by Ralph Dennis
I shook my head. “I’m looking for my cousin, Annabelle Morris. I thought she lived here.”
“Well, she doesn’t.” She backed out of the doorway and slammed the door in my face.
I called Art at home as soon as I got to my house. He said he’d have somebody from Vice check the place out later. If they could bust her with a john they could use that to peel the facts about Simpson out of her. With one charge against her a statement about Simpson wouldn’t matter.
“I’ve been trying to call you all day.”
It was Marcy on the phone and she’d caught me in the shower. I was dripping all over the floor and the bed. I decided it was time to change the sheets anyway.
“How’s Mr. Wonderful?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The cultured gentleman. My opposite.”
“He’s fine. Where were you all day?”
“You want the whole story?”
Marcy said she did.
I shook a cigarette out of the pack on the nightstand and put my wet behind on the bed. I lit the cigarette. “I was over at Jack Smathers and I kept him and Bear from trying to kill each other. That was so much fun that I flew up to Chapel Hill and helped browbeat one of Jack’s clients, the guy who’s the father of the little girl. And then we flew back to Atlanta and I went over to see a red-haired whore on business.”
“Your business or hers?”
“A bit of both,” I said. “You see, she had this hour to kill and I wasn’t doing anything …”
“Oh, shut up, Jim.”
I did. I waited about thirty seconds and when she hadn’t said anything else I said, “I looked in the entertainment section this morning and didn’t find any ballet or concerts, but there are some great foreign films and you could take turns translating to each other.”
“What?”
“Well, I understand the subtitles don’t really tell you what they’re saying.”
“Jim, you’re an ass,” Marcy said, but there was a chuckle somewhere back in her throat.
“I guess I am. You’ve got to admit though that I wasn’t the one who started talking about having found some cultured woman who loved heavy music and ballet.”
“I’m cultured and I like music and ballet.”
“Maybe we could have a date some night,” I said.
“Tonight?”
“I’d like to but I can’t.”
“That’s what I get for putting my pride aside. I guess the red-haired whore has another hour to kill.”
“Marcy, this is going to sound harder than I mean it to. I’ve got to find that little girl. Put you and me aside for a moment. See if you can remember how it was to be six years old and scared to death.”
“All right, Jim.”
“I might drop by late for a drink if we run into a dead end.”
“I’ll be here if I don’t go out and pick up that red-neck,” she said.
“I’ll call before I come by.”
“Do that.”
The phone went dead at my ear.
Hump made the call to Ernie, the Wildwood Connector, from my place. Ernie didn’t want to see us again. Hump kept insisting. Ernie hung up on him once but Hump dialed him right back.
I had my ear next to the receiver and I heard Ernie say, “White child’s nothing to me.”
“Screw the grown-ups,” Hump said. “Children don’t pick their parents.”
“Come on over,” Ernie said after a long silence.
CHAPTER NINE
Ernie was exactly where we’d left him the last time. There was an open quart of Bud on the coffee table in front of him and three plastic cups. “What now?” he asked before we were all the way through the doorway.
“You offering beer or are you expecting two other people?” Hump said.
Ernie poured each of us a cup of beer. “All right, now I’ve done the social crap. What else you want besides my beer?”
“You been following the adventures of Peggy Holt in the papers?”
“Some,” he said.
“A new chapter,” Hump said. “A small timer died on Hardman’s doorstep last night. We think he’d kidnapped the girl. Now somebody else has her or Peggy has her.”
“The child’s nothing to me.”
“You said that before,” Hump said.
“I’ll say it again if you want me to.”
“Other news,” I said. “The dead man had an $8 bag in his sock. High grade stuff. You reckon it might be some of her dope?”
“It might.”
“I think the child’s trade bait. Her for the dope.”
“Unless Peggy’s got her,” Ernie said. “What you want from me?”
“I want the name of somebody who works with her, somebody who’ll get a message to her from me.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
I shook my head.
Ernie got up from the sofa and limped away, his back to me. “You think I’m going around giving out names? You know how long I’d last in town doing that?”
“Not long,” I admitted.
“Damned right,” he said. “That’s the first smart thing you’ve said since you pranced your white ass in here.”
“All we want is a name,” Hump said. “A name we can pass a question through to her. Is the kid with her or does somebody else have her?”
“That’s all?”
“Just a question. No cops. No tail when we meet him.”
“Your word, Hump?”
“My word,” Hump said.
Ernie limped over to the bedroom entrance. “Stay here and drink your beer. Don’t get anywhere near my door.” He went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
I sat on the sofa next to Hump. “I think he’s getting tired of us.”
“With damn good reason,” Hump said. “I’m getting tired of us myself.”
Ernie came out of the bedroom. “You know the Crystal on Peachtree and Seventh?”
“I know it,” I said.
“He’ll be at the front counter, the one facing the street. He’ll be wearing a red velvet jacket and blue jeans.”
“Is he black?” Hump asked.
“Black,” Ernie said. “And in case you’re trying to shit me he won’t be carrying anything.”
“We’re not shitting you,” Hump said.
“Goodbye then.”
“No charge this time?” I headed for the door.
“My charge is you don’t come back … ever.”
I went on out the door. Hump remained behind. “What if I need some smoke some night?”
“I’ll think on that between now and then,” Ernie said.
He was there, sipping a paper cup of coffee and looking down into the empty bowl that had had chili in it. There were empty seats on both sides of him. Hump sat down on his right and I went over to the counter and bought two cups of coffee. When I sat on the black’s left he didn’t even look around at me. Hump hadn’t wasted any time.
“I don’t know any Peggy Holt,” the black was saying.
“That’s all right,” Hump said, soft and easy. “This is just pretend. If you did know a Peggy Holt, maybe you could get a message to her and have her call Mr. Hardman here.”
“If I did,” he said.
“That’s all I want,” Hump said.
I got out my pad and wrote down my name and phone number. I put it on the counter next to his cup of coffee. He looked at it and looked back out at the movement on the street.
“Big rush on this,” I said.
“Not my problem,” he said. “I don’t know any Peggy Holt.”
An hour later the phone rang in my bedroom.
It was a woman’s voice, low and throaty. “You wanted me to call you?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Talk fast,” she said.
“Is Maryann with you?”
“Are you putting me on?”
I asked what she meant.
“Don’t you have her? Isn’t that why you wanted me to call
you?”
“We’ve got our wires crossed,” I said. “I’m working for your ex.”
“Doing what?”
“Trying to find Maryann.”
“I’m not sure I can believe you. I believed a couple of people in the last day or two and they didn’t turn out to be what they said they were.”
“Call your ex in Chapel Hill and ask him about me. Then call me back.”
She hung up. She called back in ten minutes. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“I want to see you,” I said. “I’m not a cop and I won’t bring the cops with me.”
“Edward said he didn’t know you very well,” she said.
“That’s true.”
“What do you think of Edward?”
“I think he’s a gutless asshole,” I said.
Peggy laughed, deep and warm and I could feel the hairs straighten on the back of my neck. “There’s a pay phone outside the quick food store … a 7-11 I think … near the corner of Virginia and Highland. Be there at exactly 9:30. The phone will ring at exactly 9:35. The call will be for you and you’ll get instructions then.”
“We have to go through all this run-around?”
“Or not at all,” she said.
“Done,” I said and hung up.
I got down to Virginia and Highland a few minutes early and spent the time driving around the block. At 9:29 I pulled into the almost empty parking lot in front of the store. Through the wide plate-glass window I watched a few people browsing through the overpriced foodstuffs. A minute or so before 9:35, I rolled down the window on the driver’s side and felt the sting of cold wind on my face.
At 9:35 the phone rang. I got out of the car and hurried over to the phone. As I reached for the receiver a car, pulling into the parking area, lit me with its headlights. I turned and saw it stop in the space on the other side of my car. Then the phone was to my ear.
“Hello.”
“Are you Mr. Hardman?” It was a man’s voice.
“Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You’d better be,” the man said.
“I’m waiting,” I said. He didn’t answer and then I felt a touch on my shoulder. It was sucker time for me, I guess. I turned and there she was, Peggy Holt. She reached past me and took the receiver.
“It’s okay,” she said into the phone and hung it up.
“My car or yours?” she asked.
“That’s the question that gets asked at Uncle Sam’s bar,” I said.
“I don’t have much time,” she said. “And no time at all for jokes.”
“Either,” I said.
“Mine,” she said.
Beside her, on the way to her car, I got my long look at her. She wore a pair of tan jeans that looked like she’d bought them tight and then shrunk them to skin tight in the shower. I couldn’t get a good look at her upper body. She was wearing a Navy pea coat, one of the good old ones that went back to the Korean war or before. She was wearing desert boots for women, the heavy ones that I guess you could call walking boots. They didn’t hurt her grace at all.
What threw me off stride some was the hair. I’d been expecting long flowing hair. Instead she was wearing a kind of round and flat black hat, what you might call a woman’s riding derby. At least, I remember seeing them in a couple of films. Her hair’d been stuffed up into the hat, I thought, unless she’d had it cut.
It was all there and I could feel it. The knowing sexuality, but it wasn’t the brassy kind, the type that came with too much knowledge. It wasn’t the whore’s knowledge of what it was worth and what could be done with it. That was missing but, for me, it was still there and I knew how people like Ernie and Jack Smathers could be damaged by her. I don’t know how she did it but the sexuality had the shock of a kind of purity in it. Like a choir girl who had it and knew she did and didn’t know what to do with it.
Even though I knew better I felt a scrotum tightening that didn’t have anything to do with the temperature. And I told myself to quit it, this one will eat your liver and lights and do it just on instinct. It won’t even be personal to her.
Her skin, as I’d expected, in the inside light with the door to her Fairlane open, was almost blue-white, like fresh milk. Then she closed the door and backed out of the parking space. She turned into Highland and went the one long block and when we were in front of the church she made a left into Los Angeles. She stayed on Los Angeles until it split and curved to the right and became Brookridge Drive. She kept bearing to her left and then we were passing Orme Park. It was only about two city blocks long and about a half block wide. There was a slide and a few swings and a shallow stream that ran through the center of it. I’d been avoiding this area for a couple of months. The last time I’d been at Orme Park was the morning Art had taken me there to identify the body of Heddy, the red-haired topless dancer who’d been involved with some others in the J.C. Cartway fight-robbery. She’d been there, face down in the stream with her throat cut.
Peggy pulled to the curb and parked near the area where the fountain and the slide and the swings were. “Would you like to walk around some?” she asked.
“Why not?”
It was silly, it was stupid. It was pretty damn cold to be sitting out in a two-person swing. I got out my cigarettes and offered her one and lit them by shielding them against the gusting wind. Blowing the smoke out it was hard to tell which was the smoke and which the breath condensation.
“Where do I start?” Peggy braced her legs, pushed off and set the swing in motion.
“Where’s Maryann?”
“I don’t know. She was outside and that man, the one who’d been following me, took her yesterday afternoon.”
“Outside where?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Who has her now?” I asked.
“I thought you did.” She reached into her pea jacket pocket and brought out a small scrap of newsprint. “This was in the Journal, in the personals section.”
“When?”
“Today.”
I got out my lighter and read it by the flicker and whip of the flame.
Lost girl doll. Will return for
valuable consideration. Answer
Journal Box 44B.
I capped the flame and handed the newsprint back to her. “What makes you think they mean Maryann?”
“Some of the dealers use the personals column. It’s fluid out there on the street, people moving, changing addresses, no phones where they can be reached.”
“So they’d assume you’d read it?”
“Yes.”
“You answer it yet?”
“I will tomorrow,” she said.
I dropped my cigarette and ground it into the dirt. The sparks flew for yards downwind. “What do they want from you?”
“I can’t say.”
“I think I know,” I said. “And there must be a hell of a lot of it for them to go to this trouble. For people to kill for it.”
“I can’t say.”
“You going to make the deal?”
She didn’t answer right away. She flipped the cigarette toward the stream. “I still don’t know if I can trust you.”
“So far no cops,” I said.
“I’m frightened.”
“Why?” The tremor was in her voice and I’d had to brace myself against it.
“Some of the people in this with me don’t want to give it up. It’s worth too much. They’re saying it’s my child, not theirs.”
“What do they want you to do?”
“They want me to set up a meeting. They’ll try to get Maryann back without giving it up.”
“You set up a meeting with Harper?” I asked.
“If you mean did I set him up so he’d be killed, the answer is no.”
“You got any idea who got to him?”
“No. But it must have been somebody big in the drug traffic. They want to shut us down.”
/> That might be Raymond or somebody Raymond did his dealing through. It didn’t sound like something Raymond would do, but I couldn’t say the same for some of the people working for him. At that level the animals take over. Claws and teeth and all.
“The next big question. What happened to Randy King? The police think he found out you were dealing and you killed him to shut him up.”
“That’s a laugh.” She didn’t laugh. “You know where the stuff came from? Randy furnished it.”
“Where’d he get it?”
“I can’t say.”
“What happened to him?”
“I left the apartment about noon. I had to meet somebody. I was gone about an hour and a half, almost two hours. When I came back I found him like that … in the kitchen.”
“Anything missing from the apartment?”
“I didn’t stay to look,” she said. “Anyway, what they wanted wasn’t there.”
“You have a gun?”
“No.”
“Could it have been some of the people working with you … wanting to cut down on the number of people sharing in it?”
“I don’t think so. You see, Randy said he could get some more from the same place. It would have been stupid to kill him and cut off the source.”
We sat, slowly moving backwards and forward, like lovers trying to figure the next con. Silent with all the brain cells going at quick step. All around us house lights were going out. Now and then a car would rip and tear around the oval road that ran around the park. For the kids I guess it was sort of a raceway.
“How are you going to handle it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to send a letter to the Journal and see what we can arrange.”
“You people are kids at this. I’d make a guess they’re pros. A trick is the first thing they’d expect out of you.”
“They say it can be done,” she said.
“Don’t make any bets on it.”
She put a toe into the grooved track in front of the swing and dug in. We stopped. She turned and I got another scent of her. “Are you a pro?”
“I used to be,” I said.
“You could help me get her back if you wanted to.”
“Maybe.”
“Would you?”
I could feel the trembling start in her leg, the one that brought the swing to a stop and now was holding us in mid-swing. She bent her knee and we were moving again.
