The Deadly Cotton Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  “Checking out at noon. I think they’re having breakfast somewhere right now.” Art opened his note pad. “It’s a blue 1975 Montego, probably rented.” He read off the tag numbers. He placed the open pad on his leg. “I guess we wait.”

  “Go on with the fairy tale,” Barstow said.

  “I think the word got to Lippmann in prison. Cora was living it up too well. You know how this works. He sends somebody around to see her, and that somebody offers to break both her arms and legs and probably does put a lump or two on her head. By then the ex-football player is gone. He can’t protect her, and she is mad with Lippmann, and after the shoplifting bust she decides to break Lippmann’s balls for good. From the ex-football player, she knows enough details about the Parker murder. It’s ranker than anything Lippmann’s pulled. And she puts that on him and his friends.”

  “Where’s Turk all this time?”

  I grinned at Barstow. “You beginning to believe this? He’s probably in Smythtown. He’s found out that crime pays, but the hours are bad and he’s beginning to get known in town. Famous jock and all that. He’s two or three years away from being named police chief. Imagine his surprise when Cora lays the Parker murder on Lippmann and that bunch. Not that he minded at all, but you can bet he is in touch with Cora Abse right after the trial. Maybe there’s still a bit of an itch. And maybe he suggests she move to Atlanta.”

  “And they keep in touch?”

  “I’d say so. I think they set it up that way. The first year he’s police chief, he sends her a circular on the bluegrass festival. Maybe a note on it. She tells her husband she’s got a high school reunion and shows up in Smythtown. And you can bet they had a real reunion. And everything is going well. He’s very, very sure of her.”

  “And three months ago that guy, Martin, opens his mouth and the case is about to re-open,” Art said.

  “Turk’s in a sweat. Who’s going to take Martin’s word against his? But there’s the main witness, and he’s got to be sure about her. He sends her the festival circular. No answer from her. He sends her a couple more. What he doesn’t know is that she’s sweating, too. And she’s planning to make a move of her own. Turk gets so worried he takes some time off … to go hunting he says … and he shows up in Atlanta. He probably sees her and she reassures him, but Turk is not convinced. He follows her around for a day or two, and he sees her with Price. And then he follows Price around, and I think he gets close enough to know what’s going on. I suspect he got a smell of it.”

  While I’d been talking, I watched a tall, stoop-shouldered man come out of the parking lot stall and stand looking at us. Now he started a long-legged, angry stride toward the car. He leaned in Art’s window and said, “If you’re going to park in this lot you’ll have to come by the office and get a timed ticket. Otherwise, how’ll I know what to charge you?”

  Art showed him the ID. “Police business,” he said, “and now get the fuck away from here.”

  We watched him walk back to the stall, a bit more stoop-shouldered. He went in the stall and closed the door behind him.

  “My guess is that he followed Price and saw Price go to the motel where he’d reserved the room for the meeting with me. He barged in and he and Price had some words. Price didn’t make the right answers, and Turk used a blackjack on him. A few times too many. And then, dumb me, I knocked on the door and walked in.”

  “You have a talent for it,” Hump said.

  “And the nose to prove it,” I said. “Cora or Ellen or whatever freaked out. Price was supposed to free her of Nathan Webster and he hadn’t, and the police were asking questions. She did the only thing she knew to do. She bugged out for Smythtown. It was intended as a retreat, a time when she was going to decide her next move. But Turk had had enough. He and the sharecropper, one or both of them, did her in and buried her on Rock Farm.”

  “And then you showed up and started asking questions?” Art waved two fingers at me, and I passed him a smoke.

  “He doesn’t panic. He’s still thinking well. He revises his plan. He knows that if I can trace Ellen Webster to Smythtown other people can. So he plans to have Emma Terry drive the VW back to Atlanta. But first he has Emma set me up for Bennett and his shotgun. That doesn’t work, and he’s in a bind. Turk and that kid, Ed, could have covered for Bennett. The other young cop, McCrea, knew right away the description fitted Bennett. So Turk had to follow through. He’s going to go through the motions. He might even arrest Bennett until I leave town. He tries his best to warn Bennett. He yells something about this being police business. The young cop, McCrea, spoils it again. He yells from the side of the house that he’s got Bennett on the hip. Bennett thinks he’s been sold out and makes his run … right into Ed’s shotgun.”

  “It’s got holes,” Barstow said.

  “Sew them up,” I said. “You’re the cop.”

  Art leaned forward and stubbed his cigarette out “Heads up.”

  I followed his gaze and saw the blue Montego turn onto 6th street and then swing sharply to hit the ramp and head into the parking lot. The Montego passed the parking lot booth and turned left and pulled into a space in the same file with us, but five or six cars over to the right.

  Art said, “All of you stay put. You’re out of it.”

  “Careful,” I said.

  Art hit the door handle and stepped out. His coat swung open, unbuttoned. Iron on his hip and ready.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Hump said, “I don’t like this. It’s two to one.”

  “Art’s got surprise on his side,” I said. “They don’t know who he is.”

  “You’ve never seen Turk in action.”

  I watched Art. He stepped over the low concrete bumper that separated the parking lot from the sidewalk. He swung right, headed for the Montego, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he moved. It was slow and easy and he even took time to give the eye to some early morning hooker out for a free walk.

  Turk locked the door on the driver’s side. He looked like money today. He was wearing a pre-faded and splotched denim suit that must have cost a lot more than it was worth. On the other side of the Montego, Ed Beuller slammed his door and backed away.

  It looked good, very good. Art was two cars away. Count to a slow ten and it would be over.

  The first brick fell out. Ed Beuller, the young cop with the acne, waved at Turk and headed for the parking lot booth. Going for the timed ticket, I thought.

  Still possible. Art could brace Turk and when Beuller returned with the ticket the collar would fit him too.

  Beuller was halfway between the Montego and the parking lot stall when the stoop-shouldered man ran out of the booth. He was looking past Beuller, and I knew that the second brick was about to fall. I said, “God damn,” and hit the door handle and stepped out of the car. Hump didn’t quite understand, but he followed me.

  I heard only the last part of what the parking lot attendant yelled. “… don’t care if you are a cop you’ve got to pay just like …”

  Beuller understood it first. He took off at a run. I made one step in that direction, but Hump passed me at a run. Beuller reached the 6th street sidewalk and sprinted to the right. Hump cut across the lot, going at a long-legged trot. Even with a bad leg, Hump could outrun me on the best day I ever saw.

  I turned back to Art. As soon as the attendant shouted, he made his jump for the space between the Montego and the Ford station wagon on this side of it. His coat was tucked back, hand on the butt of his pistol. He said, “Turk, don’t move.”

  I didn’t believe it. It happened and I saw it and I still didn’t believe it. Turk had been looking over the roof of the Montego, trying to figure what was going on. When Art called to him, he began a slow turn. It was so slow that there didn’t seem to be any danger in it. Then it changed. It was so fast it was a blur. One step and he was close to Art. He hit Art two or three times, about as fast as I’d seen anybody hit. Art fell back and sprawled on the sidewalk.

  I’d t
hought it was done, and now it wasn’t. I pushed off and ran for the sidewalk. I was slow and flatfooted. On the way past Art, I looked down. He wasn’t out, but he was dazed and the trickle of blood had started out of his right nostril. As soon as he was sure Art was down, Turk turned and fumbled with the keys. He got the car door open and he was half in and half out. His back was to me, and he didn’t see me. I took a run at the door and slammed all my weight against it. It hit him and hurt him, and I tried to pin him there. I kept hoping Barstow would show up. Turk recovered, and he was strong. He turned and pushed against the door. I fell back, my heel hit the concrete bumper and I landed on my rump. I was like that when Turk came after me. I leaned forward, trying to get to my feet. His knee hit me in the face, and I did a double fat roll and landed on top of Art. He grunted and in some kind of reflex, he pushed me away. Maybe he thought I was Turk. I tried to get to my feet, but Turk was right on me. He caught me and lifted me and threw me against the front of the Ford station wagon. He threw a right that hit me heart-high, and I thought my heart had stopped for good. I was rumptight against the station wagon grill. He kept punching me. Body and then face, body and then face. I wanted to fall, but he’d lean in and give me a push that straightened me up and another right would come out of nowhere. My face didn’t have any feeling anymore, and I knew that if he kept hitting me the bone would be mush. I leaned forward and when he stepped in to push me upright, I saw my chance and butted him. My forehead hit him across the bridge of his nose.

  As soon as I saw the pain on his face, I almost said I was sorry. That was how dazed I was. I had a flash of a time when the school bully was picking on me and I’d hit him, and I’d known right away that it was going to be hard on me. And it had been.

  Turk was mad, really mad. His hands dropped from my chest, and I pulled and twisted away. It surprised him, and the right he was throwing at my belly missed me and struck the station wagon grill solidly, head on. Even above our breathing I could hear the bones go. The right hand wasn’t any good anymore.

  Turk’s face showed it. He knew and I knew, and he tried to back away. I kicked out at his feet, and he tripped and fell on his back. I jumped on top of him. The right hand came up and stopped about six inches from my face. He knew better. That hand dropped, and he threw his left into my ribs. After all that pain, I hardly felt it. I drew my right back and hit him in the mouth. I kept hitting him. I didn’t know how long it went on. I was still swinging when Art and Barstow caught me under the arms and pulled me off him.

  Turk looked like raw meat. I knew I looked the same way.

  Art put an arm around me and held me up. I looked across the parking lot. Hump headed toward us. He had Beuller by the back of his neck, half pushing, half dragging him.

  I spat out a mouthful of blood. It landed on Turk’s new denim suit pants.

  Hump and Art dropped by later in the day. I was in my bed. Both hands were bandaged, and they’d taken fifteen stitches on my right cheek and eight on the underside of my chin. Hump cracked the seal on the bottle of J&B he’d brought with him, and Art got glasses from the kitchen.

  “You ought to be in the hospital,” Art said.

  “You don’t look too good either,” I said.

  And we talked the rest of it.

  Turk wasn’t seeing anybody but doctors at the moment. Ed Beuller, his boy, thought up something new to tell every time Art told him that Hump wanted to see him. Ed had seen enough of Hump.

  It went this way. Turk saw it was falling apart. It scared him how easy it was when we’d gone to Rock Farm and found the body of Ellen Webster. He’d been smart enough to know that Emma Terry was the last tie. But she was in Atlanta somewhere, and I was looking for her. He knew that. And maybe he’d have never found her if I hadn’t mixed in and put the pressure on her. Emma decided she could use this to her advantage. As soon as she heard from Keppler at the talent agency, she called Turk in Smythtown. He’d been about to leave for Atlanta to look for her. That was luck. He’d told her to call me and play hard to get so I’d be set up.

  On Tuesday they’d met at the Jokers Wild behind the Peachtree Manor Hotel and put together the plan. They were going to box me one last time. They didn’t want me to have the time to do any planning. That was the reason for the four a.m. call. Emma Terry, no longer useful and a danger to Turk, had been dead even before Hump and I arrived at the Park.

  After two drinks, Hump and Art were ready to leave.

  “What about the Parker murder?”

  “That’s still in the air. With Ed Beuller’s testimony, we’ve got Turk for Emma Terry’s murder. The rest of it will depend on Turk, when he’s up to talking.”

  Art carried the glasses into the kitchen. Hump leaned over me. “You had your mean up out there today.”

  “He hurt me. Right up to where I’d decided I couldn’t be hurt anymore on this side of dead.”

  “I’ve been there,” Hump said.

  Marcy took one look at the way I moved and said I’d be in bed for a week if she had her way.

  During the night I woke up sweating. I was soaked and the sheets were, too. Marcy heard me grunting and trying to get to my feet. She changed me to fresh p.j.’s and put a cold cloth on my face. I guess I was feverish.

  I said, without knowing that it was coming, “You know, Marcy, you’ve got a cotton heart, too.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That you’re a soft, soft woman.”

  “That’s nice, Jim.” A cool hand rubbed my chest.

  Before I dropped off again, I told myself, all right, so that’s not the way the textile workers my father knew meant it. But words mean what you want them to mean. And I meant soft, soft woman.

  The scent of her perfume was soft and delicate around me when I dropped into the dark pit.

  I tried to call Nathan Webster a few times in the next week. He didn’t return my calls, and I thought that meant he didn’t want to talk to me and I forgot about it. I split what was left of the Webster money with Hump.

  In late October, when the new telephone books were delivered, just on a hunch I looked for Nathan Webster in the white pages. He wasn’t listed anymore.

  I knew then he’d left town. If I had one guess, I’d say that he is probably in Charlottesville. And that he grows cold and gray in the shadow of his mother.

  HARDMAN’S WORLD

  By Robert J. Randisi

  Many careers have been influenced by Chandler, Hammett, Ross MacDonald, Spillane, mine included. But 12 books by an under-appreciated writer had a drastic effect on my work, and my love of the P.I. genre.

  In the 70’s, I was trying to get published and writing P.I. fiction, a genre all of the editors I met were telling me was dead. Robert B. Parker’s The Godwulf Manuscript came out in 1974. It was the first book to feature Spenser and Hawk. The critics loved it. So did the readers. But that same year, I discovered Ralph Dennis and Hardman, and my attitude about the genre changed.

  Okay, I admit the covers attracted my attention first. It was the 70’s, when vigilantes were booming, and Popular Library decided to publish Ralph Dennis’ private eye novels. But they packaged the books to look like a men’s adventure series, along the lines of The Executioner, The Penetrator and The Destroyer books published by Pinnacle. It was too bad. The series lasted 12 books, but the men’s adventure audience probably did not take to it, and the private eye audience likely never found it. It was great work sabotaged by the publisher.

  But even at age 23, I was the kind of reader who looked beyond covers. And I was constantly on the lookout for new private eyes. So what I found was 12 excellent books in the P.I. genre.

  Jim Hardman was decidedly un-men’s adventure-like. He was an ex-cop, unlicensed, middle-aged and overweight private eye. His sidekick, Hump Evans, was a black retired NFL football player. As a fan—or “nut”—for the genre I was immediately pulled in to Hardman’s world. Dennis’ style was lightning quick and not hampered by unnecessary bogged-down narrative or run-on
description. The characters were real, people you ether knew or wanted to know. And to me the works showed no obvious influence by the classics. Yes, this was definitely Hardman’s world. And it all worked.

  And Ralph Dennis proved to me—the budding P.I. author—that you didn’t have to be totally influenced by those classics. Here was something new that I could point to as an influence because the series was fresh and hip as hell.

  Seeing Paul Newman play Harper when I was 15, and discovering Ross Macdonald, put me on the path to private eye writing. Ralph Dennis and Jim Hardman convinced me I was on the right road, and there were new ways to travel it.

  On his Thrilling Detective Website, Kevin Burton Smith described Hardman perfectly as “one of the great lost eyes.”

  Well, here he is, found again. And 12 books was way too few.

  Robert J. Randisi is the author of more than 600 novels (no, that’s not a typo!) and the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America. He is returning to the PI genre with his Auggie Velez/Nashville books The Honky Tonk Big Hoss Boogie and The Last Sweet Song of Hammer Dylan.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ralph Dennis isn’t a household name … but he should be. He is widely considered among crime writers as a master of the genre, denied the recognition he deserved because his twelve Hardman books, which are beloved and highly sought-after collectables now, were poorly packaged in the 1970s by Popular Library as cheap men’s action-adventure paperbacks with numbered titles.

  Even so, some top critics saw past the cheesy covers and noticed that he was producing work as good as John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross MacDonald.

  The New York Times praised the Hardman novels for “expert writing, plotting, and an unusual degree of sensitivity. Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment.” The Philadelphia Daily News proclaimed Hardman “the best series around, but they’ve got such terrible covers …”

  Unfortunately, Popular Library didn’t take the hint and continued to present the series like hack work, dooming the novels to a short shelf-life and obscurity … except among generations of crime writers, like novelist Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap & Leonard series) and screenwriter Shane Black (the Lethal Weapon movies), who’ve kept Dennis’ legacy alive through word-of-mouth and by acknowledging his influence on their stellar work.