by Ralph Dennis
“Why?”
Art waited for Hump to answer. He didn’t and after the silence lasted for a minute or so I knew that he wasn’t going to. I said, “A couple of nights ago Hump and I dropped in to see Mort Heppler.”
“Heppler? That’s high class. Why?”
“He and Ronny were pals. Word was Mort and Ronny still saw each other. Nothing came of the talk but Hump and a curly-haired dude named Tony Mitchell got their fur up. Ended up in a boxing and butting contest in the parking lot outside the Dogwood Lounge.”
Art looked at Hump. “Still puffy, huh?”
“A bit.”
“How’d the fight come out?”
“Hump scraped his plow.”
“What does Mitchell do for Heppler?” Art asked.
“I think he carries a piece for Heppler.”
“You see him carrying?”
I shook my head. I was thinking along with Art. First step was to find out if Mitchell had a permit. If so, for what kind of iron. If not, he could make trouble for Mitchell if he found him carrying without a permit. “He looks the type.”
Art grunted. “I’d like for you to put that silly statement down in writing.”
While Hump got his coat, I walked over to the bedroom and looked in. A frilly blue place, pillows on the floor and the sheets looked like a dozen or so wildcats had fought a war in the center of the bed.
“Thanks for not asking how it was.”
I tossed a pillow past him. It landed on the sofa next to him. On the way back from the girl’s apartment, I’d said he might as well spend the night at my place and he hadn’t argued.
“I don’t remember ever asking,” I said. “Not even about the live ones.”
“That’s right. Sorry.”
“But somebody else did?”
“Not in so many words,” he said.
“Who?”
“A redneck cop. First one to arrive. Took one look at her and one look at me. He wrote her off as a pig who sold it for a living.”
“Liked her, huh?”
“Seemed a nice girl after you got past a lot of that woman crap. After you got past the fact that everybody wanted her ass and what that did to her.”
I stretched and yawned. “See you in the morning. You know where the booze is.”
“You’re thinking Mitchell?”
“If the shots were meant for you, he’s the obvious one.”
“Like they used to say …”
I waited.
“If it was Mitchell he’d better give his soul to God—”
I finished it for him. “… because his ass belongs to you.”
I didn’t fall asleep right away. I could hear him prowling around the living room and the kitchen. I heard bottle and glass noise and the old springs in the sofa creaking.
It was ten when I woke up. Hump was already gone. My car was still in the driveway. It meant, I guess, that he’d called a cab from right next to my bed and I’d been so far under that I hadn’t heard him.
I dressed and called The Man while the water heated for the instant coffee.
“I don’t expect the call until later this afternoon,” he said as he came on the line.
“It’s not that.” I lit a smoke and coughed on the first drag from it. “I need to see Mort Heppler again.”
“This time of day?”
“The sooner the better. The pot’s boiling.”
He called back in ten minutes. Under some protest, Mort Heppler would see me at noon at the Bayside Club. “And wear a coat and tie so you don’t make him look bad.”
I stubbed out the smoke and made a cup of coffee. I waited a few minutes and called Marcy.
“Everything all right over there?”
“Fine. She’s a nice girl.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“She’s not here. She’s gone to check out of the hotel and pick up her things.”
“Art call her?”
“No.”
Nothing strange about that. I guess she needed a change of clothes.
“When am I going to see you, buster?”
“Soon. Maybe tonight.”
“Promise?”
I said I crossed my heart and hoped to die. As soon as I put the receiver down, I decided that considering what had happened the night before, it wasn’t the best kind of promise I could have made.
The Bayside Club isn’t one of the top five in Atlanta. It looks good enough from the outside. Something like Mount Vernon would look if it had been built by a troop of hippie carpenters. The lawn in the spring and summer is as large and as well-kept as any nine-hole golf course in the city.
It’s as exclusive as any other Atlanta social club. Membership is held down to a hundred families. For the favored there is handball and tennis and swimming. Bars and dining rooms and game rooms where the gentlemen can play a few hands of cards without fear that police will interrupt the game.
But it is second rate. It doesn’t carry the prestige of a club like the Piedmont Driving Club. In a newspaper write-up Bayside Club means new money, money acquired in the last fifty years. The Piedmont Driving Club means old money, dollar bills that have been turning over and over since before Sherman marched through and held the first citywide barbecue.
I had to wait at the desk while the steward sent one of his flunkies into the plush bowels of the club. It appeared that Mort Heppler had forgotten to leave my name on the day’s guest book. Like hell, he’d forgotten.
“This way.” The flunky returned and led me through the huge, high-ceilinged reading room, over thick carpets and past old wooden panels they must have bought right off the wall of some mansion in Europe.
He stopped in the doorway that separated the reading room and a small bar. Mort Heppler and another younger man sat across from each other at a table some distance from the bar, away from any ears that might have a backward turn to them.
As I approached Heppler’s table, the man seated across from him saw me first. He got to his feet and gave me a slow look before he backed his way to a bar stool. I tagged him as paid help. I don’t know how he tagged me.
I stood behind a chair and waited for Heppler to invite me to sit down. He took his time. “Have a seat, Hardman.”
As soon as my butt hit the chair bottom, a waiter trotted over.
“I’m having sherry,” Heppler said.
“A beer,” I said and, because it looked fancy enough, added, “A Beck’s if you have it.”
The waiter trotted back a few seconds later with a bottle of Beck’s and a pilsner glass. Unchilled.
I poured half a glass and sipped it. Mort Heppler, looking as frail and near death as the last time I saw him, toyed with his sherry glass.
“You don’t seem too pleased to see me today.” I said.
“I like to keep my business and my social life apart.”
“I couldn’t wait until your business hours.”
Heppler said, “Perhaps you’ll tell me what’s so pressing.”
I eased around in my chair and looked at the bodyguard at the bar. He was drinking straight Coke and watching me, every move I made. “What happened to your other boy?”
“Who was that?” He wasn’t going to volunteer anything.
“Mitchell.”
“Tony? He quit.”
“Quit or was fired?”
He spread his hands. “It was a bit of both. After the incident in the parking lot, I thought he might not be suited to the profession he’d chosen and he decided he needed a vacation.”
“You know where he is now?”
“No.”
“Where did he live when he worked for you?”
“In the guest house,” Heppler said. “What had been a gardener’s cottage at one time.”
“He move out?”
He nodded. “The day he quit.”
“Leave a forwarding address?”
“Are you sure this is important? I’m not sure Tony would want to see you after the other night.”
I leaned forward, perhaps a bit abruptly. Behind me I could hear the heels hit the floor. “Last night somebody tried a hit on Hump. They killed a girl instead. Hump’s out looking for Mitchell now.”
“And you’re worried about Tony?”
“Not at all.” I looked over my shoulder at the bodyguard. He’d edged close to me. “Call him off.”
“It’s all right, Bob.”
I kept my eyes on him until he was seated at the bar again. “I’m not worried about Mitchell at all. Screw him in the nose. Fuck him in the ear.”
“Then it’s your partner you’re worried about?”
“It comes to killing you can do time for offing low life, just like you’d do for a preacher.”
“Evans is no concern of mine.”
“A beating in a parking lot. Is that worth a killing?”
“People kill for a lot of things. They kill for less than a bad beating.”
I decided to drop the handkerchief and see if anybody’d pick it up. “The Wednesday poker games, was Mitchell there?”
“Of course.”
“Watching you or playing?”
“He sat in a few times,” Heppler said, “when we were a chair short.”
“New news for you,” I said. “The night Ronny was butchered he was set up for a game. Chips and cards.”
“That’s the Grand Canyon you’re trying to jump now.”
“Where was Mitchell that Friday night?”
“I don’t know. In the guest house, I suppose.”
“You don’t know?”
“Tony took a night off now and then.”
“And that Friday was a day off.”
“I’ll have to check my records.”
“Bull.”
“All right, he was off that night,” Heppler said. “There was a girl he’d met at the Lounge. A divorcee, I think.”
“Her name?”
He shook his head. “The night bartender might know.”
I made the circle. I reached back in the jumble that was the beginning of the conversation. “I need Mitchell’s address.”
“He didn’t give it to me.” He sighed, a long rattling flutter that sounded like one lung might go. “Okay. He asked if my driver could drop some of his things off for him. The driver said he took them to the Executive Motel downtown.”
“Thanks.” I poured down some of the Beck’s.
“You really think he had something to do with what happened?”
“To Ronny? I don’t know.”
“You’re raking a lot of hay for somebody who isn’t sure of much.”
I shrugged that off. “I need one more favor from you.”
“You can ask it. I think the favor box is empty.”
“I need a list of everybody who played in the Wednesday games.”
“I’m not sure I can make such a list,” Heppler said.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Look at it this way, Mr. Heppler. Everything I heard said, Ronny lost his poker nerve a couple of years back. The only game he took cards in was the Wednesday one. Now, suddenly, he’s having a Friday game at his place. Tell me, where’d he find the players?”
“You think he found them at my table.”
“Tell me somewhere else.”
“Old poker friends, people he hadn’t played with for years.”
“Those ghosts,” I said. “I’ll check the real ones first.”
Heppler drained the last of his sherry. “I’ll think about it.”
“I’ll drop by the Dogwood tonight.”
“That might be too early.”
“Don’t take this as a threat. Think of it as a possibility. You know Art Maloney?”
“By reputation,” Heppler said.
“He’s working on the killings. He could ask you for the names.”
“Bob.” Heppler tilted his head toward me.
Leather heels struck the floor. A quick step toward me. I looked over my shoulder at him. He was close, one hand out, cupped to clamp on my shoulder.
“No hands,” I said to him.
The hand straightened. He flexed it.
“Bob, show Mr. Hardman out. I wouldn’t want him to lose his way.”
I stood up. “What’s a good time tonight? Nine o’clock?”
Heppler didn’t answer.
“Nine o’clock then.”
I left the bar. The hired help dogged my steps through the reading room, past the steward’s desk and out the front door into the cold early afternoon. He stopped on the steps, blowing his frosty breath at me.
On the drive into town, I wondered if Hump was one step ahead of me or one step behind.
I parked in the motel lot. The motel was built on a narrow strip of land, in the shape of a clothespin. Three floors high. There was space for about fifty cars in the narrow courtyard. Getting out of the car I could see the maid’s laundry cart on the second level.
I was on the way to the motel office when I heard a car door slam behind me.
“Jim.” I looked around and saw Hump walking toward me. “He’s not in.”
“You sure?”
“I tried the door a few times.”
“Which room?”
“34.”
“Where is it?”
Hump turned and pointed up to the second level. I followed the angle and settled on a room a few doors down from where the laundry cart was.
“The maid clean it yet?”
Hump shook his head. “Heading that way now.”
“The maid black?”
“Yeah.”
“You jolly her then. See if we can buy five minutes in there.”
I waited in front of room 34 while he eased his way down the breezeway and ducked into the room where the maid was working. He was in there about five minutes. When he came out, he was followed by a tiny little black woman who must have been about sixty.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, son?”
“Of course not, Reba.”
She dug out a master key. She nodded at me as I stepped away from the doorway. After fitting the key into the lock she gave the empty courtyard another look. “You could get me fired.”
“From this job?” Hump shrugged.
Reba laughed and unlocked the door. She stepped away. “I ain’t got time to stay here with you.”
“Five minutes,” Hump said.
“I’ll be back in ten.”
It was 20th century motel plastic inside, so standard that a room in Georgia was exactly like one in California. The bed hadn’t been slept in, the sheets and blanket in place and the pillows fluffed up. On the dresser a pad on which there was a plastic ice bucket and about a half bottle of a bar scotch. Hump stopped at the closet while I walked back to the bathroom. There was an electric razor on the shelf above the sink, a bottle of sandalwood cologne, a tube of paste and a toothbrush. The shower stall was empty.
I backed out of the bathroom. “Find anything?”
“The closet’s full. Mitchell spends a lot on threads.”
“Suitcases?”
“Five or six.”
“Check them.” I stood behind him and he pulled the cases out and passed them back to me. The first three were empty, I could tell that from the weight. The fourth felt empty too but when I shook it I could hear something slide around in it. I carried it to the bed and tried the locks. Locked. It would make for a messy look-around but I didn’t know any other way. I got out my key ring and fingered through them until I found a sturdy one that didn’t fit anything that I could remember, I used the edge of the key to pry around the locks until I sprung them. It was an inexpensive suitcase or it might not have worked.
Behind me, Hump checked the last suitcase. “Empty.”
He reached the bed about the time I broke the second lock. I lifted the top of the suitcase and reached in. There it was. It was a stack of xerox copies about an inch and a half thick. The first page told me all I
needed to know. It was a copy of The Man’s ledger. Only one copy; I made sure of that before I closed the suitcase. “Stack them back the way they were.”
I unbuttoned my coat and let my belt out a notch. I stuffed the xerox pages down the front of my pants until it was a kind of breast plate. I drew my coat over it and fastened it. Now, if I didn’t have to bend over, I might make it.
We were out on the breezeway when Reba returned.
Hump was parked in my driveway when I got there. I parked out on the street so I wouldn’t block him. Once inside the house, I handed him the copy of the ledger and went into the bedroom. When I got through to The Man I said, “Any call yet?”
“No.”
“When you get it play it close.” I told him about the copy we found at Mitchell’s motel room. “Make sure they’ve really got a copy of the ledger.”
“How?”
Hump brought me a beer. I sipped at it. “Pick some page at random and have them read the figures off to you.”
“And if they can’t?”
“Then I’ve found the only copy there is.”
“And if they can?”
“You’d better get the money together.”
“It’s ready now.”
I told him I’d drop the copy by later in the day.
“Don’t lose it, Hardman.”
“Not a chance.”
Hump was watching Roller Derby on the TV I sat down and drank my beer. “This question came to me, Hump.”
“Ask it.”
“How’d you find Mitchell’s motel before I did?”
“I bought myself this Arco book on how to be a private detective.”
“It help much?”
He shook his head. “And then I found the doorman at the Dogwood Lounge and scared the shit out of him.”
“He remember you?”
“Like a nightmare,” Hump said.
I left Hump to his TV. I undressed and slept for a couple of hours.
It was seven-thirty when we got to The Man’s apartment. The Man was seated at the table in the kitchen. Spread out around him were ten or twelve cartons of take-out food from one of the Chinese restaurants. One of The Man’s soldiers was playing waiter for him.
“Like Chinese? Have some.”
I showed him the xerox copy of the ledger and placed it on the kitchen counter behind him. Hump lifted one of the cartons with spareribs and passed it to me. I took one and he took one.
