by Ralph Dennis
“Jaw?”
“I think that bastard loosened a tooth or two on one side.”
“Chew on the other side.”
“You try that lately?”
I shook my head. “And I run away from fights too.”
“Teach me how.” He got up and opened the refrigerator and got a bottle of catsup. He poured a glop on each pattie and went on eating.
“The girl showed up.”
“Regina or whatever?”
“I think so.”
“Nice?”
“Prime trim you’d call her.”
He swallowed and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “You have a long talk with her?”
“Lost her in the crowd.”
He laughed, spraying biscuit crumbs across the table at me.
“You up to working, Hump?”
“Finding that girl? Sure.”
“I thought I had your interest,” I said.
He went on eating.
“It ought to be easier now. I know what she looks like.”
Freddie Glass likes to call himself the Nightclub Editor for the Constitution. He isn’t but I’ve seen the byline slip through that way once or twice. They really hired him to do the usual scut work, the fires and bank robberies. About a year ago, with the usual sense that papers show, they transferred him to Amusements. He’s been reviewing movies and plays since and he doesn’t know anything about plays and even less about film. He works under the Amusement Editor who used to write sports. So much for the level of criticism in Atlanta.
What Freddie really wants to do is set up a separate desk for the nightclub beat. He’s been making that pitch for half a year. He has this dream of having a special table set aside for him at all the clubs and they’ll furnish him free drinks and free food and he’ll have so much power the young girls will drop their drawers for him to get their names in the paper.
That is, Freddie is horny and on the make.
A girl at the desk said Freddie was out on assignment and, when I pushed, she said he was at the Dream Gate South, a club on West Peachtree near Ponce de Leon. It seemed early in the day for nightclubbing but I wanted to see him. We drove down and parked in the crowded lot next door to the club.
The banner above the club entrance had red letters about six inches high. MISS NAKED WORLD APPEARING NOW. Hand on the door I could hear a drum roll from inside. We went in.
A young guy in a white Gatsby suit met us one step inside the door. “Which paper?”
“Northside News,” I said.
Hump said, “Black World.”
The young guy seemed to have heard of both of them. He waved a hand at the bar. “Drinks and food. Help yourself.”
We drifted in the direction of the bar. Trays of drinks were made up. I sniffed at some of them until I found some watered-down scotch. I passed one to Hump and got another for me.
The club was full. I could see a few newspaper men I knew. Some of them were from sports and others from the police beat. It looked like the free drinks and food had brought them all out.
I located Freddie at a table down front. That was like him. Get there early and find the best spot. Chubby, thick glasses gleaming, the pasty look of a choir boy who’d taken up drink.
Up on the stage, dressed in a red suit with gold lapels, a short barrel of a man was saying, “… guess you’re wondering why I asked you here, why I spent two thousand alone on the catering.”
A couple of people at a table over to the right laughed.
“Would you believe two dollars and ninety-eight cents?”
More laughter.
“Well, here she is. Miss Naked World.”
There was another drum roll and a red-haired girl came out on the stage. She was barefooted and wearing a dark green kimono robe. Even before she reached the chair in the center of the stage, she unbelted the robe and opened it wide. She wasn’t wearing a stitch under it. She peeled it from her shoulders and passed it to the man in the red suit.
“I feel more comfortable this way,” she said. “I hate clothes.”
The face wasn’t much. The rest of her was. The only thing that bothered me a bit was the color of her pubic hair. It was the same shade of showgirl red that her wig was. In fact, it might have been a wig too.
I edged over and found the food. There were some dips and crackers, a pan of meatballs and some chicken livers wrapped in bacon. I did some eating while the question and answer session got underway.
Between stabs at the food, I watched Freddie Glass. He was staring at her crotch and asking her a question. I could see the oil sweat on his forehead.
Hump and I waited out on the walk for Freddie. He was one of the last to leave. I guess he couldn’t get enough of that pink muff and he’d brought up a last question or two to give him a reason to stay behind.
“You here, Jim?” he asked.
“Needed a word with you.”
We’d started away when a heavy man in the red suit with the gold lapels came to the door and shouted, “Now you write a good story, you hear?”
Freddie waved at him. “What’s it about?”
I described the girl I’d seen in the doorway of the church. I told him I thought she might be a dancer.
“I haven’t seen her,” Freddie said. “Maybe she works in a topless place. Not my beat.”
“I don’t think so.” I remembered the way she looked. Too much class for those places.
He unlocked his Buick and tossed his note pad on the seat. “I’ll ask around. Regina’s the name?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll call you if I hear anything.”
I patted his shoulder as he got into the Buick. He drove away to write his story. Visions of pink muffs dancing behind his eyelids.
Later that afternoon, I dropped Hump at his place and drove back to the Starlight Estates. I parked in a slot in front of the resident manager’s apartment and tried the doorbell. No answer. I walked down to the apartment Purvis had pointed out as belonging to Ronny.
I tried the door. It was unlocked. I pushed it and went in. There were packing cases all around the living room.
“Anybody here?”
Ronny’s brother came to the bedroom doorway. He was still wearing the suit with the black armband. “You want something here?”
It wasn’t unfriendly, just irritated. I’d interrupted him in his work.
“I knew Ronny for a long time.”
He stared at me for a moment. “I think I saw you at the service.”
“I was there.” I stepped around a couple of packing cases and held out my hand. I gave him my name and he told me he was Joe Bob Kent. He had a wary, puzzled look and I was fairly certain he wasn’t the right one to use the insurance agent gambit with. So I told the truth.
He heard me out. At the end he said, “But you’re not a policeman?”
“Not anymore.”
“Then how can you investigate—?”
“Easier than you think.”
“I’m not sure I ought to trust you.”
“You talk to somebody at the police?”
“A Mr. Mahoney.”
“It’s Maloney,” I said. I nodded at the phone next to the sofa. “It still connected?”
“I think so.”
I went over and dialed Art’s home number. Edna answered and after I got past some small talk I got Art on the line. I turned the phone over to Joe Bob Kent and walked into the bedroom. Now it seemed bare and spartan. The mattress where the butchery had been done was gone and through the springs. I could see some dark stains on the floor that I knew were blood. So I looked at the walls. I could see the stick-on hooks and the dust outlines where the pictures had been. On the cleared dresser top there were stacks of pictures, some framed and some not. Off to one side about a foot of old newspapers. I’d interrupted Joe Bob while he was wrapping the pictures and packing them away.
While I waited for him to end his talk with Art, I looked through the stack of old p
hotos. Some of the larger frames held four and five pictures. The old ones were black and white, now browning with age. Ronny had been young then. Most were taken in nightclubs or by a pool. The other men in the photos were like Ronny had been then, the high roller types. In some there were girls, the showgirl types, the ones you could buy for a night with a few leftover chips.
At the bottom there were the more recent ones. They were color and they were in the folders that they came in. Linen-like paper with the beauty shot photo of the hotel or club on front. I’d culled through most of these before I realized that Joe Bob was in the doorway, watching me.
“He says you’re a mustang, but you’re honest up to a point.”
“That’s a fair estimate,” I said.
I opened another of the folders as I talked. It froze me, the picture there. It was a recent picture of Ronny. He was at a nightclub. The dazzle of a white tablecloth. Ronny wearing a dark suit. The girl next to him, without the showgirl smile, with the serious look of someone who didn’t want her picture taken, was the girl I’d seen in the entranceway to the church. I looked at the cover of the folder. The Sands Hotel.
I carried the picture over to Joe Bob. “You know this girl?”
He hardly looked at it. “I didn’t know any of his women.”
“Women” sounded like whore, the way he said it.
“She was at the service this morning,” I said.
“Was she?” He peered down at the picture. “I didn’t see her.”
“You mind if I keep this for a day or two? I’ll have copies made and mail it back to you.”
“I guess it’s all right.” He got out a shoulder wallet and gave me his card. It said that he was a real estate dealer and gave both his office and his home address.
I put that in my pocket and closed the photo folder. I looked around. “You find anything odd here?”
“Everything about John was odd.”
I felt the strong disapproval. He’d done his duty by his brother and that had included a memorial service. Now the truth was slipping out. He’d never understood Ronny and he never would.
“He was a good man,” I said.
He accepted it as another of those nice lies you tell the family about the black sheep. The ones the family chewed up and spat out later. It saddened me some, the gap between what Ronny had been and the way his brother saw him.
I thanked him and left him standing next to the dresser, staring down at the photographic proof of the kind of life Ronny had led. The bad life, the wasted life.
I drove to the photo lab on Piedmont. As soon as I decided to have some copies made I thought of Jimmy. I’d helped him get a job five years ago when he’d come up for parole. I think that carried some weight with the Board: the man who’d put the collar on him thinking he was worth paroling.
It was a lab that processed a lot of the film that came in from the little drugstores all over the city. It wasn’t an impressive building, just a cinderblock cube with one window up front and a couple of van trucks parked out there with “Quickie Film Processing” on the sides.
The girl in the office called for him and I leaned on the counter and waited. Jimmy came through the doorway like he didn’t have a worry in the world. A black in his late twenties, mod dresser. A scar that ran down from his right ear. He’d gotten that in the slam when he fought off a big stud who wanted to punk him.
He saw me and his feet got stuck in mud, but he came in. He leaned across the counter, his voice a low and intense whisper. “I’m clean, Hardman, and you know it.”
I grinned at him. “You must be clean. Otherwise you’d know I’m not a cop anymore.”
“Really?” He straightened up. “In that case, what can I do for you, Mr. Hardman?”
I opened the folder and took the photo out of the brackets. “I need a dozen copies of this. A rush job. After you’ve made the copies, slice them. I just want the girl’s picture.”
“It’ll cost you.”
“Twenty?”
“You going to wait?”
“I’ll wait.”
I sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette or two. Passing the time I turned the folder and read the back. I hadn’t noticed it before. It gave the name and address of the photo lab in Vegas. The Willow Co. Below that: For additional copies, send $4.98 and the date this picture was taken along with this photo. Lots of luck there. And then as I turned the folder, I saw a faint impression below this come-on. It was just deep enough for me to read. 11/23/72. From the smudge I could guess that Ronny had made the notation so he’d remember that in case he wanted another print. And later he’d erased that pencil mark.
It was half an hour by the clock when Jimmy returned with the copies. I put the original photo back in the folder and slipped him the twenty. He smooth-handed it off the counter and into his pocket. I took the dozen trimmed-down copies.
“Stay clean, Jimmy.”
He met my eyes. “I’ve got a wife and a boy now. That sound like somebody wants to do hard time?”
I agreed with him that it didn’t.
From a pay booth down the road I called Hump’s apartment. He answered on the second ring. “Glad you called, Jim. The Man wants to see you.”
“He say what it was about?”
“Said he had a tape he wants you to hear.”
Shit. The second demand. I’d been expecting it, but not this soon. I wasn’t close enough. I was following the string but I couldn’t see the end of it.
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Twenty minutes,” Hump said.
“I tried to stall them for a day or two,” The Man said.
“Try for a week.”
I opened the folder and passed the picture to him. The Man turned so that the light came from over his shoulder. “This the girl?”
“I need to talk to her and she’s in town.”
He looked at the beauty shot on the folder cover. “Sands, huh?”
I turned the folder so that he could see the faint impression. “See it? The date?”
The Man nodded.
“You have contacts out there?”
“Some.” He flipped back to the photo. “Seems a bit young for old Ronny.”
“Spread some bread on the Vegas waters. Describe the photo to them. Have them trace down a copy. Have them walk the photo around the places where Ronny did his play. Somebody might know her.”
“All club girls look alike.”
“Look at her again. She’s not the type. I doubt she was selling it for chips.”
He closed the folder. I got out the business card Joe Bob Kent had given me. “After you make the call, have one of your boys mail the photo to this address.”
“All right. Here’s the call.” He reached out and punched the “Play” button.
“You were a twenty short,” the mushmouth man said.
“It was a rush,” The Man said. “Mistakes happen.”
“Bad faith bothers me. I think we’re going to have to renegotiate.”
“What does that mean?”
“Good acting there,” I said to The Man.
“You saw the xerox copies of the two pages?”
“I saw them,” The Man said. “And you talk to me about good and bad faith.”
A laugh that fluttered on the tape. “The price just went up. For these copies the price is a hundred thousand.”
“That’s steep. How do I know you didn’t make a dozen copies of each page?”
“You don’t. You’ll have to trust me.”
“I did before. It didn’t work.”
Hump said, “Just the right amount of outrage.”
“Make the same arrangements. The fat man, Hardman, to make the drop again.”
“It’ll take time to get that much money together,” The Man said. “And there’s another problem.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t think Hardman will do it.”
“Good thinking there,” I said.
“Jack the money up.
He’ll sell strips of his ass for a hundred-dollar bill.”
“He says he’s out of it,” The Man said.
“Jesus Christ, that’s your problem. You convince him.”
“It’ll take time.”
“I’ll call back in two days.”
The Man hit the “Stop” button before the line went dead. Hump got up and headed for the bar. He was grinning when he passed me. “It sounds like he knows you well, Jim.”
“That remark about selling strips of my ass? I didn’t know I was a town character.”
The Man lifted the receiver and began dialing. “Fix yourself a drink while I call Vegas.”
I played barman while Hump sat on the sofa and stretched his long legs. “That bother you?”
I dropped a couple of cubes in two glasses and splashed on J&B. “What?”
“That he insists on you making the drop. Nobody else.”
I carried him his drink. “Maybe he heard around town that I was incompetent.”
“Maybe, or maybe he’s somebody you know or you knew.”
“Someone who doesn’t like me.”
“And the way he talks.”
“Yeah?” I sipped at the scotch and waited. Hump didn’t talk a lot most of the time, a lot of funny crap mostly, but when he got an idea it usually had some shine to it.
“What do you think it is?”
I said, “Something in his mouth, chewing gum.”
“Reminds me something happened to me.” He tapped his glass on the coffee table. “Knew this prime trim once. Name was Ethel. Didn’t know it at the time ,but she had false teeth. Walked in on her one morning.” He grinned. “I was going to wake her up with my special early morning perk-me-up. Found her snoring away without her teeth.” He waved a hand toward the kitchen-dining room where the tape recorder was. “Talked like that man while she was running me out of her bedroom.”
“Mad with you?”
“Some. Got over it after she had her teeth in and we were taking this hot and friendly shower together.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this profile. He’s a stud who knows and doesn’t like me and he’s wearing false teeth, except when he’s making phone calls to The Man.”
He knew it was weak. He shrugged. “Good way to disguise your voice.”
