Working for the Man

by Ralph Dennis

  “No call yet.”

  “Might not be one.” I peeled the meat from the bone and dropped the bone in the trash can. When I turned back, Hump offered me an egg roll. “If our luck holds that might be the only copy.”

  “You think Mitchell is our man?”

  “I doubt it. His head doesn’t carry the right kind of weight. The fight with Hump wasn’t smart. It drew attention to him.”

  “Then he was a spear carrier.” The Man waved a greasy hand at the soldier who was playing waiter. “Get two plates.”

  “Not for us. We’ll nibble.” I found the roast pork and forked out a thick slice. “We’ll try to find Mitchell. I want to know where he got the copy of the ledger.”

  “Only one way he could have got it. He’s in it up to his ears.”

  “Likely,” I said.

  “Sit down and eat. There’s plenty.”

  I’d been watching the black as he moved around the table, pouring The Man’s hot tea or changing plates for him. I realized that he planned to make his meal from the leftovers. It was in the blank stare he gave us while we nibbled. It soured it for me and I found a paper napkin and wiped my fingers.

  “We’ve got to head out.”

  “You’ll call later?”

  “When we get the chance. Maybe around ten.”

  We ate at Eng’s, the Chinese restaurant on the Strip. We passed up the ribs and the egg rolls and ordered the main courses.

  Exactly at nine, I parked in the lot next to the Dogwood Lounge. The doorman saw us and backed away from the entrance. He moved so far back that he had one foot in the gutter.

  “Heppler expecting us?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Hump reached the door first and swung it open. I turned and went back to the doorman. “You see Mitchell today?”

  “Not a sign of him.”

  “But you’d tell me if you had?”

  He didn’t answer. He wasn’t afraid of me. It was Hump who gave him nightmares.

  It was a larger crowd. It was the Saturday, let’s screw our way into Sunday, bunch. Opposite the bar I stopped and leaned toward Hump so I’d be heard over the noise. “Try the bartender. See if you can find out a name and an address for the divorcee Mitchell spends time with.”

  Hump wasn’t sure of me. “You handle it back there?”

  “Give me ten minutes. If I’m not back come looking for me.”

  Heppler’s new man, the one he called Bob, stood with his back to the office door. Either he spent a lot of time that way or he’d been expecting me. A few feet away from him I opened my coat and showed him my waistband was empty.

  “I’m supposed to talk to you,” he said.

  “Talk away.”

  “He doesn’t want to see you.”

  “After I came all this way?” I gave him my best hurt look. “All I want is the list I came for.”

  He opened his coat. He wore a dark green vest under the jacket. While he tried to stare me down, he dug a couple of fingers into the vest pocket and hooked a piece of paper. He passed it to me. I opened it and found five names and addresses typed on it. I didn’t know any of the five.

  “Thank him for me.” I refolded the paper and put it in my topcoat pocket.

  “I haven’t finished talking.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Mr. Heppler said to tell you he saw you those times as a favor for a friend. But he doesn’t find you amusing any more. And the cop smell is still on you.”

  “It must be hard to wash off.”

  “It never washes off.”

  “He tell you to say that?”

  “I threw it in myself … free.”

  “If it’s free, you can shove it.”

  He didn’t blink. “He said you’ve run the welcome into the ground. You’re not to come back here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” he said, “you come back and I’ll have to be rough.”

  I grinned at him. I gave him a two-fingered salute that probably confused him. I went into the bar and found Hump.

  “Do any good?”

  I patted my topcoat pocket. “Yeah. And you?”

  He nodded. “It cost a five.”

  Hump was driving. “It’s still early. Where first?”

  “I think we need the low comedy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mitchell’s girlfriend.”

  “The bartender said she hasn’t been in for a couple of nights.”

  “Name?”

  “May Foster.”

  “Address?”

  “Virginia Avenue. The better part of it.” He caught a red light. He grinned. “The exact instructions he gave me …”

  “Yeah?”

  “… give me the idea he’s made the trip a time or two.”

  Off Monroe and up Virginia until we passed Highland. Hump slowed then. He seemed to be looking for a certain house rather than a street number. “There.” He parked across the street and we got out.

  It was a narrow brick house, two floors with the brown trim that could be called gingerbread or phony Tudor or whatever. The yard was lit by a street lamp. It was a neat yard with the plants and shrubs protected by plastic against this hard part of the winter.

  On the walk Hump said, “Selling insurance this time of night?”

  “Not today. And you’d better stay back here. And don’t do any evil grinning. These southern girls have a black nightmare. One look at you and she’ll yell rape.”

  “Up you, white man.”

  But he stopped halfway up the walk. I went up the steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. After a minute or so, the porch light went on and I could see a pale thin face staring out at me.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mr. Heppler sent me.”

  “Who?”

  “Mort Heppler. I’ve got a message for Tony.”

  “For Tony?” I heard a lock snap. “He didn’t say—”

  “Lady,” I said, “when Mort Heppler wants a message delivered I’ve got to deliver it.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “You can leave the message with me and I’ll see that he gets it.”

  “It’s not that kind of message. It’s for Tony, nobody else.”

  “Are you alone?”

  I looked over my shoulder at Hump. “Got a driver with me.”

  “He can’t come in.”

  “I don’t think he wants to.”

  She opened the door just enough for me to slide through sideways. She slammed it shut and flipped a lock. In the dim light of the hallway I got my impression of her. About mid-thirties, wispy thin blonde hair, a slim body but with a high rump showing under the robe and larger breasts than her narrow shoulders ought to have to carry around.

  At the end of the narrow hallway it flared out into a living room. The sofa needed recovering and the matching easy chair had the shine of use on the arms. I made my guess that this was the furniture left from the marriage.

  “You didn’t tell me your name.” She turned and the light caught the shine in the luminous eyes. The way she wouldn’t hold my stare told me something else. How vulnerable she was. Like she was saying to me or to every man she met: tell me you love me or admire my mind and anything is possible.

  “Bob,” I said.

  “Bob what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, Bob, I know where Tony is but I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

  “We tried the motel,” I said.

  “He’s not there, not since yesterday.”

  “Tell me where I can reach him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m from Heppler.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I faced her squarely, some hardness in my voice. “I don’t have time to argue with you.”

  Either she was stronger than I thought or she knew how to bluff. “I don’t have much time. I’m going out.”


  “You got paper and an envelope?”

  “Yes.”

  I watched the high rump bounce under the robe as she walked into a room off to the left. I could see enough of it to know it was a dining room. She returned a few seconds later with a sheet of paper and an envelope.

  I sat down on the sofa and placed the paper on the coffee table. I wrote: “Mort wants to know what you did with the key to the washroom. He is getting tired of going to the service station down the street.” Then, in case she opened the letter, I added: “Use code 3.” I didn’t sign it. I folded the sheet and stuffed the envelope and sealed it. I carried it over to her. “He ought to get this right away.”

  Her nod didn’t mean much. Not yes or no or maybe.

  At the door I said, “Sorry to butt in on you this way.”

  “It’s all right.”

  She closed the door behind me and locked it. Hump wasn’t on the walk. I crossed the street and found him in the car, the engine running and the radio tuned to WPLO, the country-western station. As Hump pulled away from the curb, I looked back. The porch light was still on.

  “Turn around and come back. We’ll wait her out.”

  Down the street until we found a driveway. Then back, cutting his lights as we coasted to a stop on the same side of the street as May Foster’s house, about half a block away. Hump tapped the car radio. “You been listening to this? Country-western’s gone crazy. Now they’re admitting redneck girls screw.”

  Thirty minutes. I thought I’d missed it and read her wrong. Forty minutes. I considered giving it up. May Foster, at the forty-five minute mark, came out of the house and walked quickly to the tan Ford station-wagon in the driveway. After a couple of minutes of warm-up, with exhaust pluming behind the Ford, she headed away from us, toward the intersection of Virginia and Highland.

  Hump gave her half a block and followed. Until Monroe the traffic was thin. After that Hump worked his way up, letting a couple of cars play sandwich meat. At Monroe and Ponce de Leon she stayed in the center lane and caught the red light.

  On the other side of Ponce de Leon what had been Monroe would become Boundary. “Guess,” I said to Hump.

  “Downtown. Maybe a hotel.”

  “Wrong guess.”

  At Georgia Baptist Hospital, May Foster did a tight left into a parking lot. I ducked down and Hump went past. By the time Hump found a place to turn around and we approached the parking lot, she had crossed the street and was heading up the walk to the entrance.

  “You,” I said. Hump stopped and got out. He crossed the street at a trot. I got behind the wheel and pulled into the same lot where May Foster had parked.

  After a time it got cold in the car. I kicked over the engine. The radio was still on WPLO and I let it stay there. I heard about eight or ten songs. All those country studs wasting away for love. All those nasal women hurting. In some ways they still didn’t have the sex thing down straight yet.

  Hump came out first. He stood at the curb and looked in both directions. I got out and walked to the street and got his attention. He huffed his way across to me and we walked to the car and got in.

  “Funny thing,” Hump said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mitchell’s been in the hospital since about midnight last night.”

  “She bite him?”

  “Nothing like that. Talked to this black nurse. Seems he says he fell down in his shower and broke both his thumbs. Said he’d been drinking some.”

  “That wide receiver for Cincinnati, what was his name?”

  “That was on artificial turf,” Hump said.

  “So he’s not our man for the killing last night?”

  “Not unless he’s learned to fire a piece with his big toe.”

  “He doesn’t have that much talent.” I looked back across the street at the hospital. “He tucked away for the night?”

  Hump shook his head. “Checking out now.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  About an hour passed before May Foster stepped out and held the door while Tony Mitchell turned sideways to step through the entranceway. I watched their awkward progress. A topcoat, unbuttoned, rested on his shoulders. His hands, with casts that seemed to reach from his wrists down past the knuckles, were held away from his body, like any touch would set off some kind of pain.

  The wind was strong out on the street. Before they stepped off the curb, a gust blew the topcoat from one shoulder. Without thinking he reached up for it. Then his hands dropped and May Foster leaned across him and pulled the topcoat back into place.

  I stayed back and let them signal their moves to us. Obvious that they weren’t heading back toward her apartment on Virginia. Going toward downtown Atlanta, hitting Peachtree and heading north.

  “The motel,” I said. It was my guess for the night.

  “You want to put a nickel on that?”

  “But he’s not going to stay there. He probably can’t pee by himself.”

  Near Peachtree and Baker. In the lane that would take her out the northwest branch of Peachtree. “Gone after the copy of the ledger,” Hump said.

  “A dime on that?”

  Hump grunted. Sometimes making a bet with him you weren’t sure you had booked the bet until he paid off or he held out a hand for payment.

  The stationwagon turned in at the Executive Motel. Hump slowed, giving them a minute, and then he pulled in after them. Dim and dark in the narrow parking area, the only light from the low wattage bulbs on the walkways. There was a space about six cars in on the left. I pointed at it and Hump swung the wheel and eased in, about a skin thickness from taking paint off a VW van.

  I looked at my watch. Ten after eleven. A Saturday night gone to hell.

  Mitchell stood under a light on the ground level walkway in front of the space where the stationwagon was parked. May had gone back to the car for her purse. Heads almost together she opened the purse and took out a wad of bills. He held up his right hand, palm out, and she placed the wad of money against the cast part and watched until she was sure that the fingers closed over it. She said something and after he answered she dug down into the right hand topcoat pocket and brought out the key to the motel room.

  She went toward the stairs that would take her up to the second level. He called after her. She leaned over the stair railing to answer him. He shook his head and whirled away. He passed between the Ford stationwagon and a Toyota, doing a sideways crab, and walked down the driveway toward where we were parked. Headed, I thought, for the motel office.

  “Checking out,” I said to Hump.

  Hump nodded before he ducked his head and placed it against the wheel. Taking that as a signal I leaned my head against the dashboard. It was quiet enough to hear his leather heels on the drive, approaching and opposite us and then going away.

  I pushed away from the dash and watched Mitchell. The stiff, almost uncoordinated walk. Not like that night in the parking lot beside the Dogwood Lounge. More like the pain from his hands threw his whole body out of sync.

  A ripple of headlights on low beam brushed the back of my car. It was past before I knew it was there. Hardly any sound from the engine, like it might be coasting. A blue 1973 Nova.

  Mitchell felt the lights and moved out of the drive off to the right, his head still straight ahead. The Nova was abreast of Mitchell when it stopped. Mitchell turned in the direction of the car. He approached the Nova and when he was about a step away, he ducked his head, about to lean in at window level. He didn’t get that far.

  The first shot hit him in the mouth. The second shot under the chin as he fell away.

  No iron on me. I hit the door handle a slam and pushed it open. I yelled at Hump, “Follow him.”

  Out in the cold wind, I slammed the car door and jumped away. Hump backed out. By the time he got it turned, the Nova had reached the street and peeled to the right. Hump burned rubber.

  I could still smell the mixture of powder and rubber when I squatted over Mitchell. There wasn’t much left
of his face except for bone and blood mush. Probably he was dead by the time he hit the asphalt.

  Behind me, leaning against the second floor railing, May Foster screamed and screamed. It had the piercing quality of a World War II air raid siren. It lasted until she ran out of breath.

  “And you two were doing what?”

  I was out of the wind now. In the motel room. Mitchell’s clothing was thrown in all directions. The suitcases were open and spread about the room, the sheets ripped from the bed and the mattress half off the bed. Somebody had done an angry look-around since we were there earlier in the day.

  “I told you once,” I said.

  Art said, “Tell me another time. I’m slow.”

  Saved by the uniformed cop who opened the motel door. “Another guy who said he saw the shooting.”

  Hump walked in. One look at me and he spread his hands and shook his head. “Lost him.”

  I caught my breath while Hump told Art about the chase down Peachtree and out Whitehall. He caught a red light and couldn’t run it because there was traffic coming off Alabama. Ran it as soon as he could but by then the Nova had buried itself on one of the side streets.

  “License?”

  Hump shook his head. “I didn’t even get close enough to see how many were in the car.”

  “One,” I said.

  Art lifted his eyebrows at me.

  I explained. “Had to be. It was the way it was handled. The Nova stopped. The driver edged over, rolled down the window on the passenger side, tolled Mitchell over. Wouldn’t have had to do that if there’d been a shooter in the passenger seat.”

  “Sure kill?” Art said.

  “It was anyway,” I said.

  It was almost one o’clock before we got away from the Executive Motel. May Foster was at Grady, sedated so that Art couldn’t talk to her until the next day. Not that I figured she could tell him much. Art had a wild hair with barbs on it as far as I was concerned. He knew I was holding back on him but not how much or exactly what, just that I wasn’t telling it all.

  At a bar down the street, The Gold Cage, Hump had a drink while I made a couple of calls. The first one was to The Man.