Hump's First Case

by Ralph Dennis

  There wasn’t much I could do with the soldier boy, Bob.

  Rosemary took it well. Better than I’d expected her to. That might have been the booze. While we were away, the level of the scotch had gone down a couple or three inches.

  I had a beer while we talked. After that I switched to coffee and cognac. It was the right time for brandy. The icy rain beat on the window like somebody tapping it with a pencil tip. It was a nasty night out.

  The TV movie listed for the night was one of those three-hour spaghetti Westerns made in Spain. It starred some gay American actor. By ten-thirty I’d had too much brandy and I’d lost interest in the flick. It was an absurd bloodbath. The hero was killing people with a six-gun that fired rounds almost as big as antitank shells.

  I yawned at Rosemary. She’d taken off her boots and curled up on the sofa with a drink on her stomach. “Time to go,” I said. She didn’t answer. I went into the bedroom and got my topcoat. When I came back, she was sitting up. She hadn’t put on her boots yet.

  “I owe you for a phone call,” she said. “I called Charles so he’d know everything was fine.”

  “Is everything fine?” I yawned again. “Don’t worry about the call.”

  “Jim?” Her voice was soft, slurred by the scotch.

  “Huh?”

  “Let me sleep on the sofa tonight.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That might make problems.”

  “I promise I won’t attack you.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  “Didn’t you?” Her laugh had all the strings pulled loose.

  “You still got the motel room blues?”

  She nodded.

  “The bed’s yours.”

  “No, Jim.”

  “Either that,” I said, “or I’ll call a cab for you.”

  “Is something wrong with your car?”

  “Something’s wrong with me.” I yawned and rubbed my eyes. “I’m drunk tired.”

  “All right, Jim.”

  I got to my feet and wobbled to the bedroom. I found clean sheets and a pillowcase. I hadn’t heard her but when I turned she was behind me. She took the linen and said, “I’ll change the bed.”

  I left her to that and took pajamas and a robe into the bathroom. After a wash, I changed into the p.j.’s and the robe. On the way through the bedroom, I saw that the bed was made. It was neat, without a wrinkle. I stopped in the doorway. “You bring anything to sleep in?”

  “I hadn’t planned to stay.”

  In the back of one of the dresser drawers I found a blue flannel shirt that I’d bought a winter before. The sleeves were too long for me and I hadn’t worn it but a time or two. I removed the plastic collar stays and placed it next to the pillow.

  I sipped a final cognac while we watched the last of the movie. Time ran slow and rough, as if somebody had replaced the sand in the hourglass with pebbles. If I was going to make a move, if she expected it, it was time. If I wasn’t, it was past time.

  “Time for bed,” I said.

  That was strong decision-making for you.

  I was dreaming. I thought I was dreaming. In the dream I could smell her scent, her perfume or cologne. That’s all right, I told myself. The whole house is full of her special smell. It will take a week of garlic and armpits to rid this room of her. Nothing to it. Or it is a sense memory. Trapped far back in my nostrils, there for a month or a year.

  “Jim.” Soft, her voice, but a child’s voice.

  I opened my eyes. I hadn’t spread the sofa. I was sleeping on the narrow length of it, face pressed into the scratchy fabric of the back. I rolled over.

  The bedroom lamp backlighted her. Naked, she stood over me. The front of her was dark in shadows. The outline of her glowed, a photo burning from the corners inward.

  “I can’t sleep, Jim. Help me sleep.”

  I tried to move my tongue. It was heavy and I could feel raw cracks in it. Someone had been stropping a straight razor on it. That was the cognac.

  She sat on the sofa next to me, nudging me with her hip so that I’d make room for her. “Jim …”

  My tongue could move after all. “The other people …”

  “This has nothing to do with Charles.”

  “There’s Marcy …”

  “And it doesn’t have anything to do with Marcy either.” One of her hands moved over my chest, ruffling the hair and warming the skin. “This concerns you and me and nobody else.”

  “Us,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  She leaned forward and her hair fell across my face. Her mouth was hard. The taste of garlic and old scotch. Tongue searching my hurt tongue until my mouth was full of pain.

  It was over and it had just begun.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It wasn’t perfume. It was something else. I came up out of the darkness and breathed in, clearing my nose. That was it. It was the scent of bacon and eggs.

  I sat up and wished I hadn’t. My head felt like a shattered tooth. I sat on the edge of the bed, head down, until I thought the chances were about fifty-fifty that I could stand without falling down. That view of the room revealed an ashtray that had been knocked off the coffee table, the butts and the ashes scattered in a line so that it looked like a comet with a tail. The blue flannel shirt I’d loaned Rosemary for a nightgown was on the floor next to the bedroom door.

  Thigh and groin tired. I eased to my feet. My pajamas were strung over the back of the easy chair. I struggled into them and wobbled into the kitchen. I found Rosemary having her breakfast. She was dressed in the pants suit from the day before. She’d made herself up and her hair was neat, carefully groomed.

  “I thought I’d let you sleep, Jim.”

  “It’s a good thought. I can’t. I’ve got things to do.” I met her eyes. Hers slid away. That was the way it was. Last night was last night and today was today. I’d never learned how to deal with the mornings after anyway.

  “I’ll fix you some breakfast.”

  “Coffee to start with,” I said, “until I see what my stomach thinks of it. I’ve got some calls to make.” I had my look at the kitchen wall clock. It was 9:23.

  I left her making the coffee. In the bathroom I ran some water and dunked my face in it. I wrapped a towel around my neck and went into the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed and dialed Hump’s number.

  “I think I’m getting a cold,” he said. “It was all that mushing about in bad weather.”

  “You coming over?”

  “I thought I’d wait for an invitation.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “You want me to pick up Rosemary at the Riviera?”

  “She’s already here,” I said.

  He laughed and broke the connection.

  The second call was to Art Maloney.

  “Screw you, Jim. The answer is no.”

  “I need a meet with Ellison. I want you to referee it for me.”

  “What’s in it for him?”

  “I might be able to ID one of those boys who killed the woman at the 7–11 last Wednesday.”

  “That might grab him,” Art said. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Brown points. Enough of them so that he might leave me alone.”

  “Don’t bet on it. You at home?”

  “I am until I hear from you.”

  “Stay there. I’ll call you or we’ll come by. One or the other.”

  I put the phone down and dry-heaved into the towel.

  I shaved and showered and dressed. For show to Ellison, I picked out a good pair of dark brown trousers and my good tweed jacket. By the time I reached the kitchen, the dishes were washed and draining and the coffee she’d mixed me was cool. I drank it anyway and made myself a second cup. Rosemary watched me over the women’s section of the Constitution.

  “Hump’s on his way.”

  That wasn’t what she’d primed herself to talk about. “Last night, Jim …”

  I’d prepared myself too. “Talk
ing spoils it. It was just one of those human situations.”

  “You’re a funny man.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  “And a nice one too.”

  I carried my cup to the table and sat down across from her. “If I can’t be beautiful, I’d rather be nice. That was what my mama told me to do.”

  “Now you’re not being funny.” Level, serious eyes.

  “It’s my head. It feels like a garbage bag full of rocks and broken bottles. It clanks and rattles.”

  “That’s funny.”

  I shook my head. The dizziness blurred my eyes. “Small talk for mornings after.”

  I hadn’t heard Hump drive up. He walked around the house and knocked at the back door. He let himself in after a short wait. “Lord, it’s slick out there.” He shucked his coat and carried it to the living room doorway. I saw him hesitate when he saw the bed linen and the blanket on the sofa. He tossed his coat over the back of the easy chair. “You two look serious.”

  “I tried to drink all the brandy in the house.”

  Rosemary smiled. “I tried to match him with the scotch.”

  “Good reasons,” Hump said. “Got some coffee?”

  While Rosemary fixed him a cup, Hump sat across from me. The question was on his face. I pretended not to see it. I told him about the call to Art.

  “Soldier boy?”

  I nodded. Rosemary passed the coffee to him and left the kitchen. Past Hump I could see her moving back and forth in the living room, straightening up. Hump still had the question on his face. It was going to be there all day. I nodded and shrugged. That said it all. Yes and confusion.

  The knowing grin had started. It faded. It was back to business. “You think Ellison will buy it?”

  “I would.” I lit a smoke and felt the heat burning the cut places on my tongue. I stubbed it out. “A good cop always takes the help of a good citizen.”

  At the doorway Rosemary worked her head through the yoke of the serape. “I need to call a cab. I’ve got to go back to the motel.”

  I stood up. Hump shook his head at me. “You’ve got to stay here, Jim. I’ll drive her.” He gulped his coffee.

  I followed them to the door and touched Rosemary on the shoulder. “So much was happening yesterday I didn’t ask. Did Fred Thompson call back?”

  “No.”

  I watched them drive away, toward town. It was bitter cold. There was ice on my steps, ice coating the winter brown grass on my lawn.

  “The coffee’s still rotten.” Ellison said.

  “So don’t drink it.” I said.

  Art stared down into his cup. Some referee. He’d hardly said a word since they’d arrived. Ellison … I still hadn’t heard his first name … sat next to him on the sofa. Ellison looked like he’d just come off night duty. He needed a shave and his eyes were red-rimmed.

  “All this small talk aside, I got pushed into this by Maloney. If it was up to me, you could whistle for breath.”

  Art lifted his head. “Listen him out.”

  “I said I would.”

  “Bitch about it later then.” Art turned on me to soften it. “And this better be worth our time, Jim.”

  “Got a pencil?”

  Ellison flipped his notebook open and uncapped a felt-tipped pen.

  “The first week in October, Billie Joe James was sharing an apartment with a woman named Betsy Hart on Eighth Street.” I searched my head and found the street number and read it off for them. I stared at Ellison until he shrugged and noted it. “She was going at the time with a guy named Bob … Bob something.”

  “Is that all you know?”

  “Let me finish. A Sunday that first week in October the dude, Bob, caused some trouble at the apartment and got hauled off by the police. Drunk and disorderly.”

  It was a tennis match. I flipped back and forth from the faces. Art was interested but he was puzzled. “Get to the bottom line, Jim.”

  “That’s most of it. Except for the fact …” I let it trail away. I faced Ellison. “Remember the night at the 7–11? I told you one of the guys there had taken some cans of cat food?”

  “It was a lot of help,” Ellison said.

  “The description the Hart woman gives of this Bob something dude comes close to matching the guy in the 7–11, the one with the cat food.”

  Ellison did a quick sweep of the room with his eyes.

  “The phone’s in the bedroom.” I waved an arm in that direction. I waited until he reached the doorway. “One more thing that might help. This Bob wore a uniform part of the time. Army.”

  “Then the M.P.s would have picked him up at the slammer.”

  “If they’d known he was a soldier. What I hear is that Billie Joe bailed him out that same night. He was wearing civvies.”

  Ellison reached the foot of the bed before he turned and slammed the bedroom door.

  “He’s young,” Art said.

  “He’s aging slow,” I said. I carried my cup into the kitchen and left it on the table. “And you’re some referee.”

  “I got him here. It wasn’t easy. I had to lie and say that you’d been a half-decent cop at one time.”

  “High praise from you.”

  “He didn’t buy any part of it.”

  After five or six minutes Ellison opened the bedroom door. “It smells like a whorehouse in there.”

  “You must go to the good ones. That stuff’s probably fifty an ounce.”

  “Get on with it,” Art said. He was tired of the bickering.

  “The last name’s Buchner. Robert Bruce Buchner. He didn’t show for court. He forfeited bail.” He looked at me. “And you were right. Billie Joe James put up the bail money.”

  “A home address from the arrest sheet?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t read it.

  “Make the other call?”

  “Fort Mac says he’s been A.W.O.L. since that weekend. A couple of weeks ago the time ran out and they turned it over to the F.B.I.”

  “Photo?”

  “I think we can get one from the Bureau.” Ellison picked up a plaid topcoat and put it on. “A cruiser will meet us there.”

  I got my coat and followed them to the door. Ellison turned and blocked my way. “Where you think you’re going?”

  “I thought I’d stay with you until you said thanks.”

  “You’ll get a letter.” He dropped his arm. “It’ll have a fancy letterhead.”

  “You might need an on-the-spot ID of the kid.”

  “Just for the ride?” Art said.

  “Me get involved with gunplay?”

  Ellison agreed. “He’s your problem.”

  Hump pulled into the driveway as we came down the front steps. He gave the two unmarked cars on the street a puzzled look. Ellison and Art cut across the lawn to their cars. I made a wide circle and met Hump on the walk. “The back door is open.”

  “I come with you?”

  “They don’t even want me along.”

  Art honked. I trotted across the icy lawn and got into the car with him.

  We tailgated Ellison. When Ellison turned onto Argonne a possibility hit me. I didn’t really believe it until I saw the police cruiser parked next to the big frame house painted battleship gray. “I think Hump’s been here.”

  “Huh?” He was concentrating on house numbers.

  “Nothing.”

  We parked one house down. Ellison was out of his car quickly. Two uniformed cops got out of the cruiser and met him. One of the cops looked about my age and he was about as overweight as I am. The other was younger, probably in his first year on the force. The older cop carried the riot gun.

  It was settled by the time Art and I reached them. Ellison pointed at me. “You stay out here. Any ID needs making can be done later.” I leaned against a telephone pole. The four of them headed up the walk. About halfway there, Ellison tapped the fat, older cop on the shoulder. He said something I didn’t hear. The fat cop waddled back and stood next to me, the riot gun at
port arms.

  “I’m just a witness,” I said.

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said to stay with you.” His arms got tired. He lowered the riot gun and eased the butt to the sidewalk. “You sure you’re not involved in this?”

  “Me? That’s an insult.”

  He belched, a low, controlled rumble. Breakfast sausage probably.

  The front door closed behind the other three. I got out my smokes and lit one. A couple of puffs and I heard another rumble. It wasn’t the fat cop. This rumble had a squeak mixed in it. It came from the driveway to the left of the apartment house. I looked in that direction and after a few seconds one of those green garbage carts appeared past the corner of the house. A tall man with a wide-brimmed leather hat was pushing it. He had his head down.

  “You got another one of those?” The cop indicated my cigarette.

  I dug out my pack and shook out one for him. He braced the riot gun between his knees and lit it with his own matches. It took him three matches, the wind was that bad. After a short draw or two he cupped his hand around it, as if to hide it. “Thanks.”

  I looked over my shoulder, toward the corner of Fifth and Argonne. It took me a count of ten before it sank in. I looked quickly in the other direction, toward Ponce de Leon. The same. There weren’t any other garbage carts at the curbs. Strange. Most collection days the curbs are loaded.

  The tall man in the leather hat stepped away from the garbage cart and made an elaborate gesture of brushing his hands on his jeans. Then he turned and walked in the direction of Ponce de Leon, away from the fat cop and me.

  It was partly the solitary garbage cart. It was partly a hunch. I stepped around the fat cop and yelled, “Hey, you.” The tall man whirled and I got a brief look at his face. It didn’t mean much until he jerked the hat from his head. That was to keep it from falling off when he ran. And run he did. But not before I put the face and the white afro together and knew that this was the other young man from the 7–11 robbery and murder.

  The fat cop said, “What the hell?” He grabbed at my arm. I shook him away. I lurched into a run. Behind me the cop said, “Stop. Hey, you, stop.”

  I heard a round pumped into the riot gun.