by Ralph Dennis
I pushed the door open and hesitated. I hadn’t done my song and dance yet. “Supper?”
“Brothers Two again?”
“Sure.”
“Go on over and save me a spot at the bar.” He tilted his head toward George’s. “I want to leave a number with Sam in case Bottoms drops by later.”
I had a couple of sips of the J&B and rocks at the bar. Down two booths a pair of advertising types were bullshitting each other in loud voices. All that pompous talk about creativity when all they were selling was toilet paper.
I felt blue and alone. Maybe part of that was the gray fall day. Womb days. I left my drink and smokes at the bar and found the pay phones. Marcy answered on the first ring. She wouldn’t ever admit it, but I think she expected the call. No, she hadn’t eaten yet. She said she’d meet us in thirty minutes. If she was really hungry, she might make it in forty-five and even that would be a record.
Hump and I were on our third drinks when she arrived. Part of the wait I spent kidding around with Truckee, the waitress we usually asked for. She’d caught my interest early, the first time I’d eaten at The Brothers Two. I’d looked up from the menu and I’d said, “What’s good to eat?”
She’d looked at me with an impish half-grin and said, “Me.”
Truckee’s section was busy tonight. One more drink at the bar with Marcy and we had to settle for another waitress’ section of tables. Hump stayed with the prime rib and Marcy went along with him. I changed over to the trout.
A good dinner in him and some aimless talk from Marcy and Hump appeared to have calmed down. We were doing the coffee when the paging system called his name. I lifted an eyebrow at him. Sliding out of the booth, passing me, he said, “I left this number too.”
The time he was gone I gave Marcy a brief account of the one-dollar rip-off. When he returned, she watched him with a certain kind amusement.
“That Bottoms?”
He shook his head. “Somebody calling for him.”
“Why?”
“He said Bottoms was a friend. Said Bottoms was out running around trying to get the last twenty or so of that hundred.”
“Odd,” I said.
“Tell me something new.”
“Wait one.” I grinned at Marcy and left the booth. At one of the pay phones I dialed George’s Deli. Sam answered. “Did Bottoms come in after we left?”
“There was a call,” Sam said.
“Was it Bottoms?”
“He said it was but it didn’t sound like him. I wasn’t sure what to do but I gave him the numbers Hump left with me. Is that all right?”
I told him that was fine and thanked him and hung up.
“Odd thing number two,” I told Hump about the call to George’s.
“That’s also odd thing number three,” Hump said. “I don’t think that dude has this many friends.”
“The call you got,” I said.
“They want a meet with me. That is, Joe Bottoms is supposed to meet me at the Fifteenth Street side of the High Museum. In the driveway there.”
“When?”
“They said half an hour. I said an hour.”
I checked my watch. I estimated when the call had come in. That would put the meeting at nine-thirty, give or take a minute or two. “They give any reason why Bottoms doesn’t just walk right in here and put the money in your hand?”
“I asked.”
“And … ?”
“They said he’d laid some bad paper on The Brothers Two a while back.”
“They seem to have all the answers figured to all the possible questions.”
“Don’t they?”
I wagged my empty cup at our waitress and she brought the coffee pot. While she refilled my cup I said, “You will take my personal check, won’t you?”
She laughed as though I was joking and then she ticked off the credit cards they accepted. After she moved away, I said: “That’s it, unless they’ve changed the policy in the last year.”
“Truckee’ll take your check,” Marcy said. I’d made the mistake of telling Marcy about my first meeting with Truckee. Now she didn’t miss a chance to dig at me.
I shook my head. “She’d laugh louder.”
The waitress brought the check. She remembered my question and dropped the check on Hump. Hump passed it across the table to me. “Tomorrow’s my day.”
“It better be.” But I didn’t mind. It had been a medium to poor summer. The dirty little jobs had been half-assed and the money didn’t keep us in drinks. I was still living off my shoe box, the stash I fell back on in the hard times.
I counted out the cash to cover the face of the tab. I had some trouble with the tip. I hadn’t liked that laugh. Ten per cent and to hell with it. I put the tray on the outside edge of the table and checked my watch. Half an hour had passed since Hump had received the call. “You leaving now?”
“I expect to be early,” he said.
“You want me along?”
“It was just supposed to be company,” he said.
“It’s dark out there.”
He cut his eyes toward Marcy. “Only if you’ve got the time.”
I said I did. Marcy could drive to my place and wait for us. She had a key and she could let herself in. And, if we got the hundred, maybe Hump could spring for a bottle of Asti Spumante. It was a wine Marcy’d liked since the summer. I didn’t. It was too sweet for me. I liked a trickle of brandy mixed in mine to fight the sugar.
“Deal,” Hump said.
I watched Marcy’s taillights vanish in the direction of the Strip and Tenth Street. I turned onto Fifteenth and parked there. Off to my right, past a lawn, was the spotlighted outline of the High Museum. After a minute or two, I got out of the car and crossed the street to the sidewalk. I could see the single car, Hump’s Buick, parked in the loading and unloading zone. In the dim light, I could see the huge shape of Hump. He was outside his car, leaning on the roof of it.
I ignored him and walked toward the narrow street that ran behind the museum. I turned onto that street and curled back and crossed the back parking lot, headed back toward Hump. I stopped in the darkness, at the edge of the light, about fifty yards away from him. Ten minutes passed while Hump smoked a slow cigarette, the coal bobbing above the Buick’s top. Another ten minutes went by the board while I fought the urge to have a smoke myself.
Nine-thirty. Time for the meet. Minutes dragged by. Hump had his back to me now, watching the Peachtree entrance to the loading and unloading zone.
After twenty minutes, at ten of ten, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. It had been scrubbed for some reason. I gave a low sharp whistle. Hump turned and waved an arm at me. I followed the wave out of the dark and into the dim light thrown off by the floodlighted columns of the museum.
He met me partway. “I don’t understand this shit.”
I said I didn’t either. They’d insisted on the meeting in half an hour and had settled for the one in an hour. They’d been eager but they’d backed away.
“Thanks anyway for backing me.”
I said that the fresh air was probably good for me.
“I’m headed home,” he said.
“Come by and have a drink with us.”
“No way.” He put a lazy, sneaky grin on me. “You young lovers need some time alone.”
“I’ll tell Marcy you said that.”
“Marcy knows where my head is.” He swung back to the Buick. I cut across the grass and reached Fifteenth where my Ford was parked. I was halfway across the street when a nervous thought hit me gut-low. I didn’t like it. I turned in the middle of the street and waved an arm at him. Too late. Too late. He was pulling out of the High Museum lot, swinging right and heading for the Strip. I dropped the arm and ran for my car. I hit the horn a couple of times. That should have stopped him but it didn’t. He honked back at me and kept going. By the time I got turned around and took a right onto Peachtree I couldn’t see the Buick. He’d probably caught the green light on
Fourteenth. I caught the red and had to wait it out.
He’d said he was headed home. Maybe. Maybe not. The mood he was in he might have changed his mind. There were a lot of bars in Atlanta and he knew the back way in at about a quarter of them.
His apartment was on the third floor. It overlooked the street. Second one over from the left front corner. I slowed down and looked up. No lights showing. That could mean something or not a damned thing.
All right, I might feel dumb. That was the risk. If his Buick wasn’t in the side or the back parking lot it would be a year before I’d admit that I’d tracked him home on some wild-assed hunch. Or it might be two or three years. Or never.
After I passed the front of the apartment building, I took a left into the side parking lot. It was dark and that raked at me some. Other times there had been some kind of light. Not now. My headlights, as I slowed, lighted the spaces to my right. No sign of Hump’s Buick. And I remembered that the illumination had come from a bulb over the side entrance to the building. Dark now.
The driveway doglegged left. There were more parking spaces in back. As soon as I turned the corner of the building my headlights lit up the human charade.
Hump was in the center of it. He was backed up against his Buick, hands behind his head, legs spread. A stocky white man in a tan raincoat and a checkered hat stood about five paces away. He had Hump under the gun. A second man, black and slat lean, leaned close to Hump. He was searching Hump.
When my headlights struck them full both the men with Hump looked into the full beam. It was all the break Hump needed. He dropped his right hand and hit the black. The fist hit the man throat-high and drove him back into the white. The white pushed out and tried to clear the black. He wasn’t fast enough. Hump closed with him, belly to belly, and grabbed the gun hand.
I braked and got out of the car. I swung a wide circle. I wanted to move in but I didn’t like the way the gun was pointed. It was good sense. A round ripped into the asphalt in front of my Ford. I made the loop wider. I was about level with them, past the arc of the gun, when the black man scrambled to his feet. I could hear him gagging for air. He ran straight for me. I’d been watching the gun and I didn’t have time to brace myself.
Maybe he didn’t see me. Maybe it was panic. He hit me heart-high with the crown of his head. The force of that threw me ass-over in the air. When I landed my head hit the asphalt. I wasn’t out and I put out my right arm and caught his leg. He jerked that leg away and tried to jump me. He didn’t make it. He tripped but one foot hit my left hip and numbed that leg all the way down to the ankle. I expected him to follow up. Instead he got to his feet again and I could hear fast and light footsteps going away from me. My left leg didn’t want to work. I forced it and crabbed around until I faced Hump.
The white was stronger than most. He’d put up a good struggle. Part of that might have been because Hump had to be careful with the gun. Now strength made the difference. Hump pulled the white around until he was next to the trunk of the Buick. He rammed the white’s gun hand against the Buick until the man cursed and the gun fell free. Hump kicked it and it skidded toward me. It stopped two or three feet from me. The white man jerked away from Hump and ran for the gun. I crawled in that direction. I gave a last lunge and fell on top of the gun. I felt the hard metal scrape a couple of ribs.
At the last minute the white gave it up and skirted me.
I rolled away. One hand caught the gun butt. I turned and swung it toward the white but he’d turned the corner of the building.
Hump leaned over me. “You all right?”
“Go after him.” I passed the gun to him.
Too late. We heard the engine race and somebody tore rubber. That was probably the black. He’d gone for the car, parked in the side lot, and started it and backed it out. He’d been ready when the white got there.
Hump caught me under the arms and pulled me to my feet. The hip could take the weight after all. I hadn’t been sure it would. “It broke, Jim?”
“I don’t think so.”
I leaned against the Buick while he parked my Ford in a space down the row. When he returned my keys, I limped into the apartment building after him. At the elevator I said, “What were they after?”
“As if you hadn’t guessed.”
“The check.”
He nodded. “That’s what they said.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“They get it?”
The elevator doors opened and we got on. Hump punched 3 and leaned a shoulder against the wall. He watched with some concern while I counted my ribs. I seemed to have an extra one or two.
“Another minute or two,” Hump said, “and they might have found it.” He lifted his right leg and pulled the pant leg up. He patted the elastic part of his knee-length socks. “If they got this far.”
In Hump’s apartment, I gave the white man’s gun a look and dropped it on the sofa. It was a .38 Chief’s model and it was so battered and scratched that any trace backward wouldn’t lead anywhere. There’d probably been five or six owners and two or three pawnshops involved since it came out of the factory.
“For your collection,” I said.
“Don’t you want it?”
“I’ve got the Xerox on my ribs.”
He mixed me a drink while I dialed my number. I told Marcy I’d be a little late. I said I’d be there as soon as I had hip surgery. Marcy didn’t think it was funny.
As an afterthought, on the way out, I took the .38 Chief’s with me. I polished it with my handkerchief and gave it a toss so that it landed on one of the putting greens when I drove through Piedmont Park on my way home.
Lord only knows the past on an old gun like that. I didn’t want it around in case it carried ghosts with it.
CHAPTER FOUR
My head didn’t seem to want to work.
It might have been the drinks I had with Marcy after I drove home from Hump’s apartment. She’d wanted to hear the story and I’d limped around, gritting my teeth, and told her my version. I made the crawl and leap for the gun sound like a scene from one of the World War II movies. You know the one. The cowardly kid from the slums jumps on the grenade and saves the lives of his buddies.
Marcy didn’t believe it for a minute. She’d seen the same movies. So, I’d had to pull up my T-shirt and show her the scrape and blotch on my ribs. “See? See?”
She stayed the night.
I think I remember her kissing me before she left. On a scale from AWFUL to ALL RIGHT her morning mouth wasn’t as bad as most. And there’d been the warm good smell of her in the sheets when I rolled over and went back to sleep.
The phone rang and my head didn’t want to work. I rolled over and put my feet on the floor. I stood up and my left hip seemed to explode on me. I sat down slowly and felt the pain jumping and leaping from my knee to my shoulder. It was the fifth or sixth ring before I lifted the receiver and grunted into it.
“You all right, Jim?” It was Hump.
“I hope so.” I told him that I’d decided to give up ballet now that I’d injured my hip. “What’s with you?” I looked at my watch on the night table. It was nine thirty-four.
“This is my one phone call.”
“Huh?” Head still not working. “What?”
“I’m at the De Kalb County police station.”
“Why?”
“That Joe Bottoms. He turned up dead out here. Beat all to hell and shot. He had my name and phone number in his pocket.”
“That all they got?”
“I don’t think so.” A pause. “They know about the rip-off and they know I was looking for him. They dropped by early this morning. One look at the scratches on my hands, the ones from the scuffle last night, and they decided I did the killing.”
“All right,” I said. I got up slowly and put some weight on the hip. “I’ll be there with a lawyer or a character reference of some kind … or both. Give me an hour.”
“These
people aren’t friendly. And there’s so much water on the floor I have to swim to the johnny and back.”
I told him to rest and broke the connection. First, I called the law office of a guy I’d met a couple of months back. He was Duke law school and all that and he liked his drinking and chasing and I’d met him at Harrison’s a time or two. There wasn’t any answer at his office. I tried his home number. I’d about decided he was between home and his office when he answered.
“James Fitch.”
I told him who I was.
“Sure, I remember you,” he said.
“Remember Hump Evans, the big dude I was with?”
He said he did.
“They’ve got him at De Kalb jail on a murder charge. No, that’s not right. I’m not sure they’ve charged him yet.”
“He do it?”
“I don’t know when the killing took place. I was with him most of the afternoon and evening. If it happened during that time, he’d have had to do it while my back was turned.”
“Your word good at De Kalb?”
“Probably not,” I said. “You meet me there?”
“Give me an hour and a half. You see, you called while I was consulting with a young lady.”
I laughed. That was like him.
The second call was to Art Maloney. His wife, Edna, answered. “He in bed yet?”
“A step away,” Edna said. I heard her call him. While she waited, she asked about Marcy.
“She’s fine,” I said. “I took her to dinner last night.”
“When are you going to drop by and see us? The boys ask about you all the time.”
“Soon,” I said and then Art was on the line.
At the end of my rundown he said he wasn’t sure how much good he could do. But he’d go over with me if there was a chance he could help Hump. It would be unofficial and it might get his tail in a crack. I said I knew that Hump would appreciate it and that I’d pick him up in forty-five minutes.
After a shave and a shower, I got down my shoe box and got out five hundred. I didn’t know what the bail might be or if he’d be allowed bail. Still, I thought I’d take the cash in case he needed a bondsman. Fitch, the lawyer, would know more about that.