The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom

by A. E. Hotchner

  “Excuse me, Father,” I said, “I’m not a Catholic but is it okay to ask you about a problem I have—I mean, my family has, is that something that is okay with you?”

  The priest was a large man with a hanging chin and a hearty laugh. His laugh ended with a heavy cough. “Unusual, yes, quite but go right ahead.”

  “I…we need a lawyer,” I said, “and a Catholic one would be perfectly fine, thank you.”

  It took a while for the priest, who said to call him Father Tim, to figure out why I needed a lawyer. He knew all about the J & J killing so I guess priests don’t spend all their time reading the Bible. He said he would look into the lawyer thing but in the meantime, with my father in jail, my mother in the sanitarium, and my apartment locked up, where was I staying? Like a dummy, without thinking, I told him the truth. Well, he said, that being so, nice young fella like me should have a proper place to stay and he would arrange for me to be taken by the Catholic Children’s Center while he looked into the lawyer thing.

  Saying that, he pushed open his door and with a heavy grunt pulled himself up and came out. I got down from my chair. Up close, he was wider and fuller.

  “Come with me,” he said, “I’ll take you to Sister Ann, the mother superior, who runs the center.”

  I felt a river of panic run down my spine. “Oh, sir, Your Eminence, that’s swell of you but if you don’t mind I’d prefer not to get tied up since I have a whole lot of very important things to do.”

  As I was talking he was walking me to the back of the church and into a room where there were several nuns doing office things like typing and telephoning and writing in big bank-like books. One of the nuns who was sitting at her own desk that had a Mother Superior sign on it came over to Father Tim and greeted him. They went to the side of the room and had a private talk while I nearly died over getting myself into a dumb spot like this.

  Father Tim finally came to me and said that Sister Ann would make a place for me while he would refer my situation to the deacon. He patted me on the head, said goodbye to the nuns, and waddled out of the room.

  Sister Ann, who was a big woman with a big chin, said to come with her and she would get me settled in the center. The river down my back turned into a flood. She took me by the arm and opened the door. “It’s just down the street,” she said, leading me.

  “Ma’am, Mother Superior,” I said in a kind of panic, “do you mind, please, before I go, I have to pee.” The sisters all gasped a little.

  “The facility’s just down the aisle,” she said, pointing. “I’ll take you to the door and wait.”

  “Oh, thanks, but you don’t have to, I’ll—”

  “I will wait at the door,” she said, chopping her words.

  Of course I really didn’t have to pee, but what I did have to do was get out of this and fast before Sister Ann got suspicious. It was a small room, one urinal, one sit-down toilet, a small sink with hot-cold handles, a paper-towel thing, and a little window with a screen that was pretty high up, way beyond my reach. The door of the sit-down toilet was closed, two shoes showing under the door, maybe someone who could help me reach the window. But, no, there was that heavy screen across it and besides it was too small to wiggle through even if somehow the screen busted open.

  Even though I can easily fire up a way to get out of tough spots, either talk my way out or brain my way out, I was ready to admit I was stuck in the clutches of the mother superior and I would have to give in. I started for the door, accidently bumping over a basket that was full of used paper towels—that’s when it hit me, remembering what happened that time we were living in that place on the roof of Sorkin’s delicatessen and the bathroom water pipe broke and flooded the place.

  I scooped up the paper towels and stuffed them into the drain in the sink, as I turned on both the hot and cold full blast. The water quickly started to flow over the top of the sink flooding the floor. I pushed the water, helping it run under the door. I called out for help. “We’re flooding! We’re flooding!” The water was hitting the shoes under the closed toilet door which now flew open as the occupant, his pants down, came barreling out and headed for the door which was just being opened by the mother superior, and the toilet man, hog-tied by his pants around his legs, crashed into the mother superior and they both got tangled up and landed on the watery floor. I carefully stepped around them and walked down the aisle to the front of the church. My Keds squished as I went down the steps of the cathedral onto the sidewalk, but in this heat I knew they would dry out in no time.

  Happening 10

  White Castle was having a two-burgers-and-a-soft-drink-for-five-cents one-day promo and I was at the counter of the White Castle on Jefferson getting my five cents’ worth, leaving me with forty-two cents. After my close call with the Catholics, I decided it was dumb of me to try to get other people to find a lawyer, why not go get one myself? There was certainly enough of them all over the place, their names joined together with commas: Somebody, Somebody, and Somebody. Sometimes five somebodys. I planned to go to the Mercantile building and look them over on the board in the lobby.

  I finished off my second White Castle, each burger thinner than a spiderweb but helped with free ketchup and mustard. I laced up my Keds that had dried out in the sun by now.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WERE lots of three-, four-, and five-namers located in the Mercantile. Gary, Appleton and Bishop looked good to me, so I took the elevator to the twelfth floor and went to their office. Very high-class. Leather sofas and chairs. Even leather walls like I’d never seen before. Lady behind the desk said, “Yes?”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Appleton, please.” I liked the sound of his name.

  “Does he expect you?”

  “Well…no, but it’s important.”

  The lady smiled at me, nice smile, and said Mr. Appleton only saw people by appointment. Perhaps my father should call and arrange one.

  “That’s just it,” I said, “my father can’t call and that’s what I want to see Mr. Appleton about.”

  “Your father is not able to call? Why not?”

  “He’s in jail.”

  An inner door opened and two men came into the room, one saying to the other, thank you, Mr. Appleton. They shook hands and the man left. Mr. Appleton, a tall man with a trim mustache and a gold watch chain across his chest, looked at me and said, in a friendly way, “Who have we here?”

  I told him my name and the desk lady told him what I had told her. Mr. Appleton smiled, put his arm around me, and said, “Why, come right in, Mr. Broom, and let’s talk.”

  It was a beautiful office with a full view of the Mississippi River. He sat down on a leather sofa next to me and a woman came in with two glasses of Coca-Cola on ice. I told him how my father came to be in jail as a material witness. He knew all about the J & J murder from reading about it in the Post-Dispatch. He asked me how old I was and said for my age I was certainly “far along.”

  “Tell you the truth, Aaron,” he said, “as a material witness your dad hasn’t been charged with a crime. He’s just someone the prosecutor wants to hold until the trial. He may know something. So right now he can’t get bail but even if he could that would be difficult and expensive. However, if they find the killer then the case would be closed and your father released, which is probably what is going to happen.”

  “So the important thing is to find the fat guy who fired the gun?”

  “That’s right but if they don’t and there is a trial and your dad is still in trouble, you come see me and I’ll try to help you even though we aren’t crime lawyers, only maritime. Okay?”

  I didn’t really understand all that but I got the gist of it. I finished my Coke and thanked him politely.

  On my way out, I thanked the lady behind the desk.

  “I’m sorry I bothered you with no appointment,�
� I said.

  “That’s all right,” she said, “it was a nice break in the everyday rigamarole.”

  That was a word I didn’t know but it sounded like a good thing. I was finding out there are a lot of really nice people, you just have to find them.

  Happening 11

  Going down in the elevator, I thought about Lawyer Appleton saying that if the killer gets caught, my father would not have to be a material witness in jail anymore. Of course, it was not a sure thing that the fat killer would get nabbed but when you’ve got nothing, any news comes your way feels like something.

  Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle was high up on my favorite list of authors and Sherlock Holmes was always saying solving this and that was elementary but I doubt there’s a St. Louis police detective who’ll make the J & J thing elementary. So I guess I should try to help out. Not that I’m a solving genius just because I read all the cases that Sherlock Holmes solved in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but to coin a phrase, two hound dogs on the trail are better than one.

  So to begin with I went back to where all this started, not knowing who or what I was looking for, but I knew I had to start somewhere. I could go to J & J and ask about the Bulova case but then they would know who I was and I couldn’t snoop around. There was a boy on the corner next to a mound of Post-Dispatches waving a paper in the air and calling out, “Get your Post-Dispatch!” I made my way over to him and asked if he needed any help. He was a big kid, fourteen or fifteen maybe, and he told me to get lost. I started to tell him my story and he listened but I kept getting interrupted by people getting papers. Finally he said, “Why’d they cuff your pop?”

  Said I didn’t know. Asked if he knew who the man was got killed.

  “Mr. Dempsey. Nice guy. Used to slip me an extra nickel now and then. My pop knew him.”

  “Who’s your pop?”

  “Worked at Scruggs. Got laid off. More’n a year ago.”

  “Lucky you got this job.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “Died from the influenza back when everyone had it. You got a mom?”

  “Yeah, she’s sick in a sanitarium.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Consumption. Second time.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t know exactly. Spots on her lungs and lots of coughing with blood. She can maybe die.”

  It was hard talking with him having to yell “Post-Dispatch! Get your Post-Dispatch!” and handling the coins. He told me his name, Augie Beckmier, said he’d try to get me a job like his if I wanted.

  I said no, thanks, because I had to try to find the killer and I was hoping he would help me. He said to come back in an hour when the boy who spelled him usually showed up.

  * * *

  —

  WE WENT down the block to a place called Pete’s Parlor where he ordered a root beer we shared with two straws. I asked him if he knew the people that worked at J & J. He said yes, he delivered papers to them every day. “Justin and Joel Jankman, the owners, they got a little office in the back. A guy in a cubicle does watch repair and there are three seller people, Dempsey was the one who handled money and stuff.”

  I asked him if he could get me their addresses. He said he thought he could since one of the sellers, Grace Dorso, was always very nice to him. “She’s too fat and too jolly but nothing not to like.”

  “And the Jankmans?”

  “Justin’s all right, makes jokes and kids with me. Joel’s a real dump. All about himself. Grabs a paper, pats me on the head, never pays, says catch you next time. Big load of blue-ribbon bullshit.”

  “But with everybody all over hitting bottom how can the Jankmans—”

  “Wedding rings. People scrape up their last dollar, starve, to get a wedding ring, especially one with diamonds. They probably go straight from their honeymoon to a pawnshop but the J brothers get the whipped cream off the top.”

  “You think everybody at J & J knew my father and his watches were coming in at three o’clock?”

  “Probably. That’s usually when salesmen come in.”

  “Did you see the murderer going in or out of the store?”

  “Nope. My job doesn’t leave me much time for gawking around. But I’ll help you any way I can. We are a couple a guys with pop trouble.”

  “Does your pop do anything?”

  “No. He’s given up trying. He had a little spot on the sidewalk off Washington near Fifth selling apples for five cents but there were apple guys all up and down the street with signs like ‘Help Feed My Hungry Kids’ and sometimes he’d spend a whole day sitting behind his apple sign and still have all the apples he started with.”

  “Same as my father and his glass candlesticks. Couldn’t give them away. Now he finally gets a job—”

  “My pop’s given up looking for work. He tried everything, everywhere, all he got was no, no, no, finally he just seemed to melt down. I mean from the pop I knew, I mean he was a great man, we went to ball games and played touch football and movie nights and all kinds of good stuff but then Mom died and…”

  He took a long pull on his root-beer straw. His voice got all choked up. I thought he was finished but he pushed his voice back.

  “Now he is all the time sad and to pay the rent and buy our food he has to sell my mom’s jewelry, all the things he gave her the sixteen years they were married, one at a time and every time he has to take something out of her jewelry box, he cries, I mean, sits there in the kitchen with the bracelet or the ring and he can’t stop his crying. I guess each thing reminds him of the time he gave it to her, where they were, all that stuff. He really loved my mom.”

  I said that my father had the same thing with a brown diamond ring he gave my mom that she loved and he is trying hard not to sell it even though she wants him to. He once cried when Nathan the pawnbroker almost sold it.

  The root beer was gone and I thought it was high time to change the subject.

  “Augie, when you go into J & J to deliver the paper, can I go in with you? I’d like to see those people and maybe locate my father’s watch case.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Come on. We can do it right now.”

  We went back to his newsstand. Augie took several newspapers and gave me a couple. He waved to the boy who had taken over.

  I followed Augie into the J & J. There were two people standing at a glass counter looking at several wedding rings spread before them on a black velvet cloth. Behind the counter was one of the three sellers Augie had mentioned, name of Grace Dorso. A kind of chubby lady with bright circles of rouge on her cheeks. There was a little cubicle with a man hunched over an opened watch, a small glass squished in his eye. The two other sellers stood behind an empty glass case so I guess it was the one that was robbed. The man was very dapper, striped suit with a little handkerchief peeking out of his dress pocket, a high, stiff collar, and a tie with red, white, and blue stripes. The other seller was a gorgeous young woman, like movie gorgeous with bright red fingernails and lipstick that matched. They said hi to Augie as he gave them their papers. He introduced me as his assistant. I gave one of my papers to the gorgeous movie star.

  As I walked around I looked as best I could for a sign of the Bulova case but saw nothing.

  We left and I asked Augie what he knew about these people. He knew that Joel was married, no kids, big fancy house and car. Justin married with kids, nothing fancy. The beauty, Bonnie Porter, marriage diamond on her finger, but Augie knew nothing about the watch-repair guy, Sol Greenblatt.

  “And the guy in the swell clothes?”

  “Oh that’s Matt J. Pringle, been here forever, gives out cards with his face on ’em.”

  “Listen, Augie, one of these J & J people may have been in cahoots with the killer. Would you help me find out about them?”

 
“Like who?”

  “Like the Pringle guy.”

  “What about him?”

  “Follow him home without his knowing. Who he lives with. How he lives. Anything looks significant. Any sign of guns around. Anybody visited could be the killer? All kinds of stuff like that.”

  “I see him take the number twelve streetcar every day at six.”

  “Get on it with him. But don’t let him see you.”

  “Sure. But how’ll I get in touch with you?”

  “You can’t. I haven’t got a place right now. But I’ll be in touch with you.”

  Which reminded me, I had to line up somewhere for the night, and it wouldn’t be on top of the tennis nets in the shed in Forest Park with mice tickling my toes.

  Happening 12

  Connecting with Augie was a big plus for me, not only was he going to detectify on Mr. Pringle, but his life was pretty much like mine, only difference his mother was dead and his father wasn’t in jail.