by Bryant, Tim
When Whitey walked across Vickery Boulevard into the neighborhood, he had to have known he was crossing into unfamiliar, if not enemy, territory. To circumnavigate the area would add a good hour, probably two, to his journey though. And, I suspect it hadn't occurred to him just how big a target he was.
It's likely that when the squad car pulled up alongside of him, he thought he might be offered a ride across town.
"What ya doin,' boy?”
"I was just tryin' to get over to the Stockyards Hotel on Exchange,” Whitey says.
"They don't allow no niggers over there,” the cop says. "Matter of fact, I'd kinda like to know what you're doin' here, middle of the night.” He flashes a light in Whitey's eyes, and Whitey brings a hand up to shield them.
"I wouldn't make no sudden moves, I were you,” the cop says. One arm raised leaves the box Whitey's carrying in full view. "What ya carryin' there?”
"I'd rather not, sir,” Whitey says.
Car door swings open, cop gets out. His pistol's holstered, but he's got his hand on it. This time, Whitey ain't running anywhere.
There on the roadside in Vickery, the cop demands a look inside Whitey's box. When Whitey unties it and slides the lid off, the flashlight swings around and lands.
"Holy Mother of God,” the cop says. "That real?”
Whitey doesn't know what to say.
"You mind telling me how you come to have a dead white baby in there?” the cop says.
This time, Whitey doesn't have time to form an answer. The butt end of the flashlight comes down hard across the back of his skull. With both hands on the box, he doesn't have a chance of defending himself. The copper brings the flashlight down again and again. Whitey buckles, crunching into the roadside gravel and spilling the box across the cop's feet. He cop jumps back and kicks Whitey a time or two for good measure.
I wasn't yet sure what happened next. We know that he didn't kill Whitey there on the side of the road, because Whitey made a phone call to Miss Vita a few hours later. Even more, the kid in the goddamn box was somehow able to get to my hotel room door. Dismissing, for a moment, the idea that the cop escorted it over, that meant that Whitey either walked or crawled away from the scene. Did the cop leave him for dead there on the side of the road? Had someone else come along? Did any of this happen?
Slant Face said the cop probably got scared that he'd killed the guy and decided to high-tail it on out of there. Very possible. Then he said something else.
"Of course, you're coming at this with a predisposition.”
"Okay,” I said.
"You don't like the cops around here,” he said. "Maybe you're letting it color your thinking.”
"The Sheriff's Department sure seems to be interested in the whole thing,” I said. "They had guys at my place in record time. Hell, it took 'em thirty years to shut down Top O' The Hill.”
Slant didn't have a comeback for that.
We finally made it to Quality Grove, where I let Slant Face out at the Holy Trinity United Methodist Church. They were having a prayer service for the Calhoun family. I'd thought about going. Partly for the food, mostly for Miss Vita. But I didn't have the time or interest in the religious part of it, and I had kind of declared a personal moratorium against churches in general and funerals, specifically, so I sent Slant as my representative.
"Look for anything suspicious, out of the ordinary,” I said before pulling away.
"You leaving me here and driving away looks pretty damn suspicious,” he said.
Later, he said the only suspicious looking thing in the church had indeed been himself, the one and only white guy there.
"Well, I guess James Alto was there,” he said.
"Injuns don't count themselves white,” I said. "Just ask him.”
I knew that Alto sort of halfway followed the old Injun religions, when he had it in mind to follow any religion at all. That seemed like something that might be more along my lines. Slant said he'd heard Alto say there were more Methodist Injuns walking around than anything, and he was no doubt right about that.
Whichever way you cut it, prayer was about the last thing I was prone to try. Any God that would actually change the course of events, bend the rules of nature itself, but only if you got down on your knees and begged him nice enough for it, was a God that I couldn't muster up much belief in. I'd done it before, and I swore then, I'd never do it again. If God was interested in Alvis Curridge, he knew where to find my ass.
21
The door to Cisero Dearlove's office had a sign which read "Cisero M. Dearlove II, Criminal Defense Attorney.” Someone had tried to rub out the last two words, so, if you didn't look close, it appeared to read "Cisero Dearlove, Criminal.” While I hadn't done it, I admired the intent. I knocked on the door and pushed it open.
"Is the ol' Criminal in this morning?” I said.
His secretary, a blue-haired lady named May Joiner, looked at me over her glasses and smiled. May liked me, even if I did call her May June.
"Mr. Dearlove's out of the office today,” she said. She always kept her business voice in gear, even when she knew it was only me. "He had to run out to Mineola.”
"Mineola?” I said. "You mean there really is a Mineola?"
I'd heard of the place but didn't have a clue where it was. It was no more real than Cleco, Mississippi, far as I knew.
"Talking to a family about a case he's working,” she said. "So what are you up to?”
When May June asked that, she expected a real answer. She and Cisero had met up with me a few years back, when he took the case of a defendant that I knew. A white man had been found, beat to death, right in the front door of the Green Parrot nightclub. Murder weapon had turned out to be a solid-body electric guitar. Not just a string; the whole guitar. Next thing you know, the city starts hauling in every goddamn guitar player they can get their hands on, even though most of them had no damn use for an electric guitar at that point in time. They finally press first degree murder charges against one of 'em, a cat named Raymond Spivey who went by "Ray Ray.”
I knew Ray Ray just well enough to know he probably hadn't done it, so I started digging around as I was want to do, sticking my nose where it didn't belong. Before it was all over, they'd dropped the charges against Ray Ray and brought in a small-time con man named Hamp Menefee.
Now, Hamp Menefee wasn't any higher on the food chain than Ray Ray, but there were two details on his rap sheet that would catch your attention. One, his permanent residence was listed as Houston Street, in one of the nicest neighborhoods in town, a place called the Gold Coast. Wasn't any coast to be found there, but plenty of gold, no doubt. More importantly, and number two, he was living there with his brother, the dentist Dr. Harold Menefee.
According to word on the street, and that street for the most part being Ninth, Dr. Menefee had declared war on a couple of nightclubs in the city for getting behind on their bills. The clubs had been purchasing nitrous oxide from him, under the table. The clubs would bring it out and sell it to customers at after-hours parties. But, somewhere along the way, they'd grown lax in paying back the piper. The good doctor had finally gotten enough of it and had his no-good brother take the pipe to a few heads. Or the electric guitar, as it turned out.
The court case eventually brought out that, on the night of the murder, Hamp Menefee had shown up at the Green Parrot after it had closed its doors for the night, demanding to see the owner. The owner, not wanting to be bothered, sent one of his goons out to deal with Menefee. The goon got dealt with instead.
As tended to happen in Fort Worth, charges were finally dropped against Hamp Menefee, under the agreement that he promise to leave town and never come back. He moved to Oklahoma City. They never came up with enough evidence against the good doctor to pursue anything. He continued to practice for many years in Fort Worth.
"I'd rather seen Hamp sent to Huntsville,” I said to Cisero at the end of the trial, "but I guess Oklahoma's almost as bad.”
; Cisero and May June had been impressed with my involvement with that case, and we'd stayed in touch from then on. We'd even been known to trade information on occasion.
"I'm working on that Terrance Calhoun case,” I said to Gladys. "It's about more than I can handle right now.”
"We've been hearing all about that,” she said, being courteous enough not to mention that the dead baby had been found in my own hotel room. "It's sure enough got the whole town talking.”
"You wouldn't know if Cissy's got any new sticks in this fire, would ya?” I said.
"No, but I'll tell you this much. Mr. Dearlove swore up and down half of city hall that you didn't have a darn thing to do with that baby dying. Nothing to do with the man disappearing either, far as that goes. And he says it's all gonna come down on their own heads over there anyway, so the bigger stink they make out of it, the better.”
I stood around and made a little more small talk. She asked who that fella was that was hanging around with me whenever she saw me, and I said it was probably old Slant Face. She thought that was a hoot. She said she'd heard him talking and thought he wasn't from around here, and I said no, he spent most of his time over in Richardson.
"One more thing,” I said, on my way out the door. "What in hell does Cissy think he's doing' runnin' for D.A.?”
"Same thing you think you're doing, out there trying to hunt down the Calhoun man,” she said. "Exact same thing.”
22
Dandy come strolling into the Crystal Springs Dance Hall like he'd just stepped outside to take a whizz. I almost choked on my drink, and when he saw me, he did too, except he wasn't drinking anything yet.
"The ghost of Dandy O'Bannon," I said.
"In the flesh," said Dandy.
"Next time you decide to ditch a perfectly good gun fight, you oughta have the decency to invite me along," I said.
I grilled him all night long. Mostly, he kept giving me his name, rank and serial number and bitching about the goddamn Germans. I bought more rounds than I was accustomed to, thinking if I loosened him up another notch or two, he might start talking some sense. It's a fine line with the guy.
He wouldn't tell me a damn thing, but I hung around until a few other guys showed up, telling stories about their exploits on a trip across the Mexican border. Dandy started talking, of course, and I saw my opening.
"They had me pinned down in a bunker, goddamn siege goin' on all around me,” he said, going through his standard war story exercises. "I thought we were done for.” That's the way the whole thing goes. Deeper and deeper, until Dandy seems to not remember whether he's in Forth Worth or somewhere in the Black Forest of Germany.
"I was right there with him," I said. "We took direct enemy fire for a good hour before Dandy was able to make some kind of retreat. Left me to face those damn Nazis bastards all alone."
For once in his life, Dandy didn't even blink.
"The damn Germans pushed into our flanks and divided us," he said. "I was trying to keep them from breaching the walls of the fort.”
I thought everything was going swell. But Dandy looked at me with disgust.
"There aren't any fucking Nazis in the Great War,” he spits at me. "Know your enemy, Curridge. Know your goddamn enemy.”
Everybody laughed, but they wanted to hear more.
To hear Dandy tell it, he'd been pushed back into a defensive position by the overwhelming firepower of the Germans. As they closed in, he'd contemplated taking his own life, just to rob them of the chance to torture him.
Instead, he drove deeper and deeper into enemy territory, going right into the mouth of the beast. There he slept, often close enough to hear the voices of the enemy around him. He started to think it was his own voice talking to him, telling him to give up. He walked out twice, hands held high. He had no ammunition, so he left his gun behind.
"There was nobody to surrender to,” he said. "I couldn't even lose with dignity. I started walking, not knowing where I was going. Surely, I thought, a German village would lie just around the bend.”
"How far did you go?” I said, legitimately curious.
"I don't know,” he said. "You lose track of time. You lose your sense of where you are. Your identity. Who the fuck am I? I'm an American. What else matters? If I spoke German, I could walk right up to these damn krauts and they'd never know any different.”
I noticed Dandy's twitch had come back with him. I got an impulse to knock him flat out, right between the eyes. Partly so I didn't have to look into them anymore. Partly to put him out of his own misery.
"War makes a man do some things that he oughtn't have to do,” he said. One of the other guys agreed with him and proposed a toast to the war being over, once and for all. Dandy didn't seem to notice me.
"It finally come down to how bad I wanted to live,” he said. "I could've stayed right there and died without the Germans ever layin' a hand on me. I thought about it. But then I thought about all the good times I used to have with this soldier right here."
He slapped me on the back and turned to face me.
"Dutch, remember when we was workin' days with the Sheriff's Department, then we'd run security for Binion, out at the Top O' The Hill Terrace, half the night? Them was some crazy times.”
I said "Sure, I remember. Crazy times for sure.”
"I done some things I ain't proud of in my life," Dandy said. "They was things I had to do.”
"We all do what we have to do,” I said.
He nodded his head in agreement and turned back to the table and resumed his story.
"See, I was sent in on a secret rescue mission, and I didn't forget it. Deep as I went across enemy lines, scared as I got, I never forgot. I found the boy we was sent after, just a poor negro boy, all messed up bad.”
"Good God a-mighty,” I said.
"It wasn't pretty, boys,” he said. "Those fucking krauts had gotten to him. You know what I mean?”
The guys at the table were leaning in, nodding their heads.
"No,” I said. "What exactly are you saying?"
"I don't mean they'd just gotten to him. I mean, they got to him up here,” he said, pointing at his own crazy head. I honestly didn't know whether he was talking about Whitey or himself.
"You talking 'bout Whitey Calhoun?” I said. "Where is he?”
"I'd of tried to carry him outta there,” he said, "wouldn't neither one of us made it. I had to keep waiting for my chance.”
"What did you do, Dandy?” I said.
"I took care of 'im, Dutch” he said. "I did what I had to do an' took care of 'im.”
23
There was a phone booth on the corner right outside Peechie Keen's where James Alto held court, usually talking with his young Mexican wife or someone at the newspaper. He had rigged the thing where it gave back his nickel at the end of every call, a trick that he never showed anybody else. The closest I ever got to figuring it out was the day he called me out from my usual place at the corner table.
"Hey, Dutch," he said. "I got somebody wants to talk to you."
My immediate reaction was that his wife was upset that I'd kept him out too late the night before or had taken too much of his money playing at the domino table. I had tangled with her once and had come away impressed with her zeal if nothing else.
"Alvis here," I said into the receiver.
"Mr. Curridge?"
"That's right," I said.
"I'm a friend of Jimmy, name is Crawford Jackson. Jimmy tells me you're looking for an old race record."
"Who the hell is Jimmy?" I said.
"Your friend there, Jimmy Alto," said Crawford Jackson.
"Oh, yeah, him," I said.
"I have a music store over here on Jones Street," he said. "You know where that is?"
Of course, I did know, as Jones went right down the side of Peechie Keen's place in Hell's Half Acre. It stretched from there halfway to Arlington on one side and turned up and went toward Oklahoma on the other.
"Jimm
y says you're looking for an old race record," he said again, getting a better run at it this time. "I have probably in the neighborhood of ten, twelve thousand records over here, and you're welcome to look through 'em and see what you can stir up."
"You got any idea if you might have one from about twenty-five years ago, by an act called the Nu Grape Twins?" I said.
"All I can say is, if anybody has it, it's bound to be me," he said. "I speck I've got more race records than anybody this side of the Mississippi River."
"You got any Lefty Frizell or Bob Wills?" I said.
"Sure as shit stinks."
This seemed like the kind of guy I could get along with, and I liked flipping through records about as much as I liked flipping through a good Dashiell Hammett book, even though I didn't own anything to play them on. I had bought a record or two from bands that played the Dance Pavilion, usually just out of moral support. I gave them to Ruthie. But hell, I had once bought a Lester Young record for a dollar just because it had a picture on the back of him in a place that looked like the Rose Room.
"Which part of Jones are you on?" I said.
He gave me directions, and I agreed to meet him there the following morning and see if I might find the proverbial needle in the haystack.
"Little Jimmy Owl Toe," I said, turning back to my friend, who was smoking a cigarette and looking at the sky as if he was expecting something to appear out of the clear blue.
