by Ralph Dennis
The door opened. I couldn’t see who it was. Hump helped out. He said, “Laundry and cleaning for you, lady.”
That meant it was probably the blonde. She said something I didn’t hear. Hump said, “It’s no mistake.” He looked down at the label on the laundry. “See here. It says 124 Mason Tower Road.”
The platinum blonde who’d been at the Blue Night stepped onto the porch. Hump turned his head toward me as the blonde edged around and looked down at the laundry label. Hump dropped the laundry and grabbed the woman. One hand covered her mouth. He swung her away from the door. She kicked at him and he stepped aside.
The door was wide-open. I sprinted across the lawn and up the front steps to the porch, gun in hand, at the ready. The living room was empty and I was halfway across it, keeping to the rug, when I heard the man’s voice from the open doorway straight ahead. “What is it, Joanie?”
I couldn’t answer him. Even if I grunted it wouldn’t sound like her. I kept going.
“Joanie?” There was concern in the voice now. “Damn it, Joanie.”
We hit the doorway at the same time. He was a hairy bastard wearing nothing but shorts and we grunted with the impact. I swung at him with my left hand and he ducked under it. My left never was any good anyway, so I tried to bring the right up and hit him with a pound or so of S. and W. but his hand closed on my right wrist. He was pushing the gun away and I didn’t want to fire. He went into a kind of bunny hug dance. He was trying to shake the gun out of my hand and I was trying to knee him. He kept taking the knee on his thigh and when I tried to kick him he slipped the kicks like he’d had plenty of practice. His weight and strength was getting to me and I was having trouble breathing. He’d hit the bad ribs a couple of times and the last time was a wicked punch that pushed me toward the doorframe. When I was close he put all his strength into it and swung my gun hand against the frame. It felt like I broke a knuckle or two and the gun kicked out of my hand and bounced into the bedroom. He pushed me away and made a dive for the gun. I recovered enough to stagger after him. He got the gun and was turning, swinging the gun up and twisting toward me, when I reached him. I was tired and hurting and I wasn’t about to wrestle with him anymore. I took a final stride toward him and kicked him in the mouth.
The teeth crunched like gravel underfoot and he forgot the gun and grabbed his mouth. The outside door slammed. I braced one arm across my chest over the ribs and stepped past the man on the floor and got the .38.
Hump came in, holding the blonde by the nape of the neck like you hold a kitten. She was struggling and kicking and spitting. Hump held her up on her tiptoes and looked down at the man on the floor. He wasn’t out, but he was dazed. Blood was dribbling out of his mouth and he was spitting out chunks of teeth.
I eased down on the foot of the bed. My breath was a hard roar that came close to deafening me.
Hump looked at me and shook his head sadly. He said something I couldn’t hear.
“What?”
He said it louder. “You have to mess him up this much?”
“He wouldn’t hold still,” I said.
The blonde, Joanie, made a noise somewhere between a gurgle and a scream. Hump released her and she ran over and fell on her knees beside the fallen man. She jerked a corner of the sheet from the bed and started dabbing at his mouth.
“Where’s the little girl?” I asked.
“You son of a bitch,” Joanie said.
“Where’s the little girl?” I repeated.
“What little girl?” she said.
I took a shuddering breath and stood up. “I’m not going to ask it many more times. Where’s the kid?”
“I don’t know anything about any kid,” she shrieked at me.
“This your man here?”
“Yes,” she said. “And look what you’ve done …”
I cut her off. “Hump, take her out for a minute. I’ll talk to him. He’ll tell me what I want to know.”
“Sure.” Hump leaned over and got her by the shoulders and lifted her. She twisted and kicked at him but he laughed and side stepped it and marched her toward the doorway. Hump paused in the doorway and said, with mock concern, “You’re not really mad with this guy, are you?”
“The shit I’m not. He busted me in my bad ribs.”
The blonde was crying. “Don’t hurt him anymore.”
“He’s all right,” I said. “They’ll fix his teeth for nothing in the Federal pen.”
“In the pen … for what?”
“Kidnapping,” I said. “That’s a Federal crime, sugar.”
“Don’t call me sugar,” she said.
“Take her out in the yard,” I told Hump. I walked over to him and drew back like I was going to kick him about groin high. “He’s going to talk to me. If he can’t talk he’ll write it with a pencil and if we can’t find a pencil he’ll write it in blood.”
Hump didn’t move. “You might kill the guy,” he said.
“That’s his worry. Get her out of here.”
I started to bring the shoe forward and she stopped me as I figured she would. “She’s in the kitchen closet.”
The guy on the floor looked at the blonde and said something to her that sounded, through the wreckage of his mouth, like “You dumb ass.”
“Watch them.” In the living room I got my bearings, and found the kitchen. They were messy housekeepers and the sink was piled with dishes. The breakfast plates were still on the table with the curdle of grease and specks of eggs.
I yanked the kitchen pantry door open and there she was. Maryann was stretched out on the floor, on a blanket. Her hands and feet were taped and there was a patch of tape over her mouth. She was awake and when she saw me her eyes widened and she wanted to scream. When I reached down for her she kicked out with both feet and caught me on the shin.
“Maryann, it’s all right. I’m a friend of your father. I’m taking you back to him.”
She was still kicking when I got her up in my arms, but it seemed like reflex. I repeated it to her from close up, whispering in her ear and she went slack in my arms and lay back looking at me.
I put her into a chair at the kitchen table. I peeled the tape from her mouth first and her tongue came out and played across her lips and she sucked in deep breaths. “You thirsty?” I asked.
“Yes, please.”
I got her a glass of water at the sink. At the same time I got a paring knife. After she gulped from the glass I put it aside and cut the tape from her hands and from around her ankles. “You want to try to walk?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
She tried but her legs seemed stiff and not willing to carry her weight. I scooped her up and carried her through the living room and outside. I wanted to get her out of that house, out into the cold bright afternoon. The bundle of laundry and the dresses were gone from the porch. Art was standing out at the truck with the driver. He nodded at something the driver said and came over to me. “He wants his jacket back from Hump.”
“Maryann,” I said, “this is Art and he’s a policeman and he has children of his own so you can trust him.”
Art smiled. “Hello, Maryann.”
Maryann wasn’t ready to smile yet. I nodded in the direction of the house. “They’re in there. The blonde and her boyfriend. He’s got a busted-up mouth. They’re both pretty shook right now. I’d like to ask them a few questions but first I’d like to get Maryann somewhere she’d be safe.”
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“Marcy,” I said. “I’ll need Hump’s car keys.”
“I’ll send him out.”
Hump came out and handed me the keys. He took the jacket over to the laundry man and shook hands and watched the truck back out. Back at the porch he asked, “You want me to stay here?”
I nodded. “And take this back to Art.” I turned Maryann so she couldn’t see the gun. I opened my jacket and Hump reached in and snaked the gun from my belt and waistband. He held it behind him as I turned back to face h
im. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“What do you want to know from them?” Hump asked.
“Who they’re working for or who they’re working with,” I said.
“Might be on their own.”
“Be sure of it.”
“Hold Maryann for me a second,” I said. He held her while I got out of my topcoat. I wrapped the topcoat around her and she looked at both of us with the same, still frightened face. I guess I didn’t blame her at all.
I called Marcy from a pay phone down the road. When I explained it to her she said she’d meet me at the Bek’s down the street from her office. She was waiting in a booth when we arrived. She took one look at Maryann and asked, “Would you like to go to the bathroom?”
Maryann nodded shyly. Marcy took her hand and started away from the booth. “Men don’t know anything about girls,” she said. “Do they?”
I didn’t hear Maryann’s soft answer but I saw her emphatic us-girls-against-the-world nod and I knew that it was going to be fine between them. When they returned they were chattering away like great friends and I felt out of it altogether. They seemed to be barely tolerating me. So much for me as the hero on the white horse, loved by children and adults. Not that I took it very seriously. I’d have bought King Kong lunch if, after all she’d been through, Maryann seemed to like his company.
With prompting from Marcy, Maryann admitted that she was hungry, just a tiny bit. They went through the menu item by item and still ended up ordering cheeseburgers and French fries and cokes. Bek’s doesn’t have table service. I stood in line and worked my way through. It took a few minutes and they were giggling like children over something when I unloaded their baskets in front of them. “I like a good joke,” I said.
“So do we,” Marcy said and they went off in a giggle again.
It was time to leave. I wanted to get back to the house at 124 Mason Tower Road. I pushed my half finished coffee away and stood up. “You’ll be at your place?”
“Yes,” Marcy said.
“I’ll call,” I said.
“Are you on expenses this time?”
I said I was.
Marcy held out a hand. “I need some money. Maryann and I are going shopping.”
“For what?”
“Underwear and socks and a new dress.” Marcy leaned over Maryann. “See how men are?”
Maryann looked at me shyly and said yes.
I held out my roll and Marcy took two twenties. “If it’s more you can pay me later,” she said.
I decided to play the role she’d given me. “Where does this shopping take place … at the Federal Reserve Bank?”
“Rich’s,” Marcy said.
“Is it a good store?” Maryann asked.
I left them discussing stores. I guess I was lucky they hadn’t decided to shop at Neiman-Marcus out at Lenox Square.
It was quiet in the living room of the house at 124 Mason Tower Road. The guy with the busted mouth had his clothes on now. He was seated on the sofa with a towel pressed to his mouth. The blonde, Joanie, was next to him, legs prim and proper in front of her and arms crossed under her breasts.
Art met me at the door and we walked back to the kitchen. “They’ve decided they don’t know anything. As soon as you left they got their guts back.”
“Did it all themselves, huh?”
“Better than that,” Art said. “They don’t even know how the kid got into the pantry. One minute she wasn’t there and the next she was. The blonde says she’d just found her in there and she was about to call the police and report it when you two broke in.”
“That’s a story for you.”
Art reached into my shirt pocket and helped himself to my cigarettes. “All they needed was a little time to think up that simple crap.”
“What now?”
“I’ve called for an ambulance and a cruiser.” He looked down at my shoes. “You ought not to wear those steel-reinforced shoes.”
“Didn’t know I was,” I said.
Back in the living room I said to the blonde, “That’s a real science fiction you two are telling.”
“It’s the truth,” the blonde said. “What are you holding us for?”
“Kidnapping,” I said.
“Who’s your witness?” she shrieked at me.
“The kid.”
“Who’s going to believe a kid like that?”
“A jury,” I said. “All she had to do is convince the judge she knows the difference between lying and telling the truth and that she’ll tell the truth.”
“No death penalty anymore,” Art said. “Too bad about that.”
“But lots of hard time to do,” I said.
The blonde opened her mouth to say something but the guy next to her lowered the towel and showed us the bloody side. It hurt him but he got out something that sounded like, “Shut up, Joanie.”
So much for that. I went into the bedroom and found the phone. I dialed Jack Smather’s number. The wonder-body girl answered and when I said who I was she connected me with Jack.
“It worked out,” I said. “I’ve got Maryann.”
“How is she?”
“She’s fine. Call Simpson. As soon as I turn her over to him I’ll put in my bill and take myself out of this.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s with Marcy.”
“Who had her?”
“A guy and his girlfriend. Not sure who they are. We’re not even sure how they fit into this. Art’s not sure what he can hold them on, but he’s taking them in. If we can’t find anything we’ll make up something.”
“That’s good work,” Jack said.
“It was luck,” I said.
Hump and I left Art with the couple and started back for Atlanta. We passed the ambulance and the cruiser a couple of blocks away from Mason Tower Road.
Hump dropped me at my house. I called Marcy’s apartment first thing. No answer. I looked at my watch. The stores were still open. If it was a real shopping spree, perhaps they’d tried more than one store. It would be, if Marcy saw it that way, an opportunity. After all that had happened to her, it was certainly one way of making her feel like a little girl again. Hell, knowing Marcy, they might have gone to a movie.
I stretched out on the bed for an hour or so. When I got up it was getting dark outside. I wanted a shower but I was carrying too much tape. I settled for a sponge bath and a couple of handfuls of after-bath talc. I struggled into clean clothes and tried Marcy’s number again. When there wasn’t an answer this time either I didn’t have any ready-made reasons why Marcy and the child weren’t there. It scared me for both of them. I went over to the closet and got down the shoebox I kept my cash in. The .38 P.P. was there on top. I checked the loads and dropped it in my pocket.
It was usually a fifteen minute ride to the apartment complex from my house. I made it under that time by two or three minutes. It was cold and the wind was up now that it was getting dark. Since she’d moved in they finished the rest of the apartments and they’d planted some grass so there wasn’t as much clay dust blowing out there.
I parked next to Marcy’s car. I wanted to believe maybe they’d just arrived, but I felt the hood of the car passing it and it was ice cold. So much for clutching at impossible things.
No lights in the apartment. I ran the doorbell anyway. I gave the knob a try and found it locked. I rounded the apartment at a run and found the kitchen entrance in the lowering dark. The back door was cracked and I slammed the door open. There was the smell of burning and I found a sauce pan on the stove, burnt dry over a gas flame. Hardly stopping I cut off the gas and lunged through the kitchen door into the living room. Nothing in the living room. I went on and found her in the bedroom. She was kneeling on the floor, her upper body on the bed. Her back was to me and she was shaking and sobbing and trying to dial a number on the phone. I reached her and turned her. Her lower lip was swelling and there was some blood on her chin. High on her right cheekbone there was a bruis
e about the size of a man’s fist.
“Jim, I’ve been trying to call you.”
I lifted her and helped her stretch out on the bed. I cut on a light in the bathroom and wet a hand towel. “Tell me about it, Marcy.”
“Two men … I didn’t see them really … both very big … were in the apartment … they were waiting. One grabbed Maryann and she screamed … I tried to stop them … and one of them hit me … I don’t know how many times.”
I washed away the blood and the tears. “Both men were big men?”
“Big as you,” she said.
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. I blacked out … fainted, I guess. What time is it now?”
I didn’t need to check my watch. “Around seven.”
“We got home about five. We’d had a good time shopping and …”
“Easy,” I said.
“Jim … I’m sorry … that poor little girl … she was just beginning to feel she could trust me … and then I let them …”
“Not your fault,” I said. “It’s mine.”
I rinsed out the hand towel in the bathroom sink and then went into the kitchen and put some ice cubes in it. Marcy was staring up at the light and crying and I put the towel of cubes against her cheek and told her to hold it there.
I dialed Hump’s number. His angry burn came up to match mine in no time at all. He and Marcy were good friends. I guess a part of that, though we’d never talked about it, must have been his feelings about my sometimes desolate life. And I think he saw inside Marcy well enough to understand those after-thirty nightmares an unmarried woman has. Especially a southern woman.
“Is she all right?”
“I think so.” I reached over and moved the cluster of ice cubes down Marcy’s face to the swollen lip.
“Two studs, huh?”
“Yes,” I said, “but if they were the same two one of them has grown a few inches.”
“That kid must feel like a handball,” he said.
“I can’t leave here right now. Drop by the Crystal and find the guy who’s reading Hip magazine. I need another meeting with Peggy Holt.”