The Deadly Cotton Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  THE DEADLY

  COTTON HEART

  RALPH DENNIS

  Copyright © 2019 Adventures in Television, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Afterword “Hardman’s World” Copyright © 2019 by Robert J. Randisi. All Rights Reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 1941298133

  ISBN-13: 978-1941298138

  Published by

  Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253,

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  Also by Ralph Dennis

  The War Heist

  The Hardman Series

  Atlanta Deathwatch

  The Charleston Knife is Back in Town

  The Golden Girl And All

  Pimp For The Dead

  Down Among The Jocks

  Murder Is Not An Odd Job

  Working For The Man

  The Deadly Cotton Heart

  The One Dollar Rip-Off

  Hump’s First Case

  The Last Of The Armageddon Wars

  The Buy Back Blues

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book was originally published in 1976 and reflects the cultural and sexual attitudes, language, and politics of the period.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HARDMAN’S WORLD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The man seated across from me wore khaki twill work clothes. They were tailored, if there were such a thing, made out of better cloth than the J.C. Penney ones and the fit was exact. I’d noticed right away that there were no salt stains under the arm yokes. If he worked at all, it was with his mind, and the clothing was part of a charade. His boots, when I’d watched him walk in, were highly polished and without a scuff.

  Now he leaned across the table toward me and tossed back part of the shot of bourbon. He held it on his tongue until he’d absorbed most of the flavor. He swallowed and said, “I’m from out of town.”

  I nodded. I’d let him buy me a drink, but I hadn’t touched it. That was part of my act. I was showing him that drink wasn’t my real vice. It was supposed to convince him that I was a hard ass with business on my mind.

  “They tell me you can off somebody for me.”

  I gave him a bleak look and said, “If the money is right.”

  It had started the day before. I’d been sitting on my back steps and looking at all the bud sores, the ones that would be leaves when spring finally made up its mind to drop everything and come running.

  It was late afternoon and I was sipping a cup of hot coffee with a long pour of Calvados laced in it and Hump was in the bedroom talking nonsense to some trim who’d been warming his bed part of the winter. The part I’d heard led me to believe that the winter was over and he didn’t need the warmth anymore. It was a kind of spring cleaning. I could hear her claws loosening and he was saying something about how he and his friend, Hardman, had some business to transact and he’d call her later if it got taken care of in time. Hump could lie with the best of them. As far as business went, we were about as busy as a dead cat down a storm drain.

  The nonsense Hump was talking seemed private, so I’d taken my coffee and Calvados out back. I’d just been there long enough to warm the step when Art Maloney passed through the house. He stopped at the refrigerator long enough to grab the last beer. Now he stood on the top step and pulled the tab. He threw the tab as far as he could, almost to the stone wall that surrounds the terrace where I plant vegetables every spring or so.

  “Litter at your own house,” I said.

  “Screw you,” Art said. “A host is not supposed to talk to a guest like that. Read Emily Post sometimes.”

  “To hell with the old broad.” I moved over and made room for him on the step next to me. “You come here to talk about my manners or drink my last beer?”

  “The beer was an afterthought.”

  “What was the before-thought?”

  Art and I had known each other since the time we’d been on the Atlanta police force. The difference was that he’d stayed on and I’d moved out. Just ahead of them asking me to. Now he was a good cop and I was off somewhere in the shadowland, making more money than he was but not asking a lot of questions about where the money came from.

  “I need a favor from you,” Art said.

  “Tell me about it so that I can understand what I’m saying no to.”

  It took him time to get it all out. Between swigs from the beer can and a hesitation here and there, it went this way: an informer Art had a long rope on had passed word to him that there was a strange one moving around among the nightcrawlers. This guy was buying drinks and offering a finder’s fee. What he wanted was a pro who’d do a killing for him. He kept his cards in tight and he wouldn’t give out the name of the man he wanted wasted. That would be between him and the pro. The informer, seeing a chance to make a few points with Art, had strung the strange one along. There was a meet tonight. Either he had to furnish a pro or admit he couldn’t find one.

  “And the favor?” I’d waited him out and heard the line right above the bottom line.

  “You might pass,” Art said.

  “Pass for what?”

  “The pro.”

  “Not a fucking chance.” I stood up and sloshed the dregs out of my cup. “You know the drill on this. You get some out-of-town cop and he comes in and parades around in expensive threads and acts tough.”

  Art nodded. He knew the drill. “The problem is that I don’t have the time. I’ve got to set it up. I can’t take the chance that he’ll back off and take his business somewhere else. And he might just do that if I can’t furnish him a name and a description tonight.”

  “Why me?”

  “Two things,” Art said.

  Hump closed the back door behind him and stepped over us. He looked at the beer Art had propped on his knee. “So you’re the beer snatcher?”

  Art grinned and turned back to me. “You’re available. That’s one. The other bit is, even if you’re made, if somebody knows who you are, that you’re an ex-cop, it might still play because you’ve got a reputation like rancid salad oil.”

  Hump grinned at me, showing a lot of his own teeth. I got a bit of a burn and felt like telling him that if he’d been such a damned good pro defensive end, he’d have lost a few of those goddam sparklers.

  “You sure this is a friend of yours?” Hump asked me.

  “The yes just dropped fifty-two points.”

  Art looked at his watch. “I’ve got to know soon.”

  “Somebody waiting at a phone booth?”

  He nodded. “Got ten minutes.”

  “Why should I do this shit job?”

  Art didn’t smile. I thought he might, but he fooled me. “Because you owe me one. At least one.”

  “Tell me about it.”


  “Runt and the murder squad. The time in the mountains.”

  Hump shook his head at me. It wasn’t a no. It was more like sympathy for the fish that got caught. Hump said, “Must be something to drink in the house,” and stepped over us and went back in the house. Along with Art, Hump’s the only friend I’ve got. And there have been times when I’ve needed that big, black mean he carries around with him. For all that six-six or -seven and 270-or-so, he’s also a sensitive stud and he knows when the talk reaches a point when he shouldn’t be listening.

  “One thing I hate,” I said, “is a friend who keeps score.”

  That burned him a bit. The silence told me that. It hung out there like a frozen clothesline.

  “Sorry,” he said finally, “but it’s down to the short hairs.”

  “Make your call,” I said.

  He sat there for another five or six minutes, not saying anything. He wanted to say that he was sorry but he couldn’t, and finally he said, “Oh, shit!” and got up and went into the bedroom to make the call. I walked up the slope to the terrace. There was rot and the tree pruning that the winter had done. I’d have to clear it when I got the time. In my mind’s eye, I could see those rows and rows of Chinese cabbage my girl, Marcy, had talked me into planting the year before. But we’d never figured out what to do with it. Hump had suggested that we bale it up and leave it as Care packages in front of Chinese restaurants at 3 a.m. some morning.

  I was thinking about that and laughing to myself when I heard the backdoor slam and Art stood on the steps and waited for me to walk back down the slope toward him.

  You’d have thought the whole thing was laid on by the C.I.A., by God. The meet was set up for the next night at the Blue House Bar out on Ponce de Leon. It was set for eight and I got there at seven. There was a van with a TV camera in it parked out on the street. There was also a receiver and a tape deck in there. Art and I went inside and picked out a table against the wall. Art sat down across from me and palmed a bug and attached it to the bottom of the table. We talked a bit and he went out and talked to the technician for a time. When he returned, he said they were reading it pretty well but that I wasn’t to lean too far away from the table while I was getting the guy to spread it out for me. Before he left, Art cleared off the table and put a fresh ashtray on it, one without his filter tip butts in it, and said, “Good luck, Jim.”

  I looked over at the end of the bar. Hump was there. He’d offered to come along and back me in case it went bad. Now he was looking at me like he didn’t know me, like I was just some white-ass he’d like to kick butt on and I was trying to get comfortable with the iron that Art has passed me as a prop. It was a Colt Commander, the fancy version of the old .45 automatic. It was bulky and I was having trouble keeping my coat closed over it. I’d left the clip in, but I’d shucked the rounds out and wadded them in a Kleenex so they wouldn’t rattle around in my pocket. I had a slow beer and then a second one. I was looking at my empty glass when the man in the twill work clothes came in and stopped just inside the doorway. One look at me and I saw it register on his face. He’d matched me up against the description Art’s informer had given him. Something like: 43 or so but looks older, balding, a bit on the pudgy side, wearing a tan suit.

  It didn’t take him long to make up his mind. He walked straight over and acted like he knew me. I went along with that, and I let him buy me a drink when the scuffy waitress finally found us.

  He looked about my age, but he might have been a few years older. He’d kept himself up and his hair, a sort of reddish brown, was full and his teeth had been capped. His face had the long-jawed look that Republic Pictures used to like in their leading men back in the 1940’s.

  Without much small talk he got down to the business part of it.

  I’d said, “If the money is right.”

  “What do you call right?”

  “It’s a sliding scale,” I said. “A wino costs a hell of a lot less than a dude running for governor.”

  He shook his head. “It’s neither of those. I guess you could say it’s somewhere in the middle.”

  “Like what?”

  “A business executive. Not a big company. He might make the front page the first day. After that, page 16.”

  “Fifteen thousand,” I said, “and that’s a special rate because of the recession.”

  He nodded. “It hurt your business, too.”

  “It’s a joke,” I said, but I didn’t smile.

  “The price, it’s about what we expected.”

  I noticed the we. “Who’s the guy?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who’s going to be dogmeat?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “I’ve got to talk this over with somebody. I’ll get back to you.”

  “I want a name.” I made it rock hard, like it was standard.

  “I’ve got my instructions. And anyway, how the hell do I know you’re what you say you are?”

  I let the table top cover me while I got the Colt Commander out. I held it under the table, not pointed at him because there wasn’t any way he could tell if it was or it wasn’t. That was a precaution. I’d seen enough holes shot in the sky while changing guards in the army, when you’d cleared the .45 and passed it to the next guy and he snapped it dry and blew a hole in some cloud formation.

  I charged the Commander and looked across the table at him.

  “Listen close,” I said, “and name that sound.”

  The puzzled look on his face changed to fear when he heard the hammer fall, the dry snap. “What the … ?”

  “If we were playing cowboys and indians you’d be dead.”

  He leaned across the table and watched while I jammed the Commander into my waistband and closed my jacket over it. A twitch started just under his right eye. “You … you could have ….”

  “If I was doing it for real, you’d be gutshot.”

  “You must be some kind of fucking nut.”

  “No, all I want is a name.” I lifted the drink. It was bourbon and my hand shook, but he was so bewildered that if he noticed he’d have thought it was his head shaking. “I didn’t come here for a social. I came for business and you’re not the only one who’s deciding something. I get my say too, and to do that, I need a name.”

  “His name is Nathan Webster.”

  “What business?”

  “Real estate. Bambridge and Associates.” He gave me an address on Marietta Street. “That all you need?”

  “I’ll check him out.” I waited a beat. “I’ll need to know how to get in touch with you.”

  “Give me your number.”

  I shook my head. “Leave a message with the bartender here the next time you want to see me.”

  He nodded and stood up. “Check by tomorrow. I’ll know by then.”

  “Right.” I drank the rest of the bourbon and watched him walk out the door. As soon as he was out of sight Hump turned on his bar stool and started to move toward me. I shook my head at him and froze him in place.

  Five minutes later, Art came in and said, “He’s gone but we pinned a tail on him.” He reached under the table and pulled off the bug. “It came in loud and clear, especially the dry firing.”

  Hump moved over from the bar and towered over us. “What now?”

  “We find out who he is and who he’s working for.”

  I stood up and stretched. “Another meet necessary?”

  “Maybe,” Art said. “We need the other name out of him. Who the other part of the we is.”

  “Then what?” Hump asked.

  “Conspiracy to murder,” Art said. “That’s a no-no.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Marcy came by the house around ten. She’d been trying to reach me all evening. I didn’t see any reason to worry her so I said Hump and I had been cruising around town, having a few drinks and looking at the springtime girls. The talk about the drinks seemed to concern her more than the mention of the springtime girls. That was the way we were. Our relationship was at
that still, frozen point. Maybe if she’d been able to dredge up a few drops of jealousy it would have helped. No chance. She was that sure of me. The hard fact was that I was that sure of her too, though there’d been rumbles in the past about this man or that one. These phantom men made their appearances, it seemed, just about the time I’d turned down another position with some big security outfit, some 9-to-5 job with a fine future. The way Marcy talked about these phantoms, they were about half ambition and half great expectations. It was her way of telling me I didn’t have much of either.

  Still, the last time I’d counted, there’d been something on the fat side of twenty-five thousand in the shoebox in the back of my closet. In hundreds and fifties and twenties. That stack packed into a tight wad by the weight of the .38 Police Positive I kept there. It was unreported money, money that hadn’t seen a bank in a long time and probably never would. I figured that was a year’s supply, even with inflation. A year was a long time, and there was always the chance there’d be another shady job. Hump Evans and I were a pretty solid team. It would be the kind of job that no licensed P.I. would touch. Rank jobs that festered on the dark side of the moon.

  The only two P.I.’s I knew in town had taken the safe way out. One worked almost exclusively for the insurance companies. He spent his time sniffing around ashes and finding torches under every bed and the rubble of every company fire. The other one carried a fancy briefcase and did most of his work in South America, security for U.S. companies down there. It was steady work with all that terrorism and the kidnapping.

  Me? I’d never gone to the trouble of getting a license. I did favors. At least, I called them that every time I had a run-in with Art or one of the other cops. Hey, I’m not doing P.I. work without a license. I’m doing a favor for a friend. No harm in that.

  Oh, yeah?

  Marcy rattled the ice cubes in her glass. “How were the springtime girls, anyway?”

  “It’s too early to say. I’m not sure this was the first team.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t hedge. Have an opinion.”

  “I think,” I said, “that it is going to be a fine year for the rookies.”