A Mystery Story
Lil Psyche and Big Mambo
Lil Psych was finishing his paper route about 6:30 on a Saturday morning. The fall air was warm and fresh coming off the Nebraska fields before getting caught up in the funky Omaha stank. East Omaha caught the worst of it, the air was brown above the warehouses on the riverbanks. The western edge missed all that.
Lil Psych, or Psychy as Big Mambo called him was cruising down Blondo on his candy apple red Stingray bicycle feeling the freedom that comes with the last paper flung on Old Man Abbot’s porch, when it struck him as an afterthought, “What the . . .?” He pushed down on the left pedal, popped a wheelie, and turned his bike 180 degrees, landing the front wheel towards Abbot’s house.
He pulled up the sidewalk, and sure enough, someone was lying there looking through the gap in the front porch wall. “Funny I didn’t notice that before,” he thought.
It was really out of curiosity rather than any sense of concern that Lil Psych snuck up to the porch to see who was lying there. But when he saw the blood stains on the porch, he grew concerned. “Hey, Mr. Abbot? Old man Abbot! You alright?” he shouted softly, nudging the body with the toe of his Red Ball Jets.
The body didn’t move or make a sound. Lil Psyche went up to shake him by the shoulder. He grabbed Abbot’s yellow rayon golf jacket and gave it a tug. “Hey, you hurt?” It took a little time, but not too long, before it dawned on him that Mr. Abbot was dead. He’d have to call the police or somebody. He thought of going into Abbot’s house, but he’d never gone in there when the old man was alive, and the thought of going in there now still gave him the creeps. So he decided to call from the Laundromat at 37th street. The problem was he didn’t have a dime for the call, so he figured he could check Mr. Abbot’s pants for some change. Psych grabbed him by the belt to pull him over a bit to get at his pocket. “It’s a good thing he’s such a weasley old man,” he thought, “or I wouldn’t be able to help him out. Jeez, if it were Big Mambo, I’d just have to let him go.”
It was as he was rolling him over that Lil Psych noticed the knives in Abbot’s hands. “They must have been hidden under the jacket before I rolled him over, “ he thought, there they were: a butcher knife in his left hand and a paring knife in his right hand. Trouble was that he was holding the butcher knife by the blade. It looked like that is where most of the blood had come from. Psychy stuck his hand down the old man’s pocket; there was a set of keys and half a pack of Dentyne gum. He thought about snatching the gum, but the thought of chewing dead man gum made him a little ill. He dropped the packet on the ground and started to dig his hand back in again. This time he found a bunch of coins: two quarters, a dime, two nickels, and three pennies. He stuck the dime in his pocket and was just about ready to take off, when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to collect from Mr. Abbot next week. He had already missed the last two payments. That was $10.25 that Old Man Abbot owed him.
It felt a little bit wrong, but not very, when Lil Psych reached into the corpse’s back pocket and pulled out his wallet. It only had $7 dollars in it, but Psychy figured that was the best he could do. He put the money into his jeans pocket and set the wallet next to Abbot’s pale head, got on his bike and pedaled down to the laundromat to do his civic duty. Mrs Molanar, his social studies teacher, would be proud. She was very appreciative of one doing one's civic duty.
That afternoon, Lil Psych went to Big Mambo’s to see if he wanted his lawn mowed. Big Mambo was snoozing in his lawn chair, his feet resting in an inflatable kiddie pool of lukewarm water. His head was bent over so his white goatee was caught in the folds of his neck fat. “Are you going to mow the lawn today?” Lil Psyche asked, paying no attention to the fact that the man seemed deep in sleep.
“I reckon it’ll have to get done before Sunday,” Big Mambo drawled without looking up,
“Can’t have you mowing on the day of rest. Say now, Psychy, I heard on the monitor this morning there was a murder and robbery in the area of your paper route.”
“There was a murder all right,” Psyche said, “I called it in myself, but there wasn’t a robbery.”
“How’d you know that?” Mambo asked.
“Cuz he still had money in his wallet. He only had seven dollars in it, and he owed me $10.25, so I just took what he had.”
“Darn it Psychy,” Mambo said, finally looking up, “You can’t just go and do a thing like that. There’s proper channels and all. You’re gonna get yourself in a pile of trouble if you aren’t a little more careful.”
“You got a soda I can have before I mow your lawn?”
“Sure enough, you know where they are.” and with that Lil Psych was off and into the kitchen for a smoking cold bottle of Coca-Cola.
And sure enough, the weekend passed and Monday morning the police called the school principal who told Lil Psych to go down to the police station so the police could question him about the circumstances of Mr. Abbot’s death. Psych wasn’t there five minutes before he asked for his lawyer. The cops snickered, and one outright let go a big bursting laugh, “What’s a kid like you got a lawyer for? If that don’t . . . “
“I know my rights,” Lil Psych said, “And you can’t question me without representation.”
“But you’re not under arrest,” said a tall cop with long brown hair and a moustache, “You came here on your own didn’t you?”
“That doesn’t make any difference. I still have the right to representation.”
“Fine. Call your lawyer then,” said the cop at the desk. And he pushed the phone towards the stern faced boy, and left to get his third cup of coffee that morning.
It didn’t take much over half an hour. The police filed their paperwork, and Psychy studied the wanted posters on the bulletin board across the room. Big Mambo came in looking like an extra large Colonel Sanders, dressed in a white suit, white bucks, and a straw Panama hat. He carried a black walking stick with a Zirconium diamond embedded in the hand grip. He spotted Lil Psych sitting in the hard wooden chair, his frayed jeans falling over his Red Ball Jets dangling two inches above the green tiled floor.
“What seems to be the problem here?” Mambo called out to no one in particular.
“They’re gonna persecute me,” L’il Psych responded.
The desk cop stapled a stack of papers and shrugged, “We just want to ask him some questions about the Abbot case. It seems your client was the first witness on the scene.”
“Questions, huh?” Mambo asked.
“Yeah, just some basic questions, it’s pretty routine.”
“Routine, huh?” Mambo repeated.
“Sounds like an echo in here. Just let us do our job. You can sit and watch him in the interview room.”
“Room, huh?” Mambo enjoyed pushing buttons. The long haired police officer led the two down a pine scented hall to a room with a frosted glass window. There was a large conference table, several straight back chairs, and the smell of stale smoke in the room. No windows.
Lil Psych and Big Mambo sat on the far side of the room. The long-haired cop shut the door and left.
“So what’s the story, Psyche?” Mambo asked.
“They told me I had to come down and answer some questions.”
“Well, heck, that ain’t nothing. Lots of people get asked questions.”
“Well, they took my fingerprints, too,” Lil Psych said, holding up his purple fingertips.
Just then a short red-faced man came in wearing a white shirt with an ivory tie and a Cardinal’s tie clip. His thinning hair was slicked back in an attempt at a pompadour. Mambo was going to complain about the fingerprints right away, but he decided to save it in case he needed to change the subject or buy some time.
The detective leaned his hairy arms on the table in an imposing display. “So which one of youse is Lil Psych?” he asked.
Lil Psych squirmed in his chair. “Listen kid,” the white shirt said,” as far as I know, you’re not in any trouble, but if you are, it would be a lot better for you to get it out of your system now.”
“Get what out?” Psych asked politely, hiding a sneer only Mambo could detect.
“I dunno,” the detective said, “You didn’t kill him did you?” His poorly shaven mug grinned a big yellow toothed grin that was almost ear to ear.
“Nah, I didn’t kill him.”
“I didn’t think so. It’s just that it never hurts to ask. So, tell me, what were you doing up on his porch so early in the morning?”
“I was delivering his paper.”
“Can’t you just throw it from your bike?”
“I did,” Psyche said.
“Then why were you up on the porch?”
“I thought I saw someone looking under the porch, so I went up to see what it was.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw old man Abbot.”
“Anything else?”
“Nah, he was just lying there in some blood.”
“And you don’t remember this?” the detective said, throwing old man Abbot’s wallet on the table.
“Yeah, I saw it” Psyche said.
“Saw it?”
“Yeah, saw it.”
“It’s got your fingerprints all over it along with his keys and a pack of gum.”
“I was trying to help. I just found a dead guy and I needed a dime to call the police. I was doing my civic duty.”
Big Mambo sighed, “I told you you shouldn't have taken his money.”
Lil Psych shot him a vicious look.
Big Mambo looked down at his hands. “Sorry,” he said, “I should have kept my mouth shut.”
But it was too late. Inspector Gadget was on the trail.
“What money?” he snapped.
“I was just collecting for his subscription. He was three weeks behind.”
“So you took his money.”
“I took my money, at least part of what he owed me.”
“You know you’re tampering with the scene of a crime.”
“What crime? Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean there’s a crime.”
“Yeah,” said Mambo, trying to repair the damage.
“You keep out of this,” red-face spat.
“I’m his representation.”
“Yeah,” Lil Psych added, noticing the detective’s face turning redder.
“Well,” said the detective, trying to save face, “did you notice anything else?”
“I noticed he doesn’t know which side of a knife to hold.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. He shouldn’t go after a guy who has a big knife, if he only has a small knife. I don’t care how little the squirt was.”
Big Mambo’s ears perked up. “How do you know old Man Abbot went after the kid, and how do you know it was a kid?” he asked.
“C’mon Mambo, he’s outside his house. He could have stayed safe and sound inside the house. What else would he be doing outside with a paring knife?”
“But what makes you think he was after a kid?”
“Because he got the butcher knife away from him by holding onto the blade. Any dope with any kind of strength would have been able to keep a grip on the handle if someone is holding the blade, but maybe not some little kid. Nah, Old Man Abbot must have been pretty mad about something. Although it didn’t take much to aggravate the old guy.”
The detective seemed to wisen up, “You wouldn't happen to know who this kid is, would you.?”
“Now wait a minute,” Mambo said, turning a little red himself.”You aren’t trying to pin the murder on Lil Psych are you?”
“Easy does it, Mambo,” Lil Psych said. “I can’t be a murderer if there wasn’t a murder.”
“What d’ya mean?”
“I bet there wasn’t even a stab wound in the geezer.”
Psychy turned to the cop, “Well, was there?”
“I’m not supposed to divulge information from an ongoing investigation,” said the detective; although his voice indicated a willingness to spill the beans.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Lil Psych proclaimed. “I know he doesn’t have a knife wound except on his hand. There wasn’t any blood on the paring knife, and there’s no blood on the tip of the butcher knife, just in the middle where he cut his hand.”
“Yeah? So you’re pretty much a know-it-all, huh?” said the cop, turning another shade of red.
“Sure am,” Lil Psych said. “I can even tell you what’s on his kitchen table.”
“So you were trespassing!” crowed the detective.
“Heck no! I could have gone in and used his phone if I was going to trespass. That’s why I had to search him for a dime.”
“So how would you know what’s on his table,” Mambo asked.
“Easy,” said Lil Psych, “an old man and a boy both have kitchen knives, it’s mid-October, and there was a pumpkin seed on the old man’s shoe. I figure there’s got to be a pumpkin on the table.”
“Well, I’ll be,: said the detective, “I guess you got it all figured out.”
“C’mon, Mambo, I don’t think the detective’s gonna have any more questions for us.”
As they walked down the street in the balmy autumn crunching leaves underfoot, Mambo looked down at his younger friend, “Are you sure you didn’t have anything to do with his death?”
“No,” Lil Psych replied, “He’s not a very nice man to kids. I’d never go inside his house. That’s why he was three weeks behind on his subscription. He’d always ask me to come inside while he found some money, but you don’t want to go in there if you’re a kid.”
“Oh . . .” Mambo’s eyes grew wide, “He’s a pervert?”
“That’s what I heard,” said Psychy.
And they walked down Blondo into the warm noonday sun.