CHAPTER 4

I slept in a little the next morning, it being Saturday, and rolled out of bed about 10:30. The weather was great, sunny and breezy. A good day for baseball. The Reds were playing that afternoon and I was planning on watching it on TV. I could smell the bacon Grandma had going in the kitchen, and I pulled on my jeans and striped T-shirt, combed my hair, and went downstairs.

"Well, there you are," Grandpa said. Ten thirty was late to him. He was stretched out on the couch reading the paper.

"Morning, " I said cheerfully.

"How was the dance?"

"Oh, it was fun."

"Did you dance?"

"I might have danced a little."

"How was the orchestra?"

Orchestra?? Ha!!

"Oh, they were pretty good. I don't think you'd like them, though."

"They play any Benny Goodman?"

"No."

"Any Glenn Miller?"

"No. They played a lot of Chuck Berry."

"Chuck Berry?" he snorted.

"And Fats Domino. The Beach Boys."

"Elvis?"

"Yeah, some Elvis."

"You're right. I wouldn't like them," he snorted and went back to the sports section and I went out to the kitchen.

There was Grandma, hard at work over pans of bacon and eggs. She had her favorite apron on over a shapeless green dress and had her glasses pushed up on her head. I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

"About time you got up, dear. Here, sit down." She bustled about, pouring me a glass of orange juice. "Fresh squeezed, drink it, it's good for you." Grandma squeezed her own orange juice every morning, and it was good. She made nearly everything from scratch. She didn't really trust any food that wasn't in its raw state when she got hold of it.

"Have a good time last night?" she asked.

"Yeah, it was fun."

"See anybody you knew?"

"Yeah. Bunch of Ricky's friends from school."

She began filling plates with food. "Fred..." she hollered at Grandpa. We listened to the national news on the red plastic GE radio while we ate. President Kennedy meeting with some foreign president, Jackie getting a new hat, a total eclipse in Japan, something about cigarettes being bad for you.

After breakfast Grandpa took his coffee and newspaper out on the back porch and I followed him with my guitar. It was nice out there - my favorite spot. There was an old swing, upholstered in cracked leather, potted plants scattered around, and trellises at both ends of the porch laced with vines that kept out the sun on hot afternoons, making the back porch the coolest place in the house. Nobody had air conditioning back then.

There were two huge elm trees in the back yard; farther back, along the alley that ran behind the house, were a lot of bushes and a dogwood tree. The garage stood back there, a one-stall wooden building with swinging doors where Grandpa kept his "machine," as he called it, a 1957 Chevy that my Dad had bought for him. They had an outhouse in the back yard when I was real young, and I felt like a damn pioneer or something when I used it. It was a big deal when they finally got indoor plumbing.

I sat on the swing, plunking on my guitar and thinking about what Nick had told me the night before. I guess he must have been drunk. All that stuff about his Mom and his sister. Jesus H. Christ, what a deal, sounded like his Mom was no better than Carol. I wondered whatever happened to his Mom? Was she still in Indiana? Did she know her daughter was dead?

Man, if we could only find that crucifix we'd have the murderer. I wonder why the killer had taken

it? There had been other valuables in the room and that had been the only thing taken, and it wasn't much of a valuable, so it seemed like robbery wasn't the motive. And I'd watched enough TV cop shows to know that if robbery wasn't the motive for murder, then the motive was probably something more personal, like love or hatred or revenge.

So maybe her Mom had found out she was a whore and had sniffed her out and strangled her and thrown her out the window. Not too plausible. I wondered if her old boyfriend, David from Indianapolis, was still in town. And what about that guy she'd come down here with from Indianapolis? The guy Ricky said had gotten her pregnant? Another likely suspect. Maybe some deranged nun from St. Mary's was visiting God's wrath upon her. That sounded like something Ricky would come up with. Maybe one of her clients was a religious fanatic. Maybe the crucifix had just gotten lost in the struggle. Could have fallen out of the window or something. Some bum might have picked it up out of the alley.

When Grandma got done with the breakfast dishes she came out to fool around with the flowers that grew along the fence next to the Cowan's house, on the other side of us from the Davis's. Josephine Cowan was out doing a little gardening, too. She was a plump, jolly, white-haired lady who never stopped talking about her son, Benny, who was in the service and stationed in Germany. Grandma and Josephine were great friends, and they spent a lot of time yakking across the fence.

Grandma returned to the porch a few minutes later, looking excited and bursting with news - she always picked up the latest gossip from Josephine. "Land'O'Goshen!" she said. Grandma never swore, and "Land'O'Goshen" was her strongest expression. "The saloon was robbed last night! Josephine was just telling me."

Grandpa and I stared at her in amazement. A robbery in Calhoun? Unbelievable! I'd never heard of an actual crime occurring here.

"Damn!" Grandpa said, with feeling.

"Somebody knocked Ev on the head and got off with over 500 dollars," Grandma said in a hushed voice, like she was afraid someone would hear.

Ev Everson was the owner of the little bar next to Woody's. He was a skinny, wrinkled-up little guy who was supposed to be pretty sharp, with lots of money and some important friends.

"Hurt bad?" Grandpa asked. Ev was a friend of his; Grandpa would go down there a couple of times a week and drink a few Hudies with Ev, but he always left early, before the night-time crowd got there. Grandpa had been a little bit wild in his younger days, I'd always suspected, but these days he did his serious drinking at home.

"No, just a sore head." Grandma sat down in a wicker chair, fanning herself with her gardening gloves. She was scandalized. "The sheriff from Bloomburg (where the Top Deck was, and the closest law) came over with that skinny deputy of his and looked around, but they couldn't do anything."

The sheriff from Bloomburg was named Bodiford, and he was a fat ex-Marine who hated kids and who made a career of catching them parking or sneaking a few beers. All the kids hated him back and teased him whenever they could do it safely and anonymously.

"So the criminal's still at large, huh?" I said. "Bodiford couldn't catch a cold."

"He caught your Nick Palladino with that girl out by the gravel pit," Grandma said reproachfully.

She always referred to Nick in the possessive, like if it weren't for me he wouldn't exist, or something. Bodiford had caught him parking with Belinda Hershizer one night. Big deal, they weren't even doing anything.

"Any clues?" Grandpa asked.

"No. Got clean away. Ev was alone after closing, he told the police, and somebody hit him on the head with the five ball from the pool table and made off with the money from the cash register." Grandma shivered a little. "Oooohh, it gives me a chill."

Not too many people in Calhoun locked their doors. Everybody knew everybody else. But my Grandparents were a little more careful - maybe because they were old and had seen a lot of meanness, or maybe just because they were old - and they kept the gates on the fence around their yard closed, and the doors to the house locked when they weren't home. Grandma was always reading about crimes and disasters in the paper and she was sure something terrible was going to happen to me or to someone else in the family. Every time they came to visit us in Chicago she brought stories about horrible things happening somewhere; murders, robberies, whatever. Her favorite story was the one about the motel they had stayed in one time on their way to the Smoky Mountains. She swore she heard someone being murdered in the next room and woke Grandpa up and they packed their stuff and left.

I ran over to tell Ricky the big news and found him stretched out on the sofa in the living room reading a Sherlock Holmes story. He was drinking a glass of juice and had cartoons on the TV with the volume turned way down low.

"Hey, Ricky, didja hear?" I hollered at him.

"The curious incident of the dog in the night time," he said, not looking up from his book.

"Huh? What dog?"

"The dog that did nothing in the night time."

"What's curious about that, dummy? Hey, listen..."

"Yes, Watson?"

"The saloon was robbed last night."

"No shit?" he said, putting the book down. Now I had him.

I told him all about and he was pretty impressed. It wasn't often that I got to spring something on him.

"Man, who coulda done it?" he said, turning off the TV and pacing back and forth across the living room, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. All he needed was a pipe.

"Maybe one of the Caretakers," I suggested.

"Or some gambler who lost too much money."

"Whaddya mean?"

"Ev takes bets on horse races over in Kentucky."

"Really?"

"Yeah. He's real buddy-buddy with Vito Siri. They do a lot of business together.

"Gamblin', ya mean?"

"Yeah, and other stuff, supposedly."

"Like what?"

"Oh, girls or drugs, maybe. Nobody really knows what all they're into."

"Wow. Pretty mysterious guys."

Ricky was like that. Every once in a while he would spring some surprising piece of intelligence on me that made me wonder what else he hadn't told me yet.

"Yeah, they are. Hey, I got an idea! Let's go down and take a look at the scene of the crime!"

"Huh? We can't go in a bar."

"Aaahh, we'll just look around. We won't go inside."

So we walked down to the scene of the crime. The saloon, called Ev's Place, was a squat, weather-beaten building with a rutted gravel parking lot that would hold maybe two dozen cars, or three dozen, depending on how the customers parked. There were neon beer signs in the windows and Ev's old dog lay in the shade next to his Pontiac. There were only five other cars in the lot.

"Let's take a look inside," Ricky said. "Wanna?"

I looked around nervously. "I don't know..."

I had never been in Ev's, of course. Grandma would kill me. She didn't even like Grandpa going there. I had never been in a bar, actually, and I was dying to see what one looked like. The way Grandma said "saloon" made it sound like some kind of evil place, not like a "night club", or a "lounge". I pictured fat, dirty men and sleazy-looking peroxide blondes with hard eyes hanging around in a saloon. Cowboy movies always had saloons, of course, but I didn't expect to see Randolph Scott drinking a beer at Ev's place.

The front entrance was up three steps to a solid black door with no window. What was on the other side? Ricky opened the door cautiously. There was a small foyer, about 4 by 4, and another door.

"Granny'l have your ass if she hears about this," Ricky cackled.

"Well, I won't tell her."

We crept into the foyer, and the outside door closed behind us. The inside door had a little diamond-shaped window in it and we peered through. It was dark inside, dimly lit by lights hanging from the low ceiling and some lights behind the bar. Smoke hung in the air; there were some plain wooden tables scattered around with mis-matched chairs, some wood and some metal. The bar was opposite the door and I could see Ev serving drinks to a small group of men gathered at one end. Ev had a cigar clamped between his teeth and wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a stained brown vest. His hair, mostly gone on top, was slicked back and there was a bandage on the back of his head.

There was a partially enclosed room off to one side where a bunch of guys were playing pool. I wondered if Bodiford had kept the five ball for evidence. I could hear Kitty Wells on the jukebox.

I didn't see any women in the place. There was a TV over the bar - Christ! there was the ball game; I had forgotten all about it. I wished I could just walk up and order a beer and ask what the score was.

Suddenly the outside door opened and we both jumped about a foot in the air. It was Vito Siri! He looked at us and we looked at him, silhouetted in the sunshine streaming in, and stumbled over each other trying to get out of his way. He was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt and a gray tie and had a white straw hat pulled low over his forehead. A cigarette hung from his lips. He had a thin scar across one cheek and his eyes were rimmed in red. They narrowed now as he looked down at us. There was another guy behind him, a big dumb-looking guy with broad shoulders and a battered looking nose across half his face dressed in a sport coat that was too small for him and a wrinkled shirt who looked like a wrestler.

"Buy you boys a drink?" Siri said sarcastically in his whispery voice, raising his dark eyebrows a sending a stream of tobacco smoke through his thin lips at us.

"Uh, thanks, we were just leaving," Ricky got out in a strangled voice. We squeezed by them back outside as the big guy guffawed and Siri laughed tightly. The sun hurt our eyes after the murkiness of the saloon.

"Whew, what an icy bastard," I said.

"Yeah, boy."

"Scared the shit outta me," I said, laughing. Now I could laugh.

"Had one of his goons with him."

"Howdja like to tangle with him?"

"I don't think so."

"I don't think so, either."

"Hey! Got an idea," Ricky said. "C'mon."

He led the way around the side of the saloon, through weeds and empty beer cans and other junk, to the back of the building. There was a screen door there, through which we could hear the jukebox and the murmur of conversation. An old transmission, rusted and bird-stained, lay in the tall unmown grass.

"Ev'll sell ya a six-pack of beer back here, if you're not old enough to go in the front," Ricky said. "If ya know him."

"Yeah, Nick comes here."

"Listen... I hear voices. That's Ev's office." Ricky pointed to a small window. We moved closer to it, away from the noise coming from the door.

"I'd hate to think you're trying to screw me, Ev." That was Siri speaking. He had an accent like Marlon Brando in "On The Waterfront".

"No, I swear, Vito," Ev whined. "A robbery, just like I toldja. Like I told the cops."

"Five thousand is a lot of money, Ev," Siri said.

Five thousand? We had heard five hundred!

"An' da boss don't like losin' money."

That must be the goon.

"Would I try to screw you? I ain't that dumb."

"I hope not."

"A five thousand dollar book ain't nothin' to sneeze at, little man," the goon said.

Five thousand dollar book? What's that?

"And whaddya need the muscle for? We always had a good relationship," Ev complained.

"Just want to make sure it continues to be a good relationship, Ev," Siri said suavely, menacingly.

There was some more conversation we couldn't hear, and then we heard the door slam.

"They're gone, c'mon," Ricky said.

We crept around to the front in time to see Siri drive off in the big Lincoln.

"What were they talking about? What's a five thousand dollar book? The first edition of the Bible?" I asked.

"Betting, dummy," Ricky said. "Ev's running a bookmaking operation for Siri. Guys come in and make their bets with Ev, give him the money, and Ev turns it over to Siri - minus his cut."

"Bets on what?"

"Anything. Baseball games, football, horse races..."

"Five thousand seems like a lot."

"Maybe a whole week's worth. Or a whole month, I don't know."

We were walking back to Ricky's house to watch the game.

"Sounds like Siri doesn't exactly trust Ev," I said.

"Man, Ev'd be nuts to try to fake a robbery."

"Maybe he needs the money real bad."

"He'd have to need it awful bad to try to screw Siri. He's a mean bastard. There was a guy from Cincy a coupla years ago, a pimp, that tried to get one of Siri's best girls to come to work for him. Well, he ended up in the Miami river with a concrete block around his neck."

"No, shit!"

"And there's been lots of other shit that's happened, but nobody can prove anything on him."

"Like what?"

"They found a dead whore in the waste basket in the ladies' room at his night club."

"Must have been a big waste basket," I snickered.

"She was a tiny little thing," he said sarcastically.

"Oh."

"Anyway I don't think Ev would try to screw him."

It gave me a weird feeling knowing guys like Siri existed in real life - outside of movies and TV. And that I had been that close to him.

"So there probably was a real robbery," I said.

"That's what I think."

"Wonder if the robber knows whose money he got?"

"If he does he's awful brave or awful dumb. If the cops don't get him, Siri might."

"I'll take the cops any day."

"Me, too."

When we got back to Ricky's Uncle Bill was sitting in his big easy chair watching the game and drinking a beer.

"Three to two, Reds, top of the fourth," he said.

We sat down next to each other on the sofa. Uncle Bill was fun to watch a game with because he knew so much about baseball and could point out stuff that I would never notice. Like signs that the coaches give the players and when some player would get pissed at someone on the other team and try to run him down or something later in the game.

I had always had the idea that once you were grown up all you did was work, take care of your family, grumble about bills, and be serious and responsible all the time. A role model for your kids to grow up to be like. Like, when you were grown up you didn't have any emotions anymore. Or any fun. Most adults I knew were always busy voting, and worrying about the Bomb, and complaining about teenagers, and working on their lawns. Anyway, Uncle Bill wasn't like that. He could laugh with you and have fun just like a kid. Not that he wasn't a responsible person, because he was. He had a good job at the refinery and was a good husband and all that, but he didn't make a big deal about everything, like if you got and "F" on a geography test you were ruined for life and you would never get a good job. I could talk with Bill about stuff, and he understood what it was like to be a kid. He said he remembered being one. Grandma said he still was one.

My Aunt Kathryn came out of the kitchen flipping through a "Better Homes and Gardens" magazine. For a Mom, she was a real knockout. She had light brown hair, bleached out a little from the sun, cut sort of short, with bangs, and real pretty green eyes. She always dressed nice, and never seemed to go to too much trouble about cooking or housework, though the place was always spotless and she could cook anything you wanted, from pizza to fried tomatoes. Kind of like June Cleaver. Homemaking in pearls and high heels. She had a soft voice that would sound good to a lover or to a kid with a scraped knee.

Bill was nuts about her and wasn't shy about showing it. He grabbed her around the waist as she walked by his chair and pulled her down on his lap and kissed her on the cheek.

"Mmmm," she said. "The Reds must be winning." She really looked pretty in her blue sun dress and sandals.

"Whatcha been doin', baby?" asked Bill.

"Pulling weeds."

"You're the prettiest weed puller I ever saw."

Kathryn had a garden in the back yard where she grew tomatoes and carrots and stuff. She was real proud of her crop and was always bringing some of it over to Grandma and Grandpa. She won an award one year at the 4-H Fair for some unusual-looking squash.

"I came in to see if you boys would like some lemonade," she said, giggling, as she tried to get back up out of Bill's lap.

"Great idea, Mom. Let her up, Dad," Ricky said.

"What's the score?" she asked.

"Three," Bill said.

"What's the other score?"

"Two."

"You're a smart-aleck. Let me up."

"Just to get the drinks."

She came back with lemonade and cookies and another beer for Bill and we all watched the rest of the game. Kathryn was a novelty - she actually liked baseball. My Mom tolerated it, and Grandma didn't understand it. Kathryn got so excited when Frank Robinson hit a home run that she knocked over Bill's beer.

We had all gone to Crosley Field a couple of times to see the Reds in person and she caught a foul ball once. Not on the fly; it was bouncing around in the seats, but real impressive, anyway. She gave it to me and I got Frank to autograph it after the game.

The Reds added a couple more runs in the 7th and won the game and

Ricky went up to his room to get his glove. We usually went over to the high school and played ball on Saturdays with some other kids from the neighborhood.

"You guys need a good center fielder?" Bill asked

"Sure, Dad, come on," Ricky said, tossing him a ball.

Bill played with us sometimes. It was fun; he was a great player for an old guy (he was only in his early 40's, but that seemed ancient when I was 15), but like I said, he didn't really act old, especially on the baseball field. He was a good long ball hitter and he usually popped a couple over the fence. There were one or two other dads who played with us sometimes, but they were fat and out of shape and we were doing them a favor letting them play. They would get out of breath swinging a bat in the on-deck circle and talk about how sore they were going to be the next day. Sometimes they would even leave before the game was over and head down to Ev's for a few beers.

"Aw, hell," he grumbled good naturedly when Kathryn appeared at the door. "I promised my sweetie I'd take her to look at furniture."

They were going to remodel the living room and Kathryn had stacks of home decorating magazines all over the place and she was always bringing home fabric and paint samples.

"You can play ball tomorrow, honey." she said, smiling. "They're having a lamp sale at Sear's."

So we went to my house to get my glove, a Rawlings Ken Boyer model, and headed for the high school, which was one block off Front St. It was a fairly new building of yellow brick with windows that were blue on the bottom half, a popular style in the 50's and 60's. The baseball diamond was rocky and hard, without much grass, and right field ran downhill, but it was the only one around. At least it had a pitcher's mound and a backstop.

There were a dozen guys hanging around throwing a baseball back and forth. Kenny, the guy with the funny eye I had met at the Top Deck, was there. A couple other guys I knew. Ricky knew everybody, and they all hooted at us when we walked up.

"Hey, ain't that some shit about Ev's gittin' robbed?" Kenny said.

"Yeah, who do ya think did it?" Ricky said.

"Hell, I dunno," Kenny shrugged. He was dressed in patched jeans and an old football jersey that was too big for him. He didn't look very athletic to me.

"Well, we've been investigating," Ricky said in this real serious voice he uses when he's trying to put somebody on.

"Huh?"

"We've been to the scene of the crime."

"No shit?"

"Yeah, we've got a suspect."

"A suspect? Who?"

"Vito Siri."

"Vito Siri?"

"Yeah."

"He did it?"

"Might have."

"How d'ya know?"

"He was there this afternoon."

"So what? What wuz he doin'?"

"Havin' a little talk with Ev."

"'Bout what?"

"Business."

"Business?"

"Yeah," Ricky said, laughing, tossing the ball in the air and catching it.

"Are you shittin' me?" Kenny said suspiciously.

"He wouldn't shit you, you're his favorite turd," someone said and got a laugh.

"My Dad got a new lock for the back door today," Tommy Hicks, a little junior high kid with floppy blond hair, said.

"There's a criminal amongst us," Ricky said in an ominous voice.

"Criminals stalk everywhere."

"So does corn."

"Huh?"

"Corn."

"Stalks?"

"Ha, ha."

"Hey, we gonna play, or what? It's gettin' late."

So we got a game of batter-up going. Everybody gets a turn at bat in batter-up, and has to go to the outfield if he makes an out. He then moves up position by position until it's his turn to bat again. It was a good game if you didn't have enough guys to make two teams. I was a dead pull hitter, and I flied out to left field when it was my turn. Deep left field. I liked to think of myself as a power hitter, like Frank Robinson, who had hit 39 homers the previous season,

Debbie Shelton's little brother, Theodore, was hanging around watching us. He was only 8 or 9 and we didn't let him play much.

"Hey, I know sump'm," he piped up at me when the game was over.

I was hot and sweaty and pretty pissed off about flying out every time I'd been up to bat. "Good for you," I said.

"Sump'm 'bout Debbie," he said, chomping on a wad of bubble gum.

Now what? "What?"

"What she's doin' tonight." Theodore was throwing his Red's cap in the air and trying to catch it as it came down.

"So, what is she doin'?"

"Sump'm special." He said in a sing-song voice. He dropped the cap in the dirt and when he bent over to pick it up his gum fell out of his mouth and landed in the cap.

"Wanna tell me about it?" I was getting tired of this shit.

He got the gum all in his hair when he put his cap back on and he started to squawk. So I helped him out and he told me his big secret: Debbie was having a slumber party that night. That's where a bunch of teenage girls stay up all night dressed in skimpy little pajamas and talk about boys and do each other's hair. Slumber, of course, would be the last thing on their little minds.

Next

Chevy Summer