Max Collins: The Baby Blue Rip-Off

Somebody stepped on the back of my neck. I ate dirt for a while. It didn’t taste good.

“Mallory,” a voice said.

It was a harsh, whispering voice; I didn’t recognize it, exactly, but felt sure it was one of those I’d heard at Mrs. Jonsen’s.

“We wanted you to know something,” the voice went on. “We wanted you to know we know you. We know who you are and where you are, and we don’t want to see you again.”

I lifted my face a shade-not far, considering the foot was still on the back of my neck. I said, “Can I say something?” My voice was rather muffled, since I had a mouthful of dirt.

“Go ahead.”

“You guys are real morons coming around here.”

Another voice. “We let you say something, and that’s what you say? Jesus.”

“Kick him in the ass.”

Somebody kicked me in the ass. The shoe connected with my tail bone and rearranged my spine a little.

“We figure you don’t know who we are, Mallory. If we thought you knew who we are, we’d blow your goddamn head off. Do you know that?”

I didn’t say anything. Nobody can say I never learn my lesson.

“We’re responsible people, Mallory. We aren’t crazy. We didn’t mean to kill that old woman. We were just ripping her off, is all we were doing. And anyway, she was old, man. Maybe she’d’ve died of a heart attack about then, anyway. Without our help. Who knows.”

The other voice said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Just a second. Mallory… Mallory, be a good boy. Stay away from us.”

“He doesn’t know who we are; come on, let’s get outa here.”

“Mallory, don’t try to find us. Don’t come looking to figure out who we are. Don’t try to be a hero again, like you did back at the old lady’s place. Or you know what?”

He seemed to want me to speak, so I said, “What?”

“Or we’ll kill you. That’s what. Kill you.”

“Yeah, we’ll kill you, asshole.”

And here’s the good part: they kicked me.

In the ribs.

The next morning was hot. That brief flash of October in the middle of July had gone away somewhere, and I woke up to sweat-dampened sheets and got the air conditioner going even before I brushed my teeth.

It didn’t take long to cool down the little trailer. My quarters were small, but very nice; the previous owner of the old trailer had been as attached to the thing as I was and had taken the time and expense to remodel the interior, putting in dark paneling and a fairly modern kitchenette. The living room was crowded by the possessions that make life bearable: a nineteen-inch Sony TV, stereo tape components, brick-and-board bookcase full of paperbacks, and walls bearing posters from several of my favorite movies: Vertigo, American Graffiti, Chinatown, Goldfinger, Caddyshack, and so on. I used to have the Penthouse Pet of the Year on one wall, life-size, but too many discussions about my possible status as a sexist were, shall we say, aroused by her presence.

By the time I had some clothes on, my ribs had started to flare up. I won’t bother trying to describe the pain. It hurt. I didn’t cry, but I thought about it.

At ten o’clock I was in the hospital coffee shop having breakfast; at ten-thirty I was getting X-rayed; and at eleven-thirty I was being told my ribs (two of them, on the right) were cracked, not broken-which was good news-and was strapped into a harness-which wasn’t. If a girdle and a truss got together and had a kid, that harness would’ve been it. By noon I was pulling my van up in front of the courthouse, across the street from which is the jail. Brennan’s offices are in the front part of the jailhouse, a big light-stone, two-story building that didn’t look like a jail, really, except for the barred and caged windows and electrically fenced-in backyard, where the prisoners got their daily exercise.

Brennan was brown-bagging it in his office, studying some folders at his desk. It was cool-all the offices were centrally air-conditioned, unlike the jail cells-a pine-paneled cubicle with pictures of ducks on the wall, and some framed newspaper notices of Brennan’s big murder case, where a local woman killed her husband with a pair of scissors and Brennan had caught her red-handed, you should excuse the expression. The woman is now serving sandwiches at Katie’s, up the street, since husband-killing is generally considered justifiable homicide. There was also a color photo in a gold frame on his desk: his son John in uniform.

Evidently our temporary truce was still on, as Brennan treated me to a Pepsi, tossing me some change and telling me to help myself from the hall machine and bring him one, too. I did, then broke the truce by telling him, for the first time, about my return visit from the rib-kickers the night before.

“Jesus Christ, man!” he sputtered, getting some Pepsi on himself. He jerked up into a sitting position and, seeing as he’d been leaning back with his feet on his desk, that took some maneuvering. “Why the hell didn’t you call us?”

“I’d had pain-in-the-ass enough for one evening.”

“Bullshit!”

“Use your head. What the hell would’ve been the point of bothering you guys again? When they kicked me, I blacked out for a while… a couple minutes, at least. By the time you could’ve got to my place, they’d have been long, long gone.”

That calmed him down, sounded reasonable to him. He put his feet back up on his desk and said, “Christ. We just can’t have people going around doing things like this.”

“Kicking me in the ribs, you mean? I agree.”

“Screw your ribs. I’m talking about looting houses, and now, killing people.” Brennan gestured to a folder on his desk, next to his sack lunch. “Take a look.”

I did. There were clippings from the Port City Journal dating back to April, the first good weather. Seven other homes had been similarly emptied. I’d remembered the rash of breaking-and-enterings, but for some reason hadn’t tied it up to Mrs. Jonsen’s. Maybe because some aspects of the other robberies didn’t exactly fit the Jonsen one, as Brennan was soon to point out.

“Seven goddamn house lootings,” Brennan said, “in four goddamn months, and now another one. Only this one don’t exactly fit the MO of the other jobs.”

“MO? Brennan, don’t tell me you’ve been watching Chips reruns again.”

“Look, prior to this job, the homes were left untouched… all valuables gone, yes, but none of this vandalism crap. The whole damn Jonsen house was torn up, like some drunken kids out on prom night got together and whooped it up.”

“Like you said last night, maybe they were looking for the fabled Jonsen money.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe it’s a different bunch responsible. Somebody who pulled this, figuring we’d tie it to those others.” He made a face. “Glance at those clippings one more time, Mallory. Notice any common denominator?”

I skimmed them again. “Sure. All seven times the houses were where people weren’t home. Either out for the evening, or out of town on some trip or something.”

“Right, and that’s another dissimilarity between the Jonsen job and the other ones.”

I swigged my Pepsi. “Consider this. Suppose these people had some source of information that dried up. Suppose this job was either based on some new source of information, or was a first effort without that sort of help.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, let’s say this group of rip-off artists had some way they’ve been spotting which houses are going to be vacant. One of them works at the gas or electric company, maybe, as a meter man, say, and has knowledge of who’s going to be out of town for a while, or just overhears plans of going out for the evening when he checks the meter. Or maybe one of them has a girl friend who works as a secretary at a travel agency and knows who’s on vacation. Maybe one of them works at the newspaper and knows who’s having their papers stopped for a while. Or the phone company, and knows who’s having phone service temporarily stopped. A lot of maybes like that.”