Ed Gorman: Wake Up Little Susie

I was about to tell her how insulting her theory was-ffboth Mary and me-when I saw Dick Keys pushing through the crowd and shouting my name. He looked crazed. As a young man, he’d distinguished himself by flying more than sixty bombing missions as a tail gunner in World War Two. He was known for his charm, his self-possession.

People were watching him now.

Something was obviously wrong.

He stumbled over somebody’s foot and practically landed on his face in front of me.

“Sam, you have to help me,” he said, his breath coming in short gasps.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll explain when we get there.”

“Hello, Richard,” the Judge said loftily. “Or aren’t we speaking anymore?”

He seemed to see her for the first time.

“Oh, hi, Judge. God, I’m sorry,

I’m just so-ccfused, I guess. I really need to borrow young McCain here, if you don’t mind.”

“Consider him borrowed, Richard. But next time you could at least have the courtesy to say hello to me.” She was the only person who called him Richard. He apparently brought out the schoolmarm in her.

“I will, Judge, I promise,” he said. And then: “C’mon, Sam. Hurry!”

And we were off.

It took us a good seven-eight minutes of broken-field running to get inside the service garage, where we were finally alone.

“What’s going on, Dick?”

He looked at me lost in grief. “It’s bad enough that everybody hates the Edsel grille because it looks like a woman’s vagina. That isn’t enough? Now I got a body on my hands.”

I really thought he might start crying.

The garage had six bays and smelled wonderfully of oil and grease and cleaning compound.

There was no activity today, no wrenches clanging to the floor, no Hank Williams song on the radio, no Pepsi bottles yanked out of the nickel machine in the corner. It was Edsel Day, after all. Only heathens would work on a day like this.

I looked around the silent garage wistfully.

I’ve always wanted to be one of those manly men who can walk into a service garage and know exactly what to do. I’m terrible with hammers, saws, and screwdrivers. My dad learned my terrible secret when I was nine years old and he asked me to help him hang a pair of shutters my mom had bought at Woolworth’s. They were supposed to go on either side of the kitchen window.

My dad held the shutter in place-which was the hard part of the job-while I was supposed to bang in the first couple of nails. I banged, all right -right through storm window and window alike. My mom jumped back from the sink, screaming, as glass icicles flew everywhere. From then dad always got my kid sister to help him with his carpentry projects.

And that’s why I take my ragtop to Denny’s garage whenever anything goes wrong. I sure couldn’t fix it myself.

“I need you to look at something, Sam.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll just let you see for yourself.”

I looked at all the Rotary good service plaques he had mounted above the desk.

If you’ve read any Sinclair Lewis-my undergraduate major was American Literature -y know the word booster. And boy, that was

Dick. He belonged to everything-Rotary, Kiwanis, Eagles, Elks, Vfw,

Masons, Chamber of Commerce, you name it-and he boosted everything too: high school sports, the new swimming pool, the new softball diamond, and stricter regulation of teenage drinking at both drive-in theaters. His people had come out here from New England in the early 1850’s.

They brought a lot of good recipes and clean, admirable habits with them, including the principles of education with which the Iowa Territory established its first schools. And they brought along the dulcimer, an instrument till then unknown in these parts. The odd thing was, whenever you saw Dick with his fellow Rotarians or

Kiwanians, he seemed apart from them. The smile touched the lips but never the eyes, and the eyes strayed constantly, looking out some window that was his alone.

“C’mon.” Then, as we started walking, he said, “You’ve got a private investigator’s license, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you do work for Judge Whitney?”

“Yes I do.”

He sighed. The handsome face looked a little fleshy and old. It was a strange feeling. He seemed older now than he had a few minutes ago. He was Jay Gatsby at fifty-five, and that’s no Jay Gatsby at all.

He said, “There’s a dead girl in the trunk.”

Three Edsels were lined along the rear wall, their trunk ends out. The colors of these three were as silly as the colors of those on the lot: exotic fruity colors that no self-respecting automobile should ever be.

“I was just getting these ready for delivery,” he said. “That’s why they’re in here.” He looked paler, grimmer even than before.

I wasn’t sure which trunk held the girl until we got close. A bloody handprint was on the fender of the center car, the peach-and-kiwi-colored one.

“That’s my handprint, by the way.”

Great. The Sykes clan that ran the town and thus the police department didn’t need any help being incompetent. But Dick was going to see they got it. I wondered what other parts of the crime scene he’d violated. He saw my expression. “I panicked, McCain. I reached in and touched her to make sure she was dead-”

“That’s all right.” What the hell. He was having a bad enough day as it was. “The trunk open?”

He nodded.

I got down on my haunches and took my ballpoint out of my white button-down shirt.

That style of shirt, chinos, and desert boots are my customary uniform. They give my baby face and diminutive stature at least a semblance of age.

The tip of my ballpoint slid in nicely beneath the trunk catch. I delicately raised the lid. Then I stood up, my knees cracking, and looked inside.

Next to me, Dick said, “She’s-”

He didn’t finish his sentence. He hiccuped.

“She certainly is.”

I recognized her immediately: Susan Squires. Mary Travers had worked for her a couple of years. Susan was married to the then District Attorney, so they did a lot of entertaining and needed help around the house. Hence, a high school girl like Mary. Inexpensive and tirelessly hardworking. Even more, they were friends, confidantes. You’d see them downtown together, shopping and giggling like girlfriends. Susan told Mary virtually everything about her life.

“She was a pretty gal.” Hiccup.

“She sure was.”

“And nice. She used to work for me. That’s why she was here yesterday, decorating for Edsel Day.

A lot of old employees pitched in. This just makes me sick.”

“Me too, Mr. Keys.”

“And I don’t mean just ‘cause it’ll hurt my business.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Mr. Keys.”

He hiccuped.

“Here. Thought you might want this.”

He handed me a flashlight.

I played the beam inside the shadowy trunk.

She smelled of death. Unclean. This odor fought against the strong smell of the brand-new spare rubber tire. She’d been wearing a blue knee-length skirt and black flats and a white blouse. She had dark hair worn short and was curled up into a kitten ball. The side of her head had been smashed in so brutally you got a few glimpses of clean white bone.

“You’re going to have to call the Sykes boys.”

Hiccup. “I know I am. But I hate to.

They don’t have any idea what they’re doing.”

He leaned forward and hiccuped in my face.

“That’s between you and me.”

With all the power the Sykes clan had in this town, a wise man made a point of keeping such opinions to himself.

“Why don’t you go call them and I’ll look around?”