The Baby Blue Rip-Off (7 page)

“Not at all. Glad for the company. Any time. But can I ask something in return?”

“What’s that?”

“I give you refuge from your parents; you keep me filled in on Brennan’s handling of the Jonsen case.”

“What do you want to know? I thought you were going around to see Brennan this morning.”

“I did, and I got
some
information, but I didn’t want to press him. If he knows I’m planning to look into this, he’ll clam up on me, and turn hard-ass.”

“Then you
are
going to do some nosing around on your own?”

“Well, I don’t know, exactly. We’ll see.”

“That sounds like yes to me.”

“I don’t know. People keep telling me I shouldn’t get into this, so naturally I’m inclined to. You hear what happened last night?”

“Something else happen last night?”

“Yeah, I told Brennan this morning, but then, this being your day off, you wouldn’t’ve heard about it.”

“So what happened?”

I gave him a brief account of my visit from the Kick-Mallory-in-the-Ribs Club, and he shook his head, saying, “Those guys got balls, coming around here. The morons.”

“Easy,” I said. “That’s what I said that got ’em started kicking again.”

“How the hell
are
your ribs anyway?”

I lifted my shirt like a sailor showing off his new tattoo and let Lou see my girdled, trussed-up rib cage.

“Is that uncomfortable?”

“No,” I said. “No worse than swimming in an iron lung.”

“And you’re still interested in playing detective? You got balls yourself, Mallory.”

“Don’t mention balls either,” I said. “That’s the other place those boys like to kick. Hey, I’m in swell shape. If I got invited to an orgy tonight, I’d have to man the punch bowl, I’m telling you.”

“Listen, before I go into what I know about the Jonsen case, and the other break-ins, maybe you better fill me in on what Brennan told you so far.”

I did, and then Lou went on to tell me some things Brennan had left out.

“Brennan’s trying real hard on this one,” he said. “He knows reelection’s coming up, and he’s been sheriff for a long time and knows people are in a house-cleaning mood
around here, ever since the county treasurer absconded with God-knows-how-much.”

“So Brennan’s trying hard. So what?”

“Well, if he wasn’t trying to make it a one-man show, he could call in the boys from the Iowa Criminal Bureau of Investigation, and that would probably result in a faster and more efficient clearing up of the case, but he’s not going to, he says, unless he gets convinced he can’t handle it himself.”

“Great. And everybody knows how up-to-date Brennan is on police techniques.”

“Don’t underestimate him. He goes to Omaha to a three-week catch-up school for sheriffs every summer, and he says he picks up a lot there.”

“He probably means women.”

“That isn’t what he means—”

“I’m just kidding, Lou. Go on, will you?”

“Okay. You get surly when you’re drunk, don’t you?”

“I’m not drunk, and I’m not surly, smart-ass. You want another beer?”

“Okay.”

I got some more beers, and Lou went on. “Something else about the break-ins you might like to think about.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“All of ’em took place beyond the city limits. Annexation got defeated at the polls last fall, remember? There’s plenty of houses that extend past the actual limits, and all the break-ins have been among those.”

“Yeah? Damn, I should’ve noticed that. Has Brennan?”

“I mentioned it to him, and he shrugged it off. Said it was just that those houses are mostly spread far apart from other houses
and are easier to pull a van up to without rousing suspicion of neighbors.”

“He’s right,” I said. “Those houses are on highways, too, mostly, where cars are going by too fast to take time to notice anything.”

Lou nodded and said, “He’s right, yeah, but I see more of a tie-in than just that. Outside the city limits means the sheriff’s department handles it; inside means the local cops. Or some in town, some out means a combined investigation. I think staying outside town proper has to do with these people being afraid of what our police chief might do if he got into the fray.”

“Oh, Lou, are you kidding? That fat nincompoop wouldn’t do a damn thing.”

“That’s just it. The chief wouldn’t do a damn thing himself, but he
would
call in the Criminal Bureau of Investigation. He always does in a murder case. He did about those rapes last year, remember?”

“And Brennan’s not much for calling in the CBI.”

“No. Like I said, he likes to fool around with a case himself, especially in an election year.”

“And you think these B-and-E artists are sophisticated enough to consider that angle?”

“Why not? Besides, they’re obviously local people and would’ve known that just from living in town and paying attention.”

“I don’t know. I live in town and I didn’t know that.”

“Maybe you’re not paying attention.”

“Keep that up and you won’t get another beer. Listen, Lou, why is it obvious they’re local people? Why can’t they be out of Davenport or Rock Island or some place, and drive down now and then for a hit?”

“Mallory. You aren’t thinking. And you who used to be a cop yourself.”

“I still don’t get you.”

“I figured it from what you told me about last night—them coming back.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “Damn! What’s wrong with me? Of course they’re local! They
knew
me! They knew where to look for me.... They wanted me to know that; to know they would come around and work me over if I caused them any trouble. And anybody who wasn’t local would’ve split right after the job, would’ve headed back for wherever it was they worked out of. Lou, what about that car, that red-white-and-blue GTO?”

“License number three? What about it? You heard me last night when I said it was stolen, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “But who was it you said the car belonged to? It was somebody I know....”

“Car belongs to Pat Nelson. You remember Pat, don’t you? Went to school with us, a little ahead of us.”

“I remember him. Had a run-in with him once.”

“Oh?”

“That’s neither here nor there, but did you ever consider Nelson could’ve been in on the robbery and reported his car stolen because he knew it’d been seen there?”

“After the fact, you mean? No, he called it in earlier than that, a good hour before you saw that car at Jonsen’s.”

“I don’t know. I still think it could stand some looking into. Nelson’s been in trouble ever since he was a kid.”

“True enough,” Lou agreed. “Reform school when he was barely in his teens, if I recall.”

“That’s right. You going to look into it?”

“Probably. Are you?”

“Probably.”

“You want to do it together, Mal?”

“That’s what I’d like, but we better work separately, or Brennan might cause us some headaches. We can just keep each other up on what we’re doing.”

Lou nodded.

“What ever happened to Nelson?” I asked. “I mean, what’s he been up to lately?”

“Think he has a job with that silo company down in South End. He’s married, you know.”

“Who to?”

Lou grinned. “Don’t tell me I’m the first to break it to you.”

“Break what to me?”

“He’s married to your old girl friend. Debbie Lee. Only she’s Debbie Nelson now. They got a kid, I think.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “I just didn’t figure that marriage would’ve lasted this long.” I shook my head. “Debbie Lee. Been a long time since I thought about her. My old flame.”

“That dates back a ways, doesn’t it?”

“Hell, yes. My first love. Junior high.
American Bandstand
and going steady and dances Friday night at the YWCA. Jesus, I haven’t thought about those days in years.”

“Well, neither has she, I’d bet. You ought to look her up.”

“No,” I said, “no, I don’t think so. Married women tend to have husbands.”

At this point the conversation drifted into other areas, mostly concerned with briefing each other on what we and friends of ours had been up to in recent years. At five-thirty I talked Lou into staying around for supper and while he called home to tell his folks, I got a couple steaks and some fries
together, his share of which he wolfed down gratefully. Lou was pretty ragged from living at home. “You can love your parents without liking them,” is the way he explained the situation to me.

At seven Lou and I were watching an old rerun of
Star Trek
when the phone rang. I answered it.

“Is this Mallory?” A female voice. Soft.

I said it was me.

“Mal? Can I see you? I have to see you.”

“Who is this?”

“Debbie. Remember? Debbie Lee... Nelson now. Can I see you? I can be over in ten minutes.”

I held the receiver out and looked at it for a second. Then I shrugged, brought it back, and said, “Okay.”

She hung up.

So did I.

“Who was that?” Lou said.

“You wouldn’t even believe it,” I said.

I showed him the door.

I was thirteen when I fell for Debbie Lee. It happened at a sock hop after school in the gym at the junior high. In certain obscure areas in Iowa hinterlands, this bizarre ritual is still practiced.

Debbie was just an inch short of five feet tall and looked like something her parents might’ve won at a high-class carnival: heart-shaped face, enormous blue eyes, appropriate Kewpie lips, cap of curly blonde hair, the living doll cliché come to life.

Also, she was cuddly looking, just a trifle plump (baby fat), and she wore pink a lot. Especially fuzzy pink sweaters. And even at thirteen she could fill a sweater out, one of maybe ten girls in the whole seventh grade who could. I think that was what was so appealing about her, really; not only did she look like the sort of picture-book princess a thirteen-year-old boy could worship with knightlike purity and devotion, but she was also the stuff wet dreams are made of, the possessor of a body designed to further madden an already puberty-deranged adolescent.

I expressed my love for Debbie, at that first junior high sock hop, by asking her for each slow dance; she accepted every time, and we would dance to the strains of “Wonderland by Night” or “Blue on Blue” (the only two slow tunes in the record collection of the acned fat kid who emceed every hop). It was heaven! Here I was, holding Debbie Lee in my arms (sort of—you could’ve
driven a truck between us, actually)—though I wouldn’t dream of hanging onto her like the “steadies” in the eighth grade who, rumor had it, “made out” frequently.... Well, I would
dream
of it, but I wouldn’t dare try it. We didn’t say a word to each other—“yes,” “no,” and “thanks” all being communicated by nods of the head—but nevertheless, true love it was, and I had optimistic enough an outlook to hope Debbie shared my feelings.

This, of course, is where the go-between comes in. Every junior high love story has a go-between. Our go-between, Debbie’s and mine, was a girl named Darla whose complexion looked like the surface of the moon. Her hair was a ghastly reddish fright wig, her nose a beak, her eyes beady, her teeth buck. She was not attractive.

Which is what being a go-between is all about. The go-between is a girl who can’t get a boy to save her life, so she becomes the best friend of an attractive girl and serves a function somewhere between agent and pimp, getting far more than her ten percent of the boy’s attention. In fact, the boy will spend much more time talking to the go-between than to his actual girl friend. At least that’s the way it was back in those days before the first shot of the sexual revolution had been fired. In my case, I went steady and broke up with Debbie Lee three times before ever saying a word to her.

It went this way: I would tell the go-between, Darla, how I felt about Debbie. Debbie would tell go-between Darla how she, Debbie, felt about me. And go-between Darla would tell both of us whatever the hell she felt like telling us.

And so, after an evening of slow dancing together at the YWCA, Debbie would give me a sorrowful look and would return my silver friendship ring. Immediately I would rush to Darla to find out why. Darla would explain that I had insulted
Debbie, somehow or other. I would plead my case to Darla, who would resolutely promise to do her best for me with Debbie.

The go-between’s prestige depends on getting the best boy possible for her client, and therefore a schmuck like me didn’t stand much of a chance with a cute girl like Debbie and a shrewd go-between like Darla. Soon I was seeing Debbie’s round blue eyes staring woefully at me from across the gym floor while some older guy (an eighth-grader) would approach her and ask for a slow dance, and the vampire Darla would be sitting smugly in the corner, a smile of vicarious pleasure on her homely face.

Fortunately, Darla moved away that next summer, and in the eighth grade I made a comeback with Debbie, who was working freelance now. We even spoke occasionally.

And then disaster: Debbie became part of a crowd of “popular” girls who served as go-betweens for each other. A closed shop. This fleet of go-betweens was even more depressing than Darla, as they had boyfriends of their own and were in the go-between business for the sheer, sadistic hell of it. Talking to six of them during one day about the current state of Debbie Lee was like getting six different and equally upsetting opinions from doctors examining something malignant. By the time I was in the ninth grade, I had gone steady and broken up with Debbie Lee no less than sixteen times, investing in three rings (two wore out—swear to God) and having very little direct communication... though we had taken to talking to each other on the phone every once in a while, usually in the presence of some go-between who was staying the night with Debbie and was constantly on the extension phone, giggling in.

Most frustrating of all was the fact that I had never kissed Debbie, in sixteen rounds of going steady. We’d never lasted
long enough at one crack to get that far. And, since boys in the ninth grade are incredibly horny, something had to give.

What gave was that I took up with Debbie’s best friend, a lass named Maureen who had a 38-24-36 figure (at fourteen!) and an IQ considerably smaller. Maureen put out (which means she let me kiss her and give her a moderate grope now and then) and, being Debbie’s best friend, Maureen naturally told Debbie all.