by Ed Gorman
My dad was mid-dunk when I said, “So did Walter ever tell you why he dropped out of Muldaur’s church?”
“He sure did.”
“How come?”
He held up his finger, meaning please let him finish swallowing. He’s a little guy, which is where I get it, and when Mom’s in high heels they look sort of funny together, not mother-son but more like big sister-ll brother, but when they get out on the dance floor to Benny Goodman, their musical tastes having ossified around 1946, they are dazzling, gray hair, girdle, shoe lifts, bald head, and all.
“Muldaur tried to get frisky with his wife.”
“What? You’re kidding.”
“Oh, no,” Mom said. “One of the women at the beauty parlor said that the same thing happened to her daughter-in-law. Apparently, he was a frisky man.”
I don’t have to tell you what frisky means.
Dad rarely uses vulgarities and Mom never does. That particular genetic streak ended with me, I’m afraid.
I wondered if Cliffie knew anything about this. Muldaur was not only a religious bigot but a ladies’ man as well. Two motives had already surfaced for his being killed. There would likely be more. There usually are in homicide investigations. You take a guy like Muldaur, you might find six, seven people who’d considered killing him, each with very specific and unique reasons of their own.
Part of my mom’s long john got soaked and fell in her coffee. She used her spoon to rescue it, then ate it like a piece of cereal. I’m more careful with my dunking. More timid, I guess. I’m well aware of how pieces get too wet and fall off. I don’t want that to happen to me.
“Where’d Walter move to, anyway?”
“Cedar Rapids. Penick and Ford plant.
He’s got a brother-in-law there who’s a big shot in the union.”
“He didn’t happen to move because of Muldaur, did he?”
“Heck, no. Walter? He knew what he was getting into when he married Jinny.”
“What he was getting into? What’s that mean?”
“You know,” my dad said, as if we were telepaths. “Her, uh, bosoms.”
“She had big knockers, as the men like to say,”
Mom said, “your father included.”
“Yeah, now that I think about it,” I said, “I guess she did.”
“Guys were always gettin’ frisky with her,”
Dad said. “Muldaur was just one more. His wife was the one who thought the snake stuff was so neat, anyway. So when she told Walter about Muldaur askin’ her to meet him out to the old Tyler farm, he just told her that he didn’t ever want her to go back there to church.”
“You know who you should talk to,” Mom said.
“Who?”
“Kenny Thibodeau.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. He wrote a long article on
Muldaur and his church, back when he worked for The Clarion.”
Kenny Thibodeau was a local kid who graduated from the University of Iowa journalism school in 1955 or so. He came back to town here, became the assistant editor of the local paper, got himself married, had a son, took up golf, and could even be seen ushering at the Pentecostal church on Sunday morning.
Then he read On The Road by Jack
Kerouac and claimed to have the same kind of vision St. Paul had on the road to Damascus, or wherever he was going. Well, not exactly the same, of course. Paul claimed to have seen God and renounced all sin. Kenny Thibodeau, on the other hand, claimed to have seen Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassidy. And instead of renouncing sin, he embraced it. All kinds of sin. He left his wife and child and moved to the West Coast. He reappeared a year later, his wife and child long gone, no longer the buttoned-down, crew-cutted Kenny we’d known and ignored. He was a beatnik. I hate that word, it’s a press word, but that’s what he was.
He had the goatee, he had the black horn-rimmed glasses, the black turtleneck, the black chinos, the black socks, and, worst of all, the Jesus sandals.
I’m no fashion plate but there’s something about socks and sandals that rankles. At least he’d spared us the beret.
Kenny had been coming and going ever since. He went to London, Paris, San Francisco, New York. And always returned. He supported himself by writing pornography, or what the moralists called pornography, anyway. Paperbacks with sexy covers and suggestive titles but virtually nothing explicit inside. Lesbo Lodge was one of his, as was Life of a Lesbo. Kenny lived in a trailer near the west end of town.
We had coffee whenever we ran into each other. I enjoyed him without quite approving of him. And I disapproved of him because I was probably jealous.
He traveled, he supported himself writing, albeit somewhat scandalously, and he was always going to Iowa City on the weekends and coming back with wild tales of undergraduate English majors who “know how to swing, man, and I do mean swing.”
I’d never thought of asking Kenny for actual hard information. I’d never suspected Kenny of having any hard information. But maybe Mom was right. Maybe before he’d taken up marijuana, cheap wine, and Zen there had been an actual fact or two rolling around inside his mind.
“He looks so silly in that goatee,” Mom said. “But he’s still a nice boy.”
Dad laughed. “Don’t tell that to Emily at the rectory. She thinks he should be put in jail for writing those dirty books.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She also was going to start a petition to put D. H. Lawrence in jail until she found out he was dead.”
Summer Saturday mornings in Black
River Falls are a good time to be on the streets. The merchants are happy because business is good; the farm wives are happy because they’re getting their hair done or buying something new for themselves-it could be a dress or an electric mixer, it doesn’t matter, it’s just the idea of getting something new; the little ones are happy because there’s a triple feature plus a chapter of a serial at the Rialto; the teenage girls are happy because they’ll be modeling their swimsuits at the public pool; and the teenage boys are happy because they’ll get to watch the teenage girls model those swimsuits.
The street rods are out already. They’ll go out to the park where the boys will polish them the way pagans used to polish false idols. Chopped and channeled hymns of metal and fiberglass and rubber that wouldn’t think of playing Fabian or Frankie Avalon or anybody like that, sticking strictly to Mr. Chuck Berry and Mr. Little Richard and Mr. Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps. There are also “jes’ folks” kinds of cars, bicycles, a horse-drawn Amish buggy or two (there’s an Amish community twenty miles due east of here), and a whole bunch of motorcycles, most of the riders being Marlon Brando in their minds (but then who do the grandmas riding the big Indians imagine themselves to be?).
Kenny Thibodeau made it easy for me. He was sitting in the town square reading a John Steinbeck paperback, In Dubious
Battle.
His black uniform was intact. Even his shades were black. The only way I knew he saw me was the way he tilted his head up at me.
“Hey, man.”
“Hey, man, yourself, Kenny.”
I sat down next to him on the bench.
“How they hangin’, man?”
“Oh, you know,” I said. I’ve never known how to answer that particular cliche. They’re hangin’ low, hangin’ high? Which way is best? “How’s the writing going?”
“Pretty good. They jumped me up in advances.”
Two paperbacks rested on the pigeon-blessed bench between us.
“Take ‘em, I was gonna give ‘em to you anyway when I ran into you.”
I picked them up. The covers were nicely illustrated. One showed a virginal young blonde woman in a matching skirt and sweater and bobby sox and penny loafers staring over her shoulder at a severe but coldly beautiful older woman standing in a shadowed doorway. “Student Advisor
… Lesbos ruled this campus until a stud professor was hired.” The other one featured a well-built shirtless young girl in bed with a nearl
y naked older woman. “Sex Machine… His “tools of the trade” could turn lesbos into man-lovers.”
“The Nobel Committee wants every copy of those they can find,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he laughed, “so they can burn ‘em.”
“You ever actually meet a lesbian?”
“I heard one on the radio once.”
“How do you know she was a lesbian?”
“She said she was.”
“I guess that’s one way of telling.” Then I said, “My cousin’s a lesbian and she’s actually very nice. I mean, nobody in the family wants to acknowledge it but she never even pretends to be interested in guys romantically.”
“Maybe you could introduce me to her sometime.
You know, maybe she could teach me how they talk, code words, stuff like that.”
“I think they talk pretty much like everybody else. At least Alison does.”
“You mean Dr. Edmond DeMille wasn’t right? They don’t have a secret handshake?”
“Who’s Dr. Edmond DeMille?”
“I am. That’s one of my pen names. I wrote a book called When Your Daughter Is a Lesbo. DeMille is even more full of shit than I am.”
That was Kenny’s greatest virtue. The self-deprecation. He didn’t harangue you the way some of his compatriots did. I’d never even heard him describe anybody as “square.” That was why I liked his books, too.
I appreciated the errant erections they sometimes inspired but even more I appreciated the humor he was able to sneak in.
“My mom tells me you did an article on Muldaur.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hey, wasn’t that wild?
Him dying and all.”
“The Judge wants me to find out what happened before Richard Nixon gets here.”
He whipped his shades off. “Richard
Nixon is coming here?”
“That’s right. In six days. Having dinner with her at her club.”
“That Nazi.”
“I agree, Kenny. But right now I need to know about Muldaur. You find out anything interesting about him?”
“Interesting meaning sleazy?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“He was porking a lot of the ladies in his flocks.”
“That I’ve heard.”
“And then about six months ago, he came into some money.”
“Inherited, you mean?”
Kenny shook his head. He had beagle brown eyes. Plaintive. He made you want to put a dog biscuit in his paw. “I guess not.
He just suddenly had some money. Paid off the loan on that garage he uses for his church. Paid off a lot of bills, too.”
“But nobody knows where the money came from?”
“Nobody I talked to.”
“Wonder where he’d get money? The place he came from-^th hill people don’t have any money.” He hesitated. “You want me to see what I can find out.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“In fact, maybe I can get some ideas from it. You know, sort of playing private eye. You ever watch “Peter Gunn?””
“Never miss it.” And I didn’t.
“How about that Mancini music?”
Henry Mancini had revolutionized television theme music. His music was as much a part of the noir feel of the show as the scripts and the actors.
Kenny put his glasses back on. Raised his Steinbeck. “Writing sleaze is starting to take its toll on me, man.”
I stood up. “How so?”
“Even readin’ somebody like Steinbeck. You know, like this really serious, really fine writer. I keep waiting for the sex scenes now.”
“Yeah, I can see where that could get to be a problem.”
“Like my mom was watchin’ Little Women the other night on the boob tube.”
“Yeah?”
“And all I could think of was how I could turn it into a sleaze book. Like all the sisters are grown up now but they’re lesbos.”
“Little Lesbos.”
“That’s exactly the title I was thinking of.
Exactly, man.”
“I’d hold off on that one awhile, Kenny.”
“Yeah, for one thing, the people who read my books -they probably wouldn’t see the parallel to Louisa May Alcott anyway.”
Little Lesbos.
At least it was alliterative.
A squat, plump puppy followed me out of the town square and all the way to the sidewalk, then went bounding back to his people.
The heat wasn’t too bad yet-st in the low seventies-j the sort of temperature plump little puppies love.
Six
“I wouldn’t expect you to like him, McCain.
He’s a cultured gentleman.”
“Yeah, some cultured gentleman, the way he went after Alger Hiss.”
“Alger Hiss is pink right down to his lace panties.”
“Nixon himself said that.”
“Wrong,” she said, pleased, as always, to correct me. “That was Harry Truman himself, McCain.”
“Bull roar.”
“Bull roar yourself. Look it up. Harry Truman, the darling of the lefties, had a crony out in California he wanted to run for congress.
Felt the man could beat Nixon. Then Helen Gahagan Douglas came along and decided to run against Nixon. It was Harry Truman who started the story she was a commie. And Harry Truman who came up with that remark about being pink down to her panties. Dick Nixon merely picked it up.”
I would’ve argued with her but the tale was just unlikely enough to be true. Ever since Ike got in, Democrats have tended to canonize Truman. But you don’t want to look too closely or too long at him. Most of us, me certainly included, don’t hold up under that kind of scrutiny.
Judge Esme Anne Whitney was fashion-model elegant as ever, poised, prim, and regal against the long windows on the east wall. White summer suit, white pumps, Gauloise cigarette, glass of brandy. We were in her chambers-s much mahogany it was like living in the heart of a tree-and yes it was but eleven A.M. and yes, you did read correctly, a glass of brandy in her slender hand. She claims it helps her concentrate. The amazing thing is that she never shows the merest effect.
I laughed. “Haven’t we had this argument before?”
Judge Esme Anne Whitney didn’t laugh. Just took another dramatic drag on her Gauloise. “Don’t worry, McCain.
I won’t make you meet him when he comes out here.” She shook her head. “You and Ike.”
“Me and Ike?”
“The General can’t stand him. And poor Dick has always done everything he can to please the man.
I like Ike very much, as you know-he and my father used to down shots together in New York after the first war -but I don’t think he’s ever been very fair about Dick.” She turned on me. “And that’s why I want you to get this ridiculous snake mess cleared up. My Lord, we’ll look like hillbillies. Snakes and Ozark faith healers. Good grief. The man is an intellectual, for God’s sake.” She frowned. “For once I don’t even care about humiliating Cliffie for the sake of my family honor. I just want the culprit caught and put away.” She set herself on the edge of her desk.
The smoke from her Gauloise was diamond blue in the sunlight.
I lit a Lucky Strike.
“You know how the cops always look around to see who’s at a crime scene?”
“Rudimentary police science, McCain.”
“Well, I happened to notice two people at the crime scene last night. And you know them both.”
“Oh?”
And then she fired the first volley of the morn.
She launched a rubber band slung on her thumb and forefinger. She’s good at it. Nine times out of ten she hits me. But she was a little slow this morning. I just angled my head a bit to the left and the rubber band went right on by.
“Who are we talking about here, McCain?”
“We are talking about here, Judge, the good Reverend Thomas C. Courtney and
Sara Hal
l.”
“You just don’t like Protestants.”
“Well, aside from the fact that most of my good friends are Protestants, and that I sometimes go to hear Reverend Cosgrove’s sermons because he’s the most Christ-like man in the whole town, I’d say I do pretty well by you folks. And he’s a very conservative Methodist.”
“You’ve never liked Tom. I think you’re jealous of him, in fact.”
I smiled. “And I probably should be. He seems to have more lady friends than I do.” There had been whispers about Courtney and some of his flock.
As in fleeced.
“You just couldn’t resist saying that, could you?”
I kept on beaming. “No, I couldn’t. And I still find it damned strange he’d be out there at the time Muldaur died.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning nothing other than I find it damned strange. I find Sara Hall being out there even stranger.”
“Maybe she went for a ride. She says she does that sometimes when she feels the urge to take a drink. That was something she learned at her Mayo program. You know, to keep yourself occupied in some way.”
“So she goes for rides with Courtney?”
“What’s wrong with that? He’s her minister. And it’s better than taking a drink, she says.”
She got me with her rubber band this time. Pearl Harbor sneak attack, as I’d been wont to say on the playgrounds of my youth.
“So maybe they were just driving by and saw the ambulance and-”
“I think I’ll talk to her.”
“For God’s sake, McCain, why?”
“For the same reason I’m going to talk to Courtney. They aren’t the type that chase after ambulances. They didn’t belong there. Ergo, they’re worth talking to.”
“Ergo,” she said, taking a dramatic drag on her Gauloise.
Her chambers weren’t as exciting as they’d once been. In the old days, I came here to see the beautiful Pamela Forrest, to try and get her to go out with me. Nobody could make me feel as bad as Pamela when she turned me down and it was wonderful, anyway. I was drunk on her. And the Judge hated it, was always symbolically hosing me off with harsh words about leaving Pamela alone.