and he really only confided in me once. Elvis was singing “Where Could I Go But to the Lord” and segued into “I’m Saved” as I hit 9R. The one thing I was sure about with Howard was that he had no one else in the world who would vouch for him.
Maybe I just answered my own question.
Al kicked me in the nuts when I came to the door and he barked for five minutes straight. It wasn’t clear what point he was trying to make, but clearly he felt strong about it. I fixed him a dish of lamb and rice and topped it with half a can of sardines and he calmed down. My trailer smelled like the combination of hound, hound flatulence, and canned sardines-aromatherapy.
I had two messages.
“Duffy.” It was Marcia and she was sniffling. “I had a bad day. There’s too much sadness in the world. Call me,” she said.
She was a barrel of laughs.
I hit the button for the second message.
“Duffy, you gotta help me.” It was Howard and that’s all he said.
5
The newspaper account of the McDonough High quarterback slaying used the words “gruesome,” “grim,” and “grisly” quite a bit. For nostalgic sickos it was quite a treat because he was found propped up against the same tree that Howard’s QB was, doing his Ichabod-Crane-meets-Johnny-Unitas pose. The cable news people were having a field day and ushering in a whole host of experts about serial killers. They also did profile after profile of Howard, discussed how he was missing, and went over and over his previous murders. This was getting scary weird.
I turned off the TV and called the Crawford police to let them know Howard rang me up. I was put on hold and then spoke to two different very official-sounding cops, and they both told me to not touch anything and that they’d be over right away. Within fifteen minutes, three police cars, all with their lights flashing, and a so-called unmarked car with three detectives pulled up. It was unmarked but unmistakably a cop car, with its six-foot antenna, drab blue color, and lack of hubcaps. I never understood making unmarked cars so obvious because I didn’t know anybody who couldn’t pick out a cop car from a mile away.
They all decided to come into the Moody Blue, which made for a tight squeeze. The Blue had been modified and customized, but it was still a trailer. I don’t know if it was the extra bodies inside the metal tube I call home or the intensity they all brought with them, but the Blue was getting warm.
Al wasn’t pleased with the company. As a former member of the Nation of Islam, I’m sure he had experienced his share of harassment, and he was letting the eight police representatives witness his own brand of nonviolent uncivil disobedience. He wouldn’t shut up.
“I’m Detective Morris, would you mind…” The cop who appeared to be the highest-ranking guy tried to introduce himself. He was a short guy with a thick neck and a wicked five o’clock shadow.
“WOOF, WOOF, WOOF,” Al said.
“Al, shut up!” I said.
“WOOF, WOOF, WOOF,” Al said.
“Uh, sir… ” Morris tried to start again.
“WOOF WOOF, WOOF WOOF.” Al switched to a kind of staccato beat using two barks then a slight pause followed by two more. It had kind of a Rasta feel. The hair on Al’s back was standing up.
“Sorry,” I shouted. “The last time I had an unexpected visitor Al got hurt.”
“WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF.” Al returned to the rapid-tempo single barks.
“Do you think you could possibly…”
“WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, AHOOOOOOOO.” Al started to bay.
The cops all wrinkled their brows and rolled their eyes and did their best to look impatient. That seemed to piss Al off more.
“AHOOOOOOO… WOOF, WOOF, AHOOOOOOO,” Al said.
“Let me try to put him in the bathroom,” I said.
I went to grab Al by the collar, but before I could get my hands on it he turned and ran. Al has a long frame, and doing a 360 for him is like an eighteen-wheeler doing a three-point turn. Just the same, he was surprisingly agile.
He started to run all crazy around the Moody Blue and just when I thought I had him, he’d run right under the coffee table. He was so low to the ground that I couldn’t get at him under there, and he knew it. Al ran circles around the cops, who really didn’t seem to have much appreciation for the wonderment of nature, and then ducked under the table. The last time through, he faked me left, went right, and ran for the table. It was like trying to get Walter Payton, and Al’s change of direction screwed me up.
He went under the table and I ran head on into it, cracking my shin in the process. The table flipped over and I was hopping on one foot repeating the word “Fuck!” about twenty times, which Al found funny, and that got him baying again. The cops didn’t find it funny and didn’t bay. In fact, they just glared at me as if they were way too important to spend their time watching a dog play with his man.
“AHOOOOOOOOOO,” Al said as I grabbed him.
I scooted Al by his collar and closed him off in the bathroom. This made him bark more, though it was muffled.
“Thank you, sir, we’re sorry for the trouble. Would you mind giving us the details of the phone calls you’ve been receiving?” Morris said. The other guys stood around trying to look intense and not bored or unimportant. When Al was barking at them, they mostly looked annoyed.
I explained what I knew, which was that I had two messages and didn’t know anything more than that.
“Tell us about what this guy Howard was talking about in his therapy session,” the guy next to Morris said. He was tall and blond with a blond Larry Bird kind of mustache. He had a crew cut and it looked like he tried extra hard to look tough to somehow compensate for his fair complexion.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Excuse me?” Larry Bird said.
“C’mon, you know the rules.”
“Sir, two teenagers have been slaughtered and you are going to interfere with an investigation?” Bird said.
“Hey look.” I was starting to get pissed. “I called you guys here to do the right thing. Don’t ask me to do something I can’t.”
Larry Bird took a step toward me and puffed out his chest.
“Fuckin’ social worker…,” Larry said.
I didn’t back up, I didn’t look down, I let Larry Bird feel the discomfort of moving in on someone who didn’t back up. I’m sure he was accustomed to people wetting their pants when he did this, but his act just didn’t have that kind of impact. He stood there for a second and then backed up like he was confused.
“All right, all right, that will probably be enough,” Morris said, lightly nudging Bird with his arm. “I think we got what we need, thanks for your help. Would you mind if we check your phone lines for your recent calls?”
“Sure, no problem,” I said. They all started to file out and Larry Bird gave me a menacing look. I felt less than menaced.
“So, Duff, this Polack catches his wife in bed with another guy,” Sam said.
“Mornin’, Sam,” I said.
“So he goes and gets his revolver, kicks in the door to the bedroom, and holds the gun to his head while the two of them screw. Finally, the wife looks up at him and laughs, and you know what he says?”
I tried not to encourage Sam with a response.
“C’mon, Duff, you know what he says?”
“What, Sam?” I didn’t have the energy to ignore him.
“The Polack says to his wife, ‘Don’t laugh-you’re next!’” Sam laughed his way back to his business office cubicle.
