Jeff Sherratt - The Brimstone Murders

A male voice from behind me, one of the men at a table, spoke up. “Looking for someone in town, mister? I’ve been here nigh on forty years. Know everybody in town.”

I swiveled on the stool. An older guy without a baseball cap nodded.

“Ben Moran,” he said. “Yep, came here from Kansas in thirty-three. Depression, you know, heading to L.A. Had to find work. Got this far, ran outta money. Been here ever since. Still outta money.” When he said that, everyone in the place, even the waitress, let out a loud guffaw.

Ben sat hunched over his coffee cup alone at the table. Even seated I could see that he was a large man, a giant with more fat than muscle. His shapeless form filled the chair and parts of his backside spilled over it, curling around the edges. The man’s stringy gray hair was thin in front but long and wavy in the back and on the sides. He wore a handlebar mustache under a banged-up nose, which was too large for his face. His mouth was a jagged slit cut into his molting, liver-spotted skin.

I nodded. “Jimmy O’Brien, glad to know you.”

His pale, watery eyes, hooded by a thicket of salt and pepper brows, peered at me. “You ain’t really one of them professors or smarty-pants fellows, are ya?” he asked.

“Not me,” I said. “Just a guy trying to make a buck here and there.” I didn’t want to tell him I was a lawyer, God forbid.

“Didn’t think so. Don’t look the type. Well then, come on over here. Bring your coffee.”

I picked up my cup and moved to his table. When I got close, Moran kicked out a chair. I sat down, and we shook hands.

We-or I should say Ben-talked about his town and the people in it. He seemed to know everyone and was determined to tell me all of their life stories. He had everyone in the cafe enthralled with strange tales of his forty years in this strange town. Everyone but me, that is. He chortled and slapped his hands on his denim clad legs when he told me about Vera Olson, an eighty-year-old spinster, who was rumored to have been a communist in the thirties and now subscribed to Ms magazine. Vera was the town’s leading proponent of women’s lib. He figured she was definately bent and he figured she was bent in the wrong direction. “And like Tinker Bell,” he did a finger wave, “Vera had scattered a little pixie dust in her day.” The crowd broke up at that last crack.

But as enlightening as his narrative was, it had to end. It was getting late and I wanted to find the drug center before dark. Ben’s jocular mood shifted when I changed the subject. “Tell me, Ben, what do you know about a Christian teen drug center out here somewhere?”

The cafe instantly became quiet, and the people in the room pretended not hear my question. They all looked away.

“You some kind of government agent?” Ben asked menacingly.

“No, not at all.”

“Why you asking about the center?”

“Heard about it. That’s all.”

He leaned closer and peered intently at me. “You’re the lawyer.”

“What makes you say that?”

Without saying anything he pushed on his chair, and slowly his enormous bulk rose. Then he turned and galumphed out of the cafe without looking back.

I glanced around; everyone was ignoring me.

“Hey, buddy, we need your spot at the table,” the voice from the food slot called out. “Got a big group coming in. Be here any moment now. So, why don’t you be a good guy and hightail it outta here.”

I climbed out of my chair, surveyed the room, and in a loud voice, said, “Hey, c’mon. Don’t you people know anything about a teen drug center right here in your midst?”

Everyone in the cafe sat there gawking at me. Their eyes were dead, their faces masked with blank expressions. There wasn’t a murmur, hardly a sound, just the whining noise of the ceiling fan. It needed a new bearing in the motor.

“Where is it? Damn it, someone tell me!”

Not a peep, just the staring.

I continued to stand with my back stiff, rooted in the center of the room. My eyes tracked the vacant, lifeless forms. These people were frightened. But frightened of what? That old fat guy, Ben Moran?

After long seconds of dead silence, the food slot pleaded in a hushed tone, “Come on, Mack, leave us alone. Get going.”

“Why don’t you come out from behind that wall and make me leave?”

The food slot was beginning to grate my nerves. In fact, the whole joint was making my skin itch.

“Grapes of Wrath. Do you hear me, damn it? It’s The Grapes of Wrath!” I stomped out of the cafe.

In the parking lot around the corner of the building, I noticed a payphone. Stepping in and closing the door, I dropped a coin in the shot, dialed O, and when the operator came on, I asked to make a collect call to Sol Silverman at Silverman Investigations, Inc. in Downey.

Joyce came on the line. She accepted the call and said, “Oh, Jimmy, I’m glad you called. Sol has been pacing the floor. Hang on a minute, please.”

The line clicked and there was a moment of static.

It was stifling hot in the booth. I turned to open the door a crack and that’s when I saw her. The teenage girl from the cafe stood just outside the booth staring at me with the same blank expression as the people inside had. I swung the door open all the way. “Can I help you miss?”

She stood there motionless and silent.

“Miss?” I said.

“You want to know about the center?”

My heart thumped. “Yes.”

She took a couple of quick glances in both directions. “Meet me behind the old Harvey House in five minutes. But I can’t wait. I’ll leave if you’re not there.” She started to back away.

“The what? What house? Where?”

“You’ll find it,” she whispered over her shoulder as she turned. She moved like a shadow, slipped around the corner of the building and disappeared.

“Jimmy,” Sol said on the phone. “I’m glad you called. I have news-”

I hung up the phone and ran for my car.

I jumped in the Vette,raced out of the parking lot, and shot into the first gas station I saw, a Standard Oil just off First Street by Riverside Drive.

A craggy-faced, weathered guy hobbled out of the office. He had on the Standard Oil uniform, white pants and shirt, black bowtie, and a garrison cap like those worn by soldiers in World War II. The old guy looked like he had fought one too many battles. The Battle of Gas Pump Island popped into my head.

I asked directions to the Harvey House. He didn’t say anything, just kept moving toward me with a lumbering gait. Jumping out of the car, I rushed to him and asked again about the old house.

He stood there deep in thought. Finally, he drew an oil-stained orange rag from his hip pocket and slowly wiped his brow with it. He looked off into the distance, started to point, and then said, “Nah.” He stared at the rag in his hand. Forever, it seemed.

I mentioned that I was in a hurry and glanced at my Timex: two minutes had passed since my encounter with the girl.

Suddenly, like in a cartoon, the light bulb lit up. Not only did he know what and where the Harvey House was, but he was bent on giving me the entire history of the place. I tried to interrupt, but the guy wouldn’t shut up about the old house. He kept rambling on, said the house was once used as a location for a 1940s movie, The Harvey Girls, but now it was in terrible shape.

He kept on talking, grousing that someone should turn the place into a museum. “Maybe they will someday. You know, it reminds me of a story…”

I was getting frantic. If the girl took off, I’d never find the teen drug center. It could be anywhere in the billion square miles of desert out here. How foolish to think I could drive to Barstow, cruise around, and find it.