“Oh, hey, Vernon. How ya’ doin’?”
Before the war, Ollie had been a moon-faced, big-boned kid with an unfortunate tendency to sprout blackheads. He’d gone through high school with me and Floyd. He even dated Mary Anne for a while, when we were all juniors and she was mad at Floyd for two months running. After graduation, Ollie went into the Army. Uncle Sam made him a military policeman in Hawaii, dragging drunks off beaches and patrolling nightclubs. At the end of the war, Ollie came home to Kansas — thin, tough, and tanned right out of his skin condition. He became a police officer — the natural thing to do given his service as a military policeman. I knew his Seventh Day Adventist parents weren’t too pleased about the career choice, but Ollie was a good cop who cared about the folks he had sworn to serve.
“I’m here for my dad, Ollie.”
Somewhere behind Ollie, the old man snored. Ollie scratched his head. “Your dad?”
“Yes, Ollie. My dad. Remember him? Grady Dunham, town drunk?” I stuck my hand out about the level of my eyebrows, about five foot six. “Maybe yea so high.”
“Hey, hey.” Ollie actually waggled his finger at me. “No need to be sharp about it. Matter of fact, I haven’t seen your dad in weeks.”
This was very odd. “I just got a call from Deputy Morgan that my dad was being held down here. Isn’t that him back there?”
“No,” said Ollie. “It’s old Johann Strait. What would I be holding your dad for anyway?”
“Assault.” If Ollie didn’t know whose arm Dad had broken, I wasn’t going to tell him.
“Now why would a Sheriff’s Deputy bring someone into the city police station on an assault charge? They would have taken him to El Dorado to see the judge, or at least dumped him in the county lock-up there.” El Dorado was the county seat, a tender subject as Augusta was the original seat of Butler County. “You been drinking, Vernon?”
“Ah, no. But why would Deputy Morgan tell me he was being held here?” My stomach dropped to somewhere around my knees, as I suddenly felt dizzy. It was the missing envelope. Could the whole telephone call have been a set up? My gosh, was I a prize stooge.
“How do you know he was with the Sheriff’s Department?” asked Ollie. “I don’t know of any Deputy Morgan over there.”
“Well, he told me on the telephone he was a Deputy.” That sounded stupid as soon as I said it. But it wasn’t like I could have asked him to hold his badge up close to the handset.
“Hey,” said Ollie reasonably, “Anybody can use the telephone. It’s a free country. I could call you up and say I’m the governor. How would you know the difference?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture,” I muttered glumly. I mulled things over. I should go over to the house and see if Dad was home. I didn’t really want to talk with him, but I needed to know where he was and what, if anything, had happened to him. Nobody but me cared about Dad anymore. I was all he had — a sad comment on both me and the old man.
One more thing occurred to me. “Ollie, you ever hear of an Army captain named… ah… Marcus. No, Markowicz. Yeah, Markowicz. Know anything about him?”
Ollie got a funny look on his face, and glanced around the little office as if to see if anyone was listening from behind the file cabinet. “He was in here today asking questions about your buddy, Floyd Bellamy.”
That couldn’t possibly be good news, no matter how I tried to stretch it. “What kind of questions?”
Ollie looked even more uncomfortable. “I can’t rightly say. Military stuff. You know.” His tone of voice reminded me that he and Floyd had served our country, brothers-in-arms even while they were across the world from each other. I, the town gimp, had stayed home safe and warm with all the girls.
I tried again. “Tell me this. Is Floyd in trouble? Or is this something else, maybe a background investigation?” Floyd or no Floyd, my aircraft was in danger. I could smell it coming.
Ollie scratched his head again and stared down at the gum wrappers on his desk. “Take some advice, Vernon. Stay away from Floyd Bellamy for a few days. I know you’ve been palling around with him more than usual lately.” Still not meeting my eye, he raised his hand as if to stop traffic, or maybe wave me off. “I didn’t say nothing to the Army investigators, but your name is gonna come up if they keep asking around. I don’t know, you might ought to take a business trip to Kansas City or something. Augusta probably isn’t the best place for you right now.”
Ollie folded his arms and finally met my eye, giving me his best cop stare. The interview was over. I’d probably already learned more than I was really supposed to know.
“Thanks, Ollie,” I said. “I appreciate it.” I made an effort to sound like I meant that, covering my anger and confusion.
I turned and walked out to 5th Street. I didn’t really feel like calling Dad’s neighbors from the telephone on Ollie’s desk. The Johansens were as sick of him as I was, with the late night screaming and the shotgun blasts and the knocked-down mailboxes. But Mr. Johansen would have gone and checked if I’d asked him to. Besides, I wasn’t sure who might be listening. It would have been bad enough to have the conversation in front of Ollie.
Most of all, I hated the fact that I was starting to think this way. The war was over, we were all supposed to be going back to our normal lives.
My car was parked around the corner and down the block on State Street. Walking toward it, I morosely studied the Hudson. She wasn’t that old, just barely pre-war, and was a good car — had seen me through college and the war. I had been looking at brochures for new Studebakers at a dealership over in Wichita, but the money was more than I could spend. My faded black sedan had served me well. She was cheap, loyal and dependable, and I loved her lines. If I squinted in a bad light, I could almost convince myself I was driving a Hudson Terraplane, just like the Negro bluesman Robert Johnson.
I laughed. Being an engineer didn’t exempt me from waxing emotional about the machines that served me. I was already in love with the German airplane in the Bellamys’ barn, no matter who — or what — had buried her in that deep ice. I would come to understand her. I patted the Hudson’s fender and opened the door.
The crank telephone call really had me wondering if I should go over to Dad’s place. I drummed my fingers on the Hudson’s cracked bakelite steering wheel and stared out at the street. Today was Saturday. He would be drunk as a lord until Monday or Tuesday, then dry up just far enough to wander into town.
Dad had been a weekend alcoholic for years. But he’d slid further away, losing the habit of working after Mom died in that wreck while he slept off a bender in the back seat, and he’d pissed away months after in the rehabilitation hospital. Dad’s weekends stretched out to encompass most of the week. He usually managed to do something on Wednesdays and Thursdays, hauling junk or doing odd jobs to earn enough to stay alive and get drunk for another weekend. I should let him be, stop by on my way back from work next Tuesday.
On the other hand, if something really had happened to Dad, if the telephone call had not been a complete ruse… who had made it? I tried to imagine any other reason for the call other than distracting me to effect the theft of my German files. Nobody cared about Dad. Then I tried to imagine how I would feel if I didn’t go by until Tuesday and he had been missing for three days. I didn’t need that kind of responsibility.