Max Collins: The Baby Blue Rip-Off

“Damn,” I agreed. “What’s up, Lou? Why aren’t you still with Brennan?”

“Through for the night. Heading home. Brennan just said to stop here on my way and see how you were.”

“I’m touched at his concern.”

Brown grinned. “Yeah, what’s the deal? Do you two hate each other, or what?”

“We’re not sure ourselves.”

“The way you were yelling at each other back at that house, I’d think you hated each other’s guts. Then after a while there, you were talking real civil.”

“Well, I got a certain amount of respect for Brennan. Within his limitations, he’s a good sheriff. Except when he’s looking out for the interests of his political buddies and various other string-pullers around town.”

“I kind of gathered there was some friction between you two because of his son John. I remember how thick you guys were back in high school.”

“John and me went back even before that, to junior high. Even then I was always smart-mouthing Brennan, and Brennan never did like that. Not that I blame him.”

“You and John went in the army together, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. The Buddy Plan, or whatever the hell it was called. And John died, and I lived, and Brennan’s resented me ever since.”

“That simple, huh.”

“Well, not really. After I got out, I was one of the Vietnam vets against the war. Pretty active. Brennan got wind of that, and I’ve been a traitor ever since. He thinks this is still the sixties and I’m a hippie who thinks cops are ‘pigs’ or something. It’s sad, really.”

“Weren’t you a cop yourself at one time?”

“Yeah, a very short time,” I said, and told him how I’d been on the force for around six months in a small California town a few years ago. And that I’d worked for Per Mar, a security outfit in the nearby Quad Cities, for a while. Then we got sidetracked, with me mentioning how for the better part of five years I’d been outside Port City, doing this and that, finally coming back to roost and taking a shot at writing; and Lou mentioned he’d been gone for several years, too, working in a factory in Ohio. Anyway, we got sidetracked, and it was along about this time that the waitress told us to leave because it was fifteen minutes past the coffee shop’s closing and she had a right to go home like anybody else.

Out in the hospital lobby, Lou said, “You thinking about playing cop, Mal?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re involved, aren’t you?”

“Don’t say that.”

“Well, you are. Involved in a murder. You were beaten up, and besides, you were a friend of the old lady’s, weren’t you?”

“Tell me the truth, Lou. Did Brennan put you up to this? To find out my attitude?”

“No. I’m just curious.”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. If you and Brennan can take care of this, fine. But I admit I’m pretty pissed off about the whole thing, and wouldn’t mind getting my hands on the SOBs responsible.”

Lou just nodded.

“See you, Lou. Come over to my place sometime. I’ll see if I can’t find a beer for you.”

“I’d like that. I could use a place to get away to.”

“Love to have you. Is there a problem?”

“Well, I’m living with my folks, and it’s driving me crazy. I’m trying to find an apartment, but till I do, I’m stuck with the folks, and I love ’em, but they drive me goddamn crazy. A twenty-nine-year-old man does not belong in his parents’ home.”

“I agree. Only on holidays.”

“And Christmas is a long ways off.”

We chatted for a few minutes more, and just as we were starting to part company, Lou said, “Almost forgot the reason I came looking for you. Was supposed to find out how you were, to tell Brennan. What’s your condition, anyway?”

“Got my ribs messed up a little. Maybe cracked, maybe broken.”

“Damn. Does it hurt?”

“Only when I breathe.”

Lou went off to call Brennan, and I headed out to the parking lot and got in my van.

For a moment I thought about what Lou had said, about my “being involved.”

No way. Let Lou and Brennan handle it. Like Brennan said, in the morning I’ll be over it.

I started up the engine, turned my head, and glanced out the rear van window to back out of the parking space. My eye caught something on the floor. Something white.

A Styrofoam plate.

Mrs. Jonsen’s supper.

My house trailer sits way back from the street in the middle of a big green lawn. On a dark night you can’t even see the trailer-that is, assuming the streetlight directly in front of my place is not shining, and it usually isn’t. One of my neighbors (the guy in the split-level) has his ten-year-old son shoot out the streetlight with a beebee gun so that, come nightfall, my trailer will fall into what the neighborhood thinks is a well-deserved obscurity.

This was one of those nights. The streetlight wasn’t going, and as I pulled up to the curb, just getting back from the hospital, it was so dark that I thought for a moment somebody had hauled my trailer away.

I love my trailer.

It is very old-one of the oldest existing house trailers anywhere-a long, silver, faintly phallic module, plopped down in the center of a big luxurious green lawn like something laid by a dog from outer space. On one side of me is that split-level I told you about; on the other is a two-story with very nice gothic lines-and well kept up, too, I might add. You might wonder what a house trailer is doing on that big luxurious green lawn between those two high-class dwellings. I already explained that East Hill is a study in contrast, but my trailer next to the homes that bookend it makes the rest of East Hill seem normal.

The story is this. Several years ago there was a big hole where my big lawn now resides. That hole was a neighborhood eyesore, a dump of sorts, filled with weeds and dead trees and debris, and the city took steps to do something about it. They purchased the hole and sold it to a firm who used it as an experimental landfill project. The hole was then filled with garbage, the garbage having been dunked, like a doughnut, in various chemicals, and some dirt was put over that. Nobody wanted to live on the former hole. Nobody wanted to walk on it, let alone build on it, for fear of sinking into the garbage. Which is why I was able to rent the former hole, cheap, and put my trailer on it.

Considering the entertainment value, I don’t see what the neighbors are complaining about, really. Many of them spend their spare time watching me and my trailer, perhaps in the hope they’ll see us go sinking down into the hole like the Titanic.

Anyway, the streetlight was out, most probably due to my neighbor’s little sharpshooter. I climbed out of the van, walked up toward the battered hull I call home, began to unlock the door, and somebody put an arm around my throat.

I was not expecting that.

I was not expecting to be attacked a second time in just a few hours. The bastards could have had the decency to wait till tomorrow, at least. But decency they were short of.

The guy with his arm around my throat told me to come around behind the trailer with him, where we couldn’t be seen from the street. I did that.

There were more people than just the one. So far they had stayed behind me, but I heard them walking, breathing, felt them there. Maybe just two of them this time. But more than one.

Once in back of the trailer, I was given a forearm across my shoulder blades that sent me flopping on the ground like a professional wrestler faking a fall. If he’d hit me much harder, I just might’ve made my neighbors happy and gone sinking down to garbage level.