The girl took a shuddering breath and Dooley scowled, checking her words against his notes. “What did this car thief look like, Miss Archer?”
“I couldn’t really see, Marshal. There was hardly any light. He wasn’t very big, but he moved fast, really fast. He was wearing a suit, a dark suit. I remember I could see a white shirt and a dark necktie. And he had gloves on. And his hair was light-colored; I think he had gray hair, so he must have been older. And he had that gun... and he hit Lee with it!”
’Stelle gritted her teeth and screwed up her eyes, trying to hold it together.
Dooley sighed like a deflating truck tire and deliberately flipped his notebook shut, stowing it in the pocket of his uniform shirt. “All right, Miss Archer. Let’s quit the fun and games. Now how about telling me the truth!”
Estelle’s head snapped up, her dark eyes wide and startled. “But I am, Marshal! I am! That’s what happened!”
“You can get yourself and your boyfriend into a lot of trouble lying to the police, Miss Archer. Who are you covering up for and why?”
I’d been leaning against the counter a couple of stools down, feeling my temperature gauge kicking into the red. “You’re way off the beam, man!” I snapped. “Everyone here’s giving you a square count, especially ’Stelle.”
Like a teed-off Durham bull, Dooley swung to face me. “Come off it, Pulaski! A pistol-packing grandpa coming out here to steal one of your gang’s jalopies? Not likely!”
“Then whaddya think did happen?” I demanded.
“That the Curtis boy got into a beef with somebody out here and you worked him over. Now either he doesn’t want to squeal or he’s afraid to!”
The Dewlap wasn’t going to be satisfied until he had a juvenile delinquency problem to call his own, just like the big-city cops.
“Jeez, Dooley! Hang a wreath around your neck! Your brain just died and your head’s in mourning!”
“Watch that smart mouth, Pulaski!”
“Go check out Lee’s rod,” I said patiently, trying to gear myself down. “You can see where somebody hot-wired it.”
“Maybe so, but who’d want to steal one of those junk heaps except another member of your gang?”
I reminded myself that the momentary pleasure of busting our friendly neighborhood justice merchant in the chops would not make up for six months at the county youth farm. “Look! Nobody here stole anything or beat up anybody! Ask Eddie!”
“Well, maybe so,” the Dewlap grudged, “but this whole crazy yarn just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Neither did Mr. Kennedy robbing his own jewelry store, but that happened, too.”
Dooley winced. Awhile back, the night marshal had tried to run another Fairmont hot rodder in for a burglary he hadn’t done, and he still hadn’t entirely forgiven me for proving him wrong.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Dooley muttered.
“Maybe not, Hiram.” Doc Jorgensen came waddling up to join us. “But these kids are certainly telling the truth about one thing. This wasn’t any common beating. That boy was pistol-whipped, and savagely. The cuts from the trigger guard and gunsights are unmistakable.”
“Are you sure, Doc?” the marshal asked.
Doc Jorgensen lifted one bushy eyebrow. “I interned in a Chicago receiving hospital back in the good old days, Hiram. I know what a Joliet facial looks like.”
Lee’s folks took him into the hospital in Indianapolis for X-rays and Sally Tremain and her girlfriends drove Estelle home. Me, I patched up Lee’s ignition and drove his car back to the Curtis farm.
Lee stowed his rod in a shed off their big barn and as I got out to open the doors, Race, the Curtis’s sheepdog, yapped out to meet me. Race and I are old buddies. He planted his forepaws on my chest and panted dog breath into my face as I gave his ears a good scratch.
I backed Lee’s rod into the shed/workshop and shut it down. Then I snapped on the overhead light and did a slow walk-around on the car, checking it out.
Lee and I had both been building Model a’s but we’d produced two radically different machines. The A-Bomb was a fenderless roadster powered by a Model B straight-four. Lee, on the other hand, had put together a full-fendered A-V8 coupe. That is, a Model A with a V-8 engine swapped in from a later-model Ford.
Lee’s car was still sort of a work in progress. The body had been sanded down and primered but it hadn’t been painted yet, and the cuts and welds of the chop job done on the top still showed as raw, blackened scars. The interior had been gutted to bare metal as well, with nothing replaced but the cut-down ’40 Ford dashboard and steering wheel and some fake leopard-skin covers on the bench seat.
Like most of us who’d gowed up a Model A, Lee had Deuce-nosed his car, replacing the stock radiator shell, radiator, and hood with parts taken from a ’32 Ford, both for the better cooling and for the sharper look. I lifted the side panel of the hood and studied the inside of the neat engine compartment.
The dirt-common twenty-one-bolt Flathead had been lifted from the same wrecked sedan that had donated Lee’s steering wheel, dashboard, and hydraulic brakes. The mill had been rebuilt with Denver heads, an Almquist dual-intake manifold, and a pair of reconditioned Stromberg 97 carburetors, a mild soup job put together by a decent mechanic who didn’t have a whole lot of money to spend.
I leaned back against the rough plank wall of the shed and crossed my arms. I had to admit the Dewlap was right about one thing. Something wacky was going on here. To me, or to any other rodney, Lee’s beast was a thing of great beauty, a cool machine getting cooler. But to your average suit-wearing square, this car would be about as appealing as a cow pie.
I heard Race barking out in the barn lot and I saw a set of headlights turning in from the road. I recognized the anemic grumble of Marty Snustaad’s ’38 DeSoto sedan. I’d asked Marty and Johnny Roy to pick me up and take me back to where I’d left the A-Bomb.
I ducked under Lee’s hood for another second before buttoning it up. Then I turned out the light and closed the shed doors. I was also careful to snap on the heavy padlock I found hanging from the hasp.
I knew I’d be coming back out to the Curtis farm the next day. Somehow I also knew I’d be coming back to trouble.
Early on the following morning I tore out county road 11A to the Curtis place. Sure enough, Marshal Dooley’s black Plymouth was parked in the barn lot. Dooley was standing beside the shed where I’d left Lee’s rod. Lee was out there, too, in his bathrobe and pajamas and with a bandage on his head, as was Mr. Curtis, with his inevitable old felt hat tugged down over his eyes. Another tall, lanky, handsome-homely man, Mr. Curtis had been the model they’d built his son on.
Somebody wasn’t there, though. Race didn’t come out to meet me as I turned in from the road.
“Hey, Lee,” I said, hoisting myself over the A-Bomb’s welded door. “What’s goin’ on, man?”
“He came back, Kev.” Lee’s voice was tight. “The son of a bitch tried to steal my car again and he shot Race!”
Lee’s rod still stood inside the shed, but the doors had been forced open, the hasp and padlock dangling from splintered wood.
“You brought this car back here last night, Pulaski,” Dooley challenged me. “What time was it?”
“About eleven-thirty — twelve o’clock, I guess. Race was alive then.”
“We got back from the city about two-thirty, Marshal,” Lee’s father added. “Race didn’t come out to meet us. That was kind of funny, but Lee’s mother and I were worried about gettin’ him to bed. We didn’t think much about it at the time.”