The Golden Girl and All

by Ralph Dennis

  Mitchell is a mixed street. To the east it runs toward the State offices and the State Capitol. To the west, starting about at Pryor, it turns bad. It seems to exist just for the day labor places and the bars are open at sunrise. There are some old established businesses in the west part of Mitchell but they look like they’ll be moving as soon as they get over being stunned by the changes that are going on in the neighborhood.

  It was the west part of Mitchell that we were heading for. We parked in a lot near Forsyth and Mitchell and walked west. We’d gone about a block or so, searching the building fronts as we went, and I’d gone a bit ahead when Hump called me back. “This is it, I think,” he said. The light was bad but we could make the first part of the lettering in the concrete, FRAS … The rest was chipped away or pollution had been eating it.

  Harper Investigations was listed in Room 318 on the lobby directory. There wasn’t an elevator. We found the stairwell and started our climb up. The smell of crap and urine was strong there. More than likely some winos slept there on cold nights and they couldn’t find the bathroom or didn’t go to the trouble to look for it. I was holding my breath by the time we reached the second floor landing. I was snorting like a boxer the last flight up and even when we pushed through the third floor door and found the hallway it wasn’t much better.

  We found Room 318 at the far end of the hall. There wasn’t a light showing. Just to be sure I knocked on the frosted glass and when there wasn’t an answer I tried the door. It was locked. I found a note pad tacked to the door right under the frosted glass. I considered that for a moment and had about decided against it when Hump said, “Might be worth a lie or two.” I wrote down my name and phone number and added a brief message that I had a job for him. If we found him the lie wouldn’t matter. If we continued to miss him he might very well call me and set up a meeting. The chance to make a few dollars might draw him out. If his office was any indication I was fairly certain he needed it.

  On the way back down the stairs we passed two winos on the stairs between the second floor landing and the lobby. They were hunched over, shivering, passing a fifth of Thunderbird back and forth.

  It was getting toward my suppertime. I could feel the gnawing and the first growls were beginning, but we got Hump’s car and drove back out West Peachtree—out past where it changed into Peachtree Road and kept going. After we passed Piedmont Hospital, Hump said he needed gas and I paid for it and listed the seven dollars on an expense page in my notebook. So far the expenses hadn’t run too high for the day. Twenty-five for the Wildwood Connector, five for Ellen at Eve’s Place and the gas money. All that considered, I decided if the hunt went on much longer Hump and I might as well have supper on Simpson’s wife’s money.

  The Kingsbridge Apartments looked like a forward-thinking management had decided to change its name rather than spend the money for the renovations it needed. Just a guess. It certainly sounded like a fancier address than it really was.

  From the road we could see the three flat, long, train like buildings. They were made of red brick and seemed to have eight or ten apartments in each building. A postage stamp private yard went with each and there were shallow porches with some aluminum tube furniture. It didn’t, as far as I could see, have a swimming pool.

  The parking was in back. Hump followed the pitted paved road and parked. From the back it didn’t look much better, unless you liked garbage cans and a few rusting charcoal grills. Hump got out and waited, holding the door open while I got out my notebook again and checked the apartment number by the inside light. “2D,” I said.

  The lighting was dim between the first two buildings. Most of the light came from a porch lamp at the far end, away from us. Hump stopped and turned off the walk. He squinted at a number over the door and came back. “4D,” he said. We back-tracked two porches. Hump reached the porch before I did and flicked on his lighter to read the number. It was the right one. He put an eye against the glass part of the door and peered in for a few seconds. “No lights.”

  I reached around him and tried the door bell. I could hear it ringing inside. Almost immediately the porch light went on next door, in front of apartment 1D. The screen door swung open and a little withered bird of a woman stormed out onto the porch. Her hair was up in curlers and she was wearing a red bathrobe that she clutched at the throat. I put her age at fifty or so, the time when it hits women that the American dream is over and the nasty creeps in.

  “It’s about time you showed up,” she shrieked at us. “You know when I called the first time? Four o’clock, that’s when. No wonder the criminals are taking over the city.”

  I stared into the glare from the porch light.

  “First thing in the morning I’m going to call the Mayor’s office. I pay my taxes and I think the police …”

  Hump stepped into it before I’d decided how to play it. “What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”

  “That poor little girl … I think Mr. Harper kidnapped that poor child. She cried the whole time she was in the apartment, like her heart was breaking.

  “Did you see the little girl?” I asked. “How old-would you say she was?”

  “Seven, I think. Kind of skinny with black hair.”

  “What makes you think she was kidnapped?”

  “The walls are so thin you can hear everything that happens next door. The poor thing kept saying she wanted her mama and Mr. Harper kept telling her to shut up.”

  “There wasn’t anybody else with them?”

  “Just Mr. Harper and the girl.”

  “When did they leave?” Hump asked.

  “About five o’clock.” Anger spurted out at us again. “That was when I called you the second time.”

  I squared my shoulders and gave Hump my best professional manner. “I think we’d better look into this.” I opened the screen door and tried the knob. Locked. I put a shoulder to the door and tried to spring the lock. It didn’t give. “We might have to kick it in,” I said to Hump.

  “No need to do that,” the woman said. “He leaves a spare key in his mail box.”

  “That’ll save a door.” Hump reached own into the mail box and brought out the key. While he unlocked the door I turned to the woman. “It might not seem like it,” I said, “but we do appreciate you calling us.” I got out my notebook and pen. “Would you give us your name, please?”

  “Mrs. Carrie Newmark.” she said.

  I wrote that down. “It isn’t every citizen who’d go to the trouble.”

  “If I ever do again I ought to have my head examined,” she said. She backed toward the door and went inside and slammed the door shut behind her. The porch light snapped off.

  I didn’t know how much time we had. There was always the chance that the cops had put off answering her calls. Sooner or later they’d probably send a cruiser out to calm her down. They’d probably marked her down as a pest call, but even those got answered in time.

  I found the switch to the overhead light. It was a neat living room. The rug looked like it had been cleaned in the last day or two and the furniture had been dusted. There was a large bookcase to the left, directly facing the sofa and I went over there and squatted down to read some titles. Except for a few paperbacks of the best seller type, the books were all concerned with law. There were several volumes of the Encyclopedia of Georgia Law and perhaps half of a set of Georgia Code Annotated. The other law books seemed to be texts. I opened one of them and found Harper’s name inside along with the seal of John Marshall University, a small law school in downtown Atlanta. I don’t know how well accredited John Marshall is but I assume some of the graduates pass the Georgia Bar exam now and then.

  There was an envelope in the book which was being used as a marker. I shook it out of the envelope and read it. It had the John Marshall letterhead and it was a short note to Harper saying that he could resume his study of law as soon as he’d paid his back tuition which totaled $248.24. The letter was dated about three years before.

>   Hump had left the living room to me. He’d gone into the back part of the apartment. “In here, Jim.”

  There was a narrow hallway and beyond that to the left a kitchen and to the right a bedroom. Hump was in the kitchen. He pointed down into the sink. A cup that showed the dregs of hot chocolate and a glass that had some water in it and the smell of bourbon.

  “Nice guy,” Hump said. “Gives his kidnap victims a cup of hot chocolate.”

  “If it’s kidnapping,” I said.

  “What else?”

  “You’re guessing the little girl is Peggy Holt’s kid?”

  “That’s my guess,” Hump said, “and it’s probably yours too.”

  “World’s full of six or seven year old girls with black hair. For all we know the kid could be Harper’s daughter.”

  “No sign a kid lives here,” he said.

  I shook my head at him. It was a lot of talk and it wasn’t getting us anywhere. I left him in the kitchen and crossed the hallway to the bedroom. All that gap-leaping bothered me. There wasn’t any real proof the little girl had been Maryann Simpson. As far as we knew the child was still with her mother. On the other hand Peggy Holt had a history of dumping Maryann when the heat was on, and with Randy Holt dead back at her apartment the heat was certainly on and more. What bothered me was the question of how Peggy Holt could go from being the “tailed” person to someone who could turn the child over to her shadow. If that was what had happened.

  I switched on the overhead light. It was a small bedroom. A queen-sized bed with a headboard of some kind of bleached oak. A matching chest of drawers with two of the four drawers pulled far out and hanging. Beyond the bed a closet with the door open.

  On the bed with the raised top toward me, an old battered leather suitcase. I moved around the bed and looked down into it. Harper had been packing for a trip. It was neat and careful packing. A half a dozen shirts, about the same number or boxer shorts and t-shirts, some ankle length socks, a neat stack of laundered handkerchiefs. And in one corner a soap-stained and water-discolored dopp kit.

  Hump came in and looked over my shoulder. “Was that dude leaving town?”

  Hump pointed at the pulled-out drawers. “He’s neat.”

  “Was and must have changed his mind,” I said.

  Hump pointed at the pulled-out drawers. “You notice the rest of the place? Everything in its place. Cup and glass in the sink. Ash trays empty and wiped out.”

  “Means he left in a hurry,” I said.

  “Something changed on him. He had a phone call or somebody was at the front door.”

  “Or he heard the old lady next door calling the police,” I said.

  “Something spooked him and he turned into a ghost,” Hump said.

  Mrs. Newmark put on the porch light first and peered out at us from behind a lace curtain. She said, “Just a minute” and she began unlocking several locks and night latches. She left one chain still on and talked to us through the narrow opening.

  “You said Harper left around five. Did he leave by himself?”

  “He took the little girl with him.”

  “No, I mean did he leave with some other people?”

  “No, well, not exactly. You see, two men came to his door and rang his doorbell. He was still inside but he didn’t answer the door. I thought they were the police I’d called so I went out and asked if they were. One of them laughed at me and the other one said something nasty to me. Something I can’t repeat. That was how I knew they weren’t police and I went back in the house and locked the door good.”

  “Harper didn’t answer the door?”

  “They kept knocking and knocking and ringing the bell and finally they gave up and left.”

  “And right after that Harper and the little girl left?”

  She nodded. “Not ten minutes later. They went out the back door.

  “The two men … what did they look like?”

  She squinted at me. “One was about your size but a lot younger. The other one was smaller, maybe about up to your shoulder.”

  I thanked her and backed away.

  “You think there really was a kidnapping?”

  “There might be,” I said. “We’ll put an all points out on him and when we find him we’ll see if he can explain this to us.”

  That seemed to satisfy her and she said goodnight and closed the door. The jangle of chains and the snick of locks followed us part of the way out to the parking lot.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Art came into the Mandarin and looked around for us in the bar before he came back into the restaurant and found us. He was still wearing the shiny-seated blue suit he’d been wearing for the last seven or eight years. He saw us and nodded and worked his way through the aisle toward our table. He dropped into a seat across the table from me and gave Hump a meager grin. Art’s my age and his big round Irish face is beginning to sag a little around the edges. One difference between us is that he works out at the gym and plays handball. I have a feeling he’s not going to fall apart quite as soon as I will.

  “You eaten yet?” I asked.

  “Who the hell eats supper this late in the South?”

  “A drink then?”

  “All right.”

  I waved at the waiter and Art ordered a Bud.

  “What’s all this hurry-up about anyway?” Art asked.

  “The P.I. I had you check on. No proof, but I think he’s holding Peggy Holt’s little girl.”

  “With or without the mother’s consent?” Art asked.

  “No way of knowing.”

  “So far we don’t have a complaint of a kidnapping.”

  “How the hell’s she going to complain,” I asked, “when the cops are looking all over town for her?”

  “Her problem,” Art said.

  “Are you serious?”

  The waiter brought the beer and Art poured off part of it and watched it bubble. “All Peggy Holt has to do is walk into the police station and file a complaint.”

  “I know that would make it easier for you,” I said.

  “Oh, shit,” Art said. “I know as well as you she’s not that stupid.” He sipped at the beer. “So you want me to run Harper to ground for you?”

  “For yourself,” I said.

  “Not for you at all, huh?”

  “Lord knows. In fact, I’ll be damned if I know why I haven’t packed it in completely and called it off.”

  “It’s the little girl,” Hump said.

  “The kid’s nothing to me,” I said.

  Hump just gave me that level look of his. If he had another argument he didn’t bother to make it.

  Art nodded. “I’ll see what we can do. Material witness or something like that.”

  “That ought to do it.”

  The business part was over. Art relaxed. “How’s Marcy?”

  “Fine as far as I know.” I looked at my watch. “Right now at some seminar over at Georgia State.”

  “I didn’t get my invitation to the wedding yet,” Art said.

  “The check I gave the printer bounced. He wouldn’t let me have them on credit.”

  “I’ll lend it to you,” Art said.

  “I don’t know why all you marrieds want the rest of us to step into the same tub of crap with you.”

  “Marcy’s not going to wait forever.”

  “She’s a grown woman. Her business what she does.”

  Hump leaned in, a puzzled look on his face. “Something happening I don’t know about?”

  I shook my head. “Art’s trying to pick a fight with me for some reason.”

  “No reason I know of,” Art said, “unless it’s the fact I’m getting tired of being your man over at the department.”

  “I thought you were trying to solve a killing over there?”

  “And passing info out the back door to you is going to help?”

  “It might,” I said.

  “It’s not a feeling I like.”

  “Forget it then,” I said. “
Hump and I’ll find Harper and the kid ourselves.”

  “Sure.” Art placed his glass of beer in the center of the table and pushed his chair back. “Stay in touch.”

  Hump watched him go stiff-backed through the bar and outside. “He’s on the rag today.”

  “There’s pressure over there.”

  “I never saw Art as the type who’d feel it,” Hump said.

  “You can’t tell until it happens. It looks bad. Young cop, brother of big hero cop, killed in apartment of somebody who’s dealing in hard dope. Without being there I know the word that’s gone down the pipe. Clean it up and clean it up fast. And if possible, make sure Randy King comes out of it with a new coat of whitewash.”

  I finished my butterfly shrimp and Hump worked through his order of chicken chow mein. After that he drove me over to the Fisherman’s Inn where we’d left my car earlier in the day. I told Hump I’d call him in the morning and drove on home. Marcy’d said she’d try to drop by for a drink after the seminar closed down for the night.

  The clock on the nightstand, read by the narrow slant of light from the bathroom, showed the time as 11:48. I’d been dozing for half an hour or so. I guess the sound of the shower had awakened me. I folded a pillow behind my head and waited.

  “Do you really have to leave?” I asked her a few minutes later when she stopped in the bathroom doorway, backlit, partly in shadow. Her body was still fine but even with a lover’s eye I could see the downward tilt of her breasts and I could remember the slow erosion of skin tone.

  “I have an early appointment and you don’t seem to get up before noon anymore.”

  “Tomorrow I’m up early,” I said.

  “That’s what you say now.” She moved out of the light. At the closet she turned to put the blade in me one more time. “It doesn’t sound like a very good job anyway.”

  That was the bone we’d been kicking back and forth at each other all night, except for the time we’d been making love. It had stopped then, but I’d felt a stiffness in her I hadn’t known before. And it had resumed as soon as she’d got her breath back. She couldn’t seem to understand why I hadn’t taken one of the jobs that I’d been offered in the last couple of months. My first mistake had been telling her about them. The best of them had come through a reference from Art. It was a position as director of the Atlanta office of Safeguard Security, one of those private security systems. The money was good and there were some promised yearly pay advances if I worked out. What held me back were the regular hours, the 8 to 5 kind of crap I’d never liked. The other job had been as head of security for a chain of discount stores in Georgia and Florida. That meant a certain amount of traveling. I’d used that as my excuse for not taking that job. I didn’t want to be away from Atlanta that much. The real reason was that I didn’t want a regular job if I could get by without one.