by Ralph Dennis
The Man hadn’t moved. It was still the same auto parts store with the boarded-up front. Flaking paint that advertised parts for cars they didn’t build any more. A gravel parking lot in back. A locked door that led into a spotlessly clean stairwell. Up those stairs to a landing and another locked door. Behind this door was the apartment where The Man lived.
One of the last times I’d been at The Man’s place I’d been doing a job for him and there was a dead black man at the bottom of the stairs and the body of a white on the landing. The door and the apartment beyond had been shot all to hell. It had been a try on The Man.
At the landing, without the two blacks saying anything, I opened my topcoat. One of them leaned in and patted me down. When he was satisfied I wasn’t carrying anything, he stepped away and gave the other black a short nod. That one reached past me and rapped on the door.
Someone opened the door and we walked in. A white sofa and a coffee table with a brass top were over to the right. In the center of the room, taking up most of the space, was a circular bar with about a twenty-year supply of booze. The last time I saw the bar it was heavy brass and a burp gun had stitched some special decorations across it. Now the brass was replaced by ceramic tile in a kind of floral design of greens and blues and reds. One thing you could say about The Man: he had no taste at all.
Past the bar was the kitchen-dining room. Off to the right a door led to the bedroom. That door was closed and since I didn’t see The Man anywhere, I made my guess that he was still dressing.
The two blacks who escorted me stood in the doorway that led to the stairs. “We’re going to get something to eat. Ought to be back in half an hour or so.”
The black bodyguard who had let us in, and who carried a 12-gauge pumpgun under one arm, nodded and said, “No more than forty-five.”
After the door closed behind them, we listened to the clatter on the stairs and looked at each other. He was slim and wiry, with that odd coloring you see now and then among blacks. His hair had a kind of red tint to it and his pale skin had the freckling that, when I was a kid, we’d thought that meant that he had a lot of white blood in him.
“He said to fix you a drink.” He turned and placed the pumpgun on the bar and dipped under the opening and came up on the other side of the counter.
“Best cognac you’ve got.” I could still feel the chill from the ride and from the wind that blew across the parking lot.
“I don’t know which one is best.” While I watched, he lined up the brands on the bar. Martell, Remy Martin, Bisquit, Hennessy and a brand of armagnac I didn’t know. When I didn’t choose from that group, he added a bottle of 5-star Metaxa.
“Anything else?”
A moment of hesitation and he reached low behind the bar and lifted out a bottle of twenty-year-old Hines. I grinned at him and nodded. “About a handful of that.”
“It’s what he drinks,” he said, swinging his head toward the bedroom door. When he turned back, he placed a large snifter on the bar and poured about three knuckles of cognac into it. “Guess it must be good.”
I threw down about half the shot and felt the warmth spread all the way down to my toes. I placed the snifter back on the bar and nodded and he refilled it up to the wet line.
A few minutes later, The Man came in from the bedroom.
The last couple of years didn’t show on him. Still hard as black stone, graceful and slim. Dressed now in gray flared slacks and a gold-colored smoking jacket.
“Did you find anything worth drinking, Hardman?”
I nodded at the bar. The young black had put away all the bottles except for the Hines. One look at the bottle and The Man grinned. “I’m glad you could come and visit,” he said to me.
“If you weren’t in, I’d have left my calling card.”
The black brought The Man a snifter of the Hines. Backing away, the black said, “Freddie and Vince went to eat.”
“Fine.” The Man sat on the sofa but he kept his distance.
“Ought to be back in forty minutes or so.”
The Man lifted his nose out of the snifter. “Wait on the landing.”
“Sure.” The young black lifted the pumpgun from the bar and went out and closed the door behind him. I knew the kind of dudes that The Man hired. Going out in the cold wasn’t anything. If he’d told them to, they’d have jumped into a vat of hot chicken fat.
“I was right to think you knew old Ronny?”
“I knew him. I might even have owed him.”
“He told me once,” The Man said. “That card game all those years ago.”
“That was the one.”
“His death bother you?”
I said, “Old men die.”
“And the way he died?”
“It sounded messy.”
“You didn’t see much of him the last few years, did you?”
No reason to lie. “I saw him at a Falcon game a couple of years ago. Saw him at three or four Braves games last summer.”
“You know he was tapped-out?”
“Him?” It didn’t make sense. “He had half the money in town.”
“Not the last two or three years,” The Man said. “His stomach started bothering him and he lost his nerve.”
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
“You laugh if I told you he’d been working for me the last year or so?”
I said, “I’m not laughing.”
“It wasn’t charity. Not exactly. He was keeping some books for me.”
A comedown of sorts. “He had a good head for figures.”
“It was sub rosa.”
“You taking Latin now?”
“I knew about it and he knew about it. Nobody else. Not even my best boys knew about it. Once a week I’d drop off a ledger and a folder full of notes on my transactions. They were coded to some degree. A couple of days later he’d call me and I’d pick up the ledger and the folder. I’d burn the notes and lock the ledger away.”
I could see the shape of it. “When did you drop off the ledger and the rough data this week?”
“Friday.” He didn’t blink.
“So normally you’d hear from him on Monday?”
“Or late Sunday.”
“And now the ledger is missing?”
“That’s what my sources tell me.”
“How damaging is it?” I lifted the snifter and sipped at it.
“The ledger? Not at all unless you can read the code. This symbol stands for one bagman and that one for another bagman.”
“Who’d want the ledger?”
“The locals or the Feds.”
I shook my head. “Murder’s not their way. Bug your phone or buy your brother, that’s their thing.”
“You don’t understand, Hardman.” He cupped his hands around the snifter and warmed the cognac. “I said the locals and the Feds would like to have the ledger. I didn’t say they had it.”
“Who then?”
“I don’t know.” He stood up and carried his snifter to the bar. He tipped the bottle of Hines and added a few drops to his glass. “I’ve got something I want you to hear.” He pointed toward the kitchen-dining room.
I followed him.
In the back, left corner there was something that wasn’t there the last time I was in the apartment. Next to the phone there was a tape recorder.
“When I’m asleep or out, a switch throws all the incoming calls onto the recorder. There’s always somebody here. They take the calls and what’s said is recorded, just in case there’s some doubt about what’s said.”
“You having trouble finding good boys these days? Ones who can take messages?”
He ignored me. He turned on the machine and punched down the “Play” button.
“Hello.”
“This is Vince answering the phone,” The Man said.
“I want to speak to The Man.” The voice was that of a man, but one with a mouthful of mush.
“Nobody by that name here.”
�
��And up you too, Charlie. Put him on the phone.”
“Who is this?”
“That doesn’t matter. You tell him I’ve got the ledger.”
“What ledger is that?”
“It’s black. It’s covered with leatherette. About six inches wide and twelve inches high.”
I turned to The Man. “It’s the right one,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about a ledger.”
“Dumb fucking burr-head. I’ll call back at eleven when The Man is there. You make sure he’s there.”
The line went dead. The Man punched the “Stop” button.
“What time did the call come in?”
“About eight this morning. Vince got me up and I listened to the tape.”
“You know the time Ronny was killed?”
“No way I could have. It wasn’t on the late news last night and since nobody, not even my sources, knew that Ronny was keeping books for me, there wasn’t any reason for them to call me.”
“So you made a few calls. Ronny didn’t answer. You called somebody close to the police and you found out Ronny was dead and there wasn’t a ledger at his apartment.”
“That’s it.” He punched the “Play” button. “This call came in at eleven on the dot.”
“Hello.” I could recognize The Man’s voice.
“You always sleep this late?”
“Who is this?”
“The man who has the ledger.”
“What do you want?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“For what?”
“Wake up.” The man with the mush in his mouth sounded irritated. “I want fifty thousand for the ledger.”
“It’s not worth that.”
“Today’s bargain day. It’s worth more than fifty grand and you know it.”
“Not to me.”
“I know somebody who’ll pay a finder’s fee.”
“Who?”
“The Feds. The I.R.S.”
“All right,” The Man said. “It’s worth that much to me.”
I looked at The Man. His mouth was twisted. He didn’t like me hearing him give in that easy.
“I want it in tens and twenties.”
“How and when?”
“I don’t want it delivered by you or your boys. I can’t see you or them in the dark.”
“Who then?”
“This guy in town did some work for you once. Jim Hardman. The slow, fat one.”
“I know him.”
“Get the money together. Pack it in a bag. Get it to Hardman. He holds it until I call him and give him instructions.”
“When?”
“Later today.”
“I can’t get it together by then. The banks are closed.”
“Monday afternoon?”
“All right.”
“Old money,” mushmouth said.
“How do I know you’ll turn over the ledger?”
“You don’t.”
A click. The line was dead. The Man hit the “Stop” button. I turned and walked back into the living room. On my way past the bar, I tapped the Hines bottle. I needed something to get the sour taste out of my mouth. I slumped down on the sofa and lit a cigarette and nibbled at the cognac. What bothered me was that during the whole conversation The Man hadn’t said a thing about Ronny’s killing.
The Man eased in and stood with one hip against the bar.
“You had me fooled there for a minute,” I said. “I thought you gave a shit about Ronny.”
“I do,” The Man said. “I cared enough about him to pay him a couple of grand a month. It was pride money. It left him his pride.” I could feel the hard sting of his anger. “Where were you, Hardman, when his nerve went and he lost his stash and he was living on canned soup?”
“All he had to do was ask me.”
“You know goddam well he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t with me and he wouldn’t with you. The big difference was that I found out he needed help and I did something about it. I asked him to do me some favors and every time I picked up the ledger at his place, I left him an envelope with five bills in it on his john seat. I cared enough not to hand him the money. Not to seem to be buying him.”
“All right.” I ground out the cigarette and burned a couple of fingertips doing it. I felt shaky. Head down, I had a realization about The Man. He hadn’t sent his bodyguard out to the landing because he didn’t want him to hear about the ledger. He probably already knew. No, it was because The Man knew he was going to have some trouble convincing me. He needed me and to get me he’d have to show the soft part of him. He could show it to me and I’d understand. His boys wouldn’t. They’d see it as weakness.
“What now?”
“First things first,” The Man said. “I want that ledger back.”
“Tell me about second things.”
He smiled then. It had about as much humor in it as rank sour vomit had perfume. “I want his ass on a plank.”
“The third thing,” I said, “is if I do this, I might be the one who ends up on the plank.”
“That’s the risk.”
“And it bothered you?”
“You want me to lie to you?”
I shook my head at him. “But it’ll cost you a thousand.”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“And how I handle it is up to me?”
“After you get the ledger,” he said. “After the ledger is safe.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll send the money around to you tomorrow, right after the banks open.”
I stood up. “You’d better give me the thousand now. I might not be around to collect it later.”
He went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. I walked over to the door to the stairs and pulled it open. The bodyguard and the other two blacks were seated on the stairs, passing a thick joint around in a circle.
“Warm up the car. I’m about ready to leave.”
The black who was lipping the joint looked like he wanted to tip it back into his mouth and swallow it. I shook my head at him and closed the door between us.
The Man came back and counted the thousand out into my hand. In bright new hundreds.
At my house the sauce for the jambalaya was ready. The rice was done and the shrimp had been boiled. Marcy cubed the ham while I told her an edited version of my meeting with The Man.
Once, when her back was to me, I grabbed the Tabasco bottle from the shelf and dripped in another dozen or so drops. I like the sauce hot and Marcy doesn’t.
I figured I might as well live it up while I could.
CHAPTER TWO
By morning the ice was melting on the roads.
After a cup of coffee, Marcy decided that she could manage the slush. I saw her off and then walked around the house to the backyard. There wasn’t any real damage from the ice storm. Some pruning of dead limbs. Off in the distance, in the yard that butted up against the back of mine, an oak tree had toppled from the weight of the ice, the cluster of roots sticking up raw and clotted with red mud.
I called Hump at nine. “Busy?”
“At nine in the morning?”
“Got us a job. Five bills in it for you.”
“I could use it. Christmas is coming.”
He was at my place an hour later when The Man’s soldiers brought the fifty thousand by and left it with me. It was in an old gym bag that smelled of dirty socks and jock straps.
Hump and I have been doing odd jobs for a couple of years. He’s a lot like me. Shiftless and lazy, Marcy would say. Doesn’t want a nine-to-five job. Thinks those people who keep bubbling about how much they love their jobs are a step and a half from the funny farm.
We’re alike up to there. Then it splits. I’m going toward forty-three a bit too fast to suit me. I’m slow and pudgy and I get a sunburn the first time I stand in the sun more than ten minutes. He’s a bit past thirty and somewhere between 6 foot 6 inches and 6 foot 7 inches and the last time I saw him
on the scales at the S&W cafeteria downtown on Peachtree the needle stopped at 270 and some ounces. He’s also midnight down in the coal mine black.
When I think about it, I have to admit it’s a strange relationship. Hump doesn’t like whites much and sometimes I think he’s bothered because some people misunderstand and think he’s my “boy,” that he works for me. Not so. He’s his own man. And we cut the pie right down the middle when there’s a pie to cut.
Back a few years ago, I was a cop here in Atlanta. That soured and I left before they could ask me to leave. Back around the same time, Hump was a damned good defensive end with Cleveland, a top one and All-Pro the year before he tore up a knee. The knee didn’t get back a hundred percent and he quit. He’d slowed and he knew he couldn’t hack it any more. Even now, his slow is about five steps faster than anybody’s I know.
What’s left for him in the straight world doesn’t appeal much to him. And what’s left to me, with my slightly tainted rep, doesn’t roll me out of bed in the morning, laughing and giggling. That’s the circle: we’re back to what we have in common.
Now we do odd jobs. Anything that pays. Anything that stops this side of killing. Or mugging for booze money. Or robbing banks.
They kept us waiting. Maybe it was to make the stew taste better. Or it might have been designed to put me on edge. The call came at six.
“Hardman?” It was the same voice, the mushmouth quality I’d heard on the tape.
“Yeah.”
“Got the cash?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Listen close. I’ll say it one time. I want you to drive over to Techwood and park in front of the Omni.”
The Omni is the crushed egg carton that’s made of steel and is supposed to turn into a beautiful work of art after the steel rusts and the patina develops. The Hawks and the Flames play their home games there. It’s also booked for everything from rock shows to fashion parades. The only event that hasn’t been booked there is an exhibition of nude women wrestling in tubs of mud.
“When?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“You want me to be at the Omni at eight on the dot?”
“No, you leave your house exactly at eight and drive straight to the Omni.”
“All right.”
