Juvenile Delinquent (7 page)

W
e separated at Carson’s, Ed deciding he’d kill the remaining hour before he was due at headquarters wandering around downtown, and I driving back toward the riverfront area.

En route I stopped on a quiet street, got a screwdriver from the car trunk and made a minor adjustment of my carburetor.

Krebb’s Repair Service at Seventh and Lucas was merely a double garage which had been converted into a repair shop by the addition of a workbench across its rear. There was a cement grease pit to one side of the building, an air hose and a hand-operated gas pump, but the place didn’t seem to be a combination repair garage and filling station. The gas pump was small and looked to be the sort which was strictly for private use, not to serve the public. Apparently the only service offered was car repairs.

The big double doors of the place were wide open when I pulled up to the curb next to the driveway, and inside I could see an overalled man tinkering with the engine of an ancient Dodge. It was only a little after seven and still daylight, but the lights in the building were on.

I examined a weather-beaten sign on the roof which read
Krebb’s Repair Service
, then walked inside.

“You Krebb?” I asked the overalled man.

He straightened up to peer at me surlily. He was a thickset man in his forties with thick, ropelike eyebrows, heavy jowls and a two-day growth of beard.

“That’s right,” he said suspiciously. “What’s on your mind?”

I gave him a vacuous grin. “I wasn’t looking for you particularly,” I said. “I just asked if you were Krebb because of the sign outside. Any mechanic will do. You still open?”

“Till nine o’clock.” His expression became more friendly and he wiped his hands on a piece of waste. “What’s the trouble?”

“My motor keeps stalling. Every time I come to a stop sign and take my foot off the gas, it just dies. I’m parked out by the curb.”

Without saying anything he picked up a canvas seat protector, walked over to the Plymouth and draped it over the driver’s seat. Then he climbed in and started the motor. He raced it for a moment, took his foot off the accelerator and let the engine die. When he had tried this a couple of more times, he got out and looked under the hood.

Since the motor had run perfectly as long as he kept his foot on the gas, any kid over ten could have diagnosed the trouble as merely a too-lean adjustment of the carburetor. But my vacuous grin must have convinced him I wasn’t quite bright. What he was pretending to look for, I don’t know, because he didn’t go near the carburetor. He examined the wiring, tapped the fuel line with a screwdriver and even looked at the oil-level gauge.

Finally he straightened up and said, “You need a new fuel pump, mister.”

“Oh?” I repeated my vacuous grin, since it had seemed to impress him so much. “How long will that take?”

He estimated my dress, which unfortunately happened to be my best suit. “About an hour. Luckily I’ve got a Plymouth pump in stock.”

I pursed my lips, then shrugged. “I’ll wander around the neighborhood while I’m waiting,” I decided. “I’ll come back in an hour.”

I should have expected that, I thought ruefully as I walked away. All I’d wanted was a look at Harry Krebb, but it seemed the look was going to cost me money. On reflection I decided I should have known that a man crooked enough to act as fence for a bunch of kids wouldn’t simply take a screwdriver and adjust the carburetor when he thought he had a sucker in his place. But once I had convinced him I wasn’t too bright, I couldn’t very well have objected to his diagnosis without making him suspicious.

I walked along Lucas one block to Sixth, where I stopped a young colored boy on the street and asked him where Polito’s Barbershop was. He told me it was two blocks north.

The barbershop was a one-chair hole in the wall with a grimy front window and a generally unsanitary air about it. A customer was in the chair and another was waiting, but after watching the barber operate for a few minutes, I decided the wait wouldn’t be long. He didn’t bother with scissors, using clippers even on the sides, and at the rate he was moving the head of the man in the chair, I estimated a haircut would take him about ten minutes.

I studied Sam Polito while I waited. He was a swarthy man of about fifty with short gray hair which lay close to his head in tight ringlets. He had an insensitive, almost sullen face, thick lips and dull black eyes which contained none of the Sicilian sparkle common among his countrymen.

He wasn’t a talkative barber. The only word he said during the first five minutes I was there was, “Next.”

While he was giving the second customer what passed as a haircut, a movement of the cloth drapes at the door leading to the rear of the shop caught my eye. When I glanced that way, I saw that a boy of about sixteen had parted them slightly and was looking at the barber with an expression of desperate appeal in his eyes. I couldn’t see much except his face and his two hands gripping the edges of the drapes, because the room behind the boy was dark, but I got an impression that he was controlling a fit of trembling only by extreme effort.

Sam Polito glanced at him stolidly and said, “Wait.”

The drapes closed again and the barber went right on cutting hair.

When he finished his customer and had collected his fee, he said to me, “One moment, please,” and pushed through the drapes.

He was gone not more than five minutes and I could hear nothing from the other room. Finally he returned and said, “Next.”

Though I could have stood a trim, I didn’t particularly need a haircut. Or a shave either, since I had shaved at eleven that morning. In any event I didn’t care to chance the man’s un-sterilized equipment, so I ordered a shampoo, figuring that even in such unsanitary surroundings there weren’t likely to be many germs in either the shampoo soap or the water.

The barber was just beginning to work up a lather when the boy I had seen peer through the drapes came out into the shop. Now that he was in full view, I saw that he wore a purple jacket and a snap-brim hat with a dark purple band.

He was a fairly good-looking kid, blond and well built and with clear-cut features. There was no sign of nervousness about him now. He seemed to be in excellent spirits, his hat pushed back to the rear of his head and an assured smile on his face.

The boy didn’t stop to talk. He just walked through the shop, gave a careless wave as he went out the front door and said, “See you around, Sam.”

The barber merely nodded.

I wondered what item of stolen property the boy had brought in the back way to exchange for his feeling of well-being. Then I stopped thinking about it, because I was afraid if I thought too much, I’d climb out of the chair, pick up the sullen barber and toss him through his grimy plate-glass window.

When I left the barbershop, smelling rather sickeningly of cheap pomade, I walked back to Lucas, turned toward the river and walked another two blocks to Harry’s Pool Parlor. It seemed an ordinary enough place, just one large room containing a dozen pool tables, benches around the walls and an unpainted counter where you paid for your cue and also could buy soda and candy.

Only four of the twelve tables were in use, and at only three of them were games in progress. At the fourth a lone man was practicing bank shots.

A kid of about eighteen was working behind the counter. I bought a bottle of root beer from him.

“Art been around?” I asked.

“Art who?”

“Cooney.”

“Over there,” he said, nodding his head toward the man practicing bank shots.

I said, “Oh yeah. Didn’t even see him,” finished my root beer and walked back to the table.

After watching him run a few balls, I asked, “Want a little competition?”

Art Cooney straightened up and looked me over appraisingly. He was a rangily-built man in his thirties with a long, expressionless face and small, close-set eyes. He had a deep cleft in his chin and wore long sideburns, which I suppose were meant to give him a romantic look. They failed in their mission because he didn’t have the face for them. All they did was make his head look longer and more horselike than it already was.

He said, “For how much?”

“You name it. But keep it reasonable. I’m no shark.”

“Nickle a ball? Plus a half on the game?”

“All right,” I said.

He racked the balls while I returned to the counter and exchanged twenty cents for a cue.

As with Harry Krebb and Sam Polito, all I wanted was a good look at Art Cooney, so I made no attempt at conversation aside from remarks about the game. He let me take the first game by three balls, but he made no move to pay off.

He just said, “You’re in me sixty-five cents,” and racked the balls again.

Then, just before he broke, he asked, “Want to make this one a dime a ball, with a dollar on the game?”

“Suits me,” I said.

He let me take the second game too, again by exactly three balls. I suppose he thought if he shaved it any closer, I might begin to lose confidence.

“That’s one ninety-five you’re in me,” he said. “Thought you said you weren’t a shark?”

“I’m playing over my head,” I said modestly.

Then he made the suggestion I knew was coming. “Play you one last game for two bits a ball, with two fifty on the game.”

I was tempted to tell him I didn’t have time for a third game, just for the satisfaction of watching him go into a slow burn, but decided against it. A dope pusher would routinely be at least faintly suspicious of all strangers, and I didn’t want to make him think too much about our casual meeting after I left.

I said with a grin, “May as well make a good profit while I’m hot.”

He broke and ran all fifteen balls.

“That I couldn’t do again in ten years,” he said. “Want revenge?”

I looked at my watch. “Sorry. Got to pick up my car before a garage closes.”

The difference between what he had owed me and I now owed him was four dollars and thirty cents. Counting the twenty-cents-a-cue fee and my root beer, it had cost me exactly five dollars to get my look at Art Cooney.

When I got back to Krebb’s garage, I was soaked another seven dollars and fifty cents for the fuel pump the mechanic hadn’t installed. He had adjusted the carburetor properly though, I discovered when I drove away. The motor ran just as well as it had before I deliberately threw it out of adjustment.

I
HAD
decided to call it a day and get started again in the morning until I neared Grand Avenue and realized I was passing within only two blocks of Sara Chesterton’s apartment. Since it was not yet nine o’clock, on the spur of the moment I decided to stop by and see her.

Sara lived in a modern, tan-brick apartment house in a neighborhood which was nice without being exclusive. She had a comfortable, four-room apartment on the second floor.

She came to the door wearing a white terry-cloth housecoat.

“Why, Manny!” she said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

“I was going through the neighborhood and suddenly thought of something I wanted to ask you,” I said. “Got a few minutes?”

“Of course. Come on in.”

As she led me into the front room, I saw that it had been redecorated since the last time I was there, which wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t been in the apartment for over five years. She also had some new furniture : a handsome gray living room suit, a fragile blond cocktail table with a glass top and a twenty-four-inch-screen television set.

“You’ve fixed the joint up,” I said. “Compared to my trap this is luxury.”

“I’m beginning to accumulate a few nice things,” she admitted, looking around with satisfaction. “More than I can afford, really, but I keep buying things on time, and somehow eventually they get paid off.”

Then I saw the card table in one corner of the room with a portable typewriter and a stack of case records on it, and remembered Sara’s conversation with her supervisor.

“I forgot you have a flock of case records to get ready before morning,” I apologized. “I won’t stay long.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m practically finished. Anyway, when I feel like getting back to work, I’ll just kick you out. What do you drink? Still rye and water?”

“If you’ve got it.”

“I’ve got it. You can get ice cubes out for me while I’m mixing drinks.”

I followed her to the kitchen and wrestled an ice tray from the refrigerator while she got glasses and a bottle of rye from the dish cabinet. Meantime she kept up a constant stream of questions about how I had made out down in her relief district and what more, if anything, I had learned about the murder.

I made my replies noncommittal, but they seemed to satisfy her. Primarily I think she was chattering just to hear herself talk.

By the time I had emptied the ice tray and dumped the cubes into a bowl, she had our drinks all measured out.

“I take soda,” she said, “and I know there isn’t any in the refrigerator. Be a doll and get a bottle from the clutter room, will you?”

What Sara called the “clutter room” was merely a small back hall which was recessed both sides of the door. She used it for storage and it got its name from the fact that it was as cluttered with odds and ends as the average attic.

I found the soda without difficulty, and was preparing to return to the kitchen when I noticed a bamboo spinning rod standing in a corner of the alcove. On the floor next to it was a dust-laden bait box.

No fishing enthusiast can resist peeking into a strange bait box, and fishing has been my favorite sport since I was a kid. I lifted the lid and looked admiringly at a complete collection of spinning lures. When I didn’t see any with which I was unfamiliar, I closed the lid again.

Judging by the amount of dust on the box, Sara was hardly a rabid fisherman, but I hadn’t known previously that she was interested in it at all. She must have had some enthusiasm for the sport at one time, however, for I estimated the rod, spinning reel and contents of the bait box must have run into an expenditure of at least a hundred dollars.

When I had returned to the kitchen and opened the soda for her, I asked, “You like fishing, Sara?”

She glanced at me in surprise. “A little. I haven’t been for several years. Why?”

“Some Sunday I’ll pick you up and we’ll try the river for a few jack salmon.”

“I’d like that,” she said agreeably.

She suggested we take our drinks into the front room. When we were settled there, Sara on the couch and me in an easy chair, we talked of inconsequential things for a few minutes. Then Sara returned to my activities of that afternoon.

“You kind of brushed me off in the kitchen about what you’ve found out,” she said. “Why so mysterious?”

“I’m not being mysterious. I’ve picked up a lead or two, but I got them in confidence and had to promise not to pass the information on. What I stopped by for was to find out if you knew anything about either a man named Buzz Thurmond or one named Limpy Alfred.

She looked at me in amused surprise. “You mean there’s actually a real person with a name like Limpy Alfred?”

“Apparently.”

She shook her head. “I’ve certainly never heard of him before. Nor of anyone named Buzz Thurmond. Why do you think I would have?”

“I didn’t have much hope about Limpy, because I don’t know his last name. But I thought Buzz Thurmond might possibly ring a bell. I understand he originally came from that neighborhood, and I thought possibly the family had been on welfare at some time or other.”

“Buzz Thurmond,” Sara repeated thoughtfully. “Thurmond sounds familiar, but the first name doesn’t mean anything to me. It must be a nickname, isn’t it?”

“I imagine,” I said dryly. “I don’t think many parents would be likely to christen a child Buzz.”

“I think I had an Aid to Dependent Children case named Mrs. Thurmond about six years ago,” Sara said. “Tomorrow I’ll have Records look it up for me. Possibly your Buzz Thurmond was one of the children. How old is he?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t the faintest idea, except that he’s been connected with an adult criminal gang for at least four years. Doesn’t seem likely he’d have been a child six years ago.”

“No. He would have had to be under sixteen at the time. He may have been an older son not living at home, though. If I can find anything on him in the welfare files, what is it you want to know?”

“Anything you’re able to dig up. I don’t know a thing about him except his name and that he’s a hood.”

“You think he may have had something to do with Bart Meyer’s death?”

I said, “I can’t tell you why I’m interested in him without violating the confidence I mentioned previously. I’m afraid you’ll have to work in the dark.”

“All right,” Sara said agreeably. “I’ll do my best to control my curiosity. Why don’t you phone me at work between one-thirty and two tomorrow? I’ll either have something by then, or the news that I can’t find anything.”

We left it at that. We had one more drink together before I went home and let Sara get back to her case records.