The Charleston Knife is Back in Town

by Ralph Dennis

  “Another part of your argument?”

  “Not that. It’s that call the headwaiter made at The Gondola.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “The call’s made. Twenty minutes or so later Beck comes in. The call was made to the number on Piedmont Road. It might be that Beck sat around and watched while Charleston cut the old guy up into beef jerky.”

  “That’s a bad thought to hold in your head,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?”

  I left the phone off the hook and we slept until noon.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Exactly at one-thirty I parked in the lot next to the boarded-up empty auto parts store. That was the cover for the fancy, expensive apartment The Man had put in the loft area above. He was a black man who’d made it the hard way. He’d started out as a pimp and in a short time he’d taken large chunks of most of the rackets in Atlanta for himself. The money you paid for that grass you bought from a beard down in the tight squeeze area ended up in his pocket. That doll of a black girl who ran into you in front of a nightclub while you were trying to flag a cab and said, “I’ll do it for thirty-five” probably worked for him. And there were the hard drugs, the books, and the numbers.

  I’d called him while Hump and I were having breakfast. He said it was a bad day for visitors, a business day, but if it was important he could see us for a few minutes right at one-thirty. That’s why we were there exactly on the dot. Since the try on his life, the one we’d helped protect him against, it wasn’t easy to get past the outside entrance. If I knew the new safeguards there’d be a man at the door waiting for our knock, one hand on iron while he watched the sweephand on his watch.

  Before the echo of my knock died out, the door was opened by a slim young black. He was a new one, one that hadn’t been around when the hard stuff was going on last December. He looked us over, shoulders and hips, before he opened the door wide enough and motioned us in. “Any iron?”

  “Neither of us,” I said.

  He waved us up the stairs and followed us. One of the last times we’d been in this stairwell there’d been a dead black man at the foot of the stairs . . . one of The Man’s bagmen . . . and at the top, on the landing, there’d been a dead white man, a contract man from out of town.

  The Man was at the table in the kitchen area. That was at the back of the room we’d entered, beyond the living room and the big circular bar with its showy display of booze. The second he heard us enter, The Man slapped the covers closed on two Samsonite briefcases and clicked the locks in place. He came to meet us but he didn’t offer to shake hands. The smile he gave us was frosty around the edges. We’d helped him but he hadn’t been able to forgive us the way we’d done it. We’d said some hard words to him in front of the help and we’d manhandled some of his friends.

  “Have a seat,” he said in that learned-late-in-life precise way he had of speaking. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Already had too much,” I said. Hump shook his head.

  The Man made a thing of tipping his head to look at my bandaged hand. “I heard about your encounter with the blade.”

  “My question is—how does the other guy feel?”

  “A bruise,” The Man said, “no damage that mattered.”

  “Too bad.”

  When he didn’t say any more I knew the prelims were over. It was time to talk if we were going to talk.

  “Is Charleston still in town?”

  “He was yesterday,” The Man said.

  “And today?”

  “It is hard to say.”

  “How can I find out?” I asked.

  “You can stand in one place long enough and you’ll know.” He nodded toward the bar. “Is it late enough in the day?”

  “I think so.”

  “Scotch if I remember correctly.” The Man motioned to the slim young black. “J.M.’s new with me.”

  J.M. ducked under the bar and asked how we wanted it. I said over the rocks would be fine for both of us. He mixed a hard shot for each of us.

  “You see,” The Man said after we had our drinks, “Charleston does not like you very much, Hardman. He fancies himself a ladies’ man and if that kick of yours had been an inch or two higher you might have ruined one of his pleasures.”

  “We know about his other pleasures,” I said.

  “His work with the knife?” The Man nodded. “If I were you I would consider a trip to San Juan.”

  “Too late,” I said. “The offer ran out an hour and a half ago.”

  “I could reinstate it for you with one phone call.”

  “I don’t think so. Hump and I have business in town.”

  “Then you have wasted my time. The Charleston man will be by to see you when he is ready.” He looked at me with that same frosty smile. “I assume you only wanted to know if Charleston had left town for good?”

  “I want him on my own terms,” I said. “Today or tomorrow at the latest. This town’s getting too bloody for me.”

  “Jake and the whore? No great loss there.” The Man crooked his finger at J.M. and J.M. ducked under the bar and brought him a small snifter of Benedictine.

  “There’s one more. An old actor who wasn’t involved. Operated on like Charleston was a butcher making beef stew meat.” I took a sip of the Scotch and tried to shake the image out of my head. “Wish you could have seen it. It’d make a vegetarian out of you.”

  A touch of distaste crossed The Man’s lips and was gone. “I have heard stories that he has learned to like his work too much.”

  “He loves it. He’s over the edge.”

  “That may be,” The Man said. “But I fail to see how this concerns me.”

  “I wanted to think better of you,” I said.

  “It can be very dangerous to mix in this.”

  “He’s not going to make it,” I said. “That’s my promise.”

  “And you’re going to stop him . . . with one good hand?” The Man looked at me like I’d gone light in the head. “I thought you were more sensible than that.”

  “I’m not going to duel him.”

  “That will disappoint him,” The Man said. He looked at his watch and then at J.M. “Would you wait by the outside door. I do not want our other visitors to meet these visitors.”

  “Yes, sir,” J.M. said.

  “If any show up, have them come back in fifteen minutes. By then these guests will have run out of tiresome questions.”

  J.M. went out and closed the door behind him. The Man waited a few seconds, until he was sure that J.M. had moved down the stairs. “You know, I think, that I have no special liking for either of you.”

  “I figured as much,” I said.

  “Got the message some time back,” Hump said.

  “And yet you seem to have some mistaken idea that I owe you something.”

  “I never said that.” I looked at Hump and gave him a wink that The Man let get past. “It might be that you feel you owe us but I never said I felt you did.”

  “Some people place a high value on their lives and their businesses, other people don’t,” Hump said.

  “I know one thing that only one or two people in the city know. I know where Charleston spends some of his afternoons.”

  “And you’re not going to tell us?”

  “I’m not sure,” The Man said. “I’ll tell you this much. A young lady I know works as a maid at one of those breakfast and lunch houses. Do you know the ones I mean?”

  “No.”

  “They are daytime whorehouses. The businessman or the married man finds them especially useful. The businessman takes a client there for lunch. A married man who can’t find an excuse to get out after dark can always find an hour in the morning or in the afternoon. It’s a very class place. Top drawer, they say. The hours are, I believe, from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon.” Now that he had our attention he held us a moment while he lit a cigarette. “The young lady owes me a favor or two. Just in passing the other afte
rnoon she mentioned that a certain two gentlemen have been buying the whole house after hours for the last day or two. One of the men you know . . . a George Beck. She didn’t know the other one. He’s slim, blond, doesn’t like to be seen. He called each afternoon before coming, to be certain that the other customers have left.”

  “It might be,” I said.

  “Of course, the young lady does not know what she knows. Therefore, that information cannot be traced to me.”

  “I’d like the address,” I said.

  The Man ignored that. “Whether Charleston is human or inhuman is no concern of mine. However, I did feel that the robbery was not a well-conceived one in terms of the risk.”

  “Five young kids did it. The police know who they are. They’ll be caught.” I drank off the last of the Scotch and put the glass on the bar.

  “I’m not sure I approve of that kind of justice any more than I approve of Charleston’s way.” He sighed and shook his head. “The address of this particular house is 1122 Bricker Road.”

  I got out a scrap of paper and wrote it down. “You need an intro?”

  “Just money. And . . . you will be very careful that the girl who is a friend of mine does not get in the way of a stray bullet?”

  “Even if I have to pass him up,” I said, nodding.

  “On your way out you might seem somewhat angry at me. I think I can trust J.M. but it will not hurt to cover myself.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He let us reach the door before he stopped us. “Are we even now, Mr. Hardman?

  “If I stop him we are. If I don’t stop him I’m going to be too dead for it to matter.”

  On the way down the stairs and going past J.M. at the door we badmouthed The Man so much that I thought J.M. might be tempted to try one or both of us. Hump was calling him a dumb shit and I said that my big regret was that I’d spoiled that try on him last year. The way J.M. reacted I think it was one of our better performances.

  “Today?” Hump was headed through the main part of town. We’d decided not to call Art. We were going to wake him anyway and it might be better to give him the extra few minutes of sleep that a call before we went over would take from him.

  “It’s not the best move.” If we wanted to be sure of Charleston it would be better to catch him out of doors, to take away from him the kinds of games that he could play out of sight behind doors and walls. We wanted him between the car and the house. But it was after two and that gave us less than three hours to set it up and make it foolproof. That wasn’t enough time. I knew Art would say that. I was right and he’d be right. What hurried me was that Charleston had put in his day rooting and he was moving well. As far as the five kids were concerned, I wasn’t sure that I could afford to give him another day.

  “Risky, huh?”

  “But it might work.”

  “And Beck might be there,” Hump said.

  Edna let us in and kissed me and asked about Marcy. she didn’t want to wake Art. She said he’d had so little sleep lately. It turned out she didn’t have to. Art came stumbling out of the bedroom in his underwear, red-eyed and needing a shave. “What’s this uproar out here?” Edna shadowboxed him back into the bedroom and a minute or two later we could hear the shower going.

  Edna came back a little later. There were big spots of water on her house dress and I had a feeling Art had been a little amorous and had tried to pull her under the shower with him. Just by being there we’d ruined it for them. Sad, because when you’re my age and Art’s you never get back the ones that get away.

  Fifteen minutes later we were in the kitchen and Art knew what we’d found out from The Man. And I’d told him what I wanted to do.

  “It won’t fly,” Art said.

  “It’s that way or not at all.”

  “That hand,” Art said. “Charleston hears a man with a bandaged left hand was there and you can whistle long and hard for him. He’s gone.”

  “Thought of that.” I worked the tape free and began to peel off the gauze. It piled up at my feet before I got down to the pad and pulled that aside. The edges of the cut were jagged and crusty, the stitches so tight you could almost play a tune on them. “You got some gauze and tape?”

  I left the pad in place and exchanged the heavy padding of the bandage for a small wrapping. I held out a hand to Hump and he passed me the left glove from a pair we’d bought at a sports store on our way across town. It was thin and soft and black, a driving glove. It was some trouble working it over the bandage. I was sweating with the pain and the effort by the time I was through. “There.” I held it up. “Lost it in the war.”

  “Oh, hell.” Art got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. “You sure he’ll be there?”

  “If not today, then tomorrow.”

  “Hell, you’re not even sure he’s in town.”

  I went back over the question-and-answer we’d had with The Man. He’d never said right out that Charleston was in town, but he’d passed the info about the house on Bricker Road. That had to mean something. “My source never said so, but the fact he told me about this at all says Charleston’s still here. And unless he’s as lost as we are it backs up Hump’s theory that the boys are still in town, too.”

  “If I don’t go along with you, you’ll cut me out and do it by yourselves?”

  “Right.”

  “This is the silliest sack. . . .”

  “Are you in?” I asked.

  “I’m in,” Art said.

  I relaxed then. Hump grinned at me. It was on the way.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  At four that afternoon, wearing a slightly wrinkled suit and a tie that was a shade too mod for me at my age and with a jacket pocket of telephone memo messages . . . all fakes . . . we pulled up in front of the house at 1122 Bricker Road. We were in a borrowed Continental that I’d talked out of Eddie French who ran one of the local car-leasing outfits.

  Number 1122 was a Southern mansion with the big columns and the wide breezy porch that ran the whole length of the house. It was what I’d call Gone With the Wind architecture, that is, built after the movie came out and influenced by the movie sets in the same way that some impressionable young girls might have learned their Southern accents from the god-awful one Vivien Leigh had as Scarlett.

  Hump was in the front seat. I was in the back. Hump had a kind of rueful look on his face that said he wasn’t sure he wanted to be an actor if these were the only roles he could get. He was wearing a black whipcord suit and a chauffeur’s cap. The suit didn’t fit too well but it was the largest size we’d been able to find on short notice.

  “You ready to sit in the kitchen and flirt with the maid while old dad tries out the pleasure of this place?”

  Hump laughed. “Hardman, I expect I couldn’t finish a cup of coffee before you’d finish your pleasure.”

  “Ah, hell, who told you?” I grinned at him. “You ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Then how about coming back and opening the door for me? With a deep bow, please.”

  The young black maid who answered the door was probably The Man’s source. She was wearing a short black dress, a frilly apron and one of those white starched things in her hair . . . whatever you call them. She looked me over carefully, a look that counted the bills in my wallet and the change in my pocket. Then her eyes slid past me and landed, with claws, on Hump who was standing respectfully apart and to my right. It took her an effort to loosen the claws and get back to me.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “He didn’t say anything about appointments.” I leaned forward and swayed slightly, as if I’d already had a nip or two to get my courage up. “All he said was that you needed to be able to afford it. Is that right or wrong?”

  I guess the walk-in traffic was common enough. Also, if she had any doubts about me they didn’t extend to Hump. “You can come in,” she said to me, “but that gentleman can’t.”

  “My driver, Horace? It’
s chilly out in the car. At least, couldn’t he wait in the kitchen?”

  Hump leaned in. “I’d be pleased to wait in the kitchen.”

  “And he can have two beers on my tab.” I put my hard look on Hump. “More than two beers and you’re in trouble, Horace.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  The black maid wasn’t sure. “I suppose it’s all right.” She gave Hump a sad, understanding smile. “But you’ll have to go around to the back door.”

  “I don’t mind,” Hump said.

  As she turned to lead me into the house, Hump cut an eye at me. He could see all the possibilities. There was a chance he was going to have a better time than I was and it probably wouldn’t cost anything but a few charming words. In a house where the business was screwing I had a feeling the vibrations even got to the non-screwing help.

  Inside the house, after she closed the door, the maid said, “You ought to ask Miss Connie about your man being in the house.”

  I nodded. We were in a wide hallway that led to a high curving staircase to the left. Straight ahead to the right was the living room. It was in that direction that the maid led me. The living room was furnished as a copy of some article on restoration in some home beautiful magazine. Either they’d bought or rented the house that way or they’d hired some fag interior decorator to put the scene together for them.

  A blonde woman in her late thirties was behind a bar to the right of the entrance. She remained there as I crossed the carpet toward her. She wasn’t reading my wallet. She was reading the price tags on the clothing. Around two hundred for the suit, a bit over forty for the Florsheim shoes, eighteen to twenty for the shirt, and perhaps twelve to fifteen for the tie. It wouldn’t make me her richest customer. It might, however, put me in a class that could afford the $50 or so that was probably the going rate for short-times in the afternoon. On second thought, considering the way they’d wrapped the package, it might be closer to $75.

  “Afternoon,” she said. The inspection was over. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before, have I?”

  I shook my head. I gave the rest of the room a lingering, awed look. “A friend told me about it. I thought I’d stop by and see if it was true.”