by Ed Gorman
“She was a pretty gal.” Hiccup.
“She sure was.”
“And nice. She used to work for me. That’s why she was here yesterday, decorating for Edsel Day.
A lot of old employees pitched in. This just makes me sick.”
“Me too, Mr. Keys.”
“And I don’t mean just ‘cause it’ll hurt my business.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Mr. Keys.”
He hiccuped.
“Here. Thought you might want this.”
He handed me a flashlight.
I played the beam inside the shadowy trunk.
She smelled of death. Unclean. This odor fought against the strong smell of the brand-new spare rubber tire. She’d been wearing a blue knee-length skirt and black flats and a white
blouse. She had dark hair worn short and was curled up into a kitten ball. The side of her head had been smashed in so brutally you got a few glimpses of clean white bone.
“You’re going to have to call the Sykes boys.”
Hiccup. “I know I am. But I hate to.
They don’t have any idea what they’re doing.”
He leaned forward and hiccuped in my face.
“That’s between you and me.”
With all the power the Sykes clan had in this town, a wise man made a point of keeping such opinions to himself.
“Why don’t you go call them and I’ll look around?”
“I guess I better, huh?”
“Yeah, Dick, you better.”
He hiccuped and walked over to a wall phone by a rack of old tires.
I started playing detective.
Cliff Sykes, Jr., had seen one too
many Glenn Ford pictures.
You know how Glenn always wears a khaki uniform whenever he plays a lawman? And keeps his gun slung low? And wears tight tan leather gloves? Well, imagine a 250-pound
six-foot bullyboy in the same getup, and you’ve got yourself a picture of Cliff Sykes, Jr. The rest of the force wears standard blue uniforms. But Sykes, being the chief, and his daddy being the richest man in town, gets to play Glenn Ford.
The music stopped as soon as he arrived.
First the live band quit playing. Then the calliope went dead, and then the Ferris wheel music went silent.
And you started to see people at the windows, peering in.
I’d told Keys to lock the doors, just the way I’d learned in the criminology courses I’d taken at the University of Iowa while studying for my private investigator’s license. An unadulterated crime scene is the most important part of any murder investigation—short of a confession.
While we were waiting for Cliffie, I walked around the garage. Found nothing interesting. Went outside in back. Found nothing interesting.
Walked around the side of the building. And found something. There’d been some kind of accident
here last night. A car had backed into the concrete-block edge of the building. Bits of red plastic taillight littered the ground. I got down and picked up a piece. I’d driven over this earlier today. I checked my tires and found the rear left with a sharp angle of glass stuck in it. The tire was quickly going flat.
I walked back to where the taillight pieces lay. Two little kids watched me. One had a Flash Gordon ray gun that made this really irritating noise every time the trigger was pulled.
I tried to avoid them as I sat on my haunches and examined the pieces again.
The kid pulled it thirty or forty times.
“How come you’re doing that?” his pacifist pal asked.
“I lost a dime,” I said. I didn’t
want to explain myself.
“If I find it can I have it?” he asked.
I also didn’t want to get in a conversation with him.
“You find it, you keep it, how’s that?” I asked.
The ray gun shot me several more times, and then they started looking for the dime I hadn’t lost.
The taillight pieces belonged to a recent model car. There were two chunks large enough so I recognized the shape. There was also glass, and pieces of chrome trim, on the ground.
Flat-tire material. I knew how fussy Dick was about maintaining his lot. If one of his mechanics or customers had lost a taillight this way, it would’ve been swept up immediately.
Meaning they didn’t know about it. Meaning it happened last night and they hadn’t found it yet.
“Hey, Bobby, look what I found!” I
heard one of the kids say, the one without the gun.
He held up a V8 insignia. It was about the size of a fifty-cent piece.
I was just about to ask him for it when a gray suede lady’s pump stepped into my view. I followed it up a length of hose, a length of skirt, and a length of matching jacket to the handsome if imperious face of Judge Whitney.
“I assume you’re sober, McCain.”
“He lost a dime,” Bobby said helpfully.
“Pitiful,” she said.
I stood up. “I may have found something.”
“Something more interesting than a dime, I hope.”
The boys started looking for the money again. “How about I give you a dime for what you found?” I said.
“A dime?” Bobby said. “Are you kidding? This is worth at least fifty cents.”
“Fifty cents?” his pal with the gun said.
“It’s worth at least a buck. My dad knows a junk parts place where they buy stuff like this.”
Before the price went any higher, I gave them a dollar and took the V8 insignia.
“Now if you only had the rest of the car to go with it,” Judge Whitney said. Then: “What’s going on?”
I told her.
“Take me inside, McCain.”
“You don’t want to go in there, Judge.”
“And why not?”
“Cliffie’s in there.”
“Oh.”
About the only time they ever saw each other was in her courtroom, when he had to testify against a defendant. Even then they rarely looked at each other and seldom spoke directly.
“I still want to go in.”
“You sure?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
We went in a side door.
Cliffie stood in the center of the garage, talking to one of his deputies. Snakeskin boots. A Bowie knife hanging from a scabbard on his belt. A white Stetson hat that would have done John Wayne proud. But the critical part of the image were the eyes. For all his silliness, he was a dangerous man. He’d killed five men in the six years of being chief of police. Not one of them was armed. Most grand juries would take issue with such behavior. But when at least half that grand jury is beholden to your father for their jobs, charges are rarely brought.
He saw her then and she saw him.
It was a Saturday-afn Western movie showdown, good versus evil.
True, the Judge is arrogant and a snob, and a pain in the ass, and pretentious about her Eastern roots. And yet she’s generally fair in the way she dispatches justice. She’s an intelligent jurist and a true believer in the Constitution, if that doesn’t sound a mite corny in these cynical times.
The Sykeses came here in the last
big migration from the Ozarks, which was just after World War One. They ran liquor during prohibition and a variety of black-market items during World War Two. But by a fluke Cliff Sykes, Sr., got a government contract in
to help build training airstrips and barracks for the Army Air Corps, and it made him a millionaire many times over. He was soon building them all over the Midwest. In the process he bought himself the town of Black River Falls. The Judge stayed in office-she was appointed by a state panel that not even Sykes could buy off—but all the appointments she’d made during the Whitney tenure were long gone. The Sykeses ran everything.
Now they faced off.
“He looks dumber than I remembered,” the Judge whispered.
Then Cliffie surprised us not only by walking ov
er but by doffing his Stetson and sort of bowing from the hip.
“Judge Whitney,” he said. “This is a true pleasure.”
“I’d like to offer the services of my own investigator,” she said.
He was stunned by her abruptness. So was I.
Then he got mad. And then he gave us a grin a lizard would envy. “You have reference to young McCain here?”
“I do indeed. He’s a lawyer recognized by the bar and he’s also a licensed private investigator who has a passion for modern crime-solving techniques.”
“Well, does he now?” The lizard smiled again. “And here I thought he had a passion for that young secretary of yours, Miss Forrest.”
“Very funny, Cliffie,” I said.
“What’d I’d tell you about calling me that, mister?” he snapped.
“I guess I don’t remember,” I said.
The Judge said, “The point is, Chief, it doesn’t look good for our town to have murders go unsolved. Everybody who can should pitch in.
That’s why I’m offering you McCain here.”
He wouldn’t say yes. But he couldn’t say no. Because he’d look uncooperative. And he was learning that part of his job was public relations.
He no longer beat men in their cells, because that was bad press. Now he took them into the woods, and when they came back he talked about how
they’d tried to escape. Cliffie and his father had somehow managed to buy their way into the country club —the last bastion of the Whitneys—and certain amenities were expected of them. No more blowing their noses on the tablecloths.
“I certainly appreciate the offer,
Judge. And I certainly will take it under consideration.”
The three of us looked up at the man walking quickly toward us, the Judge’s number-one nemesis in court. Pure preppy: early thirties, brush-cut blond hair, Brooks Brothers gray three-piece, button-down pink shirt, black tie, graduate of Harvard Law. At one time his parents and the Whitneys had been best friends here in the valley, the only people the Whitneys considered even marginally civilized.
Then they’d had a falling out over a business transaction. This had been about the time the Sykes clan had assumed command. The Squires family, no doubt holding their noses, had thrown in with the Sykeses. This was the youngest Squires, David, husband of the dead woman in the trunk of the Edsel. He wore dark glasses and looked like an assassin.
“Aw, David, I’m sure sorry about this,”
Cliffie said.
“What the hell are they doing here?”
He meant us.
“Just talking, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t want them here.”
Much as he was no doubt enjoying himself, even Cliffie had to wonder about a lawyer who would draw down on a judge he frequently
appeared before.
“Get them out of here, Cliff. Now.”
“Yessir, David.” To us: “I guess I
have to ask you folks to leave.”
Squires was already walking over to the car where two of our town’s finest were pawing all over everything without first dusting for fingerprints.
Cliffie doffed his hat again and started to turn away. Then he turned back to us. “Oh, McCain, I seen you outside with that busted taillight stuff. We’ll take care of that.
Now I’d better see to Mr. Keys.”
After I got one of the mechanics to put on my spare, I walked the Judge back to the courthouse.
It was so warm it was hard to imagine that jack-o’-lanterns were only a month away, the smell of fresh-carved pumpkin in the kitchen and scarecrows ready to stalk the twilight land, crows on their ragged shoulders and eerie bogeyman gleams in the vacancy of their eyes. That’s why I always kept a Ray Bradbury paperback near my bed. It’s fun to be scared that way.
When we got to the courthouse I remembered an article I’d recently read in The Iowan about an 1851 trial held in the original version of this Greek-revival building. Seems Black River Falls had been visited by a gang of outlaws on the run from Missouri. They took a liking to the place and stayed for a week or so. They drank, they gambled, they fought. They were in and out of jail.
During a card game, a hayseed of eighteen accused the gang, rightly, of cheating. The leader of the gang shot and killed him. All who had seen it insisted that the boy had lunged at the outlaw. The judge said it would be hard to indict the gang leader, even though the boy had been unarmed. Two nights later, the boy’s seventeen-year-old sister confronted the gang leader and shot him dead.
A trial was held; there was a hung jury. The judge said the girl committed murder, and to be true to the law you have to convict her; the jurors reluctantly did so. But that night the judge himself appeared at the rear of the jail where the young woman was being kept. He’d outfitted a horse for her, and he gave her enough money and provisions to make it to Minnesota. The girl was never seen again, and no one ever went after her. Her name had been Helen, and she grew so mythic in the minds of the settlers that they called their county Helena.
“You saw him squirm?”
“I saw him squirm. That was a great idea, Judge, asking him if he wanted me to pitch in.”
“He’ll take it under consideration.”
“He wasn’t too happy when I called him Cliffie.”
“And Squires wasn’t very happy to see us.”
“He sure wasn’t.”
“It was one of the few times he could challenge me and get away with it.”
When we reached the steps, she said, “I want to humiliate Sykes, McCain.”
“I figured you did.”
“I want to really rub his face in it.”
It was the only way a Whitney could get back at a Sykes these days. A series of embarrassments.
“Do I have time for a beer first?”
“One,” she said. “And no more.”
“How about two?”
“Two and you’ll be asleep. You’re a terrible drinker, McCain.”
She strode up the courthouse steps, used her Saturday key on the door, and went inside.
Three
Elmer’s Tap is a working-class tavern where my dad and I play shuffleboard two or three times a week. Elmer, the owner, refuses to let rock and roll be put on his jukebox so the music runs to Teresa Brewer, Frankie Laine, and The Four Lads. I’m old enough to appreciate that kind of music but it’d still be nice to have Little Richard rattle the windows once in a while.
On a football Saturday when the
Hawkeyes had a home game, most of
Elmer’s regulars were in Iowa City in the stands.
Elmer is in his late sixties but still strong enough to throw around large kegs of beer. Thirty years ago he was the state executioner. This was when he lived in Fort Madison, where the hangings were done. He won’t talk about it unless he’s drunk, which isn’t often, and then he’s clinical about it. He keeps a hangman’s noose tacked to the wall above his cash register.
Sentimental, I guess. Every once in a while you’ll catch him staring off into the past, that window we all carry around with us, and you wonder if he’s thinking about what it was like, killing those men, and if he ever sees them in his dreams. He was a swabbie in the war, with the anchor tattoos to prove it. Maybe they ward off evil dreams of trapdoors flying open.
The stools along the bar were empty. Elmer was washing glasses, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the smoke stinging his eyes so that he kept blinking. He was a scrawny man with thick glasses. He was also a Taft Republican.
One night my dad and I made the mistake of telling some of the regulars that we didn’t think much of Joe McCarthy. A couple of the
drunker ones tried to pick fights with us, but Elmer broke it up and said there were three things you should never discuss: “Politics, religion, and the size of your dick, ‘cause you don’t want to make everybody jealous.” Words to live by.
“How they hangin’, McCain?” he managed to say around his cigarette. He d
idn’t seem to know anything about the Squires woman. I decided to let him find out on his own. I didn’t want to go through it all again.
“Oh, pretty good. How about a Falstaff in the bottle?”
With a soapy hand, he jerked the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it to the floor, where he proceeded to smash it with his foot as if it were a particularly pesky bug.
He got me my beer.
“Shit,” he said. “You hear that?”
The radio said it was halftime and the Hawkeyes were down by seven.
“This was supposed to be a Rose Bowl year.”
Then: “How come you don’t like sports, anyway?”
“My heart can’t take the excitement.” I’d always preferred books. This may have explained my distrust of Joe McCarthy. Why couldn’t he have been a Baptist? Why did he have to embarrass the rest of us Irish Catholics?
He smirked and shook his head and then said, “That buddy of yours is puttin’ them away.”
I looked along the opposite wall where the booths ran all the way to the back. I didn’t see anybody.
“He’s on the inside of the last booth so you can’t see him. Cronin. Somethin’s really got him down.”
I was going to be Jeff Cronin’s best man in less than a month. What was going on?
I decided to find out. I picked up my beer and went back there.
The booth was wood. It had been painted a few years back. A few of the dirty words scrawled into it I didn’t understand. But they sure sounded foul.
I sat down. He didn’t seem to see me.
Just stared at his beer. His head was bobbing. He’d had enough to start losing muscular control.
“Jeff?”
He looked up. “Hi.”
“You all right?”
“Pretty drunk, actually.”
“Yeah. I kind of noticed that.”
Jeff Cronin was a big guy. Everybody always said he should have played football but he was slow and clumsy. His father bred horses, and horses were Jeff’s love. He was one of four local veterinarians. He wore a blue sweatshirt. His blond hair was ragged. He hadn’t shaved. “Marriage is off, buddy.”
