Pimp for the Dead

by Ralph Dennis

  It was later in the evening when the call came. I was sitting on the back steps, drinking my first gin and tonic of the year. That’s an occasion, and I’d almost like to mark it on the calendar. My girl, Marcy, was in the kitchen a few feet away from me, cooking some beef short ribs in wine. I knew she was tippling at the bottle she’d taken the cup of wine from for the meat. It was a large bottle, a 2/5 size, of a good French Pommard. I was about to tell her to save a bit to go with supper, when the phone rang in the bedroom.

  “Yeah?” I said into the phone.

  “This Jim? Jim Hardman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Hubie King.”

  The name didn’t mean anything to me. But sometimes it was that way after an afternoon of drinking with Hump. “Who?”

  “Hubie King. I was in Korea with you. Same outfit.”

  I got it then. Hubie and I had done some time together, and we’d been hell on the beer ration, and a time or two we’d bedded down some girls in adjoining rooms. And I remembered one Christmas we’d been snowed in at a whorehouse during a blizzard. We’d come back from Korea to Japan for some R and R with a pile of money, some of which we’d won in a blackjack game on the plane. When we’d been snowed in, we’d bought out the whorehouse for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. And on Christmas Eve, Hubie had slogged through the snowstorm and bought perfume and candy for the four girls and the mama–san.

  The last time I’d seen Hubie had been two or three years before. He’d come to Atlanta for a Sheriff’s Association meeting. After the war, he’d gone back to Anson, Georgia, and after a few years of being a deputy, he’d gotten himself elected sheriff. The reunion that evening probably hadn’t been as much fun as he’d thought it would be. The last I remember, he’d wanted to know where the whores were, and I’d told him to go to a certain bar in the back of a certain run–down hotel and order a drink, and throw back the ones he didn’t like.

  “Sure, Hubie, how are you?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Look, the last time I saw you, you said you did odd jobs. You still in the business?”

  “Now and then,” I said.

  “I think I’ve got something for you. A farmer outside of town has a daughter in Atlanta. At least, he thinks she’s there. Wants somebody to find her for him.”

  “I could probably do it.” I sipped at the gin and tonic.

  “You be home around noon tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  We talked a bit more after that, but we didn’t have a lot to talk about. Too much had changed in both of us since that war and that Christmas in Japan. At the end, just before he hung up, he asked, “Aren’t you going to thank me for sending you the job, Hardman?”

  “I’ll wait and see what kind of shitty job it is,” I said.

  I was up around ten the next morning. I showered and shaved, and put on a clean, starched white shirt and a tie. I had no way of knowing what the farmer expected, and I thought I might as well be neat. If he found me with two days’ whiskers and a dirt ring on my collar, he might think my prices were too high.

  Right at noon, I heard him turn up my driveway and park. I opened the door and looked out. It was a 1973 pickup truck, fire–truck red, and the man getting out of it was dressed in a dark suit with a bright tie. The knot in the tie was about as big as a fist. He was around fifty, I thought, and a little humpbacked, stooped. There was a smear of gray in his hair, and he walked wide–legged, like he had one foot in each plow furrow. Under one arm, held like a football, he carried a shoebox.

  I met him at the door. “Come in, Mr. …?”

  “Barrow,” he said. “John Barrow.” The hand that grasped mine had skin on the palm like dried–out, turned–to–iron leather.

  “A beer?” I asked, when we were in the living room.

  “Coffee, if you’ve got it,” he said.

  I went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. He followed me and took a seat at the kitchen table. He seemed comfortable there, so I got myself a bottle of beer and sat down across the table from him. “I understand you’re looking for your daughter.”

  “This is her,” he said. He got a picture out of his suit coat pocket and put it on the table in front of me. It was a small picture and had rough edges. It hadn’t been cut evenly. When I saw the picture, I had my guess where it came from. The girl wore a dark sweater and a string of pearls, and I remembered the picture–taking days when I’d been in high school. Boys in a dark jacket and white shirt and tie, and girls in a dark sweater and a strand of pearls. He had, I thought, cut the picture from the Anson high school yearbook.

  “Her name?” I asked.

  “Joy Lynn Barrow.”

  I stared down at the picture. Blonde hair that looked thin and without any body to it. A narrow face with quiet eyes looking out. A mouth that was trying to smile but hadn’t quite made it in time for the photographer.

  The kettle boiled, and I made his coffee for him. When I put it in front of him, he thanked me and untied the string from around his shoebox. Before he lifted the lid, he asked, “Have you had your lunch, Mr. Hardman?”

  “I just had breakfast,” I said.

  He took the lid off the shoebox and put it aside. He reached into the box, after folding a sheet of wax paper aside, and took out a fried chicken leg. “I can’t see paying seven prices for something to eat here in town.”

  “Don’t blame you,” I said. “Now, tell me about Joy Lynn.”

  “She came to Atlanta a year ago … not quite a year ago. It was after the high school graduation, in June.”

  “To get a job?”

  He shook his head and swallowed. “It was to go to a beauty and charm school.”

  “What’s the name of the school?”

  “Foster and Summers.”

  “The address?”

  “I don’t know it,” he said.

  “It ought to be easy to find. Professional schools are pretty well regulated by the state.”

  “Hubie said you’d know what to do.” He finished the chicken leg and held the bone like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I grinned at him and got him a plate from the china shelf.

  “It should be easy,” I said. “In fact, though this might sound like I’m trying to talk myself out of a job, I think you can handle it yourself. Use my phone and call the school. You can get a home address and find her yourself. I cost fifty a day, and maybe twenty–five or so in expenses.”

  “Hubie said you didn’t come cheap.” The way he said it, there wasn’t any condemnation of me in it. It was just a fact. “And I do appreciate what you said, but you see, I called them long–distance yesterday, and they said they’d never even heard of her at that school.”

  “Maybe you got the name of it wrong.”

  “No, it was the right one. I know it was, because I didn’t want her to go, and she saved her hog money and her egg money for three years. She knew I wasn’t going to give her the money. Not on the longest day there ever was. So she saved her own money, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. And I remember sitting down across the table from her and watching her fill out the application. She was accepted about ten days later, and I watched her write them a check. It was for the first semester’s tuition.”

  “But are you sure …?”

  “Yesterday, when they said they’d never heard of her, I went in her room and found her last bank statement, the one that came after she closed out the account, and there it was. A check for $500 to Foster and Summers.”

  “You bring it with you?”

  He hesitated. He looked at the chicken grease on his fingers. I got him a couple of paper towels. After he wiped his fingers, he got the check out of the side pocket of his suit coat.

  “You mind if I keep this for a few days?” I looked the check over, and it seemed real enough. There was a FOR DEPOSIT ONLY stamp on it, and it had been accepted by The Fulton National Bank.

  “Keep it long as you need it,” he said.

  “T
he time she was here in Atlanta, did you hear from her?”

  “She didn’t write much, but she did call her mama a few times, and she came visiting at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was just for a day at a time and, to tell the truth, I didn’t care for the way she looked, She was dressing flashy–like, and with too much make–up.”

  “She tell you where she was living?”

  “She told her mama she was staying at a dormitory at the school.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “Back in February,” he said. “She came for the afternoon, on her mama’s birthday.”

  I watched as he reached into the shoebox and got out a pork chop. It was fried hard and dark. It looked like beef jerky. He broke off a chunk of it and chewed slowly.

  “I understand all this so far,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t see why it’s bothering you this much. There’s probably some good explanation …”

  “Two things bother me,” he said, cutting me off. “Her mama went in the hospital two days ago, and when I called that school, they said they’d never heard of her at all.”

  I nodded. He’d told me that. “Your wife all right?”

  “They cut off part of her bosom.”

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “A story a fellow in Anson told me. I got trouble even talking about it. I wouldn’t even call him a friend. He’s a womanizer, and he comes to Atlanta all the time. He told me he was cruising down Peachtree, near North Avenue … I think he said North Avenue … and he saw Joy Lynn dressed up and made–up like a whore. He stopped the car to say hello to her, and she came over to the car and asked him something about did he want some company. But when she saw who he was, she ran away.”

  “He sure it was Joy Lynn?”

  “One hundred per cent,” he said.

  “That changes it some,” I said. “But I don’t know exactly what you want me to do.”

  “I thought I was making it clear enough.” Mr. Barrow dropped the pork chop bone on the plate. Eyes down, he dug into the shoebox and brought out a thick wedge of cake. It was chocolate, with icing on it about an inch thick. “I want you to find Joy Lynn for me.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard.”

  “And I want you to get her away from those white slavers, before she’s ruined completely.”

  I just stared at him. I think my mouth might have dropped open, too. That was the first time I’d ever heard the term used seriously in my life. But there wasn’t a thin red hair of humor in how he’d said it. If she’d been my daughter, I might not have seen the humor in it either.

  “You got some more coffee?” He pushed the cup toward me, and I went over to the stove and made him another cup of instant. When I brought the cup back to the table, he cleared his throat and asked, “You’ll do it?”

  Why not? Even if it wasn’t much, it was better than nothing at all. I nodded. “But it might get rough, if it’s real white slavers. I can find her by myself. That might take a day or two, and that would be covered by the fifty a day and expenses. But after I find her, and if she wants to go and they don’t want her to, I might need some help. I’ve got this friend who’d help, but it would cost another fifty a day when I’m using him.”

  “If you need him, you need him.” He broke the cake and ate the bottom layer first. “Hubie said you’d want an advance.” He ate the middle layer then and saved the top layer, the one with all the icing on it, until last.

  “A hundred and fifty to start,” I said. “That ought to do for a couple of days.”

  “It ought to.” He put the top layer of the cake on the edge of the plate, where the bones were. He wiped his hands on the paper towels and got out his roll. It was thick and held together by a wide rubber band. He put the band on his wrist and counted out seven twenties and a ten. “You want to give me a receipt?”

  Afterwards, I saw him out to the front yard. I waited until he was seated in the pickup truck before I brought up my last doubt. “Of course, Joy Lynn is of age. If she’s happy where she is, if she’s not being held against her will, dragging her out of there might involve me in kidnapping.”

  “Mr. Hardman, you can take my word for it. My little girl wouldn’t do that unless she was being forced.”

  I waved him down the driveway and went back into the house. I cleaned up the remains of his shoebox lunch, opened another beer, and carried it into the backyard. Next to the beer counter at the store, it’s my favorite place in the spring and summer. There are a couple of old oak trees there for shade, and back near the property line there’s a raised terrace, walled in by stone. When I feel like it, I put in a few vegetables. A couple of dozen tomato plants, a few hills of squash and a couple of rows of white corn. So far I’d done nothing about the garden, and Marcy was complaining that it was past time to get the seeds in.

  I sat on the terrace wall and sipped the beer. The longer I looked at the garden plot, the more the job for Barrow looked like a bad–back saver. I went into the house and called Hump. He said it was a slow day and he needed a beer, and he’d be right over. He said he liked my beer better than his, anyway.

  “What do you think about white slavery?”

  We were out on the back steps. It was around one–thirty and, because Hump was dressed in his best, I’d swept off the steps.

  “You mean here in Atlanta?”

  “Her father thinks so.” I passed Hump the picture of Joy Lynn.

  “What does the rest of her look like?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  He passed the picture back to me. “I have some trouble believing that kind of shit. Too many girls’d rather make their livings on their backs. And it’s a good living, and tax–free. A girl might get talked into it, but she won’t get forced.”

  “The way I see it, too,” I said.

  “You get some dip–shit jobs. You know that, don’t you?”

  I left him out on the steps and went in and got out the Atlanta white pages and looked up the Foster and Summers Beauty and Charm School.

  On the way downtown, I explained the “muscle expense” I’d sold Mr. Barrow on. Hump was just along for the ride. After he heard me out, Hump said, “That’s fifty dollars I won’t get to spend.”

  “There you go again,” I said. “No faith in anything.”

  “That girl wants to sell her ass, that’s her business. I don’t see any percentage in fussing around with some hard–assed pimps about it.”

  “Let’s assume, just for the time, that her father might be right.”

  “Shit,” Hump said.

  “Let’s assume this is a new outbreak of white slavery.”

  “Double shit,” Hump said.

  I grinned at him, and he grinned back.

  “For a minute there,” he said, “I was starting to believe that senility had hit you a better–than–average lick.”

  The Foster and Summer Beauty and Charm School is on the second floor of a building on Whitehall. It is the part of Whitehall where most of the stores make their living ripping off blacks. The men’s stores with the cheap and flashy duds in the window, the dress shops, the discount shoe shops. Most of it junk that must have been made especially for the rip–off business. It was time payments, and all the credit you wanted, and god knows how much interest you paid on the balance in a year.

  The school was directly above a shop that specialized in cut–rate cameras and watches, Saturday Night Specials and portable radios. The special this week was a thousand bobby pins for 49 cents. I pulled to the curb across the street and got out. Hump slid over behind the wheel and said he’d park and meet me in a few minutes.

  Right away, as soon as I entered the stair well, I was surprised. It was enough to make a man snow–blind. The walls and ceiling were painted a flat white, and white carpet covered the stairs. Blinking, I reached the top of the stairs and I was in the lobby. The walls there were the same white, but the effect was eased somewhat by the huge photographic blowups of high–fashion mod
els in exaggerated, spastic poses. I did a quick count. There were eight blowups and four of the models were black. That told me something about where they got their nickels and dimes and dollars.

  Straight ahead, there was a teakwood desk about as big as a bed. The girl behind it looked like she’d just stepped out of one of the blowups. The thin, tubercular body, the face with the bones about to break through the skin, her hair in those godawful Shirley Temple curls.

  She looked me up and down and read the price tag on my suit. That didn’t mean much to her, either way. Not rich, not poor. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m John Barrow. I’m from Anson, and I called the other day to get in touch with my daughter, Joy Lynn, and you said you’d never heard of her.”

  “Is she in our school?”

  “She’s supposed to be,” I said.

  “I don’t remember the call. When was that?”

  “Yesterday,” I said.

  “I don’t remember …”

  “I don’t give a shit what you remember,” I said. “My daughter’s supposed to be in this school, and somebody here said they’d never even heard of her.”

  “I’ll check.” She got up from behind the desk, and I watched her walk to the circular index file on a shelf against the wall. Bones that would cut you in bed like a dull knife–edge. Not my type, at all. “Did you say Barrow?”

  “Joy Lynn Barrow.”

  She checked and double checked. “We have no one by that name enrolled in our school.”

  “Not now, or not ever?”

  “The file is for past and present students, and there is no Joy Lynn Barrow there.”

  “She started last summer,” I said.

  “Not with us.”

  I reached in my pocket and got out the canceled check. I leaned across the desk and showed her the front and back of it. “Explain this to me, then.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “That’s odd.”

  “A bit,” I said.