by Ralph Dennis
“I never liked guns.”
“I usually keep it in the house.” At a light, after she had a tissue, I reached across her and closed the glove box.
But I remembered the gun later when I was back at home, getting out of the car in the driveway. I leaned back across the seat, punched open the glove box and got it out. I was stepping from the driveway to the walkway, just rounding the corner hedges, when I noticed two things that seemed wrong. The light over the front steps was off, and I remembered that I’d switched it on so Marcy wouldn’t twist an ankle. Of course, that could mean that the bulb had burned out. But at the same time, I heard a faint rustle in the leaves near the far hedge ahead of me, the one that separated my house from the next one. Of course, that could be some small animal like a cat, or the wind. The two together didn’t add up right. Quickly, knowing I’d feel like an idiot if nothing happened, I made a belly-dive for the bushes at the side of the house. A shotgun blasted at me, at where I’d been only a second before. I heard the pellets strike the side of the house and, after my ears got over the blast, I heard the footsteps heading for the road. I pushed away from the bushes and got to one knee. The .38 was still in my hand and I swung it up in a reflex movement that brought my left hand across to grip my right wrist and steady my aim. When I saw the dark shape running parallel to the hedge row, I got off three shots as fast as I could. The wind grunted out of him, and the shotgun pitched into the street gutter with a clatter. When I got to him he was hanging in the hedge, thrown there by the impact. I pulled him away and stretched him out on the lawn. And then I got my surprise. All the time after I’d fired, during the slow, careful walk toward him, I was sure it would be the black from The Man’s apartment, the one that Hump and I had humbled earlier in the day.
It wasn’t that man at all. It was a short, stocky white man who looked to be in his forties. He was wearing an Army fatigue jacket and, under that, matching green twill work shirt and pants, and heavy black work shoes. I’d never seen him before. As I looked down at him, seeing the dark blood spill from a chest wound, he gurgled and died.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“His name was Fred Mullidge.”
We were in Art’s office at the department. The shotgun was on the edge of the desk, between us. It was battered and scarred, like it had been through a number of hunting seasons. But it was well cared for and I couldn’t see any signs of rust. I looked down at the stock and saw the “F.M.” scratched there.
“No identification on the body. A car down the road, a ’55 Chevy, was registered to Mullidge, and the prints matched up with the ones in our records.” Art stopped and looked at me. “You know him?”
“No.”
“If you don’t know him, why was he trying to kill you?”
“Beyond me.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Art said. “A man tries to kill you, and you don’t know him?”
I nodded.
“You working on anything besides the Campbell girl’s death?”
“No.”
“You sure?” Art looked hard and mean as hell. Friendship was one thing, but a new death was something else.
“Art, I swear.”
“You messing around with any women in his family? His wife? His daughter?”
“Not unless Marcy is his wife or his daughter.”
“Goddamn it, Hardman. It was a cold night out there, and he wasn’t standing around in your front yard for no reason at all.”
“He was there for a reason,” I said. “He was there to kill me, and he went to the trouble of unscrewing the front porch light. He gave my house two barrels. But I still don’t know him.” I grinned at Art. “You think my mortgage insurance covers shotgun wounds the house receives when people shoot at me?”
“Only if they hit you,” Art said sourly.
“What else you have on Mullidge?”
“Army in the Korean. Did a tour there. Honorable discharge. Worked in a cigarette factory in Durham, North Carolina. Drifted down here in 1960 of so. A number of nothing jobs. Last listed job was with a big parking lot over by the Capitol. Since then, he’s been working through those day-by-day temporary labor contractors down around Whitehall. Also sold his blood now and then. Arrested two times for drunk and disorderly, one for driving under the influence, and one for assault.” Art looked up at me and shook his head. “Not with a gun. Hit somebody with a beer bottle, at one of the skid-row beer places.”
“Then somebody bought themselves some cheap labor.”
“Who wants you dead?”
“Not Eddie Spence. It must be somebody else.”
Art lit a cigarette and blew the smoke across the desk at me. “You messing in the rackets now?”
“This look like a racket try to you?” The question jolted me for a second. I began to wonder if he knew about the trips that Hump and I took to New York now and then. “If he was a racket hit man, I’d be in the morgue getting a chill now, instead of him.”
“So . . .?”
“I’ll do some legwork in the morning. Give me the names of the labor contractors and the parking lot he worked for. I’ll spend some time trying to find out who Fred Mullidge knew that I know.”
Art scribbled on a memo pad and passed the pad to me. 25 Hour Labor Force. Quik Labor. Capitol Parking Lot. I tore off the sheet and put it in my pocket.
“Can I go now?”
Art nodded. “Let me know what you find out.”
I said I would. When I got home I started to call Marcy, but I realized that the shooting wouldn’t be in the morning paper. I’d let her sleep and call her in the morning, before she left for work, before she could hear it on the radio.
All night long, alone in my double bed, I thought about the blood drying on the front lawn leaves. I’d killed before, but it never got easy. And then, toward morning light, it began to rain. I slept for a time, knowing the rain was washing the blood away from the lawn, down into the earth or into the storm gutters. I liked to think that it washed all the way down to the sea, but I knew that really wasn’t possible.
At seven-thirty the alarm went off. I got up and put on the water for the coffee. When it boiled, I made a cup of instant and dialed Hump’s number. He sounded grumpy for a few seconds, and then he said that I was one lucky white man. I agreed, and said for him to get himself together and I’d call him back later. We’d be making the rounds of the labor contractors.
“Marcy know yet?” Hump asked.
“I’m going to call her now.”
He hung up and I called Marcy. She sounded sleepy and warm, like she hadn’t been awake long. I tried to make a bit of small talk, but it didn’t come off well. So I went ahead and told her about the hit try, without any frills on it. Maybe I was too blunt, because I heard her suck in her breath.
“I’ll be right over,” she said.
“I’m not hurt.”
Marcy hung up on me.
Twenty minutes later, we were standing in my living room, me holding her while she shook and shivered. She was crying, too, and I could hear, almost under her breath, “You . . . you . . . sonofabitch . . . if you . . . if you think . . . I spent . . . a good year . . . almost two years . . . getting . . . ready for you . . . and you’re . . . you’re going to . . . get killed . . . on me . . . then you’ve got . . . another thing coming.”
Holding her, I was looking at her face. She wasn’t wearing make-up, and I could see the milk blue veins in her eyelids and the crinkly tracks of wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. I tried to remember why I always thought of her as twenty-five, when she was probably thirty. There were fat drops of rain in her hair, and I suddenly felt a massive tenderness for her.
“This is some fucking courtship,” I said.
In time she stopped shivering and we were warm together, and I could feel the slight bony push of her pelvis.
We spent the rest of the morning in bed. Making love part of the time, and the rest of the time talking. Talking was easier without clothes, and she told me how she’d
plotted the whole year and how she hadn’t been with a man the whole time.
“A waste,” I said.
“Think of it as a savings account, instead,” she said.
And, late in the morning, the rain changed to sleet, and we slept for a time, listening to the dry, brittle clack of rain on the bedroom window.
I’d called Hump after Marcy came by and told him the morning had been called because of rain. At twelve-thirty, I called him and told him it was on again. Marcy wanted to wait for me at my place, but I didn’t like the idea of leaving her there alone. There might be another try. I saw her off a few minutes before Hump drove up.
The sign in the window of the 25 Hour Labor Force read “Needed 105 Men” but the battered school desks held only dozing winos, and nobody seemed to be paying much attention to them. If they needed 105 men, it must have been much earlier in the day, or on some other day.
“I’m afraid that’s information I can’t give out.” The desk plaque gave his name as John C. Armour, Manager. He looked like he had dirt in the long creases of his face. His tie had been washed along with his underwear, and the tie’s small knot held together a white shirt that wasn’t white any more.
I dropped the early edition of The Journal, the afternoon paper, on his desk. One of the lead stories was about the death of Fred Mullidge, and I’d marked it with a thick black line. “That won’t cut it,” I said. “I was the one he was shooting at.”
“Oh, that Fred Mullidge.” He folded the paper and handed it back to me. “He did work through our company now and then.”
“I’d like to see his file.”
“That’s not possible.” But his face changed, and I knew why. Hump had shifted his feet and moved forward. I didn’t need to look at him. I knew that he looked mean and irritated, like he’d beat your ass for a nickel. So that set the pattern: I’d be reasonable and Hump would be near violence, and we’d catch Armour in the whipsaw. “The files are private,” Armour protested, but it was like a gasp.
“He’s dead now,” I said, “and that’s about as public as you can get.”
Armour wasn’t listening to me. He was looking past me, at Hump. “He didn’t work for us that much.” He turned in his swivel chair and rode it two or three feet to a file cabinet. “We kept files only when the person had some special job skill. That way, if he didn’t come by one day and we needed him, we could call him.” He pulled out one file drawer and walked his fingers over up to the “M” section. He took out a file and crabbed back to the desk. “In the case of Mullidge, he had some experience in trucking.”
When he opened the file I got out my pad and uncapped my pen. “Address?”
He gave me a number on Ponce De Leon. “I think that’s the last one he gave us. I think it’s a boarding house.”
“Did he give references?”
“We don’t usually need those. He did give us a partial listing.” He read off the tobacco company in Durham. “Drove a truck for them.” He ran his finger down the single sheet of paper. “Worked in a parking lot, but I don’t have the name of it. Also did custodial work for the state. That is, he was a janitor.”
“He say where he worked?”
“I think it was one of the buildings over by the State Capitol.” Armour closed the file. “That’s all I have.”
“No record of jobs he worked on for you?”
“That’s too much bookkeeping.”
On the way out, we passed the still-dozing winos, and the sign still said they needed 105 men.
The Quik Labor office didn’t add anything new. They had the same list of previous jobs and the same Ponce De Leon address. On the way out, I happened to look back and saw the manager dropping Mullidge’s file into the trash can. It seemed final somehow, like a funeral.
The Capitol Parking Lot is on Central, almost in the shadow of the state buildings. There’s room for forty or so cars, and there’s a cramped booth where the attendant sits next to a small electric heater in the fall and winter. The attendant was a young black who didn’t look more than sixteen. I turned the car over to him and watched him whip it into a narrow space that I’d have passed up.
“You try him,” I said to Hump, as the black kid walked back toward us. I walked away a few steps and lit a cigarette. They talked for a few minutes, with the kid cutting his eyes toward me a time or two. Hump patted him on the shoulder and came over to me.
“The owner’s a guy named George Herndon, and he’s due in an hour or so. The kid doesn’t know Mullidge but he’s heard about him. Herndon uses Mullidge in his pitch for honesty. It seems that Mullidge had a tendency toward a bit of stealing.”
“I’d like to hear Herndon’s sermon.”
Hump looked in both directions. “It’s lunchtime.”
We found a small diner and ordered. I got a dime from Hump and went back to the phone booth. Hugh Muffin answered on the second ring. “Hardman, I’ve been reading about you in the afternoon paper.”
“Lies,” I said.
“You been walking around in that fellow’s flower garden?”
“I never met his wife, if he had one.”
“Why was he after you?” Hugh asked.
“Maybe you can help me.” I gave him the information I had about Mullidge working for the state as a janitor, and asked if he’d find out where Mullidge had worked. I gave him the pay phone’s number and went back to the booth where Hump was. I was halfway through a tough hot roast beef sandwich when the phone rang. I beat the waiter to it by a step.
“Mullidge worked for the state for about six months. Quit around a year and a half ago. The girl I talked to said there was a note in his file that he wasn’t to be hired again. Something to do with some missing items in the offices he was cleaning. Nothing definite, but the stealing stopped as soon as he was gone.”
“Where’d he work?”
“In my building,” Hugh said.
“You know him?”
“Not that I know of. Of course, there are a lot of them on the cleaning detail, and most of it is done at night or early in the morning, when we’re not here.”
“Thanks, Hugh.”
“You think this is tied to the Campbell case?”
“I don’t know, but it’s the only case I’m on right now.”
“Maybe it was a mistake,” Hugh said.
“It was for Mullidge.”
When the hour was up, we walked back toward the Capitol Parking Lot.
“That Hugh,” Hump said, “has got as many crooked sides as four snakes fucking.”
“Why?”
“Just a feeling I get around him. Like he’s got eight faces, and he can show you any of them with a split second’s warning.”
“He’s a political animal. He’s been at it a long time, so long he probably doesn’t know which one is the real one. If there’s a real one left.”
“Funny about Mullidge working in his building at one time, wasn’t it?”
“There must be five hundred offices in that building,” I said.
“The only one you know there is old Hugh.”
“No,” I said, “I know Arch Campbell, too.”
It was odd, but just that—nothing else that I could see. I couldn’t think of any connection between Mullidge and Hugh, or between Mullidge and Arch Campbell. I worried it around for a time, and then I let it drop. It didn’t make much sense that I could see, and the more I worried it around, the less it made.
The black kid got the car out of the tight place without losing a flake of paint. Hump sat in it and waited while I talked to Herndon. George Herndon was short and potbellied, and was like a lot of the rednecks you’d see on any weekend afternoon, out at the Braves games. He chewed tobacco and, when he talked, I could see the brown-black tongue worry the cud about.
“Fred Mullidge don’t work here anymore.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“That a fact?” He stopped the cud. “How?”
“Shot, early this morning.”
He turned away from me deliberately and spat a dark stream toward the gutter. “I knew he’d come to no good.”
“How long he work for you?”
“Oh, four months, more or less. Seemed hard-working enough. Never late opening that I could tell. But I started getting complaints.”
“Things missing out of the cars?”
“How’d you know?”
“It’s common knowledge,” I said. “What was he stealing?”
The shrewd eyes mocked me. “That’s not common knowledge, too?”
I laughed. “You got me there.”
“I thought so.” Herndon grinned at me. “It was just some tapes for those car tape players, at first. At least, I got some complaints that some were missing. I didn’t think much of it, at first. But when I got more and more complaints, I took a look in the trunk of Mullidge’s old car while he was at lunch one day. I found a whole cardboard box of stolen plunder in there.”
“Didn’t sound too bright, having the stuff right on the premises.”
“He was bright enough,” Herndon said. “He had pull of some kind, because he should have gone to jail for a year. Somebody must have fixed it, because he never served a day.”
“You know who fixed it?”
He spat again. “It’s just a guess. All I know is, he never served a day.”
The boarding house was one of those high, wood-frame houses set far back on the lot from the street, with a steep lawn in front. From the main entrance, when the storm door was open, the rank scent of turnip greens blew past me. Along with it, came the dry, dusty blast of air from the heating system.
“Yes, I read about it in the afternoon paper, and I’ve been expecting the police ever since.” Mrs. Burleson was around fifty, a hulk of a woman, with a greasy blue dress and a gravy-stained apron. Over the dress and the apron, she wore a man’s brown sweater that the moths must have been eating at over the last few summers.
“Did you call them?” I asked.
“Why should I? Me call them?”
“He wasn’t carrying any identification. They don’t know where he lived.”