Dutch Curridge

by Bryant, Tim

  I tried to talk to Dandy a time or two, put some kind of plan together, but he didn't seem to see or hear anything but Nazis. I decided to sit tight and wait for whoever it was to run out of ammo.

  Browning had hired a guy to stand out back there, just about where our attackers were standing, and guard the place during the Top O' The Hill's glory days. Guy was armed to the teeth. But he was long gone, dead from a knife fight in Hell's Half Acre. Twenty minutes into it, I pretty much knew we were dealing with the cops. Nobody else but the U.S. Army had that kind of firepower. I was also getting more worried about Dandy.

  His crazed shouting at the Germans was a little off-putting, but not nearly so much as the silence that came after twenty-five minutes or so. He'd long since run out of bullets, but had managed to keep up an impressive verbal assault. Then, suddenly, it was over.

  "Dandy," I said. "You hurt?"

  I never got a word back. I tried to get a visual on him, but keep getting chased back to the pillar by some persistent bastard out in the yard.

  I tried yelling a little bit, but didn't like the way my voice was wavering across the lot. By this time, I had a mouth of sand and needed a drink bad.

  Ten more minutes of no sound except the steady arrival of more bullets, and I was ready to negotiate a peace treaty. I tore my undershirt off and tried waving it in the air. The impact of the bullet pulled it right out of my hand. What happened next is the result of no great thought process. Dandy had his Nazis, I had my own demons.

  "Goddamn squirrels," I yelled, as I stepped out from behind my shelter. I pointed the .38 straight up, then wave it for effect.

  Silence fell over the night like someone tossing a fuzzy warm blanket from the sky. It almost knocked me down.

  "Dutch, get your hands where I can see 'em."

  A voice pierced the fuzziness, and behind it came a figure, then two, then three. I recognized all but one.

  "Shelby," I said, nodding at Stubblefield. I had both hands high, the pistola still swinging from one.

  "Alvis," Stubblefield said, "you ain't squirrel huntin' way off out here, are ya?"

  "You boys are the ones doin' all the firing," I said. "I ain't got a decent shot off all night."

  With my hands still over my head, I shuffled sideways over to the low wall where Dandy had taken refuge, bit my lip and looked over.

  "Who ya got with you, Alvis," Stubblefield said. "That ol' Horizontal Head over there?"

  "Ain't nobody with me," I said. "I came stag."

  17

  "This ain't got goddamn to do with Dutch,” Cisero said, swatting at a fly and looking Slant Face dead in the eye. "Far as I'm concerned, this is all to do with Miss Vita's boy and that baby, and, hard as Dutch tries to make it, we best not forget it.”

  Cisero, Slant, and Ruthie Nell had all piled back into the holding room at county. Cisero and Ruthie were arguing over which one was going to bond me out.

  "It was a set-up, I tell ya," I said. "Stub's been following me ever since I walked out of here. He was just waiting for a reason to bring me in."

  "Dutch, from the sound of it, you walked right into this mess, per usual" said Cisero. "If they file charges, which they will, I'll bond your ass out. But I'd feel better just giving you the money for a nice long Mexican vacation. We on the same page?"

  "He wouldn't get past the city limits,” Slant Face said. "I'm sure Stub would be more than happy to see him go, but that damn Chummy wouldn't make the trip if it was downhill all the way.”

  "I still say we need to bring Vita Calhoun in on this,” Ruthie Nell said. "You don't want her to find out what's going on from somebody else. Seems to me, we need any input she can give us.”

  Everyone was pretty much in agreement with that. No one wanted to be the one to tell her.

  "I just wanna say one thing,” I said. "All the time I was sittin' in that damn patrol car, I was thinkin.' All the time I been sittin' here in the goddamn calaboose, I been thinkin.' Tryin' something fierce to get this all to add up, and it won't add. The Sheriff's Department seems to of got wind of the baby. Knew right where he was.”

  I stamped out my cigarette and took a deep breath.

  "How?”

  They all looked at me and ran it through their minds.

  "A snitch?” Slant said.

  "A set-up, I'm sure” Ruthie Nell said, rolling her eyes.

  "Maybe,” I said. "Or maybe they're the ones put 'im out there on my stoop in the first place.”

  "That makes no particular sense,” said Cisero, "but I wouldn't put it past them."

  "It might make sense,” I said, "if they're tryin' to pin something they did on me.”

  "So you think Stub's guys killed the baby?” Dandy said.

  "Natural causes,” I said. "But they might of killed Whitey, then dumped the baby.”

  "That's crazy,” Cisero said.

  "No crazier than keeping a dead baby in your flat,” Slant Face said.

  "I'll say this much,” Cisero said. "You really are crazy if you think you can go making accusations that the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department planted a dead body in your room.” He paused for a minute.

  "And if that's the best defense you can come up with,” he said, "it might be to your advantage to look for somebody else to take your case.”

  "Mr. Dearlove can't afford to take a losing case if he really wants to be the next district attorney," Ruthie said.

  Cisero shot her a look that made me tighten my butt cheeks.

  I took a quick and silent vote, scanning the room, and found nothing but doubtful faces. Eyes that looked at the floor, at cigarette butts, anything to avoid me. I walked over to the plank that ran the length of the back wall, laid down and closed my eyes.

  "Meeting adjourned.”

  Stubblefield said he was gonna make it plain as the nose on my face.

  "Dutch, I don't have the case that I'd like,” he said. "Half the town's all up in arms over this Calhoun boy missing, but we don't have a body. And I don't have enough time or men to search every nook and cranny of town.”

  "You askin' me for help?” I said.

  He ignored me.

  "I could probably of got a jury to put you away on that damn baby. Medical report came back natural causes," he said, "but to take possession of a dead body, to move that dead body around and not even notify the medical examiner. What the hell were you thinking? And, on top of all that, I could damn sure drill your ass to the wall for breaking and entering Top O' The Hill.”

  "That's a good idea," I said. "Jury would probably like to see those papers you had out there.”

  "Listen, I'm prepared to turn the other cheek, let you walk out of here scot free,” he said. "But you gotta put something on the table for me.”

  I told him, if he'd come down to Peechie's, I could buy him a beer. Hell, it was a small price to pay and I'd drank with worse before.

  "Here's all I want you to do for me, Dutch,” he said. "Go away and let us do the job we're paid to do.”

  "But I thought you didn't have the time or the manpower,” I said.

  "I'd have more of both if I didn't have to waste it dealing with you,” he said.

  18

  "Mr. Curridge."

  I recognized the voice right away. I was trying to while away a bit of time on Brown's Mule Square and was used to Slant's voice interrupting me, so it startled me. I pulled the morning's edition of the Forth Worth Press down from my face and squinted.

  "It's Lewis, Lewis Freeman," Lewis Freeman said.

  "And so it is," said I.

  "I didn't recognize you there, but I knew that had to be your automobile," he said. "I was just wondering if you had been able to find out anything for my daddy."

  "I found out I can't take a punch like I used to," I said, pulling myself to my feet and looking the boy in the eye. He wasn't big, but he was made of muscle, like a bantamweight. The way I was feeling, he could have taken me with one arm holding a beer.

  "I was hoping you might
have some good news," he said.

  "I'm on it," I said. "Give me another week, most."

  "I have one piece of information that might help you," he said and reached into his back pocket. "This belonged to my daddy."

  I took the paper and unwrapped it. It was dog-eared and nearly rubbed through at the folds, slightly smeared with fingerprints and thoroughly faded, but you could make out the words. It was an article from the Hot Springs, Arkansas Sentinel-Record, from Wednesday, July 6, 1932, which could easily be seen in the upper right corner.

  "This year's Fourth of July festivities included Little Rock Charlie Chaplin impersonator Frederic Zielkie, cowboy rope artist Bill Swain, a group of young singers from Hot Springs First Episcopal Church, negro recording artists The Nu Grape Twins, and one-man band Artie McMiller."

  The entire paragraph, part of a longer description of the day, had been circled with an ink pen. Above the print, there was a photograph, little of which could be made out.

  "That's my uncle right there," Lewis said, helpfully, while pointing to a form, hunched down and almost out of frame. "You can tell by the shape of his mouth."

  I could scarcely tell that it was a human form, but that wasn't what bothered me.

  "I'm not sure how this is going to help," I said, "other than to confirm that there really was such a thing as the Nu Grape Twins."

  Having been somewhat doubtful, I had to give some due credit there.

  "That's all you need, the way I figure," Lewis said.

  "How so?"

  "Well, it's confirmation that my uncle and daddy were in Hot Springs on the Fourth of July, 1932."

  "So if there was some kind of robbery here in Fort Worth," I said, "I guess they are off the hook."

  "You take this to the two men claiming to be the Nu Grape Twins, you ask them where they were on Fourth Of July, 1932. If they say anything other than Hot Springs, Arkansas, you can prove they are lying."

  He had obviously thought this thing through.

  "I'm not sure I can exactly make a citizen's arrest on that piece of information," I said.

  "Right," he said, "but you can tell them to turn over any money they've received to the rightful owners. If they have payment from the record label, it's theft."

  "Theft, huh?" I said, mulling the whole line of reasoning over. It seemed suspect, but I couldn't find any real holes in it.

  "I even got the names of these two fellows," he said, "from a storekeeper on Ninth."

  It seemed like he was doing a pretty good job of it, on his own. I started to suggest that he may have found his true calling in life.

  "Let me get something to write it down," I said. Terrible with names, I am.

  I grabbed my copy of the Forth Worth Press and a pencil that I used to do the crosswords.

  "Okay," I said. "Shoot."

  "Nobel Whitaker and Verbal Whitaker."

  I tossed the pencil down. Why I hadn't seen that coming, I don't know.

  19

  I had to remain focused on Whitey Calhoun as he passed through what had to have been the blackest night that ever fell his way. It was, in the end, his story or it was no one's.

  Knowing that the kid died before Whitey got even half way across the city, it becomes obvious that Miss Vita sent him out of her house with an extremely sick child. It was no casual decision. The fact that it took him several hours to show up at the Star-Telegram warehouse allowed only one conclusion: Whitey struggled with his course of action as the baby was dying or after it died.

  Maybe he tried to get help. Maybe he lost it for awhile out there. Maybe he flagged down some stranger and pleaded for a ride to the warehouse. Did he tell the stranger his story? If so, somebody out there was probably trying to forget every little detail that I was struggling to find. This is the person I needed to find, though I didn't have a clue how to do it.

  I had located one more person who claimed to see Whitey that night. As we walked out of Peechie's, I brought it up.

  "I talked to a young negro girl, over corner of Front and Maple. I think she might of seen Whitey with the box."

  "And you just now thought to mention it?” Slant said.

  I told him that I didn't want to bring it up in front of mixed company. Ruthie Nell in particular. Didn't need her and half of Peechie's thinking I took up with streetwalkers as a regular habit.

  "But you do, Dutch."

  I told him that I didn't so much anymore, and that was none of his business either.

  "She said he come by with that package like a school boy on his way to class. She offered to take him 'round back and give him everything he could want, he just give her that pretty present."

  Slant laughed.

  "She said he started runnin,' all she saw was ass and elbows goin' down Maple," I said.

  The streetwalker had stood there, shaking her head at him. I, on the other hand, followed along with him in my mind. Day after day, night after night, I took the journey with him. Took every possible detour and side road, crossing off each one that led nowhere. What I was finally left with was frightening, and only partially because it felt real.

  I took it and ran with it, hoping to catch him. I didn't know if it was a good idea, but it was an idea. And ideas are like religion, my mother used to say. They can't all be right, but even the wrong ones might give somebody a reason to keep going. Just keep going long enough and you're bound to run into the truth eventually.

  Now, within an hour of Whitey running off from the streetwalker, even assuming that he eventually slowed down, he would have been moving in to the Vickery Place area. That matched up perfectly with Donnie Barlow's report of talking to Whitey at three-thirty on Vickery Boulevard.

  Vickery Boulevard runs right up the east side of Vickery, so after Whitey left Barlow, he still had all of Vickery to cross before coming out along Exchange and making his way toward the Stockyards Hotel.

  You might normally think that a nice, quiet place like Vickery, with its green lawns and white fences, would be the last place in all of Cowtown that someone would run into trouble. No streetwalkers or troublemakers hanging around on those manicured corners. Well, that's exactly what was working against Whitey Calhoun.

  I became convinced that someone saw this young colored man walking through their neighborhood in the middle of the night, carrying something under his arm, and they didn't cotton to it. There was one slight problem with this premise, and it bothered me for a while. The folks in Vickery Place roll up their carpets at dusk and pretty much turn in for the night. Unless they're the milkman.

  I started wondering if Donnie Barlow might have misrepresented the extent of his interaction with Whitey. He had admitted to almost running the boy over. What if he had indeed hit him? Could've been a pure accident. It seemed to be a valid possibility, but I couldn't come up with a way to get the dead kid from there to the hotel. Could a mortally injured Whitey have crawled away, his only dying wish to get his dead son to me? I crossed that one off.

  Maybe Whitey had, on his death bed, asked Barlow to do him the favor of delivering the box. Barlow could have agreed to it out of some sense of guilt and redemption. Again, it almost worked. I just couldn't see Barlow waiting around for Whitey to die, getting rid of his body, and yet going to the trouble of delivering the kid to me. It didn't add up either. I crossed that one off too.

  I was driving up Exchange just a short time later, headed toward the Quality Grove area. Slant and me had gotten into a heated discussion on the merits of peeing in the shower, him claiming it was a brutish habit invented by the French and me defending it. I was telling him that Doc Phelps had always claimed it to be a good cure for athlete's foot. Hell, it was as sanitary as all get out up next to Dandy O'Bannon, who claimed that he was just as liable to shit in the shower and stomp it down the drain. A trick he learned in the war.

  We were both contemplating this when a squad car suddenly slid by us and flashed its lights. I waved back, and it dawned on me. The one vehicle other than a milk truck th
at you might see in a place like Vickery was a cop car. No, they don't look for trouble brewing in places like that, but they damn sure patrol to make sure it don't spill over from one of the neighboring hoods. Whitey Calhoun had come spilling over into a different world. He'd picked a bad time to do it. And he was carrying a dead body.

  By the time I'd reached Quality Grove, Slant and me had the whole scene worked out.

  20

  In 1953, weren't no negro families living anywhere in Vickery. Quality Grove was what they called mixed, but all the negros stayed on one end and the whites on the other. The old store where Miss Vita had once worked was still there, of course, but it didn't do near the business it once had. It had done business with every negro family on the north side of Fort Worth. Some even come from as far as Arlington and West Dallas. They were loyal to it. When the family that originally ran it died off, it had been bought by Dock Price. He had actually done his best to keep the clientele, much to my surprise, but it was never the same. A lot of the whites wouldn't do business there and neither would a good bit of the coloreds.