Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time

by M. P. Wright

  Loretta walked over to the record player and turned the volume right down until James Brown was only a murmur in the room and the sound of her husband’s heavy snoring was the major noise to be heard. She stood over her sleeping man, hands on her hips, head shaking disapprovingly from side to side before deciding to announce my arrival to him.

  “Carnell, git your fat ass up offa that sofa, you lazy muthafucka . . . You gots somebody here wants to see you.”

  Carnell shot bolt upright on the sofa, rubbing his sweaty face and scalp frantically with his big hands, confused and sleepy.

  “Loretta, honeybunch, what the hell you doin’ scaring me like that? I nearly gone and messed myself, you shouting so loud down at me.”

  “Mess yo’self . . . You could lie in your own shit fo’ a month and not wake up unless you needed to stuff that big ole face o’ yours!”

  Carnell, still rubbing his eyes, peered across the room towards where I was standing, his face breaking out into a big smile once he recognised me.

  “JT . . . Hey, it’s real good to see you. How’s everyting going, brother?”

  “Everyting’s cool, Carnell . . . Yo’self?”

  Carnell didn’t get the chance to reply to me, with Loretta quickly answering for him.

  “That idle bastard’s always good. He gits t’ree square meals a day and my pussy to pound . . . He ain’t got no reason to complain, that’s straight.”

  “Honeybunch, you know how grateful I a—”

  Loretta cut her sluggish husband off in mid sentence.

  “Don’t you honeybunch me, and never mind how grateful you think you are, mister. You need to haul all that blubber you got stored round your gut off that foam-covered bench once in a while and help me out. Shit . . . that settee got an imprint o’ your fat ass so big on it that I couldn’t knock the damn ting out with the back end of a grave digger’s spade!”

  Loretta turned away from Carnell and faced me, all sweetness and light on her face, and smiled. I laughed under my breath at her bad-tempered berating, then sniffed enthusiastically.

  “Loretta . . . What’s cooking, girl? Whatever you got going on back there smells so fine.”

  “We having ourselves some brown down chicken and rice . . . You wanna stop and eat with us, honey? You most welcome to.”

  “Yeah, JT, do you wanna stop and . . .”

  Again, Loretta viciously interrupted Carnell before he could finish what he was saying to me.

  “Shut your shit, Carnell . . . I’m doin’ the cooking and I’ll be doin’ the inviting. You keep your big fuckin’ nose out of it.”

  “Loretta girl, I ain’t refusing your cooking, baby . . . but I’ll only stop if you got enough to go round. I don’t wanna deprive Carnell of his evening meal. That boy, he needs to be keeping his strength up to be taking you on.”

  “Keep his strength up . . . that fat fucker been chewing down on my food all weekend. It’ll do him good to share it around a little.”

  She laughed at her slothful spouse, then leant forward and kissed him gently on his balding head while rubbing the edge of his perspiring temple with the back of her hand and whispering to him.

  “I’ll go set the table fo’ our friend, honey . . . Dinner be ready in ten minutes.”

  The smile on Carnell’s face was a picture of contented happiness as his wife walked out of the room, leaving us alone together, and in that brief moment I envied the love that they shared. And somewhere in my own carefully locked-away memories, the similar feelings I had once known with Ellie returned to my recall and would haunt the remainder of my waking day.

  20

  We sat and ate at the kitchen table, and my belly ached after consuming three bowlfuls of Loretta’s wonderful brown down chicken, a rich, spicy stew that reminded me of my late mama’s fine cooking. During the meal Carnell and I each drank Guinness stout from bottles, and by the time I’d finished eating my stomach was bloated up like a farmyard hog’s. Carnell raised his big bulk off of his chair, the end crust of the loaf of bread in his hand, and peered into the duchy cooking pot that stood in the centre of the table. Loretta sat and watched her man with a beady eye, her arms folded across her shapely breasts, as her ever-hungry man checked for any leftovers before snapping her disapproval at him, making him jump back into his seat.

  “What the hell you staring down into that bowl fo’, Carnell, damn it. Ain’t your guts ever filled?”

  “I was just gonna mop out the gravy with this piece o’ bread, Loretta honey.”

  “Mop it out . . . If you try and wipe anyting else outta that pan I’m gonna pick it off the table and crack the fuckin’ ting across your big, fat, greedy head. And if you think I’m doing those damn dishes sat in front o’ you then you stupider than you look!”

  “Ain’t no need to be speaking to me like that, Loretta, with JT here; you know I’ll sort the dishes and tidy round.”

  Carnell tried to placate his wife with his best patter, stroking the back of her hand with his stubby fingers. She quickly snatched it away from him, leaving Carnell to tap the table playfully. He was fooling nobody, least of all Loretta.

  “Carnell, I know you too well where you and washing dishes is concerned. You told me the other night you’d scrub that old copper pot I use to braise plantain in. Fuckin’ ting still sat in the sink fo’ four days and I had to chip all that shit outta it with a chisel, took me near on a half-hour to git it clean. Now I’m gonna take my VP sherry wine, put my feet up fo’ a change and paint my nails while you see to that lot.” Loretta pointed at the dirty plates with an outstretched finger. “JT, just you make sure he starts on those pots befo’ my ass hits that armchair out there, you hear me?”

  “Oh, you got it, Loretta . . . Carnell here’s gonna be scrubbing them plates and pans and have this kitchen clean as a new pin in the hour. I give you my word.”

  I kept a straight face as I answered and winked at her as she sauntered in her best Sunday heels out of the kitchen and away into the living room.

  It was after six thirty that evening before talk finally got round to Vic and where he might be hanging out. I’d picked up a tea towel and stood next to Carnell, who was leaning over the sink, wearing a pair of yellow rubber washing-up gloves stretched tight across his massive hands. The bowl was overfilled with dirty pots and too much Fairy Liquid; he clumsily splashed himself and the floor with water as he rubbed away at the crockery with a long, wooden-handled dish mop before rinsing off each of the plates and handing them over to me to dry.

  “You got any idea where I can find Vic tonight, Carnell?”

  “Sure, he’ll be hanging out in the Western Star Domino club in town later. I was gonna try and catch up with him myself, play a coupla hands of poker, see if I can fleece him of some of his cash.”

  He laughed to himself as he thought about the possibilities of scoring a couple of flushes out of his friend and cleaning up a tidy sum of money for himself. It was unfair to describe Carnell as a degenerate gambler; rather he was a clever odds man whose skill and success at the card tables across Bristol and further afield had become legendary. When Carnell wasn’t filling his face with Loretta’s home-cooked food you could normally find him at the various dog tracks, bookies’ shops, race meetings or card schools, where he would be plying his trade and generally coming out a winner.

  He was also an accomplished sleight-of-hand man and a renowned pickpocket who targeted wealthy “marks” on the street to supplement his gambling income.

  “I’ll tag along with you later, but don’t you think I’m about to sit with you at no card table, I got little enough money in my hip pocket as it is and I ain’t about to lose any of it to you.”

  “OK . . . Let’s finish off in here and I’ll put me on a clean shirt and splash a little Bay Rum around to freshen myself up, then we’ll hightail it outta here.”

  He smiled back at me.

  “If you thinking o’ going out, Carnell, you sure gonna need more than Bay Rum to jazz up that stinky hide
o’ yours. Git in that tub and let your ass see some soap befo’ you think of walking outta this house with JT . . . You hear me?”

  Carnell winced at being overheard as Loretta screamed her orders at him from the comfort of her armchair.

  *

  It was just after 9.30 p.m. by the time Carnell and I pulled up outside of the Western Star club. Carnell had done as he was told by Loretta and had taken a bath, and he looked and smelt a hell of a lot better by the time we were greeted by Benton Barrow, the doorman who allowed punters access to the gambling house. Benton was from the island of St Kitts and was a stocky, passive dude with a whispering, effeminate voice whose general calm exterior and gracious manner to those he met at the club’s entrance and inside immediately made you feel welcome. You felt at ease as soon as he put out his big hand to greet you. But there was another side to Benton Barrow, the nasty side, which made him an effective and feared bouncer with a reputation for stopping trouble with a pair of four-inch brass knuckledusters that downed his opponents in a single, swift blow. Tonight Benton was on cheerful and ingratiating form, wearing a blue velvet dinner suit, bow tie and black shades, which even at such a late time in the evening made him look strangely cool. He outstretched his arm to welcome us as we walked into the foyer.

  “Hey there, Carnell, JT . . . How you boys doin’ tonight?”

  “We’re both good, Benton . . . thanks,” I chipped in real quick, knowing that if Carnell had replied he woulda started up a fifteen-minute conversation with the man that would have most likely ended up going nowhere other than keeping us hanging about and freezing our asses off at the main door. I kept things speedy and the conversation light. “Hell, it’s cold out there, Benton . . . My cousin Vic in this evening?” I rubbed my hands against each other as I awaited his reply.

  “Yeah, JT . . . Last time I seen him he was at the bar with a honky chick with titties on her the size o’ watermelons. I don’t know how he manages to hook up with some o’ the skirt he brings in here. Must have a dick on him as big as a mule.”

  He laughed to himself as he opened the inner door to the club, nodding a good evening gesture to the both of us as we walked on through.

  Inside, a thick blanket of cigarette smoke hit me square in the face and I resisted the urge to cough as my eyes adjusted to the low lighting of the large room. Derrick Harriott and the Vagabonds’ “I Care” played on the old jukebox, and I stood for a moment trying to locate Vic. Carnell moved out in front of me, having already spotted Leroy Ward, a fellow card sharp and gambling buddy. He turned on his heels, walking backwards as he spoke to me.

  “JT . . . I’ll catch you later. Join us at the tables when you find Vic, yeah?”

  He winked at me before turning back to join Leroy, who greeted him like a long-lost brother rather than the man he was going to lose all his money to later that night.

  I eventually found Vic sitting at a small circular table on the left-hand side of the room. He was glued to the busty barmaid that he’d had his eyes on the other evening when we were in the Prince of Wales pub in St Pauls. She was draped over him the worse for wear after too much Cherry B, the empty bottles littered across the table. She was nibbling on the fleshy lobe of his left ear, one red leather-booted leg was hooked over his knee, and her skirt had ridden up, which gave the rest of the men in the club watching her playful antics a cheeky glimpse of her stocking tops and white panties. She was a class below Vic’s usual kind of woman, but her ample chest was obviously the magnet for my wayward cousin. Vic caught sight of me walking towards him and pushed his amorous companion off of him and stood up. He was wearing a dark purple shirt and white neckerchief, held loosely around his muscular neck with a gold loop, and black corduroys. His long leather coat opened to reveal a large silver horseshoe-shaped belt buckle with a pearl centre that had a tiny scorpion in its setting. The woman with the big breasts spat out a disgruntled comment at him as she fell away from his shoulder, which had been propping her up. All six foot four of his frame hovered over her as she grumbled some obscenity at him. A stern look of disapproval on his face had already put the busty woman in her place, but Vic still insisted on further berating her.

  “Git the hell out my face and go put some lipstick on in the ladies’ room. I got me some bidness to attend to here.”

  He turned from her and she got up, kicking her chair back as she did so, a look of nasty dissatisfaction on her face as she stumbled off towards the toilets muttering drunkenly to herself.

  “JT . . . and it’s ’bout time too, brother. I started to think you’d got yourself a piece o’ skirt and was bunked up somewhere after tailing that cock-rat across country. Where you been, man?”

  He slapped me hard with his hand on the side of my arm where the dog had bitten me, making me flinch from pain.

  “What the hell you been getting yourself into now?”

  “Tings got a little rough . . .”

  Vic lifted his palm in front of me, stopping my answer to him in its tracks. He raised his eyebrows and a massive smile erupted across his face, before he put his arm around my shoulders and drew me in towards his bulk.

  “So tell me, you end up at some mattress house, git yourself laid?”

  “I got myself bit.”

  “Man . . . If that kinda shit gets you off, it don’t matter a ting to me.”

  “Not by a woman, a dog . . . and a goddamn big one too!”

  “Dog . . . what the hell kinda dog got the better of you? Just hold it right there fo’ a minute. I’m gonna git us a drink . . . I just gotta hear this bullshit . . . C’mon, you go an’ git that free table by the right-hand side of the stage over there. What you wanting to drink?”

  “I’ll have a pint o’ Dragon Stout . . . Make sure it’s cold.”

  “Ain’t nobody stupid enough to serve me warm beer in this place. You should know that.”

  Vic returned from the bar carrying my pint of Dragon and a saucer glass of Babycham, with the yellow deer printed on its side, which he sipped from as he sat down beside me. He swirled the bubbling, golden liquid a couple of times before knocking it back in a single gulp, then took another nip bottle of the sparkling perry from his jacket pocket and put the bottle cap in his mouth, pulling it off with his teeth.

  “Do you have to do that, Vic? Damn, it turns my guts.”

  He smirked to himself as he poured the fizzy drink into his glass, before sliding the little green bottle into the centre of the table and taking a drink.

  “So how’d you git mauled by some skanky dog then?”

  I told Vic about the young girl who had got into the silver car on Richmond Road with the white dude and how I’d followed her out to the village of Cricket Malherbie and the Blanchard estate, how I was attacked by the guard dog while snooping around and having to kill it, then the brief meeting with the kindly old vicar. My cousin sat looking none too impressed with my poor night’s work.

  “Shit . . . I went to all that fuckin’ trouble putting the frighteners on that big bastard doorman at the shebeen fo’ you to git yourself dragged about on the lawn of a stately home by some mangy old mongrel? Man, you didn’t even git a look at the girl properly or find out her name? Damn, some Dick Tracy you are!”

  I pinched my eyes hard, rubbing at my mouth with the palm of my hand before looking up at my irritated kin and risking further scorn with the question I had for him.

  “I need to find out where Clarence Maynard lives.”

  “What you want with that filthy kiddie fucker now?”

  “He knows more than he’s letting on, Vic . . . like the name of the girl in the back of that car I followed, probably her whereabouts too.”

  “Yeah . . . and how you gonna git him to spill his guts?”

  Vic’s face had gone from disdain to concern. He knew only too well what Maynard was physically capable of.

  “You let me worry ’bout that. Can you find out where the big bastard lives fo’ me?”

  “Brother, I don’t need to ask anybody
a damn ting. That sick son of a bitch lives in some shack in Montpelier, up by the railway tracks on Mina Road. He’s got himself a dope-selling ting on the side. It all goes down from that hovel he nests in, everybody but the police knows that . . . shit.”

  Vic picked up his drink and knocked it back with gusto, then took a beer mat and split it down the centre with his thumbnail.

  “You got anyting on you I can write with, Mister private detective?”

  I pulled a lightweight chrome propelling pencil that had belonged to my late wife Ellie from the inside of my jacket pocket, then passed it to Vic, who took it from me sheepishly, recognising it immediately. He stared at it briefly, saying nothing, then wrote on the card beer mat in block capitals Clarence Maynard’s address in the Montpelier district. He pushed the mat across the table towards me, giving me a hard look as he did so.

  “You want me to come with you . . . watch your back?” Vic asked me.

  “No . . . we’ve been over this befo’. Thanks fo’ the offer, cous’.”

  I gave him a sharp nod in further grateful appreciation.

  “You watch that nasty prick, JT . . . If you put that fucker in a corner he’s gonna come at you like a trapped rat in a pipe. Make that dog you went head to head with the other night look like a puppy chasing its tail.”

  “Don’t worry . . . I ain’t gonna screw this up, Vic. Now git back to your lady friend befo’ she thinks better of it and stands your mean ass up.”

  I rose from my seat and clasped his broad shoulder with my hand, then smiled at the man who was both a brother and true friend before turning and walking away through the tables of domino and card players.

  “Hey, JT!” Vic bellowed out to me, making the room go silent and the heads of the men around me rise from their hands of cards and spotted ivory blocks. I turned to face him with everyone in the room seemingly staring at me, dreading what was about to come out of his foul mouth next.