by Ralph Dennis
“That usual with prosties?”
“Not carrying much identification? It seems to be a trend. They get ripped off. Why carry around anything they might have to replace later?”
“I’d like to talk to her pimp,” I said.
“That’s a fat chance. You think some pimp’s going to walk in and say that was part of his stable got torn up out there?”
“It might be hard to tab him. Might not, though. Take the dwarf girl. She might be the key. You ask about a blonde and who her pimp was. What blonde? What pimp? But you throw in the dwarf girl who was always with the blonde, and somebody might know who the pimp was.”
“If the dwarf was always with her,” Art said.
“Have to play it that way, and hope.”
“Too bad you’re out of a job now. It’s your kind of work.”
“Easy enough for you to check out, Art.”
Art shook his head. “Tonight’s Friday. You know how many killings we’ll have by Monday? Maybe five or six. I can’t spend that time on just one of them.”
“Not on a prostie,” I said. “Now if it was a banker from downtown.”
“It would be different,” Art said.
“You bet your ass it would be.” I sipped my drink. “Now that I’m out of a job, I wonder why I’m buying you a drink?”
“A bribe,” Art said. “That’s so I don’t take you downtown and turn you over to a wrecking crew.”
I grinned at him. “I’m glad I wasn’t around in those days. A lot of people who got arrested used to try to escape. And used to get subdued.”
“Lots of bruises and lots of confessions,” Art said.
“Or just some lumps that told some guy not to fuck around in this cop’s territory anymore.”
“It sounds like primitive police work,” Hump said.
“Basic.”
“How’d it work?” Hump asked.
Art leaned back in his chair. “Take this pimp. We pick him up, and he says he never heard of these two girls. So I put him in with a wrecking crew, and they beat the pure living crap out of him. First thing you know, he does remember those girls, including how much money they made last year for him, and how many tricks they turned.”
“But now he’s got bruises,” Hump said.
“Missing teeth, and broken bones, and all that. But we’ve got four cops who say he tried to escape. And they make a report about how violent he got.”
“And how they used just enough force to subdue him,” I said.
“It was different then,” Art said. “Being a criminal meant you didn’t have any rights.”
“I’d still like to talk to that pimp.”
“Do it on your own time,” Art said.
I lifted my right leg and showed him the tear at the knee of the pants and the bloodstains on the cuff. “It’s already cost me a thirty-dollar pair of pants.”
Art pushed his empty glass at me. “Was that invitation for a drink or drinks?”
I ordered another round.
I called Hubie and reached him at home. I laid it out for him and listened to him grumble and bitch for a few minutes. It was a twenty-mile drive out to the Barrow place, and he didn’t like leaving his backyard, or his bottle, or whatever.
I took the bitch and the grumble. They were his wages for a shitty job.
It was almost midnight when he called me back. “Right back to you, Jim.”
“How?”
“John Barrow’s heading your way tomorrow. He had a call while I was there. Atlanta police want an ID from him.”
At least that was good timing. They hadn’t called before Hubie got there to break the bad news. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“He’s going to stop by your place afterwards.”
Oh, shit.
“Thought you’d like that,” Hubie said.
It wasn’t like the usual Saturday. I was up early. Frustrated and mean as a snake. I had my coffee out on the back steps, feeling that early spring coolness. It took me about an hour to get it up, and then I changed to some work clothes. It took me another half-hour to get past the looking-and-trying-to-decide-what-to-do stage.
But once I started, it went well. I got all the dead limbs out of the terrace plot first, and stacked them. After that, I used a spade and started to break ground. It was slow and hard work, and even gloves didn’t do much to protect my hands. I could feel the blisters coming up. I didn’t have to take the gloves off to know I had fat ones on the palms of my hands and narrow, banded ones on the yokes between my thumbs and first fingers.
I was halfway through the plot by noon, and I took time off to make a couple of sandwiches and a big pitcher of iced tea, I’d finished the sandwiches and most of the tea when Mr. Barrow found me. He must have tried the front door first and then, seeing my car still there, walked around to the backyard.
I waved at him and sat on the stone wall at the front of the terrace and watched him come up the slope toward me. It looked like the energy had gone out of him. He was stooped more now, and his feet dragged. We gave each other brief nods, not speaking, and he looked at the work I’d done so far while I went down to the kitchen and got a tea glass for him. I poured a glass of tea for him and put it on the wall near him. He had a clump of the dirt I’d dug up in his hands, feeling it and smelling it.
“What you going to plant?”
I told him, and he rubbed the dirt between his hands and poured it out in single grains.
“Needs some manure,” he said.
“I’ll put some on,” I said. “Sheep all right?”
He nodded. He noticed the tea, lifted the glass, and gave it a courtesy sip. “Hubie said you talked to her before it happened.”
“I know it won’t mean much now,” I said, “but she was going to call her mother this morning. She said she was going to.”
“Wish she could have. Emily’s taking it hard.”
“I took it hard myself,” I said. “She was a pretty, young girl, and I never get used to that … that violence happening.”
“God damn,” he said suddenly. “God fucking damn.”
I looked at him and then looked away. I hadn’t known why he wanted to see me. I didn’t think it was to get back part of the advance he’d given me. Maybe it was. You just couldn’t tell. But part of it was that he wanted to let the frustration and anger out. He had a sick wife at home, and he couldn’t do it there. But here I was, hired by him, and it might be his way of getting his money’s worth.
But I was wrong. He covered it over as soon as it broke out. He looked at my garden plot. “You got another spade?”
I shook my head.
“A rake?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’ll dig. You break it up and rake it out.”
I came back from the garage with the rake and found him, without his jacket and with his sleeves rolled up, digging away where I’d left off. I went back over to where I’d started and used the rake to break up the clumps and work the grass and weeds out. He worked steadily for an hour, not saying anything, just demon-driven and intent. At the end of the hour he dropped the spade and went over and sat on the terrace ledge. I went down and refilled the pitcher with tea and ice cubes and came back up the slope. He was breathing hard, like a cat or a dog does in hot weather, but he was hardly sweating. He drank one glass of tea at a gulp and held out his glass for another.
“You know,” he said, “she wasn’t really our daughter. She was adopted.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“I remember her as a baby. Hardly as big as a minute.”
I nodded.
“I wanted a son, but for some reason we couldn’t have one. And when we decided to adopt a baby I still wanted a son, but Emily took one look at that baby, and she wanted that one so much I couldn’t deny it to her.”
“You could have adopted a boy, too,” I said.
He looked at me for a long moment, as if he wasn’t sure which one of us was the crazy one.
“It bothered me, the child’s breeding. Not knowing who the baby’s parents were, and what you could expect when the baby grew up.”
“Children aren’t like pigs and cows,” I said.
“Yes, they are. Oh, I got told different at the time. Doctor Rogers … he was our doctor in Anson, until he died two years ago … I asked him, and he said heredity didn’t count in people any more. He said it was environment that was important, how a child was loved, and how it grew up. And I tried to believe him.”
“But you don’t any more?”
“Not any more.”
“I don’t see how it matters,” I said.
“It matters. You don’t know how I loved that little girl. I even got over her not being the son I wanted. You had to see her at five and six and seven to know. And right on up until she was in the ninth grade. But then something happened, and she wasn’t the same any more.”
I made my guess. “She found out you weren’t her real parents?”
He nodded. “It liked to tore the heart out of her.”
“How’d she find out?”
“I don’t know. One morning she left for school and everything was fine. When she came home that afternoon it was all different.”
“How?”
“She asked her mama who her real mama and daddy were.”
“Just straight out?” I asked.
He nodded. “For a time I thought she’d got over it. I guess that was just what showed on the outside. It was then she started saving her money to move to Atlanta.”
“Still affectionate? Still seemed to care for you and your wife?”
“It looked that way, but I guess it was put on.”
I decided I’d better go ahead and get it over with. “What still bothers you?”
“I knew better than to adopt her. I just knew it. I knew there’d come a time we’d end up paying for somebody else’s mistakes in bed.”
“That’s a harsh way of talking about her now,” I said.
“I know it.”
His eyes got that faraway look and I couldn’t see the pictures in his mind. I thought I knew what they were. The child at six and seven and eight. The innocent love a child gives to a couple who need it. The whole fifteen years before it changes and goes down the drain. I watched the calmness in his face, and I don’t think he was seeing it after Joy Lynn knew the truth.
“You know how much land I’ve got?”
“No,” I said.
“About eight hundred acres. You know what they’re worth?”
I shook my head.
“A quarter of a million dollars. That’s just the land.”
“That’s a lot of land.” I knew that sounded lame, but I didn’t know where the conversation was taking us.
“I’ve got almost no need for it now.”
“There’s your wife,” I said.
“The doctors give her a year, at most. Might be less than a year. The cancer’s spreading.”
“Sorry.” I looked away.
“I went by the bank this morning.” He reached into his pocket. The roll of money was about the same thickness, but this time there were hundred-dollar bills on top. “I asked about you. I asked Hubie about you, and then I had him make some calls to the Atlanta police. What I heard was mixed. Some don’t like you, and some don’t know for sure if you’re honest. But most of them say you’re a damned good man when it comes to figuring out things.”
He took the rubber band from the roll. His hand was shaking so much, the rubber band got away from him and flew up into the garden plot. He started counting out hundred-dollar bills. He reached a thousand and went right past it. He stopped at two thousand.
“Is that enough?”
“For me and my partner, both,” I said.
“There’s more, if you need it.” He stood up and shoved the rest of the roll deep into his pocket. “I want to hear from you soon.”
“You’ll hear from me.”
“I want to know what happened to her, and why. I want to look him in the face.”
The hundred-dollar bills were on the stone ledge between us. A breeze ruffled them, but they remained in place.
He folded the jacket over his arm and walked down the slope without looking back. I sat there and saw him round the side of the house and go out of sight. A minute later, I heard the pickup fire up in the driveway.
I fanned the hundreds. A breeze blew down the yard, chilling the sweat on my body. I closed the fan of hundreds and stuffed them in a damp pocket. I got the spade and the rake and stored them back in the garage. In the house, I showered and stretched out on the bed for an hour or so. The hour turned into three and, about supper time, back stiff and hands sore, I rolled to the edge of the bed and called Hump.
“We’ve got money and we’ve got work,” I said.
“There’s this trim who wants some of me tonight,” Hump said.
“I want to start now, not tomorrow morning.”
“Now you’re talking like a boss white.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“No damage,” he said evenly. “That girl can hold it for me until midnight.”
“You sure?”
“Sure enough.”
He hung up and I got dressed.
CHAPTER THREE
“I know three places,” Hump said, “but you’re not going to be welcome in any of them.” He took a last smiling look at the ten hundred-dollar bills and folded them and put them in his right front pants pocket.
“Black?”
“Joy Lynn didn’t give us the color of her pimp, did she?”
“Not exactly.”
“Got to check some addresses.” Hump left and went into the bedroom. He brought back the white pages of the phone book. “You see, there are some key words. They’re like a code. The words are sporting, sport and player. All of them are tied up in the pimp’s world. You find a bar or a club with one of them attached to the name somehow or other, and there’s a better than average chance you’re going to find about twenty or thirty pimps standing around drinking and flashing their clothes and bragging about their stable of expensive and faithful foxes.”
I dropped his empty beer bottle in the trash and opened him another. I put it next to his elbow and leaned over his shoulder while he wrote down three places: Sport’s Lounge, Sporting Life and Player’s Place. That done, he flipped through the directory pages and wrote down the addresses. The first one was on Piedmont, the second on Reardon, and the last one on Pryor. I knew the town pretty well, but I couldn’t remember ever having passed even one of the three.
Hump pushed the phone book away and stood up. “I’ll take the beer with me. What are you going to do?”
“I thought I’d go with you.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to have enough trouble working my way around to asking questions. With you along, looking like a cop, I might have to fight my way out of a couple of these places.”
“I can stay here and drink.”
“Blacks aren’t the only pimps in town,” Hump said. “Check out some of the white ones.”
“You got any names?”
“Try Willie Whitman.”
“He pimping?” The whole idea of that confused me. The last I’d heard of Willie, he’d been doing cons on farmers. In fact, you hardly heard of him at all until the summer months. That was when the cotton and the tobacco got sold, and the farmers had some cash money. Willie had the pigeon drop, and a hundred versions of that, and selling farmers’ wives big, beautiful appliances that never arrived.
“Not pimping,” Hump said. “Selling information. Last year, he tried a new kind of pigeon drop on a hard-assed young farmer, and the farmer busted him up some.”
“Where’ll I find him?”
“Try the Hollywood Bar on Peachtree near 10th. He’s drinking with the winos now.”
I followed him to the front door. “When’ll you be back?”
“Might be midnight. Can’t rush this kind of thing.”
“Laugh at my tomatoes, my squash and my corn.”
“If I ever see them,” Hump said.
I called Marcy after Hump left. I think I caught her in the bath. “You want to play detective with me?”
“You serious, Jim?” She laughed. “Is it like playing doctor?”
“One hundred per cent.”
I told her to dress like she was going on a picnic. I didn’t want the clothing to be expensive. Jeans, a blouse and a sweater. “Be kind of coarse-looking,” I said at the end.
“Bastard.”
I didn’t recognize Willie at first. I ordered a pitcher of beer at the bar and, while I waited for the bartender to draw it, I had my casual look around. Three winos at the end of the bar near the front door. He wasn’t in that group. Two near me. Not in there. And there was one at the back end of the bar, facing away from me.
The Hollywood is just a few doors down from the House of Eng, a good Chinese restaurant, but about a thousand real miles separate them. The Hollywood is for the lost ones, the ones who are barred from most of the other taverns in town. They sit over their bottle or pitcher like a man over his last meal. Make it last, taste every drop.
I lifted the pitcher and was heading for the booth where Marcy was, when the man at the back end of the bar turned on his stool and looked at me. It was Willie Whitman. But a battered and changed one. His nose was pushed out of line and needed an operation. The ear next to me looked like a butternut squash. The farmer had really ruined him. I couldn’t see anybody buying a used car from him. And I couldn’t see him doing the pigeon drop without plastic surgery.
He looked away without even a nod, and I went along with him. I put my back to him, went over to the booth, and poured Marcy a glass of beer.
“I like your idea of a night on the town,” Marcy said.
“It’s got the best country and western jukebox in town.”
“You promised me supper,” she said, shrill and a bit off-key. That was Marcy’s idea of acting, but a couple of winos turned in their seats and looked at us.