The Charleston Knife is Back in Town

by Ralph Dennis

  “It’s about time,” Hump said.

  Down in the ring the welterweights were through for the night. The part of the crowd that had paid attention gave the black and the Cuban a derisive hand. When the judges and the referee gave the bout to the black on points, that didn’t excite anybody either. Neither of the fighters had shown much and I had the feeling that the judgment had been made on some other basis, like having less pimples on his back and chest.

  The ring was empty now, waiting for the arrival of Cartway and Higgins. The aisles were still jammed and some of that blue haze of smoke rising over us had the acrid smell of grass. In fact, I’d caught the scent before from somewhere right behind us. Hump caught it too and he gave me a lazy wink.

  About that time a large and prosperous black stopped out at the end of our aisle, checked his ticket stub, and then, paying no attention to the people already seated, began walking over toes and corns toward us. He was wearing what looked like about a $500 J. Press suit and the hand nearest us flashed a ring that held a diamond about as big as a walnut. I stood up to let him by and he didn’t even acknowledge it. I wasn’t even there to him. As he passed me, he balled up something white in one hand and dropped it carelessly on the floor between Hump’s feet. Hump waited until the man had taken his seat a dozen or so spaces away and then he reached down and picked up the envelope. He smoothed it out on his knee and took out the contents. It wasn’t a letter. It was an engraved invitation.

  JOHN JUSTIN MARTIN INVITES YOU TO A POST-FIGHT PARTY

  IN HONOR OF J. C. CARTWAY.

  10:30 until

  2056 Rosewood Circle

  About twelve seats away the man was looking down at his ring, turning it so that it caught the light. Hump put the invitation in his jacket pocket. “I always wanted to meet J.C.”

  “Go then,” I said.

  “Crash it with me.”

  I shook my head. “Not sure how welcome I’d be.”

  “Could be a lot of trim there.”

  “That could get me in trouble. You know Marcy.”

  “I’ll tell you what you missed when I see you tomorrow,” Hump said.

  “If I miss anything.”

  A roar went up then. Cartway and Higgins were coming out of the dressing rooms, stepping over the low frame that marked the outside edge of the ice area where the hockey team, the Flames, played. It was a roar of animals and it filled the Omni until I thought the roof would have to pop off. From behind me, while the roar still swelled, a black leaned forward and passed Hump a joint in his cupped hand. Hump thanked him and sucked on it a couple of times. After he passed it back, Hump leaned toward me and wasted a little of it by blowing it in my face.

  The fight lasted into the sixth round. It might have ended earlier but I got the feeling that Cartway didn’t want to put Higgins away too soon. He wanted to savor it, that was it. Also, though he was strong and in good shape, he hadn’t had a fight in almost a year and a half and he wasn’t sharp. The meanness and the anger were there and in the opening of the sixth J.C. hit the tall, blond Texan with two or three lefts and then with a right. When the right connected it sounded like somebody had dropped a watermelon from a tenth-floor window. Higgins went down and twitched and the roar grew and grew, so strong you could feel the walls and the ceiling trembling. It grew into about half-an-hour’s ovation and Hump and I stayed through it. I was yelling too until I didn’t have much voice left. A couple of the blacks who’d wanted to beat my ass earlier ended up slapping me on the back and welcoming me into the party.

  Cartway almost got mobbed when he left the ring. It took a dozen black-jacketed Panthers to get him through the screaming, clutching mass. Cartway looked happy but he also seemed afraid of the crowd. And that seemed strange.

  We’d come in Hump’s car. He drove me over to his place where I’d parked mine. Before I got out he asked if I was sure I didn’t want to try the party. I said I couldn’t, that Marcy wouldn’t understand me being that much of a sports fan while she was out of town. Hump understood that. He liked Marcy. He didn’t push it again and I got into my car and headed for my house. The last I saw of Hump he was hunched over a street map of Atlanta trying to find Rosewood Circle.

  By the window light, the light outside, it was still night but graying slightly. I was awake and I wasn’t quite sure why. The drinks I’d had after I got home had taken the knot out of me, the one left after the excitement of the Cartway fight. So why was I awake . . . turning and staring at the clock on the nightstand . . . at 5:23 in the morning?

  I heard it then, the grinding dull sound of the front door bell. I’d packed it so that I could hardly hear it when I was asleep. Now somebody seemed to be leaning on it. The question was: Who the hell was on my doorstep at 5:23 in the morning? One way to find out. I gave up on the slippers and staggered through the dark living room, hitting one chair a glancing shot that took a bone chip out of my right hip on the way, and yanked the door open.

  Hump stood there, dressed as he’d been the night before at the fight, only there was a lump on his forehead about the size of a large egg. I noticed that right away because he was dabbing at it with a handkerchief that had some bloodstains on it. It wasn’t much blood, about what a bad cut shaving might give out.

  “Can I come in, Hardman?”

  “Sure.” I stepped aside to let him in and closed the door behind him. “Wash up in the bathroom. I’ll make some coffee.”

  I put on the coffee water and got down the cups and the jar of instant. I waited for Hump, knowing he’d probably have some tale to tell about some fight he’d had over some sweetpussy girl or other. Or how some stud had picked him out just because he was so big. When the coffee was made I sat at the kitchen table and sipped mine.

  Hump came in and slumped into the chair across from me. “A shitty thing happened to me on the way to the party for J.C. Cartway.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “J.C. didn’t show, but I got taken for about seven hundred I was carrying.” He shook his head. “Jim, you wouldn’t believe what went on over there.”

  “Try me,” I said.

  “You won’t believe it.”

  I grinned at him for making such a story out of it, for laying the suspense on so heavy. I got up and went over to the whiskey cabinet. I got out a new bottle of Cusenier calvados I’d bought a few days before because Marcy had been curious about it a few weeks earlier. It was supposed to be a welcome-back present. I peeled the foil off and got down a couple of juice glasses. Back at the table I poured me a light shot and one for Hump that was more a handful than anything to do with fingers. I looked at the kitchen clock Marcy had given me last Christmas and waited. He’d tell it his own way and it didn’t matter to him that the minute hand was making a run for six o’clock. And because I liked the big bastard, I tipped the bottle again and gave myself another half shot and tried to shake the warm sleep out of my head.

  Hump looked at the wadded-up handkerchief and made a toss for the trash can. He missed it by a couple of feet. I just grinned at him and didn’t move.

  “This the best crystal you got for drinking this fancy stuff?”

  “It’s not that fancy,” I said. “I heard somewhere that back in War Number Two they used to burn it in cars.” I took a sip and let it roll on my tongue. He gulped on his and washed it down with some of the coffee.

  “Hardman, you wouldn’t believe the smart-assed rip-off going on over there.”

  “Like I said, try me.”

  “I’d give one ball to have thought it up myself,” Hump said.

  “Come on,” I said, mock-irritated, “that’s enough promotion. Bring on the movie.”

  “It happened like this,” Hump said. . . .

  After I left him the night before he’d found Rosewood Circle on the street map and headed out Peachtree to Ponce de Leon toward Decatur. That part of Decatur seemed like a hell of a place to hold a black party, but maybe the neighborhood was going downhill. Not his problem anyway. Just s
o there was a party when he got there. On impulse he stopped at Green’s and fought the eleven-thirty crowd to buy himself a bottle of J&B. That was private stock, to be left in the glove compartment with a couple of plastic cups. In case there was some trim that took a liking to him and wanted to go out for some fresh air and a long conversation about art and literature.

  It was a fairly long drive out to Decatur and it was almost midnight when he left Ponce de Leon and found himself in one of those neighborhoods where the homes had cost $150,000 twenty years ago. No way to know what they were worth now. Not that many got bought and sold these days. Just when he’d begun to think that he’d taken the wrong turn-off, he found Rosewood Circle.

  It was shaped like a small horseshoe that had the ends bent in slightly. And though the Circle covered about a city block, there weren’t but five houses on it. There were two houses on each side and one at the center of the closed end. All the houses were set back far from the road, hidden by walls and the natural barrier of trees. One tour of the circle convinced Hump that the party was being held at the large brick English-manor type house at the closed end of the horseshoe. They weren’t very big on house numbers out there and he finally made his guess on the basis of the driveway packed bumper to tail with big, expensive cars.

  Parking space was hard to find close to the house and finally Hump gave up the search and wedged in behind an LTD. All he could hope was that the owner wasn’t in any great hurry to leave. It wouldn’t do him much good if he was. Unless the LTD had a hidden set of wings. Outside the car he could feel the sharpness of the night air and across his body the vibrations of the bass, all that was left of the music after it filtered through the brick and the drawn drapes and curtains.

  Oh, that was a time walking up the driveway. Feeling his jolly coming on, anticipating the class of trim and sweetmeat girls who’d be there just waiting for him to enter. He reached the lighted porch. After straightening his tie and dusting off his shoes with the handkerchief from his hip pocket, he rubbed a big smile onto his face and grabbed the doorknob and went inside.

  Hump drained the last of the calvados and slid the glass across the table toward me. “Must have ruined some good car engines in its time.”

  I tipped the bottle and poured another shot for him. I’d been watching his eyes and he looked a bit woozy. He was something of a hard-ass so it must have taken quite a tap on the head to slow him down enough so they could empty his pocket. I’d seen him handle a couple of dudes without breaking much of a sweat.

  “Go on with your story,” I said, “before you pass out and I have to make up the rest of it for you.”

  “Welcome to the party.” That was what Hump heard as soon as he walked through the front door. It was said to him by a man wearing a ski mask and gloves. In one hand he carried a walkie-talkie and in the other a .45 automatic, hammer back, that he’d lined up on the center of Hump’s nose.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Not even hands up or anything like that?” I asked.

  “Maybe they didn’t see the same cowboy movies we saw,” Hump said.

  Hump wasn’t about to argue with the .45, but, just in case, right next to the man with the automatic was another man, dressed the same way, pointing a sawed-off shotgun at Hump’s belly button.

  “I’m not sure this is the right party,” Hump said. “Maybe I’m expected at the one next door.”

  The two men didn’t show that they’d even heard him. “Anybody else expected?” the one with the shotgun asked.

  “Lights down the road, but not close yet.”

  The man with the shotgun wagged it at Hump. “This way.” He pointed toward a wide entranceway to a room beyond the hallway. “You might as well join the other guests.”

  The walkie-talkie crackled and the one with the .45 put it to his ear. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. Then he called to the guy with the shotgun: “More guests on the way, looking for parking now.”

  The shotgun edged a little close to him as they stepped through the entranceway and Hump considered it but the music hit him a lick then and he looked up and saw three other men in the center of the huge living room. All masked, all wearing guns in their waistbands. They were working through a great pile of clothing and coats and purses. It looked like a storeroom at Goodwill, but the coats were mink and leopard and the clothes didn’t need the tags to show that they’d cost high money. They were sorting, putting the women’s coats into huge laundry bags and the money and jewelry into a large black suitcase. From the look Hump got of the take in the suitcase they’d been at their work for quite some time.

  “Strip to your shorts,” the man with the shotgun said. One of the other three left the sorting pile and came over to stand next to Hump. On the way he’d taken out a short barrel S and W .38.

  “Come on, Superspade, do what the man told you to.”

  The odds and the hardware were all wrong, Hump decided. No use wasting an effort. He kicked off his alligator loafers and dropped first his raincoat and then his suit coat into a pile. While he skinned his trousers and tossed his shirt and tie into the same jumble, one of the other two came over and began raking through the raincoat and suit coat pockets. As soon as the trousers hit the pile, that man threw the coats aside and clawed down into the pockets until he came up with Hump’s roll. Unlike the man at the door and the man with the shotgun, he seemed to be wearing the thin rubber gloves, the kind women wash dishes in. He tossed the money clip aside and fanned out the bills from Hump’s roll.

  “Thin,” he said, looking at Hump.

  “It’s not thin to me,” Hump said. “Give it back and I’ll be glad to walk out of here.”

  “Not from this party,” the shotgun man said. “Nobody leaves this party early.”

  “You talk too much,” the one with the stub S and W .38 said.

  “Fuck you, too,” the one with the shotgun said.

  But the voices didn’t seem hard to Hump. They seemed to be pretty young, especially the one with the shotgun. The profanity didn’t quite come off. More like a studied reflex from a high-school kid who’d just learned to talk hard and couldn’t quite pull it off. That stunned Hump and gave him a second thought about the shotgun when he’d had a try at it. But all that shot to hell now. Too many guns.

  “Wrap this one up,” the shotgun man said. “More company on the way.” He moved away, back to the front door. The final man in the living room, the one who’d been bagging women’s coats, straightened up and got a roll of two-inch adhesive tape from the arm of a stuffed chair. He kept his distance, making a wide circle around Hump while the stub .38 remained lined up.

  “Hands behind you. Wrists together.”

  Hump went along with it. The man pressed his wrists together and wrapped them quickly and expertly. From the piles of clothing around the room, Hump decided he’d probably had a lot of practice. Behind him Hump heard the tape tear again and the man moved around him and planted about a six-inch strip over Hump’s mouth. It was a sloppy job and the edges ran into Hump’s sideburns. It was going to be hell to take off later. If he got the chance to take it off. There was always the chance that wherever the others had been taken was a bloodbath by now.

  “This way,” the one with the .38 said. He turned Hump by the elbow and pushed Hump ahead. There was an entranceway into a narrow hall at the right rear of the living room. The man remained behind him a pace or two as they passed closed doors on both sides and approached a closed door that dead-ended the hall. Just before he reached the door, Hump felt himself jerked around. His head was pressed against the wall. His legs were pulled back but still held together. It was like the spread cops made you do on a frisk, only Hump’s hands were behind his back and he had to cramp his toes to keep his stocking feet from slipping on the waxed floor. The man behind him then taped his ankles together and jerked him upright.

  “Now, be a good little bunny and hop into the room when I tell you to.” He turned Hump toward the closed door and still holding his elbow, turned the
knob and swung the door open. There was darkness ahead of him and for the first time Hump heard the wheezing and grunting and the sound of flesh slapping together.

  “Hop now,” the man said.

  He’d barely reached the entranceway when the man behind him laughed and gave him a shove. He fell forward, sprawling into the massed and piled bodies. He hit people and he hit the carpet and he heard the wind go out of someone he hit with a knee and then the bodies were giving, moving away from him, making room.

  Hump yawned and rubbed his mouth. “That crap went on for hours and hours. It seemed like years. Dumping men and women into the pile, coming back with others. It’s a wonder somebody didn’t get caught in the bottom and get busted all to hell. I guess what saved some lives is that the goddamn game room or whatever it was must have been about as big as a Canadian football field.”