Atlanta Deathwatch

by Ralph Dennis

  “Mine,” I said. “Ferd took it from me outside the Dew Drop In.”

  Horace backed me up. Ferd had taken a liking to the slapjack and had started carrying it around in his topcoat pocket. In fact, he’d seen Ferd playing around with it earlier in the day, before he left on his run.

  I took the slapjack into the bathroom and ran some water on it until the water dissolved the blood and the paper came free. I tore the bloody paper into small pieces and flushed it down the john. Then I washed the slapjack as well as I could and rolled it in a wad of toilet paper. Back in the living room, I dropped it into my topcoat pocket and left. As soon as I reached my house, I got out an old can of saddle soap and worked over the slapjack until it was clean. Then I put it in an out-of-sight corner of the closet to dry out.

  I called Hump a couple of times and finally reached him at five-fifteen. He said the Southern Bell trim had a list of calls made from Emily’s dorm room. He expected her in a minute or two. “If you’ll come by in an hour, we’ll go over them with her.”

  “Why an hour?”

  “Got to pay my dues with her,” he said.

  I wasted part of the hour with a call to Art Maloney, at his home number. He said there wasn’t anything new. To save myself some legwork, I asked if they’d run into anybody named Eddie who was tied to Emily in any way. He perked up and wanted details. I told him that all I knew was that the name had cropped up a couple of times. He might be an ex-boyfriend. Art said he’d have that checked out. And then, surprisingly, he thanked me for the tip. That had to mean that the police were drawing blanks all the way, and were willing to follow up any kind of lead, no matter how vague it was.

  Being thanked by a policeman always made my day.

  Before I left for Hump’s apartment I got the .38 Police Positive out of hiding and put it in my topcoat. I didn’t like the way people who had connections with The Man were dropping by the wayside. I didn’t want to be the third on that list. Or even the fourth or fifth.

  Hump and the Southern Bell trim were in the living room having a drink when I let myself in after knocking. The Southern Bell trim was not really very trim: she weighed about two hundred pounds. In fact, she looked like a busted bale of hay. Her name was Emma Jane Green.

  “This sweet young lady did us a lot of good,” Hump said.

  “It wasn’t anything,” Emma Jane said. “But don’t tell anyone I gave you the numbers.”

  I said we wouldn’t. It was private business.

  Hump handed me the penciled list of numbers and destinations. The calls included the tenth of December, the day I’d followed Emily Campbell to the Dew Drop In. “They don’t go as far as we’d like,” Hump said.

  “It might be enough,” I said.

  “Four of the calls are to the same number in Millhouse,” Hump said.

  Emma Jane corrected him. “Three are, but the fourth is a collect call from Millhouse.”

  “From the same number,” I said. There was also a call to Athens, Georgia, and one to Spartenburg, South Carolina. I decided to ignore these two for the moment and concentrate on the Millhouse calls. Three of the Millhouse calls were dated the tenth. Two of the calls looked like some kind of bare-minimum charge, as if the call had been completed but the party hadn’t been in, or the conversation had been rather short. The final call on the twelfth had run up a tab of $4.25.

  “Any way of knowing who these calls were made to?”

  “I didn’t have time,” Emma Jane said.

  When Emma Jane got ready to leave, I looked at Hump to see if I should put out some money. He read my mind and shook his head. After a bit of small-talk, Hump walked her downstairs to her car. As soon as the door closed behind them, I direct-dailed the number in Millhouse. The phone rang five times before it was answered.

  “Hello.” It was a surly, go-to-hell greeting.

  “I want to speak to Ed.”

  “Ed who?”

  “Isn’t this the fire station?” I asked.

  “You kidding?” He laughed. “That’s a good one.”

  “This isn’t the fire station?” I insisted.

  “It’s Ben Sharp’s Pool Hall.”

  I said I was sorry and hung up. Hump came in, puffing from the climb up the stairs. I looked at him and then at the closed bedroom door. He grinned. “That girl’s been eating boxes of cornstarch.”

  “But she seems to have a good heart,” I said.

  “And good moral character,” Hump said. Then he dismissed it. “You try the number yet?”

  “Ben Sharp’s Pool Hall.”

  “We going to play some pool?” Hump asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  I had a small drink while he showered. While he dressed I stood in the doorway and told him about the death of Ferd, and that it had been done with my slapjack. Hump stopped in mid-stride at that, dug down into the bottom of the clothes closet, and brought out a battered gym bag. He unzipped it and took out a rolled-up sweat suit. Inside, there was the .38 I’d given him a year-and-a-half before, one I’d taken off a drunk one night.

  “I don’t like the way this one is heading,” he said. He put on a knee-length black leather coat and dropped the gun in his pocket. “There’s blood in the soup already.”

  We arrived in Millhouse at eight o’clock, give or take a minute or two.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The main tourist attraction in Millhouse is a slave auction block in the center of a little park beside the courthouse. One corner of the block was chipped and blackened in a midnight explosion during the civil rights demonstrations, back in 1964. Other than that, it’s a town of forty thousand that locks up tight at seven every night, except for the two movie houses and two or three hamburger and beer joints.

  Hump pulled into an all-night truck stop on the edge of town. While the car was being gassed, I walked back to talk to the attendant and asked directions to the pool hall. He gave them with the ease of someone often asked. He repeated them once more to be sure I had them and, with a look toward the front of the car, where Hump was, he lowered his voice a notch or two. “He won’t be welcome.”

  “Him?” I laughed. “He’s my driver.”

  We followed the directions. Through the main part of town, one mile past the city-limits sign, left at the first fork, a right on a dirt road just past a combination grocery store

  and gas station. Half a mile down that road and you couldn’t miss it.

  “From what the gas-pumper said back there,” I said, “you’re not going to be much welcome.”

  “That’s your problem,” Hump said. “You owe me for the Dew Drop In visit the other might.”

  “That silly promise,” I said, and Hump laughed at me.

  It was there, just like the station attendant said, a low, flat building constructed from cinderblocks. There was a narrow door near the left corner and a single window to balance the door on the right. A Coca-Cola sign above the door was flaked around the edges and pocked from what was probably some late-hour target shooting.

  The packed-dirt parking lot could have held a hundred or so cars, but there were only a dozen or so there when we drove up, all of them clustered together in the darkness around the right side of the building. Hump avoided them and parked on the left side, nearer the front door. I guess I could have gone in without Hump and asked my questions. But my dealings with rednecks in the past had convinced me that they didn’t like strangers asking questions. That could lead to trouble and, if there was going to be trouble, I wanted Hump’s two hundred and seventy pounds of bad-ass on my side. Hump didn’t like the redneck shit, but he’d spent a lot of time around other parts of the country where the black-hate pushed at him in subtle ways. I believed, without ever talking to him about it, that he preferred it in the open, where he could deal with it in the physically violent way that got respect if not understanding.

  I went in first and Hump ducked in after me. The aisle between the pool tables was wide enough for us to walk side by side, and Hump moved
up level with me. The pool tables covered about two-thirds of the area of the long room. To the right there was a beer bar, and to the end near the front of the building, a wired-in cage where the business of the table rentals was handled.

  We headed for the bar. As soon as a few of the pool shooters saw us, there was a muttered “nigger” or two, loud enough for us to hear but not loud enough to appear to be a challenge. I sat at the curved end of the bar, near the wired-in cage. Hump remained standing, on my left, between me and the length of the bar, where two young rednecks in jeans and denim jackets sat talking to the bartender. The bartender, a thin crew-cut man in a dirty half-apron, ignored us for two or three minutes. Then, wiping the bar top with a rag as he came, he edged toward us. “Yeah?”

  “Two beers.”

  “We’re out of beer.”

  “One beer then,” I said.

  The bartender grinned. The gap-toothed pleasure meant he’d won, had put it over on the nigger and the nigger-lover. He went over to the Coca-Cola box and got out three bottles of Bud. He opened two of them and placed them in front of the denim-jacketed young rednecks. Slowly, as if the cap didn’t want to come off, he opened the third one and brought it down to me. He placed it on the counter in front of me, along with a paper cup. I dropped a dollar bill on the counter and watched while he made change from his pocket. He remained there, watching me. I lifted the beer and handed it to Hump.

  “He’s the thirsty one,” I said.

  Hump took the bottle from my hand and, in one fluid motion, lifted it to his mouth. He didn’t bring it down until it was empty. He put the bottle on the bar top with a loud thump.

  “Hey!” The shout was from one of the young rednecks down the bar. It sounded more like surprise than anger, but Hump and I turned to face him as he left his bar stool and walked toward us. He had carrot-red hair, a mass of pimples across the bridge of his nose, and brown acne scars on his cheekbones. Next to me I heard the gritty slip of Hump’s shoes on the concrete floor as he set his feet.

  “I might be wrong . . . but aren’t you Hump Evans?”

  “You’re not wrong,” Hump said.

  The redhead put out his hand. “God, the times I’ve seen you on TV.”

  Hump gave the hand a hard squeeze. “This is my friend, Mr. Hardman.”

  “Glad to meet you.” But he wasn’t really looking at me. He motioned down the bar. “I want you to meet my friend, Benny. Benny, come down here and meet Hump Evans.”

  The boy came, but he came slowly, as if this friendly reaction to a black wasn’t the usual social thing to do in Millhouse. He didn’t offer to shake hands, but there was some of the same awe in his face that I saw in the redhead’s.

  I took that moment to see how this registered with the bartender. “Two more beers.”

  He stuck to his story. “I’m out of beer.”

  “Two beers, Mason,” the redhead said. “If they can’t buy them, I will.”

  “Your daddy . . . ”

  “My daddy ain’t here.” The redhead sounded hard and mean. I’d seen that before: around Hump, the fans all seemed to grow hair on their chests.

  “He ain’t going to like it,” the bartender said, but he went for the beers.

  “I’m Marshall Sharp. My daddy owns the place.”

  “It’s a nice place,” I said. I even looked around and nodded a couple of times. When the beers came I tried to pay, but Marshall waved my money away and said they were on him. The bartender didn’t like that, either, but he clamped his mouth shut and moved to the far end of the bar. The kids spent the next few minutes asking Hump about other pro players he knew. Hump put on a friendly attitude that I knew he didn’t feel, and the talk went on and on while I tried to think of a way to move the subject matter around to Eddie, whoever he was, and the phone calls.

  Sometime later, during a break in the feverish fan talk, Marshall asked what we were doing in Millhouse.

  “Passing through,” Hump said.

  “We got lost,” I said.

  Marshall laughed. “This far off the main highway, you’d have to be.”

  I decided to try a story out on the kid. “We’re just kidding. We met a girl at a party a couple of nights ago. When she found out we’d be passing through Millhouse, she asked us to stop off and give a message to a guy who hangs out in here.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Eddie.”

  “Eddie Spence?” He checked himself. He was suspicious now. He’d made a slip, and he didn’t like it.

  I turned to Hump. “Was the last name Spence?”

  “You asking me?” Hump took a pull at the bottle. “You were the one doing all the talking to her.”

  “But I was smashed, and you know I never remember names the next day.”

  “You mean we came all this way out of the way . . .?” Hump let it die out. He tapped Marshall on the shoulder. “If that’s not a fuck-up, I’ve never seen one.”

  I waited for Hump’s booming laugh to fade. “All I remember is Eddie.”

  “He’d be a young guy,” Hump said.

  “Eddie Spence is young,” Marshall said.

  “The girl said she called him here all the time,” I said.

  The other kid, Benny, decided to chip in. “That would be Spence. She used to call him now and then. I remember one night, she called him two or three times. I know, because I answered the phone.”

  Marshall was trying to get his attention. To warn him, I thought. “Has he been in tonight?” I asked quickly.

  “He hasn’t been in for three or four days,” Benny said.

  “I think he’s been sick,” Marshall said.

  Of the two, I believed Benny. I wasn’t sure about Marshall. “Too bad,” I said. “The message was kind of important.”

  “You can leave it with me,” Marshall said.

  “Eddie only, that’s what the girl said.”

  “You a cop?”

  Hump and I gave him our best surprised looks. Then we laughed until the back of my throat hurt. “Him?” Hump sputtered, “Him?”

  I got out my wallet and handed him a card I’d had printed especially for such occasions. It had my name on it and a phony address and phone number. It said I was an agent for Nationwide. “Not a chance,” I said, while he read the card.

  “Why you worrying about a cop, Marshall?” Hump asked. “Has Eddie been in trouble?”

  That was one of the benefits of using Hump. Marshall still wanted to trust him. “Yeah, a time or two, but nothing really serious.”

  Benny blurted out “You call shooting at a guy at a drive-in . . .?”

  The way his face contorted, I was sure that Marshall had stepped on his foot. He choked and swallowed the rest of it. He didn’t like Marshall any better for it, but he’d gotten the message.

  Hump saw that we were overstaying our welcome. He changed the subject and told a long, colorful story about one night when he and three other pro players had gone to a bar in Dallas. It was a fairly funny story that I’d heard once or twice before. It sounded like the main fight in a John Wayne movie.

  Then, with Marshall and Benny laughing away, we finished our beers, said goodnight and got the hell out of there.

  On the way back through town, I had Hump stop at one of the hamburger and beer joints. Hump was moody after we left the pool hall. I think it was because he didn’t like the kind of double-standard that the redneck kid practiced. And maybe, though I wasn’t sure of this, he might have been a little pissed at me for putting him in that situation.

  I ordered four burgers to go and a six-pack of Bud. While the burgers were cooking, I went to the pay phone and looked up the Spences in the phone book. There were five listed. I got some dimes from the counterman and started with the first one. On the third call, I had the right one.

  “I’d like to speak to Eddie.”

  “He’s not here,” the woman said.

  “I need to get in touch with him,” I said, “and it’s important.”

 
; “He’s in Atlanta.”

  “Where can I reach him in Atlanta?”

  “Who are you?” the woman asked. “Do I know you?”

  I gave her a phony name and said I was from Nationwide.

  “We don’t want any,” the woman said, and hung up.

  I wrote down the phone number and the address. The burgers and the beer were packaged and ready. I paid for them and carried them out to the car. On the drive back to Atlanta, we took turns driving while the other one ate. I’d considered a visit to the Spence house, but Hump had argued against it. “He’s been in trouble before, and she’s probably had practice lying for him.” I’d given up on it then and decided to put it up to Art Maloney when we got back to Atlanta.

  Headed toward Hump’s apartment, I had him stop at a gas station so I could use the pay phone. I called Art, but he was out. I left my home number and said I could be reached there in twenty minutes or so. Hump pulled up beside my Ford, down the street from his apartment building. Before I got out, I said he might as well call it a day. He said he’d be at home all evening if I needed him. He was going to try the grass and hash out on the girl he thought would like them.

  “Don’t get too stoned.”

  “There’s no such thing,” he said.

  I patted the gun in his coat pocket. “And watch yourself.”

  He said he would, patting my coat pocket, as if to say the same thing to me.

  Art didn’t return my call. Instead, he drove over to my house and found me reading the blue streak edition of the evening paper, The Journal. I’d gone all the way through the paper and found no mention of anyone finding Ferd’s body. There was always the chance they’d never find it if The Man didn’t want it found.