I drove south again and put my car in the parking lot at Whitewater Beach. It was almost noon then; most of the concessions would be open, even on a weekday.
I walked slowly down the midway. Most of the smaller concessions were open, the ones that would probably have been open as early as ten last Saturday. None of them was doing much business as yet. The few that had people in front of them at the moment I skipped and went back to after I’d talked to the concessionaires at places beyond. I showed each of them the two photographs, one of Jimmy and one of Obie. All I wanted to know was whether they remembered seeing the two boys together or either of them separately. When I got an affirmative answer I tried to pin it down as to when.
But I didn’t get any affirmative answer concerning seeing the two boys together. A lot of them remembered seeing Jimmy around. No special times, just around in general. Which wasn’t surprising, since I already knew he’d hung around the park a lot. The girl on duty at the lemonade stand said he’d bought drinks there quite a few times, she thought. But she didn’t remember when the last time was, except that she didn’t recall seeing him for a week or two. And Obie’s picture drew a complete blank from her. He’d looked vaguely familiar to a few others. Only one person–a ring game concessionaire–definitely recognized him, and it turned out that he didn’t remember seeing him at the park; he was a football fan who followed high school football and had seen Obie play. He was only a few years out of high school and had played football himself. He wanted to talk football but I didn’t want to. I moved on. The first time up the midway I had to skip the lunch stand that was almost across the areaway that led back to the first dip of the Blue Streak; it was too busy.
On my way back, picking up the few I’d missed the first time, I took the Blue Streak for a stopover because my beefy friend in the sailor straw had just got there.
He wasn’t operating yet, but he was doing some paper work in the ticket booth. I rapped on the glass and he raised the window.
“Hi,” I said. “Recognize either of these kids?”
He looked at the pictures I put on the ledge in front of him and then shook his head.
“You saw one of them all right,” I told him.
He looked puzzled for a second. “You mean one of ‘em’s the kid who–”
“I thought you were the first one there. Didn’t you see him?”
“Jesus, did I see him? Face down across the tracks I saw him. And I didn’t roll him over to look at his face either. Why should I?” He looked down again at the pictures. “But if it’s one of these, it’d have to be the dark-haired one, not the blond kid. Say, are you still harping on that accident? I thought you was writing an article on roller coasters.”
“I am. But there’s one angle on the accident I’m still investigating. Probably doesn’t mean anything.”
“On the level, you a reporter? Or a cop?”
“A reporter.” I grinned at him. “Which means I could be either one. I mean, if I was a cop I could say I was a reporter. But if I was a reporter I couldn’t claim to be a cop–not without going to jail for it.”
I left him puzzling that out and went on down the midway. The lunch stand still had customers. But it occurred to me that I was getting hungry myself so I stopped and ordered a hamburger sandwich. When the grizzled man who ran the counter brought it to me a few minutes later I had the two pictures lying on the counter facing him. “Recognize either of these kids?” I asked him.
He bent over to look at the pictures. “Umm–that dark-haired kid I’ve seen around. And the blond one too, but not so often.”
“Ever see them together?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Remember when you last saw the blond one?”
“Hell, no. I see thousands of people a day. How’d I remember– Hey, wait a minute.”
He rescued two hamburgers off the grill and put them into buns and served them. Then he came back.
“Look,” he said. “I might remember at that. But why should I? I might be getting the kid in trouble. You a cop?”
I said, “I’m a lawyer. And you might be getting the kid out of trouble. He’s in it already, and he needs an alibi for–for a certain time. He says he was here at the park then and I’m trying to find somebody who can prove he was.”
“When’s the time?”
“Wouldn’t mean much if I told you first, would it?”
“It was Saturday morning, early.”
“How early? Before ten o’clock?”
“Damn if I know. I got here around past nine, maybe a little later, but I was busy for a while getting things ready. He was my first customer that day. It could have been before ten.”
“How do you remember for sure it was last Saturday?”
“That was the day the kid was killed on the Blue Streak. Jeez, I heard it–heard wood splintering and the noise the car made when it ran off– and ran over there.”
“Was that before or after the blond kid bought something here?”
“After. But it couldn’t have been more’n a few minutes after.”
“But he wasn’t still eating at the counter?”
“No. I’m sure because I took a look to be sure there weren’t any customers, or any coming. Then I pulled the bills out of the register–took a chance on the change–and ran over to see what the crash had been.”
“Did you see the blond kid over there?”
“Not that I remember. There were six or seven people around by the time I got there, but I don’t remember him being one of them.”
“You’re sure he was alone while he was at the counter here?”
“Sure. He bought a coke, that’s all, and stood there to drink it. The bottle was on the counter.”
“Did you see him leave? Which way he walked?”
“Nope, I was back getting things ready for the day’s business. I didn’t stand there watching him drink the coke and go away. All I know is he wasn’t there any more by the time I heard the crash.”
And that was all I was going to learn from him, so I followed through with my pretense of wanting an alibi witness by taking down his name and home address. And I’d finished my hamburger by then and wandered off. I tried the couple of remaining concessions I hadn’t got yet and then went to the parking lot and got in my car.
I hadn’t really expected to, but I’d got something after all. Not much, but something. Obie had been right near the scene of the accident and just before it had happened. If only I could have found someone who’d seen him and Jimmy together just before the accident …
What do you mean, accident? I asked myself.
And not murder either, exactly. Murder means there’s a motive. And Obie had no motive for killing Jimmy Chojnacki. Certainly and above all, he didn’t know that his billfold was in Jimmy’s pocket.
But does a tiger need a motive? Oh, it has one often: hunger. But not always even that. A rogue tiger will kill for the pure savage joy of killing.
3
I had a date with a tiger.
Not to talk to, not yet, but damn it I wanted a look at him. And I was pretty sure I could see him at the railroad station at two o’clock. Mrs. Westphal had said he’d be back “at two o’clock” from Springfield and there was a two o’clock train that came through there. If he’d been coming back by car she’d have said “early in the afternoon” rather than such a specific hour. Private automobiles don’t follow timetables.
It was now half past twelve; I didn’t want to eat lunch yet, though, because the hamburger had killed my appetite. And it was too soon to start for the railroad station.
Maybe, while I was so near, I could look up the Pete Brenner whom Mrs. Chojnacki had mentioned as Jimmy’s best friend. She’d said he worked at the fruit market “down the block”; there wouldn’t be more than one or two fruit markets on Radnik Street in or near the
2900 block. And it would kill time for me.
I drove to Radnik and along it slowly. There was a fruit market near Paducah, a block and a half from where Mrs. Chojnacki lived. I found a place to park and went inside.
It was fairly busy. There were more customers than clerks so no clerk accosted me, and none of them was a kid that could have been Pete Brenner. I walked on to an open doorway at the back and looked through. A boy of about seventeen was working at a big table back there, bunching carrots. The color of his hair just matched the carrots he was handling. I went through the doorway and walked up to him.
“You’re Pete Brenner?” I asked him.
He turned around and his eyes gave me a dusting-over. They weren’t shifty eyes, but they were hard and suspicious. They took all of me in before he said “Yeah.”
He was going to be tough to handle. He wasn’t going to swallow any of the stories I’d been handing around so glibly the last few days. He wasn’t going to answer any questions beyond that first one without having a reason to answer them.
There was only one reason I could give him, besides the truth and I wasn’t going to give him that. I took the reason out of my billfold. “Want to earn a fin by answering a few questions?”
“Who are you?”
I grinned at him. “If I’m answering the questions it’ll cost you a fin instead of me.”
“What are the questions?”
“They’re about Jimmy Chojnacki. And he’s dead so you can’t do him any harm by answering them.”
He looked up over my shoulder at what must have been a clock on the wall behind me. He said, “I’m takin’ off for lunch in four minutes. Wait outside. Boss don’t like me to gab in here while I’m workin’.”
“Okay, Pete,” I said. I went through the fruit store again and waited just outside the door.
In a few minutes he came out. He said, “I got only a half hour. Can we talk while I eat?”
“If it’s near here.”
“Across the street. That hamburger place.”
I thought I could eat another hamburger myself by now. Added to the one I’d eaten at the park it would hold me until dinner time. “Swell,” I said.
We sat at the counter, down at the far end. I took out the five-dollar bill and put it down between us as soon as the counterman had taken our orders and had gone front to the grill. Pete Brenner glanced at it but didn’t make any move to pick it up.
He said, “Listen, you can’t buy me for five bucks. Besides that, I want to know who you are and what this is all about. If it’s okay, then I’ll answer your questions–if I like’em.”
No, there wasn’t going to be any use handing him a story I couldn’t prove. He was a tough little redhead, and he knew it.
I put my press pass on the counter. I said, “I’m a reporter. There’s my name and my paper, the Herald. I think I’ve got an angle on Jimmy’s accident. Maybe it’s screwy but if it isn’t, it’s going to be a big story. And it can’t hurt Jimmy. If I get the story I won’t quote you unless you want me to, so it can’t hurt you.”
“What’s the angle?”
“That’s my business. I’d be a sucker to tell you. You could take it to a reporter on the other paper in town and peddle it to him.”
“Let’s see if I like the questions.”
“You were Jimmy Chojnacki’s closest friend?”
“I guess I was.”
“When did you last see him?”
“The evening before he was killed, up to about midnight. Him and me bummed around awhile, shot some pool. He was goin’ home when he left me.”
“Did he say anything about what he was going to do the next day, Saturday?”
“Yeah, he said he’d probably go over to the park, Whitewater.”
“Alone?”
“I guess so. I usta go with him sometimes but since I got this fruit market job I can’t get off Saturdays. That’s the busiest day they got there.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t going to meet anyone there?”
“Hell no, I’m not sure. But if he was he didn’t say so to me.”
The counterman was bringing our sandwiches. “Which one of you wanted the French fries with?”
“Mine’s the plain one,” I said.
He reached for the five on the counter. “Take ’em both out of this?”
“Sure.”
He brought the change and left. I pocketed it and put down another five-dollar bill.
Pete looked at it. “That’s all you wanted to know?”
I nodded, and he stuck the bill into his pocket. “You didn’t get much for it,” he said.
“Guess I didn’t,” I said. I hadn’t, but then I hadn’t expected much. And I hadn’t yet asked the final question; I’d waited deliberately until after he’d taken the money so I could ask it casually. I was pretty sure he’d answer anyway, and it wouldn’t be one of the paid-for answers.
I waited some more, until we’d almost finished our sandwiches and until a few remarks about how damn hot the weather had been had intervened. Then I asked, “Do you know a boy named Obie Westphal?”
“Sure. That is I know him by sight; I don’t really know him. He was in my class at high. I mean, the class I was in until I quit a year ago.”
“Do you know if Jimmy knew him?”
“Just about like I did, I guess.”
“He never mentioned him?”
“Not unless we happened to be talking about football. We both went to a couple of South Side games last fall so naturally we talked about ’em. But Jimmy didn’t really know Obie, or maybe just enough to say hi.”
He picked up the last of his French fries and then turned to look, at me before he put it in his mouth. “What’s Obie got to do with this?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I went to South Side myself and still see a football game now and then. I was trying to remember whether Obie would be playing this coming season or whether he graduated last June.”
“Oh. Well, he’s got a year to go. He started as a freshman the year Jimmy and me started, so he was a junior last year.” His eyes turned hard and suspicious again. “How’d you know we went to South Side? I didn’t say that till after you asked about Obie?”
“You’re not the first person I talked to. How’d you think I knew you were a friend of Jimmy’s, and found you?”
“All right, how did you?”
“That’ll cost you five dollars.”
He laughed. “You win. Thanks for the fin, and the lunch.”
I left him in front of the restaurant and walked to my car. I’d have to drive fairly fast now to make the railroad station by two o’clock.
4
I made it, and I needn’t have hurried. The bulletin board showed that the train was going to be twenty minutes late. The station was crowded, and it was hot as hell. I couldn’t find a vacant seat, so I leaned against a post that gave me a good view of the door he’d come through.
I watched the door and waited.
I knew him the minute he came through it. He looked a bit older than he looked on the picture in my pocket and quite a bit bigger than I’d guessed him to be. Quite a bit bigger than I am. At least six feet tall and a hundred and eighty, maybe ninety pounds. He was a young giant with shoulders made to order for football. He had short blond hair and didn’t wear a hat. He was good-looking as hell. Just about every girl who saw him would be nuts about him.
He carried a light suitcase–at least it seemed light the way he carried it, but from the look of his shoulders he might have carried it that way even if it had been loaded with bricks. He put it down just inside the door and stood looking around. Then he grinned; he yelled “Hi, guys!” He picked up the suitcase and started toward two other young men–or high school kids, whichever you want to call them–about his age. Both of them wore striped T shirts; o
ne of them carried what looked like a clarinet case.
They stood talking a minute and then all three drifted over to the soft drink counter. They had cokes and Obie paid for them. He drank two himself, rapidly, as though the train ride had made him thirsty. Then the three of them headed for the door labeled Men and went through it.
I found a vacant seat on a bench from which I could watch the door without being conspicuous. I watched it for what seemed quite a while, and when I looked at my watch I saw that it had been quite a while. I remembered then that the men’s room of the railroad station had a door on the other side that led through a cigar store to the street.
I went into the men’s room and they weren’t there. I went on into the cigar store and they weren’t there, either; not that I’d expected them to be. I thought, what a hell of a shadow I’d make.
The proprietor was picking his teeth behind the cigar counter. I bought a cigar and asked, “Three high school kids come through here from the station a few minutes ago? One of ’em a big blond kid?”
“Yeah,” he said. He took the toothpick out of his mouth. “They got in that car that’s been parked out front, the one I been laughing at.”
“What about it?
“Stripped-down jalopy with a wolf’s head on the radiator cap and painted on the side, ‘Don’t laugh; your daughter may be inside’”
“The blond kid drive it?”
“Nope, the one with the squealer.”
“Squealer?”
“The clary, the licorice stick.” He grinned. “I talk the language. I got two kids in high.”
“God help you,” I said. “Have a cigar.”
I gave him back the cigar I’d just bought from him and went out, leaving him staring at me.
I got in my own car half a block down the street and sat there trying to think until I realized how hot I was and that I could think just as well with the car moving, no matter where.
That is, if I could think at all. Just then, I could only wonder if I was stark raving mad to have thought what I’d thought about Obie Westphal. Now that I’d actually seen him it didn’t really seem possible. Tigers drink blood, not cokes. And one may smile and be a villain, but can a homicidal maniac grin as Obie had grinned at his friends? I didn’t know.
The Deep End Page 8