by Ralph Dennis
“Just the last two or three months.”
I capped the pen and jammed it back in my shirt pocket. “It was terrible what happened to him.”
“You think it was terrible—you should have been with me when I found him.”
“You did? I didn’t know that.”
He nodded. “You see, it was late Saturday afternoon. He didn’t have a color TV set.” He nodded toward a small Sony on a low table that faced the sofa. “There was a football game coming on from out on the west coast. You know how they start late. Well, I waited for him and when he didn’t show up, I went down there to get him. He didn’t come to the door when I knocked. I got worried. With people my age and his age … well, you have to worry. So I used my passkey and went in.” He blinked at me. “Lord, I never saw anything like it and I hope I never do again. You know how much blood a person has in him? It looked like three or four times that much.”
“They’d been rough on him?”
“Cut on him. Stripped the skin off him like you’d slice a piece off a side of bacon. And burned him. Burned his face and chest and his … privates.”
“You must watch the place pretty close. You see anybody at his apartment the night before?”
“One person. It was like I told the police. I saw that niece of his with him. It was about seven that night.”
“You see her leave?”
“Not that night. You see, Friday’s my night for bingo at the Legion. That’s how I know she was at the apartment. I went over to ask him if he wanted to go play bingo with me. As soon as he answered the door, I knew she was there.”
“See her?”
“Not exactly, but I could smell her perfume and right past him I could see her coat where she’d dumped it over the back of a chair.”
“Sure it was her?”
“It couldn’t have been anybody else. Didn’t any other woman visit him except her.”
“And when you got back from bingo?”
“It was after midnight. His lights were out. I thought he’d gone to bed.”
The pump was running down. I primed it again. “The girl’s car still out front?”
“No.” He closed his eyes. “In fact, I’m not even sure I saw her car that night. She drove this little car, a tan Pinto.” He opened his eyes. “But that might not mean anything. Sometimes he’d drive in and pick her up. And other times, even when she drove out, she couldn’t find a parking spot out in front of his apartment and had to park down the street a ways.”
I stood up and held out my hand. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me, Mr …?”
“Purvis,” he said. “Ken Purvis.”
He followed me to the door. “You don’t remember the tag numbers on her Pinto, do you?”
“Police asked me the same thing.” He shook his head. “It didn’t mean much to me at the time and it really wasn’t any of my business what John did and what girls he saw.”
I got out to the porch before he stopped me. “One thing just came back to me. It was something I forgot and didn’t tell the police. I think she was a dancer.”
I turned and leaned into the doorway. I could smell the sourness of him on the warm air that rushed past him. “What makes you think that?”
“Something he said or something she said. I can’t remember exactly.”
I looked down the row of apartment entrances. “That might be helpful, Mr. Purvis.”
“Hoped it might.”
Might as well try it. “Which apartment was John’s?”
“Third one down.”
“Any chance of looking around?”
“Of course not.” He seemed shocked that I’d asked.
“Huh?”
“Police orders,” he said.
I waved at him. A good citizen accepting it when rebuffed. Another gold star on my book. Back at the car, Hump was huddled over, shivering. I drove back to town and found a restaurant where we could have lunch and a couple of drinks.
With a shot of J&B in me and lunch ordered, I carried my second drink over to the pay phone and called the Police Morgue. Somebody there said the body of John Kent had been released to the Callenwald Funeral Home. A secretary there said there would be no public viewing of the body because the brother had decided upon cremation. But there would be a memorial service the next morning at eleven at the Broadside Methodist church.
Art found us in the bar at Swain’s. It was about five of seven. We carried our drinks into the dining room and Art ordered a beer. Art is moon-faced and so damned Irish-looking that you’d want to cast him in crowd scenes in any I.R.A. movie you were making. Or as the pub keeper. I’ve known him for almost twenty years, from the time we both were on the force. He was whippet-fast and quick then. He’s slowed some and put on some weight, but not as much as I have.
He lowered the menu and looked at me. “I guess we’re going to have to talk sooner or later.”
“For your supper?” I grinned at him.
“I might have had to talk to you anyway.”
“Why?”
“You knew Ronny pretty well. I didn’t.”
“This is a switch. I thought I was going to pick your mind.”
“Let’s call it a trade.”
“I heard a few things in the last day or two. You might already know them.”
“Try me,” he said.
“Ronny was tapped-out and even worse he’d lost his gambler’s nerve.”
“Broke?”
“That’s what I heard.”
Art looked back down at the menu. “That would blow one theory all to hell.”
“You check his bank?”
“A couple of thousand in savings. Two or three hundred in checking.”
That would fit what The Man had told me. I dipped my head at Hump. “You want the prime rib?”
“About ten pounds of it,” Hump said.
“You know as well as I do,” Art continued, “that gamblers don’t use banks any more than they have to.”
“So you people think somebody went after his stash of play money?”
“It happens.”
“The stash was gone. He’d lost it.”
“I’d need to check that. Tell me where you heard it.”
“It was passed in confidence,” I said.
“You believe it?”
“Until I hear something that swings it the other way.”
He made a crease down the menu with one fingernail. “You working, Jim, or is this some kind of private vendetta?”
“You know I can’t work, Art. It’d be against the law. I’m not licensed by the Secretary of State.”
“You could be,” Art said.
“I’ve got better things to do with my money.”
“Money?” Hump looked puzzled.
“To get licensed as a private detective, I’d have to post a ten thousand dollar bond. I’d have to pay a couple of hundred a year to keep the license. And there’s a board that would have to decide if I was respectable enough to get the license in the first place. That kind of crap.”
“You changing the subject on me, Jim?”
“Trying to.” I laughed at him.
“Would you say you were doing a favor for somebody?” “Favor” is what I call it when I talk about being hired to do one of these odd jobs. “Maybe.”
“Anybody I know?”
“I hope not. First thing you know you’ll be trying to get into her pants too.”
He didn’t believe me. But he knew he couldn’t push it. “Is it big enough for both of us?”
I nodded. “And the cab of one Mack truck.”
“For this favor, what exactly are you doing?”
“I talked to the Resident Manager at the Starlight Estates.”
“Sell him some insurance?”
“You find the girl yet?” I said to get back to him.
“It’s harder than that. We found a brother out in Chamblee. He said he didn’t know anything about a niece. As far as he knows, he’s R
onny’s only living relative.”
“That Friday night, anybody in the other apartments hear anything?”
“Nothing. It happens that way sometimes. The apartment on the right is empty. The one on the left is rented to three stewardesses. All three were on flights that night.”
“Looks like one of them could have managed to be on the rag,” I said.
“Not anymore,” Art said. “Not with the pill.”
“Blanks and more blanks.”
Art stopped worrying the menu. “The prime rib good here?”
“I don’t know, but it’s usually a good index for the rest of the food.”
“I’ll risk it.”
The waitress must have had the table bugged. She hovered over us seconds later and I ordered prime rib for the three of us. After she left, I said, “That resident manager, Purvis, he came up with a bit he said he hadn’t told the police. He can’t place it exactly but he thinks the girl, Regina, is a dancer.”
“That doesn’t exactly open the door wide. You know how many dancers are working here in Atlanta?”
“Nobody said it was going to be easy.”
Hump rattled the ice cubes in his empty glass. He listens good and I find myself wondering what he thinks about the crap Art and I talk about when we get together. “How’d he die, Art?”
“You know him, Hump?”
“Saw him a time or two.”
“According to the M.E., his heart gave out on him.”
“Rough?”
“The apartment smelled like the cook got drunk and burned the roast. You ever handle a soldering iron?”
“Never by the wrong end,” Hump said.
“Somebody used the wrong end on him. They did everything but write the Lord’s Prayer on him. His balls looked like somebody’d cooked them on a barbecue grill.”
“Mean shit.” Hump turned and looked at me. I had the feeling he knew I wanted to ask but couldn’t bring myself to it. I’d guessed it hadn’t been pretty, and I wanted to walk around it if I could.
The bottom fell out of the talk. We sipped fresh drinks and waited for the prime rib.
After supper, we walked out to the car with Art. It was cold and moist, a bad wet cold. Art unlocked his car and opened the door and turned and leaned on it. “I’ll try the angle that the girl is a dancer. All the girls who work in clubs have to be licensed by the city.”
“Better if we had a last name.”
“That would be too easy. If it was that easy, I’d solve my ten murders in the next two hours and go on vacation.” He blew his fog breath at me. “Way down south where the sun is.”
“There’s a memorial service for Ronny in the morning. I thought I’d look in at it.”
“You think that girl Reggie or Regina is going to be that dumb?”
“Maybe. I knew this woman once.” I’d started to say spade woman and stopped myself. “Her husband died in the hospital. Doctors had it down as a natural death. Some young intern asks her if they can do an autopsy. Dumb broad gives her permission. They find enough poison in him to wipe out Tucker, Georgia. We start checking back and find she’d collected insurance on two other husbands. Dug them up and found poison in them, too. Last I heard, she was still doing time.”
“That girl didn’t know what autopsy meant. I’ll bet she thought it was a new way of combing a dead man’s hair.” He turned, bent over and got into the car. “You’ll be at the service?” I nodded. “No reason for me to stop by then.”
I stepped back and he closed the door.
The Man came on the line a few seconds after I gave my name to the soldier who’d answered the phone.
“Yeah, Hardman?”
“Any calls?”
“Nothing.”
“I guess they’re still counting last night’s take.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You know anything about Ronny’s personal life the last two or three months?”
“A man his age?”
“He ever mention a girl named Regina?”
“Not to me.”
“Any of the old crowd stay close to him the last year or two?”
“Most of them are dead,” The Man said. “Maybe Mort Heppler did.”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
Hump came in from the kitchen. He put a scotch and water on the night table and went into the living room.
“The way he is most of the time, you couldn’t get within fifty feet of him without a roof falling on you. Let me try to reach him. I’ll call you back.”
“I’m at home.”
He hung up and I carried my drink into the living room. Hump had the TV tuned to channel 17. He’d found a Hawks game. It was the same old crap. The Hawks were playing like they already knew the season was over and they’d already packed for their end of the season vacation.
“You free right now?” The Man asked when he called back.
“Sure.”
“You know the Dogwood Lounge?”
I did. I’d passed it a number of times but I’d never gone in. It was pretty far out Peachtree Road. It was on the ground level of one of those huge apartment towers. I’d heard it was expensive and that it had a reputation as a pick-up place. Widows and divorcees with a little money did their drinking there. I guess they figured if you were a guy who could afford the tab, your social position was high enough to rate a try at picking them up.
“Mort owns it. He says to tell the doorman you’re expected.”
“Thanks.”
“Get on with it,” he said. “You drag your feet and I can expect another money phone call.”
He chopped the line. I stopped off at my closet and took out my tie rack. I carried it into the living room with me. It was halftime and Skip Carey, in that bland pudding manner of his that passed for humor, was interviewing some expert or other from the other team.
“Pick one.”
“We got an invitation to a rich place?”
“Not exactly.”
Hump fingered two or three of the ties. “Shit, I’m going to have to leave a few of mine over here. These look like you got them from a rag picker.”
I gave him his choice. He didn’t like any of them.
The doorman in front of the Lounge eased himself around on the balls of his feet and stared at us. He was looking, I thought, for an excuse not to let us in. Drunk already or not wearing a tie, maybe even mud on our shoes. From the long time he kept his eyes on Hump I was certain there weren’t many blacks who didn’t get turned away for one reason or another.
“You want something?”
“Heppler’s expecting us.”
He couldn’t take his eyes of Hump. Maybe he’d never seen a black that big before. “You’re Hardman?” I nodded. “I didn’t hear anything about two of you.”
“My uncle goes everywhere I do.”
His face twisted at that, the wrinkles chewing on it, and when he couldn’t come up with what he thought was a suitable volley, he turned and led us into the Lounge, past a coat room where a slat-thin girl in a pink wig motioned that she’d take our coats. We didn’t stop, followed the doorman over thick dark carpeting and down a low flight of stairs into a basin-like room. A big room. Careful and low lighting. Hardly a shadow would perch on a wrinkle down there. In the center of the room, there was a huge circular bar with a piano built into one end of it. It was early or the piano player was on a break. He was dark, Cuban-looking, with a cigarette wet-lipped in the corner of his mouth, his hands doing idle tinkling. The tune wasn’t anything I could whistle.
About eight or nine women at the bar. A couple of them butterflying around the piano player. At the small tables spaced around the bar, the usual pairs of women. Never out to drink alone. That was America for you. The women dressed with the smell of money on them. As we marched through behind the doorman, the casual look around at us that had the right degree of boredom in it, but underneath the hungry that nothing could kick sand over.
“Back here.” We�
��d reached a door with PRIVATE in script on it.
Down a narrow hallway. Another door at the end. Nothing written on this door. He waved us to a stop and tapped on the door and stepped back. A minute later, a young tough opened the door. A screw-you in the pale blue eyes that looked past the doorman at Hump and me. Curly straw-colored hair that he was trying to straighten. He wore a dark plaid suit with the waist pinched and the cuffs flared. It was two-eighty off the rack and a few days to get the fit just right at the tailor’s.
“Mr. Heppler’s expecting them,” the doorman said.
“You’re Hardman then?”
I just looked at him. I didn’t nod or smile or wink.
“Who’s he?” He dipped his head at Hump.
“With me. He’s my partner.”
“Nothing said about him.”
“We going to stand out in the hallway all night?”
I started past him. He put up a hand, hard against my chest. The doorman stepped around behind me and ran his hands down me. When the doorman grunted and moved away from me, I looked over my shoulder at him. He’d approached Hump. Hump turned slowly and looked at him.
“I’m not carrying.”
“I’ve got to check you,” the doorman said.
“Do your fag tricks somewhere else.” Hump opened his coat and showed them there wasn’t anything in his waistband.
The doorman angled a look at the stud in the doorway. He got his instructions and backed away.
“I’m Tony Mitchell,” the guy in the doorway said. He backed against the doorframe to let us pass. I could smell sandalwood on him, so much of it that he wore it like a loose coat. We were in a reception room. There was a closed door straight ahead and he led us in that direction. When he reached the door, he didn’t knock. He gripped the knob and turned back to us. “I didn’t get your name,” he said to Hump.
Hump gave him a smile with all the good will scraped off it. “Fuck you, Charlie.”
It registered on Mitchell and he gave it some consideration. He might have done something about it if the man inside hadn’t said, “Are you coming in or not?”
The man behind the desk didn’t get up. I’m not sure he could have. He looked about seventy. What we used to call TB-thin and tall, about six-four or five. His skin had the pallor of death before the undertaker brushes the rouge on. The alive part of him was his hands. Without seeming to know what they were doing, like they weren’t a part of him, he was playing with a deck of cards. From the moves, he was a damned good mechanic.