It seems that the reputation of the Iroquois as steel workers is carefully cultivated. Here, it’s mentioned as the Seneca; traditionally, people think of the Mohawk. Either way, people within the Five Nations decided many years ago that it would be nice if they had guaranteed work in this new field and claimed that their traditional way of life prepares them for a life building skyscrapers, because they don’t fear heights and are particularly well endowed with balance and so forth. This is only briefly relevant to today’s episode, but it comes up for a second and is interesting to me, so I’m sharing.
Jim is hired by an old friend again, this time Louise Hartman (Neva Patterson). Her son, Billy Jo (Joey Aresco) was, as happened yesterday, killed in a car accident that was declared an accident. Like yeterday, his mother doesn’t believe it was an accident. Today, she has hired Jim to find out the truth, and it turns out that Billy Jo, in addition to being a demolition derby driver, was involved in an insurance scam.
The same starting place can take us in some very different directions. Today, we’re away from Diel and his awful moustache, but of course that means that the threats to Jim are considerably more personal. Sending Jim to San Quentin or Folsom or wherever wouldn’t be great, but he’d be alive. Obviously, the people running the insurance scam are not so particular. We’re not going to get Angel in this one; he’s too much of a coward and also probably still hasn’t forgiven Jim from yesterday, where admittedly about half the people wanted to kill Jim.
I wonder if Rocky even considers the fact that Louise hadn’t seen her son in something like six months at the point at which he is killed. Because she disapproved of his lifestyle, you see. Now, okay, life of crime, but she didn’t know about that part. She didn’t like his being a demolition derby driver. I’ll admit that I find demolition derby deeply weird as a concept, and I wouldn’t be thrilled if one of my kids ended up involved in it, either. Still, her disapproval meant she lost him altogether before he was killed.
Jim, as with so many other detectives, is a knowledge magpie. Sherlock Holmes at one point goes out of his way to forget that the Earth goes around the Sun because it might take up room in his brain that could be filled with something more valuable. But what Jim and other detectives I like have proved is that you never know when a piece of information might turn out to be valuable. Something as simple as the pronunciation of a name can be the clue that gives you what you need to solve the case.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Knocked out and sent down a ravine. Car chase, car blown up.