Pimp for the Dead

by Ralph Dennis

  Marcy smiled over the edge of her wine glass. “Am I your bottom woman, Jim?”

  “Bottom and top,” I said.

  I went on to the second entry she’d decoded.

  July 8,1972: Boy am I mad today. About the time I got up Harry brought over a new girl. Her name is Crystal Hanner. Her hair is blonde but I do not think it is the real color. Harry said from now on Crystal is going to share the apartment with me and sleep in the spare room. Harry saw I didn’t like it and he followed me into the bedroom and closed the door. He said he didn’t like taking on a second girl either but we just were not making money as fast as he wanted to. With Crystal hustling too we could get to Spain faster and we could stay longer.

  I still do not like it. For one thing we will be paired together and it will be harder for me to lie about the number of tricks I do each night. And if I hold money back and she does not it will seem that she is doing better than I am out on the street.

  I hustled while he helped her move her things in. I was mad because I knew that he was doing a lot more than just helping her move her clothes in.

  I tricked nine times and told him seven. I held back sixty dollars and he was mad with me and said I must not have been trying very hard.

  I turned the page over and looked at Marcy. “This all you’ve done so far?” I grinned at her. “You must not be trying very hard.”

  “You think it’s easy, you do some,” she said.

  I got up. “Not me. Got to check on the charcoal.”

  I went outside and looked at the coals. They weren’t anywhere near ready, and I’d known it. I sat on the steps and sipped my wine. The mama cat trotted over and rubbed against my leg. I scratched her behind the ears and listened to the purring that brought on.

  Back during my days on the force, when I’d just been starting out, I had done some time on vice. You’d act like a nerd and let the girl solicit you, and then you’d go to her room, and when she took the money, you arrested her. Back then, I don’t think prostitution was that big a business. But now, the town was growing at a hell of a rate. Exploding. Trying to become a big convention city. And that meant heading toward Hooker City, U.S.A.

  I thought of the two days in the life of Joy Lynn Barrow, the ones Marcy had just decoded. Sociologists and forward-thinking policemen like to think of prostitution as one of the victimless crimes. Maybe so. But Joy Lynn seemed to be a victim to me. But, then, I guess it depends upon your definition of a victim.

  Marcy finished another page before I put on the steaks. It wasn’t much new. Joy Lynn and Crystal weren’t getting along too well, and Joy Lynn thought Crystal was using her shampoo, and she didn’t like using the toilet without spraying the seat with Lysol spray. And with Crystal paired off with her, it was hard to hide the number of tricks she turned. On this night, because she wanted to bring home as much money as Crystal, she’d only put by $30.

  I got the steaks the way both of us liked them, charred on the outside and bloody under the crust. We had just salad and the rest of the wine with it.

  Marcy said she was tired, and I dropped her after she did the dishes. She took the diary with her and said she’d translate as much as she could, using her lunch hour and her breaks. She didn’t say so, but I had a feeling she was intrigued with this look into the gutter life.

  Art called a few minutes after I got back. Harry Falk’s widow had made a positive ID on the body. Beyond that, she didn’t have much to say, except for the fact that she hated him.

  On impulse, I mentioned that I’d heard the name of another girl who’d been part of Falk’s stable some months back.

  “You say Crystal Hanner? Hold a minute.”

  He was off the line for a couple of minutes. When he came back, he said, “She’s one of the well-known ones. She’s got a long record of arrests.”

  “You got an address?”

  “Better than that,” Art said. “We’re in luck. She’s in the slam right now.”

  “For what?”

  “Same thing. Selling her ass.”

  “I’d like to talk to her,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “God knows. It might be so long ago, she might not know anything worth going to the trouble for.”

  “I’ll call you back. Let me see what I can arrange.”

  As soon as Art was off the line, I called Hump. I’d called him after my return from the lake. With Harry Falk dead, it looked like all the roads were closed. They’d all turned dead-end. And I had a feeling that if this was a racket-involved kill, I was going at it all wrong. I was under some stupid compulsion to put together a biography of Joy Lynn. And it was a million-to-one against me knowing who’d killed her, even after I knew everything else about her, if I stayed on the same track.

  “Hump,” I said, “you might have a night off.”

  “I don’t need a night off.”

  I told him I might be going out to talk to a hooker who’d known the Barrow girl some months back. “That grab you?”

  “Might be worth a listen.”

  I said I’d call him after I’d talked to Art.

  “It took some talking, but I sprung her. I argued the chance of the protection racket, and needing an informant out on the street.”

  “She buy your deal?”

  “Says she does.”

  “Where do I meet you?”

  He said Crystal wanted to shower and change clothes after a day in the slam. She lived in the Central Hotel, on Courtland, and he’d drop her there and wait for me at the Book Store Bar, a place about half a block from the hotel. Crystal would meet us there after she’d cleaned herself up.

  “You mind if I bring Hump?”

  “You ever go anywhere without your shadow?”

  I said I didn’t, and he said to bring him along.

  The Book Store Bar was a strange idea gone even stranger. There were bookcases all along the walls, and they were filled with real books. The story I’d heard was that on opening day, they’d given a free drink for every two hardback books brought in. They’d filled the shelves in one afternoon, but most of them seemed to be old, out-of-date college textbooks.

  Even before our first drink arrived, Art was on me. “How’d you hear about Crystal Hanner?”

  “Around,” I said.

  “You know something, you better let me know.”

  “That’s all I know right now.” There was a certain amount of truth in that. I wouldn’t know any more until Marcy decoded some more pages. But I knew Art would love to get his hands on Joy Lynn’s john list even more than the diary. He’d probably get it, in time. Cops like to think that most violent deaths are the result of passion, and the john list would give Art the names of some men in her life. He’d put blinders on until he checked them out. The blinders were so he wouldn’t allow himself to know that most crimes of passion weren’t committed that way, like some scene out of an early James Cagney flick.

  I’d have some tall lying to do when I turned the diary and the address book over to him.

  Hump took the heat off me. He started talking about the Braves and Hank Aaron. Even with his mind on other things, Art couldn’t resist the chance to badmouth the Braves. From that, they moved on to an estimate of how many games the Braves would win the whole season. They were haggling around sixty games. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was looking around the bar, feeling better, off the sharp hook.

  It was then that I saw the four of them. They came in with the precision of a Vince Lombardi end sweep. They didn’t fit the Book Store Bar. They belonged in Vegas. Big city muscle. Not the type for knives or guns. Maybe a blackjack or two.

  I dropped a hand under the table and gave Hump a tap on the knee. He didn’t break stride, kept on talking about how Aaron didn’t like to play first base, but his head turned to follow my eyes and register the muscle. He must have passed the tap on to Art. For now his head went around easy and slow.

  Two of the four peeled off and fitted themselves into a space near the center of
the bar, to our left and not far away. The remaining two stood in the doorway for a count of about ten, eyes moving around the large room, searching. When their gaze reached our table, I saw a hesitant flicker and a skip on past.

  “Who are they looking for? You know either of those two?”

  Hump shook his head, his answer to Art’s questions.

  “I think we’ve been jobbed,” I said.

  “The girl?”

  “My guess.” Damn her. “You carrying, Art?”

  Art said he was. “But I can’t pull iron in a crowded room like this.”

  I tipped my head at Hump. “It’s time you finished your talk with us and went back to your place at the bar. Shake hands, like a polite boy.”

  “That wouldn’t fool my grandmama.” But Hump pushed back his chair, smiling, and shook each of us by the hand. He lifted his drink and carried it over to the bar. When he pushed in next to the two hard-asses he planted himself toward the lower end of the bar, putting himself between them and the table where Art and I were.

  The two near the entrance watched the charade with the handshaking and wanted to believe it, but I don’t think they could. Hump was the unknown, and they didn’t like the setup when they couldn’t predict it. They were worrying it around in their heads, not liking it. Still, they’d set it in motion, and I guess they decided to play it out.

  They made their move. The two near the door stepped out, moving single-file down the aisle between the tables. They stopped about a foot or so from our table and looked at us. They were both about the same size, two hundred or a bit past that. The one who paired off with me had the shoulders and arms for wrestling bears, and a face with deep acne craters about the size of tack heads spread across his cheeks. The other one, the one facing Art, wasn’t marked. In fact, now that he was close enough, I could see that he didn’t match the mold the others were taken from. He was about forty, with a salting of gray hair. He looked like someone who might sell you insurance any night on national TV. But not the eyes. The eyes wouldn’t sell you anything but death. They were the eyes of a man three days dead.

  “You’re Art Maloney,” the one with the dead eyes said.

  “That’s me.”

  “We’ve got a friend in common.”

  “I doubt that,” Art said.

  “You sent him up a couple of years ago.”

  “That explains it,” Art said. “He was no friend of mine.”

  “I told him I was passing through Atlanta, and he said for me to be sure and look you up.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Names don’t matter.”

  “All right, all this horseshit aside,” Art said, “what is it you want?”

  “Don’t rush it. There’s plenty of time.” He turned his head slowly and looked at Hump. “Who’s the big spade?”

  “Ask him that way and he’ll tell you,” I said.

  He’d been ignoring me. Now his eyes swept back from the bar and locked on me. “Jim Hardman, ex-crooked cop.” He smiled at me. “Or is it Jim Hardman, crooked ex-cop?”

  “Why the names? You got to list us on your expense account?”

  “That’s not bad,” he said. He nodded to the bruiser squared off against me. “He’s making a joke, Frank.”

  “Is that a joke?” Frank’s voice cracked. It sounded like somebody’d almost ripped his throat out one time or another.

  “In some circles,” I said.

  All the talking wasn’t getting us anywhere. They’d come to beat on us, and nothing was going to change that. If they’d come to warn us off, they’d have done it and gone on their way. The element that was holding them back was the unknown, Hump. They’d come four against two, and found it might be four against three. Now they were probably wishing they’d brought six.

  I slid my near shoe across the carpet and tapped Art on the ankle. That meant heads up, it is about to happen.

  At the bar, Hump planted his left elbow on the padded rail and gave me a questioning look. I nodded and set it off.

  Hump whirled and hit the stud next to him as hard as he could, getting all his weight into it. I could hear the splat over the low music. The splat and the grunt that went with it startled the two in front of us, but I knew it wouldn’t last long. I braced my feet under me and pushed the table toward the bruiser, Frank. He caught it in his hands and grinned at me. The grin said he was going to do terrible things to me. But as I came out of the chair, I reached behind me and caught the chair by the top rung and swung it toward him. He was pushing the table away from him when I stepped around it and hit him about hip-high with the chair. The shock almost tore it out of my hands. It wasn’t a breakaway chair, like in the flicks, and if it broke anything, it might have been a bone in Frank’s hip. It hurt him, and he grunted with the pain. But his hands were free now, with the table pushed away, and he brought up the hands. I could see a busted knuckle or two, and I swung the chair again. I aimed lower this time, and I had to move under a right he was throwing. It was ticketed for my face, but I bent under and felt it rip across the top of my head. That shook me some, and I could feel my knees give. The chair reached him and banged him across the knees. With any luck, there went a cracked kneecap. He grabbed the chair and pulled at it, and I held on and pulled against him, and then turned it loose. That fooled him, and he was falling back, hands full of the chair, when I stepped in close and hit him as hard as I could in the neck. It stunned him and his head bent back, mouth open, gasping for breath. His throat was open, unprotected, and I put the same fist in the soft part of it. He went down, holding his throat with both hands, like I’d broken up the rest of it, and rolled on his side, retching and vomiting.

  I stepped around him and looked for Art. The one fronting Art hadn’t lost his reflexes, like mine had. He had Art backed up against one of the big bookcases, and books were thudding off onto the floor. Art was giving as good as he was getting, but it was too close to an even fight, and it might take time for one or the other to wear down. I didn’t feel like waiting that long. I stopped behind the stud with the dead eyes and hit him in the right kidney. The breath went out of him like a whistle with a scream buried under it. I left the rest of it to Art, and turned to the bar.

  It was under control there. One of the studs was on the floor next to the bar. That was probably the first one Hump had hit. The other one had made more of a fight of it. They’d fought their way down the length of the room, through the crowd, toward the front door. Hump had taken it out of him, finally. When I reached them, Hump had him by the neck, backed against the wall near the cigarette machine, up on his tiptoes. Blood ran out of both nostrils and out of the torn bottom lip.

  The bartender was nervous. “I called the police.”

  I nodded toward Art. “He’s police himself.” There was plenty of room at the bar. I pointed at the J&B. He poured me a stiff one. I knocked it back. I pushed the glass back at him. “This time, on the rocks.” While he poured, I could hear the sirens. I ran a hand over the top of my head. No blood, but I was going to have a knot in an hour or so. I carried the J&B on the rocks down to Hump. Hump opened the balled fist he’d been threatening the guy with and took the glass. “Now you’re not going to bother me while I’m drinking, are you?”

  The stud shook his head. The blood ran down the side of his neck. Hump nodded and gulped at his drink.

  A couple of minutes later, two police cruisers arrived. As soon as Art had it explained to them and I could move away from the bar, I went into the bathroom to wash my face. I was bent over, scooping water by the handful, when I felt the last drink of scotch come choking back up. I let it gush into the sink, and then I went on washing my face.

  I didn’t feel too bad about the scotch. I hadn’t paid for it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “She went out right after she got here,” the desk clerk at the Central Hotel said.

  “Any phone calls?” Art asked.

  “Not through the switchboard.” The desk clerk was in his early
thirties. The way he dressed and carried himself showed that he fancied himself a bit. Now, as if he was in a stage play, he turned and looked at the bank of pay phones against one wall of the grimy lobby.

  “You see her make a call?”

  “I didn’t see anything.” He also had the cheap-hotel sickness, the one that made you blind and deaf.

  Art put out his hand. “The key to her room.”

  “You got a search warrant?”

  “I don’t need one.” Art kept his palm out, waiting.

  “I’m not supposed to do that.”

  “I’ve had a bad night,” Art said. “If you don’t put that key in my hand in about five seconds, I’m going to come around there and stomp your ass, and then I’m going to charge you with assaulting an officer, and then I’m going to take that key and go up to her room.”

  The room key hit his palm a split second later.

  Hump remained behind in the lobby while we took the self-service elevator up to the fifth floor. “I’m going to have a hell of a time explaining what happened to my new informant,” Art said.

  “It tells us one thing,” I said. “She’s more afraid of them … whoever they are … than she is of the police.”

  “I should have camped outside her door,” Art said.

  “No way you could have known.”

  The elevator doors opened. We passed a beverage dispenser, a cigarette machine, and a candy and snack-cracker machine. It looked like the Central Hotel didn’t do much in the way of room service, unless you ordered a hooker.

  A wrinkled pants suit was thrown across the bed in room 508, along with some sweat-dirty underwear and a pair of stockings. While Art checked around the room, I went into the bathroom. The tub was bone dry. A washcloth on the shower curtain railing was damp. Crystal Hanner had been in a hurry. She’d settled for what we used to call a Marine bath. That’s a quick dab under the armpits with a wash cloth and a splash of shaving lotion … or, in her case, cologne or perfume.