by Ed Gorman
“You know the Edsel they found the body in?”
“You ki. in’?”
“You know where it was?”
“Yup. Right over there in the corner. Along with two others. I put them there myself at the end of the day.”
“While you were here, did you hear the sound of a car slamming into the edge of the building?”
“No. But this is a big place and I was playing the radio pretty loud, or I might have been up front talking to Susan Squires.”
“You tell Sykes all this?”
“I tried. He didn’t seem much interested.
He just wanted to know if I’d seen anybody dump the body in the Edsel. I wanted to say, Hey, man, I seen somebody do somethin’ like that, you don’t think I’d call you right on the spot?”
That sounded like Sykes, all right. Don’t confuse me with the facts. Just let me use my Chief Suspects dartboard and I’ll have this case wrapped up in no time.
“You take a look at something for me?”
“I’m really in kind of a hurry.”
He’d probably been wondering what I had in the lunch sack I carried. I spread the pieces out on his workbench.
“Taillight,” he said.
“Right. Make?”
“Chevrolet.”
“Model?”
“Could be one of three or four. But it’s a ‘fifty-five.”
“Easy to replace?”
“V. At least usually. But Gm’s union has been threatening a strike. They started a slowdown a while back.”
“How long to get a replacement?”
“Couple days.”
“So the driver probably hasn’t replaced it yet.”
“Could have. But probably not. Even if it’s in stock, it’ll probably take till tomorrow before he’d have his car.”
“What if he’s a do-it-yourselfer?”
“Buy his own kit, you mean? Install it himself?
If that were the case, he could have it on by now.”
“If he used a service garage, would it probably be you?”
“Iowa City and Cedar Rapids aren’t very far away.”
“So there’s nothing special about this taillight?”
“Just that it’s broken.”
I thanked him and started to walk out of the garage when I saw the Keyses. They were both nicely dressed, as usual, Keys in a tan two-piece, his wife in a russet-colored suit that hid some of her boxy shape.
“Anything new on the murder?” Dick asked.
“Afraid not.”
“I just wish I hadn’t gone home so early,”
Mrs. Keys said. “If I hadn’t left at seven-thirty, maybe I could have scared him away. You know, with both Susan and me working in the showroom together.”
He slid a commiserative arm around her.
“I’m the one who should have been here. But there was so much last-minute stuff-I don’t think I was here twenty minutes the whole night.” He frowned. “Well, if you hear anything-”
“I’ll call. Don’t worry.” I nodded good-bye to Mrs. Keys.
You can never be sure how Judge Whitney is going to react to a piece of news. One time I told her I’d misplaced a vital piece of evidence in one of her cases, and she poured me a drink of brandy and said we all made mistakes from time to time and why didn’t I just sit down and relax. Another time I told her I was three minutes late for our meeting because my ragtop had had a flat tire, and she threw her brandy glass at me and said it was time I got rid of that “embarrassing juvenile car.” You may get the impression that she likes to start meetings on time.
“How’s her mood?” I asked Pamela
Forrest when I walked into the office that fine fall Monday morning. Pamela was wearing a blue shift with a matching blue ribbon in her baby-blond hair.
“How was Custer’s mood after the Little Big Horn?”
“That bad?”
“She said you didn’t call her.”
“I didn’t have anything to tell her.”
“She said that shouldn’t be any excuse.”
“Just wait till I tell her what David Squires wants. You’ll be hearing her scream.” Then: “Why are you smiling? Do you like seeing me in trouble with her?”
“Oh. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
And I got jealous because the only time Pamela ever looked that radiantly happy was when there was good news on the Stu Grant front.
“Something happened with Stu, didn’t it?”
“Not with Stu exactly.”
“Huh?”
“With his wife.”
“Oh.”
“Been called away, poor thing. Needs to spend two months with her ailing gran, poor thing.”
“Here’s your chance,” I said, unable to keep the sadness from my voice.
Her smile got even bigger. “That’s what I was thinking.”
Her intercom buzzed angrily. “Is that who I think it is out there?”
“Yes, Judge.”
“Tell him to get in here right now!”
“Yes, Judge.”
I just kept thinking of how shocked she was going to be when I told her Squires wanted to hire me. I also just kept thinking about Pamela and Stu together for two months.
The intercom clicked off.
I turned and started for the Judge’s chambers.
But before I could take a step, Pamela grabbed my hand. “I say prayers for you and Mary all the time. That you’ll-y know-get together. Would you do that for me? Say prayers that Stu and I get together?
I’m so scared, McCain, I really am. This may be the only real chance I ever have at him.
Two months.”
“I’ll try.”
I didn’t know which I felt more miserable about at that particular moment, Pamela or facing the Judge.
She had her tall executive leather chair turned away from me. All I could see was the thick blue smoke from her Gauloise cigarette curling up toward the vaulted ceiling.
With its mahogany wainscoting, small fireplace, leather furniture, and elegant framed Vermeer prints, the office was seminally intimidating. The Supreme Court couldn’t look a whole lot plusher than this.
She didn’t say anything for a few moments.
Making me anxious was her second favorite sport. The first was tennis.
Finally: “Is the door closed?” Still facing away from me.
“Yes.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid I’m going to explode and really tear into you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Still facing away from me. More smoke from her Gauloise. More silence.
Then: “And have you found the murderer yet?”
The only reason I put up with this was because of the shock I was about to give her. It would be like dropping a bomb on her desk when I told her what David Squires had proposed.
“No.”
“And what did you do all day yesterday?”
“Stayed home.”
“And did what?”
“Thought about the case.”
“All day you thought about the case?”
“Well, except for when I was reading the funnies.”
“And what else?”
“Watching Maverick.”
“And what else?”
“Reading that paperback.”
“Are you ashamed of yourself?”
“Sort of.”
She whirled around and glared at me. “Sort of?” Her cigarette in her right hand, her cut-glass brandy snifter in the other. “Sort of?”
As I’ve said many times before, she’s a good-looking woman, the Judge. Handsome.
Imposing. She had on a fashionably styled fawn wool suit and white blouse this morning.
Her short hair framed her face perfectly.
She was the kind of woman you saw in high-toned magazines, pushing a poodle down Park Avenue.
“We
ll, I did actually do some work.” I told her what I’d done.
“And I’m supposed to be impressed?”
“It’s better than nothing.”
“Oh, there’s a slashing self-justification.
Better than nothing. Inspiring, McCain.
Downright inspiring.”
I wanted to slide this one right across the plate.
Startle her with it. Make her wonder if she’d heard me right. I wanted to rattle her like she’d never been rattled before.
I said, fast, “David Squires wants to hire me.”
She said, “I know. He called me last night.”
She slid it right back. Startled me with it.
Made me wonder if I’d heard her right.
“What?”
“He said he decided it’d probably be better to speak to me directly.”
“Great. Just great.”
“You were hoping to surprise me with it, weren’t you?”
“I guess.”
“And here I was the one who surprised you.
That’s funny.”
“Real funny.”
“I told him you’d do it, McCain.”
“What?”
“He and Cliffie are up to something, and I want to find out what.”
“You think Cliffie’s involved in this?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
That’s when she got me with the first rubber band. She keeps a stash of them in her drawer. She makes a pistol of her hand, thumb and finger, and then lets me have it. She’s good. Annoyingly good. The rubber band hit my nose and fell into my lap.
“Nice to know I haven’t lost my touch.”
“Yeah. I’m thrilled.”
“Try and be a little faster next time. It’s no fun if I always win.”
She exhaled a great deal of French blue smoke. “Find out what they’re up to, McCain, and fast.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
This time, even though I ducked, her rubber band got me on the forehead.
A sip of brandy. A glance at the two-hundred-year-old Swiss clock. “I need to get ready for court, McCain. And you need to get ready to do what you should’ve done yesterday.” She shook her head. “And I certainly wouldn’t go around admitting that you still read the funny papers. My Lord, McCain.
Presumably, you’d like to be a grown-up someday.”
I made it all the way to the door. Then she did some showing off. Just as I started to open her door, one of her rubber bands landed on my shoulder.
“It’s a good thing you’re short, McCain. I don’t think I could’ve pulled that off if you were normal-sized.”
All the time I was reading Nancy and Slu)o yesterday morning, I should have figured that Judge Whitney would pay me back for it, comments about my size being her specialty.
The beautiful Pamela was on the phone when I went out. She didn’t get to ask me to pray for her and Stu again.
Seven
Try to keep the covers folded back so you can’t see the illustration of Captain Video, the boldest man in outer space and the most popular science-fiction show on Tv. Friend of mine at Woolworth’s was closing out merchandise that didn’t sell. Among those items was a box of forty-eight small spiral notebooks that fit nicely in my back pocket. Great for keeping notes during an investigation-z long as nobody saw the illustration with the Captain and his zap gun.
Before I left the courthouse parking lot, I wrote three names on the first page of my fresh notebook:
Mike Chalmers
Todd Jensen
Amy Squires
I’d stopped by the parole office in the courthouse and gotten Chalmers’s address. He was living on an acreage where he worked part of a farm for a salary. Kepler, the parole officer, didn’t seem to have much faith in the man. “You know what the first thing he did was when he got out a few years ago?”
“What?”
“Cruised David Squires’s place.”
“Squires tell you that?”
“Squires didn’t have to. A cop did.
He saw Chalmers out there several times and thought I should know about it. So I call Squires and warn him and I call Chalmers and try and scare him.”
“He scare, did he?”
“You know Chalmers pretty well?”
“Pretty well.”
“Well, then, whaddaya you think? You ever know anybody who could scare Chalmers?”
I put the top down. Figured if I had to work, I might as well enjoy it. I was sixteen again. It’s funny how quickly you can get nostalgic. Here it was 1957 and I was looking back at 1952 as the Golden Age already. Senior year in high school. Somehow, it seemed a slower, gentler time. Beer parties at the sandpits. Dancing with Pamela on the boat that goes up and down the river all summer. Seeing my dad finally shake off the war. No more nightmares. No more depressions. The year 1952 was just about as perfect as a year could get.
I was sitting at a stoplight when the black Ford convertible mysteriously appeared next to me.
A beautiful blonde. Kim Novak. Head scarf. Shades. Radio blasting Buddy Holly. Revving the engine. Daring me to drag her. A smile that said we knew each other, disturbing without me understanding why. And then she was fishtailing and her tires were screaming and she was laying down a quarter block of rubber. And then she was gone.
The acreage was scruffy, overgrown with weeds.
Wire fences falling. Bottles and cans and papers littering the front yard. Windows crisscrossed with tape. A chimney that was little more than a pile of bricks atop a shingle-bare roof.
From what I could see, Chalmers had himself what was essentially a tenant-farmer agreement. There were a lot of acres in the adjacent land given over to soybeans and even more given over to corn. In the distance along the horizon line you could see a new big blue silo, a new red barn, and a new white farmhouse. Whoever lived there was doing all right for himself. But he still had some back acres he wanted worked so he offered a subsistence wage and a faded frame two-story farmhouse and disintegrating outbuildings and told the tenant farmer, in this case Chalmers, to go to it. Miserable as the conditions were-I had the sense that there was electricity but no indoor plumbing, thus the outhouse in the backyard-it still had to beat being in prison.
There was a rusty Ford pickup sitting at the end of the dirt drive. The house and the outbuildings looked even rougher close up, badly in need of washing and painting. A John Deere even older than the truck sat near the left-leaning barn.
A sweet-faced border collie ran in sad useless circles before slowing down to take a look at me. All that frantic pointless energy.
I got out. The border collie came over and growled. I put out my hand. She licked my fingers. I smiled at her and patted her head.
She looked old and dusty and lost, a kind of quiet doggy sadness that can break your heart.
I went to the back door. Knocked. No answer. I went to the side door. Knocked.
No answer. I went to the front door.
Knocked. And that’s when the girl came out.
She was probably around twelve or thirteen, slender, shoulder-length blond hair with a tiny blue plastic barrette in it. Her flowered dress had been washed a few dozen times too many. You noticed the eyes first, the animal sorrow, the animal fear. And then, as she came into the sunlight on the porch, you saw the metal brace on her leg.
She just looked at me. “He isn’t here.”
“Who isn’t?”
“My dad.”
“Mike Chalmers your dad?”
She nodded. “I’m Ellie.”
“You know when he’ll be back?”
“He’s at work.”
“Your mom around?”
“My mom’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
“That isn’t what girls usually say when their moms are dead.”
“Well, it’s what I say, mister.”
She was going to step back inside at any moment. Shut the door
.
“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra glass of water on hand, would you?”
“My dad said I shouldn’t ever let anybody inside.”
“I’ll drink it on the porch.”
“You wait here.”
When she turned and started walking I felt terrible about asking her for water. Walking looked to be such a ponderous effort for her.
She brought back a glass that was a couple of notches this side of clean. Handed me the water.
I thanked her. There was an ancient porch swing suspended on rusting chains. I went over and sat down. Pulled out my cigarettes.
She said, “I bum one of those offa you?”
“Wouldn’t your dad get mad?”
“My dad lets me smoke.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
I held my pack out to her. And made her walk again. She did what I’d hope she’d do.
Sat down next to me in the swing. She took a cigarette and I put a match to it. She inhaled and wiggled into a comfortable spot. I pushed on the swing. It glided gently back and forth.
“He was in prison.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah.”
“You ever go see him in there?”
“A couple of times. He cried whenever I had to leave. Just broke down and cried.” She said this with no particular emotion.
“How come you hated your mom?”
“It don’t matter. She’s dead.”
“It’s just funny, that’s all.”
“What is?”
“A girl hating her mother.”
Head back, eyes closed, exhaling smoke.
Fetching nymphette profile. “I’d get scared to go to school and she’d call me a sissy and slap me and stuff.”
“How come you were scared?”
“Oh, you know.”
“I guess I don’t.”
She looked over at me with one eye. She was a skilled con artist. “Maybe if you gave me another cigarette I’d tell you.”
“You’re not done with that one.”
“For later.”
“Ah.”
For the very first time, she smiled. “I like that.”
“Like what?”
“That word. Ah. I like words sometimes. Maybe I’ll start saying it.”
I gave her another cigarette. She tucked it behind her ear.
“How come you want to know all this?”
“I work for Judge Whitney.”
“She’s the one that sentenced my daddy.” Again, and curiously, without emotion.
