The Charleston Knife is Back in Town

by Ralph Dennis

  And that was that.

  Hump and I waited in the driveway next to 1122 while Art went in. He was inside for around fifteen minutes. When he came out I saw a lace curtain pulled aside at one of the front windows and two withered and tiny little faces peered out at us. They were both topped with mounds of gray hair so I assumed they were ladies. Art got in the car and started it up. “That really made their day,” Art said. “Both ladies are about eighty and spinsters and I had a hell of a time trying to find the right word for cathouse, something I could say to them. So I said bordello and that was almost as shocking to them as whorehouse.”

  He pulled into the road and turned and backed up the drive. “I had to tell them something so I said we were going to raid this bordello next door.”

  “I hope they don’t come out to watch.”

  “I warned them against that. Said they could get arrested if they got in the way.”

  We settled down to wait. Now and then the lace curtain would curl away and the small faces would appear, remain for a brief moment and vanish as the curtain swung down again.

  A few minutes before five the trickle from 1122 Bricker Road began. In ones and twos the men left, coming out and crossing the driveway to their cars. That was when the road race started. They’d pull out of there like a race start, as if they wanted to get as far away from the house as they could in as short time as they could. After that, they could always act like they were coming from somewhere else. Even before the last customer left, Francine came out, still in her maid’s uniform and a raincoat, and backed a VW out of the garage.

  “There’s your girl,” I said.

  “That mean it’s off?” Art asked.

  “Still in costume,” I said. “Might be an errand.”

  “Booze or some dope’s my guess,” Hump said.

  “Time,” I said. I got out of my topcoat and passed it back to Art. Hump got out and nodded and moved down the driveway toward the low fence that separated the house of the two old ladies and 1122. I bent down and checked the hedge, looking for a break. I found one finally, a low opening where the neighborhood dogs must have tunneled. I got to my knees and crawled into it. It was hard with the one hand and it seemed to be taking hours. When I was almost through I snagged my pants and it was a job to kick myself free. For a frightening moment there I could see myself having to face Charleston from that position and it wasn’t something I liked.

  I made a low run for the corner of the house. I squatted there and tried to even my breath. I couldn’t see Art from my low angle and if a hitch came up I didn’t know how I’d get his attention. I looked around and found two or three smooth stones. With my luck, if I had to toss one I’d end up paying for a windshield.

  I settled down for the wait. One man came out and drove away and then another. Unless there was a customer who’d left his car out on the street, that did it. The house was empty except for the girls. Now we didn’t have to worry about a customer walking into the middle of a shoot-out.

  Ten minutes went by and then another ten. And then a suspicion jumped up at me. Had someone in 1122 seen the activity in the driveway and sent Francine out to warn Charleston? To meet him down the road and turn him back? I threw that around for a few minutes and didn’t buy it. There wasn’t any way for the girls to know why or that we were interested in Charleston. Any activity could mean, to them, that a vice raid was coming. And yet, none of the girls had left the house. So, no warning.

  And then, as if to bear me out, I heard the rough engine of the VW. It was Francine. On the other side of the hedge I heard Art kick the engine over and then, immediately, shut it down. But then it caught again and I turned toward the hedge and when I turned back I saw the dark blue Capri turn into the driveway. The VW continued on into the garage and out of sight. Oh, shit, Francine, please stay in the garage . . . just a minute longer. But even as I whispered that to myself she came around the corner of the house. Charleston . . . I could see the blond hair . . . was still in the car, unbuckling his seat belt. All right, I thought, then go straight into the house.

  She didn’t do that, either. She stopped and moved a few paces toward Charleston’s car. Waiting for him, it seemed. I brought up the .38 and tried to line it up on him. He opened the door and stepped out and slammed the door behind him. I didn’t have a shot. She was within the line and I relaxed. Maybe when he reached her he’d clear himself and I’d have a better angle. At that moment Art left the driveway on the other side of the hedge and Charleston looked up, startled for just a moment, and then reached Francine and said something and laughed and put an arm around her waist. He was too close. Move away from him, back away. Even as she pushed him away and he grabbed at her, Art turned up the driveway. He skidded and fishtailed. I took my eyes off Charleston for an instant and when I turned back he was straightening up, his pants leg high on one side. There was a flash in his hand and he had a knife against Francine’s neck. The other hand caught her high in the chest and turned her, putting her between himself and Art who was out of the car and moving toward him.

  “Police,” Art said, “hands on your head.”

  “Don’t take another step,” Charleston said, “or I’ll bleed her right here.”

  Then he moved a step backwards. Then another step. That was it, he was going to try to make it up to the porch and into the house. I could drop him anytime I wanted to but I’d take all or part of Francine with him. That went against my promise to The Man and I wasn’t sure that Hump would care much for it either.

  “Drop the knife and step away from her,” Art yelled at him.

  Charleston continued to move toward the steps. A step back and then a jerk at Francine that pulled her against his chest. I watched his shuffle. One step and a pull. Another step and a pull. He was close to the first step but he hadn’t looked back yet. That might be the chance. I saw him reach back the leg, higher now, and feel for the step. The leg was far back and I could see driveway beyond the leg. It wasn’t a high percentage shot. It was the only one I might get. I steadied the .38 over my left forearm, got the leg in the sights and squeezed off two rounds. One or both hit him. It was like somebody had kicked the other leg from under him. He whirled away from Francine and the knife kicked up into the air and landed several feet away.

  Francine didn’t know where to move. She made a lunge toward me and saw the gun and changed her mind. Art was coming at a run and that unnerved her even more. The third choice rounded the far corner of the house and she gave a cry and ran toward Hump.

  I moved over and looked down at Charleston. He was curled in a ball, both hands gripping his left knee. Blood was running through his fingers. He was gasping and his lips were pulled back against his teeth, pale and bloodless.

  Art joined me and I handed him the .38 and straightened Charleston out and patted him down from his neck to his shoes. All I found was the empty sheath.

  The front door opened and Connie looked out. Behind her were two of her girls. One of the girls was Melba.

  “Police,” Art said to them.

  Charleston was in some pain now, but his eyes were clear and dry. He looked hard enough to take the pain. He licked at his lips. “You’re Hardman, I guess.”

  I held up the bandaged hand. “I thought you’d recognize your initials.”

  “Luck,” he said, looking at the hand.

  Art looked at the blood welling out of the wound. It was darkening the driveway under the leg and soaking the length of the pants leg. Art snaked his belt off and wrapped it around Charleston’s leg above the knee. When he put pressure on it, Charleston winced and bit his lip.

  “Bad luck got me,” Charleston said.

  I hooked a thumb at the three whores in the doorway. “If that’s what you want to call them.”

  He tried to grin then. “Joker,” he said, “you’re some joker.”

  Closer now, with the grace and the deadliness gone, he looked like any number of those young men who seemed to remain eternally young for years and t
hen overnight they grew old. That would happen to him. With the knee torn up, if he knifed anyone else he’d have to hire somebody to hold them for him. And when his business was death you could write him off as out of business.

  “Hey . . . you . . . cop.” It was one of the girls in the doorway calling. I didn’t look up because I didn’t think of myself as a cop anymore.

  “You . . . the fat cop.”

  I looked up at the girl. It was Melba. It would take too long to explain that I wasn’t a cop, so I answered, “Yeah?”

  “You want some more head?”

  Shrieking, laughing, the three whores backed into the house and slammed the door behind them with a loud smack.

  Hump and I left before the ambulance or the other patrol cars arrived. Art had his spare .38 back and he had Charleston. Now if there was just something he could charge Charleston with. There was the assault on me at Maxwell’s place and Hump would have to lie a little to hang that on him. That is, he’d have to testify he’d got a full face look at Charleston that afternoon he’d limped down from the breezeway between apartments 14 and 16. With Francine’s help we might tag him with another assault charge. But there were other deaths, the deaths of Jake, of Heddy, the old actor, and the Harper kid that we’d have a hard time placing at Charleston’s doorstep. Art, of course, would try to talk to Beck as soon as Beck could talk. That was a long chance. Beck was busted up and he might not be the man he once was. Still, there wasn’t any reason to believe he was so far gone that he’d spill his guts in a courtroom. Beck was too much an organization man for that.

  With Charleston down, Art was easy to get along with. Hump took him aside and said that Francine was a special friend and she’d helped us and couldn’t he sort of forget about her when the vice squad came out to do their bust?

  “Anyway,” I said, “we need a ride into town.” That might have been what pushed it over toward yes. I don’t think Art wanted us around when the rest of the cops got there. He had enough to explain already.

  On the way into town in Francine’s little VW, we passed an ambulance making a hell of a racket and a couple of police cars tearing the late afternoon traffic into shreds. Hump drove us over to the lot where he’d left his car and I left them alone for a few minutes while they made whatever plans they had to make. I didn’t hear it but I saw him take out his roll and peel off some bills. While she put those in her purse, he worked a key I took to be his apartment key off his ring and handed that to her. He kissed her and put her into the car and waved her out of the lot.

  We waited for the parking lot attendant to work his car out of a block. Hump said, “I’ve got this idea. Why don’t I go out to the airport with you and meet Marcy?”

  That seemed friendly enough. He knew, from what I’d told him, that Marcy was pissed at me. Maybe he felt that he could act as a buffer until Marcy calmed down some.

  “Then I thought I’d take you two and my new girl out to supper.”

  I had a feeling he was cooking something, that it was boiling and bubbling in him. “Any special place you want this supper?”

  “The Gondola,” Hump said.

  The meeting with Marcy was stiff at first. I think she felt I’d be tight and distant and she’d backed away into herself. When I lifted her and kissed her hard and hungry, she had a hard time coming out again.

  Hump stood in the background, grinning to himself. As soon as I released Marcy, he stepped forward and winked at her and got her tickets. He went to pick up her bags.

  I put an arm around her and said, “Look, Marcy, it’s over, it’s done. The only damage is to my hand. The rest of me is whole.” I leaned over and kissed on the soft line of her jaw. “And I did miss you, badass.”

  She turned then and I could see the crow marks around her eyes and. the blink of moisture and I knew it was all right.

  “We got time for a drink or are we in a hurry?” I asked when Hump came back with the bags.

  “No hurry. My girl’s out at one of those malls trying to find some place to buy her some uptown threads.”

  “Is this a new girl?” Marcy asked. She liked Hump a hell of a lot and she always had an interest in the string of girls that Hump ran by for inspection from time to time.

  “A young virgin Hump saved from ritual sacrifice,” I said.

  “With Jim’s help,” Hump said.

  “And from the slam as well.”

  “That too,” Hump said.

  Marcy looked from one of us to the other, that puzzled look on her face and we went out to look for the drinks. We could tell her then as much as we wanted her to know.

  Francine looked like about half a million dollars when we picked her up at Hump’s apartment a little before ten. She’d bought herself a gray tweed pants suit and some of those god-awful thick-soled shoes that made most women walk like they were club-footed. On her they didn’t seem to spoil the grace.

  We reached The Gondola parking lot around ten. Hump remained behind a second to lock the car and when he caught up with us, he was carrying the brown paper bag with the thick bulky object in it. He saw me give it a hard look. He didn’t explain and I didn’t ask. I decided to wait and let this grown-up man do what he wanted to.

  The maître d’ remembered us and he wanted to lead us into the main dining room. It was Hump’s party and he was in the lead. He shook his head at the maître d’ and pointed at the table we’d had a couple of nights before. Jocko was back at his usual booth and I saw him give us a brief look and then dip his head.

  The maître d’ didn’t like it much. He turned and looked in the direction of Jocko. He wanted help but Jocko didn’t seem to want to give him any. All this hesitation irritated Hump and he took Francine’s arm and pushed past the maître d’ and headed for the table. Marcy didn’t understand any of this and she gave me a worried look. I shook my head at her and took her arm and followed Hump and Francine. The maître d’, with nothing better to do, brought up the rear.

  We sipped at the first drinks. Hump still didn’t indicate exactly what he had in mind. He was chatting along with Francine and Marcy and didn’t act at all like a man about to do anything rash. The talk wandered for a few more minutes. I’d about decided that Hump didn’t intend anything except to drop by and let our live bodies speak for us when Hump turned from Francine and dropped an eyelid at me. “What say we pay our respects to Mr. Giacommo?”

  “Fine with me,” I said. “Now?”

  “Why not?”

  Marcy looked up at me. “Is that nice Mr. Giacommo here?”

  I leaned over to her. “Explanation later, but he’s really not that nice. Keep Francine company.”

  Before we left the table Hump stripped the bag away and I saw that he had an up-to-date Sears Roebuck catalogue. I saw the direction then but I didn’t say anything. We crossed the aisle and stood next to Jocko’s table, waiting for him to look up. He kept us waiting too long and Hump held the catalogue about three feet above the booth table and dropped it. That got Jocko’s attention.

  “Ah, Mr. Evans and Mr. Hardman. Back so soon?”

  “I like the way you fix spaghetti and meatballs,” Hump said. “About as good as a spade place over on Boulevard.”

  Jocko gave us his good-host smile but Hump pushed a stony stare back at him. What the hell, Hump was my friend, so I matched the stone in his.

  Jocko tapped the Sears Roebuck catalogue with a manicured nail. “What’s this?”

  “I thought you’d remember. I told you if you ever turned Beck loose on me you’d have to order another one. Well, you can order now, but try to get a better one. He wasn’t good enough.”

  “I heard,” Jocko said unruffled, “that George had an accident.”

  “That wasn’t any accident,” Hump said. “That was on purpose.”

  The good-host smile vanished. “Is there anything else, gentlemen?”

  “One thing more,” Hump said. “You tell him Jim.”

  “Since you re going to order anyway,” I said, “you
might as well order me a new playmate, too. The last one didn’t wear very well. I shot him in the knee this afternoon and made him a charity case.”

  That puzzled him. I guess he hadn’t heard about Charleston yet. “Which playmate was that?”

  “Charleston.”

  He paled on that. “Where?”

  “In front of a whorehouse.”

  He thought about that for a few seconds. “It’s been nice talking to you, gentlemen, but as you can see I’m very busy. . . .”

  “Write it off,” I said. “Close the contract down. It’s over and you know it. Jake’s dead, the dancer’s dead, one of the kids is dead, Maxwell’s probably dead though we haven’t found the body yet . . . and some poor old guy who wasn’t involved is dead. Of the eight involved in the rip-off, four are dead. Call it half a warning and write it off.”

  “I never take business advice from strangers,” Jocko said.

  When Hump and Francine left my house, it was well after one a.m. and there was a cold, brittle rain falling, a rain that might turn into sleet if the temperature continued to drop. It was the first time Marcy and I had been alone since I’d met her at the airport and I could feel the stiffness creeping back between us.

  “Bedtime,” I said.

  I left her in the kitchen straightening up and went into the bathroom and washed up and brushed my shaky old teeth. I left the light on in the bathroom and cut out the bedroom lights. I undressed and got into bed and waited.

  Marcy went by without speaking and I doubled the pillow behind my head and listened to the tap of the cold rain until the roar of the shower drowned it out. When the shower stopped I could hear the wind blowing the rain against the windows. And waited. And waited. Trying to tell from the sounds in the bathroom exactly what she was doing. That’s a way of passing the time. Hard time.

  When she finally came out of the bathroom she was wearing my old terrycloth robe and from the light in the bathroom I could see a few drops of water on her forehead and a soggy strand or two of hair in the back. She sat on the edge of the bed, turned toward me, facing me but not close.