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Manny Feldman, the crusty neighborhood mechanic who only recently could speak to me without gritting his teeth, was sitting in my office, rolling his already battered baseball cap into an unrecognizable wad. A surreptitious glance when I greeted him at the door showed me he had made a real effort to spruce up before confronting me on my turf rather than his, which was the floor of his dilapidated old garage on Curtis Street, six blocks or so northeast of my building. Manny's fingers had been the only gnarled digits, other than my uncle's, ever to curry and pamper the car my uncle had willed to me, the gorgeous AMX Piranha. When Manny learned that someone else was now on that select list, and a mere woman to boot, he became first astounded, second apoplectic, third acquisitive, and then barely resigned. As for the third condition, he spent weeks and weeks raising the price, trying to buy the car from me. The offers he started with were quite ludicrous, assuming -- as he surely though erroneously did -- that no mere female would have the foggiest notion of just what a collector's item this car was. The last of the offers was nearly as ridiculous, waving under my nose offers of more than several hundred dollars over any reasonably sane offer. It was only then he finally got it: I would not sell that car at any price. I had coveted it all my life, and it was mine! That's when he finally gave it up as hopeless. It was much later he was forced to admit, albeit very grudgingly, that I took great pains to never abuse it, didn't strip the gears or throw any rods, kept it always washed and polished -- well, my amanuensis, Ted Trump, did anyway. I even swore a solemn oath to him that no grimy paws would ever come within yards of her innards except for his grimy paws. At long last he imperceptibly began to thaw. This morning he wasn't in his normal attire of grease-stained overalls, buck workboots, and leather pillbox hat. Manny had on a spotty brown suit of ancient vintage, a plaid shirt, a turquoise-and-silver bolo tie, and new black wingtip shoes over a remarkable pair of hand-knit purple and pink argyle socks. His short gray hair was slicked down with some kind of goo, a part running straight as an arrow, front to back, about an inch to the right of the top of his head. The pomade was losing its grip, and the nearly military cut was beginning to lift at the ends, giving his skimpy thatch the look of girding itself for imminent take-off. He had made a Herculean effort to remove the mechanic's stigmata -- ground-in grease -- from his hands. The knuckles looked nearly raw from a scrubbing. Manny kept kneading the defenseless vitriolic green cap, clearly wishing to be anywhere but here. He had made me grovel, pull my forelock and say "Yessir" on many occasions while pounding his car expertise down my throat; I was sorely tempted to return the favor now. But the cranky old duffer was so obviously troubled, it seemed high time to be magnanimous and just get on with it. "Manny, quit beating up on that hat -- here, let me have it," said I, reaching over to pull it from his death-grip, placing it on the corner of the desk in front of him. Manny gawked at the mashed hat in silence, then reached into his jacket pocket for the neatly ironed and folded handkerchief which he promptly started twisting and wadding. I sighed, figuring those hands were accustomed to working on something, and he simply had to keep them occupied somehow even if only in rending a hapless handkerchief. When it didn't appear he quite knew where to start, I primed the pump with, "Do you have a lawyer yet, Manny?" "Yeah," he croaked, cleared his throat noisily and at length, before continuing in his usual gravelly voice, "a shyster who lives up the block a little ways from me. He's the guy what bailed me out of jail last night." The handkerchief emitted a faint ripping sound, but Manny didn't seem to hear it. Fuzz picked about this time to plop his six pounds onto the floor from his usual work-hours perch on my office couch, and Manny jumped about a foot. "Whatinhell's that?" he growled, pointing a crooked forefinger at my innocent little friend. "That, obviously, is a purebred Chihuahua who is registered with the AKC, a wonderful dog, and the only blood kin I have left." Manny worked his jaws, shot his sly and rheumy old eyes from Fuzz to me, then finally acknowledged, "Well, there is a certain likeness, now you mention it." I didn't know whether to slug him or laugh out loud, so I laughed -- the crotchety old coot! "Well, Manny, now that you've got your lick in for the day, let's get down to it. What do you want to hire me to do?" "Hire? Who said anything about hire? I ain't got no money, girl, to hire! What I propose is a trade-off. You get me out of this mess, and I'll take care of your uncle's car proper." He was frowning with real outrage at me as if I had suggested our imminent betrothal. "Manny, you already take care of my car proper; what are you saying would be so different about --" I stopped in mid-sentence when I saw him shaking his head, waggling his finger at me. Slowly and carefully he spelled his proposal out to the obviously backward woman before him. "I mean I'll do it for free instead of you paying me to fix it up when you ruin it." "When I ruin it? Good Gawd!" What was I going to do with him? So far in the months I'd been driving the car, his entire work on it consisted of changing the plugs, one oil change and filter, one new air filter, and checking the brakes -- which were fine. I could rack up charges totaling that amount in one day's concentrated sleuthing! "Manny, I don't think you understand how I work. If I take your case, it could mean --" "Never mind, woman! If you're so busy, Missy, you don't need my trade, so I'll say 'good-day' to you and be gone! Sorry I bothered you with my problems!" All this was yelled as he rose to his impressive five-foot-five height, grabbed his mangled hat, and stomped for the door, sending Fuzz in full flight from the thunder of his departure. "Wait a minute, Manny! Just hold on there a --" "No, no! My Momma always told me to leave when I was shown the door, so I'm leavin' right now," and he did, slamming both doors behind him, the office and the front. I was glad that for security precautions I'd followed the advice of my insurance carrier and changed the expanse of glass in the inner double doors to Lexan. Glass would never have survived it. The outer door was a huge solid wood slab and vibrated the windows in my office as he shut it. I sat there and watched that bandy-legged figure throw his indignant self into the cab of his pickup, fire her up, and take off like Barney Oldfield. And I felt about two inches high. Pride and fear coupled with an innate reluctance to ask for help from anyone, let alone a mere woman, had propelled that old man right out of my door. He wasn't really angry with me any more than he always was with everybody; it was the helplessness he felt talking -- rather, bellowing -- and railing against something over which he had no control. Deciding it might be prudent to wait an hour or so before begging the old buzzard to forgive me and allow me to snatch his chestnuts from the blaze, I dialed Sergeant Morales, my old partner and still buddy, to see what he could tell me anything over and beyond what the morning paper had detailed in lurid prose. "Morales." Whitey did tend to run on and on. "Hi, Whitey, it's Sheila." "So it is. How you doing, amiga?" "I'm doing just dandy. But I have a new client -- at least I think I do -- who's not doing too well. What can you tell me about the body in Manny Feldman's garage? That is, what can you tell me beyond the colorful terminology of the morning newscasts and paper?" "You think you have a new client? How come you don't know whether or not you have a client?" When I started to explain, he said, "Never mind -- I don't have time to listen to you natter on like an old woman --" "WHITEY --" And he had got me again, enjoying my outrage while chuckling in my ear. "Oh, get on with it, Idiot Boy," was the feeble best I could manage. "Beyond what you know, not much, I guess. I haven't had time to read anything printed about it, and it's too soon for any forensic reports; so I'm supposing you already know the body was hanging from the chain of the hoist which was dug into the neck, right? Not a pretty sight, let me tell you. We had to take the poor old man to the emergency room that discovered the body -- damned near had a stroke." "The paper seemed to be rather wishy-washy about cause of death -- I mean, whether suicide or murder. The fact you brought poor old Manny in leads me to believe you lean towards foul play; am I right?" "Oh, yeah, that's right. The thing was set up to look like a suicide -- you know, the ladder was placed strategically on the floor to look like he'd kicked it over in his death throes after climbing it and literally tying a loop in the end of the chain around his neck. "But if he hanged himself, then he must have beaten the hell out of himself first for his lower lip was split, his nose was broken, his left cheekbone was badly scraped, and we found one loosened tooth in his mouth." "Uh-huh, that does tend to put the question to death being self-inflicted. "But, Whitey, what made you focus on Manny? I know he's a hard case and a pain in the ass, but I can't see him killing anyone, to say nothing of being able to physically manhandle the victim first. He's old, and he's just a scrawny little dude, after all." "Yeah, and strong as a bull, for all that. Also, he was once convicted of manslaughter. I bet he didn't tell you about that one, now, did he?" "No, I can't say he did. How long did he serve, and when was that -- how long ago?" "It was 1946. He had just been mustered out, and he was waylaid by another ex-swabbie, someone holding a grudge from some insult or other. They got into a fight in a bar, and Manny ended up breaking the guy's neck while they were rolling around on the floor. The witnesses said he was hardly even winded while standing there, looking down with apparent satisfaction on this considerably bigger man lying there who had his head under his wing." I pondered the vagaries of fortune for a minute or two. "As far as how long he served, it wasn't overly long -- I've got it here someplace -- well, just say not too long. The same witnesses said he had been mightily provoked before lighting into the other man." "Okay, Whitey, I got that. But what made you think he had done it again? The crimes bear no resemblance to each other -- or am I missing something?" "Well, from what I've been told, Manny and the guy who died in the garage, this Bill Webber -- aka 'Bumpy,' for God's sake -- have carried on a running war since the first day he started working there, and that was about ten years ago. There's some shirt-tail relationship between the two of them, it appears, and lots and lots of bad blood." "Well, I guess I should thank you, Whitey: You've just made my problem a bigger one. Now that I think on it, you have always been an expert at muddying up the waters for me when I ask a simple question." "Simple is the word for your questions, all right. "Anyway, you're welcome, Nasty. We aims to please. Call again sometime when I'm not in," and hung up. Too bad Whitey has been married for thirty-some years to a smiling lady I consider a friend, for I do love that little man. |