by Ralph Dennis
“Nothing,” I said, going back into the bedroom.
Art turned from some clothes in the closet. “Wears expensive clothes. Better than Edna does.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but she has to let a lot of strangers stick their clap stick in her, to afford them.”
“You through?”
I nodded, and we rode the elevator back down to the lobby. The desk clerk had his nerve back. I guess he’d been pumping and puffing it up while we were upstairs.
“I’m going to call the hotel’s lawyer first thing in the morning. You can’t just run over people this way.”
“Do it.” Art slapped the key down on the desk.
I put an elbow on the counter and gave him my kindest smile. “Do it, but know the rotten can of peas you’re opening. You’re running close to a cathouse here. The police have all the time in the world. They’ll take five years proving it if they have to.”
“The Hanner girl,” Art said. “She leave in a cab, or did somebody pick her up?”
“I didn’t see,” the clerk said.
“Do better than that,” Art said.
He choked again. “In a cab.”
“Which kind?”
“Terminal City,” the clerk said.
We went out to the street. It was cool and the wind was up. It was like this in the early spring. There was a trace of dampness in the air, like it might rain. It made me think about my vegetable garden. I was going to have to get some seeds in soon. Otherwise, I was going to be pissed every time it rained for the next week or two.
“I’ll trace her through the cab company,” Art said.
“It’ll lead you to a street corner or the bus station.”
“Got to try it, anyway.”
I dropped Hump off and went on home. In my bathroom mirror, I checked the knot on top of my head. The skin wasn’t broken, but it was stretching some now. I talked myself out of a drink and got into bed, trying to dive into sleep past the beginning of a headache.
In the morning, the knot was there, but it didn’t look as large as it felt. I sat around the kitchen until eight, reading the paper and drinking coffee. At exactly eight, knowing it was time for Marcy to leave for work at the welfare department, I dialed her number.
“I knew it would be you,” Marcy said. “And all you want is to know how many more pages I’ve decoded.”
“Not exactly.” I liked it when she misjudged me. “I wondered if you could find the time to pick up some seeds for me?”
“What do you need?”
“Summer squash, corn. Anything else you like.”
“Zucchini,” she said.
“We can do a few hills of each, summer and zucchini.”
“I’ll try.”
“And keep on translating,” I said.
After she said she loved me, too, I made another cup of coffee and carried it out into the backyard. It had rained during the night, while I was sleeping, but it hadn’t been a heavy rain. The ground wasn’t soggy. I leaned on the terrace wall and drank the coffee and felt the coolness after the rain. The spring was really getting cranked up. You could almost hear the leaf buds breaking open.
So much for the spring. My look into the death of Joy Lynn wasn’t going too well. It was down the dark tunnel and the dead-end waiting. The four muscle men from the night before weren’t going to say anything. I’d heard them rehearsing-it with the cops, right after they arrived at the Book Store Bar. It was just a barroom argument that got out of hand. And, of course, they’d made a lot of the fact that Hump had thrown the first punch. Even if a judge believed Art, it would be a short time in the slam. And because they were pros, they’d take the soft time and be back on the street, still in good shape with whoever had sent them, and maybe with a bonus for taking the fall with their mouths closed.
Crystal Hanner might know something. No doubt at all, she’d put the ugly four on us. Or she’d called somebody who’d put them on us. A talk with her, if Art could locate her, might send us off in a new direction.
I carried my empty coffee cup back into the kitchen. I was thinking of calling Art, when he called me.
“That’s good mind-reading,” I said.
“About to call me?”
“Hand on the phone,” I said.
“I located the driver, the one who picked up somebody at the Central Hotel about the right time. The problem is, he called in right after that and wrote himself off for the rest of the night. I got his address and his phone number, but I can’t reach him.”
“Sounds like the right one,” I said.
“Name’s Freddie Black.” He read me off an address on Monroe Drive. “I think it’s one of those wood frame apartment houses near where Monroe and Ponce de Leon come together.”
“You want me to check it?”
“If you want to,” Art said. “I’m bushed. I need a few hours of sleep.”
“What if I turn up something?”
“Give me two hours sleep, and then call me.”
I said I would. I dialed Hump’s number. He sounded awake. I guess he’d gone straight to bed after I’d dropped him. “I’m going looking for a cab driver.”
“I need my breakfast.”
“Check with you later, then,” I said.
“No, wait. It shouldn’t take long to peel the driver down. After that, we get some breakfast.”
“Done,” I said.
Hump was parked in a side street that faced the Monroe address. He honked at me as I went by. I got the car turned around and went into the street and parked behind him.
“No sign of the cab,” Hump said.
I leaned on the open car window and looked over at the house. “I’m not sure about the Terminal City Cab Company, whether they lease by the week and let the driver keep the cab full-time, or the other way.”
“Let’s try it,” Hump said.
We crossed Monroe Drive. It was a big wood frame house with a tin roof. It had been painted a battleship gray, maybe with surplus paint, back in the summer. The floor boards on the porch didn’t look too safe. I picked my way across the porch to the rack of mailboxes. Next to the mailboxes, facing out to the street, was a hand-lettered sign that announced there was a furnished apartment for rent. ADULTS ONLY—NO PETS.
By the number of mailboxes, there were six apartments. An F. Black had apartment #4. I pushed into the hallway. Apartments 1 and 2 faced each other across a boxlike hallway. There was a staircase straight ahead. We went up to the second floor. I found #4, but I couldn’t find a bell. I rapped on the door panel. When there wasn’t an answer, I tried again.
The door across the hall cracked open a few inches. “He’s not home,” a woman said.
“He come in last night?”
“No,” she said.
“Do you know …?”
The door jerked open a few more inches, and I could see a woman in her forties, heir hair up in tissue and curlers. “All I know is, I’ve got a headache and you’re not helping it any.”
“One question, and we’ll leave your headache alone. Does he keep the cab while he’s off duty?”
“Sure. It’s parked out in the driveway. Makes the house took cheap, I think.”
“Thanks.”
“Breakfast?” Hump asked when we reached his car.
“Breakfast,” I said.
I locked my car, and we drove down Ponce de Leon until we reached Mrs. Pearson’s Cafe. The sign out front was in the shape of a big puffy homemade biscuit. That was the specialty of the place, served with butter and honey. I ordered coffee and a couple of sausage biscuits. While I ate those, I watched Hump work through six eggs, a couple of orders of bacon, and about a dozen hot biscuits. It bloated me, watching him.
“How’s the decoding going?” Hump asked, catching his breath over a second cup of coffee.
“It might take some time.”
“You doing anything with the john list?”
“Not so far. I don’t think it’ll lead us anywhere. Why?”
I caught the check. Hump left the tip. Hump’s breakfast was almost a lunch tab downtown. Hump held the door open and grinned at the change I got from a five-dollar bill.
At eleven-thirty or so, the cab made its turn into the driveway and parked. I tapped Hump on the shoulder, and we left his car and went across the street at a fast walk. Black was checking his mailbox when we reached the steps.
“You Freddie Black?”
“What if I am?”
Black was a short, feisty man in his mid-twenties. He was wearing a windbreaker, so I couldn’t be sure, but he looked the type to have tattoos on both arms and his chest. Right now, he needed a shave.
“We’re interested in a girl you picked up in front of the Central Hotel last night. Your last trip.”
“What’s she to you?”
“You make any guess about her profession?” I asked.
He nodded.
“That girl rolled me, not half an hour before you picked her up.” I looked down at the ground like it wasn’t that easy to tell strangers what a fool I’d been, “I made a complaint at the police. A detective named Art Maloney’s been looking for you all night.”
He bought it. “How much she roll you for?”
“Close to five hundred,” I said.
“No wonder she was in a big hurry.”
“Where’d you take her?”
“She gave me twenty above the fare so I wouldn’t say.”
“You’ve still got the twenty, and I won’t tell her I got anything from you.”
“I took her to the bus station,” he said.
“Not a chance,” I said. “You’ve been gone all night. Maybe you didn’t drive her to South Carolina or Florida, but it was a long trip.” I gave him a long look up and down. “My guess is, you took a nap on the side of the road.”
“This won’t get back to the cab company?”
“No way,” I said. I could see him relaxing, getting ready. “And I’ll call the cop and keep him off your back.”
“You know a town named Fletcherville, near the Carolina line?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t on the main route north. It was more westerly. I hadn’t been there, but I’d heard of it. It was about a three-hour drive. “Three hours to get there. That would put you there around midnight.”
“Later,” Black said. “We stopped for supper.”
“Where’d you drop her in Fletcherville?”
“That was the odd part. She had me leave her right on the main street.”
“Anything open, that time of night?”
“Maybe a cafe and the hotel,” he said. “It’s the kind of town where it’s locked up tight at nine or ten.”
“You see her head for the cafe or the hotel?”
“Not while I was watching her. She was just standing there, with that little overnight case.”
“You nap on the road?”
“The money I made last night, I stopped in the first motel I saw.” Then the thought hit him, and he didn’t like it. “I guess she paid me with your money.”
“Forget it,” I said. “You didn’t have any way of knowing it was stolen.”
Hump and I started away.
“You’ll keep your word about the cab company?”
I said I would.
At twelve-thirty I called Art, and had to fight my way past his wife, Edna. She didn’t want to wake him up. We’d been friends for a long time, but she wanted Art to get his seven or eight, no matter how important the business was.
Art drove over a bit after one. We decided to go in my car because I didn’t want to drive the city-owned one. Hump and I split the driving time while Art leaned back, stretched out his legs, and tried to get three more hours of sleep. I didn’t wake him until we reached the city limits of Fletcherville.
It’s a farm town, like a hundred others across the state. There’s a main street about a block long. A J.C. Penney store, a few small shops, a movie theater showing a double feature of horror films, the Wagonwheel Cafe, and a hotel, The Planter’s Rest.
Hump pulled to the curb, and I got the attention of a kid wearing jeans and a Braves t-shirt. “Where’s the police department?”
“Take the next left,” he said. “It’s just past Law Court.”
Hump worked over into the lane and made the turn. It was a narrow street, still paved with the old red bricks. In places, the bricks were worn down into ruts, and it was slow driving. It wasn’t comfortable, but I guess I understood why some historical society or other probably opposed paving over the bricks. The street most likely went back to the days when the only vehicles in the town were wagons.
Low two-story buildings of the same brick edged in from both sides of the street. I assumed this was Law Court, because of all the lawyers’ signs sticking out of the building fronts at all levels. I counted about thirty shingles. I shook my head. I couldn’t see that many lawyers making a living in a town that small.
And then we were past Law Court and back in the real world. The police station building looked new, built in the last five or six years, I guessed. The sign out front had Fletcherville Police Department on it, and below that, in small script, Jail in Back. Hump pulled into a gravel parking lot on the other side of the building. He parked next to a police cruiser and a pickup truck.
Art got out and spent a minute trying to shake the wrinkles out of his jacket. “Coming in?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I’ve been in enough police stations,” Hump said.
We left him stretching and lighting a cigarette. We went in. A chest-high counter stretched across the front of the room. There wasn’t anyone at the counter. A young man with his legs propped up on the typewriter leaf of a desk looked at us, but didn’t get to his feet. He was wearing a dark cotton police uniform.
“Do something for you?” he asked.
“Where’s the chief?” Art asked.
“He’s out,” the young cop said.
“I’d like to see him.”
“You can take a seat or come back in an hour.”
“I don’t plan on waiting an hour,” Art said, an edge in his voice. “How about you calling him?”
“I know his answer now,” the young cop said. “He’ll say he’ll be back in an hour.”
“Come over here. I’m tired of yelling.”
The policeman dropped his legs from the typewriter leaf and got up slowly. He came toward us like he was prepared for almost any kind of trouble we planned on making. When he reached the counter, Art got out his I.D. case and opened it.
“I just drove all the way from Atlanta, and I’m not even on shift time, and I don’t have any intention of cooling my heels for an hour. How about you calling the chief, and telling him it’s police business?”
The chief threw the front door open ten minutes later. He was red-faced and angry. “What’s all this Goddamned rush?”
The young policeman nodded in the direction of Art.
The chief was spare and lean. His hands and face had the washed-out wintertime look of a man who fished all summer. He leaned on the counter and looked at Art. Art passed him the ID case. While the chief looked at it, Art told him about Crystal Hanner and the fact that she was needed for questioning in the killings that had taken place in Atlanta in the last few days.
“The two whores?” the chief said. “I read about that.”
“The Hanner girl knew one of them and might be able to tell us something.”
“You got any idea how you’re going to find her?” The chief closed the ID case and passed it back to Art.
“She got in pretty late last night. Might be in the hotel.”
“What’s that name again?” The chief pulled a telephone toward him and dialed a number.
“Crystal Hanner.”
“Bob, this is the chief. You got a girl named Crystal Hanner registered over there?” He turned to us. “He’s checking the cards.” After a minute, he said, “Yes, Bob? Is that right?�
�� He shook his head at Art. “Nobody by that name over there.”
“See if any woman checked in last night … no matter what the name is.”
The chief mumbled into the phone.
“A blonde with dark roots showing? Mid-twenties, kind of tall?”
The chief read that into the phone. He paused and then asked, “You there, Bob, when she checked in?”
“It would have been after midnight,” Art said.
“She’s there,” the chief said. “Registered as Mrs. Carol Howard.”
“I’d like to pick her up,” Art said.
“You want to question her here?”
“I need her back in Atlanta.”
The chief turned to the young cop. “Go with them, Ernie.”
“Right, Chief.”
Art thanked the chief and told him, if he was ever in Atlanta, to stop by. The chief said he would, and it might be soon. He leaned on the counter and gave a long sigh as he watched us leave. His day had been ruined, but he could console himself with the thought that he’d done some police business.
I stood outside room 28 and knocked.
“Who is it?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Room service,” I said.
“I didn’t order anything.”
“Room service,” I said, with the same level of voice, as if I hadn’t heard her.
The door opened, and I put a hand on it and pushed. At first, just seeing me and not knowing me, I thought she was going to faint. Then Art stepped from behind me and she recognized him. It was relief mixed with anger.
“Back to Atlanta,” Art said.
Hump drove. Art was in the back seat with Crystal, and I was up front, turning with an arm on the seat back to listen to Art’s questioning and add my dime’s worth now and then.
“That wasn’t smart, Crystal,” Art said.
“I didn’t have any choice.”
“Why not?”
“I could have got in trouble if I’d stayed in Atlanta,” she said.