Arno Zimmer - Death Comes to the Torpedo Factory

Nellie’s friend slid behind her and let her wedge in next to Woody at the bar. They were almost forced to glance into each other’s eyes. It was a tantalizing moment to be suddenly so intimate as they struggled to talk over the cacophonous crowd. Woody explained that he had recently been discharged from the Army. She heard little else but kept nodding and smiling. Then, she turned and introduced her roommate, Liz Cuttwater. Woody learned that they shared an apartment in Georgetown and worked downtown but was able to pick up little else through the clamor. Mostly, they stared at each other and laughed nervously.

Woody looked out to the street through the bar window and saw that it was getting dark. He had forgotten his therapeutic visit with Honest Abe and cursed his bicycle. He almost yelled into Nellie’s ear that he had his bike out front and had to start for home. When he said he hoped to see her again, Nellie winced, and Woody concluded that he had misinterpreted what he thought were encouraging signals. Crestfallen, he turned to leave but Nellie grabbed his arm while she looked back and whispered something to her friend. When she turned back, she was smiling as she handed Woody a scrap of paper. It was still very loud, but Woody distinctly heard her say “Don’t lose it”.

“Not much of a pick-up artist, is he?” Liz mused after Woody walked away. “No, he isn’t. Just like I remember him,” Nellie said, a smile suffusing her face.

BEFORE HE KNEW it, Woody was back in Old Town, walking his bike the last few blocks from the path to his apartment as the dusky night turned dark. Before leaving Georgetown, he looked at the scrap of paper to confirm that it had Nellie’s telephone number written on it. When he got off his bike, he looked at it again to make sure it was real. He remembered the line “on gossamer wings” from some poem by Whitman, or so he thought, and was pretty sure it meant floating blissfully on air. If so, he felt it in his heart’s core at that moment. Woody wasn’t a Romanticist and didn’t aspire to be one, but he did believe in fate. Any thought of leaving Old Town and returning to Parlor City any time soon had suddenly evaporated into thin air.

Woody was beaming with the sweet image of Nellie Birdsong dancing in front of his eyes as he opened the apartment door and flipped on the light switch. He dropped his keys and went slack-jawed by the sight in front of him. It looked like a cyclone had hit his apartment and destroyed everything.

WOODY STUMBLED AROUND his sparsely-furnished apartment with mixed feelings of anger and bewilderment. His couch was tipped over and the bottom cut open. In the bedroom, the mattress had been shredded and was laying in a lump next to the frame. He had one dresser and the drawers had been pulled out with clothes strewn around the floor.

To top it off, the phone mounted on the wall had been yanked off and smashed. Even the cord had been cut so Woody couldn’t call the police – or Nellie Birdsong! He left the lights burning, locked up and headed to Pudge McFadden’s.

Woody saw Pudge holding court at the far end of the bar, surrounded by four people roaring with laughter at some story the Irishman was telling. Caught in the moment, it even made Woody smile.

When Pudge heard Woody’s story, he made a call and announced, “Someone will be here shortly. We’ll walk over to your apartment together. Joey will close up if we don’t make it back in time.”

HANK WILLOUGHBY WAS Pudge’s detective friend. He was a short, stout man with a droll sense of humor which he only revealed after he decided you were worth knowing. While kind-hearted, he often affected the gruff demeanor of a longshoreman or big rig truck driver after a long day. His black hair, with a pronounced widow’s peak, was starting to thin on top. Wide sideburns adorned his ears and crept down his jowly cheeks, complemented by a bushy black mustache that hung below his upper lip, making it difficult to discern his mood. Not known for his panache, Willoughby favored boldly-checked sports jackets and open shirts which revealed a thick neck that merged with, and was indistinguishable from, his chin. He had been an offensive lineman on the high school football team and once explained to Pudge that he liked to “work in the trenches”, obscure and unnoticed. As a detective, it had served him well.

Drooping eyelids gave Willoughby a somnambulant appearance which convinced people who didn’t know him the detective wasn’t paying attention or simply wasn’t very bright. Despite his unimpressive appearance, Willoughby had Sherlock Holmesian-like observations skills. What subtle clues others might overlook or dismiss as inconsequential, Willoughby perceived as vital to solving a case and pursued them doggedly.

Willoughby had been teased of late by his colleagues with the moniker “Cannon” due to his remarkable resemblance to the unimposing private eye, Frank Cannon, on a new TV detective series eponymously named. Like the TV character, Hank Willoughby was sometimes mocked or treated dismissively. Cannon certainly did not “look the part” like that handsome actor on “The Rockford Files”.

On the short walk over to Woody’s apartment, Willoughby asked if anything of value was missing. “Nothing there worth stealing, sir,” Woody said with exasperation, adding “I don’t even own a television.” Willoughby grunted something that sounded like “umf” but said nothing.

The detective walked silently through the apartment while Woody and Pudge waited by the front door. When he returned, he said “It looks like a professional flip job, kid. My guess is that it was a two-man team and they were looking for something of particular importance to them, most likely not valuables or cash. Of course, there is the off-chance that the perpetrators simply got the wrong place. Or perhaps it was someone with a grudge, say even a casual acquaintance or friends of an ex-girlfriend?” Willoughby suggested.

Woody immediately thought of Nellie Birdsong, certainly not because he suspected her but because of Willoughby’s choice of words. Then, he remembered the incident at the bar earlier that day.

“I had a confrontation earlier, if you can call it that, with this rather strange character that came into Pudge’s as I was finishing up work. I wrote an article on Barrington Dumont for the Observer and he took offense at it. Told me he had evidence for a hard-hitting story on the Dumonts that would be sensational. Insisted that people were out to get him, mentioned somebody at the Torpedo Factory, but I brushed him off. Told him I no longer wrote for the paper and he walked off in a huff.”

“So, this evidence, he didn’t describe it or give it to you?” Willoughby asked. Woody nodded no, and Willoughby continued, “Did you get his name?” “I asked him for it when he was leaving but he just kept walking. All I remember about him was straggling brown hair and he walked with a pronounced limp. Oh, and he had a space between his front teeth,” said Woody, surprised that he recalled all of these details which he hadn’t thought much about at the time.

Willoughby stroked his mustache and stared at the floor, as if searching for a clue buried in the carpet. “Okay, let me nose around and see if I can identify this character. I’m assuming he works over at the torpedo factory. Oh, if you remember the name of this guy who was allegedly out to get your new friend, let Pudge know and he’ll pass it on to me. In the meantime, you should go down and file a police report so that someone can come out and conduct an official investigation. I would be surprised if they find prints, but you never know. And let’s just agree between us three ladies that I wasn’t here tonight, okay?”