Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (19 page)

“But Sam—it ate on him. Bad. He never forgave his father for shunning him and his mother. So when Hamilton was born, my husband insisted on naming him Alexander Hamilton. Know why?”

“Because the original Alexander Hamilton’s father abandoned him when he was only eleven,” Willie answered. “In a place called Charles Town.”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “You know your history, Officer. Charles Town. Just like the Charles family ranch that Hannah and Sam wasn’t good enough to ever set foot on. Samuel thought it would be funny if he named his son after the first Alexander Hamilton. But it was anything but humorous, and it ate on Sam until the day he died.”

Sophie dropped back into her chair and her head bobbed on her chest. She had told them things she may never have told anyone else, just to protect her son, to parry some of the painful questions that were going to sling his way during the Senate hearings. When it appeared as if she had dozed off, her
head snapped up and once again her fiery eyes met Manny’s. “Hamilton’s a good person and a good son. Leave him alone.”

Sophie slumped farther into the chair then, and her head rested on her chest. Gentle snoring rose from the old woman, and Willie and Manny tiptoed out the door. As they started toward the Durango, Manny felt eyes watching him. He turned to the house, but saw no movement.

“I’d have hated to get on her bad side back in the day.”

“I’d hate to get on her bad side now,” Manny said, watching the house until they drove away.

Manny and Willie walked into the house just in time to hear Pee Pee Pourier shout out “thirty-four ninety-nine!” Drew Carey, his arm barely able to drape over the massive, shaking shoulders of the woman in the muumuu, gave the lucky contestant the choice of the winning prize. Pee Pee waved them into the living room and dropped back in front of the television. He turned the volume down and divided his attention between the TV and them.

“Watch this. Drew Carey’s going to lead this schmuck into picking door number two.”

“You certain?”

“Just watch,” Pee Pee smiled and rubbed his testicles as if it would bring the woman luck.

Drew Carey gave the fat lady on stage the choice of three doors, the crowd chanting, working themselves into a failure frenzy following Drew’s lead. “Door number two! Door number two!”

“Door number two!” she shouted out and the curtains
rose slowly as if in mourning. Gone was the new Chevy Impala. Gone was the entertainment center, complete with surround sound, and vacation trip to Disney World’s Epcot Center. The contestant wound up with two tickets to the Rose Bowl.

“At least she won something.”

Pee Pee laughed and turned the television off. “That damned fool lives in Connecticut. You think she’s going to plunk down change to go all the way to Pasadena to smell a bunch of flowers and watch a football game?”

“I see your point.”

Pee Pee faced them and leaned back in the chair. His T-shirt wore more breakfast than his plate had as if he were competing with Willie for most sloppy. He rubbed his crotch waiting for an answer.
At least Willie doesn’t fondle himself.
“You didn’t come here to hang out with old Pee Pee or watch Drew Carey put the screws to someone else. You want to know about that car.”

“Give that man door number two!” Manny did his best to imitate the
Price Is Right
host.

“That’s pretty good,” Pee Pee laughed. “But you sounded more like Bob Barker. Remember when he was the host?”

“For years. A hometown boy.”

“Close. From the Rosebud.” Pee Pee checked his watch. “Wait a sec while I check some bidding.” He moved to a chair in front of a computer that took up most of the kitchen table and was the only thing in the room that didn’t have food dribbled on it. He played the keyboard like a sloppy Liberace and eBay popped on the screen. Pee Pee entered a bid a dollar higher than the last bidder.

“What you shopping for?” Willie leaned over his shoulder. “I’ve picked up some good deals on eBay myself.”

“Boots.” Pee Pee winked, his finger poised over the mouse pointed to the bid button. “The pair that Elvis wore in his last concert in Sioux Falls in ’68.”

“Think you’ll get them?”

“Only other bidder is Lumpy.”

Now it was Manny’s turn to look over Pee Pee’s shoulder. “How you know it’s Lumpy?”

“Deduction, Watson. I told him about this pair of Elvis boots that was nearing the end of the auction and how I’d like to bid on them. I also told him I needed to go to Hot Springs and see my dad in the VA home. So Lumpy was real generous and gave me the day off. Said take all the time I need.” Pee Pee tilted his head back and laughed. “All he wanted is for me to be away from my computer so I couldn’t bid on them.”

“That’s not very smart. You know Lumpy will bid them up.”

Pee Pee chuckled. “I’ll recoup my money in the end. Lumpy will hound me until I finally relent and sell the boots to him for more than I paid for them.”

“Kind of cold,” Willie said. “Staying here bidding instead of visiting your dad.”

Pee Pee smiled. “Didn’t they teach you anything about deception at the police academy? My dad hit it big time at the Prairie Wind Casino last year—biggest haul in the quarter slots they ever had. He took his winnings and moved to Daytona Beach; lies around all day looking at babes in thongs and getting a tan.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell him we Skins already have a natural tan?”

Pee Pee checked his watch again, his finger poised above the mouse, checking the time left, then hit it. His bid went through, and the time ran out on the auction. “There, fat ass! Take that.”

“Won?”

Pee Pee nodded and sneered. “Be here overnight. I can’t wait to see Lumpy’s face when I come waltzing in wearing those fancy Tony Lamas.”

“The car,” Manny pressed.

“The car. Sure.” Pee Pee moved onto the couch and grabbed a manila folder from the end table. “Car was a 1940 Buick Roadmaster. Damned near new in 1944. But bombs definitely did the old girl in. I found fragments of bomb casings imbedded in the sheet metal, and the pattern of the broken windows indicated overpressure blew them out.”

“You sure?” Willie sat beside Pee Pee and flipped through the folder. “No one would put a new car out there for bombing practice.”

Pee Pee took his teeth out and started picking at them with a screwdriver he’d found under a mound of junk on the coffee table. He spoke to Willie, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if instructing a class of new recruits. “I had the brake drums pulled. Back then, people had to put new brake pads on every two thousand miles. By the looks of the rotors on that baby, they’d been turned once. Twice at most.”

“That only means the owner couldn’t afford brakes.”

“I thought of that.” Pee Pee scratched his testicles, rubbing his magic lamp. Manny hoped Pee Pee’s genie wouldn’t come out with him and Willie there. “That’s what took me so long. I also tore into the motor. Know how much dirt and rust accumulates in seventy years?”

“What did you find?”

Pee Pee opened his mouth, and Elvis spit out an orange PEZ. “The rings of that engine had just started to seat in the cylinders. Even though it would have been three or four years old at the time of the bombing, that was a pretty new car.”

“That makes no sense.” Willie stood and paced the room. “No one leaves a new car someplace like that when they know there’s bombing practice going on.”

“It does if those two drove there never expecting aircraft from Rapid City Air Base.” Manny reached for the Elvis PEZ, then thought better. Pee Pee’s scratching hand played with the
plastic flip door, and Manny knew where that hand had been the last few minutes. “What we got to do now is figure out how this ties in with Gunnar’s body being found on top of the other two inside that car.”

“Why do they have to be connected at all?” Pee Pee gummed his PEZ. One tooth was stained orange. “And we sure don’t know they were murdered. Looked like they were just in the bombing range at the wrong time.”

Manny leaned closer to Pee Pee. “Didn’t they teach you anything about investigations in the police academy? I don’t believe in coincidences, and those three being interred in that car in that place all together would be stretching the laws of the Coincidence God. No, they’re connected somehow.”

Pee Pee reached over and played with the remote volume. The television powered on and he adjusted the volume as he scooted his chair closer to the TV. “I’d wager you two got a big job—finding out who wanted those other two dead as well as Gunnar Janssen.”

As Drew Carey’s assistant called for another contestant, Manny thought how right Pee Pee was. And Pee Pee
was
a wagering man.

Willie pulled into the Cohen Home and parked between a pickup missing the bed and a Volkswagen missing one fender, sitting up on blocks. “Sure you want to go in alone? The way I hear it, he’s a bear in the morning.”

“Chief Horn’s a bear anytime”—Manny grinned—“but at least he tolerates me. If I bring you along, you might have to arrest him.”

“Arrest a retired cop?”

“Retired and continues being a crotchety old fart. I’ll be all right.” Manny tried to sound as confident as he entered the retirement home and stopped at the receptionist’s desk. The
twenty-something girl looked up from her Harlequin romance and frowned as she recognized Manny.

“You going to get Chief Horn stirred up again.”

“How so?”

“After you visited him two months ago, he went into a cleaning frenzy.”

“Thought that’s what you people wanted—for him to take better care of his apartment.”

She shook her head. “It is, but he took it upon himself to be the cleaning police for the home. Insists on daily inspections. Raises hell with the other residents if their rooms aren’t cleaned like he thinks they ought to be.”

“I’ll visit with him about it.”

“Wipe your feet.”

Manny walked the hallway toward the last apartment, past two-occupant rooms on either side to the room occupied by one person: Chief Horn. The first time Manny had visited his old police chief was while he was working on the Jason Red Cloud murder. Chief Horn’s room had been a poster child for every ghetto flophouse that Manny had ever been in: messy and dirty and unkempt enough that no one would ever want to return for a visit. When Manny came away from his visit with the chief, he wished he’d packed a can of Black Flag and hand sanitizer.

But the chief’s granddaughter, Shannon, had convinced him that he’d get more visitors if his room were clean. The last visit Manny paid, Chief Horn’s apartment had been cleaned so that, with a good imagination, Manny could just about make out furniture uncluttered by trash. But he wasn’t prepared for this.

“Come in kid,” Chief Horn bellowed and stepped aside. It took Manny a moment for the shock of the chief’s white shirt and bow tie to wear off before he took in the apartment. The
cases of beer—both empty and waiting to be emptied—that did double duty as end tables and places to set trash were now gone. Manny studied the room trying to locate the beer, but found it nowhere on the varnished wooden floor. And he could actually see the kitchen table with a bouquet of wild flowers in a Budweiser bottle doubling as a vase. “Let me take your coat.”

Like a polished butler, Chief Horn helped Manny with his coat and hung it on a bentwood coatrack beside the door.

“Iced tea? How about a soda?”

“No beer?”

Horn smiled. “Got no time for that now. I’ve been too busy enforcing the house regulations on keeping things cleaned.”

“So I’ve heard. Tea would be nice.”

Horn grabbed a glass from the cupboard, held it to the light, and polished it with a dishcloth before filling it with ice cubes and tea. “So why the visit?”

“I just wanted to check out rumors.” Manny smiled, waving his hand around the apartment.

Horn tilted his head back and laughed. “Bullshit, kid. I know you. You need some info. ’Bout the only time you come to visit your old chief.”

Manny nodded. “I’ll correct that in the future. I’m working on a couple deaths that happened in the bombing range.”

“Three bodies to be exact.”

“Moccasin telegraph clued you in?”