Pimp for the Dead

by Ralph Dennis

  “You are in trouble,” Art said. “You set us up.”

  “Who’d you call from the Central Hotel after Art dropped you off?” I asked.

  “I didn’t call anybody.”

  “You called somebody, or those four goons wouldn’t have known where to find us.”

  “I didn’t make any call,” she insisted.

  “Just give me a name,” I said.

  Hump said, “Let me pull over to the side of the road. After she set me up last night, I wouldn’t mind beating the crap out of her.”

  “This is Hump,” I said. “He doesn’t like being set up. He likes to believe he can trust people.”

  “Believe me,” she said to Hump.

  “Who’d you call?” Art pushed at her.

  “A name and a phone number,” I said.

  “Otherwise, it’s going to be a long afternoon and night,” Hump said.

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “Who’d you call from the lobby?” Art nodded at me, and I passed him my pack of smokes. He lit one and blew the smoke at her.

  “I didn’t make a call.”

  “The desk clerk says you did.”

  “He’s lying, then.”

  “You’re the one lying,” Hump said. There was a turn-off coming up on our right. Hump went into the turn going pretty fast. It threw us all to the side. I banged a shoulder against the door. It was a clay dirt road, not paved. Hump braked in a whirl of red dust, and was out of the car in a rush. He pulled the rear door open and yanked the girl out by an arm. His right hand went back, like he was about to slap the hell out of her. “Bitch! I’m tired of your lying.”

  “No,” Crystal shouted at him. “I called this guy I know. I told him I had to leave town, and why.”

  “His name?” Hump still had the hand back.

  “Alan Wright. His name is Alan Wright.”

  “See how easy it is?” Hump pushed her back into the car and closed the door, and got behind the wheel again. He got turned around and we headed for Atlanta once more.

  “A pimp?” Art asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Yours?”

  I got out my pack and offered her a smoke. She took one and Art lit it for her.

  “Mine,” she said.

  “He the type to send four guys, muscle men, after us?”

  “Alan? He wouldn’t have the guts. All he knows is how …”

  “You think he called somebody else?”

  “He might have.” She spread her hands and looked at Art. “I wasn’t there. I have no way of knowing if he called anybody after I called him.”

  No way to argue with that. Art got out his pad and took down Alan Wright’s address. It was an apartment on Piedmont, on the west side of the park. It was, Crystal said with a misguided pride, near the Piedmont Driving Club, the most exclusive of the Atlanta social clubs.

  “Am I going back to jail?”

  “For the time being,” Art said. “Until we’ve leaned on Alan Wright and checked your story out.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to.”

  That floated in the silence for a time. Now that we had out of her what we wanted, there didn’t seem to be much to say. I watched her and saw that she’d accepted the prospect of jail. She relaxed and, when I saw that, I could ask my questions.

  “How well did you know Joy Lynn Barrow?”

  “I never knew her,” Crystal said.

  “Look, are we going to have to go through this every time?”

  “What?”

  “This lying. You lived in the same apartment on St. Charles, and you had the same pimp, Harry Falk.”

  “All right, so I knew her for a few weeks. I didn’t like her, and she kept making trouble between Harry and me.”

  “How?”

  “She thought she was his bottom woman and his only woman. Jealous? God, the way she acted! Like he belonged to her. And she was such a poor hustler. I could make more with one hand in a night that she could with her whole ass.”

  “How long did you share the apartment?”

  “Not long. I couldn’t trick, with all that shit going on.”

  “What happened?”

  “Harry set me up in my own place,” she said.

  “That easy?”

  “I was the best money-maker he had.”

  “How many girls did Harry have in his stable at the time?”

  “The two of us, at first. Later there was another girl, but she was out of a freak show.”

  “The dwarf girl, Carol?”

  “That’s the one,” she said. “God, who would want to ball her?”

  “Harry, I guess.”

  “That was like him. You know why I left him?”

  I shook my head.

  “He went down to Miami for a few days. Came back with the clap and gave it to all three of us. Right then, I knew I’d had enough. You might slip up now and then and get a dose from a john, but from your own best man? That’s something a girl doesn’t have to live with.”

  “When was that?”

  “In the fall sometime. Late September or October.”

  “You see Joy Lynn after that?”

  She shrugged. “Now and then, here and there. She hated me. You know the kind of crazy head she had on her? She thought I gave Harry that dose of clap. After I left, I guess that was what he told her.”

  “You heard what happened to Harry?”

  “That’s no loss,” she said. “Big cock, small brain.”

  “That’s quite an epitaph,” Art said.

  “Now you take Alan. He’s different.” She’d started glowing, and then she stopped and turned it off. She’d just remembered that she’d sold Alan out to us. “Too bad about him. He had style.”

  “What’ll you do now?” I asked.

  “Stay out of it, for a while.”

  Art was watching her face. “It’s getting rough out on the street, huh?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she said.

  “It must be,” Art said, “if you’re going to drop out.”

  “I’m getting religion.” She fluttered her eyelids at Art and then at me. It was a Lillian Gish parody. “It’s been coming on me for a long time.”

  We went by my place and Art put Crystal in his unmarked car. We tail-gated him downtown to the station, where he dropped off Crystal. I didn’t know what the charge was going to be. I knew, at the same time, he could come up with one. It wasn’t hard to find a reason to jug a hooker with a past record like Crystal’s.

  When she got out of the car, she turned to Hump and me, smiled, and blew us a kiss. As the hand waved the kiss toward us, it changed. It became the high middle finger: up yours.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The security man at the door didn’t want to let us in without calling up to Alan Wright’s apartment first. Art pressed him a bit. He called him a number of names, and he ended up threatening to call for a half-dozen cruisers, sirens going, so it would look like we were knocking over a three-dollar whorehouse. Either that, or we’d go in and make the arrest in a quiet way.

  “Well, if it’s going to be an arrest,” the security man said lamely, “I wouldn’t try to stand in your way.”

  “Now you’re being sweet,” Art said.

  I stopped Art before we reached the bank of elevators. “You believe him?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why don’t you keep him company for a few minutes?”

  “Why …?”

  “He might call up and warn Wright,” I said.

  Art pivoted and looked at the security man. “You think that’s necessary, huh?” But he was working it around in his head. He didn’t mind it at all. He was limited in what he could do, limited by the rights and the court, but Hump and I weren’t. We knew gutter talk.

  “How long?”

  “Ten minutes,” I said.

  Art checked his watch and walked back across the lobby to stand beside the security guard. He started talking to the guard and,
just before Hump and I stepped into the elevator, he called over to us, “He’s got a girl with him.”

  On the ride up to the 7th floor Hump asked, “You got any ideas?”

  “About getting in? How about some lying?”

  “I could tell him I’m the new security guard …”

  “Yeah?”

  “And somebody just broke the windshield of his car with a brick.”

  I grinned at him. “You think he’ll believe a cock-and-bull story like that?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  “Oh, shit, yes.”

  “You say what?”

  The door edged open a bit more. I could see the big dark-haired stud in the blue silk robe and slippers. His hair was pillow-mussed, and he put up a hand and tried to smooth it down.

  “My car? A white Mercedes sedan?”

  “That’s the one, sir,” Hump said. “I could see the brick, right there on the front seat.”

  “You called the police yet?”

  “I wanted to make sure it was yours first.” He reached in his pocket and brought out a scrap of paper. “Look, I wrote down the license number, and if you’ll check it …”

  Wright nodded and reached out a hand for whatever Hump had in his hand. Hump caught the wrist and yanked him forward. Wright slammed against the doorframe. Wright pulled against him. “Hey, what the hell …?” Hump let the wrist go and Wright went off balance, falling back into the room. Hump pushed the door open and went after him. It was with the same quickness and the speed I’d seen him use on those fall afternoons when he’d gone after a quarterback or a back taking a swing pass in his area.

  I walked in after him and closed the door.

  Wright had more balls than Crystal Hanner said he did. He came up and moved toward Hump, you could say that for him. He didn’t let Hump’s size bother him. He flicked a left and Hump ignored it. Then he threw a right that Hump took on his forearm. At the same time, Hump flipped the right upwards and stepped under it. He hit Wright about belly-high, and Wright grunted and farted and sat down on the plush carpet. The fight was over.

  Hump turned on me. “You just going to stand there?”

  I grinned at him and left him massaging the forearm where Wright had hit him. I crossed the living room, filling my eyes with all the expensive crap you could doll an apartment up with if you could talk a few women into selling their asses for you. The door to the bedroom was closed. That was polite of Wright, protecting the reputation of the woman. Before he set her out on the street. I turned the knob and went in. The lighting was low in the bedroom.

  The naked girl had her back to me. High-rumped and well-formed, her hair was honey-colored and shoulder-length. I might have stood there and admired her some more, except for the fact that she was dialing a number on the phone. I crossed the thick-carpeted bedroom in a lope and caught her around the waist with one hand. I used the other hand to jerk the receiver away from her and jam it back on its cradle. Then I could use both hands on her, and I needed them. She struggled and twisted, and once or twice I got a handful of titty without being able to enjoy it. She swung an elbow at me and kicked back. But there is a kind of disadvantage about being naked. It makes a person feel defenseless, and nothing you try then ever seems to work.

  I swung her around and threw her onto the bed. She faced me then. A little girl’s face attached to a body that had just reached it, the plateau, the full ripeness that has a few good years left before the skin tone’s shot.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” I reached down to the baseboard and pulled out the phone jack. “You got a robe?” I waved the phone at the closet. “How about in there?”

  She shook her head.

  Eyes still on her, I backed into a walk-in closet. Over in the back corner there was about a yard of shirts on hangers. I yanked out the first one I reached and carried it into the bedroom. I tossed it to her. “Put this on.”

  “Who are you?” Her hands fumbled with the shirt, trying to get the top button undone so she could remove the hanger.

  “Don’t worry yourself about it.”

  She got into the shirt and buttoned it all the way down the front. It reached her knees. When she rolled up the sleeves they wadded at her wrists.

  I nodded toward the living room door. “After you.”

  Hump must have lifted Alan Wright and put him into one of the rope-bottomed chairs while I was in the bedroom. Wright was bent over, hands clasping his stomach, gasping for breath. “I think you broke something.”

  “Nothing in there to break that I know of,” Hump said. He eased around slowly and looked the girl up and down. “Well, what do we have here?”

  “Some meatroll Wright’s getting ready to turn out,” I said.

  “We’re engaged,” the girl said.

  “Sure.” I winked at Hump, making it broad enough for her to see. “He’s engaged to his whole stable.” I waved her to the sofa. I tossed the phone into an empty chair.

  The girl sat down and stuffed the shirttail between her thighs. Hump watched this and grinned at me. “You get all the good jobs. Why do I always get left in the living room?”

  “It’s the class system.” I dipped my head at Wright. “You talk to our boy yet?”

  “Right now, I’m waiting to see if he’s going to keep his supper down.”

  “It’s his rug,” I said, “so it doesn’t matter.”

  “True enough.”

  “We’re going to play a game called truth or lies. Everybody knows how to play it, except we’ve got some new rules. Every time he lies, I want you to cuff him in the mouth, the nose or the ears.”

  “Who are you?” Wright demanded. “You know, you could be in a lot of trouble.”

  “We just got back from Fletcherville, and we brought back another girl you’re engaged to.”

  “I don’t know anybody from Fletcherville.”

  I looked at Hump. “You believe that?”

  Hump answered me by reaching out and cuffing Wright across the mouth. The swing looked effortless, like there wasn’t any steam behind it, but it had the flattened-out shock of a pistol shot.

  Hump said, “Crystal Hanner said to say hello.”

  “Oh, her?” Wright lifted a hand and rubbed it across his mouth. “Sure, I know her.”

  “She said she called you last night. She told you she was in a bind with a cop, and she was supposed to …”

  “I haven’t seen her in weeks. The last time I saw her …”

  Hump leaned in and backhanded him across the nose. “I don’t think he understands the game yet.”

  “It’ll slip up on him.” I pushed it back at Wright. “Not long after that call to you, four hard-asses keep the appointment instead of Crystal. My question is, did you send them?”

  “I don’t know any four …”

  Hump popped him in the left ear. “I don’t think this game is much fun,” he said to me, “when the other people playing it cheat.”

  “Either you sent them yourself, or you know who did send them,” I said.

  “I don’t know …”

  Hump cuffed him in the mouth again. A thin trickle of blood curled over the corner of Wright’s mouth and ran down his chin. His tongue flicked out and touched it and tasted the salt.

  “You send them?”

  Wright shook his head.

  “See?” I said to Hump. “He’s learning to play the game.” I got out a smoke and lit it. “So you called somebody. Who’d you call?”

  “I didn’t …”

  Leaning in, Hump popped him across the nose.

  “Who’d you call?”

  “I told you, I didn’t …”

  Hump hit him in the nose again. A glob of blood and snot poured out of his left nostril. He sniffed at it but he couldn’t stop it. He reached up and smeared it with the palm of his hand. “Does she have to stay here?”

  “No reason.” I curled a finger at the girl. “You. Come here.” I followed her into the bedroom. “Flop. Make yourself comfo
rtable.” Then, shielded from the living room, I put my back to her and got out one of the hundreds I’d gotten from Barrow. Using a felt-tip pen, I wrote J.H. in the top left corner of the bill. I folded the bill and hid it in my palm.

  In the living room, Wright was worrying the blood around his mouth and nose. He’d smeared it into a thin coat over the lower half of his face. I took one look at him and went back into the bedroom. There was a box of Kleenex on the table next to the bed. I pulled out a thick wad. At that sound, the girl opened her eyes and looked at him. “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”

  “If we have to,” I said.

  Her eyes jerked shut and a tear ran out of her right eye. Oh, shit. Whore or no whore, it was a nasty business. Without looking back at her, I went into the living room. I handed the wad of Kleenex to Wright. Hump gave me a puzzled look. He didn’t know what was going on. “I think you’re messing up your robe.” Leaning toward him, I pulled at the robe. The other hand, the one with the hundred in it, edged toward the robe pocket. The hundred dropped into his pocket without a rustle.

  The doorbell rang. I went over and opened it for Art. Art looked at Alan Wright and then at us. “What’s going on here?”

  “Chief, we’ve got him. Pimping, pandering, whatever you want to call it.” I pointed at the bedroom door. “The girl’s in there.”

  Art crossed the room and looked in the bedroom. “That’s a girl, sure enough.”

  “He offered us the girl, the two of us for a hundred.”

  “That’s a goddam lie,” Wright shouted. “You two came busting in here, and …”

  “The marked bill’s in his robe pocket. I saw him put it there.”

  “That’s right.”. Hump understood the charade and grinned at me.

  Wright reared up out of the chair. Hump reached out a big arm and wrapped it around his neck. Art reached into the robe pocket and brought out the hundred.

  “My mark’s on it,” I said.

  Art unfolded the bill slowly. “That’s your mark, all right.” He turned to Wright. “You ever do time?”

  “It’s a frame. A goddam frame, and you know it.”

  “We’ll leave that to the judge.” Art walked over to the bedroom door. “Get your clothes on, girl.”

  “I’d better watch her,” Hump said. “She might try to hide some drugs on her, or something.”