Dutch Curridge

by Bryant, Tim

  His cigar was all fired up.

  "I've told you before,” I said, "I won't come back to work for you, no matter how much you beg me.”

  I was feeling pretty fired up too. I looked at our friend behind the counter and winked.

  "Curridge,” Stubblefield said, "I have orders to bring you in on suspicion of murder in the case of Terrance Calhoun, as well as the deceased Calhoun infant.”

  I studied his eyes, so black they seemed all pupil. His teeth had clamped down into something that was half grin and half grit.

  "Consider yourself under arrest,” he said.

  "You're joking,” I said. We had both been joking with no acknowledgement of it. Now that things had taken a turn for the serious, I was thrown off balance.

  "I'm sure it won't be necessary to cuff you,” Stubblefield said.

  By the time we'd taken it outside, to Stub's white '48 Chevy patrol car, to be precise, I was pretty well convinced that it was no joke.

  "What the hell is this all about, Stubblefield?” I asked.

  "We got a tip that you might have a hand in the disappearance of the young man from Stop Six,” he said. "Got a couple of officers over at your place, just to make sure things check out.”

  "Make sure things check out like what?” I said.

  He opened the passenger-side car door.

  "Depends on which way you look at it, I guess.”

  I slid onto the seat and ashed my cigarette on the floorboard of the car.

  "Does Vita Calhoun know what's goin' on here?” I said.

  "She knows we're tryin' to help find her boy,” Stub said.

  I watched helplessly as we pulled away from the curb and cruised back up Ninth, around the corner and past the Chummy. Looking at the damn thing sitting there, not doing a cotton picking thing to help, I felt an anger rise within. I couldn't blame Miss Vita, couldn't blame Whitey or the dead baby. Couldn't blame Slant or Dandy.

  I knew, as much as I wanted to hate him, Stub really was only doing what he was wired to do. Somebody out there had set me up big time, but I couldn't come up with a name to save my nutsack. I turned all my disgust toward the Chummy and swore that next time I saw it, I'd rip it to pieces with its very own tire iron.

  The radio in the squad car squelched a line or two of gibberish, and Stub took it like he was one of those code breakers in the war.

  "You gotta be shittin' me,” he said. "Come again.”

  The next time, I managed to make out my own name. Alvis Curridge, Jr. All of a sudden, it didn't even sound right to me.

  "What did they say?” I said.

  Stub looked at me with a look of genuine concern. Or maybe it was fear.

  "Looks like they found that baby.”

  I was pretty sure that's what they'd said.

  I was allowed one phone call and I took them up on the offer. I went with James Owl Toe. Pissed Slant Face off that I didn't call him, of course, but he didn't have a damn telephone. I would have had to call the old lady he rented a room from and hope she eventually got word to him. Considering she was deaf as a mallet, and I generally don't like hollering at little old ladies, it was a gamble I wasn't prepared to take.

  Alto, on the other hand, was on a party line, so I was well aware that half of Fort Worth might be listening in on that conversation.

  "Alto," I said, "Curridge here.”

  "Dutch,” he said. "Any word I can pass on to Miss Vita?”

  "Not just yet,” I said. I wasn't sure how he would bring up that I was behind bars on suspicion of murdering her grandchild. I decided that, in spite of my innocence, it might not be the time for honesty.

  "I need you to do somethin' for me” I said. "I need you to get in touch with Cisero Dearlove and send him down to the jail to see me immediately.”

  "Bringing in the district attorney,” he said. "Sounds promising.”

  "He hasn't won the election yet,” I said. I considered it a wash, if he did win. As a defense attorney, he was one more decent person fighting for the little man. As a district attorney, he would be somebody we knew on the inside.

  "I should be down here at the jail for most of the day,” I said. Stub sat behind his desk, filling out papers and shaking his head.

  "Cisero Dearlove's about the last person I wanted to see today,” he said.

  "Anything you want me to tell Miss Vita?” Alto said. "She hears you're at the jail, she'll be wanting to know if they done brought somebody in down there?”

  Miss Vita could take it straight. I wasn't sure at all that I could give it.

  "No,” I said. "Just tell her no, they sure don't.”

  13

  Cisero Dearlove came down and won major points by sharing that evening's chef's surprise with me. It reminded me of something my mother had always called shit-on-a-shingle. The indigestion hadn't even set in when Ruthie Nell Parker came parading through the door.

  Noticing that a good portion of the Sheriff's Department was hanging around my apartment that afternoon, her curiosity had gotten the best of her. She went over to find out what was up, but one of them recognized her from the paper and put the kibosh on any and all communication with the press. I was glad to hear of it. Ruthie Nell, however, took it as a personal challenge. To her way of thinking, she was merely a concerned neighbor. She did what any concerned neighbor with paper thin walls would do.

  "Dutch,” she said, "they found a dead body in your hotel room. And if that ain't enough to string you up, they're talkin' like you killed somebody else too.”

  Ruthie looked like she was in worse shape than I was.

  "Ruthie,” Cisero said, "is there any way in hell you can keep this from hittin' the papers, least for a day or two?”

  "I don't have that kind of power,” she said. "Anyway, I don't know what difference two days is gonna make with Dutch sittin' here. If he was headed toward Mexico, it might come in nice and handy.”

  I gave her the details, as much as I knew of them. Cisero, meanwhile, assured her that he'd spring me, at least long enough to get down to the Salvation Army and buy a suit to be buried in. I tried to remain confident.

  Here's what I liked about Ruthie Nell. She never once asked me if I'd done it.

  "You know where you can find me,” she said before leaving.

  "I don't show up pretty soon,” I said, "I guess you'll know where to find me too.”

  Cisero asked if I did it, but only after we'd left the station and were safely on the road. It was his job to ask me questions, though. As he drove me away from downtown in his '52 Ford Monarch, I told him he'd get my vote for President of the United States if he could help clear my name and put away the guilty party.

  Turned out I wasn't under arrest at all, but only because everybody knew where to find me. And I had been warned something good.

  "You're what we call a person of suspicion," Stubblefield said, as if I didn't know anything in the world about police talk. "We get word back from the coroner that that baby met with foul play, that you touched one hair on its head, that things didn't go just like you say they did, we come up with any more dead bodies, Curridge, we're gonna reel your no-good ass back in here so fast, you'll shit your pants."

  Later on, for small talk and maybe to lighten things up, I asked Cisero why the hell he wanted to trade a perfectly good job in, just to be the District Attorney.

  "Same reason you were trying to help Vita Calhoun,” he said. That was all I needed to hear. We rode the rest of the way in silence.

  14

  "I've been tailin' Kimble three days now,” I said. "He makes a stop at that apartment again, I think I'm goin' in.” Sometimes he stopped at Walton's Barbecue, sometimes the Metropolitan Coffee Shop or Renfro's. Didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to any of it. Closest thing to a crime I'd seen was him walking out of Renfro's without paying for his ice cream. Half the people in Forth Worth did that. Still, I didn't dare approach him in a public place.

  On two of the previous outings, he'd pulled up to an apartme
nt on Magnolia, down by Smitty the Greek's old place, and stayed for a good half hour. Slant figured he was having an afternoon fling with a mistress, but I was pretty sure it was an afternoon shit stop. Those things almost always run to a schedule. From what I know, mistresses only sometimes do. Either way, though, it looked like a good move. With any luck at all, I'd catch him with his pants down.

  15

  Every man has regrets about certain things in his life. Maybe the way he treated his girl. Maybe not taking guitar lessons as a kid. I try to have as few as possible, and I try to keep them on the small side. One of them, I suppose, is the first time I walked into the Merkley's department store. Another, for sure, is the return trip.

  The store had never had a proper name. It had always stood with just the requisite "Dept. Store" branded across a now-fading piece of plywood over the door. But when I came back through the door, I couldn't help but notice a small sign which read "Merkley Dept. Store." I wondered if it had been there on my first stop.

  I also wondered if the old couple would remember me, but that didn't last for long.

  "You again," the old lady said, before my eyes had even adjusted to the drab darkness of the big room. I walked toward the sound of her voice, feeling just a bit vulnerable. Slowly, she came into sight.

  "I'm on official business," I said. I had taken care to round up my newest old P.I. card for their benefit, hoping that a cursory glance wouldn't reveal its age. I reached inside my jacket for it.

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you," Old man Merkley said, and I realized he had come up behind me.

  "I was just getting my card," I said, turning around to face him. You always want to face the one that's the most dangerous. In this case, I was willing to give the old lady a pass.

  "We know who you are," he said.

  Now, I have to admit, that, somewhere inside my mind, I took a long pause to reflect on, and maybe even marvel at, the fact that someone like Chester Merkley actually knew who I was. The Chester Merkley, not just a Chester Merkley. The one that every kid in Fort Worth had heard whispered about, how he had almost killed his very own son just for going into the wild places up on Jacksboro Highway. He was not unlike Fort Worth's own Ming The Merciless.

  "Chester, all I need from you is some information about some records you got rid of," I said. "Tell me where I can find 'em, I'll be on my way."

  At this point, I thought I had a good handle on things. I would keep my cool, make it obvious that I wished the guy no harm, get my information and be out the door and, hopefully, out of his life.

  "I got your records right here," he said.

  He brought a right hook across my bad left ear and I was going down before I even saw it coming. I kicked a leg out on my way down, which knocked him just enough off balance to land right on top of me. For a moment, I could see enough daylight to peg him a good one right in the kisser. I could literally smell blood.

  I heared the crack of a mop handle as the old lady cracked it across my skull, having a nice, clear shot at it, as I was now sitting atop my hat.

  I came to as Merkley was dragging me toward the front door. I heard voices. To be specific, I heard one voice, and I would have recognized that accent anywhere. Slant Face had come in behind me, just as I had instructed him to do.

  Merkley dropped me, and it took only a second to realize why. Slant pegged him across the face with a haymaker that bent his nose due south. The old lady decided she didn't want any part of Slant and started backing down the center aisle of the store, now holding the mop in a defensive position.

  I jumped up and hit Merkley just hard enough to push him back to Slant, who clocked him over the right eye and dropped his German ass like a sack of Irish potatoes. It was like Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmelling again, even if it had taken one Joe Louis and a sliver of another, and scrawny white ones at that.

  "What did you have to go and do that for?" Old lady Merkley said, as if her husband hadn't attacked me from behind.

  "All I wanted was some goddamn records," I said.

  "We don't keep any records here at the store," she said. "They are all at home."

  "He's not talking about business records," Slant Face said, and you could tell the lady was running it slowly through her brain, because either his accent or the general concept at hand was slowing her down.

  "He's looking for a record about an ice cold Nu Grape," Slant said.

  About that time, Chester Merkley came back around enough to get back in on the conversation.

  "You've got to be kidding me," he said.

  I kicked him a good one, not hard enough to knock any teeth out, just enough to get him to shut up.

  "What did you think I was talking about?" I said.

  If he thought anything, he didn't say.

  I picked up about a dozen cans of beans that we had strewn across the old wood floor and set them back up on the nearest shelf, resisting the urge to throw a couple at the man's head.

  I then picked up a bottle of Peruna Tonic that had probably been there since the days of Miss Vita. I took aim and let it fly.

  "That's for your son."

  Slant held the door open and I walked out.

  "Can you believe they actually thought we were talking about business records?" he said.

  "I told 'em once, it was about soda pop," I say. "What am I supposed to do?"

  I let Slant drive the Chummy back over to Peechie Keen's, and I tried to stay awake as the hot afternoon sun beat down unsympathetically on my bruises.

  16

  There is no Cleco, Mississippi. Oh, there was one. It was a lumber town somewhere down in the delta. Closest thing there is to it now is a place the locals call Big Pow. Ain't even on the map.

  Ruthie Nell was relaying this information, which she'd managed to dig up at the newspaper, to me and Dandy as we sat in Tootie's Hot Plate, having breakfast.

  I had it in my head that we needed to go out to the old Top O' The Hill place. The fun had all been stripped out of it in '47. Finally shut down by Stubblefield and his boys in '51, it was locked up tighter than Travis County Jail. They'd strung barbed wire around the entrance and gate house and plastered the hell out of it with signs saying "Keep Out" and "Tarrant County Sheriff's Department.” Looked like a damn compound.

  "You don't honestly believe they have Whitey Calhoun out there, do you?” Ruthie said.

  I had no reason in the world to think we'd come crashing into the place to find him tied to a stake, a fire lit under his feet. But Dandy had been hanging around the County Jail long enough to catch a few whispers that they might be using the old casino to store any records that they wanted to make sure remained confidential.

  "Stubblefield came in the other night, asking for some report on Tincy Eggleston,” he said. Tincy was a local heavy who was being investigated by the federal grand jury over at the court house. "Stub was so afraid they were going to ask for his records, he wanted 'em all destroyed, then and there. One of the deputies had to remind him that they had been among the papers hauled out to the old Top O' The Hill building.”

  "I don't think you could get in there if you tried,” Ruthie said.

  Me and Dandy O'Bannon showed up at the Top O' The Hill just after midnight, ready to reclaim our territory, if not the state of mind that once came with it. The moon was full and bursting through the pine limbs overhead, throwing diagonal, disjointed shadows at our feet. We'd had a few drinks, which made the shadows move in odd ways that made me re-think of squirrels.

  I'd told Dandy there was bound to be some cash laying around out there, too, because Fred Browning, the man who ran the casino for Binion, had so much money socked back, there was no way he got it all on his way out the door. No way the damn Sheriff's Department could have sniffed it all out either. And even if we didn't come up with loot, we told ourselves, we could always make off with one of the slot machines. A keepsake, you know. Something that Stub's boys had no need for.

  We managed to make our way around to
the back entrance, which is where everybody always went in anyway. Door wasn't even locked. Somebody else had done beat us to it. Problem is, we didn't realize that. I thought it was our lucky day. I had gotten so spooked by the thought of whatever might be moving around in that big, black back lot, that I just wanted to get inside those four walls. Back to where I felt some sort of safety. Unfortunately, whoever came in ahead of us watched Dandy and me creep around from the main casino room to Browning's old office and haul one big ass file cabinet worth of papers out to the Chummy. They didn't offer to help, but when we came back for more, they were sure as hell waiting.

  There is no other feeling in the world like hearing bullets buzz and whir around you and realizing someone on the other end of the gun just missed his target, and it's you.

  I don't remember what I yelled at Dandy when the bullets started flying. I do remember yelling. Dandy took cover behind a two-foot high faded orange adobe wall, and I took a matching pillar that wasn't any bigger around than I was.

  Took about ten seconds to work out where the shots were coming from. I could see the flash of the muzzles against the dark as the rifle barrels were lifted up against a stack of kitchen equipment that had been carted out of the building to slowly rust in the Texas weather. Makes a real good cover.

  I had my finger on the trigger of my .38 Colt, but I never squeezed off a shot. I could hear Dandy ping two or three off the kitchenware, and then he commenced to shouting about the fucking Germans. I figured the guys out there in the dark were sure enough in trouble then.