by Tom Schreck
In addition to the Foursome and me there was also Al and, right now, Al was leaned over the bar scarfing down a cheeseburger. He had ketchup on his ears and he ate the burger like he was starving. Then he started to lick the plate clean and with that he pushed it across the bar. Before I knew it, Al was completely on top of the bar pushing the plate down to TC.
AJ, the owner and the bartender, gave me a dirty look and whisked the plate out from under Al’s nose.
“Duffy—he’s not supposed to be on the bar. For Christ’s sake, he’s not supposed to be in here!” AJ said.
Al is a Basset Hound. He looked confused when AJ took his plate away but he coped with it well by laying down right in front of TC’s B&B. He burped and went to sleep.
“Duffy! His woo-woo is touching my snifter!” TC said.
“That sounds kinky,” Jerry Number Two said.
“What the hell’s a ‘woo-woo’? Rocco said.
“Woo-woo? I wanna know what TC’s snifter is doing on the bar,” Jerry Number One said.
“I didn’t think it was a ‘woo-woo’ I thought it was a wee-wee...” Rocco said.
“It’s still touching my glass. Man, he does this to me on purpose,” TC said.
“You think Al has a frottage thing going with your B&B?” Jerry Number Two said.
“Frottage? That’s the French word for cheese, right?” Rocco said.
“Frottage cheese?” Jerry Number One said.
“On a dog, I think it’s called his ‘cookie,’” Jerry Number
Two said. “Only on a female,” Rocco said with confidence. “Cookie refers to the female gerontology.”
“It’s ‘winky’ isn’t it?” Jerry Number One said. “Or is it a ‘wanky?’”
“I think it becomes a ‘wanky’ if you touch it too many times,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Isn’t it just a pecker?” Rocco said. “Not on a dog—that’s impolite.” Jerry Number One said.
“Oh, that’s impolite—but the fact that it’s touching my drink doesn’t bother anyone?” TC said.
“Frottage is rubbing up against things for sexual pleasure,” Jerry Number Two clarified.
“Who wants to rub up against cheese?” Jerry Number One said.
“Mostly, the French,” Rocco said.
Fortunately, for all involved, Al awoke, turned around and took his woo-woo-wee-wee-wanky-cookie—but certainly not his pecker—and sat back down on his bar stool without any hint of frottage induced sexual pleasure.
That was enough to get the brain trust off the Basset private parts discussion and it brought Rocco back to his nightly ritual. I was through with my first Schlitz and AJ had slid number two in front of me.
“Says here, Duff, that Mike Tyson is bankrupt,” Rocco said.
“Yeah, so?” Rocco felt the need to update me on all matters related to the sport.
“Just wanted you to know,” he said. Rocco’s reading glasses somehow hung on to the very end of his very Roman nose in a way that defied the laws of physics. He moved on to other stories.
“Well, here’s something that’ll interest you Duff,” Rocco said. I was waiting for the upcoming TV boxing schedule. “Yep—this one’s right up your alley.”
“What is it?” I said.
Rocco read from the paper in that exaggerated monotone way that people feel compelled to do when reading from a newspaper.
...A Schorie County woman’s trailer was robbed on Wednesday night by two men believed to be running a confidence scam. The woman, 58 year old, Mary Jo Wilkerson, said she was distracted by a man selling Christian books, while his alleged partner burgled her trailer. She had lost track of the salesman’s partner and only realized the theft hours later.
“Rocco, what makes you think I would care about this?”
“I wasn’t finished,” he said. “May I continue?” I nodded.
...Wilkerson reports several hundred dollars in cash were stolen, some paper work and a scarf she had received from the late singer, Elvis Presley...
“Let me see that,” I said. Something inside of me went bad.
The story went on to talk about how distraught the woman was and there was a photo of her crying outside her trailer. It was beyond sad and I found myself staring at her picture for a long time.
“Duffy?...I need the paper back,” Rocco said.
“Huh?” Rocco jolted me from my thoughts. “Yeah, sure.” I handed Rocco the paper, grabbed Al by the leash and headed out.
Schorie County was 45 minutes away but I figured if I went about 80 I’d get there around nine, which didn’t seem too late. My 76 El Dorado still had plenty of gitty-up and with Elvis in the 8-track; Al in the co-pilot seat and a lot to think about, forty-five minutes was going to be nothing.
I was listening to Elvis, From Memphis, recorded in his hometown in ‘68 when he was at the top of his game. I thought about Mary Jo Wilkerson and how she must’ve felt. I also thought about the kind of guys who would rip off someone in a trailer by conning them. The type of guys that take shit without a thought about what it will do to the person they’re robbing.
Mostly, I thought about Elvis. Since I was a kid he’d been my hero. Lots of people have never gotten that, but I didn’t care. I know, though, when you’re a kid, a boy about to be a teenager, and you have no idea how shit works you need something or someone to guide you. I remember being 13 years old, with a face covered with zits and scared of everything—other guys beating me up, unapproachable teenage girls and the thought of never having a place anywhere in the world. I didn’t know how to act, what to look like or what to do.
Then, I found Elvis. He looked cool, but he looked a little nervous, like he wasn’t so sure what he was doing. In his movies he got the girl but he got the girl by being a little bit shy and a little bit unsure. He all at once seemed to be almost arrogant and insecure at the same time. And when people fawned all over him he seemed to be laughing at himself as if his whole appeal was tongue-in-cheek. He was polite and generous and he never acted better than anyone else.
When I was a teenager and I was scared I’d act like Elvis. I’d adopt his walk, throw on some shades and maybe even stammer a bit when I talked like he did. When you’re thirteen and scared to death it comes in handy. Since then he’s kept me company when I had a broken heart, when I needed to get psyched up or when I wanted to feel like he seemed to feel. I don’t know if that makes him a hero, I’m uncomfortable with that word; it’s more like he was like a best friend or a big brother that I never actually met.
When you’re an Elvis fan people like to remind you that he got addicted to drugs and got fat. Yeah, well, when you’re like me that sort of stuff can make you feel sad but ultimately it doesn’t matter a bit. I know what the man gave me and the rest of it doesn’t make any difference. I never got to see him but there’s no question he’s touched me and I know how important it is to me. To be honest with you, if someone tells me they don’t like Elvis, none of his music, his movies—anything—I never really trust that person. You see, Elvis stood for expressing yourself, letting yourself go, being whom you are but not being self-centered about it. Elvis shook when he sang because that’s what he did, he wore spangled jumpsuits and capes because that’s what he did. Those things taken individually didn’t make Elvis cool—it was the fact that he wanted to do things differently and he did. He expressed himself uniquely and trusted his instincts and he was himself. If there’s a better message on how to carry yourself and live life I haven’t heard it yet. I don’t think I thought about all of this when I was thirteen but I know that if inside I thought of him, then I had a guide for how to be, how to act and how to treat others. It gave me, hell, still gives me something to hang on to.
Something told me Mary Jo Wilkerson felt the same way.
The Shady Acres Trailer Park was right off Route 88. Mary Jo lived on Crescent Court, which turned out to be the last of what had to be 25 rows of trailers. The place was laid out like a grid with trailers spaced about every 15
feet and there had to be a hundred, maybe more, of them. The further you went back, the older the trailers got and the less pleasant to look at. The first few rows were new ones that were designed with great effort to not look like trailers. Back on Crescent Court the trailers were corrugated steel rectangles.
Al came with me as I knocked, actually rapped, on her front door. Is it a front door on a trailer? Or is it a side door?
I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it because the door flew open and a shotgun came out inches from my nose. Al went into a barking fit and started pulling hard on his leash.
“Who the hell are you?” A woman who looked like the Mary Jo I saw in the photo said.
“My name is Duffy Dombrowski,” came out of my throat.
“What the hell do you want?” she said. “I’m going to get your scarf back,” I said.
She took her closed eye off the sight of the rifle and looked at me hard. She cocked her head and looked away from me for a moment and then let her chin rest on her chest. Tears began to come but without any sound, like she didn’t have the energy for that. The rifle fell from her hand and she walked back into her trailer.
Without any invitation, Al broke free from my grasp and ran on in after her. I was a few feet behind and when I got inside Mary Jo was sitting with her head in her hands crying and Al was licking her tears of her cheeks. Mary Jo looked like she was in her late fifties, a woman who had once been a strawberry-blonde who now had some gray mixed in. She was heavier than she should be but in that way that still showed that she had at one time an hourglass figure. She had on acid washed shorts, little white Keds and a yellow halter with Black Eyed Susans all over it.
“What ya mean you’re going to get it back?” she said through sniffles.
“I’m going to find the guys who ripped you off and I’m going to get it back,” I said.
“Yeah, like you’ll be able to find them and then they’re going to just hand it to you when you ask them...”
“If I need to, I’ll take it back,” I said without smiling.
Mary Jo stopped crying and looked straight at me. “Who the hell are you?” she said.
“I don’t like it when people are mean,” I said.
I looked around her trailer and it dawned on me that it was decorated as almost a scale replica of The Jungle Room in Graceland. Elvis’s famous den was made up of wild jungle themed furniture and animal skins. Mary Jo had done a pretty accurate job of recreating the room. She also had a life-size portrait of Elvis, the same one he had commissioned that hangs in Graceland where he’s in a gold suit with an almost heavenly background.
“You’re a fan aren’t you,” she said.
“Yes ma’am.”
“You know Elvis had a Basset Hound named ‘Sherlock.’” Al was now asleep at her feet.
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“I saw him back in 1976. I hitchhiked to Las Vegas. It took me five days. He was at the Hilton and I fought my way to the front of the stage. A big security guard grabbed me and began moving me back.”
She looked down at Al and kept talking, almost to herself. “Elvis was singing ‘The Wonder of You’ and stopped and said ‘Hey, man. Let her go.’ The big security guard hesitated and Elvis waited while the band kept playing.”
She paused and wiped a drying tear from the edge of her nose. “He said to the guard ‘C’mon man, it’s okay with me.
‘The cop let up and I just looked at Elvis like we was the only people there. He said, ‘C’mere honey.’ Then he put it around my neck and kissed me,” she said.
She was crying again. Al woke up and started to whine with her. I was about to say something and she spoke. “Mister, my whole life I’ve felt like nobody. Shit, I am nobody. My daddy ran out on my mom after she had me and every man I ever had left me. But that night in Las Vegas I was special and that scarf was there to always remind me so,” Her face went back to her hands and the tears came again.
“You’re getting his scarf back,” I said. I was certain of it. Talking tough was the easy part, actually finding her stuff was going to take some work.
There were two people I needed to speak to and fortunately both of them were nocturnal creatures. My full time gig is as a drug counselor and from that job and from hanging around inner city boxing gyms I’ve made plenty of street connections throughout the years.
The first guy I wanted to talk to was a guy who just went by the name “Reno.” Reno was a bit of a street legend in Crawford and he was kind of a go-to guy for street stuff. He wasn’t a drug dealer, but he knew where to get shit, he wasn’t a pimp but he could find you a woman and he wasn’t a fence but if you wanted a flat-screened TV for $200 Reno knew who was in business. The funning thing was Reno was the last guy you’d expect to have any street cred. He was a middle aged, balding white guy, who read James Michener, drank Glenfiddich and loved to talk about Fellini movies. Suffice to say, in my hometown he didn’t get to talk about Fellini much, but he always found someone and something to talk about.
Reno owed me a favor from a time he got in a jam and was about to get roughed up. Honestly, I didn’t have any particular affection toward him but it was inside the boxing gym that some guys started with him and I felt that they were disrespecting the gym. Reno didn’t care why his ass was spared, he was just grateful. I called Reno on his cell and asked him to meet me at AJ’s when my other friend would be in.
Kelley was a cop and a good friend. He wasn’t one of the Foursome but he was in AJ’s quite a bit, always one seat removed and always turned toward the TV drinking Coors’ Light unless he was on duty. Tonight he was so he’d be in for his break but he wouldn’t be drinking.
Reno was engaged with Jerry Number 2 and didn’t notice me when I came in. Kelley was in his seat, halfway through a burger, with his patrolman’s cap lying next to his plate.
“La Strada is overrated, shit Fellini is overrated,” Jerry Number 2 was saying.
“Overrated? Are you kidding me? If the American public had any intelligence at all La Strada would be more popular than the Wizard of Oz,” Reno said.
“Wizard of Oz?” Rocco joined in. “Did you know they had to wrap Judy Garland’s tits in ace bandages for that movie?”
“What did she sprain them on a munchkin or something?” Jerry Number One said.
I knew that if I didn’t intervene this runaway train would never get back to the station. I tapped Reno on the shoulder and motioned him to come sit by Kelley and me. Reno took a step toward the barstools and then kind of froze.
“Geez, Duff, you gotta choose your friends more carefully,” Kelley said without looking up from his burger.
“Hi Officer Kelley, it’s good to see you again,” Reno said.
“You two know each other?” I said.
“Professionally.” Kelley said.
Reno sat straight as a board and sipped his scotch. He had to make do with Whiteside in AJ’s.
“Anything I should know about?” I said.
“Not really,” Kelley said “Suffice to say Reno and I are acquainted.”
Reno swallowed.
“We’ll anyways. I wanted you two to help me with something. Did you hear about the woman in Schorie who had her trailer ripped off by a couple of con artists posing as bible salesman?’ I said.
“What tells me you’re about to poke your head into something...” Kelley said.
“Look, I met the lady and it’s incredibly sad. I want to get her shit back,” I said.
“This has to do with the Elvis handkerchief or something doesn’t it?” Kelley said.
“Yep,” I said.
Kelley didn’t mock me about it. He knew how important it would be to me and he respected it.
“I wanted to see if either of you guys would have any idea who might be doing it?” I said.
“These types are usually gypsies. They’re probably in Ohio by now,” Kelley said.
Reno stayed quiet and didn’t stir. Kelley’s presence had made hi
m squirrelly. He barely breathed.
“Duff—this where I usually tell you to stay out of it but there’s no chance of that happening tonight, is there?” Kelley said.
“No,” I said. “No chance at all.”
“Did one guy talk to her, while the other guy said he had to go to the truck to make a call?” Reno said looking straight ahead.
“Yeah, something like that,” I said.
“One short and skinny and one big like a body builder?”
“Yeah.”
“Handlebar mustache?”
“Yeah.”
“Burrows and Carpenter. They live in the Fort Tucker section of Crawford. They haven’t done this shit in awhile. I think they may have just gotten back into town and are starting up again with people who will probably fly under the radar,” Reno said.
“I’ve heard of them,” Kelley said. “Not nice guys, history of violence, I think they use to sell meth.”
“That’s right. Used to make it and they went away,” Reno said. “They still drink at Thirsty’s, off North Clinton. I’d be careful.”
I thanked Reno and Kelley and I headed over to Thirsty’s to see what I could see. The Fort Tucker section was cross town and about a fifteen minute ride. Elvis took me over with the song The American Trilogy, which was mad up of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Dixie and All My Trials. It was one of his more dramatic songs and right now I needed a little drama. Al didn’t pick up on the drama, he was asleep.
