Dames Fight Harder

by M. Ruth Myers

“It could be late. I may have to spend some time with Lulu Sollers or one of her policewomen.”

  “Ah. That business with the candy wrappers, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Late doesn’t matter.” His eyes were twinkling. He swayed me side to side as if dancing. “I guarantee I’ll make it worth your while.”

  ***

  The curtained tub-shower at one end of Connelly’s room was cramped but adequate. For once I didn’t buy a paper before settling on a stool at McCrory’s for breakfast. When I went to get one afterward, the sight of Heebs back on his corner put a spring in my step.

  “Hey, sis. You look lots better today.”

  “You too, Heebs. Any trouble getting your place back?”

  “Naw. The kid that was here backed off like he was scared of me. Guess I must have a reputation for holding my own. Paper, mister?”

  Things were starting to feel normal again, or as normal as they’d been since Pearl Harbor. I spent the morning making futile phone calls to shingle, steel and lumber places. Each one left me more convinced that Morris, the workman with the droopy eye at Rachel’s work site, was my best hope for putting the last nail I needed in Lamont’s coffin. Lamont might not be the one who’d actually murdered Gabriel Foster, but if I could confront him with what the swindle he had going involved, he’d squeal like a baby pig pulled off its mother’s milk.

  Lack of supper on the previous day, not to mention the night’s very pleasant exertions, had left me ravenous. I went for an early lunch at a diner I liked where I topped off a blue plate special with rhubarb pie á la mode. With a potentially lengthy evening ahead of me, I went back to Mrs. Z’s and repeated my afternoon nap of the day before.

  At five o’clock I drove past Rachel’s construction site to see if the men were leaving. They weren’t. The big machine with the bucket in front that had almost smashed me into oblivion the night this whole business started was parked at the edge of the site now. Its presence puzzled me since it looked to me as if all the digging or whatever they did with such machines was already finished.

  I parked two blocks farther away, toward where Morris had indicated he caught the trolley, and hoped the gorilla Hawkins didn’t come the same direction. Everything I’d seen about Morris made me trust him, and think he’d go a mile or two extra to help the woman he worked for. Everything I’d seen about Hawkins made me think he’d trip her any chance he got.

  About forty minutes after I’d parked, Morris came striding down the sidewalk. I leaned across the seat and called out the passenger window.

  “Morris! Want a ride?”

  He looked around, spotted me, and came over. Bending down to see me he grinned.

  “Thanks for the offer, but no. By this time of day I smell pretty ripe.”

  “I’ve been ripe a time or two myself, and I want to talk to you about helping with something that might get Miss Minsky off the hook.”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Get in.”

  He was right. As the door closed behind him and I pulled into traffic, his sweat made its presence known. I’d smelled worse things. I thought about the bum who’d dragged me up from the edge of the river.

  “You’ve worked construction projects long enough to have a feel for the materials, right?” No point pussyfooting.

  Morris frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Say the steel beams or lumber or shingles or something wasn’t up to snuff. You’d be able to tell that.”

  He rubbed his chin in thought.

  “Lumber, probably, since framing and sheathing is what I work on mostly. Shingles, maybe. On some projects I’ve helped with roofing; other times not. As for the beams, they’d have to be rusty or something just about as obvious for me to guess anything was wrong. Concrete... it might take something like rust for me to think it wasn’t right. Other companies come in and pour. I’ve never paid any attention to it until it’s set.” His puzzlement showed. “You think that’s why the man got killed? Because something we’ve been using wasn’t right?”

  “Not something your crew was using, something at the dead man’s project. Which way to where you live?

  It turned out to be a tidy white frame house with a not-quite-as-tidy addition in back. He lived with his sister and her family.

  “Pick you up at seven,” I reminded as I let him out.

  We’d agreed it was time enough for him to shower and eat his dinner, with plenty of daylight left for him to look around at our destination. He nodded and started into the house, then spun back.

  “What do we do if they have a guard?”

  I grinned. That part was the least of my worries.

  “I have a plan.”

  FORTY-THREE

  “Why’s that big machine with the jaws that used to be in Rachel’s equipment yard where you’re building now? Aren’t you done digging?” With Morris beside me, I circled the project Gabriel Foster’s company had been in charge of before his death. It looked to be deserted.

  “Another outfit’s breaking ground a block over. Miss Minsky’s renting it to them, but the other outfit needed to leave it at our site a couple of days. It’s called a bucket loader.”

  I found a parking spot on a cross street and sat for a minute watching Foster’s site and the streets around it to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. This wasn’t a residential area like where Rachel was building. It was a commercial district that had seen better days. The mostly small offices were closed for the day. A cinder block garage, its gas pump slumping forlornly in front of it, was closed for good. We got out and walked casually toward the building project with its three-floor skeleton.

  “If anyone comes along, I’ll be the giggly girlfriend. I’ll go on about how you love looking at construction and I told you nobody was going to care if you took a peek.”

  Morris nodded absently.

  “And if they act like there’s a chance I might look familiar, I’ll say where I’m working now looks a little iffy and I was wondering whether this job might be taking on workers. Got it.”

  His shirt and trousers weren’t the ones he wore on the job, but they were just as crisply pressed. He was already eyeing the structure in front of us. I sat down on an overturned bucket and concentrated on looking demure. A few cars passed. Their occupants must have bought the little tableau I’d tried to create. There weren’t any shade trees around, so there weren’t any birds save for plucky sparrows that seemed to thrive anywhere.

  A sandwich shop that, like its neighbors, was closed for the day tried to splash out cheer with a window box of petunias. It lost the battle to drab business fronts and concrete. The evening breeze rippling over my skin was pleasant, though, and the surroundings felt peaceful. My new .38 was tucked in my purse in case they proved otherwise.

  My aim would be slightly off because of the shorter barrel. I needed to go somewhere and practice. I thought about it during the thirty minutes or so Morris spent inspecting things. First he circled the building’s perimeter, where sheets of wood already were starting to cover uprights at ground level. Periodically he stopped and stood looking up. Then he stepped through an opening destined to be a door, and I couldn’t see him.

  I started to fidget, hoping I wouldn’t missing the eight-thirty bus; hoping the kids I was hunting wouldn’t be on it yet if I didn’t. Morris reappeared. The confidence in his steps as he strode toward me brought me to my feet.

  “I think I’ve found something,” he said. “Want to see?” He turned and retraced his steps without awaiting my answer.

  Inside, he led the way to a wall where sheathing wasn’t up yet. Light still flooded in from outside.

  “Look at this board, and at this one.” He indicated one four feet away. “See the difference?”

  After staring and looking at each of them up close, I shook my head.

  “Feel then. Can you feel it?”

  I ran my hand along the two boards like he did, but more cautiously for fear of
splinters. Again I shook my head.

  “This one is grade one framing stock. This one is grade two, still good, but not as good. Not quite as strong or long lasting. You’d use it for a house, but not for commercial construction.” He spun, indicating the wooden skeleton around us. “Except where there’s an extra board for doors and that, every fifth stud in here is grade two.”

  “Twenty percent.”

  “Give or take.”

  “I take it there’d be a significant difference in price between the two grades?”

  “I don’t know about significant, but there’d be a difference, and more than pennies. Don’t forget, there’s lots of lumber goes into a building, too, so it would add up.”

  “Could the difference in price be enough for a company to bid lower than their competitors? Even if the lower grade only accounted for twenty percent of their lumber costs?”

  He started to frown. I was pushing him out of his depth.

  “Maybe.”

  I already had the answers I needed, though. I knew from wading through the data on projects Rachel had bid on that every project specified the grade of the various materials to be used.

  ***

  The eight-thirty bus was just pulling to the curb as I neared the bus stop. I broke into a run.

  Collins, the driver, didn’t notice me as I got on. When he’d closed the door and started off again, he caught sight of me in the mirror.

  “Well, well. So you did decide to take another ride with me, eh? When you didn’t come last week, I thought maybe you’d lost interest.”

  “Got sick,” I said.

  He nodded in sympathy. “I hope it wasn’t that same bug I got. It sure flattens you.”

  We chatted some. The kids in question hadn’t been on the bus last week either, it turned out. That worried me. Maybe a neighbor or sibling had gotten wise to them and put an end to their nocturnal wanderings. On the other hand, when I initially talked to the driver about the kids, he’d said they usually got on around nine-thirty. It had been my choice getting in place early in case they varied their pattern, so I was content to ride along and exchange a few words with Collins from time to time and think.

  As half-past nine approached, I slid forward and spoke into Collins’ ear, briefing him on the arrangements Lulu Sollers had helped me make in hopes the kids showed up. I moved to a spot two seats up from the back bench where they usually sat.

  At the nine thirty-two stop, two kids with dun brown hair and one with black curls climbed on amid the arriving riders. Two were fourteen or fifteen. One of the brown-haired ones was considerably younger. I didn’t need Collins’ tug at his earlobe, a touch he’d insisted on, to tell me these were the kids I’d been hunting.

  They settled in and exchanged a whisper or two. There was a soft snicker. A candy wrapper rustled. I peeked around. I couldn’t read the name on it, but the wrapper was the right color for a Whiz bar.

  The next stop for the bus was directly in front of the neon sign of a liquor store. I made sure I was the first one off and ran inside. Jostling past a customer, I rapped the counter to get the clerk’s attention

  “Call the policewoman.” He looked up and nodded.

  The bus doors closed behind me as I clambered back on board. I wondered if Collins had been forced to wait for me, but I didn’t think so. The bus was half full now, but the place I’d occupied was still vacant. I slid back in.

  “She must have needed booze real bad, jumping off and getting right back on like that,” the older of the brown hairs whispered.

  “Dummy, she couldn’t buy anything that fast.”

  “Maybe she called ahead and they had it for her under the counter.”

  They snickered.

  “Maybe she’s the driver’s girlfriend and that’s why he waited.”

  More snickers.

  They weren’t bad kids. Probably no worse than Wee Willie and I would have been at that age if we’d been unsupervised. But these kids were unsupervised. They were testing limits where none existed, flirting with fire.

  Half a dozen rows ahead of me, two women gabbed away, not loudly enough to be nuisances, just night music. My pulses were jittering, filled with expectation of what might be learned from the threesome behind me. Within the hour it could be dashed, but every little scrap I could snatch for Joel — for Rachel — mattered now.

  The bus began to nose to the curb. Here and there passengers left. Half a dozen others dropped their fares in the box at the front and began to take seats. Among them was a blonde about my age whose bearing and composure marked her as the policewoman, even though from this distance the small badge pinned to her bodice might just as easily have been a pretty brooch. I went forward to meet her.

  “Are you with Lulu?”

  Her head inclined. “You must be Maggie.”

  We shook hands.

  She qualified as fresh faced if you overlooked the alertness in her eyes. They were fixed on the boys in the back seat. She spoke to me under her breath.

  “Let’s take opposite sides of the aisle, shall we?” She sat down just in front of the boys and half turned to face them. I followed suit.

  “Good evening, boys. I’m Policewoman Perkins and this is detective Sullivan.”

  Her voice was mild. Behind us, our fellow riders read papers and continued conversations, unaware of the drama. The boys’ mouths dropped open. They stared. The eyes of the youngest one flicked to her badge.

  “Police?” The older brown haired one recovered first. “Why? We haven’t done anything.”

  “How about littering?” With considerable satisfaction I pointed at the candy wrapper tossed on the floor. Not only would it qualify as litter, it was folded into a neat little bow tie.

  The one who had spoken smacked the younger one on the back of the head.

  “Pick it up, stupid! Look at the trouble you got us in.”

  “Actually, you’ve done a dandy job getting yourself in,” Perkins assured him. “I expect you’re already sorry, though ... what’s your name?”

  “Benny. Benjamin. Yeah, I’m real—”

  “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Hattie. Hattie Rose. Why?”

  “And your mother?”

  The one with black curls had figured out where this was going.

  “Angela Carmichael. She’s not home, though. She’s working.”

  “At Univis with our mom. We don’t know what they make, though, ’cause it’s secret. But it’s for the war.” The little one spoke up proudly.

  Benny raised his hand to deliver another back-of-head smack. A look from Perkins discouraged him.

  “That’s certainly an important job,” she said to the little one. “We wouldn’t want to call your mothers at work and make them come home to sort this out, would we? Let’s have a little chat downtown instead, shall we?

  “Miss Sullivan, would you pull the cord to let us off? We should have transportation waiting.” She glanced out the window. “Ah, yes. There it is.”

  It was a patrol car.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “Now, boys.” Lulu Sollers folded her hands on the desk in front of her and looked at the trio across from her so sternly they squirmed. “Suppose you tell me what you saw and heard at the construction site you were at the end of last month?”

  We were upstairs at Market House. A block away, the UBB building that housed the Bureau of Policewomen was closed for the day. Marching the boys past a duty sergeant and into the detective squad room, where a few men were working the night shift, probably loosened their tongues more anyway.

  “What construction site?” Benny made another of his periodic stabs at being a tough nut.

  “The one where you hid under the tarp,” I said.

  “What makes you think—”

  “The candy wrappers your brother left.”

  His arm twitched but he managed not to raise his hand.

  “Dummy,” he muttered.

  We’d been through the preliminaries.
The little one was named Tom. The one with curly black hair was Ian. Lulu had scared most of the stuffing out of them by first asking sternly what they knew about recent petty thefts and broken windows by boys their age. They’d fallen all over themselves pleading ignorance, which was probably true.

  “We didn’t see anything.” Ian piped up now. “Just their shapes, anyway, and that they had a car. But nothing about what kind of car, or what they looked like. When we had to run, we were too scared to look back at their faces.”

  Lulu’s fingers tensed.

  “You ran? The men saw you?”

  “Not our faces, ‘cause like I said, we were too busy running to look back.”

  With saintly patience, as Perkins took notes and I listened, Lulu coaxed out details in bits and pieces. Their mothers gave them spending money as a reward for looking after themselves and going to bed when they were supposed to. They spent part of it riding buses all over town. If they saw something that looked interesting, they got off to ‘explore.’ They’d been poking around Rachel’s site, seeing what there was to see, when a car swung in with its lights off. Caught off guard by the sudden appearance and fearing discovery, they’d hidden under the tarpaulin that covered the lumber.

  “They took this big thing out of the trunk.” Little Tom’s eyes were huge. “And when they unwrapped it... it was a dead guy!”

  “You couldn’t tell he was dead,” scoffed his brother.

  “Yeah, you could, the way they dragged him around,” said Ian.

  Lulu silenced them with a lift of her hand. They quit their squabbling and more or less took turns telling the story.

  “They brought him over like they were going to put him close to where we were, only then they didn’t.”

  “They were arguing, see. The one in charge got real mad when the other one went to get something out of his pocket and it wasn’t there. That one, the big guy, said it must’ve fallen out and he’d go look in the truck.”

  “But the one in charge said they didn’t have time. He called the big one an idiot.”

  “And the big one said he’d had a bellyful of the other one spouting off, and if he called him stupid again he’d clip him a good one and leave him to do his own dirty work.”