Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005

The Sound of Justice by James H. Cobb

James H. Cobb was already established as a writer of futuristic techno-thrillers when he turned his hand to mysteries — going back in time with the change in genre, to the ’fifties and the world of souped-up cars. This is the second story EQMM has published featuring his hot-rodder hero Kevin Pulaski. The Tacoma author’s latest book is Cibola, a space adventure/science fiction novel from Five Star Press.

Author’s note: As a writer, I’m interested in the beginnings of things, be they words, places, or people. Accordingly, I one day asked a question of my friend, former lawman and fellow hot-rodding buff, Kevin Pulaski (of whom I have written elsewhere).

His answer was a derisive snort. “No way did I ever figure on becoming a cop.”

Considering that Kevin is a retired veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, this was quite a revelation. “Not even when you were growing up?”

A second snort. “Hell no. In fact, back in ’forty-eight when I was a snot-nosed high-school kid in Indiana, there were folks in my hometown who considered me to be Fairmont’s premier juvenile delinquent and a major threat to Western civilization.”

This was another revelation. “You, a JD?”

He cocked a gray-frosted eyebrow at me. “Man, I was there when they first came out.”

Right up until then it had been a really, really smooth night. The kind we got a lot of back in the summertime Midwest. A couple of gajillion stars overhead and warm enough to let you cruise till dawn with the top down. It was a little past midnight when I wheeled my black Deuce-nosed ’29 into the empty parking strip in front of the Route 22 diner, spraying gravel and feeling easy.

I gave the little fenderless Ford a friendly pat on her hood, because she had been a very good girl that evening, then ambled on in through the stainless art-deco doors of the Route 22. Parking myself on one of the stools, I slapped my palm on the Monel countertop. “Innkeeper, a malt of the chocolate persuasion, if you please. Make it an extra-thick.”

Eddie, the night counterman, rolled his eyes toward the tin ceiling and reached for a malt tumbler. “You’re happy and rich tonight, Pulaski. Somebody must have been suckered.”

I dipped into the pocket of my leather jacket and flashed the trio of Lincolns. “Five dollars a gear with a college guy from Indy. He and his buddies were out cruising in Daddy’s new Cadillac convertible, feeling really impressed with themselves. You’d figure that somebody bright enough to go to college would know there ain’t no way a big chair-car Caddy could out-drag a stripped-down and gowed-up Model A.”

“Yeah, but he should have busted you once you hit the top end,” Eddie replied, dumping a scoop of vanilla into the blender can. “That little track roadster of yours is faster’n spit off the line but the V-8s will still kill you in high gear.”

While Eddie isn’t a rodney himself, our pack of local hop-up hounds have hung around his joint enough for him to dig our jive.

“That is the truth,” I agreed. “But you see, I sort of organized for this race to take place over on that little side road near the county airport. It’s prime for dragging, all paved and straight and no traffic and everything. There just isn’t very much of it.”

I dug out my half-crushed pack of Lucky Strikes. “I was out in front all the way until we got into high and that college boy finally got that big ‘ol Caddy crankin’. But then, just as he was starting to make his move on me, dang, wouldn’t you know it but we ran clean out of road.”

I chuckled and struck a light to my smoke. “You’d figure somebody smart enough to go to college would also be smart enough to scout his racing ground before laying his money down.”

The counterman sighed and dusted a pinch of dry malt across the top of my shake. “Pulaski, unless you manage to wrap yourself around a telephone pole first, somebody is going to shoot you one of these days.”

“Either way, my man, I hope I go out grinning.” I reached over and flipped a nickel into the counter Play-O-Matic.

I was taking the first pull from my malt when the sound of a distant car engine leaked past Peggy Lee’s latest.

“You got two customers coming in,” I said. “Steve Roccardi and Julie Kennedy will be walking through that door inside of a minute.”

Eddie cocked a sceptical eyebrow. “Did you see ’em coming over?”

“Nope, but it’ll still be them.” I tapped the side of the shake tumbler. “Bet you the tab for this malt. Double or nothing.”

“You’re on.”

For the second time that night, it was no contest. The two-toned rippling snarl grew in intensity and swung off the highway. I didn’t need to look out the window to know that a T-bolt roadster, channeled, Indy-nosed, and fire-engine red, was parking beside the A-Bomb. I also didn’t need to look to know that my buddy Steve would be driving it. The tricky part was Julie, but these days the odds favored her sitting at Steve’s side.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Eddie grumbled, filling a couple of water glasses and setting them on the counter.

The thing was, when I did get around to looking at my friends, I could see that we had grief. Steve had those dark Greek sailor kind of good looks and generally is a pretty mellow kind of guy. Tonight, though, he looked mad enough to spit lug nuts. Julie’s pretty blue eyes were also red from a lot of crying.

It was time to make with the inquiries.

Steve and me were what you’d call muy simpatico, even though he was a senior classman in high school to my junior. Both of our dads worked for the railroad. Both of us were outsiders who’d come to Fairmont at about the same time, and both of us lived and breathed hot-rodding. We’d swapped car parts and speed tips and had stood pit crew for each other at about half of the circle tracks in Indiana.

Julie, on the other hand, was a local girl who came from the good side of our fathers’ tracks. A rare dish of a sweet little blonde, she and Steve had been spending a lot of time staring deep into each other’s eyes lately.

And therein rested the hitch. Julie’s father owned Fairmount’s only jewelry store. The glorified watchmaker’s shop wasn’t exactly Tiffany’s but you’d never know it from the way Mr. Kennedy carried on. His one-man consensus was that his daughter was way too good for the son of a GM & O section man. Of late, whenever Steve looked honked and Julie had tears, it was generally due to some beef with Daddy-O.

“What’s tickin’, gang?” I asked as they claimed the stools beside me. “Why the bring-down?”

“The usual, Kev,” Steve replied grimly. “Only more of it. Static with Julie’s dad. Big-time.”

I outed the Luckys again and offered him a smoke. “So what else is new?”

Julie gave a kind of shuddery sigh and brushed road dust from the front of her swing skirt. “This is different, Kevin. This time Dad put his foot down. He says I can’t see Steve anymore, ever.”

“Like I’m talking to a mirage here?”

My friends grinned in spite of themselves. “Nope,” Steve replied, reaching over to squeeze Julie’s hand. “But I guess it’s time for a showdown. Julie and me have to make some decisions. And we’re not exactly sure what we’re going to do.”

Heck, I knew what they needed to do. So did most everyone else in town who’d ever seen them walking around totally gone over each other. Steve and Julie just needed a chance to talk themselves into it.

“Okay,” I said, “so give me the word from the bird. Maybe ol’ Uncle Kev can help.”

They hit Eddie up for a couple of Cokes and started the yarn.

“I’ve been helping Dad out in the store this summer,” Julie began, “and late this afternoon, yesterday afternoon now, I guess, Steve dropped in for a minute to see me. Dad doesn’t like it when Steve hangs around, but I couldn’t see how it could hurt for just a little while. Anyway, Dad had been called down to the bank and I always feel kind of nervous minding the place by myself.”

She gave another shuddery kind of sigh and took a disinterested sip of her Coke. “We were just standing at the counter, talking, when my father came storming out of the back room. I mean, he just tore into Steve right there and then. I don’t think it would have made any difference even if we’d had any customers. He just started threatening Steve and yelling these awful things.”

“Yeah,” Steve scowled, “I could have taken it if he’d just kept it to me, but he starts in on my family. He called my father a damn dirty dago and a bunch of other stuff. Then he said some things about Julie. I’m telling you, Kev, I almost decked him on the spot. As it was, I said some things back and walked out before I totally blew a gasket.”

“Smart move, kid,” Eddie commented.

And it was. Given what folks were saying about teenagers these days, if Steve had hung a fat lip on Julie’s old man, no matter how well deserved, he’d have caught hell for it.

“So then?” says I.

Steve shrugged. “So nothing. I was so steamed that I couldn’t stand being still. I got in the T-bolt and started cruising. Man, I burned a whole tank of gas just driving around the county, trying to cool off. Once I did, I came back to town and picked Julie up. We have to start getting some things straight.”

“Didn’t her dad have anything to say about that?”

Julie smiled one of her “for Steve only” smiles and rested her hand on his shirt collar. “We got lucky. A little while ago Dad was called down to the store for some reason and I sneaked out the back door when I heard Steve’s car drive past. I’m sure Mom’s called Dad by now, but I don’t care. They’ve already grounded me till I’m forty, so what else are they going to do?”

I gave her a thumbs-up. “Very slick, chick. That’s flyin’ with Doolittle.”

I dig hanging around with fighters.

I’d just started to think about my friends’ problems when one of my own showed up. Gravel crunched out in the parking strip and a black Plymouth sedan with a police badge on the door stopped in front of the diner. A few moments later, the massive slope-shouldered silhouette of Officer Hyram Dooley loomed in the doorway.

Dooley was Fairmont’s night marshal and he’d been playing Elmer Fudd to my Bugs Bunny ever since the A-Bomb and I had started to develop our rapid reputation on the local back roads. He’d never caught us, of course, but hey, he was always in there pitching.

I didn’t pack a grudge about it. In a way, having somebody like the old Dewlap hanging on your tailpipes wasn’t such a bad thing. It kept a guy from getting sloppy.

Dooley’s assistant marshal followed him into the diner and the two cops eyed us balefully, trying to look ominous.

I sighed and snubbed out my smoke before they could tell me to and rotated my stool to face our local justice merchants. “Top o’ the evenin’, Officer Dooley, and what can I be doin’ for ye this foin night?”

My natural suspicion was that this had to do with my little acceleration contest out by the airport. However, I was wrong.

“Nothing, for once, Pulaski,” Dooley growled back, “beyond keeping your smart mouth shut and staying out of our way. I’ve got business with Roccardi here.”

Steve’s brows came together. “With me? What’s the problem?”

“No problem, Roccardi. We just want to talk to you.”

When a cop tells you there’s “no problem” in that tone of voice, then, yeah, there is a problem.

Julie, Eddie, and I looked on as they leaned Steve against the counter for a pat-down. “All right, Roccardi. Where were you at about ten-thirty tonight?” the Dewlap demanded.

“Uh, I was just around.” Even to Julie and me it sounded lame, and we knew what he was talking about.

“What do you mean by ‘around’?” Dooley snapped.

“I mean that I was in my car just cruising around. I couldn’t say exactly where I was at ten-thirty. Somewhere east of town, I think.”

“Or maybe you were down around Main Street at about that time?” Dooley’s sidekick chimed in, double-teaming Steve.

“No, I was clear out of town.” Steve started getting a little hot under the collar. “Will somebody tell me what’s going on around here? Why all the questions?”

Dooley answered with another one. “You mind if we have a look at your car, son?”

“Why?”

“Do you have a reason you don’t want anyone looking at your car?” This time it was an accusation, not a question.

Steve shook his head. “No! But I wish somebody would tell me what you’re looking for first.”

“Don’t worry,” Dooley replied flat-voiced. “You’ll know if we find it.” He gave his assistant constable a curt nod and the second officer headed out to shake down Steve’s rod.

It got real quiet in the diner. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Steve’s fingers start to curl into fists. “Be cool, man,” I murmured. “Be cool.”

“Listen to your friend,” Dooley growled. “For once, Pulaski is making sense.”

It didn’t take them long to score.

Dooley’s partner came back inside, holding up a plastic-handled screwdriver. “I found this under the front seat,” he announced. “It’s the same make as the screwdriver we found in the store, maybe part of a set. I found these, too.”

He held out his other hand. Gold gleamed in his palm.

Dooley dug a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket. Flipping it open, he methodically consulted it. “One opal ring in a gold setting... one gold chain necklace... two ladies’ wrist watches... Yeah, this is some of the stuff on the list Kennedy gave us.”

He turned to Steve and unhooked the handcuffs from his belt. “Okay, Roccardi. You’re under arrest. Don’t make any more trouble for yourself by making more trouble for us.”

It was a hard call to make on who was the more shook, Steve, me, or Julie.

“Under arrest!” she cried, her voice rising as she came to her feet. “What for? What for!”

Dooley finished slapping the cuffs on my bewildered buddy. “Somebody broke into your father’s store earlier tonight and cleaned the place out. And we’ve just found some of the stolen jewelry in your boyfriend’s car.”

In a way, I was kind of glad Dooley had moved so fast in making with the bracelets. Otherwise, for sure Steve would have started swinging. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Steve yelled back over his shoulder. “I don’t know where that stuff came from!”

“You should, kid,” Dooley said with a heavy, wet-concrete kind of satisfaction. “You were hatching it in that jalopy of yours. You must have got careless when you cleaned your take out from under your seat. But that sums up punks like you and Pulaski here, real careless.”

Things got kind of crazy after that. I called a friend of Steve’s and mine to come out and pick up his car. Then, leaving the T-bolt’s keys with Eddie, I drove a halfways-hysterical Julie Kennedy back to her house. After that, I set out to get the straight skinny on what was going on with Steve.

I was strictly nowhere with the Fairmont law, but the night deputy at the Grant County Sheriff’s Office up in Marion was a big circle-track fan. He got the dope for me.

Late in the evening, Ben Schyler, the night watchman hired by the Fairmont Merchants’ Association, had been making his rounds along Main when he had spotted what looked like a light inside of Kennedy’s Quality Watch & Jewelry. He’d crossed the street to have a closer look and, just as he was starting to check the front door, he heard what he said was a hot rod blasting away from behind the building.

Mr. Schyler is kind of stove up, so it took him a minute to get around to the alley in back. By that time, the car was long gone but the busted rear door of Kennedy’s store was standing wide open.

Mr. Schyler next yelled for Dooley. When the night marshal had shown up, they’d gone into the store to find that several of the display cases had been cleaned out. They also found an eighteen-inch screwdriver that had been used as a jimmy and a two-cell flashlight, apparently dropped when the burglar had fled the scene.

Steve Roccardi’s name had been scratched on both.

Steve had admitted that the flash and the screwdriver were his, but he had no idea of how they could have gotten into Kennedy’s store. The last time he’d seen them, they’d been rattling around under the seats of the T-bolt.

Likewise, he had no explanation of how those bits and pieces of stolen loot had ended up in his car. He also couldn’t provide the name of anyone who could prove his whereabouts between his gassing up at Payne’s service station at eight o’clock and his arrival at Julie’s house shortly before midnight. Between those hours he’d just been a set of headlights on a back road.

The Grant County Sheriff’s fingerprint man was going to check out Kennedy’s store in the morning. Too bad I already knew what he was going to find.

It looked rank. Steve would have had more than enough loose time to bust in the store and hide the loot before picking up Julie.

Steve’s dad showed up at the sheriff’s office, looking kind of blasted, like someone you might see wandering around in the road after a bad car crash. Because of Steve’s otherwise clean record, and because he was still three months short of being eighteen, they released him to his parents. At ten the next morning, a hearing would be held in Juvenile Court there in Marion.

I had a hunch this would only be a formality. The way things were sounding around the sheriff’s office, they were already reserving a bunk for Steve at the County Youth Farm. I could only give Steve a thumbs-up as he and his dad took off. Then I headed for home feeling lower than a snake’s navel.

It was almost three in the morning by the time I got back to Fairmont and the lights were glowing in the kitchen as I wheeled the A-Bomb into the alley behind our house. I was running way past due and the folks were waiting up for me. For once I was glad.

Dad was a big, old, raw-boned, pan-faced Polack with dark hair and eyes and the only beard in town worn by anyone under the age of sixty. Some folks thought his beard gave him sort of a sinister air, kind of like the classic Bolshevik bomb thrower. (In fact, during one kind of heated election down at the Railroad Workers Brotherhood, Big Jed Sullivan actually accused Dad of being a Bolshevik. However, Jed apologized after Dad threw him down two flights of stairs, so there weren’t any hard feelings about it.)

Mom was a lot more like me, brown-haired and blue-eyed and on the short and quick side. She could do smiles as well as Dad did scowls, but even she was frowning as I came through the back door.

Dad gave me one of those looks from his seat at the kitchen table. “Three o’clock,” he said.

“Yeah, Dad, I know,” I replied, hanging my ponyhide jacket up by the back door. “But for a change I got a good reason.”

I pulled a chair up to the table and laid out the whole story. By the time I had finished, Mom had materialized a piece of cherry pie and a glass of milk at my elbow, so I knew all had been forgiven.

Dad shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like the Steve Roccardi I know. Leon Roccardi is a good man, and I haven’t heard anything different about his son. A little bit hotheaded maybe, but no kind of thief.”

“I know his mother, and I can’t see it, either,” Mom added, “but people can surprise you at times.”

“Ah, come on, Mom! Ain’t no way! Somebody must be setting Steve up on this thing!”

“That’s a pretty melodramatic claim, son,” she replied. “Most people will prefer the simpler explanation that your friend did commit the burglary.”

“But there isn’t a single soul in town who can say they actually saw Steve bust into Kennedy’s store. Even the night watchman only saw a light in the window. All the evidence is — what d’you call...”

“Circumstantial,” Mom finished. “That’s true, but a lot of people have been convicted on circumstantial evidence alone. All the prosecuting attorney needs is enough of it. And the fact that some of the stolen items were found in his car without a valid explanation is going to be very powerful.”

Mom worked as a legal secretary before she married Dad, so she was hep to all of this courtroom jazz.

“It could have been planted on him, Mom,” I protested.

“By Steve’s own admission, he and Julie were the only people in or around his car from the time of the burglary on. You also have to remember that the boy had a powerful motive beyond mere theft. Retaliation against Mr. Kennedy over the matter of his daughter. And as your father said, Steve apparently does have a reputation as a hothead.”

“He also has the reputation of running with a pretty wild crowd,” Dad added, throwing in another of his patented pointed looks.

“Jeez, Dad! Come on! There’s all the difference in the world between, uh, engine testing out on the Alsbury Pike and knocking off a jewelry store!”

“You know that and I know that, Kevin. But a lot of people around here aren’t going to see it that way. Young people these days seem to have a knack for making older people nervous.”

“Yeah, well, that’s their tough luck!” I shot back. “I don’t give a damn — sorry, Mom — about what the people around this town think. Somehow Steve’s being sold up the river for something he didn’t do! And if nobody else is going to do anything about it, then I am!”

“Good enough.” Dad stole my last forkful of cherry pie. “You’d better get at it, then. It looks to be a job of work.”

Man, that left me with my jaw hanging.

“If you genuinely believe that your friend is innocent,” Dad continued, “then probably you’re the best man to go about proving it. You know how he thinks, what he does, where he goes. You know the situation and the people involved. If anyone can prove that Steve Roccardi is, in fact, being railroaded for this burglary, likely it will be you.”

That’s my father. Go to him and say that you’re setting out to do just about any damn fool stunt you can name and he’ll probably say, “Have fun.”

But once you’ve made your brag, he expects you to deliver on it. A thirteen-year-old kid found that out when he announced at the dinner table that he was going to build himself a soup job.

“Yeah, I guess so.” I got up from the table and took my pie plate and glass to the sink. “I guess I’d better turn in. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

“I imagine so, son. Good night and good luck.”

As I climbed the stairs to my room, I heard my mom say quietly, “Joe, are you sure it was such a good idea to encourage Kevin to get involved in this thing? It could cause trouble.”

Dad gave a short laugh. “I never worry about my sons causing trouble, Mary. Most of the great men of history have been troublemakers. My concern is that our boys always do what’s right. And by God, standing up for a friend can’t be wrong.”

It was easy to spot the dividing line between my brother’s half of our room and mine; the pictures of the football and baseball players stopped and the cars started. You could also get a clue from the pinups. Frank liked Vargas while I was an Elvgren man.

Frank halfway woke up while I was getting ready for bed and grumbled at me and I told him, in a brotherly fashion, to kiss my ass. Switching our radio on low, I dialed in to the colored music station in Indianapolis. With a whisper of rhythm and blues for background I flopped on my bed to do that heavy thinking.

I wasn’t a big whodunit fan, so I wasn’t really up on the whole detective deal. Cars took up most of my free time. (Girls, too, but that’s another deal altogether.) But one thing I had learned from putting the A-Bomb together is that you have to be methodical. If you aren’t working to a plan, you’re in trouble from the start.

Another thing that I’d learned is that you have to have a starting point to work from. With the A-Bomb, it had been a Riley four-port racing head for a Ford Model B engine that I picked up for five bucks at a junk sale. The whole rest of the car sort of grew outward from that one component as I mixed and matched parts and figured out what worked and what didn’t.

I wondered if I could apply the same technique here? And what kind of starting part did I have to work from?

All I had at the moment was this sense that there was no way my buddy Steve could be guilty of the crime he was being charged with.

And you know something funny? That was enough.

Oh, it took awhile to figure out how Steve had been set up and by who. And it took even longer to figure out what to do about it. The sky beyond our bedroom window had gone from black to gray to blue and the birds were yelling about how neat the new day was going to be by the time I had it put together.

I rolled out of bed then and got dressed. I was running empty on sleep but that didn’t matter. Steve’s Juvenile Court hearing was set for ten o’clock and there was a lot to get organized before then.

I guess that the counsel for the defense is supposed to wear a suit and tie into the courtroom. However, I’d had to lay under a couple of cars that morning preparing my case, and Mom would have killed me if I’d wrecked my new Clipper Craft blue serge, good cause or not. They would just have to take me as I came, in Levi’s and a beat-up leather jacket.

They were all there, the center aisle of the hearing room dividing the accused from the accusers. Steve and his parents were on the left as I came in. His dad, haggard under his outdoors-work tan. His little plump mom, despairing yet proud. And Steve, defiant but kind of resigned, like a gladiator who knows he’s going to get the thumbs-down no matter how hard he fights. I hadn’t been able to talk with him yet, so he didn’t know that just maybe, we had a chance.

On the other side sat Mr. Harmon Kennedy of Kennedy’s Quality Watch and Jewelry, pink, bald, and generating sweat and self-righteousness in equal amounts. A comfortable morning breeze flowed through the open hearing-room windows, but still, every few seconds a white handkerchief would flash across his set features.

Officer Dooley was there, a redheaded mountain, and Mr. Schyler, too, wearing his watchman’s uniform and with his bummed-up leg stretched out ahead of him. There was another legal-looking character present as well. I recognized him from his campaign posters, Mr. Jason Archer, the county district attorney.

Fairmont, Indiana, had its first genuine juvenile delinquent, just like they wrote up in the big-town newspapers, and it looked like everyone was lining up to take a swing at him.

And straight at the head of the aisle was the lean and vultury figure of Judge Carl Johannson, a man I’d worked very hard not to come to the attention of. That was going to change here in a few minutes, though.

I kept my mouth shut during the first part of the hearing, keeping it cool in the back of the room while the county D.A. laid out his case. The break-in at the Kennedy store. The hot rod pulling away into the night. Steve’s fingerprints at the scene of the crime. The evidence recovered from the store and from Steve’s car. Steve’s lack of an alibi. He dolled it all up with insinuations about Steve’s lousy relationship with Mr. Kennedy as well as broad hints about Steve’s wild and antisocial ways. Oh, Mr. Archer did a honey of a job painting the accused as a budding Pretty Boy Floyd.

There wasn’t any kind of defense beyond Steve’s own defiant statement about his actions and his innocence, and his father’s proud, desperate assurance that his son wasn’t a thief. The only positive glimmer had been that the bulk of the stolen jewelry hadn’t been found at the Roccardi home or anywhere else. Steve angrily denied knowing anything about where the loot might be hidden. Mr. Archer twisted this around to show Steve’s “unrepentant attitude.”

And then the D.A. was finished and Judge Johannson was set to make the call and, man, it was time to choose off and go to the line. I stood up.

“Your Honor... (Damn it! What was that phrase they used in the movies? Oh yeah.)... may I approach the bench?”

Judge Johannson gave me the cold, cold eye, but after a second he nodded. “You may approach the bench, son. What can we do for you?”

I approached the bench, that being the five-dollar word for the desk Judge Johannson was sitting behind. “My name is Kevin Pulaski, Your Honor, and with the court’s permission, I’m here to offer evidence in the case against Steven Roccardi.”

Johannson frowned. “I see. And what kind of evidence, young man?”

“It’s like this, Your Honor. I think I can show the court that Steve is innocent, that he was nowhere near Mr. Kennedy’s store last night. If you’ll give me the chance, I think I can prove that somebody else committed the burglary.”

“What the hell is going on here?” I heard the stage whisper behind me and I glanced back over my shoulder. Mr. Kennedy was leaning over and angrily tugging at the D.A.’s sleeve. Mr. Archer didn’t look too happy, either, as he stood to address the judge. “Your Honor, the county has already presented its case in this matter. There is more than ample evidence to find Steven Roccardi guilty on the charges of burglary. I fail to see how this disruption could further the cause of justice.”

Judge Johannson didn’t reserve that cold stare of his just for teenagers. “I’m certain that the district attorney’s office feels that this is the case. However, this court intends to review all of the pertinent evidence before passing judgment on this youth. All of it, Mr. Archer. If there is more to be heard in this matter, then it will be heard.”

The judge looked back at me and somehow he didn’t seem quite as spooky as he had a second ago. “Proceed, Mr. Pulaski. You seem to indicate that you can refute some of the county’s evidence against Mr. Roccardi. How so?”

I swallowed hard and started speaking the words I’d carefully laid out in my mind. “This is how it goes, Your Honor. There are three pieces of evidence against Steve. One is that his fingerprints were found in the store. There’s no big deal about that. Anyone can tell you that Steve hangs around there a lot because of Julie, Mr. Kennedy’s daughter. He was even in the store on the day of the robbery.

“Next is the fact that a screwdriver and a flashlight belonging to Steve were found in the store after the robbery and that afterwards some of the stolen jewelry was found in Steve’s car. Heck, Judge, you know how it is around here. Who ever locks their car? Besides, Steve drives a roadster, usually with the top down. It would have only taken a second for someone to swipe those tools and plant that jewelry, tying Steve to that crime.”

The judge cocked an eyebrow. “And you have proof that this was done, young man?”

“No, Your Honor, I don’t. But you have to admit the possibility that it could have happened.”

“And what of Mr. Roccardi’s own statement that he was in or around his vehicle continuously from the time of the burglary to the time of his arrest? Is it your assertion that the arresting officers planted false evidence on Mr. Roccardi?”

“No, sir! No way! The Dewl... Marshal Dooley is an on-the-square guy for a co-policeman. He wouldn’t do that to anybody.”

I heard Dooley grunt behind me. I hesitated. I had to get this next phrase out in just the way my legal advisor (Mom) had told me to do. “Leaving the exact time when the jewelry might have been planted in the car aside, I am only asking the court to concede that there is no physical impediment to the act being done.”

After another deliberate pause, Judge Johannson nodded again. “The court so concedes. Continue.”

“What I would like to do now, Your Honor, is work on the third piece of evidence, the one that’s supposed to put Steve at the scene of the crime. If it’s okay with the court, I’d like to ask Mr. Schyler a couple of questions.”

“Proceed.”

Ben Schyler is sort of Fairmont’s personal war hero. He went to New Guinea during the Pacific campaign and came back packing a Silver Star and a load of shrapnel. He’s too banged up for regular work but he’s also too proud to take charity, so the night watchman’s job is sort of a town make-do for a brave guy. He looked up at me with a scar-twisted smile as I went over to where he was sitting.

“What do you want to know, son?”

“I know that you’ve already told your story here once, Mr. Schyler,” I replied, “but I want to make sure about a couple of things. For one, you never actually saw the car that drove away from behind Mr. Kennedy’s jewelry store. Right?”

“No. I couldn’t get around to the alley fast enough, but I sure heard it haul out of there.”

“But even though you never saw it, you’re sure that it was a hot rod?”

He nodded. “It’d be hard to mistake that. It was so loud that it rattled the windows when it took off.”

“Okay, then it’s safe to say that you heard that car real good.” I crossed the hearing room to the open windows. “With the court’s permission, I’ve set up a kind of a demonstration.”

The Juvenile Court’s hearing room was on the ground floor of the Grant County courthouse, separated from the street by only the sidewalk and a narrow strip of lawn. A row of cars sat parked nose-in along that street, just beyond the hearing-room windows. Four of them were hot rods, one of them wasn’t. And in each set of wheels sat a kid who wanted to see that Steve Roccardi got an even break.

I gave a wave to the guys outside and held up one finger. Out in the A-Bomb, One-Speed Dean fired up the engine of the little track roadster. In a moment the familiar light, fast-revving snarl of her four-banger power plant sang into the hearing room. I let One-Speed blip the throttle a couple of times, letting the RPMs peak out, then I drew my finger across my throat in the “cut it” gesture.

The Bomb’s mill sputtered down into silence and I turned back inside. “That’s my car, a nineteen twenty-nine Model A Ford with a Model B four-cylinder engine in it. I run a split racing manifold and a set of gutted stock mufflers on her. I oil-burned those cans myself and they sound pretty good, if I do say so.”

I held two fingers out of the window and a second engine started, a rolling motorboat bubbling that rose and peaked and then backed off again with a sharp, angry crackle.

“That’s Jeff Mulready’s ’forty Ford Deluxe Coupe. He’s got a half-race Mercury Flathead in that thing with a Mellowtone Hollywood exhaust system. There’s some money tied up in that car.”

I extended three fingers. A third engine kicked over with a deep, vibrant purr that climbed smoothly into a solid, flowing roar of power. It made the windows buzz in their frames, then faded into a grumbling shutdown.

“That’s Clint Flock’s chopped ’thirty-five. He’s running a Lincoln Zephyr V-12 with three-inch pipes and Porter steelpacks. A real cherry machine.”

“Is there some purpose behind this, Mr. Pulaski?” Judge Johannson asked impatiently.

“Yes, sir, there is,” I replied, turning to face the judge’s desk. “I’m what you call establishing a precedent. You see, Your Honor, every hot rod ever built has a kind of fingerprint. Something about it that is totally different from any other car in the world, the sound of its engine.

“It pretty much has to be that way. Hot rods are one-of-a-kind deals. Different cars with different engines set up in different ways. Different exhaust systems with different mufflers and different pipe diameters and lengths. All unique. Once you develop a rodder’s ear for it, you can identify a specific car just by the sound it makes. It’s like a signature.”

I turned toward the window again. “Mr. Schyler has told how he heard a hot rod pull away from behind the Kennedy jewelry store last night. The thing is, every time he’s said ‘hot rod’ everyone here has heard ‘Steve Roccardi.’ Sure, Steve is a rodney and he does drive a rod, but that doesn’t necessarily signify.”

I shot a look at the night watchman. “Mr. Schyler, I’ve got another car here for you to listen to. Listen carefully, please.”

I held up four fingers. Out on the street, Steve’s T-bolt lit off. Julie Kennedy, her face pale and pinched, sat behind the wheel of the low-slung little bomb, revving its engine, fighting for her guy in the only way she could. The edgy two-tone snarl of the T-bolt lifted and peaked and held for half a minute and then faded as I gave the kill signal.

“Okay, Mr. Schyler,” I said, turning to face the watchman, “is that what you heard last night behind Mr. Kennedy’s store?”

His expression had become puzzled and thoughtful. “No,” he said after a second, “the car I heard last night didn’t sound like that at all.”

I took three fast steps back to the judge’s desk. “Your Honor, that was Steve’s car and I can bring fifty kids in here who can testify to that. Steve runs a real unusual setup with his rod, a two-hundred-and-forty-eight-cubic-inch GMC truck engine blowing through a home-made 2/4 split manifold and a set of Smitty mufflers. Probably not another car in the state even comes close to sounding like it.

“Maybe the flashlight and screwdriver used in the burglary did come from Steve’s car, and maybe the jewelry found in that car did come from Mr. Kennedy’s store, but the car itself, and the guy who drives it, wasn’t there.”

The judge had a thoughtful expression on his face now. So did the D.A. and Officer Dooley. At long damn last they were thinking and not just taking for granted. Everybody but one.

“Your Honor, this is ridiculous!” Mr. Kennedy exploded. “Why is the court wasting time with this dog-and-pony show! This young thug’s a crony of the Roccardi boy. Probably he was in on the burglary, too. What does it matter if they drove a different car? They could have borrowed one. Or stolen one! I want that wop punk in jail!”

I kind of went cold inside then. I’d given Mr. Kennedy his chance. I mean, he could have been the first to admit there was now that “reasonable doubt” as to Steve’s guilt. He could have walked away from it. But he wouldn’t. So now we were going to have to go the rest of the way, even though some people were going to be hurt.

I turned back to the open windows for the last time. “Your Honor, I think I’ve proved my point about hot rods all sounding different. But that rule doesn’t apply to stock iron, the regular Detroit production-line automobiles that most people drive. With them, the same models all sound pretty much alike. Mr. Schyler, I have one more car for you to listen to.”

I held up five fingers.

Out on the street, Amy Vickers pressed the starter of the sedan she’d borrowed from her dad’s car dealership. A hoarse chugging roar echoed into the hearing room, louder than any of the rods we’d listened to so far. I let it run for a minute or so then signaled for Amy to shut it down.

I didn’t have to ask the question; Ben Schyler was already nodding. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s a lot more like what I heard last night.”

“Your Honor,” I said, “that’s a Pontiac Chieftain straight eight with the muffler taken off to make it sound like somebody’s idea of a hot rod.”

I faced that somebody. “Mr. Kennedy, you drive a Pontiac Chieftain, don’t you?”

The perpetual pink flush had drained from the jeweler’s face and he wordlessly rose to his feet. But Officer Dooley was at his side, pushing him back into his chair.

All of a sudden the night without sleep caught up with me and I was feeling really tired. “Hey, Dooley, if you want to go out and have a look under Mr. Kennedy’s car you can see the tool marks on the exhaust pipe where the muffler has been unbolted and remounted.”

And, man, that was it.

Even though I was the guy who had solved the thing, I got chased out of the hearing room pretty quickly after that. I replaced Amy’s dad’s muffler and turned my fellow rodneys loose with my thanks. Then I staked out a claim on a bench under a maple tree in the park across from the courthouse and awaited developments.

About an hour or so later, Dooley came out and crossed the street, looking like a guy who needs to sit in the shade for a while. As he approached, I untwisted my pack of Luckys from my T-shirt sleeve and offered him one. He gave me an instinctive glower, then halfways smiled. Accepting the smoke, he sat down on the bench beside me.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“It’s pretty much wrapped up,” Dooley replied. “Kennedy isn’t exactly a hardened criminal, so he spilled the story. He’s sunk every dime he has into that jewelry store of his and come to find out, Fairmount isn’t big enough to support it. He’s in debt up to his ears and he has mortgage payments on both his house and store coming due. When he got desperate, he decided to try and fake a robbery. Between the insurance and the money he would have received selling his stock to a fence, he could have gotten out from under for a while.”

I nodded. “Yeah, and by using a little bit of the jewelry to railroad Steve for the job, he’d be getting rid of the boy he couldn’t stand seeing his daughter with, killing two birds with one stone.”

The big cop nodded. “Kennedy’s confessed to stealing Roccardi’s tools and planting the jewelry in his car. He’s also admitted to gimmicking his own car to sound like one of your hopped-up jalopies. He planned his fake burglary to coincide with Ben Schyler’s rounds to throw more suspicion on the Roccardi boy, gambling that Roccardi wouldn’t have a solid alibi for that time. It almost worked.”

“So what happens now? How bad is Mr. Kennedy going to get it?”

“That’s hard to say. Judge Johannson and the D.A. are working that out now with Kennedy’s lawyer. Kennedy has a couple of things going for him. For one, he hadn’t filed an insurance claim yet, so he technically can’t be hit for insurance fraud. And for another, Steve Roccardi has refused to press charges. That’ll help. Still, the Kennedys have some hard times ahead.”

Across the street, a little group of people left the courthouse. The Roccardis plus one. Julie Kennedy was with them. Steve’s arm was around her shoulders and his mom and dad were walking family-close. No matter what, Julie wouldn’t be facing her hard times alone. And who knows? Maybe even Mr. Kennedy would come to realize that his future in-laws were pretty good folks after all.

“Okay, Pulaski,” Dooley went on. “Now you can tell me something. All that business with the cars was pretty cute, but what I want to know is what put you on to Kennedy in the first place. Was it just because he had a grudge against Roccardi?”

“Sure, there was always that,” I replied, taking a last drag off my Lucky. “But there was something else, too. Something that, when you thought about it for a while, pointed straight to Mr. Kennedy and no one else.”

The Dewlap looked puzzled. “Okay, I’ll bite. What was it?”

“The jewelry you guys found in Steve’s rod. Look at what you call the ‘chain of events’ yesterday. Steve goes over to the Kennedy jewelry store late in the afternoon to visit with Julie. Her dad walks in, there’s a big blowup, and Steve honks out of there, feeling frosted.

“He’s so frosted, in fact, that he cruises around the county all evening working off his mad. When he does hit town again, he goes over to Julie’s place, picks her up, and goes straight out to the diner where you found him.

“Get it? Like everyone was saying, there was no way anyone could have stowed that jewelry in Steve’s rod after the break-in because, from the time of the burglary on, Steve was sitting in his car. Those pieces of jewelry must have been planted several hours before the burglary was ever committed. And the only person who could have done that was Mr. Kennedy himself. Probably he planted the loot and lifted the tools just before he picked that big fight in the jewelry store.”

I ground my smoke out on the edge of the bench. “You dig the scene? Kennedy was counting on Steve being seen as the tough-kid JD while nobody would figure on the respectable buisnessman burglarizing his own store.”

Dooley nodded and gave a grudging grin. “Yeah, I ‘dig the scene.’ That was a pretty good piece of detective work.”

“You think?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. All I had to go on was this feeling down in my guts that Steve didn’t do it.”

“Brains and guts are what it takes, Pulaski.” Dooley paused for a second. “Say, did you ever think about going on the cops?”

“Me, a cop?” I threw my head back and had my best laugh of the day. “Come on, Dooley!”

After a second he started laughing, too.

Copyright (c); 2005 by James H. Cobb.