by Tim Bryant
"I am the black ace, I'm the boss card in your hand," I said. "Old blues. I heard Smokey Hogg do that at the Rose Room one time."
They got distracted by two old white guys sitting in their front yard and called a halt to it before we ever got out of the truck.
"What can I do for you?" Burl Johnroe said.
I knew Burl from playing down on Ninth Street, usually around Leroy's Bar and Pool Hall. I wondered if he recognized me.
"Hello Mr. Burl," I said. "I was wondering if we could ask your partner here a few questions about Mr. Samuel Cunningham, from the Crystal Springs Dance Hall.”
Nic tried his best to hide behind his guitar. It was a cheap Stella, and it looked almost identical to mine.
"I don't know nobody by that name," he said.
I stopped clear of the porch, and Slant Face stopped right next to me. Neither of them looked happy to see either of us.
"I saw you win the playoff game against Mineola in 1949," I said. "Hell of a game."
That at least got a smile. I flashed my PI license at them, even though it was out of date and not worth the paper it was written on. I explained that I was working a couple of different cases and thought Nic might have heard something that would be of help to me.
"I'm sorry I can't help you, sir," he said. "I don't think I know anybody by that name, Cunningham."
I explained that he was the guy who paid Nic off at the end of every gig out at the dance hall, and even then, all I got was a shrug and a shake.
"Only man I know about is the man on that dollar bill," Burl said. "You hear me?"
Slant Face saw that things weren't budging, stepped in and gave a try from the other side.
"Nic, you happen to know the fiddle player with The Jazzbillies, Werner Athey?"
Nic put his guitar down at his side like a soldier resting his rifle.
"He that man that killed his family, right?"
Burl was playing a lick that sounded like Stick McGee's "Drinking Wine Spo-dee-o-dee," one of only a handful of songs I could stir a little dust up with. You might have thought he was paying us no more attention, but you'd have been wrong. It was the lick he wasn't paying any mind to.
"Werner Athey was the old white man telling that story about the revenue man," he said.
They argued over it a bit and decided it had been back in September, before the Richland Scramblers first Crystal Springs gig.
"But it weren't no revenuer, pops," Nicaragua said. "Revenuer's a government man."
Burl said Athey was asking to sit in with the Scramblers, in a roundabout way, because he was needing extra income.
"He said he either needed a raise in his wage or he needed to take on more work, because the revenuer man was about to kick him out of his house come the end of the year. He got up and played at the end, and we let him take a bill or two out the jar."
September would have been right before his hospital stay, too. He must have had a lot on his mind. It was easy enough to see why he might have needed the extra loot.
"Wasn't the revenuer," Nicaragua said. "Was that man drives around in that big white Lincoln. Big cowboy owns all them houses."
"You see him after that?" I said.
Burl said he never gave Werner another thought until he heard his name come up in the news, and, even then, he didn't hardly believe it was the same man.
"The folks down at the domino hall all swore it was him that killed them little girls," he said, "but I didn't buy it. I just think there's gotta be more to the story. Maybe that landlord done it. Or maybe that landlord drove him to it. Could have been just about anything."
"I see that landlord all the time," Nic said.
I knew who they were talking about. Claude Griner. He owned four or five different rent houses, and none of them were far from where I stayed. In fact, I saw Claude in his big white Lincoln Capri pretty damn often, too. He knew me, mostly from my days at the Sheriff's Department, and most of our run-ins hadn't been pleasant ones. Most had to do with things like holding a tenant’s property after they had moved out, which, I had to explain to him, amounted to theft. Which amounted to arrest and jail. I was sure that he wasn't the world's greatest landlord, even if it didn't exactly implicate him in the murder of the Atheys.
Nic's momma, Leonor, came to the screen door and asked if I was the Curridge who knew Vita Calhoun, and I said I was. Turned out Leonor knew Miss Vita, an old friend from way back and the woman who gave me my very first job, from church. This also meant that Nicaragua knew Miss Vita's son Terrance, who had gone missing a couple of years back.
"Nickie, this is the man that looked all over town for Terrance," she said.
If either of us thought that would win any points, we were mistaken.
"Didn't never find him neither, did he?" he said.
I couldn't really blame him for that. I had been blaming myself for a long enough time. Having someone else help me do it was almost a relief. I left Burl playing some kind of jazz sounding chords that reminded me of T-Bone Walker. Burl Johnroe was one of the better musicians I'd heard around town, and I never saw him play inside of a building. He was always either on a street corner or on a porch. Counted his pay from a hat at the end of the night. He didn't split it with any managers or band members or anything, so he probably made out better than any of the rest.
28
I wasn't looking forward to visiting Claude Griner. I can't think of anybody who would have, except maybe his momma, and that's only if she wasn't renting from him. My best hope was that he would have forgotten me in the years since I had threatened him with arrest and a night in the calaboose.
He lived close enough to me that I could have walked, but I didn't like the idea of having to walk away in the event that thinks turned ugly. I would have gone solo except for the fact that I saw James Alto coming up the street just as I was leaving, and so he got to ride shotgun with me. I tried my best to catch him up on things.
"I've almost convinced myself that the bear trap isn't a part of the engine," I said. "It's under the hood— the water pump or something— but I'm not so sure it's a part of the engine."
He seemed disappointed to hear that, but he didn't look heartbroken.
"What makes you think that?" he said.
"The facts."
I had replaced the bear trap with the gun found out in the tall weeds, at least in my mind. The reason was simple enough. At least three people lay dead with bullet holes in them. The only person I could find who had been caught in a trap readily admitted it, explained how it happened, and explained what the trap was being used for, too.
I told Alto about the Colt Trooper and the skeleton. He said he'd heard of wild hogs eating a dead cow, bones and all.
Griner lived on White Settlement, in a house that he built. He built each of his rent houses, always picking the best one for himself and moving as he got better at it. The one he ended up in was the biggest and the best, although it wasn't much to crow about. His best move had been coming back around and adding indoor plumbing to the first couple, but he coupled that kindness with a sizeable boost in rent, so he had his own incentives.
We got to his place only to discover he wasn't home. His neighbor, a lady who looked like a plate of Mamie Eisenhower with a side of Mrs. Wilberforce, flagged us down at her mailbox.
"You're looking for Mr. Griner, I'm pretty sure you can find him over at the place where that horrible murder happened."
I offered her thanks but no details, not feeling particularly chatty.
"You know Griner very well?" Alto said.
I idled the engine and looked at the cluster of mailboxes. I could see Griner's name on the far end. From that, I deduced that the lady's name was neither Roosevelt or Kettle but Spotswood. She didn't look like a Spotswood.
"I know him as well as I care to," she said. "We've been placing bets around here, how long it was gonna take the law to pick him up for questioning."
I had known a guy named Al Spotswood who was doing time in state prison fo
r holding up a bank in South Dallas. I wondered if he was any kin.
"What you think we need to question him about?" I said.
She looked at me like I was nuts.
"You really mean to tell me you think he didn't have squat to do with those murders?"
She was what Ruthie Nell called saucy. A quality I was kind of partial to.
"Well, it might have crossed my mind," I said.
James Alto was rolling a cigarette. He always carried a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers. He had showed me how to do it once, but I didn't have the patience for it. He claimed not to have the patience for store-bought cigarettes.
"Got anything more solid than a hunch, Mrs. Spotswood?" he said.
As a matter of fact, she said, she did, but then it turned out to only be a habit Griner had of going over to the Athey house every morning when he left home.
"I get up every morning and drive to Bewley Mills, and nine times out of ten, he's parked there in front of that house," she said. "If you need me, I'll stand up in a court of law with my hand on a Bible and tell them that's where he was on the morning it all happened."
Everyone knew Griner made his daily rounds. I was more curious about Mrs. Spotswood working at Bewley Mills. Bewley had been making flour in Fort Worth for long as I could remember, but what I knew and loved them for was their radio show on WBAP with The Bewley Chuck Wagon Gang. I still missed the show and could sing the song word for word.
"We eat the bread that mother bakes,
Biscuits, pastries, pies and cakes..."
"Oh, and by your by, I'm not Mrs. Spotswood," she said. "The only Mr. Spotswood was my daddy, and he died in 1949."
That seemed to me like a flirtatious move, but it didn't seem desperate or anything.
"Was your daddy's name Al?" I said.
I backed the truck out of the driveway and reversed direction, headed for the Athey place. Along the way, I sang the Bewley's theme song to Alto, just to prove to him that I could. Then I told him the story of catching Al Spotswood at a little motel in Arlington, not far from Top O' The Hill Terrace. The guys in Dallas had been looking for him ever since he'd walked out of South Dallas Bank and Trust with forty grand that didn't belong to him. I was working security for Top O' The Hill, and, when Al showed up at the craps tables there, I recognized him.
"She didn't say Al was her daddy, but she did look a little startled," Alto said.
I had noticed the same thing, and it made me curious. I wanted to talk to this Spotswood lady a little more, but it would have to wait.
29
Two minutes later, we spied Griner's yellow Lincoln sitting in the Atheys' front yard, Wiley King's Airflyte right behind it. To the right of the house were two big trucks from the city.
"King's got his jailbirds out here cleaning things up," I said.
I pulled into a clear spot and let the truck shudder and shake to a standstill.
"The Sheriff friends with this guy?" Alto said.
I could see Griner in the backyard, arms folded like he was a general overseeing his troops. Only trouble was, they weren't his troops and they were the jail crew. Looked like ten or twelve of them, and they were out in the back of the property, cutting grass and sifting through things. Looking for more clues or, more likely, running roughshod over any that might have remained. King was standing at the front of one of the trucks, his shotgun leaning on his shoulder. He turned around and saw us coming before Griner noticed anything.
"Y'all looking for anything in particular?" I said.
I wondered if he had stumbled onto some new information.
"Naw," he said. "I think we've found everything there was to find."
One of the jail crew walked by.
"Chiggers, sir. That's what we're finding."
King fumbled around in his pocket and brought out two shells.
"We dug one .38 shell out of a pepperwood tree about an hour ago," he said, holding it up to the light. "Then we found another one in the dirt."
Alto shaded his eyes from the sun and gazed down into the tree line.
"Toothache tree," he said. "Indians used to use the thorns to numb tooth aches."
I had always heard them called the devil's walking stick growing up in Weatherford. It seemed to be the tree of many names.
Griner ignoring us, continued to stand his ground.
"I don't want them niggers to cut the shit down and just leave it down there," he said. "You need to have 'em load it up and carry it out of here when you go."
King rolled his eyes at me.
"One negro in the bunch, all he sees is niggers."
Seemed like a good time to bring up some business with Griner, what with the Sheriff being right there and already irritated with him.
"Claude, I heard the Atheys' lease was just about up here. I'm sure you would know if they had been planning to move on out."
He spit a wad of tobacco between two fingers, then wiped them on the brim of his cowboy hat. Alto also wore a cowboy hat, but it was a Mexican style with the flat crown. I much preferred it to the typical ten-gallon, which only reminded me of the asshole oil guys and ranchers who came from West Texas to play and cause trouble on Jacksboro.
"Why would they wanna leave?" Claude said.
He was no cowboy. He liked to look the part, but I doubt he knew a bull calf from a heifer.
"Just asking," I said. "Word is, they were planning on moving out the weekend of the murder."
He had a temper on him, and it was would show itself if you poked at it. One reason I decided to go ahead and do my talking while Wiley was still there. If things got too ugly, I figured he could throw Claude in the truck with all the other inmates.
"I guess you're saying I shot 'em all to keep 'em from leaving," he said. "Makes a lot of goddamn sense."
He turned to Wiley and held his hands out, wrist up.
"I'm busted, Sheriff. Take me on in. I'm your guy."
Two deputies rolled into the yard just as a storm started rolling in from the sticks. Wiley thumped his watch and told the crew to hightail it. Dewey Mitchell grinned and walked by with a guy who looked like a long piece of bad road with no shoulders.
"I was just wondering, as people will," I said.
"They're bound to wonder what you were doing here on the morning before the murders," Alto said.
If Sheriff King looked like he was inclined to cuff anybody, it didn't appear to be the one I would have preferred. The thing is, I knew immediately what I had done. In that moment, I wasn't far enough out of the department to not feel the shadow descend. I'd pulled Santa's mask off before Santa was good and ready.
"Dutch, why don't you step with me out to the car for a jiffy," Mitchell said.
I felt I had walked right into a trap all over again. Was he ready to serve the warrant and haul me in? Had he been waiting for backup? Did even Griner know what was coming? Alto was right with me. I saw his right hand brush against his gun, a sign that meant he was getting itchy. I told him to stay put. It wasn't totally out of kindness. I knew if they hauled me in, I would need him to get the word out, help post bail.
Back at Mitchell's cruiser, I was read the riot act.
"Dutch, we were a butt pucker away from taking Griner in on suspicion," he said. "You show up here and start talking, you throw everything into a tailspin. You realize I can get you for interfering with a police action?"
"Suspicion of what?" I said. "Impersonating a real cowboy?"
I couldn't believe they were arresting him on suspicion of murder, unless they had a lot more information than I did. If they did, I wanted to know it. Otherwise, it was a circumstantial evidence case, and a weak one at that.
"I could write you up on impersonating an officer of the law," he said.
A low blow.
"I'm a private investigator," I said. "I have as much right to be here as you do, Mitchell, and you know it."
He was trying to talk to someone on the other end of his radio, but they weren't complyi
ng. He was stuck with me.
"Properly certified, Dutch?"
I started fishing out my license, even though we both knew it was out of date. He looked at me and shook his head. I left the Athey place with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. Partly, it was because the taste of death hung over the place. Not literally, but the thought of it couldn't help but crawl into your head and your nose and your mouth. It was something you couldn't spit out. It made me uneasy, like the seed of something bad was growing there, and, if I hung around much longer, it would start growing inside of me too.
I could imagine that old boar hog standing out in the trees, just beyond our eyesight but close enough to hear us. I wondered what he knew that we didn't know. I wondered if he was laughing at us.
30
They say things that happen in the night always look different in the morning light. Jacksboro Highway was kind of like that. If the clubs looked smaller in the sunlight, they also looked cleaner, friendlier. Deceptively harmless. At mid-morning, most of the cars in the various lots were left from the previous night, sometimes their passengers asleep inside them. I looked for Werner Athey as I made my way along, but saw nobody except for a beer truck driver and a lady stopping to get a paper outsider the Skyliner. I wondered if she had any clue where she was.
It was deer season, so most of the business at Roberts Cutoff Shotguns was hunters running late on their way out of town. Lines weren't long, but the old man who owned the joint was slowing everything down to his speed. At first, I thought Ballard wasn't in, but he was meticulously cleaning a gun in the back room. An old man with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel and his blind accomplice. It's a surprise they weren't held up every time they unlocked the front door.
I didn't feel like waiting in the line, so I asked if we could speak with Ballard Runion and moved right past it into the back area. The other men looked at us and wondered why they hadn't thought of it. Ballard had the gun in so many pieces, I wasn't sure if he'd ever fit it all back together, but he didn't seem concerned.
"Hi, Mr. Curridge," he said. "How are you doing?"
