Atlanta Deathwatch

by Ralph Dennis

  “Judas?” Coleman broke in on me.

  “Say you committed a murder, and your girlfriend knew about it. Somebody offers a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer. There’s a good chance you’d end up minus a girlfriend, and she might end up plus fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “You think the reward’s too high, then?” Coleman asked.

  “No. It’s not my place to say. It’s their money, and they can spend it the way they want to.” I stopped to top off my beer and take a long swallow. “But unless there’s a Judas around, it’s not going to speed up things one damn bit.”

  “I see.” He looked put down.

  “It’s not your fault,” Hump said. “It’s just that there might not be anybody who knows enough to be the Judas.”

  Coleman looked at me, and then at Hump. “It seems this business is a lot more complex than I thought it was.”

  “With some luck, we might get a chunk of the fifteen thousand,” I said. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” Coleman said.

  I sat back and belched politely into my hand. “How long have you been working for Campbell?” The way I put it, it was just talk among the boys.

  “Three years . . . a bit more.”

  “He an easy man to work for?”

  “Sometimes, sometimes not. Just between you and me . . . ” He hesitated until I nodded that it was. “ . . . he can be hell on hot wheels when he doesn’t get his own way.”

  “I guess I can see that,” I said.

  “He’s like a lot of those self-made men, the ones who drop out of school in the seventh grade and think they know all there is to know.” A note of high sharpness had come in, and he smiled and shook his head, going back to being the little boy. “Of course, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. He wouldn’t be where he is now if he wasn’t a pretty damn smart guy.”

  I thought we’d gone as far in that direction as it was worth. Hump leaned in and said, “You’ve been with him over three years, so I guess you were around when Eddie Spence was courting Emily.”

  “It was just one of those high school crushes. It wouldn’t have lasted past her first year in college, but Arch wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  “You tried to talk him out of it?” Hump saw me lift an eyebrow at him. That meant to carry it on, string it out.

  “I did everything but beg him. But what worried him was the possibility that they might run off and get married before she got to college and met those handsome college men.”

  “How’d he handle it?” Hump asked.

  “Just a phone call. The sheriff . . . his name is Todd Blaney . . . was happy to do a favor for Arch. There was a beer joint outside the city limits that sold beer to under-age kids. Eddie and some of the other boys hung out there. The sheriff just picked a night when Eddie was there, and came in and did some rough arresting. Maybe Eddie put up a struggle out in the parking lot, like they said. Maybe not. He got a bit of a beating, either way.”

  “How did Emily take all this?”

  “She was mad, at first.”

  “And then?” I asked.

  “Arch lied to her and said he hadn’t had anything to do with it, that it had just been the sheriff enforcing the law, like he was elected to do.”

  “And she believed that?” Hump signaled the waitress for another round.

  “Not right away. But then Eddie left town and ended up in the Navy, and not too long after that, she started dating other boys.”

  “Young love don’t last long, does it?”

  “About two jumps,” I said.

  Hump laughed and Coleman looked a little stunned, like he didn’t understand.

  It was my turn. “You look like a guy who’s been around, Coleman. How did you see this Emily girl?”

  “Young, very pretty, not as much sense as she’d have had in another year or two. Lord, she was a pretty little thing. Made your teeth ache, just to look at her.”

  “You ever take her out, Coleman?”

  “Me? She was a little young for me.”

  “She wasn’t that young,” Hump said.

  “You ever get any of it?” I asked.

  That seemed to shock him. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “That’s a terrible thing to say. You know that, don’t you?”

  “If it was so nice,” Hump said, “I’d feel better knowing that it wasn’t wasted.”

  “God, you two are a pair of ghouls.”

  “You didn’t answer the question,” I said.

  Ben Coleman strode out of the bar with a heavy-footed, aggressive walk.

  “You’re right about one thing,” Hump said. “He didn’t answer the question.”

  The waitress brought over the round of drinks, including the Jack Daniels for Coleman. I paid for the drinks and Hump took the Jack Daniels, to sip along with his beer.

  “At first, I thought you were being unkind to that poor fellow,” Hump said.

  “That’s right,” I said. “And after he came all the way down here, to tell us where the treasure was hidden.”

  “He seemed like such a nice, open fellow . . . so honest.”

  “Right.”

  “But when I got to know him, I didn’t like him very much,” Hump said.

  “That’s the second time I didn’t like him.”

  We sat around for a few more minutes and watched the next go-go dancer. It turned out to be our waitress, and she must have been new at it or extremely modest, because she didn’t take off the top of her costume the whole time we watched.

  On the drive back over to Hump’s apartment, I made myself a note in my pad. Find out relationship Emily and Coleman. Where was Coleman the night of murder?

  While I unpacked the clothing I’d brought from my house, I asked Hump if he was doing anything that evening. “Nothing the rest of the afternoon, and nothing this evening.”

  “I want you to cruise some of the black bars. Now that we’re working on the assumption that Eddie didn’t do it, let’s touch all the other bases.” Without pushing, I wanted him to find out anything he could about how The Man and Emily C. got along. Any recent trouble? How were things between The Man and Ferd? And with any free time left over after that, I wanted to know anything he could find out about The Man’s organization.

  “That could be rough, asking those questions in his home territory.”

  “That’s why you’re doing it instead of me, Tonto,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve had my beating for the month.”

  Hump put on his coat “I might as well start now. The sooner I start, the sooner the bruises start healing.”

  “The word that we’re working for The Man might cover you.”

  “Maybe. But not when you’re asking questions about The Man.”

  He left, and I got a beer and sat and watched part of a college football game between a couple of Ivy League Schools. I was kind of sorry that Hump had left, because he’d have got a laugh out of the single-wing that Dartmouth was using. At five, I turned the sound down and called Art.

  “News for you.”

  “If you’ve got any more wild-goose chases, you fly after them.”

  I told him about Eddie’s note on the mirror.

  “That’s horseshit and you know it. The slugs from the tree behind the pool hall match the ones we took from Reese . . . the cop in the alley.”

  “That’s the cop,” I said. “Emily wasn’t shot.”

  “Just a second.” I could hear him talking with Edna away from the phone. In a few seconds he was back. “Edna says you’re to come to supper. She’s fixing a roast the way you like it, cooked in wine.”

  “I don’t know whether I can.”

  “Come on,” Art said. “She wants to see your homely face.”

  “As long as it’s not my beautiful body.” I said I’d be over around six-thirty.

  On the way over to their place, I cut into Piedmont and followed it until I reached Ansley Mall. I stopped there long enough to
visit the wine shop and buy a couple of bottles of Mouton Cadet. I knew it was a wine that Edna liked. Raising four kids on a cop’s pay didn’t leave much for even an inexpensive wine. I knew we’d probably only drink one bottle. The other bottle would make Edna happy one day next week.

  I heard the tap, tap, tap as I was going up the front walk. I changed directions and cut across the lawn to the driveway. I followed the driveway and found Mickey, aged six, and Andrew, aged eight, playing one-on-one at the basketball hoop that Art and I had put up on the side of the garage a couple of years ago. They were so intent on the game that they didn’t see me, and I stood and watched. Then Andrew got a rebound and dribbled out toward me. He saw me, stopped, and whipped the ball to me. I batted it down with my free hand and trapped it with one foot. I put the wine down to one side and dribbled over to the corner and did my one-hand jump. I missed the hoop and all.

  “Hardman, you’re out of shape,” Mickey said.

  “You’re right.” I got the wine and went up the back steps to the kitchen. Edna had her back to me, cutting up celery, carrots and green peppers at the cutting board. She is a red-haired woman in her early thirties, with wide hips and the shoulders of a swimmer. She has a flat, round Irish face, with about the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. When she heard the door and turned and saw me, her hands were full of chopped vegetables. I lifted the top from the large skillet and leaned over it, smelling the winy liquid the roast was cooking in. She reached in to drop the vegetables in and I replaced the skillet top.

  “Jim, it’s good to see you.” She gave me a firm hug, holding it for a long time, as if she wanted me to feel the warm flow from her to me. “It’s been too long.”

  “I’ve been busy. You know how it is.” But I couldn’t meet her eyes when I lied to her.

  “That’s a lie, isn’t it, Jim?”

  “Yes.”

  “The way you left the force, you thought it would hurt Art if you hung around with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody worth knowing believed that shit.” Shit was a strong word for her to use. I’d never heard her say more than a lower-case damn now and then.

  “Careful now,” I said. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “I mean it.”

  I took the two bottles of Mouton Cadet out of the bag and put them on the counter. “I don’t have to work tonight. You and I can get a little tipsy, even if Art can’t.”

  She grinned at me and I went through the dining room and into the living room, where Art was in his stuffed chair reading the Journal. I got out of my topcoat and sat down on the sofa.

  Edna came in with two bottles of beer, “It’s all done but the sauntering. I can sit with you for a minute.”

  “Where are the girls?” I meant Connie and Agnes, the oldest children. I’d been around when they were born, and I’d had to suffer with Art when it looked like he wasn’t going to get the sons he wanted.

  “A slumber party down the street.” She sipped on Art’s beer before she passed it on to him.

  Art put down his paper when he took the beer. “You believe Eddie Spence, that he didn’t kill Emily Campbell?”

  Edna stood up. “If you’re going to talk shop, I’ll fix the salad.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But if it’s true, it muddies the waters.”

  I heard the kitchen door close behind Edna.

  “But why you? Why’d he go to the trouble?”

  “I’m dogging him, and he doesn’t like it.”

  “If he sets up a meeting with you,” Art said, “you’ll have to tell me in time to set it up so that we can take him.”

  I shook my head. “I want to know what he has to say.”

  “We’ll take him after you’re through talking.”

  “I don’t think it’ll work.” I leaned toward him and made it as forceful as I could. “Look, he’s scared and he’s getting a lot of practice at running. If I see him at all, it’s going to be without much warning. No time to stake out a place. He’ll step out of a doorway with the safety off, and the cannon pointing at me. I don’t love you enough to get killed for you.”

  “Try to talk him into coming in.”

  I nodded. I could do that. I didn’t think he’d listen, but I could try.

  Twenty minutes or so later, while Art was setting the table in the dining room, the door bell rang.

  “Get that for me, will you?” Art said.

  I went to the door and opened it. The breath went out of me like I’d been kicked.

  Marcy King stood in the doorway, smiling at me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A wind blowing through the empty places in me.

  Sounds like the inside of a conch shell, or blowing over the edge of an empty jar.

  Memory of a night in New York, a year ago. The newspapers playing hide-and-seek for me in Atlanta, while I hid, an airplane ride away. A call-girl I met there who looked like Marcy. The same blonde-toward-reddish hair, the same slim and fine-boned body, slate-gray eyes and pale skin that wouldn’t tan . . . but I couldn’t get it up. Paid her anyway and, knowing why I’d wanted to ravage her, I fell off the edge. Set off on a nightmare week of bars and hotel rooms, the final night with the hiccups. Hiccupping through half the bars in the Village, one time so hard that the tie-tac flew out of my tie and hit the bartender in the face. Bleeding out of all the empty places then, leaving a spoor everywhere I went.

  Until it didn’t bother me anymore. I thought.

  “Hello, Jim.” Smiling, but there wasn’t any sureness in the smile. Instead, a wavering at the corners of her mouth. “I’m supposed to say that I didn’t know you’d be here, but I knew.”

  “Such careful honesty,” I said.

  “It’s about time I was.” The smile gone, replaced by a calm seriousness, waiting until I decided to do whatever it was I was going to do.

  “Or I was. Or somebody was.” Aware then of the stillness of the house, no rattling of silver or dishes, only in the distance, with the door open, the faint tap, tap, tap of the basketball.

  And without meaning to do it, not knowing I was going to do it, I put out a hand and cupped the side of her face. “I guess we might as well let the matchmakers think they won one.” I turned to let her pass, and I heard her answer, like a whisper, “Yes.”

  But Art wasn’t in the dining room, where I thought he was. We found him in the kitchen with Edna, and when Edna saw we’d gotten past the first, the hardest part, she broke down and started crying. Marcy saw that and, nervous as she was already, she began to cry along with her.

  Art and I got another beer out of the refrigerator and went into the living room. Art leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “You think you and I spend a lot of time planning and plotting on something like the Spence case? That’s nothing. Nothing at all. Edna and Marcy’ve been putting in forty hours a week overtime.”

  “You involved in this?”

  “All I did was answer one question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They asked if this would work, and I said if you didn’t kill her in the first two minutes, it was probably love.”

  We drank both bottles of the Mouton Cadet, and it was a great dinner, and I couldn’t remember it ever being better. Art had to leave, but Marcy and I stayed on. Marcy helped with the dishes, and I sat around the living room, talking to Mickey and Andrew about pro football. They knew I knew Hump, and they were saying wistfully that it would be nice if I’d bring him over sometime, so their mother could meet him. Even after the dinner dishes were stacked away, I found I was still hesitating. I didn’t know exactly what to do next. But it was time to go. I wanted to be at Hump’s place when he came back from his tour of the black bars.

  “Give me a lift home?” Marcy asked.

  “Sure.” I helped her with her coat.

  “I came in a taxi,” Marcy explained, “just in case.”

  I followed her directions and drove far out along West Peachtree, and then into a maze of circles and dead
-end streets. Then the trees disappeared, and there was nothing but blowing red clay dust. We’d reached the Mellon Heights Apartments. I stayed with the paved road and fought a few bad bumps and stopped, when she said to, in front of 14A. It was something like a small motel unit, but it had it’s own small lawn, without any grass yet, and a porch that would hold two people if they didn’t mind sitting a close together. Out of the car and standing on the porch, it looked like a desert with building blocks thrown about it at random.

  “As you can see,” Marcy said, handing me her apartment key, “it just opened.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was one of the lucky ones, believe me. They moved some people in before they even had the sewer lines hooked up.”

  “Tricky, very tricky.” I opened the door and stepped aside to let her through. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next. And not knowing, I decided I’d better say good night and head for Hump’s.

  “How about some coffee, Jim?”

  “If I can make a call.”

  She pointed toward the phone and went through a door in the rear of the apartment to what was probably the bedroom. I dropped my topcoat on the back of a chair and, standing, dialed Hump’s phone number. It rang seven times and there was no answer. That worried me a little, but not enough to go rushing out to look for him. Hump could take care of himself. Also, there was always the chance that Hump had run into some trim during his bar crawl. That was more likely than anybody getting the best of him.

  I sat on the sofa and waited and smoked a cigarette. The furniture seemed like a familiar old shoe to me and, when I saw the antique china cupboard, I knew that these were the furnishings from her other apartment. I went over to the cupboard and ran my hands over the scarred panel on the right side. I remembered that cupboard very well. It was solid oak and weighed about a ton. I’d moved it for her once and thought I was going to get a hernia.

  “I had them in storage while I was out of town.” Marcy closed the bedroom door firmly behind her and passed me on the way into the kitchen. “It cost a fortune I didn’t have.”

  Just to be talking, to say something: “You might have found some friend who’d have kept them for you.”