Death of a Rainmaker

by Laurie Loewenstein

  Temple pulled his pad out and started taking notes.

  Baker went back to the file. “Five feet eight inches and a hundred thirty-three pounds in July. He’s gained a few by now, I’d bet. Assigned to Bunkhouse Four. That’s about it.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  Baker put the file back and rose. “’Course. Sundays the corps has the day off. We organize activities. Today are the boxing finals and a baseball game. I’ll walk you over to the rec fields.”

  Temple stood. “I’m sorry for this. And my deputy, well, you can guess how down-at-the-mouth he is. He credits the CCC with turning his life around. Sometimes I think he’s more a CCCer than a deputy.”

  Baker laughed. “Ed’s got a fidelity streak a mile long.”

  He led Temple between the two rows of barracks. A couple of young men were crouched in doorways, bent over writing tablets. The thick thrum of a guitar came from the shadowed interior of another. Otherwise the bunkhouses appeared empty.

  At the far end was a dining hall. Competing aromas of roast chicken and dish soap wafted from the windows.

  “We try to give the boys something special for Sunday supper, although it is questionable if that is necessary since they inhale whatever is put in front of them,” Baker said over his shoulder. Up ahead, hoots and whistles could be heard. At least two hundred young men were spread across two large playing fields. A baseball game was underway on one. The batter, a lanky kid with a heavy hank of hair falling in his eyes, swung and missed to a chorus of jeers from the outfield. Opposite, a thick crowd surrounded a crude boxing ring made up of a planked floor enclosed by thick rope tied to iron piping. Inside the ring, two boys circled one another.

  “Come on, Jimmy, sock him a good one!” someone shouted, and one of the boxers sprang toward his opponent, attempting an upper jab that failed to connect. The other kid, shorter and wiry, pranced backward out of range, a pair of too-large gloves shielding his concave chest. Someone struck a cooking pot with a metal spoon to end the round. The two fighters retreated to their corners where they wiped the snot from their noses and got an earful of advice from supporters.

  Jimmy was outfitted like the real McCoy in a pair of sateen basketball shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. He was bent over, sucking in air. His opponent, in sagging trousers and bare chested, seemed scarcely winded as he shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. He poured a ladle of water over his head from the corner bucket and shook it off like a nerved-up terrier.

  An eager spectator leaned forward. “You show ’em, Carmine. Show ’em for us new guys.”

  DiNapoli nodded as if to say, Will do, and turned back to the ring.

  The pot was struck and the two boxers moved warily toward one another. Jimmy was still breathing heavily and DiNapoli seemed to sense this. With a series of jabs, he backed the boy into the ropes and landed a solid hit to the abdomen. Jimmy doubled over, the ref split them up, and DiNapoli glanced out at the crowd with the start of a grin. It abruptly vanished when his eyes fell on Temple’s uniform. Jimmy got back on his feet and the ref gestured for them to continue the fight. DiNapoli grabbed the closest corner post and vaulted over the ropes.

  “Hey, what the heck!” someone shouted as the boxer dashed away from the ring.

  “Ah, jeez,” Temple said. “Let’s go.” He and Baker set off at a trot.

  DiNapoli was sprinting, despite the heavy boxing gloves. Temple shifted to a walking pace, knowing there was no sanctuary for the kid out there. No alleys, no apartment house doorway—just wide-open prairie.

  “Let him run it out,” Temple said to Baker.

  Eventually DiNapoli slowed to an open-mouthed jog. Then a walk. The kid’s knees buckled and he slumped to the ground. Temple and Baker caught up a minute later.

  “Let’s go,” Temple said.

  Panting, DiNapoli pushed up onto all fours, wobbled, and stood. Temple untied the knots on the gloves. Wordlessly, the three walked back to camp.

  “Go in and clean up,” Temple said to DiNapoli as they approached the washhouse. “I’ll wait.”

  The barracks were deserted. Everyone, including the letter-writers and the guitar player, had been herded to the baseball field by the camp staff. The kid emerged from the washhouse with face and bare chest dripping. Lean but with some muscle on him, Temple noted. DiNapoli’s chest, neck, and arms were tawny. Funny. Coming from the city, you’d think he’d be paler. Had he been in camp here long enough to brown up?

  DiNapoli had one of those streetwise faces. Opaque. Closed in. And he had an older purple bruise along his jawline as if he’d gotten punched a day or so ago. Say, Friday night.

  Baker offered Temple the use of his office before moving off toward the ball field.

  “Follow me,” Temple said. DiNapoli nodded.

  Once inside Baker’s office, the sheriff pulled the two chairs across from one another and indicated that DiNapoli was to sit in one. He took the other, pushing it back a bit so he could cross his legs comfortably. DiNapoli sat with thighs wide, forearms resting on each, head bowed.

  “Son, why did you run?”

  DiNapoli shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “What?”

  DiNapoli raised his head. His eyes narrowed. “Said I don’t know.”

  “You’ve got to have some idea. You took off like a jackrabbit right in the middle of the round. One you seemed to be winning, by the way. Caught a glimpse of me and off you scooted.”

  DiNapoli shrugged again.

  A fly whizzed past Temple’s head, banged against the window glass. Searching for an escape route. It looped around to another window and finally commenced a twanging barrage against the screen door. It was the only sound for a full minute.

  Eventually Temple uncrossed his legs. “Okay. We’ll go into that later. I’ll tell you why I’m here. I have reports from several witnesses that you got into a fistfight with a Mr. Roland Coombs on Friday night. That so?”

  DiNapoli raised his eyes to the sheriff’s. The gaze was unreadable. “Yeah.”

  “And you’ve heard that Mr. Coombs’s body was found outside the theater yesterday?”

  DiNapoli jumped in, his voice raised: “I heard. But I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”

  “All right.” Temple’s tone was measured. “But could you tell me about the fight? How it came about? How you met up with Coombs?”

  DiNapoli tilted his head back, shut his eyes, and sighed. “It being Friday night, me and a couple of guys went to town to, you know, have a couple of beers, play some pool.”

  “Did you walk in?”

  “Started walking but a farmer gave us ride in the back of his truck. He said a rainmaker was set to shoot off explosives at the edge of Vermillion and he was going. Sounded fun. We asked if we could come along.”

  Temple tipped his chair back and laced his fingers behind his head. “Good show?”

  “The aces.” DiNapoli sat up. “Bam. Boom. Louder than fireworks. I thought for sure it’d start pouring right then. Afterward we talked to Coombs. Found out about his setup. How he rigged the explosives and all. Then he said he’d give us a ride back to town and buy us beers if we’d help him load his truck.”

  “When did you get to the Idle Hour?” Temple asked.

  DiNapoli thought for a moment. “Somewhere around ten.”

  “Big crowd?”

  “Guess so. For around here. Not the same as in Kansas City where you’ve got to squeeze inside it’s so packed. And that’s on a weeknight.”

  Temple turned his eyes away for a minute. “St. Joe’s close to Kansas City, right?”

  “Guess so. I’ve never been.”

  “Did you know Coombs was from St. Joe?”

  DiNapoli shook his head. “Never said where he was from.”

  “All right. You’re at the Idle Hour . . .”

  “Coombs bought us the suds. Then we all bought each other rounds.”

  “Get drunk?”

  “I was pretty pickled. Coombs ta
lked with us for a bit, then drifted away. An hour or so later, he was back.”

  “And that’s when the fight happened?”

  “I was out of matches and asked him for a light. Coombs tosses me his lighter. A spiffy sterling-silver job. I must have forgotten to give it back and he forgot to ask. But then he did ask, so I checked my pockets and couldn’t find it. He accused me of filching. We were both blotto by then. He wouldn’t let it go. Shoved me. I shoved back. He shoved me again. Then I let him have it. He got one across my jaw. I knew I’d overstayed my welcome. When I got outside, the fellows had ditched me.”

  The sheriff shifted in his seat. So far, the kid seemed to be honest. After so many years questioning moonshiners, he could tell when a man was telling the truth and when he was lying. Couldn’t explain it. Something in the eyes and hands.

  “Go on.”

  “I thought about walking back to camp but I was too drunk. I needed to sleep it off. I’d missed bed check but nothing I could do about that. I stumbled down a couple of alleys and found an unlocked shed. Nothing inside but a bunch of garden tools and a sack of ground cobs that made an okay mattress.”

  Temple grunted. “Passed out cold?”

  “Yeah—no, wait. I was soused but woke up at some point. Heard the back porch steps creaking, like someone didn’t want nobody to hear. I rolled over and looked out through a crack in the wood. There was a dark shape, but that was all I could make out.”

  “Man or woman?”

  DiNapoli paused. “Man. Not a big man, but bigger than a woman. He was stooped. Maybe an old guy? I didn’t come to again until morning. I peeked out. There was a woman cranking clothes through a washer on the back porch. She’d have seen me if I tried to leave. I lay back on the cobs and must have drifted off.”

  The shouts and hoots of young men rose in the distance. Someone on the diamond had likely scored, Temple thought. “And then what?” he asked.

  “And then the shed door was rattling. It was the wind. Howling and spraying dirt through every opening. There was a window but it didn’t do no good since I couldn’t see a thing. That was one hell of a dust storm. I was pinned down for a couple of more hours, knowing that whole time I’d be in big trouble at camp, but there was nothing I could do about it.”

  “How long were you in the shed?”

  “However long the storm lasted. When it stopped, I started hoofing it to camp. I thought I’d get a ride along the way but no go. My stomach was yapping something fierce. I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before except a couple of Saltines at the bar. So when I spotted a campfire by the tracks I made a beeline. There was a whole crowd of fellows there. Had some chicken that some . . . that some fellow cooked up. Finally crawled back to camp around midnight. Got caught by the senior leader and put on KP for a month.”

  Temple stood, stretched his legs. He wandered over to examine the wall map. “So you’re telling me you were nowhere near the Jewel on Saturday?”

  “The movie theater? No sir, I wasn’t.”

  “Anyone see you around the shed or when you headed back to camp?”

  DiNapoli shook his head.

  “Where was the house? What street?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of blocks from the bar.”

  “Would you know it if you saw it again?’

  “Maybe. But I was pretty blotto.”

  “So you got drunk, got in a fistfight with Coombs, staggered into someone’s toolshed to sleep it off, and then, after the storm the next day, walked back to camp after taking a detour at the jungle beside the tracks. And you never saw Coombs after he left the bar on Friday night?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So why did you run when you saw me?”

  DiNapoli shook his head. “Instinct, I guess.”

  “Have you had run-ins with the law before?”

  “No sir.”

  Outside, the wind picked up. A metal chain on the flagpole took to clanking.

  Temple said, “Let’s go over to your barracks. I’m going to need to see the clothes you were wearing Friday.”

  DiNapoli paled. “Sure.”

  In Bunkhouse Four, DiNapoli led Temple to his bed, which was made up army style with a wool blanket stretched tight. A row of hooks had been nailed above the beds and from DiNapoli’s hung a white duffel bag.

  “Dirty laundry’s in there,” he said. “Clean stuff’s in the footlocker.”

  Temple took down the bag, tugged the drawstring, and dumped the contents on DiNapoli’s bed. A wrinkled green uniform, socks, and underwear tumbled out.

  “What were you wearing Friday night?”

  Pulling his hands from under his armpits, the boy poked through the pile. “These trousers, I think. And this.” He picked up a CCC shirt.

  Right away, the sheriff saw what might be dried blood on the pocket and on one of the cuffs. “Your blood?”

  DiNapoli dropped his head. “Coombs’s. At the bar. I got him between the nose and the lip. It was a real bleeder.”

  “Not the next day? Not in the alley?”

  DiNapoli’s eyes widened. “No! Jeez, you don’t really think I killed him, do ya? ’Cause I didn’t. I swear on my mother’s life.”

  Temple put the shirt aside. As he picked up the trousers, something fell out of a pocket and onto the floor. “This the lighter?”

  DiNapoli scratched his neck and gazed away. “Yeah.”

  “So you didn’t forget to give it to him?”

  “No. I boosted it. I boosted it and I smashed him in the face at the bar, but I didn’t kill him.”

  Temple shook his head. “This isn’t looking good right now. You know that?”

  “Yeah.” The kid sniffled, wiped his nose.

  Temple gathered up the trousers and shirt, put the lighter in an envelope, and tucked it in his shirt pocket. “I’m going to need to talk to you again tomorrow. See if we can’t locate that shed. In the meantime, don’t even think about running. I’m going to let Commander Baker know and ask that his entire staff keep their eyes trained on you. If you take off, it’ll only be harder on you. Understand?”

  DiNapoli nodded.

  “Okay. Let’s go talk to the commander.”

  * * *

  The wind battered the sedan’s snub nose mercilessly as Temple drove home. With dusk coming on, the dust swirling darkly across the asphalt blurred the boundaries of road and field. He tried to sort out his thoughts. Was a barroom fistfight enough of a motive for DiNapoli to hang around town overnight, track down Coombs’s whereabouts the next day, and wait for the odd chance to knock him off? Might be enough for a hotheaded kid. DiNapoli certainly had access to the type of weapon used, and his shirt was bloodied. Temple could be easily persuaded that DiNapoli was the killer. And a liar too. He’d lied about stealing the lighter. And, Temple thought, maybe about his life before the CCC. DiNapoli had known how to hunt down a place to sleep it off. Probably he’d spent some time bumming around, maybe riding the rails—acquiring that tan, learning the rules of the road, using people to his advantage. Another thing was the St. Joe connection. That needed more fleshing out but something could be there. Maybe Coombs and DiNapoli had butted heads before Friday.

  Temple absently scratched his chin. But then there was DiNapoli back at the camp and signing up for a boxing match. If he had killed Coombs and was expecting the sheriff to come after him, why hadn’t he just jumped the first freight out of town from the hobo jungle? Why make the hike back to camp at all? Maybe, Temple reasoned, he didn’t think he’d get caught. But surely with that fight in the bar witnessed by so many, DiNapoli knew he’d be a suspect. So how come he’d waited until today to run? And another thing: when the kid heard why Temple was questioning him, wasn’t there a spark of surprise in his eyes? They wouldn’t be closing the case today, that was for sure. But there was a healthy chance of an arrest before the primary.

  Temple pulled behind the courthouse and parked. On the third floor, the open kitchen window glowed. He sniffed
, then grinned. Sunday pot roast. As he stepped out of the car, his legs, protesting against the cramp of the footwell, moved like rusty jackknives. Being long-shanked was a scourge.

  The courthouse clock struck six, its toll displacing the sparrows atop the gabled roof and rattling Etha’s cut-glass tumblers in the china cabinet for a solid minute.

  * * *

  After returning from Lottie’s, Etha had tied on her apron and scrubbed the vegetables for dinner. The carrots were knobby with cracked skins and the turnips bore black spots. She’d decided that telling Temple about her trip to the jungle would do no good. It would just worry him for no reason. And hadn’t it all worked out? As she knifed potatoes into quarters, Etha’s brain kept murmuring, But then again . . . But then again . . . But then again, she’d never withheld anything from Temple. Not in thirty-two years of marriage. Was that true? She had withheld some of her innermost thoughts . . . about Jack, about her desire for another child after his death. But she’d never failed to tell him what she’d been doing or where she’d been or purposely mislead him as she had this time. Green shoots sprouted from the onions. She clipped them off and was pulling out the roasting pan from the oven when the bell struck six. She watched Temple walk toward the back entrance down below; he took off his hat and waved it at her. As gallant as a rodeo rider. Her stomach dipped. I can’t lie to this man. I’ve got to tell him.

  “Smells mighty fine,” he said, settling in at the kitchen table.

  “The same roast I make every Sunday. Some of the vegetables are long in the tooth, I’m afraid.”

  Temple laughed. “Same as me. I tell you, Etha, I’m feeling my age today.” He pulled off his boots, then his socks, and massaged his feet. “How are things with the Kleins? Same old Sturm und Drang?”