The Baby Blue Rip-Off by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

help myself from the hall machine and bring him one, too. I did, then broke the truce by telling him, for the first time, about my return visit from the rib-kickers the night before.
    “Jesus Christ, man!” he sputtered, getting some Pepsi on himself. He jerked up into a sitting position and, seeing as he’d been leaning back with his feet on his desk, that took some maneuvering. “Why the hell didn’t you call us?”
    “I’d had pain-in-the-ass enough for one evening.”
    “Bullshit!”
    “Use your head. What the hell would’ve been the point of bothering you guys again? When they kicked me, I blacked out for a while... a couple minutes, at least. By the time you could’ve got to my place, they’d have been long, long gone.”
    That calmed him down, sounded reasonable to him. He put his feet back up on his desk and said, “Christ. We just can’t have people going around doing things like this.”
    “Kicking me in the ribs, you mean? I agree.”
    “Screw your ribs. I’m talking about looting houses, and now, killing people.” Brennan gestured to a folder on his desk, next to his sack lunch. “Take a look.”
    I did. There were clippings from the
Port City Journal
dating back to April, the first good weather. Seven other homes had been similarly emptied. I’d remembered the rash of breaking-and-enterings, but for some reason hadn’t tied it up to Mrs. Jonsen’s. Maybe because some aspects of the other robberies didn’t exactly fit the Jonsen one, as Brennan was soon to point out.
    “Seven goddamn house lootings,” Brennan said, “in four goddamn months, and now another one. Only this one don’t exactly fit the MO of the other jobs.”
    “MO? Brennan, don’t tell me you’ve been watching
Chips
reruns again.”
    “Look, prior to this job, the homes were left untouched... all valuables gone, yes, but none of this vandalism crap. The whole damn Jonsen house was torn up, like some drunken kids out on prom night got together and whooped it up.”
    “Like you said last night, maybe they were looking for the fabled Jonsen money.”
    “Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe it’s a different bunch responsible. Somebody who pulled this, figuring we’d tie it to those others.”He made a face. “Glance at those clippings one more time, Mallory. Notice any common denominator?”
    I skimmed them again. “Sure. All seven times the houses were where people weren’t home. Either out for the evening, or out of town on some trip or something.”
    “Right, and that’s another dissimilarity between the Jonsen job and the other ones.”
    I swigged my Pepsi. “Consider this. Suppose these people had some source of information that dried up. Suppose this job was either based on some new source of information, or was a first effort without that sort of help.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, let’s say this group of rip-off artists had some way they’ve been spotting which houses are going to be vacant. One of them works at the gas or electric company, maybe, as a meter man, say, and has knowledge of who’s going to be out of town for a while, or just overhears plans of going out for the evening when he checks the meter. Or maybe one of them has a girl friend who works as a secretary at a travel agency and knows who’s on vacation. Maybe one of them works at the newspaper and knows who’s having their papers stopped for a while. Or the phone company, and knows who’s having phone service temporarily stopped. A lot of maybes like that.”
    Brennan had been nodding all through what I said. He said, “We’ve considered those. They sound good, until you knock ’em up against this job. Why would these people change their pattern now?”
    I shrugged. “Could be they just thought someone would get wise to their present source of information. Could be that source got fired or laid off from that information-packed inside job.”
    “Or,” Brennan said, “could be they heard about Mrs. Jonsen’s supposed money and figured