The Deadly Cotton Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  “Nathan, what is it this time of night?”

  Her voice had the same accent, the same inflections. I stood up and faced her.

  “Mother, this is Mr. James Hardman. He’s been doing some work for me.” Then to me: “Mother’s just arrived from Charlottesville for a visit.”

  Mrs. Webster drew her robe together with thin, chalk-white hands. “You appear to work strange hours, Mr. Hardman.”

  “At times it’s not the kind of work I like,” I said.

  “I don’t understand what kind of work you could be doing for Nathan.” As she spoke, she moved across the living room. Her walk was erect, an effortless glide. She’d learned posture and walking in a good school.

  I waited until she was seated next to Nathan. Then I could sit down too.

  “Is it about Ellen?”

  “Mother …” He wanted to protest, but he really couldn’t.

  I said that it was. Briefly, with lean words and no coloring, I told them about finding Ellen Webster’s body in Smythtown. I said that they’d probably be hearing from the Tennessee police in the morning, and I hadn’t wanted them to get the word that way, without any warning.

  I stood up. “I won’t stay any longer.”

  Mrs. Webster thanked me. I was watching his face. At the end of it, his face looked like a picture puzzle with several pieces missing. I said good night and went to the door. Before I opened the door, I looked back at them. Mrs. Webster had an arm around his shoulders, and she’d pressed his head down into her flat breasts.

  The last image I had, before I pulled the door open and stepped outside, was of her face. It showed a fierce and angry tenderness.

  I carried that look with me down the dark streets, the car window down and the wind blowing in my face. It was still there over a drink at my house before Hump left to drive home. All right, her face said, I may have won by default, but I won.

  There was a note on my pillow. It was from Marcy. When you get through (tired of?) playing Philip Marlowe, call me.

  It was my morning coffee, but it was two in the afternoon before I made it and carried the cup up the slope to the terrace garden. Chin on the wall, eyes on the ground level, I could see tiny cracks in the earth, places where the dirt was being pushed up and away. The garden was coming up after all. It was the only good news of the week.

  Art and Hump arrived about the same time. They came around the side of the house together in a mock argument about Henry Aaron. Art took the redneck position of some of the Atlanta fans that Henry couldn’t hit his weight, and Hump was pretending that he took the statement seriously and he told Art that Henry had slimmed down since he’d moved to Milwaukee.

  Art leaned a hip against the wall and said, “I tried to call you but you didn’t answer.”

  “It’s too damned much trouble,” I said.

  Art raised an eyebrow at Hump. “Your man’s in a bad mood today.”

  “Getting old,” Hump said. “Not only can’t cut the mustard but can’t find the jar.”

  “Too much Tennessee last week,” I said.

  “I talked to Vincent, the guy from T.B.I.,” Art said. “He’s impressed with you.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Hell, you might get a job offer.”

  “That’ll get about as far as the references.”

  “Well, one thing tells you something. They let you out of Tennessee.” He nodded at Hump. “Hump was too smart to make the trip.”

  I blinked at him.

  “They had you right there where they didn’t need extradition. Could have tossed your butt in the slammer.”

  That was true.

  “I’ll write you a glowing reference.” Art tipped his head at Hump. “Hump will, too.”

  “That’s right, boss.”

  “We might need a job.” I took a last look at the garden. All it needed now was a light rain or two. I started for the back steps.

  “This favor finished?”

  “Looks like it, Art.”

  “Done in Tennessee?”

  “I think so.”

  They followed me into the kitchen. I added fresh tap water to the kettle and lit the gas burner. “The bad news is that I can’t draw unemployment.”

  Art got down a cup and placed it next to mine. “Ellen Webster’s death, that might have put a stopper on both cases, the conspiracy to murder here and the Parker murder in Tennessee. That seem odd to you?”

  “The whole damned affair gets odder and odder.” I rinsed my cup and added instant coffee to mine and to Art’s. Hump shook his head and got a Bud from the refrigerator. “You’re up early again, Art. Your hours get changed?”

  “I woke up with this feeling.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Hump turned a chair and straddled it, his elbows on the back arch of it. He looked sleepy but he was alert, listening.

  “I said to myself, now Jim might think he’s done with this job. But I know that ugly old mind of his, the way it works. He’s been setting himself problems and trying to forget about them and waiting to see what floats up.”

  “That’s about half right.” The kettle began its rumble boil. I made the coffee and put a cup in front of Art. “I’ve been trying to empty it out, but it won’t go away. Hell, I never was in this. By the time Hump and I had our first solid lead, the one that took us to Smythtown, Ellen Webster was about one step away from being dead. For all I know, she might have been dead. Well, I found her in a clay hole and it ought to be done.”

  “But you’re not satisfied?”

  “Not by half,” I said.

  “And you’re still chasing it?”

  “Like a kitten after its tail.”

  “Let’s do an if,” Hump said. “If we were still in it, what would be the next move?”

  “Easy.” I had a taste of the coffee and realized that I hadn’t put in any sugar. “No, deciding would be easy. Doing it would be hard.” I used Art’s spoon and stirred in a couple of pinches of sugar.

  “I like this hair-splitting,” Art said.

  “It builds the suspense,” Hump said.

  “The only tie we’ve got is Emma Terry, also known as … any damned name she wants to call herself. The way I see it, she drove the VW to Atlanta. That was part of the cover-up, a kind of misdirection play. If anybody was looking for Ellen Webster the road starts here, not in Smythtown.”

  Art nodded. “I heard you sell that to the T.B.I. men.”

  “It’s one chance in a hundred that Emma Terry is still in Atlanta. If she’s got any sense. It’s too hot back in Tennessee.”

  “Maybe,” Art said. “And that’s a big maybe.”

  “The question is, what does an unemployed, has-been, fat and forty ex-madam do with herself in Atlanta?”

  “That sounds like a Waylon Jennings song title,” Hump said.

  “Could she trick?”

  “For the guys at the old folks home.”

  The chair back creaked under Hump’s weight as he stood up. “Let me make a phone call.”

  It was fifteen minutes and Lord knows how many phone calls before Hump returned. He dropped his empty in the trash can and nodded. “They call it the Rodeo Circuit. That means barebacked riders for all occasions. Atlanta’s the hub. Trains, planes and buses leaving every few days in all directions. New girls for old, a straight trade.”

  “What area?”

  “The way I hear it, it’s South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. Met this girl once who was just back from Knoxville. She stopped over a few days before she headed for Jacksonville.”

  “Vice might know something,” Art said.

  “Just talked to this old hooker with bad feet.” He looked at me. “I said we’d drop off fifty on her later today.”

  “Fine.”

  “The word she sold me is that it’s a big organization, and that most of the recruiting and the booking goes through a dummy talent agency way out Peachtree almost to Buckhead.”

  “It got a name?”


  “Models and Talent, Inc.”

  I found the phone book under the bed, blew the worst of the dust cotton candy off it and carried it into the kitchen. I found the listing, ran a crease under it with a fingernail and turned the book toward Art. He copied down the address and said, “I’ll check this with John Hedge over at Vice.”

  After he left for the bedroom, I grinned at Hump. “I didn’t know you knew any old hookers.”

  “They’re the only nice ones,” he said. “The greed’s burned out of them.”

  “I’m a respectable businessman.” Arnold Keppler waved a pudgy hand toward the two framed certificates on the wall next to the door. One was the business’ membership in the Chamber of Commerce. The other noted that his agency was a member in good standing of the Federation of Atlanta Businessmen.

  We were in the inner office. A mousy girl with a body like a four-by-four, no lumps, no ridges and no bulges, had wanted to stop us at the reception desk. John Hedge, a dapper little man who looked like he ought to be wearing elevator shoes, flipped his ID at her and told her it was police business. That got us past the desk at a fast walk.

  “And this is a legitimate business,” Keppler said with a dramatic flair. He slapped a palm on the center of his desk. “And, perhaps I shouldn’t say this, my taxes pay your salary.”

  “Some of what I hear is not good,” John Hedge said. He took his time looking at his note book. The hesitation might not have been for affect. The lighting was so dim he might have had trouble reading his notes.

  Arnold Keppler fitted the seedy grandeur of the office. The furniture gave me the feeling that it had been repossessed from the offices of some con man who’d tried to set himself up as an Atlanta film producer. Now, his point made, Keppler sat back in his high-backed leather chair. He blinked at John Hedge. While he’d been standing, I’d seen the badges of the Atlanta businessman, the white belt and the white shoes. His face was going to jowls and his dark brown hair looked like it might be a wig. I was waiting for a look at his neck so I could be sure about the wig.

  “You know a Linda Ross, a Betty Carpenter, a Jenny Burk?”

  “Should I?” Keppler said.

  “They say you tried to recruit them,” Hedge said.

  “For what?”

  “As hookers,” Hedge said. “To go out on your Rodeo Circuit.”

  I saw Keppler’s mouth tighten. I edged toward Hump, who was thumbing through a model and actor’s book put out by one of the legit agencies. Hump lifted his head and winked at me.

  “That’s absurd,” Keppler said. He’d been hit hard. I could hear the wind leaking out of him.

  “I’ve got statements from them,” Hedge said. He looked over his shoulder at Art.

  Art stepped close to the desk, until his legs were braced against the front edge of it. “We’re looking for a woman who might be in Atlanta. She goes by the name of Emma Terry, Betty Franklin, Betsy Franks and any number of other names.”

  They hadn’t hit him hard enough. I could feel the control coming back. “What do you want this girl for?”

  “She hasn’t been a girl for a long time,” Art said. “She’s forty or a bit better than that.”

  “Then, of course, she is not the kind of model I’d use,” Keppler said.

  “She’s more the management type,” Art said. “A madam.”

  “A foreign lady?”

  Hump hooted at him. At the sound, Keppler turned in his chair and looked at the two of us. “Are you police officers, also?”

  “I’m Jim Hardman.”

  Hump closed the book with a smack and gave him a little bow. “Hump Evans.”

  I watched him write our names on a pad.

  Art pushed at him. “Do you know this woman?”

  Keppler didn’t answer. He pushed the button on his intercom and said, “Miss Tarver, would you place a call to Richard Wyler of Didler, Bacon and Wyler? You’ll find it listed under law firms.” He flipped the intercom button and lifted a bland, assured face toward John Hedge. “I assume if you had a warrant that you would have served it by now.”

  “That’s right,” Hedge said.

  “Can I also assume that if you had more proof than the word of these three women, you’d have brought a warrant with you?”

  John Hedge did a slow, easy turn and looked at Art. The look said, what the hell did you get me into, anyway?

  The intercom buzzed. Keppler leaned forward. “Yes, Miss Tarver?”

  “Mr. Wyler is in conference. His secretary wants to know if he can return your call in twenty minutes.”

  “Tell his secretary to tell Mr. Wyler that the police are in my office right now, making wild accusations about my business.”

  “Yes, Mr. Keppler.”

  Arnold Keppler leaned back in his red leather chair. His face said, it’s your move now.

  Hedge closed his note book. “That may not be a wise move. We’re only asking questions now. Next time, it might not be questions. Think about this, Keppler.” He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. “How’d you like it if every woman who came out of your office was stopped and questioned? How’d you like a patrol car parked out there on the curb all day?” He lowered his head and opened his eyes. “That’s not a threat. It’s a possibility.” He smiled. “I saw it in the movies once.”

  Keppler had started it with the call to his lawyer, and maybe he wanted to stop it now, but he didn’t know how to back away. “Is that all?”

  “All for now,” Hedge said. “You think about it.”

  Art and John Hedge left together. I heard Art say something to the secretary in the outer office. Hump was watching me. He wanted to know if I wanted him to do one of his wild black man acts. I shook my head at him and tilted my head toward the door. He went out and, as an after-thought, pulled the door closed behind him.

  Keppler stared at the pad where he’d written our names. “Yes, Mr. Hardman?”

  “Just between us?”

  “I don’t know exactly what that means,” he said.

  “Some advice. Good advice. This is a rank business we’re talking about. Two or three killings we know about, and the woman, Emma Terry, is right in the middle of it. You protect her and all this other crap is going to fall all over you. Crap that has nothing to do with you.” I leaned over the desk, turned the pad that had my name written on it, and wrote down my phone number in inch high numbers. “You’d better believe me, Keppler. This flesh business is something we don’t care about. Couldn’t care less. So you play this right and you won’t be whipsawed.”

  He’d listened. He tapped the pad with my phone number on it. “What’s this for?”

  “Have her call me.”

  On the way through the outer office I heard him on the intercom. “Miss Tarver, cancel that call to Richard Wyler.”

  Out on the street Hump leaned against the building front and stared at a couple of spring girls who’d taken off their sweaters and discovered they hadn’t been wearing bras all winter. I stopped next to him and said, “That’s third string.”

  “Coach your own team,” he said.

  I laughed at him and drifted down the street to where Art and John Hedge were. Art, patient and waiting his time, was getting it blown out at him. Hedge said, “… doing their dumbass work for them and …”

  “Come on, Johnny,” Art said. “The Rodeo Circuit talk melted his glue. The rest of it was bluff.”

  “Easy for you to feel that way. Somebody’s going to ask me why I walked right into that office and laid out all I knew … without really knowing anything. And that call to his lawyer is going to bump all the way down to me in no time at all.”

  I leaned in. Hedge did a two-step away and braced his butt against the hood of his car. I ought to be used to it by now, the reactions I get from cops. Not wanting to be too close to me and not sure how they’re supposed to act around me. “Keppler cancelled the call to the lawyer. I’ll book you twenty that you won’t hear from it.”

  “On my pa
y?” But you could feel him stop sweating.

  “Two to one?”

  “Tell me something,” Hedge said. “I don’t know how it is out in the real world. What did we get done up there?”

  “We passed the word,” I said. “And we spoke with a forked tongue. One fork said we wanted to talk to Emma Terry. The other fork said we thought it was not nice for him to be nice to her right now.”

  “All that?”

  “All that.”

  Art clapped Hedge on the shoulder. “Jim learned it in an Arco book.”

  “There’ll be a fugitive warrant on the Terry woman in a day or two,” Art said. He was driving us from Buckhead to my place. We were going against the afternoon traffic heading away from the center of town. “That would put the F.B.I. in it.”

  “We can’t wait for that.”

  Art took a left past White Columns to get us out of the traffic. “That wasn’t a nice thing we did to Hedge.”

  “A favor for a favor. He didn’t get hurt.”

  Not much more talk. Each of us pulling inward, drawing in tight. Down long, tree-lined streets, past the Ansley Country Club and the golf course. Lulled by all that green.

  Art pulled up in front of my house. From the car I could look at the lawn and see the bare spots, patches where it needed re-seeding. Fat chance. Only if the neighbors came by and did it one afternoon while I was out.

  Art said he’d try to put some people on checking the hotels. On short notice, Emma Terry might have to use one of the names she’d used in the past. Until she had time to establish a new identity.

  “You?” Art said as I got out.

  “If we punched the right button I ought to be getting a phone call.”

  “You, Hump?”

  “He’s with me,” I said.

  I left Hump with the phone and drove to Peeples Liquor Store. I loaded two cases of Bud into the back seat and walked around the wine section until I found a bottle of a Macon Blanc that had a label I could read. Fred Peeples had the tab figured and I counted it out while he bagged the wine. Along with the change, he passed me a sealed envelope.