Murder In The Laundromat

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Murder In The Laundromat


The stretch of Highway 51 outside Wausau was straight, flat and built for speed. As Sonny wound out the 1969 GTO, the car went airborne. Construction ramps, left in place mistakenly instead of detour signs, provided liftoff. To Sonny and his Dad it seemed an eternity until the car came in for a hard landing on the road surface beyond the section of newly poured cement, bottoming out with a loud “whomp.” Frame met axle; it was a violent meeting as car springs compressed to the max.

Sonny kept the wheel straight. Wavering one little bit would have swerved the car sending it into a spin and barrel-roll down the highway. He looked over at his Dad as if to say, It’s gonna be ok.

“Jesus, Key-Riced, what was that?” his Dad asked as he lit a Lucky Strike, his eyes as wide as owls. “We must have been going a hundred fifteen when we flew over that bump. Whoa-eee, what a noise.”

“Speaking of noise, did you hear anything funny in the basement of the Laundromat the other night?” Sonny was a lot calmer than his Dad.

“Must have been Jake again. He’s a noisy prick…not to mention a sneaky bastard.” His Dad did not like Jake.

Putting his foot back down, Sonny listened to the GTO’s massive 400 cubes growl on up to 6000 rpm. He thought about the motor’s eight pistons under the hood galloping up and down a hundred times each and every second. His Dad, never attuned much to technology, tuned the radio to the area’s only station and listened to what seemed to be their only song:

I was dancin’ with my darlin’ to the Tennessee Waltz
When an old friend I happened to see
I introduced her to my darlin’, and while they were dancin’
My friend stole my sweetheart from me
I remember the night… and Tennessee Waltz…


They rolled into Minocqua, in the north woods, just in time for drinks at Ole’s Place, not to say that any time was a bad time for drinks at Ole’s Place. Minocqua’s illustrious drinking history went back to the logging days, a time before the turn of the century when the town had twenty-nine saloons and just fifteen homes. Loggers drank aplenty, but apparently they were not big on homes. They fought when they drank, so much so that the town doctor set up shop to sew them up right in one of the saloons.

Ole and his Dad grew up together - on the farm - downstate. They told stories of hard work and tough times, times called the Great Depression. They would have left the farming life even if it were not for the Depression. “That town was not big enough for us,” his Dad had been heard to say. When his Dad got around Ole, he liked to drink more than usual; Ole liked to drink all the time. But he was a friendly drunk, a loveable guy with a toothy smile, a hearty laugh and always…always a good story to tell. Ole’s real story was told on the varnished wooden plaque that hung over the smoke-filled bar:

Don’t take life too seriously –
You never get out of it alive

“Jerry, what are you going to have?” Ole looked at his Dad, then over at the boy as if to ask the same question. Ole knew his Dad drank Crown Royal Manhattans on-the-rocks. He poured two, one for his Dad and one for Sonny. Before the night was over he would be calling Sonny “Jerry,” too.

“Ole, the kid saved our ass coming up here. Nobody on the road…we’re doing a hundred fifteen…all of a sudden the car’s flying through the air. I thought we’d be going ‘ass over tea kettle’”. He took a deep drag on his cigarette when he finished.

“No kidding.” Ole didn’t talk much when he was drinking, which was most of the time. Ole Olson - he was one good Norwegian listener.

“Hey, we’re here – we made it.” His Dad smiled big as he clinked his glass on Ole’s, then on Sonny’s. “Made it in two hours forty minutes from Jackson…216 miles…damn, must have averaged over 80 miles per hour. Drink up. We going fishing tomorrow?”

“You betcha.” Ole nodded.

Thank god that Dad has quit talking about how I wrecked his favorite Chevy…which is why he got this new 1969 Pontiac GTO, the thought bounced around in Sonny’s mind. The GTO was the fastest car on earth. This red one was the special edition called “The Judge” as in Laugh-In’s “Here come de Judge.” His Dad was proud of that.

***

Lake Minocqua shimmered in the early morning haze…the best time to fish the underwater ledges for Northern Pike. The lake, the day, and the town – an island in the middle of the lake where Chippewa Indians once spent their summers – were a veritable postcard, like one of them back in the dock’s bait and tackle shop with an inscription that said, “Up North is Good for Your Soul.”

So far, they had one twenty-seven inch Northern on their stringer along side the boat, a fish patiently awaiting a chance to escape. “That’s a good one…for starters,” Ole said referring to the fish. “Hey, guys. Want a Leynenkugel? Smoothes out whatever ales you.” Ole was trying to be hospitable, offering the guys a beer to go with their cigarette, even though it was early in the morning. They shook their heads no.

Ole had the Evinrude boat motor on a slow troll, looking for the next Northern, when they saw the sheriff’s car pull up to the dock. The sheriff motioned them to come in. Shit, just when I was getting’ ready to take a pee off the end of the boat, Sonny thought.

“Morning, Ole,” the sheriff said. Looking at Sonny and his Dad, he said, “You guys up here from Jackson?” They nodded. “You come up last night?” They nodded again. “You own the Laundromat on University Avenue?” One more nod and one more question. “You guys in a hurry to get out of Jackson?”

“Yeah, we murdered a bunch of folks down there,” was Sonny’s wiseass reply.

Ole interrupted, looking at Sonny as if to say, Cut the crap, “What’s this all about, sheriff?”

“They got a dead body of a woman down in Jackson, Ole, and it was found in the basement of their Laundromat. The police down there got questions for these guys.” Sonny was thinking, Yeah, and where the hell is Jake right now?

“Hold on, sheriff. Jerry here, he’s like…well, he’s like my brother.”

The sheriff wanted to keep Ole happy. After all, Ole’s Place was the sheriff’s favorite hangout. He also wanted to get this whole thing off his back…quickly. They all convened at Ole’s Place for a short beer… and to strategize. The plan was simple. The sheriff radioed Jackson authorities that he had “the Laundromat fellows”, Sonny and Jerry, in custody. He was bringing them back to Jackson today. “Bringing them back” turned into an escort service. The 1969 GTO led the convoy followed by the sheriff’s big-block Ford. “Here come de Judge.”

“Fellows, we can make real good time here. All I got to do is turn on the flashing lights and siren. Set your own pace with that there GTO – let’s see what it’s got,” the sheriff blabbed on; he couldn’t wait to open up his cruiser on Highway 51’s straight stretches. “Oh, geez, and be careful about the construction near Wausau.”

“Yeah, we know.” Sonny did not elaborate.

The trip back was uneventful. The radio station’s new favorite, “Canadian Sunset”, blared:
Laaaaaaaaaa, la, la, la, la
Daaaaaaaaaaaa, da, da, da, da

They hummed the tune while the engine worked its way up to a hundred fifteen. In the rear view mirror, Sonny could see that the sheriff was having trouble keeping up; he slowed down to a hundred. When they reached Jackson, the sheriff waited while they dropped off the GTO at home, then they jumped into his cruiser for a ride to the local precinct.

***

Jake was eccentric, certainly by Jackson standards. Sonny’s standard’s, too. Thirty-something, Jake’s upturned mustache gave him a dapper look, anything but Midwestern. Tall and lanky, his appearance was accentuated by tight, pegged pants, the kind with a revealing pouch. He had been an aggressive teenager at Sacred Heart Academy when Sister Alphonse, aka “Buggers”, took him under her wing. Sister Alphonse kept a kitty to help get wayward boys back on track. Her motto was: “Never give up on a boy.” Jake made it through high school and, with Sister’s help, finished the Art Student’s League in Chicago.

Back home in Jackson, Jake had set up shop as a portrait artist next door to the Laundromat. He did portraits of mostly younger gals; in fact, they were all young and they were all women. A steady stream of young women came and went.

Claire was different, too. Not so much in her good looks; she was gorgeous. She would not be referred to as a girl, rather as a woman, a sophisticate. People in Jackson never asked, but they could tell when a woman came from refined upbringing, the kind from back East. Claire was from back East. She also had a side that people did not see, an insatiable side. Claire and Jake were a couple cut from a mold that was anything but Jackson.

Sonny had gotten to know Jake, whose studio was next door, when he came around the Laundromat to collect quarters from the machines, keep the place shipshape and schmooze with customers. Jake was two kinds of people – one when he was around Claire and another when he was by himself. By himself, he would roll up his T-shirt to let the world see a mean looking tattoo: “Born to Raise Hell”. By himself, he told stories of his expertise for doing women, a reputation that had gotten around. Young women showed up often at his studio; not all of them were there to be painted. Sonny was glad when they did their laundry while Jake did them next door.

When Claire was around, Jake was proper – the way he dressed, the way he looked, the way he talked. She sat elegantly in his studio lounge chair with her back straight, her knees together and her high-heeled shoes slightly lifted. She looked the way Sonny had seen her hundreds of times on TV ads, ads for places like The Coat Factory where she walked straight, turned her knees in unison and stood on the toes of her high-heeled shoes.


Claire was dead. The police did not beat around the bush when they questioned Sonny and his Dad, who converted to chain-smoking after a few hours of police grilling. This can’t be happening, Sonny thought as he wondered what the police were doing to his Dad. She had been found in the basement of their Laundromat in a pile of muck, refuse from the dry cleaner. “Diatomaceous earth” was the proper term for the stuff; they called it muck after it filtered out the grease, dirt and other debris from clothes. The basement was one big pile of muck.

Claire’s body had been buried in the pile of muck, which would have hidden it…and preserved it…had it not been for a gas leak in the basement. Gas + cleaning fluid = acid, an acid that ate away at Claire. Laundromat customers summoned police reporting “odd sizzles” and “odd smells” coming from the basement.

Sonny thought immediately of Jake. He also thought of the unused passageway between the connected basements of the Laundromat and Jake’s studio. Jake had done it - Sonny had no doubt. Now he summoned all his energy to point the finger at Jake. Yes, the police would question Jake. Yes, they would checkout Jake’s studio and the unused passageway between the basements. They had more than a casual interest in Jake. A number of young women, women who had been over to Jake’s studio from time to time, had been reported missing in Jackson.

It didn’t take long for Jake to confess. Everything had pointed to Jake – the jig was up. Authorities were ready to put him up for Murder One, when Jake came up with a novel defense. Jake claimed that he had an extra Y-chromosome. Sonny remembered Jake bragging that he was a “super male”. Richard Speck, after he murdered eight nurses a few years before, had used the “extra Y-chromosome” defense to save himself from the death penalty. Hey, it wasn’t their fault that they had been born extra aggressive. Jake’s story was that Claire was strangled accidentally when he wrapped a cord around her neck to heighten sexual pleasure. It was a story that might sell. It helped that the missing girls all turned up at a cult colony in California – they had not been murdered. Such was life in Jackson circa 1969.

***


A few days after all the excitement, the phone rang. It was Ole. “Hey, you guys doing ok? The sheriff gave me the scoop. Why don’t you get back up here? Drinks are on me. The fish are biting. And the sheriff’s been tuning his Ford motor. He wants to get you guys back out on the highway to see just how fast that GTO is.”

Sonny and his Dad headed back to Minocqua that afternoon. As they approached Highway 51, Sonny pulled the GTO over to the side of the road and said, "Dad, why don't you do the driving this time."


THE END


Please R&R. I will return the favor.