The Deadly Cotton Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  “Didn’t take a week,” he said.

  I didn’t bother to count it. The count was always right. The bills would add up to $950. After I got home, I’d have to do some figuring and decide how much I ought to return to Nathan Webster.

  On the way home, I looped over to Ponce de Leon and bought three pounds of shrimp at the fish market.

  I reached home just in time to get a call from Marcy.

  The Philip Marlowe note, according to her, was a joke. I laughed politely and invited her to supper.

  The phone rang a bit after ten. We’d had supper and we were watching the Braves game that was being televised from Montreal. It was too early in the spring, and it looked like it might snow before they got in five innings.

  Marcy was nearest the bedroom. She started for the phone. I waved her away and closed the door to shut out the TV sound.

  “You know who this is?”

  The voice didn’t mean anything, but I made my guess. “Emma.”

  “You want to talk to me?”

  “I want to see you,” I said.

  “You must think I’m dumb.”

  “You pick the spot,” I said.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Maybe a break for you when it goes to trial.”

  “No way.” I could hear the breathy laughter. “If it goes to trial, it’ll go without me.”

  “Heading out?”

  “I’m not welcome here anymore. That’s thanks to you.”

  “I want to see you before you leave.”

  “I’m not going to walk into anything,” she said.

  “There’s no warrant on you yet that I know of.”

  “And that’s supposed to be a reason why I should see you?”

  “You’ve seen the paper?”

  “I saw it.”

  “There’ll be a fugitive warrant on you in the next day or two,” I said.

  “You were there?”

  “With a shovel in my hand.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that. I just drove the car to Atlanta.”

  “But you knew what was going to happen?”

  “I guessed. No, I just thought it was going to be rough on her.”

  “And better her than you, right, Emma?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pick a place for a meet. I’ll come alone.”

  “No, I’ve seen you with Turk. I don’t trust you.”

  “Turk’s in Tennessee. What’s Turk got to do with not wanting to … ?”

  “You dumb fuckhead, don’t you know anything?”

  She slammed the receiver down. I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the dead sound on the line.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Marcy left at daybreak. I remember the warm bed scent of her and a kiss with the taste of toothpaste in it. And then I rolled over and slept until nine.

  I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. After I put on the coffee water, I walked down the front steps and looked for the Constitution. The paper boy’s arm was going. The paper was lodged far back in a pyracantha bush. That was the expected. The unexpected was parked on the curb.

  It was a new black Continental.

  I couldn’t see the driver. I stood on the steps and stared at the Continental until the driver got out. Even with bleary eyes I could recognize him by his bulk. The driver, now rounding the back of the Continental, was Carter Williams.

  He stopped in the center of the lawn. “I want to see you, Mr. Hardman.”

  I searched the tone. He didn’t seem angry. I worked the rubber band from the rolled paper and waved him up the stairs. “I’m about to make some coffee.”

  While I made the coffee, he sat at the kitchen table. His head craned this way and that. I could feel him reading me by the furnishings and the way the house was kept. Compared to his house on Fortune Road, it was a slum. Still, it wasn’t as bad as usual. After supper the night before, Marcy had given the kitchen a cleaning, and Hump had put out the trash before the beer bottles and cans became a hazard.

  “You want to see me about Ellen Webster?” I slid a cup across the table toward him.

  “I understand you were there when they found her.”

  I pushed the milk carton and the sugar dish back toward the center of the table. “I did some of the digging.”

  “How?”

  “How was she killed? Shotgun.”

  “Bad?”

  “I’ve never seen a pretty dead body,” I said. “Not after the undertaker finished either.”

  “I decided I ought to talk to you.”

  “Your lawyer, Markman, know about this?”

  “No.” He lifted the cup and his hand shook. “He wouldn’t like it. He checked on you.”

  “I heard.”

  Coffee slopped over the rim of his cup, and the harder he tried to control the shaking, the worse it got. I watched the coffee rain down upon the table. “He told me about the favors, the ones you do now and then.”

  “It’s a living.”

  “You’re working for Nathan now?”

  “Until Sunday,” I said. “Now, I don’t know.”

  “Could I hire you?”

  I tore three or four paper towels from the roll and spread them over the spilled coffee. “It would depend on what you want. And I’d need some straight talk from you.”

  “It won’t go beyond this room?”

  “I can’t promise that. If you’re involved in some crime …”

  “I’m not, unless sleeping with a woman is a crime.”

  “So, you’re finally going to level?”

  He sipped at what was left in his cup. “I thought about it most of the night. I’ve been parked outside for most of an hour. I guess it’s time.”

  It began about three months before. That would put it at the end of February. He’d never really paid much attention to Ellen Webster. Oh, he’d noticed that she was an attractive woman and all that. Any man would. The end of February, he’d realized that she was obviously putting herself in his way. Every time he turned around, she’d be there. It was flattering, it did wonders for his ego, and that was when he took her to lunch for the first time.

  It was after the second lunch, when she’d fought back tears during the telling about her problems with her husband, that they’d made love the first time. She’d still been disturbed, and he’d taken her into his office after they returned to the Foundation. She’d broken down completely, and one moment he’d been comforting her and the next moment they were making love on the rug. It had been world-shaking, amazing, the best and the most exciting. Touching her had been like touching flame and not being burned.

  There’d been other lunches, and there’d been evenings when she could find some excuse to leave home and meet him. Those meetings had been arranged with care. She’d drive to the parking lot at Ansley Mall, not far from her home, and she’d be met there by Billy Ray Price. Price would drive her to the apartment.

  “Often?”

  “Two times a week,” Williams said.

  “And Billy Ray knew about the affair?”

  “He had to, but, like I said, he was more a friend than an employee.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “Fortune Road was out of the question. Billy Ray rented an apartment on North Highland in his name.”

  “And afterwards Billy Ray would drive her back to the parking lot?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Both of you have cars on those nights?”

  He looked puzzled.

  “After he dropped her, did he have to drive back to the apartment to pick you up?”

  “No, he used his own car.”

  “So, there’s no way of knowing how much time Billy Ray really spent with Ellen Webster? He could have driven her straight to the parking lot, or he could have spent an hour with her or even two hours?”

  I’d planted the seed. The question we’d asked him that time at his house hadn’t reached him. He’d been so sure that Billy Ray was the per
fect employee and good friend, it had slipped right past him. And, of course, he must have believed in Ellen.

  “How serious were you two?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Any talk about marriage?”

  “You always do,” he said. “Even if it’s just to save the woman’s feelings.”

  “Any talk about her getting a divorce?”

  “Some. Now and then. But I’d told her that I wasn’t sure I could risk having my name involved in a messy divorce case.”

  I left him for a few seconds and found part of a pack of smokes near the TV set. I lit my first of the day. “And when you told her that she said … ?”

  “She said she thought she could convince Nathan to give her a divorce without letting him suspect there was another man involved.”

  “It’s straight up time,” I said. “You have anything to do with trying to hire the professional?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t know what Billy Ray was doing?”

  “How could I?”

  “You didn’t go to the motel that night and try to convince Billy Ray to drop the hunt?”

  “I didn’t. And I didn’t kill him and beat you up if that is what the question means.”

  I lit the burner under the kettle. I kept my back to him. I didn’t know for sure that he was telling the truth. Not the one hundred percent truth. Still, it had the right sound to it.

  “You said something about hiring me?”

  “Yes.” He placed a hand over the top of his cup when I brought the kettle to the table.

  “What am I supposed to do for you?”

  I watched him while I mixed myself another cup of coffee. He hesitated. The words wouldn’t roll out. I knew then that it wasn’t the standard job I’d be getting. It wasn’t the find-out-who-really-did-it crap.

  “I want to be sure that my name is kept out of this … no matter what else happens.”

  “The way I see it, you’re out of it,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “If you didn’t try to hire the killer, if you didn’t kill Billy Ray …”

  “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”

  “Then you’re home free.” And got screwed and blowed at no expense, at no cost to you.

  “I feel better.” He brought out his checkbook.

  I shook my head at him. “Let’s see how it works out. It works out for you, if you’re left out, you send me a check for five hundred.”

  He replaced the checkbook. I saw him to the door. He said the usual things about feeling better now that he’d told somebody about it. I nodded like I believed him.

  After I closed the door behind him, I cleaned off the kitchen table and had that second cup of coffee and read the Constitution. I’d reached the sports page before the timing hit me.

  Three months. Yes, that was Cora Abse for you. The Parker case was breaking open one state over. She looked inside herself and saw that she needed the protection that big money could give her. She needed to change her name and her feathers one more time. If she worked it right, if she married Carter Williams, it would not be hard to manipulate him. There were so many other places to hide. New York and San Francisco and even Europe. Who’d look for Cora Abse on Park Avenue or Nob Hill or at the Ritz Hotel or the south of France? Nobody.

  So she’d put it to him. All that wonderful screwing, and he could have it if he kept her happy.

  Moving on time. Cora Abse knew all about that.

  My father died in 1952, while I was in Korea.

  Back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, he’d worked in the textile mills in North Carolina. It had been a time when the unions were moving in and organizing, and there’d been the bloody strikes and the busted heads and the broken arms and legs.

  I was born in 1931, and Mama didn’t like what was going on so she’d pressured him. She’d said, “Mr. Clem, this is not a place to bring up a child.” You see, she’d had great hopes for me. I’d be the first one in the family to graduate from college and I’d go on to be a great lawyer or a doctor.

  The pressure worked. We leapfrogged South Carolina and ended up in Carsonville, Georgia. Mama had a sister living there. In time, Daddy worked his way up from mail carrier on the rural backroads to postmaster.

  He never forgot the language of the textile workers. He’d use a word or a phrase, and we’d give him a puzzled look and he’d laugh. It’s been a long time, and I’ve forgotten most of those words and phrases. Only one of them stays with me now. I guess I remember it because it was the summer I was fourteen and I was just getting interested in women. A lady that went to the same church with Mama and Daddy, a lady they respected a lot, suddenly, with no warning, up and ran away with the Watkin’s man. I don’t remember the man, but I remember those trucks. The Watkin’s trucks covered the backwoods in the south, selling coffee and spices and needles and thread and a hundred other things farm women needed.

  The day we heard what had happened, we were on the porch after a heavy supper. Daddy waited until Mama went in the house to refill his iced tea glass, and he said to me, “I always thought Mrs. Jennings had a cotton heart.” He was a kind man, a man with a massive understanding. He didn’t mean anything harsh.

  It turned out, back in the textile days, that was the way men talked about the women who worked there. If they could be led this way and that, if they could be talked into walking too far in the woods on a dark night, they’d wink and say, “A cotton heart on that one.”

  Cora Abse-EIlen Carver-Ellen Webster? No, not really a cotton heart the way those men meant it.

  Too deadly for that. If she had a heart it was as hard as the shell on the seed in the center of the bole.

  It was cocktail hour at 590 West, the bar on the top of Stouffer’s Inn on West Peachtree. It was early in the week and slow. As the week went on, it would crowd and fill. As the week moved on toward Friday.

  I’d spent the rest of the morning, after seeing Carter Williams, waiting to see if Art would call. He hadn’t. I guess nothing had come of the look-see at the hotel registrations. At four, Bill Barstow, the T.B.I. man, called. He’d flown in alone to talk to the Atlanta police. They locked in tight on Emma Terry ever since they’d bought my theory that she’d had driven Ellen Webster’s car to Atlanta and that had taken us to the grave on Rock Farm. Like me, they’d arrived at the conclusion that the woman was still in Atlanta.

  I agreed to meet him for a drink. Now we were seated at a window table on the front side of the bar. Our table overlooked the Crawford Long hospital complex and beyond that the northwest section of town with its old houses and all those trees greening over.

  “No way to pressure Keppler at the talent agency again?”

  I said I didn’t see how we could do it. He’d done about as much as we’d asked him to. He’d cut her loose, unprotected I thought, and he’d probably told her to call me. That was as far as I thought he’d go. He wasn’t about to turn her over to us, not with what she knew about his operation. If anything, he’d told her to call me, but that she’d damn well better keep her distance.

  “I’m not sure your way was the best one,” Barstow said.

  “It’s all risk,” I said. I sipped my gin and tonic and looked down at the street. “You just come in from Smythtown?”

  He said he had. I watched him having trouble with the stalk of celery that came with his Bloody Mary. He didn’t want it and it was too long to fit into the ash tray. He solved the problem by eating off a couple of inches before he dropped it in with the cigarette butts.

  “How’s Turk?”

  He laughed. “That bastard. You know what he did? He went to the mayor and complained that he didn’t like the way Vincent and I came waltzing into his territory without so much as a hello of warning. He raised hell and more hell, and he decided that he needed a week off so he could calm his nerves.”

  “He just got back from a …” I laughed along with Barstow.

  “That’s what the mayor said. But Turk said it was
either that or they could have his badge and the shitty job.”

  “And he got it?”

  “Starting yesterday. Monday.”

  “That’s balls,” I said.

  “If I’d tried that,” Barstow said, “I’d be on the street looking for a job.”

  We agreed that things were run funny in Tennessee. A puffy woman with fat fingers sat down at the piano and began playing rock songs scaled down for a two-step, and we had another drink and I said I had to leave.

  Like a lot of cops I knew, Barstow was dull as cooked carrot tops. About all he knew was his work.

  I was relieved that Art was wrong. There was no talk about offering me a job.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hump’s dusty Buick was parked in the shady part of the lot to the right of his apartment building. The front door, usually locked, was propped open, letting in some fresh air to blow away the stale fall and winter smells.

  Hump came to the door wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a tie shirt with a collar so frayed that it looked fringed. “You didn’t bring any fried chicken with you, did you?”

  “Hungry?”

  He motioned me in and left the door open. “This being unemployed hurts.”

  “The shorts?”

  “So-so,” he said.

  I got out my money fold and spread it. I worked three twenties out of the bottom. “That hold you? I can get more from the house.”

  “This ought to do me for a day or two.”

  I sat down and looked at the zipper scar that ran up the side of his right knee. There was one on his left knee, too, but it was only about half as long. “That’s two-sixty of the five hundred. Your half of the thousand from Webster. Soon as I can see him again, I’ll see if he wants some of it back. I thought I’d give him a couple of days before I talked to him.”

  “I trust your math,” he said.

  “Want some supper?”

  “I could use a rib sandwich.”