a report. “They were interviewing him about the disposition of one of his trucks. He had an episode of delirium tremens and attacked the investigators with a wrought-iron floor lamp.”

  That sounded like Dad, alright. He never got over the idea that he’d killed Mom with his drinking, and that just fed his anger and kept him stuffed further inside the bottle. I hadn’t gotten over blaming him either, come to think of it, but that was both uncharitable and untrue, at least strictly speaking. More to the point at the moment, I could easily imagine which of Dad’s trucks Army CID would be interested in. It was parked in a barn fifteen miles away from here with a secret Nazi weapon still loaded on the back. “Is Dad all right?” I asked, visions of Fort Leavenworth’s penitentiary walls dancing in my head.

  “He’s fine, except for a couple of bumps to the head,” said Deputy Morgan. “There’s a very unhappy Captain Markowicz here with a broken arm, however. I believe he is keen to speak with you in person.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” I said. “Thank you for your time.” And for not locking Dad up, I thought. Not to mention the courtesy of the telephone call, instead of simply storming up the stairs with handcuffs and a truncheon. I handed the telephone back to Mrs. Sigurdsen: Chief Librarian. “I appreciate the assistance with that important call, ma’am.” I winked. “Government matter.” If I was going down, I would go down in style.

  I walked out of the office right past assistant librarian Weeks’ desk, heading for the carrel where I had been doing my research.

  It was absolutely clean.

  No German-English dictionary. No Encyclopedia Britannica volumes spread around. And no envelope of Nazi papers. “For the love of Christ,” I hissed under my breath. I couldn’t believe I had been foolish enough to turn my back on the materials.

  I turned away, my face hot and sweaty, and stepped back to the circulation desk. “Ah, Miss Weeks?”

  She looked up at me, distaste obvious in the set of her lips and her narrowed eyes. “Yes, Mr. Dunham?”

  “I left some research materials in the study carrel over there when I took my telephone call.”

  “Yes. I reshelved them. Reference books are not to be left lying about, Mr. Dunham.”

  “I don’t care about the darned books.” Miss Weeks’ glare intensified, as if she could deliver me a black eye through sheer nerve. Her boss maybe, but not her. And that was definitely the wrong thing to say. I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. What I’m very concerned about is the packet of materials I left at the study carrel when I took the telephone call. Some technical reports to be specific.”

  “Nothing like that was there when I cleared the carrel,” she said primly.

  “What do you mean they weren’t there?” My voice rose sharply. “I left them spread out with the dictionary when I went back to the reference section. From there, I followed you into the office.”

  “Lower your voice, please, Mr. Dunham, or I shall be forced to ask you to leave and bar you from the premises. You must have taken them with you when you received your telephone call. Perhaps they are in your pocket.”

  Which was ridiculous as I was wearing canvas work pants and a denim shirt. No pockets big enough. I was certain the papers were not in the office, but I pushed past her desk and walked into the office without knocking. The old bat who roosted there was talking on the telephone. It didn’t sound like English, but I didn’t catch enough of what she was saying. She covered the handset when I walked in. “May I help you, sir?” she asked in a tone that could have frosted glass.

  “I need to find a manila envelope with some documents. Miss Weeks thinks I may have left the materials in here.”

  “I have no such envelope in here.”

  “Are you sure?” That hot, angry feeling was building in me, matching my sweaty face and racing pulse. My game leg started to ache, too, a sure sign I was in deep trouble.

  “I suggest that you leave this library, Mr. Dunham,” she said. “Your presence here is disruptive and no longer welcome.”

  “But my envelope —”

  “There is no envelope here, Mr. Dunham. I am sure you have done something else with it. Now I believe that you have business with the Deputy Sheriff?” It was clear she would find some business for me with Deputy Morgan if I didn’t exit gracefully.

  The Chief Librarian stared me out of her office. I backed out, shutting her door, and looked around for Marion Weeks. She was nowhere to be seen, vanished just like my envelope of documents. I slowly turned and walked out the front door of the library and down the old flight of wooden stairs bolted to the outside wall of the city building.

  There had to be a connection between Army CID talking to Dad and someone stealing my documents out of the library. Taking the envelope wasn’t Floyd’s kind of prank. He wouldn’t be willing to compromise our little project, not even in the name of scaring the pee out of me. Nobody else in Augusta, Kansas could possibly have wanted anything from those Nazi documents. They wouldn’t mean anything to anyone here except me. Or a military intelligence officer. CID wasn’t M.I., but the broken-armed Captain Markowicz could be playing a double role. I would if I was him.

  I wondered why the CID man wasn’t bringing criminal charges against Dad for assault and battery. I would.

  Chapter Four

  Ollie Wannamaker, newly minted Augusta police officer, sat at the desk in the police department’s cramped waiting room. Two benches flanked the desk, war bond and ration posters on the wall. The sandstone floor was blotched with odd stains, and someone was snoring inside the barred cell barely visible through a cracked open door behind Ollie’s desk. It sure sounded like Dad’s rattling breath, music to an entire childhood’s worth of sleepless nights.

  “Oh, hey, Vernon. How ya’ doin’?”

  Before the war, Ollie had been a moon-faced, big-boned kid with an unfortunate tendency to sprout blackheads. He’d gone through high school with me and Floyd. He even dated Mary Anne for a while, when we were all juniors and she was mad at Floyd for two months running. After graduation, Ollie went into the Army. Uncle Sam made him a military policeman in Hawaii, dragging drunks off beaches and patrolling nightclubs. At the end of the war, Ollie came home to Kansas — thin, tough, and tanned right out of his skin condition. He became a police officer — the natural thing to do given his service as a military policeman. I knew his Seventh Day Adventist parents weren’t too pleased about the career choice, but Ollie was a good cop who cared about the folks he had sworn to serve.

  “I’m here for my dad, Ollie.”

  Somewhere behind Ollie, the old man snored. Ollie scratched his head. “Your dad?”

  “Yes, Ollie. My dad. Remember him? Grady Dunham, town drunk?” I stuck my hand out about the level of my eyebrows, about five foot six. “Maybe yea so high.”

  “Hey, hey.” Ollie actually waggled his finger at me. “No need to be sharp about it. Matter of fact, I haven’t seen your dad in weeks.”

  This was very odd. “I just got a call from Deputy Morgan that my dad was being held down here. Isn’t that him back there?”

  “No,” said Ollie. “It’s old Johann Strait. What would I be holding your dad for anyway?”

  “Assault.” If Ollie didn’t know whose arm Dad had broken, I wasn’t going to tell him.

  “Now why would a Sheriff’s Deputy bring someone into the city police station on an assault charge? They would have taken him to El Dorado to see the judge, or at least dumped him in the county lock-up there.” El Dorado was the county seat, a tender subject as Augusta was the original seat of Butler County. “You been drinking, Vernon?”

  “Ah, no. But why would Deputy Morgan tell me he was being held here?” My stomach dropped to somewhere around my knees, as I suddenly felt dizzy. It was the missing envelope. Could the who
le telephone call have been a set up? My gosh, was I a prize stooge.

  “How do you know he was with the Sheriff’s Department?” asked Ollie. “I don’t know of any Deputy Morgan over there.”

  “Well, he told me on the telephone he was a Deputy.” That sounded stupid as soon as I said it. But it wasn’t like I could have asked him to hold his badge up close to the handset.

  “Hey,” said Ollie reasonably, “Anybody can use the telephone. It’s a free country. I could call you up and say I’m the governor. How would you know the difference?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get the picture,” I muttered glumly. I mulled things over. I should go over to the house and see if Dad was home. I didn’t really want to talk with him, but I needed to know where he was and what, if anything, had happened to him. Nobody but me cared about Dad anymore. I was all he had — a sad comment on both me and the old man.

  One more thing occurred to me. “Ollie, you ever hear of an Army captain named...ah...Marcus. No, Markowicz. Yeah, Markowicz. Know anything about him?”

  Ollie got a funny look on his face, and glanced around the little office as if to see if anyone was listening from behind the file cabinet. “He was in here today asking questions about your buddy, Floyd Bellamy.”

  That couldn’t possibly be good news, no matter how I tried to stretch it. “What kind of questions?”

  Ollie looked even more uncomfortable. “I can’t rightly say. Military stuff. You know.” His tone of voice reminded me that he and Floyd had served our country, brothers-in-arms even while they were across the world from each other. I, the town gimp, had stayed home safe and warm with all the girls.

  I tried again. “Tell me this. Is Floyd in trouble? Or is this something else, maybe a background investigation?” Floyd or no Floyd, my aircraft was in danger. I could smell it coming.

  Ollie scratched his head again and stared down at the gum wrappers on his desk. “Take some advice, Vernon. Stay away from Floyd Bellamy for a few days. I know you’ve been palling around with him more than usual lately.” Still not meeting my eye, he raised his hand as if to stop traffic, or maybe wave me off. “I didn’t say nothing to the Army investigators, but your name is gonna come up if they keep asking around. I don’t know, you might ought to take a business trip to Kansas City or something. Augusta probably isn’t the best place for you right now.”

  Ollie folded his arms and finally met my eye, giving me his best cop stare. The interview was over. I’d probably already learned more than I was really supposed to know.

  “Thanks, Ollie,” I said. “I appreciate it.” I made an effort to sound like I meant that, covering my anger and confusion.

  I turned and walked out to 5th Street. I didn’t really feel like calling Dad’s neighbors from the telephone on Ollie’s desk. The Johansens were as sick of him as I was, with the late night screaming and the shotgun blasts and the knocked-down mailboxes. But Mr. Johansen would have gone and checked if I’d asked him to. Besides, I wasn’t sure who might be listening. It would have been bad enough to have the conversation in front of Ollie.

  Most of all, I hated the fact that I was starting to think this way. The war was over, we were all supposed to be going back to our normal lives.

  My car was parked around the corner and down the block on State Street. Walking toward it, I morosely studied the Hudson. She wasn’t that old, just barely pre-war, and was a good car — had seen me through college and the war. I had been looking at brochures for new Studebakers at a dealership over in Wichita, but the money was more than I could spend. My faded black sedan had served me well. She was cheap, loyal and dependable, and I loved her lines. If I squinted in a bad light, I could almost convince myself I was driving a Hudson Terraplane, just like the Negro bluesman Robert Johnson.

  I laughed. Being an engineer didn’t exempt me from waxing emotional about the machines that served me. I was already in love with the German airplane in the Bellamys’ barn, no matter who — or what — had buried her in that deep ice. I would come to understand her. I patted the Hudson’s fender and opened the door.

  The crank telephone call really had me wondering if I should go over to Dad’s place. I drummed my fingers on the Hudson’s cracked bakelite steering wheel and stared out at the street. Today was Saturday. He would be drunk as a lord until Monday or Tuesday, then dry up just far enough to wander into town.

  Dad had been a weekend alcoholic for years. But he’d slid further away, losing the habit of working after Mom died in that wreck while he slept off a bender in the back seat, and he’d pissed away months after in the rehabilitation hospital. Dad’s weekends stretched out to encompass most of the week. He usually managed to do something on Wednesdays and Thursdays, hauling junk or doing odd jobs to earn enough to stay alive and get drunk for another weekend. I should let him be, stop by on my way back from work next Tuesday.

  On the other hand, if something really had happened to Dad, if the telephone call had not been a complete ruse...who had made it? I tried to imagine any other reason for the call other than distracting me to effect the theft of my German files. Nobody cared about Dad. Then I tried to imagine how I would feel if I didn’t go by until Tuesday and he had been missing for three days. I didn’t need that kind of responsibility.

  I pressed the starter on the Hudson, and checked my mirrors before pulling out. I noticed a police car parked three or four spaces back down the street from me. That was odd — the station was around the corner. The police department had plenty of parking there.

  Ollie, keeping an eye me.

  Avoiding eye contact with Ollie, I pulled out and headed up State Street. The car still lagged just a little, as if I was carrying extra weight. I figured I’d go ahead and stop at the service station and check the air in my tires, then drive out to Dad’s house on the north side of town, near the lake, and try to make it back to my boarding house for the supper seating.

  Mrs. Swenson had strong opinions about people who came late to meals.

  A siren interrupted my thoughts. I looked in the rearview mirror to see the police car right up on my bumper, its revolving light flashing. That was when I realized it was a Sheriff’s patrol car. Not Ollie following me at all. I pulled over to let him pass. He pulled over behind me.

  “Wonderful,” I shouted at my windshield, fist curling and uncurling on the steering wheel. My head started to pound — blood pressure rising, which was bad for my game leg. I wondered if CID had arranged to have me arrested so they could pull me in without being obvious about it.

  I turned off the Hudson and rolled down my window. The deputy walked up to the car. It was Deputy Truefield, from El Dorado. He had turned Dad over to me a few times rather than driving him all the way back to the county seat to lock him up. Deputy Truefield was okay, if a little stiff.

  “Taillight’s busted out, Vernon,” he said as he leaned in my window. His peaked cap brushed the head liner in my Hudson. Deputy Truefield had razor stubble that would have scared a porcupine, which he kept long in an unsuccessful attempt to cover a chin that receded like the tide.

  My taillight? “I’m sorry, sir. It was fine the last time I looked at it.” I glanced over my shoulder, out the back window. As if that would tell me anything. “You want my license?” I asked, hoping this was just a routine traffic stop.

  “Nope,” he said. “I know you’re clean. No warrants, never had any trouble from you. But I’d be much obliged if you stepped out of your automobile.”

  I resisted the urge to ask why, knowing that would only irritate him. Truefield looked sufficiently nervous and annoyed as it was. I opened the door of the Hudson and got out, trying my hardest to look like a good citizen. Truefield motioned me around to the rear of the car. His right hand kept brushing his service revolver.

  “See there?” he asked. The taillight was indeed broken. The license plate was bent up on its mounting bracket as well.

  I had no idea how that had happened. “That’s odd.”

  “Thought so myself
,” said Truefield. “You mind opening the trunk?”

  “Why?” I asked before I could stop myself. Me and my big mouth.

  “Because I have reliable information that causes me to want to inspect your trunk,” he said flatly, his eyes narrowing. Truefield’s hand closed on the grip of the revolver. “Now look Vernon, you and I, we ain’t best buddies or nothing, but I’ve done you a few favors regarding your dad in the past few years, on account of your mama dying that way and all. I know it’s been hard on both of you.” His face relaxed at the memories and the hand wandered away from the revolver. “Do me a favor, open the trunk. If I have to call Judge Abernathy, you and I are both gonna wish you’d just opened the trunk when I asked in the first place.”

  There was nothing in the trunk I could think of except a badly patched spare tire, a few tools and my laundry for McVay’s Cleaners. Nothing about Floyd’s aircraft, I was certain. I popped the latch and pulled the trunk open.

  I was wrong about the contents of my trunk. Dad was in there, dressed in his underwear, curled up so tight he seemed as if his knees and elbows had been broken. And from all the blood on my grubby office shirts, Dad wasn’t doing too well.

  “Vern,” said Truefield slowly. He had drawn his revolver, but kept it pointed at the street. “We should discuss this.”

  It could have been worse. I suppose if Dad hadn’t still been breathing Deputy Truefield would have arrested me then and there. On the other hand, dragging Dad’s bloody, unconscious body out of my trunk and settling him into the back seat of Truefield’s patrol car on a Saturday afternoon on State Street pretty much ensured that all of Augusta would know by supper time that something bad had happened to my father, and that I had something to do with it.

  Truefield didn’t say much, just grunted, as we folded Dad into the patrol car. He waved me into the front as he got in on his side. Truefield started up the lights and siren.