Par Four, page 5
part #2 of Jake Hines Series
The bartender, Red Eickhoff, was sitting on a high stool, leafing idly through a two-day-old copy of the Minneapolis Tribune. The thieves hadn’t touched the bar, he said.
“Far as I can see, the only damage in this part of the establishment is just the usual mess I face every Tuesday morning from that shit-for-brains Babe’s got working Sunday nights.” His account of the morning agreed substantially with Jack’s, except that in Red’s telling, he became the hero of the day.
“I told Jack right away, I said, ‘Let the police handle it. You just do what you always do, get the lunch counter open.’ I mean, running around like a chicken with his head cut off.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “As far as Babe getting taped up like that, all I can say it was bound to happen. Bound to happen. Whaddya expect? A woman alone hasn’t got any business trying to run a place like this.”
He had his name in at a couple of places downtown, he said; he would be giving notice soon. He had worked at all the best places in town; he didn’t have to put up with this foolishness here at all. Never did like working for a woman anyway, and now thieves breaking in, it was just ridiculous. Business was going to hell here anyway, anybody could see that.
“Look around,” he insisted, indignantly. “You see a lot of customers in here?”
“Looks pretty quiet. You had a good weekend, though, right? The tournament?”
“Friday night sure wasn’t nothin’ to write home about. Saturday got fairly lively for a while. I didn’t work Sunday, but Sundays never amount to much, tournament or no tournament. And that boy’s gonna chase away what little business we got left.”
“Which boy is that?”
“Sonny boy.” He nodded disgustedly toward the back room. “Candy-ass Randy in there. She leaves him in charge, and all he thinks about is playing with his friends. Hear that?” he demanded, as a chorus of laughter and shouts erupted in the other room. “Him and his worthless pals. How’d you like to be working for that? Even when he works, he just makes problems. Today he volunteers to go fetch the liquor order, and he comes back with a bunch of stuff nobody every heard of.” He held up a bottle of bourbon with a label I’d never seen before. “Look at this crap. What am I supposed to do with this?” He leaned toward me with malice pinching his features, and hissed urgently, “Some of these friends of his are worse than worthless, if y’ask me. A couple of the ones he’s hanging around with now are niggers, for Chrissake!” Suddenly, he looked at my face and became unsure of himself. I stared back impassively, watching his jowls get pinker as he debated whether an apology would make things worse.
One of the men sitting at the end of the bar turned suddenly and said, “Say, ain’t you the young fella that used to work here a few years back?”
“Hey,” I said, looking, “Tony Pease.” I walked over. “You still like vinegar with your fries?”
He was pleased I remembered. He crowed to his friends, “You see, I told you. You were thinner then, weren’t you? I probably was too, far as that goes. You remember Larry Tuohy, don’tcha? And Pete Peterson? I’m try’na think, was your name Jack or Jim?”
“Jake,” I said, and we shook hands all around. “I’m a detective now, with RPD.” I showed them my shield and they passed it from hand to hand, wonderingly.
“Lookit that,” Tony said, proudly. “This hardworking young man went out and made something of himself. Ain’t that great?” They had all been getting close to retirement when I worked at Rowdy’s, and they were really old guys, now, white-haired, with arthritic fingers. “You here to find out about Babe’s robbery?” Larry asked.
“Right,” I said.
“Terrible thing,” Pete said, and they all looked grave.
“Makes me so mad, to think of some smart-aleck punks doing that to Babe, hard as she works for her money,” Tony said.
“And Babe’s decent to everybody,” Larry said, “Rotten kids.”
“Did Babe tell you they were young?” I couldn’t remember that she had mentioned age, to me.
“Oh, well, no, but….who’s doing all the terrible stuff around here lately?” Tony said, getting agitated. “Bunch of punk kids have taken over this neighborhood, Jake. It’s enough to make you sick. I’ve lived here all my life, I own my own house and I’m almost afraid to come out on the front step. I hardly ever do go out after dark, any more,” he said, and his two friends said, almost in chorus, “Nobody does.”
“Really?” I said. “It’s that bad? Since when?”
“Oh…well, it’s been gradually getting worse, of course, but…year before last, around the time the pawn shop opened up, that’s when we really noticed it. Right, guys?” The other two nodded. “The pawn shop and the…”–he waved his hands around, embarrassed–“you know, the place with the dirty books. X-rated, ain’t that they way they say it? Jesus,” he added, staring into his beer, “what kind of people would want to…” Words failed him.
Pete looked at me and shrugged helplessly. “This wasn’t a fancy part of town when you worked here, Jake,” he said, “but people were holding down jobs and mostly behaving themselves, right? Am I right?”
“Well,” I said, “except for St. Patrick’s Day,” and we all laughed. The year I worked at Rowdy’s, St. Patrick’s Day came on a Saturday night. A good many North End citizens started their celebration at lunch, and by midnight Rowdy’s was the center of a neighborhood drunk of epic proportions. Babe and I needed all our strength and ingenuity to get the place closed that night. Larry, Pete and Tony were some of the last customers out the door.
“Aw, Jeez, you would bring that up,” Pete said, chortling delightedly. “Whee, boy, been quite a while since any of us hung one on like that. Of course,” he nudged me and winked–I had forgotten what a great winker Pete was–“it was Mr. Tuohy here that was really a disgrace; we had to carry him home if I remember rightly.”
“Oh, yeah, well at least I’m Irish,” Larry said. “The rest of you was just fakin’ to get at the booze. All them old songs about Mother Machree and like that, for Chrissake.”
“Now listen here, my mother was Irish! I learnt them songs from her fair and square!” Tony Pease yelled. “I admit I’m not much with the jig until I’ve had a couple of boilermakers.”
“No, and not too much after,” Larry said. They were all laughing and punching each other by then. Larry ordered another round and insisted I join them.
“I really can’t,” I said. “I’d get fired. Gimme a rain check and I’ll come back when I’m not working.”
I left them shaking dice for the price of three beers and strolled into the back room, where Randy was trading taunts with three other pool players. The sweet smell of cannabis perfumed the air.
Randy turned toward me smiling, recognized me, and said, more seriously, “Oh, hi!” He turned back and said something softly to the other pool players. One of them, a tall, very handsome young black man with dreadlocks, leaned gracefully toward an ashtray and snuffed out a butt with elaborate casualness.
“Mom went home to get some rest,” Randy said. He was more authoritative in his mother’s absence. “She’ll be back around six, I think. Can I do anything for you in the meantime?”
He liked being in charge. His face had echoes of Babe’s features, but blunted and babyish; he had soft, plump hands and a roll of fat around his hips. In his management persona he copied her mannerisms.
“Well, yes, you can, Randy. I need to talk to you about the last two days, get your whereabouts since yesterday morning on the record.”
“Oh, well…” He wavered, rather pleased to be interviewed by the police but reluctant to leave his game. “Okay, hang on a minute…” He went back to his friends at the table. They talked softly for some time while I waited. Finally they slapped hands and said, “Yeah, later, man,” all around. He swaggered back down the long room to where I stood and led the way to a booth on the restaurant side.
I put the tape recorder between us, said, “You mind if I use this?” and turned it on without waiting for an answer. I wanted to jolt him a little. I resented the self-important way he had kept me waiting while he talked to his friends, and I had begun to blame him, unreasonably, for some of the changes in his mother’s face. When I looked up from setting the recorder, I saw that I now had his full attention.
“C’mon, you don’t need to do that,” he said. “I’m not really involved in this at all!”
“Did I say you were?” His smile was fading. “I’ve got everybody else’s story about what happened yesterday. Now I need to get yours. That’s all.” He began rearranging himself in the booth, crossing and re-crossing his legs. “Any reason why you don’t want to tell me where you were Monday?”
“Of course not.” He paid a lot of attention to himself while he lit a cigarette. “I was fishing all day with a friend.”
“Name?”
“Scott Rouse. His dad took us–it’s his dad’s boat. Norbert Rouse.” He gave me the address on Third Avenue, and the phone number.
“You left from their house?”
“Right. I rode my bike home after I locked up here, gave the keys to Mom and put a few things in a bag, then rode my bike back to Scott’s house so I’d be there, ready to go at six in the morning. We went to Lake Pepin.”
“You fished all day?”
“Till about three. Never caught one fish. Pitiful.”
“You came home then?”
“Yeah. Well, back to Rouse’s. I stayed there last night.”
“Any reason?”
“We were going to try our luck at Wabasha today. But the outboard wasn’t working right, and this morning Mr. Rouse had a flat on his car, so he decided to get his gear fixed, and I left to go home.” He fussed with a book of matches. “But then I decided to come here.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, elaborately casual. “Well, you know that. You were here when I came in.”
I leaned across the table till he met my eyes and asked him, “Who’d you see on the way?”
“Nobody!” He slid back in the seat as far as he could go, trying to get more distance between us. “Why?” His eyes darted back and forth from my face to the ashtray where his hand kept tapping that cigarette. “What makes you think I saw anybody?”
I almost felt sorry for him. He couldn’t seem to see that I was just following where he led me.
“You got here about eleven-thirty,” I said. “Their house is what, ten blocks from here?”
“I guess. Maybe twelve.”
“What time did you leave your friend’s house?”
“Oh…we were out in the yard awhile, shooting hoops…I’m not sure.”
“Well, how long does it take you to ride a bike twelve blocks? Five minutes?”
“Well, c’mon, longer than that.”
“Ten minutes? Fifteen? We get that bike any slower, Randy, it’s gonna fall over.” I gave him a slitty-eyed look, very Sam Spade. “So when I check with your friends the Rouses, are they going to confirm that you were at their house, in their yard, till at least eleven-fifteen?”
“Well…Jeez. Listen, I could have stopped a couple times on the way over here. I probably did, come to think of it.”
“Where’d you stop, Randy?”
Randy puffed up and got red in the face, simmered and steamed a couple of seconds and then decided to try indignation.
“Oh, the hell with this crap! Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? All these stupid pushy questions! Who elected you God? You got some goddamn nerve, coming in here treating me like a criminal in my own place!”
“That’s funny,” I said. “I thought it was your mother’s place.”
He slipped over the edge, then, into genuine rage.
“Smartass motherfucker!” he yelled. He picked up the ashtray from the table between us and hurled it across the room. “You get out of here!”
The ashtray struck the mirrored wall behind the lunch counter, narrowly missing Jack, who had luckily squatted just then to put something on a shelf. The mirror shattered noisily. Jack popped up like a mechanical toy and stared openmouthed at the splintered mirror and the thousand shards of glass lying all around him. His shocked gaze swung around to the two of us in the booth. Randy was breathing hard through his mouth, his cheeks bright red.
I shrugged apologetically toward Jack’s openmouthed stare, and punched the recorder off.
“Tell your mother I’ll come back tomorrow,” I told Randy. “You and I can talk some more then.” His face was turned to the wall and his shoulders shook. He didn’t look around when I left.
I debated, driving back to the station. Maybe I should have taken Randy in and let him cool his heels in a cell overnight. His behavior could have been called obstructing justice. His answers might have been politer by morning. But he was Babe’s baby, and it seemed to me that Babe had had enough grief for a while. I didn’t see how Randy could have had any part in the robbery. He’d given me an alibi that was easy to check. Besides, Babe would have known if her own kid taped her up, mask or no mask. I had just started leaning on him because his arrogance ticked me off, and then his devious answers kept me going. Something did seem to be bothering him. I should find out where he was getting his dope. When I did, I would no doubt have to add it to the pile of woe that seemed destined to keep growing around Babe Krueger.
As soon as I was back in my office, I called the phone number Randy had given me. Norbert Rouse confirmed Randy’s story about yesterday’s fishing trip, but he had no idea what time Randy had left his yard that morning. He called his son, Scott, to the phone. Scott said it was shortly after breakfast, “Whenever that was.”
“Can you give me an estimate?”
“It’s summer,” he said. “Who keeps track?”
I was typing up my notes when I realized I’d forgotten to leave Babe’s deposit book at the bar. I dug it out of my briefcase and put it in the middle of my desk blotter, where I’d see it for sure in the morning. On an impulse, then, I picked it up and leafed through the pages, starting with the last one and working back.
There was a huge difference between this last weekend’s deposits and those for the preceding days. Rowdy’s Bar was only ringing up a few hundred dollars, weekdays. Last Friday and Saturday had grossed barely fifteen hundred between them. But this weekend…I dug out my calculator and added it up. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday came to $28, 464.93.
I leafed back through the book. It was filled with neat pages recording pitifully small numbers; the worst day, a Tuesday early in July, was just over two hundred dollars. How did Babe pay staff and keep the lights on with so little business? Then I leafed back to the last weekend in June and found another winner: in three days, Rowdy’s Bar had deposited over thirty thousand dollars, virtually all of it in cash.
I stared at the wall a minute. Then I locked Babe’s deposit book in the file cabinet, put a note in the exact middle of my clean desk blotter reminding me to return it in the morning, and wrote a second note that said, “Call Chamber of Commerce.” Somebody there could probably tell me what special events took place during the last weekend in June. Then I’d get Babe’s explanation for her big June weekend and see if it tallied. I had to figure out some devious way to ask her, since I’d promised not to snoop through her deposit book.
I went home and checked my answering machine. A to Z Rentals had not called. I emptied the pan of water under my leaking sink, nuked the half pizza that was aging in my refrigerator, and watched the world news while I gnawed my way through some very tough cheese. When I finished it I swept the crumbs into my napkin, flattened the can from the one beer I had allowed myself, brushed my teeth carefully, and gargled with mouthwash. I wanted to smell kissing sweet for my first CID.
3
✜
Todd Lovejoy was in the small meeting room, hunched in the farthest chair from the door. I took the chair on his left.
“I never been to one of these things,” he said. “They gonna hypnotize us or what?”
“It’s my first one, too. We’re just gonna tell what happened, I guess.”
“I’m still not sure I know,” Todd said.
Mike Zimmerman came in looking at his watch and took the seat next to me.
“Hey, Mike,” Todd said.
“Hope this thing isn’t going to run late,” Mike said. It was seven twenty-eight. Bright sunlight was still coming in through a crack in the drapes.
“Why?” Todd asked him. “You gotta be someplace else?”
“No,” Todd looked at his watch again. “I just don’t want this to take all night is all.” He was just fussing about the time to cover his nervousness. CID’s are strictly voluntary; he could leave any time he wanted to.
Two cops I didn’t know came in then, wearing uniforms. Their arm patches read “Austin, Minnesota.” They took seats across from each other at the oval table. One pulled brochures out of his briefcase and arranged them in two stacks in front of him, taking care to get them lined up straight. The second man unbuckled the leather strap of his wristwatch and laid it on the table in front of him, then took a list out of his pocket and unfolded it.
Bo Dooley stood still in the open doorway for a few seconds, then came in and took the first seat he came to, at the head of the table. He was a patrolman for five years in St. Louis before he transferred to Minnesota, and he drove a squad car in Rutherford for a couple more years before he made detective. Department gossip said he was kind of a loner. In theory I was his boss now. In practice, he’d been running his own show ever since Frank assigned him to narcotics, and I really had no idea how to manage Bo Dooley.
Vince Greeley walked in last, smiling. He greeted everybody by name and introduced himself to the out-of-town officers, shaking hands. He took his seat and looked around affably, like a guy getting ready to play cards. He was the only person in the room who seemed entirely at ease.
