Ed Gorman - Wake Up Little Susie

Just before five, the phone rang.

“Hi, Sam. This is Miriam Travers.”

“Hi, Miriam. How’s Bill?”

“Oh, actually coming along a little better than the doctor thought he would. In so short a time, I mean.”

“That’s great.”

“The reason I’m calling, Sam, is to ask if you’ve seen Mary.”

“Isn’t she working at Rexall?”

“It’s her afternoon off.”

“Oh.”

“She said she was going to stop by your office and then come home. She said she had something important to tell you.”

“Gee, no, I haven’t seen her. Of course, I haven’t been here all afternoon either.”

“Well, if you do see her, please tell her I’ll hold supper for her.”

“I sure will, Miriam. And that’s great news about Bill.”

At the time, I didn’t think anything of the call. A lot of times, Mary got in her old DeSoto and drove to Cedar Rapids or Iowa City to shop. Being almost twenty-three, she didn’t feel any great need to tell her mother her plans.

A harmless shopping trip.

That was my first conjecture about her absence.

But it would prove to be very wrong.

Perfume. A glimpse of a candlelit dining room. A Jerry Vale Lp on the record player. Mrs. Goldman was up to something tonight.

Her door was open so I peeked in. I wanted to ask her if she’d seen who’d dropped off a letter for me. An unstamped letter.

She was looking mighty fine, Mrs.

Goldman was, in a tan tailored suit, her dark hair swept up in a stunning Cyd Charisse hairdo.

“Wow.”

She laughed. “Thank you, McCain.”

“In fact, double wow.”

“My optometrist friend is coming for dinner tonight.”

“He doesn’t stand a chance.”

She smiled. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

“So your date Saturday night went well?”

“Very well. Except for a little guilt now and then. You know, as if I were betraying my husband by going out.”

“You’ll get over that.”

“I suppose. But I’ll never forget him.”

The smile this time was sad, remembering her husband. She changed the subject. “So what’s up with you?”

I remembered the letter. “You see who dropped this off on the front porch?”

“Afraid not, McCain. I was downtown most of the afternoon.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll let you get back to setting the stage.”

“I made peach pie. I’ll save you a piece.”

“Thanks.”

Up in my apartment, I settled in with a beer and a cigarette. Early autumn dusk, the colors of the sky, the last birds of day filling the fiery trees with song and silence. Soon enough their winter trek south would begin. In the alley, a couple of kids were playing the last act of their cowboy movie for the day, a shootout in which one was the victor and the other got to ham up a slow death as he dropped to the ground. Far away you could see the lights of the football stadium. They were testing everything for the big game Friday night.

I sat in the easy chair with a Four Freshmen album on the hi-fi. As much as I like rock-and-roll, I also appreciate the simple beauty of the human voice.

I kept studying the envelope and the letter inside.

Chevy ‘ee: (312) 945-3260

That’s all it said.

Who had left the letter for me? And why?

Cliffie was convinced that Mike Chalmers had killed Susan to avenge his prison sentence. But if the ‘ee Chevy figured in the killing, it would tend to exonerate Chalmers. He didn’t own a ‘ee Chevy.

I was just about to dial the 312 number when the phone rang.

“Hi, Miriam,” I said.

“There’s still no word from Mary. I’m getting worried.”

“Sounds like a shopping trip to me.”

“Oh, Lord, I hope so.”

“Tell you what. I’ve got to go out for a while. I’ll look around at the places she usually goes.”

“It’s just not like her to do this. Especially with her father in his condition.”

I hadn’t thought of that. And when she said it, the first faint note of alarm sounded in my emergency system. It really. was out of character for Mary to do something like this. She was a dutiful daughter.

“I’m sure it’s fine, Miriam. There’ll be some perfectly logical explanation.

You’ll see.”

“I just keep thinking maybe she’s been in an accident or something-”

Then the words from her previous call came back to me. How Mary’d had something important to tell me. Something about Susan’s murder?

“You just relax, Miriam. You’ll be seeing her very soon.”

“Thanks, Sam. You’re such a good boy.”

I smiled fondly. Miriam Travers had been telling me that most of my life.

I tried the 312 number. Eighteen times I let it ring. No answer.

I stopped seven different places, looking for Mary. In the course of my travels, I played two games of pinball, bought a copy of the new Cavalier magazine with a Mickey Spillane story in it, caught up on some gossip with three or four old high school classmates, had an ice-cream cone at one of our favorite places, and walked around in a ladies’ dress shop feeling very self-conscious.

No Mary.

In Chicago-or even Des Moines-a person can easily lose herself. So many places to go. But in Black River Falls, if she was out tonight, I should’ve run into her.

No Mary.

This left two possibilities. That she was visiting somebody, tucked inside a private house or apartment, or something had happened to her.

The former seemed unlikely. Because if she were visiting somebody, she’d have called her mom and told her so.

Leaving accident or foul play.

I wouldn’t have been so concerned if she hadn’t told her mother that she had something important to tell me. Mary wasn’t much for drama. If she said something was important, it was.

I was wheeling around downtown when I saw Chip O’Donlon swaggering down the street, glancing at his reflection in store windows. He was an Adonis, he was; just ask him. I’d inherited Chip as a client from his older brother, who was currently serving two-to-five for setting fire to a rival’s garage, said rival having had the temerity to start dating the girl the brother had dumped six months earlier. I hadn’t been all that sorry to see him go. He was Adonis senior and real hard to take.

Chip. Maybe it was the sunglasses at night. Maybe it was his always calling me Dads or Daddy-O. Maybe it was because the cheap bastard never paid me. Chip liked telling people he had “a lawyer” and they’d been “in court” that morning and maybe he’d get “sent up” and maybe he wouldn’t. His offenses ran to speeding, drag racing, giving beer to minors, and using profane language on a public street: nothing that would get him sent to prison, nothing that would mess up his pretty face. But he enjoyed the bad-boy image.

I whipped up to the curb and said, “Get in.”

“Hey, Daddy-O.” And he gave me a jaunty little salute.

“You hear what I said? Get in.”

He got in. He was wearing enough aftershave to make a stadium tear up. “You got a hot poker up your butt or something?”

“No, but you will if you don’t pay me the money you owe me.”

The girls say he looks like Tab Hunter.

He dresses like him anyway, all the California cool clothes you can buy between here and “Chi-town,” as he frequently refers to Chicago. “Hey, man, you know I’ll pay you.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“How soon is soon?”

“Real soon.”

I sighed. Actually, I didn’t expect ever to get my money from this dimwit. But I had an idea of how to resolve the trouble Jeff Cronin and Linda Granger were having. To do that, I had to talk him into something. “When’re you going to get a job, Chip?”