by Ralph Dennis
One more bank of rooms to go. I was almost there when the door to the right opened and Regina Clark stepped out. “… want to see me later, I think …” Then she saw me and broke off in mid-sentence. She turned to the side and a man passed her and faced me in the hall. He was in his late twenties. The boyish face that women seem to like, marred, I thought by a half-moon scar that almost formed a cleft in his chin.
“Miss Clark,” I said, “I’m Jim Hardman.”
“I don’t have time. I have another—”
“I was a friend of Ronny’s.”
“I don’t know … I don’t know anybody named Ronny.”
Pretty-boy wanted to score some points. “I don’t think you ought to bother—”
“Butt out,” I said.
He clenched his fists. Regina Clark touched his shoulder. “Jim, I don’t think you ought to get involved.”
His name was Jim too. For a second, I thought she was talking to me and it didn’t make any sense.
He said, “I’ll call the police.”
“They’re already on the way.”
“Well …” It took some of the steam out of him.
“Go on.” She gave him a gentle push. “I’ll see you at the next lesson.”
He brushed past me, still the outraged defender of young women. I watched him until he reached the door to the reception room, pushed the door open with a bang and stepped through. It closed behind him.
“So you don’t know Ronny?”
“No.”
“That’s funny. I don’t think Ronny ever would have said he didn’t know you.”
It broke her. Like I’d slammed a fist in her belly and knocked the breath out of her. She whirled, putting her back to me, and covered her face with her hands and began to cry.
Art hooked a foot on a chair and pulled it over until it faced the one where Regina Clark was seated. A cigarette in the corner of his mouth wagged at me. I passed behind him and closed the door to the studio. Art said, “You’ve been hard to find, Miss Clark. I hope there was a good reason.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I was afraid you’d think I had something to do with … with what happened to Ronny.”
“Running away didn’t look good.”
“I was leaving town tomorrow,” she said.
I pushed away from the closed door. “Back to Vegas?”
A flick of her eyes, surprised that I knew. “Yes.”
“It wouldn’t have been far enough. You remember a picture you had taken at the Sands back in December of ’72? Ronny kept a copy.”
“It was my twenty-first birthday.”
Art turned and hooked an elbow over the back of his chair. I could see he was in a bind. He wanted to know what I knew but he didn’t want to admit in front of the person he was questioning that he didn’t have all the facts.
“A security man I know in Vegas checked the picture back to you and it led us to the apartment on Briarcliff.” I made a cut-hand gesture to Art. I’d explain it to him later, as much as I could without throwing The Man into the pot. “We know how you met Ronny and we know he helped you and we think he felt about you the way he might about real family.”
I could see the tension falling away. “I thought the police might misunderstand.”
“One thing was working for you. We didn’t know you but we knew Ronny. It wasn’t his style and he had style.”
“He was the nicest man I ever knew. He wasn’t like all those other men, the …”
“Shakers and movers?”
She nodded. It was close enough. “If he wanted anything out of me, I never knew what it was.”
“Friendship?” I said. It was a kind of love.
Art saw that she was about to break. He took time to offer her a smoke and light it for her. He waited until she had it under control before he went on. “When did you come to Atlanta?”
“Three months ago.”
“Your idea or his?”
“Both, I guess. He knew I wasn’t happy in Las Vegas. He kept telling me to come to Atlanta. And one day, when it was so bad I didn’t think I could stand it any longer, I called him and he sent me a plane ticket.”
“Anything special happen in Vegas?”
“No. It was the usual. A man I worked for started acting like working for him meant working under him.”
“Tell us about Atlanta,” I said.
She liked Atlanta. Ronny found her an apartment and he had a friend who had a friend and out of that had come the job at the dance studio. But she’d been surprised by a few things. Out in Vegas she’d thought Ronny was rich, the way he threw money around. As soon as she reached Atlanta, she realized that he was down on his luck. His apartment wasn’t lavish and though he had money for most things, she knew it wasn’t unlimited and she began to refuse the kind of financial help she’d been willing to take earlier.
“Last Friday night,” I said.
Most weekends she spent at least one day with him. On Friday, she’d gone out to fix supper for him and she’d intended to stay all evening, watching TV or listening to music with him.
“The way you say it,” Art said, “something was different this time.”
“He said he had some work to do.”
That would be the work on The Man’s ledgers.
“Purvis, the resident manager, said he stopped by Ronny’s apartment that night.” Art turned to me. “What time did he say?”
“Seven o’clock. He was on the way to a bingo game.”
“You were in the apartment then, Miss Clark?” Art said.
“I was in the kitchen making a salad.”
I looked around for an ash tray. I couldn’t find one, so I brought over the metal trash can. I placed it between Art and Regina Clark. I lit a smoke and backed away, circling until I was directly behind her. “What was supper?”
“Baked pork chops, asparagus and a tossed salad.”
“You ate and then what?”
“I washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. By then it must have been eight o’clock.”
“You left then?”
She nodded and then she realized that, asking the question behind her, I couldn’t see the nod. She said, “Yes.”
Art said, “You left the Starlight Estates about eight. Where’d you go from there?”
“To my apartment on Briarcliff. I’d intended to spend the evening with Ronny, and I didn’t have any other plans.”
“Anyone see you there?” I leaned past her and dropped an ash in the trash can.
“I don’t think so.” She hesitated. “Yes, the man next door.”
“Apartment 24?”
She looked over her shoulder at me. “I’d hardly taken my coat off when he knocked. He said he was stuck with some tickets to the Hawk game. If we hurried, we could get there for the second half.”
“He high that night?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was.”
Art reached out and took the short butt from Regina’s fingers and mashed the coal out on the side of the trash can. “You know him, Jim?”
“Met him yesterday. He smokes like an old stove.”
Art braced the pad on his knee. “His name?”
I shook my head.
“I think his name is Harris,” Regina said.
“First name Bob,” I added. I could still hear the strident voice of the girl yelling from the bedroom.
Art wrote it down. “I’ll check this with him. He backs it up and you’re clear.”
“And you stayed home all evening?”
“Yes.”
“Nobody called you, anything like that?”
“I don’t have any friends in Atlanta.”
“Stay around,” I said. “You’ll make a few.”
I was watching Art’s face. Puzzlement and dissatisfaction mixed on his face. Here he had his first good witness and the deadend signs were still up.
“There’s one thing,” Regina said. “I don’t kno
w if it matters.”
“It might.”
“I was thinking back over that last time with Ronny. Right before I left, he did something.”
“Go on, Regina.”
“It’s probably not important.”
“What happened?” Art sounded impatient.
“It was strange. I was standing in the kitchen doorway, putting on my coat, and I saw him move the sugar bowl and the salt and pepper shakers from the dining table and place them on the counter by the stove. Then he put the big ash tray from the living room in the center of the table.”
She’d been right the first time. It wasn’t important.
“And I think I saw a chip holder and a number of decks of cards on the kitchen counter.”
“How many decks?”
“I just saw them out of the corner of my eye. But it might have been eight or ten decks.”
“A poker game,” I nodded at Art. “Ronny was having a play money party.”
“But Wednesday was his poker night.”
“Usually.” I cut an eye toward Art. He knew it too. He’d heard it fall over. The deadend sign was down.
“Does that help?” She looked from me to Art. “I really want to help.”
“I think it does.” Art isn’t one to bubble away. He gets a lot more distance out of understatement. Now it was wrap-up time for this interview. “Where are you staying now?”
“The Hotel Francis until tomorrow.”
That was the low rent district. I couldn’t see her fitting in there.
“You’re going to have to stay a few more days,” Art said.
I asked, “You short, Regina?”
The four or five beats of hesitation meant she didn’t like answering me. “A little. I’ve got a plane ticket to Vegas and enough to keep me until I find a job.”
“Marcy will put her up for a few days.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble …” she began.
“It’s that,” Art said to her, “or I’ll have to find some reason to hold you.”
“Marcy’s my woman. She’s not a jailer.”
“And too good a woman for the fat man here.”
“All right,” she said, “if she doesn’t mind.”
“She won’t.”
Art stood up. “I’ll need a full statement tomorrow. I’ll call you here.”
“I’ve given my notice. Today’s the last day.”
“Marcy’s place then.”
Out in the reception room, Hump had done a bit more than jolly Miss Winters. They were head to head and he was feeding her some candy nonsense. She was buying about half of it. Regina left us and went into the ladies rest room. I walked Art down the flight of stairs to the street level.
“I could be wrong but the girl seems straight.”
He buttoned his topcoat and turned up the collar. “My feeling too.” He opened the door and the cold wind sliced in. “What if Marcy won’t put her up?”
“She will.” I grinned at him. “I’ll give her a choice. Either she puts Regina up or I will.”
I used the desk phone to call Marcy’s office. I didn’t have to use the either/or thing with her. She said she’d come by my place after work. I replaced the receiver and stood back and listened to some of Hump’s con and candy. It was some of his best.
“How’s the briar patch?”
“Makes me itch.”
“Scratch it,” I said.
An eyelid drooped at me. “This girl’s going to have a drink with me.”
I heard the question in that. I got out my key ring and unclipped my car key. “Keep in touch.”
We drove to my place in Regina’s Pinto. On the way I offered to stop by the Hotel Francis and pick up her things. She said she’d rather wait until the next day. She could pick them up on her way to or from the police department.
That out of the way, she said very little. I gave her directions to my place. Left turn here, right turn there, and I guess I got so relaxed that I didn’t notice she’d been studying me.
“You knew Ronny for a long time?”
“Almost twenty years.”
“That’s odd. He never mentioned you.”
“Not really. He was a gambler. I wasn’t. The worlds don’t touch much.” I knew where she was heading. I decided to spread it out for her. “I didn’t know about his hard luck. Not until after he was dead. If I’d known, I’d have tried to help him. Maybe you know. He was a close man. The few times I saw him in the last few years he looked like big money. I didn’t feel like I belonged.”
“And yet you’re trying to find out what happened to him.”
“It’s simple enough. To him, maybe I never got past being the kid he’d helped out in a game once. Maybe. But how you feel about other people isn’t dependent on how you think they feel about you.”
For some reason I didn’t understand, what I’d said closed her up again. She fell into yes and no and it was a deep pit and finally I gave up and left her there.
By six, Marcy and Regina were on a first-name basis. We had a couple of drinks and a little later they left, Regina following her in the Pinto. I washed the glasses and refilled the ice trays and I wandered around the house, running into small pockets of their perfume. Hers here and Marcy’s there. After a time I couldn’t tell which was which.
CHAPTER SIX
The agony wasn’t long. After an hour or so, the perfumes blended in with the other closed-in winter smells. I brewed up a cup of instant coffee and carried it into the bedroom. I dialed the department and got Art on the line.
“You got the photos taken at Ronny’s apartment?”
“Wait a minute.”
While he was gone, I could hear a hunt-and-peck typist doing his two words a minute off in the background.
“Got them,” he said.
“Any of the kitchen?”
“One.”
“The table in the kitchen set for a poker game?”
“No. No cards. No chip holder. Looks like a sugar dish, salt and pepper shakers, and a napkin holder.”
“That doesn’t bother you, Art?”
“Because of the girl’s story? Sure it does.”
“Look in the inventory of the apartment’s—”
“I’m ahead of you,” Art said. “I’ve checked the list. No chip holder on it and only two decks of cards. One used, the other with the seal intact. But they weren’t in the kitchen. They were in a bureau drawer in the bedroom.”
“Not enough cards for a game.”
“So how do you see it, Jim?”
“Say they play a few hands. When they start cleaning up the mess, after Ronny’s dead, they have to worry about the cards. Could have left the chip holder except for the fact it’d point to a game. Too many prints on the cards so they’d have to be taken away. So they just dump the whole mess in a sack and cart it away.”
“Or,” Art said, “they didn’t play at all.”
“Huh?”
“The poker game’s just an excuse. Maybe they just walk in and get down to the other business. When that’s done, they’ve got a dead man on their hands. They’re combing through the apartment and they get to the kitchen. They see the chip holder and the unbroken decks of cards. They know if the police see those it’ll read poker game. Have to haul those off.”
“Or there was never a poker party planned in the first place. It was a cocktail party and they were going to show the Candy Barr blue movie.”
“Screw you.”
I told him I’d get back to him in a day or two.
I had a sip of coffee and tried Hump’s number. No answer. I watched TV for a time and then dialed the number again. Still no answer. Hump and that fox, Miss Winters. All that body. He’d run her to ground in some hole other than his own bed.
“Jim?”
I got up on an elbow and looked at the dial of the clock on the night table. It was two-ten a.m.
“Yes, Hump?”
“It’s messy over here.”
“What
? Where are you?” My head wasn’t working. I could blame that on about three shots of J&B.
“It’s Betty Winters.”
“What about her?”
“She’s dead in the doorway. I just called Art over at the police.”
“How’d it happen?”
“I was on the crapper. She was making drinks. Guess the doorbell rang. Soon as she opened the door somebody shot her a few times.”
“How many times?”
“It sounded like three but I can’t be sure. The one time in the face was enough.”
“Dead?”
“Dead, Jim? She’s blood pudding.”
He gave me the address. It was one of the old apartment houses out Peachtree N.E., around 17th Street, a few blocks before the two parts of Peachtree merge and become Peachtree Road.
I got dressed and I was at the front door before I realized I didn’t have a car. Hump had it. I had to wait twenty-five minutes for a cab. It gave me time to have a weak cup of coffee.
“Door was on the chain,” Art said. He nodded his head at Hump who was seated in a rope-bottomed chair. “According to Hump the light was on in the bedroom, out here in the living room, and on in the kitchen where she was mixing drinks.”
“She was back and side lighted,” I said.
“And maybe front lighted from the hall,” Art said.
I leaned over Hump and shook out a cigarette and lit it for him. “Who the hell would want—?” I didn’t finish it. I let it trail off and die.
A plainclothes cop with Art, an older man with a twitchy rat’s face, leaned in. He’d been listening. “A jealous boyfriend. He’s waiting outside. Sees his girl come in with company. Gets mad and kills her.”
Some people piss me. All the first level, slow-headed shit. “You got the name of this boyfriend?”
He shrugged. “We can ask around. It’ll be the way I said.”
“Do that, Bert,” Art said. “Do it door-to-door. See who heard the shots. See if anybody saw anybody leaving right after the shots.”
“Sure, Art.”
He swaggered out of the apartment. Art watched him go. “I think Bert ass-kissed his way out of uniform.”
Hump lifted his head. The smoke from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth drifted up into one eye. He squinted. “It wasn’t her they wanted dead. It was me.”
