The Baby Blue Rip-Off

11

Knocking.

There was a knocking at the door. I opened my eyes, slowly, tentatively, like a guy peeking into an envelope that just might contain his pink slip.

Beer cans.

I saw beer cans on the coffee table. I was on the couch, where I’d fallen asleep after consuming five beers while trying to think, an impossible task.

“Just a second,” I told the knocking, or tried to. My voice was a fog of phlegm. I cleared my throat, tried again, and did better.

I got up and my legs seemed to work, so I answered the door. It was Lou Brown, dressed in civvies: gray tee-shirt and blue jeans. The light from outside did a number on my eyes, which I covered, reacting much as Count Dracula might.

“Did I disturb you?” Lou wanted to know.

“No,” I said, without conviction. “Come on in.”

“I should’ve called first.”

“Hell with that. Hell with formalities.”

“Are you awake?”

“Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope crap in the woods?”

Lou laughed and said, “I’ll come back some other time.”

I laughed and said, “The hell you will. Come on in and talk to me. We’ll have some beer, if I didn’t drink it all. What time is it?”

“About four,” he said, following me inside the trailer and closing the door behind him.

“Sit down. Be with you in a second; my bladder’s killing me.”

“Justifiable homicide,” Lou said, noting the table of beer cans.

When I came back from the john, I got a couple Pabsts out of the fridge, popped the tops, joined Lou on the couch, gave him his beer, and started mine.

“What d’you do, Mal? Sleep all afternoon, or drink all afternoon?”

“First drink,” I explained, “then sleep.”

“That how you while away the hours? Drinking yourself unconscious?”

“It is till I figure out a way to drink and sleep at the same time.”

“Can I ask you something personal? We aren’t exactly close friends but is that all right, if I ask you something?”

“Go ahead, Lou. Maybe if I answer a personal question, we’ll become close friends. Or maybe I’ll toss your butt out of here. Who knows?”

He grinned at that and shot his best shot: “Are you able to support yourself writing? You go out to the college, too, I know. But you don’t have a job.”

“This may come as a shock to some people, but writing’s a job. Not a living, maybe, but a job.”

“Then how…?”

“When my folks died a few years back, they left me some cash. Not much… but I got some left. Enough to try to get a writing career off the ground. And the government pays my tuition. I’m an ex-GI, you know.”

“Aren’t we all? Your folks were in farming, weren’t they?”

“Yeah. My father had a farm. There was some money there.”

“I don’t mean to be nosy.”

“No, that’s okay. I understand what it is you’re doing, and it doesn’t bother me.”

“Oh? What is it I’m doing, then?”

“You’re fishing around to see if maybe I might be part of that looting crew myself.”

“Come on, Mal….”

“No, it’s okay. Really. Doesn’t bother me. I’m a natural suspect.” Just ask Edward Jonsen.

“Listen, Mal, I won’t deny it. It was just something I felt I had to touch on. For my own peace of mind.”

“Forget it.”

“Good,” he sighed, relieved. “I’m glad you’re not pissed. Because, actually, I was hoping to escape my folks for the rest of the afternoon, and hoped you wouldn’t mind my hanging around awhile.”

“Not at all. Glad for the company. Any time. But can I ask something in return?”

“What’s that?”

“I give you refuge from your parents; you keep me filled in on Brennan’s handling of the Jonsen case.”

“What do you want to know? I thought you were going around to see Brennan this morning.”

“I did, and I got some information, but I didn’t want to press him. If he knows I’m planning to look into this, he’ll clam up on me, and turn hard-ass.”

“Then you are going to do some nosing around on your own?”

“Well, I don’t know, exactly. We’ll see.”

“That sounds like yes to me.”

“I don’t know. People keep telling me I shouldn’t get into this, so naturally I’m inclined to. You hear what happened last night?”

“Something else happen last night?”

“Yeah, I told Brennan this morning, but then, this being your day off, you wouldn’t’ve heard about it.”

“So what happened?”

I gave him a brief account of my visit from the Kick-Mallory-in-the-Ribs Club, and he shook his head, saying, “Those guys got balls, coming around here. The morons.”

“Easy,” I said. “That’s what I said that got ’em started kicking again.”

“How the hell are your ribs anyway?”

I lifted my shirt like a sailor showing off his new tattoo and let Lou see my girdled, trussed-up rib cage.

“Is that uncomfortable?”

“No,” I said. “No worse than swimming in an iron lung.”

“And you’re still interested in playing detective? You got balls yourself, Mallory.”

“Don’t mention balls either,” I said. “That’s the other place those boys like to kick. Hey, I’m in swell shape. If I got invited to an orgy tonight, I’d have to man the punch bowl, I’m telling you.”

“Listen, before I go into what I know about the Jonsen case, and the other break-ins, maybe you better fill me in on what Brennan told you so far.”

I did, and then Lou went on to tell me some things Brennan had left out.

“Brennan’s trying real hard on this one,” he said. “He knows reelection’s coming up, and he’s been sheriff for a long time and knows people are in a house-cleaning mood around here, ever since the county treasurer absconded with God-knows-how-much.”

“So Brennan’s trying hard. So what?”

“Well, if he wasn’t trying to make it a one-man show, he could call in the boys from the Iowa Criminal Bureau of Investigation, and that would probably result in a faster and more efficient clearing up of the case, but he’s not going to, he says, unless he gets convinced he can’t handle it himself.”

“Great. And everybody knows how up-to-date Brennan is on police techniques.”

“Don’t underestimate him. He goes to Omaha to a three-week catch-up school for sheriffs every summer, and he says he picks up a lot there.”

“He probably means women.”

“That isn’t what he means-”

“I’m just kidding, Lou. Go on, will you?”

“Okay. You get surly when you’re drunk, don’t you?”

“I’m not drunk, and I’m not surly, smart-ass. You want another beer?”

“Okay.”

I got some more beers, and Lou went on. “Something else about the break-ins you might like to think about.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“All of ’em took place beyond the city limits. Annexation got defeated at the polls last fall, remember? There’s plenty of houses that extend past the actual limits, and all the break-ins have been among those.”

“Yeah? Damn, I should’ve noticed that. Has Brennan?”

“I mentioned it to him, and he shrugged it off. Said it was just that those houses are mostly spread far apart from other houses and are easier to pull a van up to without rousing suspicion of neighbors.”

“He’s right,” I said. “Those houses are on highways, too, mostly, where cars are going by too fast to take time to notice anything.”

Lou nodded and said, “He’s right, yeah, but I see more of a tie-in than just that. Outside the city limits means the sheriff’s department handles it; inside means the local cops. Or some in town, some out means a combined investigation. I think staying outside town proper has to do with these people being afraid of what our police chief might do if he got into the fray.”

“Oh, Lou, are you kidding? That fat nincompoop wouldn’t do a damn thing.”

“That’s just it. The chief wouldn’t do a damn thing himself, but he would call in the Criminal Bureau of Investigation. He always does in a murder case. He did about those rapes last year, remember?”

“And Brennan’s not much for calling in the CBI.”

“No. Like I said, he likes to fool around with a case himself, especially in an election year.”

“And you think these B-and-E artists are sophisticated enough to consider that angle?”

“Why not? Besides, they’re obviously local people and would’ve known that just from living in town and paying attention.”

“I don’t know. I live in town and I didn’t know that.”

“Maybe you’re not paying attention.”

“Keep that up and you won’t get another beer. Listen, Lou, why is it obvious they’re local people? Why can’t they be out of Davenport or Rock Island or some place, and drive down now and then for a hit?”

“Mallory. You aren’t thinking. And you who used to be a cop yourself.”

“I still don’t get you.”

“I figured it from what you told me about last night-them coming back.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “Damn! What’s wrong with me? Of course they’re local! They knew me! They knew where to look for me…. They wanted me to know that; to know they would come around and work me over if I caused them any trouble. And anybody who wasn’t local would’ve split right after the job, would’ve headed back for wherever it was they worked out of. Lou, what about that car, that red-white-and-blue GTO?”

“License number three? What about it? You heard me last night when I said it was stolen, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “But who was it you said the car belonged to? It was somebody I know….”

“Car belongs to Pat Nelson. You remember Pat, don’t you? Went to school with us, a little ahead of us.”

“I remember him. Had a run-in with him once.”

“Oh?”

“That’s neither here nor there, but did you ever consider Nelson could’ve been in on the robbery and reported his car stolen because he knew it’d been seen there?”

“After the fact, you mean? No, he called it in earlier than that, a good hour before you saw that car at Jonsen’s.”

“I don’t know. I still think it could stand some looking into. Nelson’s been in trouble ever since he was a kid.”

“True enough,” Lou agreed. “Reform school when he was barely in his teens, if I recall.”

“That’s right. You going to look into it?”

“Probably. Are you?”

“Probably.”

“You want to do it together, Mal?”

“That’s what I’d like, but we better work separately, or Brennan might cause us some headaches. We can just keep each other up on what we’re doing.”

Lou nodded.

“What ever happened to Nelson?” I asked. “I mean, what’s he been up to lately?”

“Think he has a job with that silo company down in South End. He’s married, you know.”

“Who to?”

Lou grinned. “Don’t tell me I’m the first to break it to you.”

“Break what to me?”

“He’s married to your old girl friend. Debbie Lee. Only she’s Debbie Nelson now. They got a kid, I think.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “I just didn’t figure that marriage would’ve lasted this long.” I shook my head. “Debbie Lee. Been a long time since I thought about her. My old flame.”

“That dates back a ways, doesn’t it?”

“Hell, yes. My first love. Junior high. American Bandstand and going steady and dances Friday night at the YWCA. Jesus, I haven’t thought about those days in years.”

“Well, neither has she, I’d bet. You ought to look her up.”

“No,” I said, “no, I don’t think so. Married women tend to have husbands.”

At this point the conversation drifted into other areas, mostly concerned with briefing each other on what we and friends of ours had been up to in recent years. At five-thirty I talked Lou into staying around for supper and while he called home to tell his folks, I got a couple steaks and some fries together, his share of which he wolfed down gratefully. Lou was pretty ragged from living at home. “You can love your parents without liking them,” is the way he explained the situation to me.

At seven Lou and I were watching an old rerun of Star Trek when the phone rang. I answered it.

“Is this Mallory?” A female voice. Soft.

I said it was me.

“Mal? Can I see you? I have to see you.”

“Who is this?”

“Debbie. Remember? Debbie Lee… Nelson now. Can I see you? I can be over in ten minutes.”

I held the receiver out and looked at it for a second. Then I shrugged, brought it back, and said, “Okay.”

She hung up.

So did I.

“Who was that?” Lou said.

“You wouldn’t even believe it,” I said.

I showed him the door.