He nodded. “It’d be hard to mistake that. It was so loud that it rattled the windows when it took off.”
“Okay, then it’s safe to say that you heard that car real good.” I crossed the hearing room to the open windows. “With the court’s permission, I’ve set up a kind of a demonstration.”
The Juvenile Court’s hearing room was on the ground floor of the Grant County courthouse, separated from the street by only the sidewalk and a narrow strip of lawn. A row of cars sat parked nose-in along that street, just beyond the hearing-room windows. Four of them were hot rods, one of them wasn’t. And in each set of wheels sat a kid who wanted to see that Steve Roccardi got an even break.
I gave a wave to the guys outside and held up one finger. Out in the A-Bomb, One-Speed Dean fired up the engine of the little track roadster. In a moment the familiar light, fast-revving snarl of her four-banger power plant sang into the hearing room. I let One-Speed blip the throttle a couple of times, letting the RPMs peak out, then I drew my finger across my throat in the “cut it” gesture.
The Bomb’s mill sputtered down into silence and I turned back inside. “That’s my car, a nineteen twenty-nine Model A Ford with a Model B four-cylinder engine in it. I run a split racing manifold and a set of gutted stock mufflers on her. I oil-burned those cans myself and they sound pretty good, if I do say so.”
I held two fingers out of the window and a second engine started, a rolling motorboat bubbling that rose and peaked and then backed off again with a sharp, angry crackle.
“That’s Jeff Mulready’s ’forty Ford Deluxe Coupe. He’s got a half-race Mercury Flathead in that thing with a Mellowtone Hollywood exhaust system. There’s some money tied up in that car.”
I extended three fingers. A third engine kicked over with a deep, vibrant purr that climbed smoothly into a solid, flowing roar of power. It made the windows buzz in their frames, then faded into a grumbling shutdown.
“That’s Clint Flock’s chopped ’thirty-five. He’s running a Lincoln Zephyr V-12 with three-inch pipes and Porter steelpacks. A real cherry machine.”
“Is there some purpose behind this, Mr. Pulaski?” Judge Johannson asked impatiently.
“Yes, sir, there is,” I replied, turning to face the judge’s desk. “I’m what you call establishing a precedent. You see, Your Honor, every hot rod ever built has a kind of fingerprint. Something about it that is totally different from any other car in the world, the sound of its engine.
“It pretty much has to be that way. Hot rods are one-of-a-kind deals. Different cars with different engines set up in different ways. Different exhaust systems with different mufflers and different pipe diameters and lengths. All unique. Once you develop a rodder’s ear for it, you can identify a specific car just by the sound it makes. It’s like a signature.”
I turned toward the window again. “Mr. Schyler has told how he heard a hot rod pull away from behind the Kennedy jewelry store last night. The thing is, every time he’s said ‘hot rod’ everyone here has heard ‘Steve Roccardi.’ Sure, Steve is a rodney and he does drive a rod, but that doesn’t necessarily signify.”
I shot a look at the night watchman. “Mr. Schyler, I’ve got another car here for you to listen to. Listen carefully, please.”
I held up four fingers. Out on the street, Steve’s T-bolt lit off. Julie Kennedy, her face pale and pinched, sat behind the wheel of the low-slung little bomb, revving its engine, fighting for her guy in the only way she could. The edgy two-tone snarl of the T-bolt lifted and peaked and held for half a minute and then faded as I gave the kill signal.
“Okay, Mr. Schyler,” I said, turning to face the watchman, “is that what you heard last night behind Mr. Kennedy’s store?”
His expression had become puzzled and thoughtful. “No,” he said after a second, “the car I heard last night didn’t sound like that at all.”
I took three fast steps back to the judge’s desk. “Your Honor, that was Steve’s car and I can bring fifty kids in here who can testify to that. Steve runs a real unusual setup with his rod, a two-hundred-and-forty-eight-cubic-inch GMC truck engine blowing through a home-made 2/4 split manifold and a set of Smitty mufflers. Probably not another car in the state even comes close to sounding like it.
“Maybe the flashlight and screwdriver used in the burglary did come from Steve’s car, and maybe the jewelry found in that car did come from Mr. Kennedy’s store, but the car itself, and the guy who drives it, wasn’t there.”
The judge had a thoughtful expression on his face now. So did the D.A. and Officer Dooley. At long damn last they were thinking and not just taking for granted. Everybody but one.
“Your Honor, this is ridiculous!” Mr. Kennedy exploded. “Why is the court wasting time with this dog-and-pony show! This young thug’s a crony of the Roccardi boy. Probably he was in on the burglary, too. What does it matter if they drove a different car? They could have borrowed one. Or stolen one! I want that wop punk in jail!”
I kind of went cold inside then. I’d given Mr. Kennedy his chance. I mean, he could have been the first to admit there was now that “reasonable doubt” as to Steve’s guilt. He could have walked away from it. But he wouldn’t. So now we were going to have to go the rest of the way, even though some people were going to be hurt.
I turned back to the open windows for the last time. “Your Honor, I think I’ve proved my point about hot rods all sounding different. But that rule doesn’t apply to stock iron, the regular Detroit production-line automobiles that most people drive. With them, the same models all sound pretty much alike. Mr. Schyler, I have one more car for you to listen to.”
I held up five fingers.
Out on the street, Amy Vickers pressed the starter of the sedan she’d borrowed from her dad’s car dealership. A hoarse chugging roar echoed into the hearing room, louder than any of the rods we’d listened to so far. I let it run for a minute or so then signaled for Amy to shut it down.
I didn’t have to ask the question; Ben Schyler was already nodding. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s a lot more like what I heard last night.”
“Your Honor,” I said, “that’s a Pontiac Chieftain straight eight with the muffler taken off to make it sound like somebody’s idea of a hot rod.”
I faced that somebody. “Mr. Kennedy, you drive a Pontiac Chieftain, don’t you?”
The perpetual pink flush had drained from the jeweler’s face and he wordlessly rose to his feet. But Officer Dooley was at his side, pushing him back into his chair.
All of a sudden the night without sleep caught up with me and I was feeling really tired. “Hey, Dooley, if you want to go out and have a look under Mr. Kennedy’s car you can see the tool marks on the exhaust pipe where the muffler has been unbolted and remounted.”
And, man, that was it.
Even though I was the guy who had solved the thing, I got chased out of the hearing room pretty quickly after that. I replaced Amy’s dad’s muffler and turned my fellow rodneys loose with my thanks. Then I staked out a claim on a bench under a maple tree in the park across from the courthouse and awaited developments.
About an hour or so later, Dooley came out and crossed the street, looking like a guy who needs to sit in the shade for a while. As he approached, I untwisted my pack of Luckys from my T-shirt sleeve and offered him one. He gave me an instinctive glower, then halfways smiled. Accepting the smoke, he sat down on the bench beside me.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“It’s pretty much wrapped up,” Dooley replied. “Kennedy isn’t exactly a hardened criminal, so he spilled the story. He’s sunk every dime he has into that jewelry store of his and come to find out, Fairmount isn’t big enough to support it. He’s in debt up to his ears and he has mortgage payments on both his house and store coming due. When he got desperate, he decided to try and fake a robbery. Between the insurance and the money he would have received selling his stock to a fence, he could have gotten out from under for a while.”