“No,” I said. “No idea at all.”
“Well, I’m sorry this had to happen, Mr. Todd,” he said briskly. “It’s a damned shame. I’ll have to make out a report. Could I see your license and registration, please?”
“We’ll be in the bar if you need us,” Bernie said.
The constable waved a hand.
“Sure, boys, you go along. I’ll drop by in a few minutes to get your names and addresses.”
He used the hood of the Pontiac as a desk to copy information into a small notebook he took from a leather pouch strapped to his gunbelt.
“Some of these rotten kids,” he said as he wrote, “you wouldn’t believe the things they do. Smash windshields, rip off radio antennas, sometimes run a nail down a car they’re walking by. Just to ruin the finish, you understand. No rhyme or reason to it. Damned troublemakers.”
He replaced the notebook in his gunbelt, handed the license and registration back to me. We started walking toward the roadhouse.
“New York City—huh?” he said. “I guess you’re used to shit like this. I hear the place is a jungle.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “There are places just as bad. Maybe worse.”
“Yeah,” he said in a flat, toneless voice, “ain’t it the truth? Well, you’ll be needing a wrecker, I expect. Know any garages around here?”
“How about Mike’s Service Station?” I asked. “Could they handle the job?”
“Oh hell, yes. They got a tow car. A job like this, I figure you won’t get it today. Maybe tomorrow, if they put a rush on it. My name’s Constable Fred Aikens. Mike knows me. Mention my name, and maybe he’ll shave the price a little. But I doubt it,” he added with a dry laugh.
We paused just inside the entrance of the roadhouse.
“We’ll do what we can, Mr. Todd,” Constable Aikens said, “but don’t get your hopes up. A malicious mischief job like this, probably we’ll never catch who done it unless they pull it again, and we get something to go on.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Besides,” he said, “you got insurance—right?”
“I have insurance,” I said, “but I’m not sure it covers malicious mischief. I’ll have to call my agent.”
“Well, I’m sorry it happened, Mr. Todd,” he said again. “But at least no one got hurt—right? I mean, no bodily harm done. That’s something to be thankful for, ain’t it?” He smiled coldly. “Well, I got to find those truckers and get their names and addresses. You’ll be hearing from us if we come up with anything.”
He waved a hand, started toward the back of the bar where Bernie and his mate had joined the two truckers who had been there since I had first entered. All four of them were drinking boilermakers.
The black bartender was alone, and motioned me over.
“Miss Betty is upstairs in the office,” he told me. “She’d like to see you up there, if you got a minute. Take that door over there, and it’s at the head of the stairs.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll go up.”
“She says maybe you better bring your hat and coat with you.”
“Yeah,” I said sourly, “maybe I better.”
The door of the office was open. Betty Hanrahan was on the phone. She motioned me to come in, and pointed to a wooden armchair alongside her cluttered desk. I sat down, took out my cigarettes, offered the pack to Betty. She took one, and I lighted it for her as she was saying, “Yes, Dave … Yes … I understand, but I’ve never made a single claim before …”
I lighted my own cigarette and looked around. It was about as big as a walk-in closet, with just enough room for a desk, two chairs, a scarred metal file cabinet, and a small, old-fashioned safe shoved into one corner: a waist-high job on big casters with a single dial and brass handles.
Betty Hanrahan leaned back in her oak swivel chair and parked her feet up on the desk. Good legs. Her rhinestone-trimmed shoes had heels at least four inches high, and I wondered how she could wait bar on those spikes. I also realized that in her stockinged feet, she’d be a small one. In length, not in width.
“Okay, David love,” she was saying, “do what you can … Fine … Let me know as soon as you hear.”
She leaned forward to hang up the phone. As she did, she looked at her skirt and tugged it down a bit over her knees.
“Nothing showing, is there?” she said.
“I didn’t see a thing,” I assured her.
“Well, what the hell, I’m wearing pants.”
She opened a side drawer and pulled out a half-full bottle of Wild Turkey. She also set out a stack of paper cups.
“Build us a couple,” she said.
I rose and began pouring the bourbon into two cups.
“I’ll get you some water,” she said, “if you want it.”
“This’ll do fine.”
“I need a shot,” she said. “I don’t like rough stuff on my property. It scares me, and gives the joint a bad name. That was my insurance agent I was talking to. He thinks I’m covered against malicious mischief. But even if I’m not, I want you to know I’m picking up the tab.”
“I appreciate that, Betty,” I said. “But I may be covered myself. I’ll wait till I get back to New York, and check it out.”
“New York,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s funny. I had you pegged for Chicago. You don’t talk like a New Yorker.”
“Transplanted,” I said. “Ohio originally. Could I use your phone? I want to call Mike’s Service Station and see what they can do about my car.”
“Let me call Mike,” she said. “I know how to handle that old crook.”
She took her feet off the desk, rummaged through a drawer, came up with a dog-eared business card. She had to put on a pair of glasses to read the number. The frames of the spectacles were sparkling with little rhinestones and seed pearls.
I listened to her explain to Mike what had happened. She told him she wanted the car picked up immediately, and new tires installed by 5:00 P.M. I heard an angry crackle on the phone. She screamed back, and finally agreed on the job being finished before noon on Saturday. Then they started talking cost, and another argument erupted. I didn’t catch what the final figure was, but I do know she beat him down, and concluded by yelling, “And you make sure I get the bill, you goddamned pirate.”
She slammed down the phone and grinned at me. She took off her glasses and put her feet back on the desk again. This time she didn’t bother tugging down her skirt. She was right; she was wearing pants.
“They’ll pick it up right away,” she told me. “He claims he just can’t get to it today. But they’ll have it ready for you by noon tomorrow. They’ll deliver it to the Coburn Inn. Okay?”
“Thanks, Betty,” I said gratefully. “But you don’t have to pay the bill. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It happened on my property, didn’t it?” she said. “I’m responsible for the safety of my customers’ cars.”
“I’m not sure you are,” I said. “Under the law.”
“Fuck the law,” she said roughly. “I feel responsible, and that makes it so. Got any idea who did it?”
I had a lot of ideas.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Haven’t been leaving your shoes under a strange bed, have you?”
“That’s what one of the truckers suggested. But it just isn’t so. As far as I know, I have no enemies in these parts. Maybe it was an accident. I mean that my car was hit. Maybe some joy-riding kids just picked on me because my heap was parked by itself, way down at the end of the lot.”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully.
“That’s what Constable Fred Aikens thinks. Claims you’ve had a lot of vandalism by wild kids lately.”
“Constable Fred Aikens,” she said with great disgust. “He couldn’t find his ass with a boxing glove.”
“Betty,” I said, “tell me something … When you called the cops, when I went out to look at my car, did you tell them my name? Did you say
the car was owned by Samuel Todd?”
She thought a moment, frowning.
“No,” she said definitely. “I just told them a customer had gotten his tires slashed. I didn’t mention your name.”
“When Aikens showed up and was inspecting the car—this was before he checked my license and registration—he called me Mr. Todd. I just wondered how he knew who I was.”
“Maybe he saw you around Coburn and asked who you were. Or maybe someone pointed you out to him.”
“That’s probably what it was,” I said casually. “Someone pointed me out to him.”
“Ready for another?” she asked, nodding toward the bottle.
“Sure.”
“Use fresh cups. They begin to leak if you use them too long.”
I poured us two more drinks in fresh cups. She drank hers with no gasps, coughs, or changes of expression. I hardly saw her throat move; she just tilted it down. No way was I going to try keeping up with this lady.
“You’re in Coburn on business, Mr. Todd? If you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t mind,” I said, and I told her, briefly, about the Bingham Foundation, the Thorndecker application, and how I had come to Crittenden to make a field investigation.
“I know that Crittenden bunch,” she said. “The Thorndeckers have been over two or three times for dinner. That wife is a doll, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said. “A doll.”
“And we get staff from the nursing home, and a lot of the young kids from the lab. Usually on Saturday and Sunday nights. A noisy bunch, but they mean no harm. Drink up a storm. Mostly beer or wine.”
“Mary Thorndecker ever show up?”
“Never heard of her. Who is she?”
“Thorndecker’s daughter. Stepdaughter actually. Twenty-seven. Spinsterish looking.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her.”
“How about Draper? Dr. Kenneth Draper?”
“Him I know. A loner. He comes in two or three nights a week. Late. Sits by himself. Drinks until he’s got a load on. A couple of times he got a crying jag.”
“Oh?” I said. “That’s interesting. How about Stella Beecham? She’s chief nurse at Crittenden Hall.”
“Yeah,” Betty Hanrahan said scornfully, “I know that one. I had to kick her ass out of here. She was hustling one of my young waitresses. Listen, I’m strictly live and let live. I don’t care who screws who. Or how. But not on my premises. I got a license to think about. Also, this waitress’s folks are friends of mine, and I promised to keep an eye on the kid. So I had to give that nurse the heave-ho. That’s one tough bimbo.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “she is. Betty, I don’t want you telling any tales out of school, but did Julie Thorndecker, the doll, ever come in with any man but her husband?”
“No,” she said promptly. “At least not while I was working, and I usually am. You want me to ask around?”
“No, thanks. You’ve done plenty for me already, and I appreciate it. Could I call a cab—if there is such a thing around here? I’ve got to get back to the Inn.”
“I’ll do better than that,” she said. “You need wheels until Mike fixes up your car. I can take care of that. Not a car exactly. I drive a Mark Five; you can’t have that, but we got a wreck, an old Ford pickup. We use it for shopping and put a plow on it to clear snow off the parking lot. It’s not much to look at, but it goes. You’re welcome to use it until you get your own car back.”
I didn’t want to do it, but she wouldn’t take No for an answer. I kissed her thankfully. Much woman.
So there I was, twenty minutes later, rattling back to Coburn in the unheated cab of an ancient pickup truck that seemed to be held together with Dentyne and Dill’s pipe cleaners. But it rolled, and I was so busy figuring out its temperamental gearbox, trying to coax it to do over thirty-five, and mastering its tendency to turn to the right, that I was back at the Coburn Inn before I remembered that I had forgotten to pay my lunch tab at Red Dog Betty’s. When I returned to New York, I resolved, I would send Betty Hanrahan a handsome gift.
Something encrusted with rhinestones, seed pearls, and sequins. She’d like that.
Up in my room, I glared balefully at those two drinks lying quietly in the bottom of the quart vodka bottle, not doing anyone any harm. Not doing anyone any good either. I got my fresh bathroom glass and emptied the bottle. I flopped down and took a sip. So far that day I had swilled beer, Scotch, ale, bourbon and vodka. How had I managed to miss ouzo, sangria, and hard cider?
I drank morosely. I was not feeling gruntled. The slashing of my tires seemed such a childish thing to do. I knew it was intended as a warning—but how juvenile can you get?
I figured it had to be Constable Fred Aikens, acting on orders from Ronnie Goodfellow. I could even imagine how it went:
Aikens makes a routine patrol of the parking lot at Red Dog Betty’s. Or maybe he’s been tailing me since he saw me nosing around Crittenden Hall. Anyway, he spots me parked outside the roadhouse, thigh-to-thigh with Julie Thorndecker. If Aikens didn’t actually see her face, he sure as hell recognized her blue MGB nuzzling my Grand Prix. So he hightails it to the nearest public phone. It must have gone something like this:
“Ronnie? Fred. Did I wake you up?”
“That’s okay. What’s going on?”
“I just spotted your girlfriend’s car. Parked in the lot at Red Dog Betty’s.”
“So?”
“Right next to a black Grand Prix. She’s sitting in the front seat of the Pontiac with this tall dude. Thought you might want to know.”
Silence.
“Ronnie? You there?”
“I’m here. That son of a bitch!”
“You know him?”
“A snoop from the City. A guy named Todd. He’s here to investigate Thorndecker about that grant.”
“Oh. It’s okay then? Them being together?”
Silence.
“I just thought you might want to know, Ronnie.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Listen, Fred. Could you fix that smartass bastard?”
“Fix him?”
“Just his car. Don’t touch him. But if you get the chance, you could do a job on the car.”
“What for, Ronnie?”
“Just to give him something to think about.”
“Oh, yeah, I get it. You know that hatchet you took away from Abe Tompkins when he was going to brain his missus?”
“I remember.”
“The hatchet’s still in the trunk. If I get the chance, maybe I can chop down that Grand Prix.”
“Thanks, Fred. I won’t forget it.”
“You’d do the same for me—right?”
“Right.”
I figured it went something like that. But solving the Mystery of the Slashed Tires gave me no satisfaction. Small mystery; small solution. It had nothing to do with the Thorndecker investigation.
I thought.
I sat there, trying to make the vodka last, glowering at nothing. In any inquiry there is an initial period during which the investigator asks, listens, observes, collects, accumulates, and generally lets things happen to him, with no control.
Then, when certain networks are established, relationships glimpsed, the investigator must start flexing his biceps and make things happen. This is the Opening Phase, when all those sealed cans get their lids peeled off, you lean close to peer in—and usually turn away when the stench flops your stomach.
It was time, I decided, to get started. One thing at a time. I chose the first puzzle of the Thorndecker inquiry. It turned out to be ridiculously easy.
But the simple ones sometimes take the most time to unravel. I remember working a pilferage case in a two-story Saigon warehouse. This place stored drugs for front-line medical units and base hospitals. An inventory turned up horrendous shortages.
The warehouse had three entrances. I had two of them sealed up; all military and civilian personnel had to enter and exit from one door. I doubled the guards, and e
veryone leaving the place had to undergo a complete body search. The thefts continued. I checked for secret interior caches, for tunnels. I even had a metal detector set up, the kind airports use, in case someone was swallowing the drugs in small metal containers, or getting them out in capsules up the rectum.
Nothing worked. We were still losing drugs in hefty amounts, and I was going nuts trying to figure how they were getting the stuff out of the place.
Know how I solved it? One day I was sitting at my desk in the security office. I took the last cigarette out of a pack. I crumpled the empty pack in my fist and tossed it negligently out an open window. I then leapt to my feet and shouted something a little stronger than “Eureka!”
That’s how they were doing it, all right. A bad guy was dropping the stuff out a second-story window, right into the arms of a pal standing in an alley below. Simple? Sure it was. All the good scams are. Took me three weeks to break it.
But finding the author of the note, “Thorndecker kills,” wasn’t going to take me that long. I hoped.
I grabbed up my hat and trenchcoat, and went back down to the lobby, using the stairs. Twice as fast, I had learned, as waiting for Sam Livingston’s rheumatic elevator.
I glanced toward the cigar counter, but Millie Goodfellow had a customer, one of the antediluvian permanent residents. He was leaning over the counter, practically falling, trying to read the sign on the front of her tight T-shirt.
“What?” I heard his querulous voice. “What does it say? I left my reading glasses upstairs.”
I went to the desk, and the baldy on duty looked up, irritated at being interrupted in his contemplation of the Playboy centerfold.
“Yes?” he said testily.
“I need a new typewriter ribbon,” I said. “You got any place in town that sells office supplies?”
“Of course we do,” he said in an aggrieved tone, angry because he thought I doubted Coburn could provide such an amenity.
He told me how to find Coburn Office Supplies, a store located one block north of the post office.
“I’m sure they’ll have everything you need,” he said stiffly.
I thanked him, and started away. Then my eyes were caught by the right shoulder of his blue serge suit. He saw me staring, and twisted his head and looked down, trying to see what I was looking at. I reached out and brushed his shoulder twice with the edge of my hand.
The Sixth Commandment Page 24
