Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2000

“It was a 1976 Plymouth. Station wagon.”

“Why was he driving that? Where was his Buick?”

“Cost you a dollar.”

I dropped another dollar in his lap. I had three dollars left.

“Buick was at the garage with a flat tire. He was going to make a delivery. The people who ordered the piece let him borrow their car.”

I dropped a dollar in his lap. “Who were the people?”

The television came to life. The screen glowed, and an excited voice roared, “And only three flex payments of forty-nine ninety-five, so order now! Order now!”

“Mr. Kinch, who were the people with the Plymouth station wagon?”

He flapped that twitching hand at me. “Get out of here. Maury’s on.” And on the huge screen appeared a middle-aged man with a stewardess’s grin and the eyes of an evangelist. Underneath in black letters I read WOMEN WHO MARRY DWARFS.

I stepped in front of the screen, leaned into his face, and said, “Who were the people with the station wagon?”

Mr. Kinch pushed at me with that spastic hand, leaned way to his left so he could see the screen, and hollered, “I don’t know. I never saw them.”

I dropped another dollar in his lap, leaned to my right, stared into his eyes, and hollered, “What was the piece? What did they order?”

Mr. Kinch frantically sat upright. “A chest, a big goddamn chest, like a pirate’s treasure chest.”

Mrs. Ogden was sitting in her recliner, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and Cat nestled in her arms. She smiled at me. “He give you any trouble? I heard shouting.”

“Not much. He was upset that I was causing him to miss the start of something called The Maury Show. ”

She smiled again. “How much?”

“Five dollars.”

She dipped into her sweat suit, pulled out a damp looking fistful of balled-up bills, and counted off five. “Every time I go near the sonofabitch it costs me six or seven dollars, but I get them back when I do the wash.”

I smiled sympathetically, eased Cat into her sling, and asked, “Do you remember any of the people who worked for Bob Kokar and your father? Any who are still around?”

Mrs. Ogden lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of her last one. “Cost you a dollar.”

I dug in my pocket, found a faded, wrinkled dollar, and dropped it in her smoldering ashtray. She grinned. “You’ll find C. C. Dorfman at the health club.”

I said, “Thank you,” and, as my dollar burst into flames, headed for the door.

There are two health clubs in town. The Muscle Stop, located in the old train station, and Blood Sweat and Black Iron, in the old town garage. I phoned The Muscle Stop, and an angry voice informed me that C. C. Dorfman owned Blood Sweat and Black Iron.

Thanks to a significant raise in taxes, the Public Works Department moved into a new garage four or five years ago, leaving a rundown building of gray cement and red brick. In a line along the front of the garage were four bay doors; stuck on the north end was an awkward looking two story barracks.

I pedaled across a gravel parking lot filled with pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles with tough sounding names and leaned the bike against the first bay door. A confused jumble of noise came from inside the building, and I thought I heard someone scream. I put Cat in her sling and walked through a small door built into the first bay door.

And confronted primordial grunting, cries of exertion, weights crashing and banging, and rock-and-roll music screaming from large loudspeakers hanging by clotheslines from steel beams high above my head. The thick, humid air smelled of dirty socks and pizza.

Perhaps thirty people were working the weights. Blood Sweat and Black Iron was just what it said. No treadmills, stairsteppers, or other modern exercise gizmos, just free weights, I-beams with cables, and crude looking devices with discs of black iron hanging on them.

I must have appeared lost and confused, which was accurate, for a short bald man dressed in billowing red pants strutted up to me. He was muscle on muscle, almost as thick as he was tall, and his eyes spoke his devotion. He stared a moment at Cat, who was hanging half out of the sling taking everything in, looked at me, and raised his eyebrows.

I bent down and yelled in his ear, “I’m looking for C. C. Dorfman.”

He pointed to the far end of the garage, gave Cat a last look, shook his head, and strutted back to a barbell with a massive amount of black iron hung on it.

Clutching Cat, I threaded my way through thousands of pounds of grunting, sweating, absurdly veined muscle to the other end of the garage and huddled in a corner, wondering which one of the mutated creatures might be C. C. Dorfman.

Finally I approached a man who was lying on a bench with a loaded barbell above his chest and hollered, “Are you C. C. Dorfman?”

He laughed. “Don’t very damn well think so,” he yelled. “Try the one with the tits.”

I looked to my left and saw a woman standing behind a barbell. She was my height, looked a young forty, and was dressed in drab gray spandex shorts and halter. Her brown hair was cut very short, and like everyone else in the place she was superbly muscled with veins like rope and her face was a lesson in angles and hollows.

As I watched, she stooped, picked up the bar — which had at least a hundred pounds hung on it — and pushed it from her chest to as far above her head as she could reach. She did this fifteen times, then dropped the weight on the floor and did a series of stretches.

I walked over, gave her my friendliest smile, and hollered, “Hello, my name is Harry Neal, could I talk with you for a moment?”

She gazed at me with placid, judging eyes, shrugged, and pointed to a small back door. I followed her out the door into a blissfully silent field of dead weeds and rocks.

Actually I walked, C. C. Dorfman strutted, her highly muscled hips undulating with a primitive sensuality that brought a silly, bemused smile to my face.

As she turned around, I whipped the smile off and said, “I’m a friend of Annie Kokar, and I’m trying to trace Bob’s movements on the day he had his stroke. I was talking to Philip Kinch and his daughter, and she said you were working at Kokar and Kinch that day.”

She gazed at me, gave Cat a long searching look, and nodded. “Whew, that brings back some memories. You saw Kinch? How is the old bastard? Sometimes when I have five or six dollars to spare I pay him a visit, but I haven’t been there in weeks. Frankly, he makes my ass tired.”

“I’m not sure how he is. He sits in the basement and seems fixated on something called The Maury Show. It cost me five dollars to talk to him. He says he has Parkinson’s. Do you remember the day Bob Kokar had his stroke?”

With long callused fingers she slid Cat out of the sling and ran her other hand over Cat’s body. “Car get her?”

I nodded. “Yes, it was touch and go for a bit, but Annie pulled her through. She’s pretty gimpy but manages.”

C. C. Dorfman nodded thoughtfully, squatted down, and laid Cat on her back in the weeds. She held Cat’s body with one hand, grasped her bad front leg with the other, and, as she slowly, gently pulled it forward, asked, “So what’s the interest in Bob’s last normal day?”

“He was carrying some keys with him. Before he died, he hinted to Annie that they might lead to something of value. And he was driving another person’s car, a 1976 Plymouth station wagon. Listen, what are you doing to Cat?”

Cat’s eyes had suddenly bulged and her purring turned to a drawn-out yowl. C. C. Dorfman now took both front legs and very slowly pulled them forward.

“She’s extremely stiff. She needs to be stretched out daily. It’ll reduce the scarring of the deep muscle tissue and increase her mobility. With increased mobility she’ll be able to build up the atrophied muscle, reduce her discomfort and pain, and lead a better life. So stop screwing around, she’s your responsibility, and you’re not doing the work. Once a day minimum, stretch her out. If you’re too damn lazy, give her to someone who will.”