off to work, these cars remaining being second cars, or belonging to people who worked nights, like Peg Baker. I snuggled in between a station wagon and a Volks and turned off the engine and got out.
The phone book had listed Peg Baker’s address as 121 Fuller, and this was 121 Fuller, all ten apartments of it. Some of the tenants had their names on their mailboxes, six of the ten did anyway, but not Peg Baker. Knowing six of the places weren’t hers narrowed the field, but not enough. And the curtains on those four remaining apartments were all closed, too, in case I wanted to risk getting busted for window-peeking. I could always check with the manager to see which apartment was Peg Baker’s, but the manager lived elsewhere. On the door of a laundry room was a notice giving the manager’s name and address and hours at which to call. The hours were in the evening, but I used the pay phone in the laundry room anyway and tried the manager’s number and a recorded voice asked me to leave a message after the tone and I hung up. Damn.
I was just getting ready to pick one of the four doors at random and knock when I spotted what had to be Peg Baker’s car. Her registration would probably be visible, and on that would be her address. Hopefully that address would be more specific than “121 Fuller.”
It was no chore figuring the car as hers. The surprise was I hadn’t spotted it immediately, but I hadn’t, because it was hidden down there in the end stall on the opposite side of the lot from where I’d parked. It was crouching there behind a big blue four-year-old Caddy.
It was a pink Mustang.
Several years old, but shiny and pink and dentless like new, a sheltered pink baby that never grew up, a Peter Pan of a car, parked way down on the end where nobody could hurt it. The upholstery was pink. The carpeting was pink. The dashboard was pink. The gearshift knob was pink. I was afraid to look under the hood.
My joy at finding the car subsided at once: her registration was taped inside the front window, staring up at me in the face, the useless “121 Fuller” address thumbing its nose at me. It said, “Margaret Anne Baker,” and it said, “State of Iowa Motor Vehicle Licensing Bureau,” and “Port City” and sundry other bureaucratic bullshit, but nowhere did it say Apartment Number Such-and-Such.
What now? Back to pick a door and ask? I’d have to be careful how I went about it, as the laundry room and several windows were decorated with signs saying “No Solicitors Allowed,” warning that a city ordinance called for the immediate jailing of anyone practicing that forbidden art. I reminded myself not to spit on the sidewalk.
I was one hell of a fine detective.
So I wandered back to my car, head hanging low, to regroup my thoughts. I’d intended getting at Raymond Springborn via an indirect route, namely Peg Baker. Just how I would do that, I didn’t know; I would improvise, as time allowed for nothing but improvisation, and then what else could I have done but improvise, never having done this sort of thing before. My only other option would be a frontal approach with Springborn, and what with the body of his murdered brother-in-law Albert Leroy just fresh found, now was a decidedly bad moment to approach Springborn frontally. I could picture myself dropping in on the mournful family, perhaps while Springborn was gathering the sympathies of the Port City Chief of Police. Such a situation could bring up some embarrassing questions, such as, “Who are you?” or “What are you doing here?”
I sat in the Ford, slouched down, trying to think. For two cents I would’ve gone to sleep. For three cents I would’ve never waked up. I kept trying to think, trying. I couldn’t. Maybe Broker was right, maybe I was being an ass, maybe I should give it up. My initial feeling of indignant rage had dissipated by this time. I felt crumpled, like an empty paper cup, used, emptied, discarded.
I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Didn’t recognize him. At first. But he was familiar. I made myself think. And I knew him.
The drummer.
The drummer in the rock band at Bunny’s the other night. And Peg Bunny Herself Baker’s latest shack-up, if barroom rumor had it right, and what I’d seen of her cow-eyeing him from the sidelines substantiated that rumor.
He was creeping from out the apartment down on the far left corner of the building, bottom floor, over there on the side where the pink Mustang was parked. He had closed the door gently and was moving slowly away, doing the walking-on-eggs bit, carrying tennis shoes in his left hand, holding them gently by his fingertips. He looked like a guy in a cartoon sneaking in late after a night’s drunk, only to be caught and clobbered by a shrew with a rolling pin. Except this guy was sneaking out, not in, and did not fit the henpecked hubby stereotype. His was another stereotype: long blond shaggy shoulder-length hair, stubbly beard, shirtless, faded blue jeans with “LOVE” stitched up the crotch.
I sat there in the car, still slouched, still unseen by this refugee from a panel cartoon. Oh, I thought idiotically, what I’d give for a rolling pin. I watched him near the pink Mustang; he was shooting furtive glances every half-second, moving carefully, the tips of his dirty toes barely touching cement. I didn’t know what this boy was up to, but up to something he was.
He opened the door to the Mustang on the driver’s side and crawled in. Crawled I say because he got down on the floor, on his back, poking fingers up under the dash. I sat and watched and for just a moment I wondered what the fuck the clown was doing and when the moment was up, I knew: he was hot-wiring the car.
He didn’t see me coming. He was on his back still, but his eyes were watching as his hands scurried up under the dash. He had a pocket knife out and open, stripping insulation from wires, and he knew what he was doing but his work was going kind of slow. I knew why. I could smell the liquor and I was standing and he was down there on his back. So he was a drunk sneaking out, if not in, and who but a drunk would steal a pink Mustang, anyway?
I grabbed him by an ankle and pulled him out. He bumped his head several times on several surfaces and by the time he was out onto the cement he was pretty shook up. I said, “Lose your keys?”
He tried to kick me in the face. I didn’t let him. I batted his foot away and he tried to slash me with the knife. I didn’t let him do that, either. I kicked the knife out of his hand and it skid across the cement and into some bushes and I stepped on his throat. Not hard, but with a throat you don’t have to step hard, really. His eyes were round and terrified, saucers full of fear. He tried to say something, but nothing came out; it’s difficult to speak when someone is standing on your throat. So I eased the pressure to hear what he had to say, lifted my foot completely off and he took the opportunity to say, “Mother-bitch-son-of-a-fucker,” which was an indication of how drunk he was.
I yanked him by the arm and he hung sort of in space and then I heard her.
“What the hell’s going on here?” she was saying. Her voice was high-pitched, shrill at the moment, but of course she was screaming, so that was natural.
“Is this your car?” I said, nodding to the Mustang.
“It most certainly is!”
“What about him? Is he yours too?”
“I know him. What are you doing to him?” She came a little closer and said, “Jesus, what a stink. Christ, is he drunk. He must’ve guzzled down every ounce of booze in my apartment.” She wasn’t looking as good as her Playboy picture, or as prick-teasing as her appearance the other night at the club, but Peg or Bunny or whatever she called herself was a beauty, a natural one, and with no makeup and with tousled hair and in an old worn-out blue terrycloth robe that covered her neck to knee, tied round the waist and giving only the slightest hint of the body under there, she was a woman you could screw, not a picture you could masturbate over.
I said, “What I’m doing is stopping him from stealing your car.”
“What?”
“He was hot-wiring it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He was hot-wiring it, rigging it so the motor would run without the use of the ignition key.”
“What the hell for?”
“So he could drive it away, I suppose.”
She came over and kicked the guy right along where the word “LOVE” was sewn. He kind of got away from me then, as he wrenched free from me so he could grab himself and roll into a ball.
“Fucking asshole,” she said. “Why didn’t he just steal the keys out of my purse?”
“You got me. Maybe he’s so drunk he’s stupid. Explain why anybody’d pick a pink Mustang to steal in the first place.”
She laughed. Not at all shrill. “Explain why anybody’d own one.”
“I was going to ask you about that.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you. What’s your name?”
