by Tim Bryant
“So do you think maybe it was his brother that killed him?”
I was expecting Melvin to answer. I got Dulcie instead.
“Don’t make no sense.”
“Why is that?” I said.
“Is it true they put a note to him saying something about it being a warning?”
I wondered how she knew such information, but it had been in the papers. And Dulcie, I had to remember, had connections that even I no longer had.
“Who was it a warning for?” said Melvin.
"Don't seem his brother would come down and kill him as a threat to somebody else," Dulcie said. "Even if he was a no good so-and-so."
The street fight moved deeper into the Flats, and we decided it was time for us to go the other way. On the way out, I asked Melvin just how much he knew about our host.
"William Boon was the biggest pimp in the Flats," Melvin said. "He was making money off half the girls down here and a few of the boys too. And I think he probably did everything he could to keep Dulcie away from that. She swears he was a good daddy."
A good daddy, I thought. Gee, it didn't take much.
"So what happened?"
"He died. Left her the house and the business."
Dulcie had carried on, pimping girls in the Flats, but she soon discovered that she was making more money than she knew what to do with, so she started giving more of it to the girls. Instead of making things better, it brought more and more girls to her door, wanting to sign up for business. That's when Sheriff King came knocking.
"Trouble is, from what I can see now, Dulcie's the one out on the street corner, and King's the pimp," Melvin said.
In Battercake Flats, the pimp was king. In the long and crooked halls of law enforcement, King was the pimp. That was the way the scales of justice balanced out in Fort Worth. It wasn't exactly news.
13
“Who was it a warning to?” said Slant Face.
“That’s what I can’t figure out.”
Slant Face and me were at the Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion up on White Settlement Road. I had pissed away most of Dulcie's scotch but was quickly replacing it with Jack and Dr Pepper as I went over the afternoon’s activities and brought my partner up to speed.
Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers were playing a rare local engagement that night and Jesse Ashlock was joining in. Bruner and Ashlock had both played in Milton Brown’s Musical Brownies, a band that had changed my life after seeing them once as a young man. I loved country and western music, jazz and blues, but western swing was my favorite because it rolled all of them up into one big ball. I never passed up a chance to see Bruner.
“Was Patrick a business partner?”
"What do you mean?" I said.
"A business partner with his brother. Back in Chicago."
"No. I haven't heard anything to indicate that."
I pulled out my black notebook— the one I always keep in my coat pocket— and began to scribble. Sometimes, when I couldn’t focus on one obvious line of thought, it helped to visualize it. I would diagram different scenarios and study them like they were math problems. A lot of times, when you did it that way, you would start to see which ones didn’t add up.
In scenario #1, Patrick's brother Anthony hunts him down and kills him. Why? Maybe he's blackmailing Anthony. Threatening him. Maybe he's putting things in peril. I admit, the warning note makes no sense. Maybe it's there to throw people off, but that's one too many maybes. The Cain and Abel scenario is discounted.
In Scenario #2, a lawman from Illinois is on the heels of Anthony, and he's using his brother as bait. He meets up with Patrick, shoots him and sends out a warning that Anthony is next. Explains the note, but only by adding other elements. The Frank and Jesse James scenario has its points but is put aside.
In Scenario #3, an ex-patient from the Chicago Institute for Jacking Off is out for revenge. He may think that Patrick is hiding his brother. He may think he has some of the money. He may just be warming up on Patrick and hoping the attention will unnerve Anthony, bring him out of hiding.
“Still doesn’t make sense,” Slant Face said. “Especially if Dulcie is right, that Patrick said someone was coming for him. He must have been aware of the trouble he was in."
And so that brought me back around to scenario #1. His brother was coming after him.
I, of course, knew Slant was right. None of it was making sense. The only scenario that clicked into place was one in which Patrick was a little fish, caught as an example to someone much bigger and more dangerous. That would be Anthony. The answer matched up. The math worked. Sure, it raised more questions, but they at least felt like the right questions. You answer the first one right, you’re on your way. Answer it wrong, you're lost before you start. You just have to solve them one at a time.
We didn’t get any further that night, because Cliff came out and started right on time.
“We have a lot of music tonight, we’ve got a good friend or two joining us on stage
a little later, so we’re gonna go ahead and get this thing started,” he said. “This is a number called ‘Too Wet To Plow,’ and we do it like this.”
It was a great night for music. Bruner and his Wanderers played everything from “Sunbonnet Sue” and “That’s What I Like About The South” to “Can’t Nobody Truck Like Me” and “Red River Rose.” Then he called Jesse Ashlock out to do “Draggin’ The Bow” and “Nancy Jane” and “Sitting On Top Of The World.” I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Unfortunately, my final trip to the bar, for one last drink, brought me back down to earth.
“Dutch Curridge.”
I almost didn’t hear my name, drowning, as it was, in a crowd full of rebel rousers and alcohol. I slowed down only slightly.
“Dutch.”
I turned around, expecting to see one of the regulars who always spoke to me. Maybe even Mr. Cunningham, the owner. Really just about anyone but Jerry Paul Crum. He was buttoned up in a three-piece suit and wearing a winter coat, even though he was indoors.
“How ya doing, JP?”
“Fine night, isn’t it?” he said. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I’m big enough to buy my own drinks, thanks.”
I wanted to hit him, but not quite as bad as I wanted a drink. I turned away and continued my voyage.
“You should stop by the table and say hello. I’m sure Ruthie Nell and the gang would love to see you.”
I most likely would have left the place then and there, but by the time I got my one last final drink, Cliff Bruner was bringing out his one last final guest, none other than Moon Mullican. I’d never seen Moon, although I rated him as the best piano player going. The crowd went crazy when he launched into “New Jole Blon,” but it was “I’ll Sail My Ship Alone” that brought me back to the side of the stage. My theme song, being sung right to me by the man who made it famous. As if recognizing the magnitude of the moment, the crowd demanded a second run through the tune, and then the band, Moon and Jesse included, all ended up on “Goodnight Irene.”
It would have been a world class kind of night if I hadn’t run into Ruthie Nell as we moved through the foyer and out into the parking lot. I tried not to notice, but for one brief moment, my eyes locked on Ruthie's. Of course, they did. It was like trying not to think of an apple. She smiled, and I tried to. I could see her moving sideways through the crowd. If I’d been sober, I would have been able to gather my senses and duck out of her reach.
“Dutch,” she said. “Wasn’t that just wonderful?”
I planted my feet and tried to keep my balance as the crowd flowed around me like blood rushing from my head. I didn’t see JP. I didn’t see Slant Face.
“Ruthie, can I ask you a question?”
"What?"
"Can I ask you something?"
Now there are times when I am so far gone that I honestly don’t know what is going on in my own head, what is fixing to come out of my own mouth. Part of me was standing back and watching the proce
edings like it was a movie at the Deal Theater. Didn't matter if I liked it or not. The ticket had been punched. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d wanted to.
“Right here?” she said.
She was wearing a new dark green dress with a hat to match, and she looked good. Happy, although it probably wasn’t to see me.
“Did we have something special?” I said. “Because I thought we had something kind of special.”
I don’t believe in God. I always said I worshipped Milton Brown. But right there, it felt like I was petitioning the throne of the Almighty. I was putting it down. Laying it all on the line. The whiskey— hell, maybe even some of Dulcie's scotch— was talking loud. Maybe too loud.
She moved in closer with a look that I knew to mean “we don’t really need to have this discussion right here and now.” And yet the hand had been played. I didn’t move, mostly out of fear that my knees would buckle. I closed my eyes and felt the world swirl around me. I reached out and found only a handful of air.
“No, Dutch. I’m sorry, but it wasn’t like that. Not like what I think you’re saying.”
She wasn’t there when I opened my eyes, but I found Slant Face. He never said anything about it, and by the next morning, when I woke up in my own bed with no recollection of how I got there, I wasn’t even sure if the whole thing hadn’t played out inside my mind. Maybe it had been a movie. Just maybe.
I had a habit at that time of warming up a can of beer or two on the radiator next to my bad. A warm beer first thing in the morning was my secret weapon against hangovers. I was working on the second one and strumming on my guitar, a cheap Stella that I’d purchased in a Dallas pawn shop because the owner swore it had once been played by Blind Willie Johnson, when Slant Face showed up.
“You alive?”
I didn’t think the question warranted an answer.
“Hell of a night,” he said. “Best show since Bob and the Playboys in 1952.”
Then he sat there, listened to my strumming and tried to name the tune. Either his naming was striking out or my playing was.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” I said, “but did I cause a scene in front of JP and Ruthie Nell?”
I swallowed the last of the beer and tossed the can across the floor.
“Am I obligated to answer that?”
“Tell me and then I’ll let you know,” I said.
Slant Face kicked the can back across the room at me.
“I don't think you ever cause a scene," he said. "You just stand at the ready to play your part."
What kind of answer was that? I sat the guitar against the wall and looked at it. It was one string short, and the neck needed resetting. The bridge plate needed replacing as well, but there were two small cracks in the body, and I didn’t know if it would handle the strain of a fix up.
“Goddamn thing is falling apart,” I said, “but hell if it don’t still sound pretty good.”
I never asked Slant about that night again. I knew it was true. Even if it hadn’t happened, it was still true. Like James Alto once said, you see the truth most clearly when you see it coming at you out of the corner of your eye.
14
Harris Methodist was the biggest hospital in Fort Worth and the only one with a hepatitis ward. Fort Worth didn’t have what anyone would call a hepatitis epidemic, but it certainly wasn’t unheard of. Mostly, it was caused by poor hygiene or contaminated food or water. Adolphus Merriweather wasn’t the first person I’d known to come down with it.
When I arrived at the hospital, I wasn’t expecting much. I felt like the investigation had gone forward enough that it had, in all likelihood, left Mr. Merriweather behind. All the same, I’d talked the head nurse on his wing into helping me out, so I was following through.
I wandered around the halls of the hospital like a chicken with its head cut off, first one floor and then another, until a woman pushing an old man around in a wheelchair finally took pity on me.
“I’ve passed you three times,” she said. “Are you lost?”
"No, are you?" I said.
I was looking for the quarantine section, so it didn't make sense to follow anyone else. I walked against the flow until I found myself in a dark and deserted hallway full of stripped and deserted hospital beds, three levels up. I had to be getting close to either the quarantine unit or experimental operations.
"You can't go in there."
I turned around to find a little girl standing with her hand on her hip. I mean little like Lizabeth little. Six, maybe seven.
"I work here," I said.
"I don't believe you. I can tell by your clothes."
"What are you doing walking around all by yourself in a place like this?" I said. "I don't suppose you work here."
"My daddy lives down there," she said.
She pointed into the gloomy end of the hallway.
"What's your dad's name?" I said.
"Mr. Minchew."
I found the nurse’s station just around the corner at the end of the hall. There was a lady sitting behind the counter reading a book. It was obviously too good to put down.
“I’m supposed to meet Pearl Salinas,” I said.
“Pearl Salinas,” she said.
She returned to her reading, and I guess she assumed I would just mosey on and cut my losses. She didn’t know Alvin Curridge.
“You happen to know Pearl Salinas?”
“I know a lot of people, sir.”
This woman, with her stern Germanic features, heft and pursed lips, reminded me of an old friend named Big Rube, who ran the Brickyard Bar in West Dallas. Big Rube scared the tar out of a lot of folks, even a good portion of her best clientele, but she could make you laugh at a tornado. A good candidate for working a hepatitis ward, most likely.
“Any of them people called Pearl?”
She put down her book and looked over her glasses.
“You really call yourself a private eye?”
She stood up, turned around and pushed herself through a set of swinging doors. I considered following, and would have had done so, had there not been a sign over them warning me not to. No matter, a moment or two later, she came sauntering back through with a clipboard in her hand. She walked around the counter and stopped right in front of me. It was only then that I was able to read her name tag.
“Let me have these questions, Mr. Curridge” Pearl Salinas said. “Mr. Merriweather is awake, but he's just had his bath, and it’s getting close to nap time.”
I removed the piece of paper from my hat band.
“Well, it’s really just one question,” I said. “Can you ask him if he remembers either a Patrick Cavanaugh, and, if he does, what he remembers?”
She took the paper and gave it a look over, like she didn’t quite trust that that’s what was written on it.
“I can, but that definitely counts as two questions. You'll have to fill out forms for that.”
I don’t care for mean people, but I’ll take an odd duck over a run of the mill type anytime. I can roll with the punches as well as anyone, and, on a good day, I can get in a few swings of my own.
“In that case, can I make it an even three?”
Pearl Salinas laughed. It wasn’t a loud, boisterous laugh, but it was enough to burn the fog off.
“An even three,” she said.
"The third question is for you then," I said.
"I'm a married woman, Mr. Dutch," Pearl said. "But my husband works on oil rigs in Sulphur Springs, so I have a lot of time to myself."
I feared I might never be able to look Big Rube in the eye again.
"Just tell Mr. Minchew his daughter said hello," I said.
15
I’m a flirt. Always been a flirt. I’m a flirt and a story teller and all those things that result from having a big mouth that don’t know when to quit. And like most storytellers, I’m usually not as interested in telling a story accurately as I am in telling it well.
That said, for all my philan
dering ways, I haven’t had a load of success with the fairer half. In fact, my experience would lead me to question exactly how fair they truly are. I was married to Noreen from 1947 to 1949, and we might have had three or four good months. When she divorced me in ‘49, she did so on the grounds of me being a perpetual drunk. I might have counterclaimed that I was a drunk because I didn’t particularly like being married to her. It was a hard and expensive way to discover that I wasn’t cut out for marriage in general, but I have a pattern of doing things that way. It was suggested that I stand before Judge Lynch and argue that Noreen had me all wrong. I was told to throw myself on the mercy of the court. Instead, I did it my way. And then I helped her pack up all her things and move back to Arkansas.
Ruthie used to try and psychoanalyze me. She was convinced all of my problems resulted from the death of my little sister Lizabeth. Lizabeth died from polio when I was eight. I had it too, only I got better. Anyway, it took its toll on the family. Between polio and draughts, my father couldn’t quite deal, so he took off one day when I was nine and never came back. I was suddenly the man of the house, and I wasn't particularly suited for that role either.
Maybe I’m more like Alvis Sr. than I aimed to be. If I’d had either the gumption or the means, or if I’d even known that he was splitting for good, I might have gone with him. As it was, I resented the hell out of him for leaving me, and I resented Lizabeth for the same damn reason. If Ruthie's analysis was right, I guess she was saying I'm a resentful man.
When I got older and finally did split, things got little better. I moved thirty miles east to Fort Worth, but I might as well have moved to the moon. I didn’t speak with mama for ten or twelve years. Maybe more. Couldn’t bring myself to go back. Cursed myself for it, but couldn’t do it. Poor Noreen walked right into the middle of that like a kitten into a snake pit.
I had hardened myself up pretty good. I liked to drink, and I liked to fight. I wasn’t too big though, so I didn’t come out on top all the time. After one too many nights on the wrong end of the action, on the bad side of town, I figured if I went into law, I could beat some people up and even shoot them if they needed it.