The Charleston Knife is Back in Town

by Ralph Dennis

  “Have a seat,” Art said.

  We were in the farmhouse. It still had the smell of incense clouding it. We’d turned on the overhead lights and we could see why they preferred the dim ones. The living room was a rathole with big dust balls rolling past and cups and dishes here and there. There wasn’t any way to guess what had been on the plates or in the cups: mold covered that.

  The four kids looked at each other and then walked over and sat hip to hip on the old rump-spring sofa. They were still frightened after the run. Added to that they’d recognized Hump from the rip-off party. He hadn’t said anything to them yet but just stood and stared at them. He looked about as mean and rank as he smelled. He’d done some washing up but the sour curse was still on him.

  Tight-lipped. That meant they’d make some kind of agreement not to tell anybody anything. The young ones always did that and it often turned out to be a race to see which one’d break first and tell it all.

  Might as well start the process. I took a step toward the sofa and picked out the one I was sure had to be Edwin. His startled eyes flicked over me and darted away. “I’m Jim Hardman,” I said, “and you must be Edwin Robinson.”

  “What’s it to you, cop?”

  “Watch your mouth,” Hump said behind him.

  “You’re Edwin Robinson,” I said.

  “What if I am?” His chin was up but you could see the quiver built into it.

  “Your grandmother’s a friend of mine. So’s Tippy. I’ve been working for her, trying to keep you from ending up like Henry Harper out there.”

  “You’re not a cop?”

  “Was once,” I said “not anymore” and I nodded toward Art. “He’s the only cop here.”

  “How’d you get mixed up in this drug thing?” Art asked.

  “We weren’t. We’d only been here a couple of days.” Edwin was choked but he was getting the words out. They sounded like they came from the mouth of somebody with a broken jaw that’d been wired.

  “Shut up, Edwin.” The heavyset one with the oily blue-black hair didn’t like the way it was going.

  “You know how long you can get for being mixed up in growing and selling this quantity of grass?” I asked.

  “Ten years if you get a friendly judge,” Art said.

  “You can do ten years easy,” I said. “Of course, the old cons’ll probably knock all your teeth out to make your mouth a better cunt.”

  “They really like nice tight young boys like you four in there,” Hump said. “You’ll come out thinking and acting like a girl.”

  “You can be the Andrew Sisters,” Art said, “a new female impersonation team.”

  The wall fell down. At first maybe they thought we’d be satisfied with the information about the grass operation. And they told us about that at great and windy length. At the Dairy everybody who stayed there had to do something to earn their keep. None of the four had wanted to do the milking or the other farm work so they’d agreed to help with the grass cleaning and packing.

  After a time we’d had all we wanted of that. It wasn’t our interest anyway. It was our way of getting them used to talking. So we shifted gears and pointed at the robbery party after the Cartway fight. That made them hard-lipped again. Hump, who’d had little to say, jumped into the middle of that silence on all fours and kicked it to pieces. It was awesome to watch. How angry he was. How near violence. How close to kicking the shit out of all of them. Who the hell did they think they were anyway? Ripping off seven hundred of his money. Putting a shotgun on him. Pushing him around. Laughing at him, yes, dammit, laughing at him. The money burned him, yes. But the laughing, that was too much. It called for ass-kicking. White-assed kids who couldn’t even shave yet treating him like that.

  It was all I could do to hold him back. I got a bruise or two doing it. He raved and I talked and I soothed him and he pushed me away and I talked some more. He didn’t want to do it. Not a chance in the world. Why, people would laugh at him behind his back if he did. But finally he agreed. He accepted with the reluctance of a virgin whose mother had been badmouthing sex all her life.

  “All right, all right,” Hump said huffing and puffing, “I’ll take my seven hundred and one hundred interest and I won’t beat up on your punk kids.”

  The cache was out in the barn. We stood around and watched while the four of them grunted and sweated their way through two ten-foot high walls of baled hay. Behind that they’d pried off a section of the barn. There, between that inner wall and the outer one, they’d hidden the take. Edwin got the suitcase for me and brought it over. I put it on a bale of hay and opened it. It was the real thing. There was a large cloth sack of watches and rings stuffed in one side of the suitcase. The rest of it was the cash. It looked like they’d had fun counting and stacking it. It was in flat packets tied with rubber bands.

  “You counted it,” I said to Edwin. “What was the count?”

  “A hundred and fifty eight thousand and some odd dollars,” he said.

  “All of it here?”

  “Most of it. We never got to meet with Jake and give him his share.”

  I took out a packet of hundreds and slipped the band off. I counted out seven bills for Hump and added the eighth that he’d demanded as interest. Art counted with me and watched as I replaced the band and dropped the rest of the packet back into the suitcase.

  “All right, you four, follow me.” He waited until they were loaded down and started them single-file out of the barn. “Over there to the paddy wagon,” he said. At the door he looked over his shoulder at me. “Jim, watch the suitcase, huh?” He marched off after the kids.

  “Is Art for real?” Hump asked.

  “One way to find out.” I grabbed a couple of stacks of the hundreds and tossed them to Hump. I dug out a couple of stacks for myself and then tossed another to Hump. I guessed we’d have carried off half the suitcase if Art hadn’t come back, whistling a tune just before he stepped through the doorway. We watched as Art closed the suitcase. “Want to make any bets those kids can’t count?” he said.

  Art stayed at the city limits just long enough to see Edwin and the others transferred from the county wagon to the Atlanta one that had been waiting. On the way back into town he dropped Hump and me at my house. As soon as he drove away we went into the house and emptied our coat pockets onto the kitchen table. Hump held out his eight hundred and we counted the rest. It came to $24,900 and we split it down the middle. It wasn’t what we’d expected when we’d gone into the crap-job but it was more than I thought we’d end up with during those first minutes in the barn.

  “Payment before the job’s over, huh?” Hump said, stuffing his share into his coat pocket.

  “The job we were doing for Annie’s over. Edwin’s safe in jail by now.” I went over to the junk drawer next to the sink. I found an old pair of scissors. “Help with this.”

  Hump cut the black driving glove away. “Charleston will be there tomorrow afternoon.”

  “If he’s the stud Francine says he is,” I said.

  “Francine . . . shit. She’s over at my place.” But he took his time and worked the glove off my left hand. It was sore and stiff but the bandage still covered it to some degree.

  “I’ll drive you over to pick up your car.”

  On the drive Hump said, “Charleston’s yours, but I’ll back you.”

  “Appreciate that,” I said.

  After I left Hump I stopped off at a pay phone and called Annie Murton. I told her where Edwin was and that she could probably go over and see him right away. If she’d ask for Art he’d fix up a visit for her. She thanked me but it didn’t seem like her heart was in it. I think she was already running ahead, thinking about her visit to Edwin. I could understand that and it wasn’t anything I’d complain about.

  It was a deep dreamless sleep until around seven, first light. I awoke then but I still felt tired and I tried to force it. It was then I had the dreams, dreams about people with white bloodless slashes at their throats
like fish gills. So finally I said to hell with it and got up. I made coffee and got the Constitution from the doorstep and read the sports page. I listened to the radio and it was all about it never raining in California and how this one guy was meeting Mrs. Jones at the same café everyday. It might have been more fun if they’d met at a motel. And when I’d had enough of sports and the music, I shut my mind to it and thought about Charleston.

  At seven the blond young man came out of a stand of pines fifteen miles away from the Dairy. His clothes were somewhat rumpled but he didn’t look like a road barn. The second car he thumbed stopped for him. It was a green Toyota driven by a young construction worker on his way to his job on the complex at Colony Square. He rode that far and thanked the man and walked down half a block to a cafe and had breakfast.

  The job wasn’t over, he knew that. Those four kids were out there somewhere, running scared. But the priority had changed since last night. Even if it was free, if he didn’t get a dime for it, the fat man was next. Even if he blew the whole job because of it. And that was a promise he made himself.

  After he had his second cup of coffee he walked a few blocks up Peachtree until he reached 10th. There didn’t seem to be any cabs around so he caught a # 10 bus and rode it downtown.

  The phone rang around eleven and I caught it on the third ring. I assumed that it was Hump. Instead it was a masculine-voiced woman who said it was Western Union and she had a telegram for Mr. James Hardman.

  “Read it,” I said.

  “Are you Mr. Hardman?” she asked.

  “Unless you’ve got a wrong number.”

  “This is your telegram: Arriving on the eight-ten tonight. Meet me if you like. Do not if it is too much trouble. The telegram is signed ‘Marcy.’ ”

  It sounded like her and it sounded like she hadn’t gotten over the burn from the night she’d called.

  “Would you like me to repeat the message?” the woman asked.

  “No,” I said, “once is enough.”

  At twelve I got out the card Connie had given me at the breakfast-and-lunch place on Bricker Road, the one with only a phone number on it. I dialed the number. A woman answered. It wasn’t a voice I’d have matched with the blonde, Connie, but I asked it anyway. “Connie?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Al Burns. I was there yesterday. Remember me?”

  “Yes, Al.”

  “About what I was talking about. I talked to my poker friends and they’re interested.”

  “I hope you realize that the fee for such a party would be quite expensive, Al.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “One thousand,” Connie said.

  “That’s steep,” I said, “but I’ve got my quarterly bonus socked away.”

  “Then I believe we can set a firm date,” she said.

  “Tonight, I want tonight.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. I checked my engagement calendar and I find we already have plans today.”

  “Aw, hell,” I said.

  “Tomorrow is open,” she said.

  “I’d rather have today,” I said, “but if it’s taken. . . .”

  “Tomorrow then.” Then she said if I wanted the evening kept for me I’d have to drop by a deposit of five hundred before noon the following day.

  I said I would. That I’d send my driver, Horace, by.

  “See you then, Al.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” I said.

  But today, I thought, as I broke the connection.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  From around one to two Hump and I had lunch at the White Horse in Underground Atlanta. It was mainly a roast beef place and we both had a couple of ribs worth of the rare. We kept the drinking down. It wasn’t anything we talked about. Maybe we read each other’s minds.

  Hump dropped me at the doctor’s office so I could get the hand checked and the bandage changed. He’d said he’d be right back, that he had an errand.

  Hump was parked in the lot, waiting for me when I came out. There was a flat thick object in a brown paper bag on the seat next to him. He didn’t explain what it was and I didn’t ask. It didn’t seem the right size for anything that would fire silver bullets.

  We drove around for a while and picked up Art at exactly four. When Art got into the front seat with us, Hump lifted the brown paper bag and tossed it into the back seat. It hit there with a heavy thud.

  “Good to have your money back?”

  “Great,” Hump said.

  While Hump was answering, Art had turned to watch my face.

  On the drive to the department Art filled us in on what he’d picked out of the boys during the late-night questioning. The original plan had been Jake’s. When he met Edwin and saw how much the kid needed money to attract Heddy, he’d turned the kid to his uses. Heddy had helped in that. One night in bed and the promise of many more to come. Edwin had enlisted the other four from the Burger Shack. The only loose end had been tied up, too. On the night of the robbery, Fred Maxwell had been the one outside the house on the walkie-talkie, the guy who’d counted the guests as they approached the house and alerted the guys inside. It looked like Jake had trusted the kids or he had trusted Edwin’s passion for Heddy. The split was to be made the night Jake was killed and Edwin and the others had driven over to Jake’s Headhunter Lounge and found the lot full of police cars. After that they’d stayed at the Dairy. Not leaving it, waiting to see if anyone would come looking for thorn. Of course they heard about the death of Jake but they weren’t sure it was connected with the robbery. It just meant they were a lot richer.

  “Why use kids?” I asked. “I always thought Jake had some sense.”

  “They didn’t know. My guess is Jake knew no pro would take on a job like that. It had to be the innocents or nobody.”

  The night before, they’d been in the tobacco barn cleaning some of the grass and Henry Harper had said he was hungry, that he was going back to the main house for something to eat. Charleston must have messed up there because they’d heard one scream out of him and they’d had enough sense not to go out and look for him. Maybe they’d been expecting it. They’d gone out the back window and cut into the woods. They were afraid to try to reach the van so they’d tried for the highway.

  “It was still a good piece of work,” Hump said, “until the hounds got there.”

  “Any charges on the boys yet?”

  “The D.A.’s working on that now. There’s breaking and entering at the Rosewood Circle house. And if we can convince a few good citizens to step forward and testify, we might tag them with armed robbery.” Art leaned across me and stared at Hump. “How about you as a witness?”

  “Not likely.”

  “A good citizen, huh?”

  “Just getting by,” Hump said. “As far as I’m concerned, they took their chances and the pros among them got caught. The kids can do some probation or some time in one of the youthful offender camps. Other than that I’ll draw the line at the bottom and say that part is over.”

  “I’m with Hump on that,” I said.

  “Should have known better than to have asked.”

  Hump parked in a lot down the street and we walked over to the department. On the chance that Charleston might know my car and Hump’s, we’d decided to use-Art’s unmarked car. That had the added advantage of a police radio if it went wrong somehow.

  Art came out and we got in his car and headed for Bricker Road. We were still ahead of the time schedule I’d worked out. A few blocks from the Bricker Road place, Art checked his watch and pulled over and parked. He got a folded sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket and spread it on the dashboard. “Before I left last night I had the day squad get the word to check out the area for us. I wanted a rundown on the houses around, who lived there, drives, backyards, and so forth.” He tapped his finger on a block that represented the house on the other side of 1122. “Think our best bet is to work from here. There’s a hedge fence between but the drive is hi
gh and from what the day man said you can sit in a car in the drive and see the road and see the driveway of 1122. That is, we can see any car approaching on the road and we can see who gets out of the car in the driveway.”

  “That’s one-sided,” I said.

  “You’re right. It might be better to bracket it, use houses on both sides, cut off any possible escape route. The thing is—I don’t want to run the risk that too much activity might be noticed.” He shook his head. “No, we can’t chance that. I think we can get him just using three sides.”

  “Tell it to us,” I said.

  He had it worked out so that I’d be in the car in the driveway on the other side of 1122, the car turned and pointing out to the road. Hump would be far up the driveway behind the car, at the fence looking over into 1122. He’d keep an eye on me. Art would get through the hedge and set up at the corner of the house nearest the hedge. As soon as the last customers left . . . that would be around five . . . we’d set up for the next car to approach the house. “When you see it you start the engine. That’s my signal if I don’t see him. As soon as he enters the drive you leave the driveway and pull in behind him, blocking that way out.” Art looked at Hump. “As soon as Hardman pulls out of the drive, that’s your cue to go over the fence and cover the backyard, just in case he gets away from us and heads in that direction.”

  “Looks good,” Hump said.

  “Only one thing,” I said. “You drive the car and I go through the hedge.”

  “With that bad hand?”

  “You want me to get arrested for driving police property?”

  “How do you stand on this?” Art asked Hump. “It’s trouble for you if he can’t hack it.”

  “He can hack it,” Hump said.