The Charleston Knife is Back in Town

by Ralph Dennis

  “What’s the car?”

  “Blue ’71 Fury. I could get the tag numbers. But it’s parked in front of the house with the rock fence around it.”

  “Come on in. The water’s boiling.”

  Art wasn’t in when I called the department. I said it was important and the man who took the call said he’d reach Art and have him return the call. I left my number but not my name.

  Hump came in a couple of minutes later. “He’s still out there. Didn’t get a good look at him, but I think it’s just one man.”

  I passed him his coffee. “My guess is he’s going to spend a miserable night out there, just on the chance we might lead him somewhere. Jocko’s nervous and he wants to know what we do between now and tomorrow noon.”

  “Sleep,” Hump said, “I’m going to sleep.”

  I was one step from the bed when Art returned my call. I’d reached the point where I felt almost anything that came up could wait until the morning. I was wrong again.

  “Got a break,” Art said. “The house we’ve staked out isn’t rented, isn’t sold and it’s supposed to be empty. The owners are in Miami and I had some trouble finding their son. He says the house isn’t on the market, that it’s supposed to be renovated starting sometime next week.”

  “So you’ve got breaking and entering if nothing else?”

  “It might not be Charleston. Maybe it’s just some cheap con or other. We might end up catching a chicken rather than a hawk.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Soon. The problem is that we’re not sure there’s anyone in the house. No car out front and no lights that we can see from over here.”

  “You might blow it,” I said.

  “Got to take the chance. If nobody’s there we leave it like it is. A look around might tell us if he’s flown or might be coming back. I’ll be damned if we’re going to stake out this place for a week and then find out he’s left for good.”

  “I’d like to go in with you. But I’ve got a tail out on the street and I wouldn’t want to lead him over there.” I told him about the blue 71 Fury and gave him an idea of where it was parked.

  “Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll get a cruiser over there. Have him checked out as a prowler. Drive past the Fury. If the cruiser’s there, come straight over. I’ll have them check out the car, see if it’s stolen, all that crap.”

  “And if the cruiser doesn’t make it we’ll have to peel him off ourselves?”

  As a last thought before we left the house I got out a flask and poured the last of the calvados in it. It was a cold damp night out there.

  When we passed the Fury I could see the cruiser parked behind it and the two cops shaking the car down. We passed it and circled back toward Piedmont Road. Hump found the house without too much trouble. It was a small brick- and stone-fronted cottage set fairly far back from the road. As we passed it and I got a look at the other buildings in the area I understood why the house had been chosen. It was a changing neighborhood, with new apartment buildings clustering around it pushing in at it. If it had been a house in a single-family area, the people in the other houses might have noticed a stranger. Not so with the apartment dwellers. They didn’t notice much and they didn’t seem to care.

  At the end of the block Hump turned and headed back. We parked in the lot next to the Piedmont Apartments and went in. We rode the elevator up to the 6th floor and knocked on the door of 604. The young cop who’d been with Art at the Headhunter Lounge that night, Bill Matthews, opened the door for us. He didn’t seem especially pleased to see us. He didn’t speak and if he nodded, it got lost in the quick turnabout he did as he headed back into the main room, the living room.

  There were three other cops in the living room. All young and all trying to look hard. Art didn’t introduce us. From the way they acted and the fact that I didn’t know any of them, I made my guess that they were uniformed cops that Art had requisitioned on short notice to make up the stake-out team.

  At the front window there were two cameras on tripods. One had the fat magazine of a film camera. The other had a lens that must have had a hell of a focal length. That was for stills. But all that was out the window now. Art had an excuse for going in and there was little chance they’d get used.

  Art came over and offered us coffee. We took it and offered him a spike from the flask. He put his back to the others and covered me while I tipped the flask and let a bit run into his cup.

  “Trouble with the tail?”

  “Good timing all around,” I said. “What are we waiting for?”

  “You and for two more cruisers to work their way over here. I want us covered in case he’s there and slips away from us somehow.”

  I looked at the three young cops. “How’d you explain me?”

  “Said you were a friend of the owner. That you came over to see if the house’d been damaged any.”

  “They believe you?”

  “Not much.”

  The phone rang then and Art answered it. He listened and said a few words and hung up. “It’s on. They’re in place.” He held his hand out to Bill Matthews. “You got the house key?”

  Matthews handed him the key. He looked at Hump and then at me. “You sure you don’t want me along?”

  Art shook his head. “You’ve got the number over there. You see anybody coming, you ring it twice and hang it up. If anybody gets surprised it better not be me.”

  Matthews still didn’t like it but he didn’t argue. I guess they’d been training them better since my time, since the time Art and I had been coming up.

  The three young cops went down in the elevator with us. One of them, at a sign from Art, peeled off and took his station across the street from the cottage. It would be his job to back it up if anything went bad. He was also near the radio so he could alert the cruisers if they got past him.

  The other four of us crossed the street and followed a curving walk up to the cottage.

  “You carrying?” Art asked.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Don’t use it unless it’s tight.”

  “Not unless he cuts me again.”

  “Oh, shit, I know you’ve got some sense.” Art tipped his head toward Hump. “How about him?”

  “I think so.”

  Art lowered his voice. “I’ve got to take the young one with me. Just in case he blows. You and Hump’ll have to take the back door.” He touched my arm. “Watch yourself.”

  I dropped back and waited for Hump. I tapped him on the shoulder and we cut across the lawn and headed around the side of the house. Away from the street lamps it was suddenly dark. I stepped over a low picket fence and we were in the backyard. No light from the house that I could see. I found the back door, up some brick steps to a screened-in porch. That meant there was one more door, one from the porch into the house. I didn’t like that. Still, I didn’t want to run the risk of making noise entering the porch. A squeaking screen door hinge or a loose board on the porch might blow it all.

  I took a quick look around the yard. There wasn’t time to figure it that close. I pointed over to a picnic table under a large oak about twenty yards away from the door and to the side. Hump made it in about six quiet steps and took his position in the shadow of the oak. As soon as he was in place, I flattened against the porch and squatted near the steps. I was out of the porch sight lines but close enough to jerk his legs out from under him if he came barreling out at the run.

  It was a short wait. I heard a lock snick and the back door opened. I brought the .38 up to the ready. The steps across the porch were slow. It was Art. “He’s gone, Jim. Come on in, but take a deep breath of good air. It’s not pretty in here.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Like the man said, it wasn’t pretty. We were in the one furnished room, if you could call a cot bed and a telephone on a chair furniture. It was probably one of the bedrooms in the house plans. There was a small bathroom off to one side with a low-watt bulb burning in it.

  The cot
looked like it’d been used for major surgery. If there’d been a pillow and sheets, they were gone now. The thin mattress might have been painted red-black but it hadn’t. It was dried blood and the room was full of the stench of it.

  I crossed the room and pushed up a window. Hump followed me and stood behind me, taking in some long, shuddering breaths of the chill night air. When I had my stomach back in place, I got out the flask and passed it. The young cop got it first because I saw that he needed it the most. He looked about ready to vomit and his hand shook when he tipped the flask back.

  “No body?” I had my sip and passed it to Hump.

  “Unless it’s in the backyard or they carried it away.”

  “Or the cellar,” I said.

  Art took the flask and shook it near his ear. “You think he’s coming back?”

  I rounded the bed and looked at the phone. The message was there. The cord was ripped out of the wall box. I indicated it to Art and he nodded and then had his drink. “He’s flown.”

  “He had his fun. But he crapped in his nest. He’s gone to find him another one.”

  Art sent the young cop over to room 604 to pass the word. He wanted a crew on the double, including lights and shovels. The young cop left looking like he’d just won the Irish Sweepstakes, that happy to be away from the operating room.

  “You want to make a guess who this blood belonged to?”

  “Maybe Fred Maxwell,” I said. “We know Charleston was looking for him.”

  Art pointed at the cot. “Why all this?”

  “Fun and information. He wanted some names . . . if it was Maxwell he worked on.”

  “I want some information myself.”

  “I’ll have to make a call. After that, maybe you’ll get it. Fair enough?”

  “It is if I get the information.”

  Hump and I crossed the street and went up to room 604. I dialed Annie Murton’s number and waited. From the time it took her to answer, I guess she’d been asleep. I explained the situation to her, how it was going sour and I thought it was time to unload what we knew on the police. Annie didn’t like that. Maybe she’d let herself believe that Hump and I could cover for the kid, Edwin. That we’d bring him home unhurt and she’d spank him and put him to bed without supper. I had to get her past that so I put it hard and nasty. How Heddy had died and now the bloody cot bed across the street. “I think Edwin’s still alive but the time’s running. Unless we get to him fast he’s dead, dead, dead.”

  I’m glad it was a phone call because I think she must have cried then. I’m glad I didn’t have to watch it. It was a measure of the kind of strength she had that she choked it back. “If you think it’s best, Jimmy.”

  “I do.”

  “Tell them then. And you’ll stay on it?”

  I said I would and I said I was sorry I’d been rough. She said she understood and we said goodnight.

  Art met us at the door of the cottage. “We don’t need the shovels after all. Down in the basement.”

  We followed him inside. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at Hump and then at me. “I thought you two might do an I.D. for me.”

  Hump shook his head. “Had enough blood tonight.”

  He stayed in the front room. I followed Art through the halls and down the narrow stairs into the basement. It had the smell of damp earth and there was a single bulb burning near a furnace. Art handed me a flashlight and nodded in the direction of a dark corner in the far left.

  I played the light across the body once. That was enough. I swung the light away. The vomit bubbles were breaking in the back of my throat. It was that nasty a cutting job.

  “Maxwell?” Art asked when I handed the flashlight back to him.

  I shook my head, still not able to answer. I choked and swallowed and then I could talk. “Not Maxwell.” I went up the stairs and Art dogged me. “An actor. I don’t know his name.”

  That meant the hunt had caught up with us. Charleston knew about the kids from the Burger Shack. And maybe if the old actor had been holding back something he knew from us, then Charleston was in the clear and moving beyond us. The way the old actor looked now he hadn’t been able to hold back anything.

  Art and I stood on the back porch and I laid it all out for him, point by point. When I finished Art hawked and spat a big glob into the screen where it hung there, some of the feeling he had about me for holding out on him for that long.

  The old actor’s name was Hardy Simpson. We got that from the wallet in the bundle of clothes we found under the stairs in the basement. There was a ring of keys too and Art followed us in his car and we showed him the way to Tindall Place.

  I found the tagged keys to the boys’ apartment and Art went over to look around while Hump and I remained in Simpson’s apartment. There wasn’t that much to see, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to sift through the wreckage in apartment 3 again. Once had been enough. While Hump prowled the other rooms, I stopped to read some of the playbills the actor had arranged on one wall. He’d been Mercutio in a 1943 production of Romeo and Juliet at the Town theater in Columbia. He did the 3rd Guard in a 1959 production of Antigone at Richmond. One season, 1963, he’d been the house manager with the Barter Theater. In between he’d been in some crowd scenes with The Lost Colony. The most recent one was dated back in 1969 when he’d been Charlie Horse in a production of the Atlanta Children’s Theater. In something called Animal World.

  “In here, Jim.”

  I found Hump in the kitchen. He was standing next to the sink. On the drain board there were two thin-stem glasses. They were on a paper towel and there were still beads of moisture on the glass and a damp ring on the paper towel. On the kitchen table there was about half a bottle of Strega.

  Two glasses. That meant Charleston had probably come by to check on the boys. He’d pretended some interest in the old actor, maybe been a little fey with him. They’d had a drink of Strega and Charleston had suggested that Simpson go over to his place for a drink. I could see the old actor jumping on that hook.

  But Strega? That was like drinking perfume.

  We found Art in the living room of apartment 3. He was sitting on the sofa and shaking his head. “How do you figure this?”

  “The way it looks,” I said.

  Hump stepped over to the pile and kicked into it. “That old actor, those playbills, they give me an idea. This place looks like a goddam stage set. Curtain comes up and somebody says it looks like somebody tore the place up and left town.”

  Art wasn’t much interested. “What else does it say?”

  “I’m beginning to feel they never left town. That they just staged this so we’d think so.”

  “You think the old actor knew?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Art grunted. “It’s good talk but short on proof.”

  “Come on, Art. Open your head. Why go to all this trouble? They did this the morning after the robbery. That’s hours before they’re blown, hours before Charleston comes to town, hours before Jake gets this throat cut.”

  “All right . . . why?”

  “One of these kids has a cute mind on him. This is just in case it goes sour. This is thinking ahead. They do this charade and they con the old actor and then they load up the van . . . and drive across town.” Hump looked at me to see how I was reacting.

  “Maybe,” I said. “At least if we look for them here in Atlanta we can sleep in our own beds at night.”

  “I’m not through yet. Look at it this way. If you want to leave town and you don’t want anybody to know, if you want a few days head start, you just walk out of the house like you’re going out for a beer and you keep going. No goodbye to talkative old actors. No tearing the shit out of the place like this. Just walk out and nobody knows you’re gone. Two or three days before they get over thinking they’ve just missed you coming and going.”

  “Or you tell everybody you’re leaving and you really leave town,” Art said.


  “And go to all this trouble? Shit, man, it must have been hard work tearing up this place.”

  “It’s worth checking around,” I said to Art.

  Art nodded reluctantly. “I guess so.”

  “If Charleston’s still in town, they’re still in town,” Hump said.

  “I wonder where that bastard’s sleeping tonight,” I said.

  “If he’s sleeping at all,” Hump said.

  We left Art sifting through the old actor’s things. Not that he expected to find anything worth the trouble. It was just a thing some cops did when they couldn’t decide what the next step was.

  What do you do for a living? the girl asked him.

  They were in the oversized bathtub on the second floor. The girl was the one they called Kitty, a dark-haired girl who was probably 19 or 20 but she had the hard, underdeveloped body of a 13-year-old. Most of her regular customers were in their fifties, men who needed almost the spice of perversion to get them up. After the afternoons with the tired, the sick and the flabby, this man was almost too much to believe. Kitty wasn’t supposed to ask personal questions. The johns had first names and that was all. But this man had touched some animal part deep in her and she couldn’t fight the compulsion to know more about him.

  I sculpt, the man said.

  What?

  I’m a sculptor, the man said.

  Oh, an artist?

  Yes.

  You mean shapes, like the rusting metal thing in front of Colony or the concrete things in Peachtree Center? Kitty asked.

  No, the man said, forms. Human forms.

  The girl lifted her hands over her head in a pose she’d seen somewhere. The nipples on the small, child-like breasts were like dark raspberries. Would you like to sculpt me?

  No, the man said. His hands, smooth and hard as good shoe leather, cool like stone, caught her under the arms and lifted her. No, I have other things I’d rather do with you.

  “Something else occurs to me,” Hump said as he drove me home.