The Deadly Cotton Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  “Damn you, Jim.” She got up and walked to the kitchen. The way she walked was like floating. I watched the hips and the shoulders. It was a body I knew pretty well, but I felt a twitch, an inner rumble, and I knew it sure as hell was spring. If all the birds and the animals suffered with it, I guess I could too.

  Marcy returned with a fresh drink. She leaned a shoulder against the door frame and crossed her legs at the knees. The light from the kitchen picked up the gold highlights in her blonde hair, and I could feel the skin on that slim and fine-boned body under my hands and under my body in my bed. But the slate gray eyes were hooded in the shadows and I couldn’t read anything in her face.

  “I guess I ought to expect it,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “The way it gets every spring. You, Huckleberry Hardman, and your good friend, Nigger Jim Evans, all ready to build a raft and float off somewhere.”

  I grinned at her. “It passes, given time. But you’d better be careful who you call Nigger Jim. I’m not sure Hump’s read the book.”

  A set of headlights brushed the front window. I put my drink down and went to the front door. I cut on the porch light and waited. Art Maloney walked into the light and up the front steps. I opened the door and waved him in. “A drink, Art?”

  “A beer if you’ve got one.”

  I left them in the living room and got a Bud from the case I’d picked up on the way back from the Blue House. When I returned, he and Marcy were talking some about his wife, Edna, and the kids. Art and Edna were special friends of Marcy’s. In the past they’d done their share of matchmaking with us. I felt that Art, a good Catholic, looked on the relationship Marcy and I had as a sinful one. I mean, it was all those pleasures without any of the responsibilities.

  I handed Art the bottle of Bud. “You out cadging beers?”

  Art got the message that I hadn’t told Marcy about the acting job I’d done earlier in the evening. “I need a few words with you, Jim.”

  That blew it. I could see the interest and the curiosity on Marcy’s face. I decided I might as well hang it all out and let Marcy sniff at it. “Go ahead. She’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

  “I took it to the captain, the tapes, the video, all that.”

  “And … ?”

  “I got a new lump kicked on my butt,” he said.

  “For which reason?”

  “For using you.”

  I nodded. I could understand that. I did have a reputation that was on the far side of rank.

  “He thinks we blew it. In a conspiracy trial we’d have to put you on the stand, and that would give some smart lawyer a field day on you.”

  “True enough.”

  “Even if the tapes were allowed in court, we’d need your half of it. And we need another meet. One where you dig out who this dude is running this errand for.”

  “The other part of the we?”

  “I’ve made my guess,” Art said. “And it’s big, rotten big.”

  “How big?” I’d watched Marcy from the moment we’d begun to talk. She’d taken a chair across from me, put her chin in her hand, and she was staring at me with fixed eyes.

  “The name Carter Williams mean anything to you?”

  “Henry’s boy?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Old Henry Williams had been a bit of a pirate in his time. He’d started with a dairy and a few wagons. By the time cars came along, by the time he’d had to move his dairy out beyond the city limits of Atlanta, Henry had shifted from milk and butter to real estate. He’d got a good jump on some of the slower developers. By 1965, the year old Henry died, he’d owned land worth on the other side of $100 million. After his death, it had been nasty. There’d been a squabble about the will. Henry’s son, Carter, and his daughter, Eve, took it all away from their mother. It had a sour taste to it, the trial where they’d proved that Mrs. Williams was senile and unable to handle the estate. About two years later, Carter and his sister sold it all for a bit better than market value.

  I’d seen pictures of him in the papers now and then. He was a heavy, brutish-looking man with a Neanderthal cast to his face. They always photographed him after he’d killed some animal or hooked some fish.

  “What’s the connection between Carter Williams and the guy I talked to at the Blue House?”

  “You know the Williams Farm?”

  I did. It wasn’t really a farm. It was like some feudal estate. The gardens were famous and I always felt, without being able to prove it, that there were a few slaves hidden off in some remote corner of it.

  “The one you talked to, Billy Ray Price, manages the farm for Carter Williams.”

  “Show me the connection between Carter Williams and the guy they wanted offed … the Webster man.”

  “I can’t. That’s tomorrow’s work.”

  “It’s all guessing games.” I drained my glass and carried it into the kitchen. I added a couple of ice cubes and a touch of J&B. I took my time and gave Art a couple of minutes to sip his beer and decide how he was going to handle me.

  He still hadn’t decided when I sat down next to him on the sofa. It was time to push it back at him. “So how come you’re knocking at my door this late at night?”

  “Even though I’ve blown it, I need that other meet with Billy Ray Price. I’ve got to get the rest of the story.”

  “You say you can’t take it to court with me as the main witness, so what’s the drill now?”

  “Purely preventative. We find out all we can and then we put it to Price. We scare the ass and the hide off him.”

  “Until he thinks better of it and goes back to farming?”

  “That’s it,” Art said.

  I sipped the J&B and scowled at him. “You’ve got a lot of balls, Art. I’m not good enough to carry this into court for you, but I’m good enough to shovel around in the shit for you. Why the hell should I? Give me a good reason.”

  “My ass is on the line with this one,” he said.

  “That’s your problem.” I didn’t feel like talking about it. “Call me in the morning. I’ll know something by then.”

  He left about half the beer. He found his own way out. After the door closed behind him, Marcy lifted her chin out of her hand and said, “You’re rough tonight, Jim.”

  “It was that kind of a day.”

  “And sensitive, too.”

  “I thought you liked sensitive men.”

  Marcy shook her head. It wasn’t a no, just an unwillingness to talk about it anymore.

  She stayed the night. I guess the spring had slipped up and kissed her on the neck, too.

  Art called late the next morning. I was seated at the kitchen table staring down at the packages of garden seeds Marcy had left spread out on the kitchen table. She’d gone while I was still asleep. Now the picture packages of summer squash, pole beans, radishes, corn and butter beans, all fanned out, looked like a nothing hand in a game of five card draw.

  “We’ve got the connection,” Art said. “Neighbors like to talk.”

  “It’s too early in the morning for guessing.”

  “A wife, that’s the tie-in. Nathan Webster’s got a wife who works for Carter Williams.”

  I said I’d thought Williams was out of business.

  “He is. This is something called the Henry R. Williams Foundation. It’s a tax dodge of sorts. A lot of money sitting around and a grant every now and then. Nothing like the big foundations.”

  “It’s paper thin,” I said.

  “Oh, hell, yes, but it’s all we’ve got. And you know as well as I do it’s usually the obvious one that nails it to the wall. People kill for love or money. Carter Williams must have half the money in Atlanta. That leaves love.”

  “You get a look at the lady yet? She might have a harelip.”

  “That’s the morning business,” Art said. He coughed. I knew he didn’t have a cold. “Jim, you going to the Blue House and check on messages?”

  I let him wait. For all
the talk the night before about thinking it over, the spring and Marcy had fogged my mind. I’d just let it drift about in the back of my mind. “This one time,” I said finally, “and now you owe me.”

  “When?”

  “Six or so,” I said.

  “Call me and let me know what the arrangements are.”

  “If there is a note.”

  “Of course.” He hung up. He was, I thought, about a breath away from a laugh.

  I went back into the kitchen and warmed up my cup of instant. I leaned on the table and stared down at the seed packages. Even considering them made me think of all the work it would take to clear the terrace garden plot. All the blisters and the sore back. I tossed the packages in a kitchen drawer and went looking for Hump.

  “Nobody can accuse you of being a fast learner,” Hump said.

  We had an early lunch at the 1776 on Luckie. On the way out the owner, Millie, reached out into the aisle and pinched my butt and asked where I’d been. I told her I’d been on the road doing time. The redhead waitress with the long legs stood at the bar counter and smiled like she knew it was a joke. Millie didn’t seem that sure.

  We spent the afternoon jumping from bar to bar. One drink here and a beer there. At five-thirty, I said it was time, and Hump drove me to the parking lot next to his apartment building. I got out next to my car and waited.

  “You want me to tag along?”

  “Now who’s the slow learner?”

  Hump grinned. “No red off my candy cane either way.” But he waited for my answer.

  I shook my head. “No reason for both of us to waste our time.”

  “Call me.”

  I said I would.

  The day bartender at the Blue House thought he was a hard ass. Maybe he’d bounced a 97 pound drunk once. He said, “This is a bar. The closest post office is down on Highland.”

  I waited. I sipped the watered-down scotch. It was either that or he had the fastest melting ice cubes in town.

  He weakened first. “What’s the name?”

  I took a long slow drink. It took me that long to remember the name I’d given Billy Ray Price. “Humphrey.”

  He reached behind the cash register and brought out a sealed envelope. He dropped it on top of the change from a ten. I decided there was a message in there somewhere. I put the envelope in my jacket pocket and pushed the five at him. He palmed it without even saying thank you.

  While he was at the other end of the bar, I tore off the end of the envelope and tapped out the note. It was brief, typed.

  Maybe we’ve got a deal. Meet me at the Regent’s Motel, room 17, at 8 tonight.

  I didn’t reach Art until 7:45. I’d left a flock of messages all over town and I’d about given up on him when Sam Najjar, the bartender at George’s Deli, answered the phone and waved a hand at me.

  “You’re a lot of help,” I said.

  “I didn’t plan on another killing this afternoon.” Art sounded short of breath, like he’d been climbing stairs.

  “Anybody we know?”

  “A small-time coke dealer.”

  I read him the note while I checked the time on my watch.

  “You’re going to be late,” Art said. “I need to put a bug on you.”

  “How long?”

  “It’ll take me time to get it together. It might be quarter of nine before you can make the meet.”

  “No way.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s already nervous. If I’m not there by five after eight he’ll check out on us.”

  “You think so?”

  “It’s my best guess,” I said.

  “How do you want to play it, Jim?”

  “I’m a ten minute drive away. I think I can make it by eight. Give me half an hour. If I’m not out by then you walk in and we lean on him from all directions.”

  “Without a warrant?”

  “Hell,” I said, “you knock on the door and I’ll invite you in.” I gave the watch another reading. “And I might even tell you some funny story about being offered a contract on somebody.”

  “All right.” He let out a long hiss of breath. “Eight-thirty.”

  I’d made the first mistake the day before. The second one was knocking on the door to room 17. The third one, after a wait, was trying the knob, finding it unlocked, and walking in.

  A billy or a blackjack came out of nowhere and landed across the bridge of my nose.

  I went down in a lump. If they hit me a second time, I didn’t feel it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything. Something heavy pressed down on my face and I could feel water running into my ears until they filled and overflowed. I thought, God, somebody is trying to drown me. I swung both hands and hit nothing but air. I flopped over and found I was on all fours. I stared down at a sopping wet bath towel with an uneven red sunburst design. While I watched, a few drops of blood fell onto the towel and, following the fibers, diluted until the spots were a pale pink.

  I shook my head and blood splattered in all directions. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the tips of a pair of black lowcut shoes. They shifted away when a few drops of blood landed on one of them.

  “Don’t bleed on my new shoes,” Art said.

  Somebody behind me caught me under the arms and pulled me to my feet. Someone else pushed a plastic form-fitting chair against the back of my legs. The knees buckled and I sat there and looked at Art. He looked fuzzy around the edges, but I could recognize the center, the eyes, the nose and the mouth that had Irish written all over them.

  “That’s some nose you’ve got there,” Art said.

  I lifted a hand and touched the bridge. The pain bounced off the back of my head like a handball. I heard water running in the bathroom and then footsteps and someone handed me another damp towel. It was a smaller one. It smelled clean so I bit into it and got some moisture running down my throat. The water tasted burnt and clean at the same time.

  “Tell me about it, Jim.”

  I blinked at him. “About what?”

  Art shifted in his chair and dipped his head in the direction of the main part of the motel room. My neck was stiff. I had to turn my whole body to look in that direction. All I could see was the polished boots and the legs and the knees in the tan twill trousers. The rest of him was blocked by the plastic-looking footboard of the bed.

  “Who?”

  “Billy Ray Price.”

  “How?”

  “Take a look.”

  I started to shake my head and thought better of it. “Not unless you bring him over here.”

  Art pushed up from the chair and walked over to the bed. He looked down and then turned and stood in front of me. “Maybe I ought to say we think it’s Price. He’s got a head like chopped souse meat. Before it’s packed in a loaf pan.”

  “Good country metaphor,” I said. I was coming out of it and I could hear heavy breathing, like a dog in hot weather. It was a few seconds before I realized that it was my own breathing I heard. I was aspirating, my nose blocked, and I had a feeling that each eye was trying to look around an opposite side of a mountain. “First thing you know, you’ll be talking like a real cracker.”

  I laughed. There was the sound like something tearing, the sound you hear when you bite into a piece of gristle, and I looked down and saw blood covering the front of my shirt. I choked and said, “God damn,” and I started to fall forward. Someone caught me from behind, at the shoulders, and Art leaned forward and pushed at my chest. I said to hell with it and I was choking, spitting out blood, and the last thing I saw was Art’s hands, bloody to the wrists.

  I spent three days at Georgia Baptist.

  The first day, they were messing with my nose and pouring blood into me as fast as it poured out. I lost a couple of units of blood the first night. It was twilight time and I kept moving in and out of the real world. I remember seeing Marcy a time or two, and one time Art leaned over the bed and said, “How you feeling?
” and I told him where to stuff all that sympathy.

  On the second day, I was awake when Hump walked in and lowered himself into the chair next to the hospital bed. He lifted his right arm and showed me a square of gauze taped to the big vein inside his elbow.

  “You just missed out,” he said. “Wrong blood type, or you’d be growing half moons on your fingernails.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “That was the choice. My blood or cop blood.”

  I blinked at him.

  “Art sent over about half a duty shift.”

  “It must have been a direct order.” The way they felt about me over there, it had to be.

  “Didn’t ask.”

  I looked at the window ledge. For the first time I realized there was a blue vase there full of tiger lilies. “You send those?”

  “Me?” Hump hooted.

  A pretty black nurse squeaked her way into the room and shook her head at Hump. “Don’t excite him,” she said.

  “This honk? He ain’t nothing to me.” Hump eased his way out of the chair and looked down at her. “I’m just leaving. Maybe you could show me where the door is.” He followed her out, hesitating just long enough to wave. Before the door closed behind them, I could hear him begin some candy nonsense. “Now look here, black beauty …”

  “Edna sent the flowers,” Art said. “They came out of the back yard.”

  I opened one eye and looked at him. “If they last another day or two you can ship them to the funeral.”

  “Quit whining. The doctor says you can go home tomorrow.” Art placed a Samsonite briefcase on the bed. He was about to flip the locks when a nurse waddled in and looked at him. Art said, “Police business. I don’t want to be interrupted.”

  The nurse said, “Yes, sir,” and went away and closed the door behind her. For all I knew, she even put up a sign.

  Art opened the briefcase and unpacked a portable tape recorder. When he had that set up, he reached into the briefcase again and brought out a large can of Bud. He popped the tab and tossed the tab in the briefcase. “Good for you as spinach.”

  “Thanks.” I had a sip.