by Ralph Dennis
Hump was on hands and knees. He watched Shorty move to the tape machine and cut the volume down. There was jerky movement at the sofa. A brown-haired girl with a wisp of blond pubic hair sat up and jumped away from the sofa. In her nakedness he could see the abuse she’d been taking. Bruises and dark places on her thin body and a tailpipe burn on the inside of her right leg.
Her face twisted. She shrieked, “Shorty, I said I’d do anything you said but I ain’t going to do no nigger.”
“Go in the other room, Sally.”
This nigger wouldn’t touch you, Hump thought. He watched the child’s body as she turned away. The bony pelvis, the small breasts like eggs. Sixteen and already rank spoiled.
A wooden cable reel served as a table in front of the sofa. Shorty sat down on the sofa and placed the .45 on the reel. He lifted a brass hash pipe. He lit the hash with a kitchen match and drew in a deep swallow.
“I’m standing up,” Hump said. “Nothing sudden.”
Shorty nodded, holding the smoke in.
Hump got to his feet. He felt himself swaying, knees weak and head fogged. “Better,” he said, but he didn’t believe it.
The hash hissed in the pipe bowl. “What is it you want, man?” Shorty asked.
“I’m looking for Carl Culp.” Hump nodded toward Curly and felt his neck stiffening. “This one before it got rough, said something that sounds like he might be dead.”
“Might be dead?” Shorty mocked Hump. “Well, if he is I don’t know about it.”
“That was a put-on,” Curly said.
Hump pointed at the hash pipe. “I take a hit?”
“An upright type like you?”
“Might be good for my hurts,” Hump said.
Shorty moved the pipe to the side of the table near Hump. He picked up the .45 and leaned back. “Help yourself.”
Hump balanced the wood ball tip in his mouth and picked up a match. He held the flame over the bowl and drew in. The pipe load was about done but there was enough for one more hit. Hump held the smoke in his lungs and placed the pipe on the table. When he could talk once more he said, “Appreciate it.”
Curly grunted. “The nigger appreciates it.”
“Good shit.” Hump could feel the first part of it, the first tingle. “Look, I didn’t mean to break in on your party.”
“Which party?” Shorty grinned. “Poker in the kitchen or balling in the bedroom?”
“Either,” Hump said.
“You walked into it,” Shorty said. “The question is whether you’ll ever walk out of it.”
Curly, on Hump’s left, shifted his feet. “What’s your interest in Culp?”
“Not much. A friend from his hometown, that’s Kingstree, asked me to look him up.”
“That’s the town all right. So why’re you looking here?”
“Word is he was hanging around with you.”
“Sucking up is more like it,” Shorty said.
“He wasn’t a member?”
“Him?” Shorty slapped the butt of the .45 against his thigh. “On his best day he couldn’t wash my dirty underwear. All he was good for was a free tank of gas now and then.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“He just drifted off,” Curly looked at Shorty. “Back in November, wasn’t it?”
“About that.”
“Where was he living then?”
“Somewhere on Argonne, I think.” Curly looked at the chain in his hand. He wrapped it around his waist, looped it and drew it tight. “I never saw the place.”
“You ever see him with a girl? A blond about eighteen, pretty? Her name’s Billie Joe. That would have been in late August or September.”
“Him with a girl?” Shorty waved a hand toward the bedroom where the thin girl had gone. “When we let him, he got leftovers.”
“Low pig in the house,” Curly said.
“Acourse, we didn’t know him until the middle of September,” Shorty said. “Right?”
“One hundred percent,” Curly said.
Shorty pulled the hash pipe toward him. He placed the .45 on the table and reached in the pocket of his jeans. He brought out something wrapped in tinfoil. He unwrapped it and it looked like a square of bittersweet chocolate. He broke off a corner chip and placed it in the pipe. “What comes to me is that you aren’t really asking about Culp. You’re asking about the girl.”
“Might sound that way,” Hump said.
Shorty struck a kitchen match on the table top and held the flame over the chip. He took a deep puff.
It was the right time. Hump said, “Who killed Carl Culp?”
Shorty choked on the hash smoke. To Hump’s left, Curly fumbled with the chain. He was unlooping it when Hump turned and hit him with a right in the mouth. Curly grabbed at his teeth and fell backward. Across the cable-reel table Shorty was still coughing. He slammed the pipe down and grabbed for the .45.
Hump kicked out and caught the table edge with the sole and heel of one shoe. It tilted the table. The movement displaced the .45. Shorty’s hand hit nothing but table top. He said, “Goddamn,” and fumbled for it. Hump reached across the table and caught the .45 at the same moment Shorty did. He pressed the .45 to the table with his left hand. Shorty tried to jerk it away. That didn’t work. He wasn’t as strong as Curly. So he leaned away and hit Hump with a left. Hump saw the fist coming and slid under it. It scraped his right ear and burned.
Hump hit Shorty with a short right and stretched him out. Hump had the .45. He ejected the clip and shoved that in his coat pocket. He whirled and threw the .45 into the far corner of the room. The .45 bounced off the wall. It made a racket. A fat girl with black hair, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, ran out of the bedroom and stood staring at him. The skin of her lower body and legs looked like curdled milk. After a moment of shock, the girl put back her head and screamed.
A man with a husky voice said, “What the fuck, Red?”
Hump ran out the front door. He was across the street, getting into his Buick, when the front door opened and about eight or ten bikers, some dressed and others dressing, ran onto the porch. They were yelling and shouting.
All down the street the lights went out.
Hump dropped the clip on the kitchen table. I picked it up and checked it. It was a part load, only four rounds showing. I slid the clip back to him. “Might have been one in the chamber.”
“Maybe they didn’t know it.”
“To find out, all they had to do was point it.”
He shrugged. “I guess I lose a couple of points for that.” He had a swallow of the cognac. “But don’t I get points for getting away?” He took the plastic bag of ice cubes from his neck and looked at it. “You sure this does any good?”
I shook my head. Hump tossed the bag into the sink. Cups and dishes rattled.
“And they followed you?”
“In that blue van. On my tail the whole way. Over to Charles Allen, a left on Ponce de Leon, all the way to the Plaza. I thought about driving over here but I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
I could see the two of us against about ten of them. It wasn’t a good picture in my head.
“I decided it was better where there were some other people.”
“And a telephone,” I said.
“That too.”
I drained the last of the cognac from my cup. I carried it to the sink and rinsed it. “You can have the sofa it you want it.”
“Since I don’t have wheels that might be a good idea.”
“We’ll get it first thing in the morning.”
He trailed me into the living room. I moved the coffee table. He worked at the sofa until it opened into a bed. While he did that I got him sheets, a pillow and a blanket. I tossed them to him and he sat down and held them across his knees.
“My first time out, how’d I do, boss?” The boss was sarcastic. “Is that a B or a C?”
“You’re still alive,” I said. “I never give the final grades with a headful of wine and brandy.�
� I stopped in the bedroom door.
“I’m seeing Rosemary in the morning.”
“That ought to be fun,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant. I meant I’d appreciate it if you’d talk to her with me.”
“I’ll sleep on it.”
“Sleep?”
“Dream.”
I did dream. There I was running through fields of flowers, reds and blues and yellows. I was with Rosemary. I was younger in that dream, about thirty, and she looked about eighteen. It was Rosemary. I knew that. But there was something of the girl in the 7–11 store in her as well.
The dream had the texture, the feeling of a scene out of Wild Strawberries.
After the dream went on for a time I realized that we weren’t alone. A little blond girl, four or five years old, was running in the field with us. She was holding on to her mother’s flowing white dress. Every time I got close to Rosemary, I tripped over the little girl.
That was the dream. I don’t remember much more of it. If there was anymore.
I awoke about seven, still tired. I guess it was all that running.
I had my breakfast and waited for Hump to roll himself off the sofa. I rattled enough pots and pans to wake up an army barracks. It worked after a time. He showered and came into the kitchen, rubbing a stiff neck. He ate about everything left in the refrigerator and did it the hard way: the “square meal” style out of one of those old West Point movies. His chest hurt and he couldn’t lean forward and he couldn’t move his neck. At a kind of attention, he had to lift that fork quite a distance.
“Those two dudes just about ruined me,” he said.
“Or the ice pack did. I can’t remember whether you’re supposed to use ice or heat.” I mixed him a second cup of coffee and watched him slosh it about.
“I may have to look those boys up one day.”
“Somebody might do it for you,” I said.
“You?”
I laughed and shook my head. “I’ve been thinking about what Curly said to you. About lighting a candle for Carl Culp. You think he meant it?”
“He was a smartass,” Hump said, “but it came out funny, odd.”
“If what he meant was that Culp wasn’t around, that he didn’t know where Culp was, why put the death mark on it?”
“Beyond me.”
I waited until he wiped the last smear of egg from his plate with a corner of toast. I dropped the plate in the sink and headed for the bedroom. “What was that new dance step you named after me?”
“The Jim Hardman fallback?”
“That’s the one and I’m proud of it.” I placed my cup on the night table by the bed and dialed the police department number. I got switched to Art Maloney’s extension.
“I’ve got my topcoat on,” Art said.
“I’ve got a name for you and a question.”
Hump came in and stood next to the bed, listening.
“I haven’t got time,” Art said. “I’m due home. Edna’s got breakfast started.”
“It’s worth a bottle of booze. You name the brand.”
“I’ve got a taste for that cognac you had last winter, the good stuff in the green bottle.”
That was the sixteen- or seventeen-year-old stuff. It sold for about thirty dollars, give or take a dollar or two. “A deal.”
“Payable when?”
“Later today.”
“All right. I just took off my topcoat.”
“His name is Carl Culp. He’d be somewhere around twenty. Last address over on Argonne. He was working at jobs and going to night school at Georgia State.”
“That rings a bell pretty far off. What exactly did this …?”
“You got a body fits that?”
“The bell’s closer in. I’ll call you back.”
I broke the connection and stood up. Hump moved around me and eased himself to a seat on the edge of the bed. “You got a phone book?”
“Under the bed.”
He leaned forward and caught himself. Pain track-walked across his face. I got the book for him and blew the dust cotton candy away. “The Riviera,” Hump said.
I found the phone number and read it to him so that he could dial. I dropped the phone book on the floor and nudged it under the bed with a toe. I headed for the kitchen. I reached the door about the time he got the call through.
“Rosemary? Hump. I’m at Jim Hardman’s place.”
I closed the bedroom door and looked at the sofa. He’d folded the linens and the blanket and placed the pillow on top of the stack. I started to take them into the bedroom and changed my mind. No way I wanted to listen to what they had to say. I went into the kitchen and made myself another coffee to replace the cup I’d left in the bedroom.
“Rosemary’s coming over,” he said. He stopped in the doorway and looked at me.
“You want the bedroom or the living room for the conference?”
“Dumb,” Hump said, “real dumb.”
That was a fair estimate. I said, “I don’t know where my head is this year.” The phone rang in the bedroom and I edged past him and got a tap on the shoulder from him.
“Your line’s been busy,” Art said.
“Hump’s been using it.” I was about to add that he’d been using it for his courting but that wouldn’t roll off my tongue. Anyway, he’d remained in the kitchen so it would have been a broken needle.
“You got the green bottle yet?”
“The Ansley Mall store doesn’t open until ten.”
“I’ll have to trust you,” Art said. “The Carl Culp you asked about. He’s an open case.”
“What?”
“He turned up dead last month. The fourteenth of last month.”
“How?”
“Somebody broke his neck. And he’d been beaten with something. Not a whip or a rope. Something harder.”
“Chains? The way bikers use them?”
“Might be,” Art said.
“Where?”
“Let me see.” I could hear paper crackle. “You know the underground parking lot at the Omni? Found in his car the morning after one of those big rock concerts, one of the English groups.”
“How’d your people figure it?”
“The big guess was that it was a drug ripoff. They found about half a pound of low-grade grass under the front seat. You know how that got put together.”
I knew. If you didn’t have anything else to go on and there was dope involved, they always figured it was some disagreement over the dope or the money. It was standard.
“You haven’t told me your interest in this,” Art said.
“That information you gave Hump last night.”
“The biker gang?”
“Yeah. The Atlanta Outlanders. Hump asked them a question and got a strange answer. He wanted to find Culp and got told to light a candle for him.”
Art was a practicing Catholic. He understood the candle bit. “It might be worth some more questions.”
“I understand there was some trouble at the Majestic last night. Might be those Outlanders are in your slammer right now.”
“Who gets asked the questions?”
I called Hump to the phone. “Give him descriptions of Shorty and Curly.”
After Hump finished, he passed the phone back to me. Art said, “I think you just ruined my breakfast.”
“Think how pleased the Captain’ll be when you crack the case.”
“Crack the case? Oh, shit.”
“Isn’t that the way real cops talk?”
“Oh, hell, yes.”
“Four this afternoon at my place?”
“You’ll have the green bottle?”
“With the seal still on it,” I said.
After I shaved and showered, I sat at the kitchen table and started a grocery list. I got past eggs, bacon, bread and milk, and I was considering some Italian sausages and a few steaks when I heard the car door slam out in the drive.
Hump opened the door and let Rosemary in. She was
wearing dark slacks, a white turtleneck and the suede coat from the day before. I left my grocery list and went in to have my look at her. Hump closed the door and stood with his back to it.
“That a rental car out there?”
Rosemary said that it was.
“Lend it to me for an hour,” Hump said.
While she fumbled for the keys, Hump worked his shoulders into his topcoat. “I forgot to tell you, Jim. I made a second call. Got myself an appointment with a doctor at the Medical Arts Building. I thought I’d better have this neck looked at.”
“Your neck?” Rosemary whirled from Hump to me. I could see the concern in her face. “What happened …?”
“I think it was some folk medicine Jim tried on me.” Hump took the keys and left.
Rosemary unbuttoned her coat. Maybe it was reflex. I went over and helped her with it. That was that southern gentleman crap, hard to shake after you’ve done it for years. Close up, I could smell her perfume. It was something subtle, there and almost not there, and it rocked me. I quickstepped away from her. I’d headed for the bedroom with the coat before I had a second thought. I was going to drop the coat on the foot of the bed. No way. Her perfume was in the coat. It stayed on my bed long enough and I’d be sleeping the next day or two with the scent of her.
“What happened to Hump’s neck?”
I dropped the suede coat at the end of the sofa. “That’s his story. Wouldn’t want to spoil it for him.”
“You two seem to like secrets.”
I shrugged. “I’m coffee’d out, but if you want some …”
“Thank you,” she said. “I would.”
She followed me into the kitchen and watched while I filled the kettle and placed it over the flame. “I’m glad you’re going to help.”
“Did Hump say that?”
“Not in so many words,” she admitted.
I let that float in the air for a few seconds. In the end I said, “I guess I am. Among other things, I had a dream about you last night.”
“I hope it was a good dream.”
I could see her eyes, nothing but her eyes. The warm amusement there. “It was tiring.”
Then she was laughing. It was warm and real and throaty. And I knew that she thought I meant the dream had been a sexual one. It hadn’t been and I was about to say, no, it wasn’t a wet dream, lady. I saw the absurdity of that and I backed away.