The Deadly Cotton Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  “They give you their name?”

  He shook his head. “We’ve got a Dope Hotline here. People don’t have to give their names to report a crime.”

  “Easy on them,” I said. “What now?”

  “We go down to the station and you talk to the chief.”

  “You mean you’re not the chief?”

  Hump laughed.

  “Act any way you want to with me,” the young cop said, “but you’ll watch your mouth with Turk Edwards. He don’t take shit off anybody.” The way he said it had pride and awe all tied up together.

  The name rang a bell somewhere. I couldn’t place it. Across the table from me, Hump smiled and lowered an eyelid at me. I don’t know what he meant.

  “Let’s go talk to the chief,” Hump said. He was still smiling when he tipped back his bottle and drained it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The police station had the minimum furniture. Two desks behind a waist-high counter. The walls were bathroom green and there was the fresh smell of the paint. It was spring cleaning or some sprucing up for the festival.

  Hump and I got edged in until we faced the counter. The quiet young cop stood gun on us, the heel of his right hand lightly on the top of the butt of his holstered gun. The other one danced around the end of the counter. “Chief, we’ve got them.”

  No answer. I could hear water running past the partly open door straight ahead.

  Acne chin took in a deep breath and yelled, “Chief!”

  The water stopped. The man who came through the door was probably forty or forty-one. He was five-eleven or so, broad in the shoulders and a little bowlegged. His tanned face had sun squint wrinkles in it. He wore the tan uniform pants and a short sleeve white shirt with his badge pinned on it.

  “What you yelling about, Ed?”

  “We picked up these two at Thelma’s.”

  “The drug tip?” The chief hadn’t looked at us. He was drying his face with three or four paper towels.

  “Dead right.”

  I smiled to myself. I guess that was the way he thought cops talked. I looked over my right shoulder at Hump. He had about the biggest bird-eating grin I’d ever seen on anybody’s face.

  “You search the car yet, Ed?”

  “Not yet, Chief.”

  “Get to it then.” The chief turned and dropped the wad of paper towels in a trash can beside the office door.

  “It’s still …” Ed mumbled.

  “What?”

  “It’s still out at Thelma’s.”

  “Go get it, you dumbass. What kind of police work … ?” The chief lifted his head and looked at us for the first time. Maybe not looking at us was part of his act, letting us know that we didn’t matter one bit to him. One look at Hump and I saw his mouth drop open a couple of inches, and I saw the amazement and the recognition.

  “Hump, you son of a bitch, is that you?”

  “In the black flesh,” Hump said. “If I’d known you were chief here, Turk, I’d have got arrested sooner.”

  The chief started past the young cop. His hand was out. The young cop couldn’t take the surprise. He said, “You know this nig, Turk?”

  It was so fast I’m not even sure I saw the blur of Turk’s hand. He hit the young cop with an open hand. It sounded like a closeup thunderclap. Ed’s head flew back and his cap skidded across the floor and didn’t stop until it reached the wall.

  Turk grabbed him by the shirt front. “Ed, I don’t know if you’re going to make it in police work, boy.”

  “But …”

  “You’re going to be working in Allgood’s garage again next week if you don’t grow some manners. You know who you just arrested?”

  “The tip said …”

  “You arrested my friend, Hump. Why, we played ball together at Cleveland.”

  “The tip we got …”

  Turk shoved him away. “You selling dope now, Hump?”

  “Came to hear the music,” Hump said. “I’m not selling anything on this trip.”

  “Your friend there?”

  “He’s clean.”

  “You hear that?” Turk yelled at the two young cops. “If you heard that, then you get your asses out there and arrest me some real dope dealers.”

  The two cops sprinted for the outside door. Turk watched them go. He walked over and picked up Ed’s cap. “Help ain’t what it used to be.”

  “I read that somewhere,” Hump said.

  Turk dropped the cap on the nearest desk and they shook hands. As soon as Hump got his hand free, he waved it at me. Turk repeated my name to himself a couple of times so he’d remember it. I could see his lips move.

  It was coming back to me. Turk Edwards did mean something to me, after all. He’d been a hell of a free safety in his time. He’d played for two or three teams, but he’d finished up at Cleveland.

  “How do you like our town?” Turk asked.

  “A lot of charm,” I said.

  “You know there’s no drinking here in town?”

  “That’s why we were out at Thelma’s,” Hump said.

  “Come on back to my office.” Turk led the way. There was a new metal cooler on the battered desk. Turk flipped open the top and pulled out three Stroh’s. “Confiscated this off some long hairs over at the square. Those boys were dumb careless.” He closed the top and ran his hand over the finish. “I’ve got a feeling this is going to come in handy on fishing trips this spring.”

  I found myself a seat and settled down with the Stroh’s. It was old home week and I sat off at the edges of it and listened to them run through the when-is-the-last-time-you-saw routines. It was ten minutes by the clock over the desk before they ran out of names. I had a feeling it might have lasted longer, but neither Turk nor Hump seemed to have kept up with their old teammates.

  Turk dropped his empty in a trash can behind the desk. While he popped the top on another he said, “I see you’re still hanging around the wrong kinds of places, Hump.”

  “Smelled the beer,” Hump said.

  “That all you smelled out there?”

  The grin just this side of a leer told me all I needed to know. “The motel?”

  “If you want to call it that.” Turk laughed. “Well, these farm boys have to learn about women somewhere. At that, it’s still nothing like Atlanta. The last thing I heard there must be two or three thousand of those lost women walking up and down Peachtree.”

  “My girl won’t let me do a head count,” I said.

  Turk looked at me with some new interest. “You made the place right away, huh?”

  “Jim used to be with the Atlanta police,” Hump said.

  “That right? What tipped you?”

  “I met the manager.”

  “Emma? A bottle blonde with a shape like a trash bag?”

  I nodded.

  “Manager is a kind way to talk about her.”

  “The town winks at it?”

  “The chief before me … Handy Spence … he said he thought it kept rapes down. And it gave work to girls too lazy to work in the dime store or the supermarket.”

  “Ahead of his time,” I said. I dropped an empty and got myself another Stroh’s. “You’ve been chief how long?”

  “A bit more than three years.”

  “Then you didn’t know Ellen Carver?” It wasn’t the right way to throw that in. Maybe there wasn’t a right way.

  Turk placed his beer bottle on the desk and pushed back his chair. He went into the bathroom and wet a couple of paper towels. When he returned to the office, he was wiping his face and arms.

  “Next year I’m going to be air-conditioned if I have to send those two idiots down to the Morse Appliance Store and break and enter.” He wadded the paper towels and tossed them in the trash can. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and tipped his head toward Hump. “You sure this is a friend of yours?”

  “He’s straight with me,” Hump said.

  “He’s about to get crooked with me,” Turk said.

 
“I’d be sorry about that.”

  “You ought to be.” He jerked his right thumb from his belt. He lifted his Stroh’s. The look on his face said that it didn’t taste right anymore. “Jim Hardman, that right?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “Show me your license,” Turk said.

  “A P.I. license? I don’t have one.”

  Turk turned and walked to the window. He stood there for a long time. It was so still I could hear the string instruments from the bands playing on the square. “You’re missing some good bluegrass tonight.”

  I waited.

  “But you didn’t come for that, did you?”

  “I could stand a couple of hours of it,” I said.

  He whirled and moved to the desk. “Every time I think this thing is buried, another one of your kind starts trying to dig it up again.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “The hell you’re not. Let me tell you something. Nobody blows smoke up my ass. Nobody.” He waved his beer at Hump. “You tell him.”

  “Not in the old days,” Hump said.

  “And not today either,” Turk said. “You traced it this far. That’s one step past anybody else. You must be good at it.”

  “I put in my time,” I said. The fog was blowing in. It didn’t make one bit of sense. He talked like I knew something that I didn’t, and I knew if I admitted that, I’d never find out what it was. The well would dry up damned fast. Or, as they used to say in con circles, the pump handle would pull out. “Tell me about her, Chief.”

  “Not on your fat ass, Charley.”

  “Then I’l1 tell you what I know. I think she’s in town.”

  “She wouldn’t come back here. She knows better.”

  “It’s a good time for it,” I said. “You’ve got forty or fifty thousand strangers in town for the festival. What’s one more strange face?”

  “Slow it down,” Hump said. “This is flying past me too fast.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You’ve been in town how long?”

  “Since this afternoon,” Hump said.

  “And right away you’re camped out in front of the motel? Don’t try to shit me, Hump.”

  Slow, slow, all those brain cells dying every year. It took me longer than it should have. “She worked there?”

  “Seven or eight years ago. She was still in her teens. Eighteen or so.”

  “Ellen Carver was hooking?”

  “It wasn’t Carver then. That was later. It was Abse then.”

  “A local girl?”

  “From outside of town, between here and Corkville.”

  “Ellen Abse.” I tried out the name.

  “It was Cora Abse when she worked the flatback trade,” Turk said.

  “And what happened?”

  Turk laughed. Spit flew across the desk. “You tell this buddy of yours, Hump, that I’ve spent time in the city. This dumb act won’t get him a nickel’s worth of anything from me.”

  I spread my hands in a gesture of apology. “I had to try it.”

  “And you got what it was worth.”

  “Seems so.”

  He was running in circles too. He came back and faced it finally. “You say you think she’s in town?”

  “I had a feeling she was headed this way.”

  “Just a feeling?”

  “More than that.”

  “You said you talked to Emma at the motel?”

  I nodded.

  “You asked about Ellen Carver?”

  “I asked.”

  “That explains the call to the Dope Hotline.” He grinned at me. “This the way you people do police work in Atlanta?”

  “When we don’t know enough to do it any other way.”

  “Funny thing.” He said it slow, musing. There was a coat rack in the back corner of the office. He got his uniform jacket and hooked a finger in the neck and slung it over his shoulder. “You asked Emma about Ellen Carver. She puts my boys on you. Wonder why she’s freaking out like that. It’s not like her.”

  I stood up and tossed back the last of my Stroh’s.

  “You boys enjoy the festival.” Turk reached the doorway.

  “Wait a minute.”

  He turned and put a hand on the door frame. “Yeah?”

  “My car’s out at Thelma’s.”

  “And you want a ride?”

  “Your boys brought us in. It just seems fair.”

  After a long hesitation, he nodded. He drove us out the river road to Thelma’s. He didn’t say a word the whole time.

  Turk stopped the police car in front of Thelma’s. Hump slid out and held the door open for me. I moved in that direction before Turk touched my arm and turned me back toward him. “You two owe me a beer. I’ll be in to collect it in a minute or two.”

  “After you talk to Emma?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stepped out. “Glad to buy you the beer.”

  “And you owe me some truth.”

  “That might be harder to get.” I closed the door.

  He threw rocks and dust going around the side of the beer joint. At the front door, I thought better of it and told Hump to go in and order us a beer. I headed for the motel at a fast walk. I reached it just as the door to the office closed behind him. I edged over to the window part of the door and looked in. He was leaning with his arms straight on the counter. Emma, dressed in a pink terrycloth robe, was behind the counter. Turk said something I didn’t hear. She shook her head. He repeated it. She shook her head once more. His right hand moved about four inches. It hit her flush on the side of the jaw. She fell back, out of sight behind the counter. He pressed his stomach against the counter and leaned over it. He said something. It was about half a minute before she pulled herself up. She braced herself against the counter. She was shaking her head, like she was trying to get the cobwebs out of it.

  He asked his question again. This time she answered him. It was one of those times when I wished I could read lips.

  I turned away and headed for the beer bar. I was about halfway there when I heard him coming up behind me. He moved pretty fast.

  “Hear enough, Hardman?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  He caught my elbow and turned me. “You boys from the big city have bad habits.”

  “That might be, but I gave up slapping women years go.”

  “She was wasting my time. She wanted me to stand around asking that question all night.”

  “And you got your answer?”

  “I got it,” he said. He released my arm and moved up level with me. “Now I’m ready for that beer you owe me.”

  “I was right?”

  “She was here. Stayed one night and left this morning.”

  “Going where?”

  “Emma didn’t know.”

  “Why was she here?”

  “Emma didn’t know that either.”

  We reached the side door. “Emma doesn’t seem to know very much.”

  “It was the truth,” Turk said.

  “You sure?”

  He nodded. “She was scared enough to tell me.”

  “Unless she’s more afraid of somebody else.”

  Over beers in Thelma’s, I asked when Emma had said Ellen Carver had left.

  “Eight-thirty or nine this morning. Is that important?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You sure do have a talent for walking around a question.” Turk narrowed his eyes and faced Hump. “You used to talk straight back some years ago.”

  Hump shook his head. “I’ve had special training since then.”

  “In lying?”

  “In close-mouth.”

  “It’s the same thing.” He turned on me. “I’d like to know who you’re working for.”

  “Ourselves. I like girls.”

  “Some years back I might have believed you. Words I hear lead me to believe Cora was the best in the state at
a couple of those bedroom games and that’s from some people who have made a statewide study of it.” Turk waved his empty at the counterman who sprinted over to the table with three more Buds. “You’re from Atlanta so I’m going to guess that you’re working for somebody there. And that thought confuses me. As far as I know, nobody involved with this royal fuckup lives in Atlanta. And that makes me believe that this animal has grown a few more legs.”

  “I’ll tell you who I’m working for if you’ll tell me what it’s about.”

  “You never stop trying.” He shook his head.

  “It’s a fair deal.” I reached into my coat pocket and tore out a couple of deposit slips from the back of my checkbook. I placed one slip in front of Turk and kept one for myself. “This is the deal. I’ll write down my interest in the girl and you write down what the big secret is.”

  “This some trick?”

  “No.”

  “Your friend honest, Hump?”

  “He pays what he owes,” Hump said.

  I thought I deserved a reference too. “How about Turk?”

  “He says he’ll do something, he’ll do it.”

  I shielded the deposit slip with one hand while I wrote Her husband is looking for her. I folded it once and waited. Across the table from me, Turk had watched the movement of my pen. Now he leaned over his slip and wrote what looked like two or three words.

  “No trick?”

  “No trick,” I said.

  We passed the slips across the table top. I opened the one that Turk had written on. It was lean to the bone and it didn’t mean a thing to me.

  The Parker murder. That and nothing else.

  Turk read my note a time or two. “She’s married?”

  I didn’t answer. He turned to Hump. Hump nodded.

  “You didn’t give me her married name.”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal.” I pushed back my chair and stood up. I lifted my almost full bottle of Bud.

  “Can’t say I wasn’t warned.” He refolded the deposit slip and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

  “You think we’ll be arrested on the road for drinking?”

  “Doubt it. I know my boys, they’re down at the square chasing some hippie girls.”

  “If they catch any,” I said, “make them take their shots on Monday.”

  We left him hunched over the table. It was cloudy and there was a light misting of rain on the windshield as we drove back toward town.