Ed Gorman - Wake Up Little Susie

“I guess I better, huh?”

“Yeah, Dick, you better.”

He hiccuped and walked over to a wall phone by a rack of old tires.

I started playing detective.

Cliff Sykes, Jr., had seen one too many Glenn Ford pictures.

You know how Glenn always wears a khaki uniform whenever he plays a lawman? And keeps his gun slung low? And wears tight tan leather gloves? Well, imagine a 250-pound six-foot bullyboy in the same getup, and you’ve got yourself a picture of Cliff Sykes, Jr. The rest of the force wears standard blue uniforms. But Sykes, being the chief, and his daddy being the richest man in town, gets to play Glenn Ford.

The music stopped as soon as he arrived.

First the live band quit playing. Then the calliope went dead, and then the Ferris wheel music went silent.

And you started to see people at the windows, peering in.

I’d told Keys to lock the doors, just the way I’d learned in the criminology courses I’d taken at the University of Iowa while studying for my private investigator’s license. An unadulterated crime scene is the most important part of any murder investigation-short of a confession.

While we were waiting for Cliffie, I walked around the garage. Found nothing interesting. Went outside in back. Found nothing interesting.

Walked around the side of the building. And found something. There’d been some kind of accident here last night. A car had backed into the concrete-block edge of the building. Bits of red plastic taillight littered the ground. I got down and picked up a piece. I’d driven over this earlier today. I checked my tires and found the rear left with a sharp angle of glass stuck in it. The tire was quickly going flat.

I walked back to where the taillight pieces lay. Two little kids watched me. One had a Flash Gordon ray gun that made this really irritating noise every time the trigger was pulled.

I tried to avoid them as I sat on my haunches and examined the pieces again.

The kid pulled it thirty or forty times.

“How come you’re doing that?” his pacifist pal asked.

“I lost a dime,” I said. I didn’t want to explain myself.

“If I find it can I have it?” he asked.

I also didn’t want to get in a conversation with him.

“You find it, you keep it, how’s that?” I asked.

The ray gun shot me several more times, and then they started looking for the dime I hadn’t lost.

The taillight pieces belonged to a recent model car. There were two chunks large enough so I recognized the shape. There was also glass, and pieces of chrome trim, on the ground.

Flat-tire material. I knew how fussy Dick was about maintaining his lot. If one of his mechanics or customers had lost a taillight this way, it would’ve been swept up immediately.

Meaning they didn’t know about it. Meaning it happened last night and they hadn’t found it yet.

“Hey, Bobby, look what I found!” I heard one of the kids say, the one without the gun.

He held up a V8 insignia. It was about the size of a fifty-cent piece.

I was just about to ask him for it when a gray suede lady’s pump stepped into my view. I followed it up a length of hose, a length of skirt, and a length of matching jacket to the handsome if imperious face of Judge Whitney.

“I assume you’re sober, McCain.”

“He lost a dime,” Bobby said helpfully.

“Pitiful,” she said.

I stood up. “I may have found something.”

“Something more interesting than a dime, I hope.”

The boys started looking for the money again. “How about I give you a dime for what you found?” I said.

“A dime?” Bobby said. “Are you kidding? This is worth at least fifty cents.”

“Fifty cents?” his pal with the gun said.

“It’s worth at least a buck. My dad knows a junk parts place where they buy stuff like this.”

Before the price went any higher, I gave them a dollar and took the V8 insignia.

“Now if you only had the rest of the car to go with it,” Judge Whitney said. Then: “What’s going on?”

I told her.

“Take me inside, McCain.”

“You don’t want to go in there, Judge.”

“And why not?”

“Cliffie’s in there.”

“Oh.”

About the only time they ever saw each other was in her courtroom, when he had to testify against a defendant. Even then they rarely looked at each other and seldom spoke directly.

“I still want to go in.”

“You sure?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

We went in a side door.

Cliffie stood in the center of the garage, talking to one of his deputies. Snakeskin boots. A Bowie knife hanging from a scabbard on his belt. A white Stetson hat that would have done John Wayne proud. But the critical part of the image were the eyes. For all his silliness, he was a dangerous man. He’d killed five men in the six years of being chief of police. Not one of them was armed. Most grand juries would take issue with such behavior. But when at least half that grand jury is beholden to your father for their jobs, charges are rarely brought.

He saw her then and she saw him.

It was a Saturday-afn Western movie showdown, good versus evil.

True, the Judge is arrogant and a snob, and a pain in the ass, and pretentious about her Eastern roots. And yet she’s generally fair in the way she dispatches justice. She’s an intelligent jurist and a true believer in the Constitution, if that doesn’t sound a mite corny in these cynical times.

The Sykeses came here in the last big migration from the Ozarks, which was just after World War One. They ran liquor during prohibition and a variety of black-market items during World War Two. But by a fluke Cliff Sykes, Sr., got a government contract in to help build training airstrips and barracks for the Army Air Corps, and it made him a millionaire many times over. He was soon building them all over the Midwest. In the process he bought himself the town of Black River Falls. The Judge stayed in office-she was appointed by a state panel that not even Sykes could buy off-but all the appointments she’d made during the Whitney tenure were long gone. The Sykeses ran everything.

Now they faced off.

“He looks dumber than I remembered,” the Judge whispered.

Then Cliffie surprised us not only by walking over but by doffing his Stetson and sort of bowing from the hip.

“Judge Whitney,” he said. “This is a true pleasure.”

“I’d like to offer the services of my own investigator,” she said.

He was stunned by her abruptness. So was I.

Then he got mad. And then he gave us a grin a lizard would envy. “You have reference to young McCain here?”

“I do indeed. He’s a lawyer recognized by the bar and he’s also a licensed private investigator who has a passion for modern crime-solving techniques.”

“Well, does he now?” The lizard smiled again. “And here I thought he had a passion for that young secretary of yours, Miss Forrest.”

“Very funny, Cliffie,” I said.

“What’d I’d tell you about calling me that, mister?” he snapped.

“I guess I don’t remember,” I said.

The Judge said, “The point is, Chief, it doesn’t look good for our town to have murders go unsolved. Everybody who can should pitch in.

That’s why I’m offering you McCain here.”

He wouldn’t say yes. But he couldn’t say no. Because he’d look uncooperative. And he was learning that part of his job was public relations.

He no longer beat men in their cells, because that was bad press. Now he took them into the woods, and when they came back he talked about how they’d tried to escape. Cliffie and his father had somehow managed to buy their way into the country club -the last bastion of the Whitneys-and certain amenities were expected of them. No more blowing their noses on the tablecloths.