Max Collins - The Baby Blue Rip-Off

“I’m sure you are,” I said.

“Are you ready to talk seriously?”

“Sure.”

He loosened his grip on the gun, lowered it, and I reached over and plucked it out of his hands. A tiny gasp escaped his lips: a child’s gasp to go along with the toylike gun. His eyes were round white marbles as he looked at me pointing the little revolver back at him.

I let him sweat for a while; he could stand to lose some weight.

Then I tossed the gun in his lap.

“You didn’t deserve her,” I said.

He didn’t know what I was talking about. He said so.

“Your mother,” I explained. “And come to think of it, she didn’t deserve you, either. Good-bye, Jonsen.”

I got out, slammed the door, and the Buick roared off. I stood watching the empty street for a good minute, watching his exhaust fumes dissipate, then headed back inside my trailer and popped the top of a Pabst to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.

I sat on the couch.

Kicking me isn’t enough, I thought. Now people got to come ’round and point guns at me.

Damn!

This really wasn’t my idea of a good time, not to mention that I’d cut my lit class at the college this morning to talk to Brennan, and I had a mystery novel to write, and besides, it was time I got out and started looking for somebody to bandage my various wounds. Somebody soft who smelled better than me.

But damn !

Somebody had to care about Mrs. Jonsen’s murder, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her fat, spoiled son. Somebody had to care about her death. Not her damn possessions: her death.

Somebody had to (damnit) get involved.

Maybe it had to be me.

I finished the beer and started another.

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.”