Nate Rosen Investigates

by Ron Levitsky

  “And you didn’t hear anything else from the Hobbeses’ house?”

  She shook her head. “Is this discrepancy about the time that important?”

  “We just want to make everything as clear as possible. You let in the delivery boy the afternoon before the murder. That was about four-thirty?”

  “Yes. Ben gave us a key to the house years ago. He’d call an order to the grocer’s, and one of us would let in the delivery boy. We’d do the same thing for Claire when she was busy with her church business.”

  “That’s right,” Claire said. “Like I told you before, I called in the order about three from Reverend McCrae’s. We was all so worried about Lem.”

  Rosen asked the old woman, “As far as you know, no one else entered the house until that evening around nine-fifteen, when someone in a Corvette drove here?”

  Miss Celia nodded. “But if it wasn’t Claire, who was it?”

  “Good question. Claire, could anyone have borrowed your car while you were at Reverend McCrae’s?”

  “No,” she said almost too quickly. “Keys were in my purse in a closet with the other women’s purses.”

  “Then someone could’ve taken them.”

  “Nobody would’ve done such a thing. Just ain’t possible.”

  They stared at each other. This time she played the game well, barely blinking. Finally Miss Celia got up to leave. Checking his watch, Rosen saw it was nearly twelve; he was supposed to meet Jesse for lunch on campus. He and the old woman left through the garage. She continued to her house, while he walked down the alley to Jesse’s car.

  Rosen drove the Porsche slowly down the street. Concentrating so much on what Miss Celia had said, he almost didn’t notice that the brown Granada was still parked in the same place. The driver’s face was buried in his magazine. Through the rearview mirror, Rosen saw the other man leave his car, walk up the street and around the corner toward Claire’s front door. The man was heavy—he had to hike up his trousers—but broad-shouldered, with a short, muscular neck. The build of someone who’d once been an athlete, many years and a boatload of beer ago.

  Turning his car around, Rosen parked two blocks down from the Granada and waited. He thought of the families of Earlyville, of Ben and Claire Hobbes; Simon, his wife and son; Reverend McCrae, his daughter and cousin; even Celia Duncan and her sisters. Somehow, despite their arguments and the murder, he felt the connection among them. The one to the other and all to the land, this speck of Tennessee called Earlyville. Not unlike the families of his little street in Chicago that once made up his world, from the yeshiva at one end of the block to the kosher butcher shop at the other. A world that he’d been forced to leave long ago, yet that still traveled with him wherever he went. Damn! He missed his daughter. He saw his grandmother’s face in her, and a little of that world. What would he say when he phoned her?

  The man was returning to his car. Fifteen minutes had passed. Rosen started the Porsche and crept about a block behind the Granada, as the man turned left on Jackson Street. Passing the entrance to the college, Rosen kept going. The big man was heading toward the highway. Rosen decided to keep following him; it was the only fresh lead he had. He hoped Jesse would understand, but lunch would have to wait.

  Chapter Eleven

  thursday afternoon

  Leaving Earlyville, the big man took the highway leading west. Rosen stayed three or four car lengths behind and jotted the Granada’s license into a small notebook.

  Last Sunday he had driven this same highway from the airport. Six fast lanes with a concrete barrier median; along either side trees rose above exposed layers of brownish limestone. With traffic so light, had the other man spotted him? Because the Granada couldn’t possibly shake Jesse’s Porsche, would the big man panic, would it lead to a confrontation, or was he after all only a vacuum cleaner salesman trying to peddle a deluxe sweeper? Rosen smiled and shook his head. Maybe it was nothing, but why had the other man waited for Rosen to leave before approaching Claire’s house?

  Twenty minutes later they passed the airport and, after another five miles, the big man took the exit marked “Downtown Nashville.” Rosen moved a little closer. The Granada made a right onto West End Avenue, an area filled with fast-food restaurants, sports shops, and Laundromats, which usually signaled a college campus. Sure enough, two blocks down on the right Vanderbilt University began, its dark brick buildings presenting themselves with the quiet dignity of old money.

  Across the street, Centennial Park stretched into the distance—past majestic trees, multicolored flower beds and an artificial lake—until reaching the Parthenon, the only exact-size replica in the world of the ancient Greek temple. No wonder Nashville was called the Athens of the South. Couples worked small paddleboats across the little lake, while families spreading blankets over the lawn shared picnic lunches.

  The images stayed with Rosen long after he passed the park. Had he yielded to the terms set by his father or, years later, those of his ex-wife, maybe he would’ve had a family to take to the park. But long ago he’d turned his back on his father’s God, and his father turned his back on him. If only Bess could’ve settled for what he was, but she couldn’t. So he traveled to places he didn’t know, like this one, to be a stranger among strangers. He’d come to accept it. Still, it would’ve been nice.

  Rosen followed the Granada into the business section of town. Banks alternated with offices and hotels; occasionally a nineteenth-century building asserted itself like a stubborn old relative. He passed Union Station, a customs house, and the bell tower of some church long since vanished. The people Rosen had met in Earlyville were like this city, the past holding on with the same clawlike grip as the Duncan sisters.

  The intersections were numbered in descending order. Past Fourth Street, adult bookstores and peep shows peppered the neighborhood. A few women lounged in the doorways, stretching their long legs like bait. Eyes averted, men walked close to the storefronts. Rosen stared at them, wondering who would take this kind of lonely walk where all was flesh and no spirit. He looked a moment too long.

  At Third Street, just as the light changed to red, the Granada suddenly turned left. Rosen could only jam on his brakes and watch the other car disappear in the traffic.

  There was no chance of catching the big man, so, when the light changed, Rosen followed the street to the river. Parking, he walked past a reconstructed fort of log palisades. Opposite the water, old warehouses of gray brick lined the next few blocks; some had been converted into condominiums. Places where, long ago, cotton bales and human beings had been sold. Rosen couldn’t understand slavery, just as he could never understand the stories his grandfather had told of the pogroms in Russia, Cossacks bashing in the skulls of babies with the same casualness as cracking an egg.

  A half block farther, he walked into a branch of the post office. Tearing a sheet of paper in half, he taped the pieces into two small packets. From his handkerchief he removed the evidence, the black hair from Claire’s bed and scrapings of stain from her garage worktable, placing each in a packet, then enclosing both, with a short message, in an Express Mail envelope. His office in D.C. would receive the evidence tomorrow, which meant that with luck he could get the lab results early next week.

  After posting the letter with the clerk, he asked, “Do you know a restaurant called Patty’s Place? It’s supposed to be near the river.”

  “You betcha. Go back to Second and turn left. Can’t miss it. If you like fried chicken, you’re gonna love Patty’s.”

  Second Street acted as a boundary between the renovated riverbank, with its tourist attractions like the old fort, and the seedier area he’d passed earlier. Patty’s Place was a few doors up the street, an old narrow building squeezed between a used-record store and a pawnshop. Its bricks were painted lime green, but large patches had peeled off to reveal an earlier coat of brown, the entire effect one of camouflage, as if the restaurant were ashamed to show itself in such a neighborhood.

 
Inside, Rosen was surprised at the restaurant’s length. A row of about a dozen booths ran along the left wall, ending at a jukebox in the far corner. Across a narrow aisle stood the counter, filled with at least twenty people in suits, cowboy garb, hard hats, T-shirts, even a jogging outfit. Nobody talked much; the customers hunkered over their plates and sucked chicken bones while listening to a lugubrious country-and-western record. Something about a woman running off with her husband’s best friend’s hound dog. Rosen slid onto the last vacant stool.

  Snapping her gum, a young waitress waited for his order.

  He said, “I didn’t get a menu.”

  Rolling her eyes, she nodded at a chalkboard hanging over the coffee urn. It read: “Today’s lunch—Chicken, Chili, Chitlins” and listed the prices.

  “Chicken, chili, chitlins,” he repeated. “No chopped liver?”

  “Huh?”

  “Fried chicken will be fine, and hot tea.”

  The waitress called in his order, then brought a pot of tea. She wore too much makeup; her hair, dyed henna, was too red; her outfit too short and too tight. The whole effect made her look like a comic strip character. Glancing from their plates, the customers watched her body wiggle behind the counter. She must’ve known they were watching. Did she count on it for bigger tips, for the come-ons and good times later? Claire said she’d worked here. Was this the way she’d dressed and moved for the customers? Rosen couldn’t imagine her acting that way, yet she’d called herself bad. Was this what she meant?

  Five minutes later the waitress served him a plate heaped with fried chicken, steak fries, and cole slaw.

  “Looks great,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about this place. Have you worked here long?”

  Rosen realized immediately he’d said the wrong thing. How many times had she heard that line before? She looked him up and down, studying his potential as a one-night stand, while he felt his face burning.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No?” She smiled, leaning forward. “What did you mean?”

  “A friend of mine used to work here. Maybe you knew her.”

  “Maybe. What’s her name?”

  “Claire.” He remembered her maiden name from the D.A.’s report. “Claire Daniels.”

  The woman’s brow furrowed. “Don’t know her, but I only been working here little over a year.”

  “There’s a cook named Ethel . . .”

  “She’s the one who fried your chicken, which you’d better start eating before it gets cold. Unless you got something else on your mind.”

  Her gaze held him for a moment. Looking away, Rosen saw the man next to him smirking.

  “Could I see Ethel?”

  “Not now. She’s too busy cooking. Maybe later this afternoon. Well, if you need anything else, you let me know.”

  As she moved with her coffeepot down the counter, Rosen stared into the plate and ate his lunch. The fried chicken was delicious, better than Claire’s; biting through the crispy skin, he tasted the hot tender meat sprinkled with spices. The potatoes were just as good. In ten minutes he’d finished the meal. Too fast. The food lay heavy in his stomach. Shifting carefully from his stool, he left a tip, paid his check at the register, and stepped outside, adjusting his belt.

  He went around the building to a narrow alley behind the restaurant. Garbage cans lined the back wall. Flies swarmed like dark clouds over the graveyard of chicken bones or buzzed against the kitchen’s screen door, where the smell of more chicken and hot grease made Rosen’s stomach feel even heavier. Waving away the flies, he quickly stepped inside, shutting the screen door tight.

  The temperature jumped twenty degrees; air crackled with the sound of frying chicken. Down the center of the kitchen stood a wooden table. Along the length of one wall ran stainless steel vats of hot oil, above which hung wire baskets filled with chicken or potatoes that the cooks lowered into the sizzling oil, raised, then dumped into trays back on the table.

  All five cooks were black and wore long aprons stained with grease and blood. The oldest, a woman about sixty, was short and heavy, with arms like half-filled balloons and legs the size of ham hocks. A few wisps of silver hair peeked from under a red bandanna. She stood at one end of the table, cutting the chicken, then shaking spices from an unmarked tin can with a mesh top. She worked with a singleness of purpose that reminded Rosen of an automaton. The heat, the sight of all that raw chicken, and the smell of hot oil unsettled his stomach even more. He mopped the sweat from his forehead.

  At that moment the woman looked up. “You another one a’ them health inspectors?” Rosen walked toward her and waited for a wave of nausea to pass. “Thought Cal took care of them violations. Boys all been washin’ their hands after goin’ to the bathroom. You’d think their mamas woulda’ learned ’em better when they ’uz young. Hey you don’t look too good. Ozzie, bring me a little a’ that cookin’ brandy.”

  Rosen took a few sips, which settled like a warm blanket over his bubbling stomach. “Thanks, that is a little better. I’m not the health inspector. Is your name Ethel?”

  She grasped the cutting knife. “Who wants to know?”

  His smile, when it came, felt like wet plaster on his lips. “I’m here about Claire Daniels.” When Ethel didn’t answer, he repeated, “Claire Daniels. She worked as a waitress here a few years ago.”

  “I know who you’re talkin’ ’bout. Poor child. Been seein’ all the bad news on TV. You more a’ that bad news?”

  “No. I’m Claire’s attorney.”

  “A lawyer? God help us all. I ain’t talkin’ to no lawyer, so you might as well just—”

  “Not even if it’s to help Claire? She told me that you were her friend.”

  Ethel nodded, as if daring him to say otherwise. “She had no mama. Somebody had to tell her what to do.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “She was a decent child, maybe a little mixed up, but who could blame her? Her mama’d been sick a long time. Finally died a few months after Claire come to work here. Never talked ’bout her daddy. Don’t think the poor girl ever knew who he was. Worked her whole life but never was like some a’ the white trash you find ’round here. She done studied her books, always readin’ that pretty poetry. Maybe she was a little mixed up, but that church sure helped straighten her out, even if it did mess with them snakes.”

  Rosen asked, “Do you know how she first became involved with Reverend McCrae’s church?”

  “No, and I didn’t wanna have nothin’ to do with them snakes. Preacher and that girl a’ his—they was awful nice to Claire—come ’round sometimes for lunch, after she started goin’ to their church. For a while it was right across the street, where that plumbing supply place is now.”

  “Is there anyone who could tell me something more about Claire, especially how she became involved with the church?”

  “Hmm, now that be a problem. Tania, another waitress who was a good friend a’ hers, got married and moved up to Kentucky. Course there’s that old boyfriend a’ hers. Still see him around.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Before Ethel could answer, a door opened near the corner by the stove, and a man walked out. He was white, about thirty, and wore an apron like the other cooks. Tall and sandy-haired, he was strikingly handsome, his body just beginning to grow soft from too much fried food. He held up his hands, like a doctor after scrubbing, and gave an idiot grin.

  “See, I washed my hands after taking a pee, just like that other feller told me to do. No need to be comin’ back for six months. Now if it’s more money—”

  “Shut up, fool!” Ethel shouted. “He ain’t another health inspector. He’s Claire Daniels’s lawyer. Come here to ask some questions, that’s all.” To Rosen, “That’s Cal. He’s the owner’s grandson.”

  “Assistant manager,” Cal said.

  “Manager?” Ethel shook her head. “Boy can’t remember to wash his hands. When he was little, all the time he be sloppin’ grease
and chili all over his clothes. His granma got so worried, she was gonna put him in a rubber suit.” The woman laughed, her whole body shaking.

  “That was a long time ago. Now you’d better get back to work and stop gabbing with—”

  “Don’t you be tellin’ me what to do. When you was a baby, I changed your diapers right here on this table, and I can still lay a hand across your backside.”

  Rosen resisted the thought of dirty diapers mixed with his fried chicken. “I won’t take much more of your time. You mentioned someone who might tell me more about Claire.”

  “Oh yeah. That be Hec Perry. Fella plays the local clubs. I still see him around.”

  Cal said, “Guy’s a loser. Half the time he’s hopped up on something. Claire was smart to dump him. Don’t know what she saw in him in the first place.”

  “Hush, now. You’s just jealous she didn’t pay you no mind.”

  “Look at me, mister. Why would any woman rather go out with some doped-up third-rate musician?”

  Ethel said, “You loves yourself so much, you don’t need no woman.”

  Cal slowly shook his head. “It ain’t that, really it ain’t. It’s just . . . well . . . something was always funny about her, that’s all.” His face grew red, and after a moment he added, “Looks like we’re getting a little behind here.” He began cutting potatoes.

  Rosen asked the woman, “Where can I find Hec Perry?”

  “He used to live above a bar called Here’s How. Claire say he played there at night to pay his rent. For all I know, boy’s still there. Place is right up this here street. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That’s all right. You give Claire my love ’n’ tell her I’m prayin’ for her. Newspapers been spreadin’ a pack a’ lies. I know she’s a good girl.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Rosen replied, but his gaze lingered on Cal. The other man was cutting potatoes dangerously close to his fingers, his mind somewhere else.

  Opening the screen door, Rosen hurried through the alley past the clouds of flies until reaching the street, where he breathed deeply the clean air. It was good to be walking. He’d been sluggish, not just from the fried chicken. Each day something new had been revealed about Ben Hobbes’s murder—whether relating to cause of death, motive, or suspects—but it all seemed to be heading nowhere. Now he had a fresh lead.