Mitch walked with her to the other room where a table had been set up for him to sign a stack of his books. He turned to her and asked, “What’d you think of the new book?”
His agent smiled before responding, “It’s very interesting, and you were right–it’s very different from the other books you’ve written. But I’ll give you my complete verdict later, I want to read some more.”
The line inside the bookstore for the signing was already forming with a group of impatient fans holding copies of his latest book.
“You okay?” she whispered making her way behind him.
“Yeah … I am now. Thanks for caring.” He smiled again, and she left him to his admiring fans. Was the room was beginning to feel warm? Yes, that must be it.
He pulled out his phone and went to check for messages. Nothing. Disappointment showed on his face. He shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “Showtime,” he proclaimed as he sat down to sign his first book.
Carol waited to make sure he had everything he needed to work his magic before she retreated to find an easy chair located in the lounge outside the cookbook section of the bookstore. She quickly opened her briefcase and eagerly returned to her reading…
“Dutch” Walker was being held in the Southern Missouri Regional Correctional Facility prison outside of Malden, Missouri. He was serving time for armed robbery. Police investigators never found the gun used in the crime so the courts could only sentence him to serve an eight-year term in prison. He would be out in three years with good behavior. His mother swore he was innocent and that he was at home with her the night the crime occurred. Unfortunately, the police found out she was in Los Angeles with her physician husband attending one of his many medical conventions. They would have charged her with perjury if they could have proved it.
I always liked Dutch. He was the same age as my older brother Josh, and he always kidded with me and roughed up my hair every time he saw me. He made me laugh. He was a body builder and had huge muscles on his arms, and I couldn’t believe it…he had tattoos on his biceps. A skull and crossbones on one and the name Mary tattooed on the other! Just like a pirate. When he was living at home, he would lift weights in the Walkers’ front yard every day, causing traffic to slow and girls to honk their car horns at him as they went by their house.
Dutch, with his ever-present cigar hanging from his mouth, rode his motorcycle from Saint Louis to Las Vegas then to Memphis where he went to work as a bodyguard for Elvis Presley. He always sent pictures to Timmy showing him and Elvis and a bunch of other guys they called the “gang.” He sent pictures of them playing football on Elvis’s front lawn and standing guard at his concerts. Wow! I wished I could meet “The King” someday.
Timmy and his mom had been visiting Dutch in southern Missouri for weeks. The prison was in the “boot-heel” of the state about a six-hour drive from Saint Louis, deep into the Ozark Mountains. I heard it was not a nice place. My mom would have gone crazy if she knew Timmy was visiting a prison. She didn’t like Dutch much either.
“Davey? Stop daydreaming. Here’s the list of things I need from Schnucks market,” my mother said as she handed me her list.
“Ssssschnucks?” I moaned. The nearest grocery store was Weis Brothers Market, and it was only two blocks, but Schnucks was a much longer walk, more than fifteen blocks away. It was a long walk on a hot day with bags of groceries.
“And come right home, and don’t you dare stop anywhere. Do you hear me, David Malloy?”
When my mother used my full name that was her way of saying I better listen to her and do what I was told.
“Yyyes, ma’am. I’ll cccome right hhome.”
“You’re a good boy, Davey. Has anyone ever told you that before?
“You have, Mom. All the ttime.”
She wrapped her arms around me, hugged me and kissed the top of my head. “Hurry now; go on, your father’ll be home soon. And dinner will be on the table.”
It was a long walk to Schnucks, both there and back. When I had to carry two bags, the groceries were so heavy that I always had to stop at different places to rest and get some air conditioning to cool off. Sometimes I would rest at Overland City Hall, sometimes at the YMCA, and sometimes at the new post office. When I went into the post office, so it didn’t look like I was just hanging around, I liked to study the FBI wanted posters.
I loved to look at the pictures, just in case I ever saw a wanted criminal on the street that I needed to arrest or report to Chief of Police “Johnny” Gestridge. Looking through all the wanted posters I thought, maybe I’d be a cop one day, track down all of these criminals and receive a big reward. Or maybe I could just find one and they would give me a cold Coke and a Banana Flip, my favorite with all that oozy white cream on the inside and soft Twinkie-like stuff on the outside. I liked it even better than Twinkies.
A block in Saint Louis was a loosely defined unit of measurement used in the Midwest, which defined distance. If you were giving directions to a stranger, you counted each intersecting street as a block, regardless of how long it actually happened to be. From our house to Weis Market was one block, but a long block so I always figured it was two blocks.
I started the long walk to Schnucks, over fifteen blocks away and it was hot. It was going to be a long, hot summer. I had to walk to Schnucks since the list had too much on it to carry on my bike.
It was stifling, and I could not breathe for a minute. The air was very still. There was no breeze at all.
I walked past the big brick house of Mr. and Mrs. Jost, our longtime next-door neighbors. They didn’t have any kids and were not sure what to make of me and the big Malloy clan living next door.
They always sounded so formal or maybe they were annoyed at me for something I had done. I was never sure. They were nice, but when Mrs. Jost offered candy from her clear-cut glass crystal candy bowl, she would always say, “Have one, won’t you, David?” And she meant just that, have one, not two or three or more, just one. How could I take just one when she was showing me what seemed to be a bushel basket full of chocolate Hershey candy kisses?
Mrs. Jost waved to me as I walked by. She walked towards me and away from her brand new Edsel parked in the driveway saying, “Hello, Davey. How are you today?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Jost. How are you?” I answered politely but continued to walk. It was too hot to stand still.
“Very fine, thank you. Tell your parents I asked about them.”
I stopped walking. “What did you want to ask them, Mrs. Jost?”
“It’s just a manner of speaking, David. Tell them I wish them well, okay?”
“They aren’t sick that I know of, Mrs. Jost.”
“David, don’t be so annoying. Just tell them I said hello, okay?” said a now thoroughly annoyed Mrs. Jost. Why is she always so mad at me? I guess I’ll never know.
“Oh Davey,” she called after me, “Charles wants to talk with you. Can you wait a minute, please?” Charles was her longtime husband. She had showed me their wedding pictures once when he had hair, and he looked like a totally different man, young even.
“Sure, Mrs. Jost.”
“Charles?” she called to inside the house. “Young Davey Malloy is out here. You wanted to talk to him, didn’t you, dear?”
“Yes, I’ll be right out,” came a deep voice from inside. He came out dressed in his usual khakis, and an old blue and silver Air Force t-shirt he loved to wear. It was stretched tight across his chest.
“Hi, Davey. Having a good summer so far?” he asked drying off his hands with a red work towel. Must be working on his car again, as always.
“Hi, Mr. Jost. Yes sir, it’s going to be a great summer.” It was hot standing there on the sidewalk. I moved from one foot to the other.
“Good. You remember my ham radio set that we used a couple times in the basement, don’t you?”
“Sure do, Mr. Jost. That was swell, talking with people from all over the world.” I wasn’t hot any longer.
“Would you like to have it?”
My heart leapt. “Are you kidding? You bet.” This was great! One day we had talked with people from all over the globe, from Germany to South Africa to Japan to California, and although we could not always tell what they were saying, they did speak enough English for us to find out where they were located. I put a pin on a map to show their location.
“Stop by later, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Thanks Mr. Jost.” Wow! My very own ham radio! My mind was reeling with the adventures I could have with my newfound BlauBruin International IR-2600-K radio. I could be an international Musketeer.
“Now Davey, the only thing is—it’s very expensive.”
“I’ll be real careful with it Mr. Jost, I promise.”
He paused, appearing slightly annoyed at being interrupted, “I know you will be, Davey. What I started to say was…it’s a very expensive radio but since you being a neighbor and all, I would only ask you to pay, say…twenty dollars?”
I swallowed hard. “Wow! Mr. Jost, I don’t have that kind of money.”
I could see the wheels moving behind his eyes as he said, “Well, tell you what, you just wash my car twenty times, and we can call it even. What do you say?”
I would rather drink battery acid than agree to that, but I really loved that radio so I agreed.
“Sure Mr. Jost, but if I can come up with the money on my own, I’ll just pay you. Okay?”
He made a frown but agreed by saying, “You got a deal, Davey. Shake.”
We shook hands on the blood deal, and I started to think of ways to make money that summer to pay for my new beloved radio. I had washed his car a couple of times the previous summer in his drive-in-basement-garage, and I promised myself I would never do it again.
The last time I washed his car, it took him twenty minutes to show me how he wanted the car washed and dried. He always began by saying, “Take your belt off so you don’t scratch the car, and then put a towel over your jean zipper so you don’t scratch it. Then water the car down completely with this special hose attachment, including the wheels, then wash it with a big sponge and some soapy water, then dry it with a goat skin towel called a chamois, making sure you turn the chamois over every time you use it.” And that was just the outside of the car. It took him another twenty minutes to show me how he wanted me to do the inside and then an additional fifteen minutes on how he wanted me to clean his tires.
I had to find another way to make the twenty bucks. I had to. Not easy, but I knew I could do it. I continued to make my way towards Schnucks to do my mom’s shopping. Only another ten blocks, I thought to myself. The heat had returned only it was hotter.
As I neared the City Hall building, the chief of police’s car was just pulling out of the police station onto the side street near me. I waved at Chief Johnny Gestridge, and he just smiled at me, touching the rim of his gold braided police cap, our kind of secret salute. He lived down the street from us on Charlack Avenue, across from Sun Lei’s house. The sheriff had a daughter who was Joanie’s age and two sons, both in the Marine Corps.
I had signed up last summer to be an honorary Overland police cadet for the summer and scoured the neighborhood searching for criminals and lawbreakers. I wanted to be a police officer so bad. When I turned in my substantial list of grievous crimes and offenses, the police officer at the front desk took one a look at the long list and promptly threw it in the trashcan. Then he told me to leave and not come back. It was then I decided I wanted to be a cowboy instead. I kept walking towards the supermarket; with the sidewalk so hot, it felt like the bottoms of my PF Flyers were on fire.