Southern Select (The Dutch Curridge Series Book 2)

by Tim Bryant

  “Was she married?” I said, having never heard of a Mr. Boon.

  “She's listed as his daughter,” Mrs. Baker said. "Mr. House probably either died and willed it to her or became incapacitated."

  “So what about this other guy?”

  “Adolphus Merriweather,” she said.

  “The world explorer?” I said.

  “Says a tenant, fifty-seven years of age.”

  Catherine Baker had no noticeable sense of humor.

  “You run his name through your doohickey and see what comes up?” I said.

  She rolled her eyes like I'd said something dirty and made out like she had a hundred other things she needed to be doing. When I didn't leave, she picked up her binders and trudged off into the back. I took the opportunity to make small talk with a young lady who came in and left a stack of papers.

  "Looks like some good reading," I said.

  She at least knew how to look diverted.

  "If you like reports on property values and tax rates," she said.

  "Oh, those are my favorites," I said.

  She stopped in her tracks, and I could see that she didn't know what to make of me.

  “New around here?” I said.

  “I work for Judge Lynch.”

  Judge Lynch and I went back, way back, before my wife Noreen and I divorced. He always had a good looking girl or two in his employ. As soon as one would quit, another would show up to replace her. It was only one reason I hated the bastard.

  “Tell the old judge that Dutch Curridge said hello,” I said.

  “Dutch Curridge,” she said and made a face that said I-should-have-known.

  “He’s mentioned me?” I said.

  “No, not the judge,” she said. “But I’ve heard of you.”

  And with that, she was on her way.

  Mrs. Baker found a trail from Franklin Street to Jacksboro Highway by our Adolphus Merriweather. Drunk and disorderlies mostly, but a couple of petty thefts and then finally the attempted robbery of the gas station out by the Four Deuces. Merriweather, had done two months in County for that. Dulcie Boon, it seems, hadn’t shown up to pay his bail or even bring him a cake.

  I thanked Mrs. Baker for her enthusiasm and turned to go. Noticing that there was no one else in the room, I decided to take a chance.

  “The young girl who was just in here,” I said. “You know her?”

  Mrs. Baker picked up the stack of papers, licked her thumb and began to page through them. I wondered if she hadn’t heard me or was just ignoring me.

  "That would be the girl who brought those papers in," I said.

  “She’s engaged.”

  “Oh, I wasn't gonna ask her to go courting,” I said. “She just mentioned that we had a mutual acquaintance.”

  “Everyone knows everyone here, Mr. Curridge” Mrs. Baker said. "You're certainly no great exception."

  It could have been taken as a compliment, but she said it like it was meant to put me in my place. Then she pulled the stack of papers up under her wing like she was a football player taking off up field and left me grasping at air.

  7

  I asked around the clubs on Jacksboro Highway and finally found someone at the Rocket Club who knew Adolphus Merriweather. Merriweather, it turns out, was quarantined in Harris Methodist with a bad case of hepatitis. Meeting him would be out of the question. I explained my predicament to the head nurse in the hepatitis ward. Writing out questions was out of the question too.

  “We would have to burn the paper before it left the ward, Mr. Curridge. I don't expect that would do you much good at all.”

  She told me I was welcome to make an appeal to the board of nurses who oversaw operations on the ward, but that she was on the board, and, in fact, she was the board, so I should take that into account. I understood her kind. All I had to do was hold out and take up enough of her shift time that she would relent just to get rid of me.

  It was finally arranged that a shift nurse in the hepatitis ward would verbally relay a short set of questions and then get the responses back to me. I was instructed to keep it short and to the point.

  Did Mr. Merriweather remember anyone by the name Patrick Cavanaugh, and did he know if he had any enemies?

  I was aware that Merriweather was on the list of possible enemies, but I decided it was worth the chance. If Merriweather did have something to hide, he would at least know that someone was nipping at his heels.

  I was in route from Peechie’s to Harris, a trip which took me right past the Fort Worth Press. If I had had time to think about it, I’d have never done what it was that I did. On the spur of the moment, seeing an open space right at the front entrance, I pulled in and cut my engine. It was easy as pie to do. I’d done it a hundred times before. I jumped from the truck, wishing Slant was there to witness this sudden act of bravery, but knowing I would have been far less likely to summon the courage if he had been. This way, there was no reason anyone would ever have to know.

  I walked through the door and found the same young lady at the front desk who’d been there several months before. She recognized me too.

  “Good morning, Mr. Curridge, how may I direct you?”

  I took off my hat as I normally did.

  “Miss Parker here today?”

  The lady cocked her head like she was trying to hear me from far off.

  “Ruthie Nell Parker?”

  “That would be the one,” I said.

  “Mr. Curridge,” she said. “Miss Parker is no longer employed with us. She’s been gone for a while now.”

  James Alto once had a girlfriend who threw him out of the trailer house they shared in South Dallas, and when he went back to beg forgiveness, she was gone, trailer house and all. I must have looked about the way he did, but I tried my best to maintain.

  “Well, I'll be,” I said. Sometimes, that's about all there is to say.

  “Shall I buzz you in to speak with someone else?”

  The office was housed in one of those buildings where the entire front edifice is made up of window panes. I looked out at the world going by. My world. I felt as far away from it as if I’d been sat down somewhere in Ballyshannon. I wasn’t rightly sure I’d ever bring myself to walk through the doors again, so I took her up on the offer.

  I waited in front of three closed doors for a good ten minutes, and then a young man in a bad suit opened the middle one and waved me in. I couldn’t tell a whit of difference between him and the beat reporter from the Star-Telegram I’d spoken with days earlier.

  “I’m Melvin Chambers. What can I help you with, sir?”

  I introduced myself as professionally as I could, explaining that I’d often used the friendly services of the Press while scoping out people and information. Case work not terribly different from his own, just with a slightly different end. He at least pretended to listen respectfully and nodded in all the right places.

  “So have you guys heard anything about a guy named Patrick Cavanaugh, came here from up north last year, got killed over on Jones Street?”

  It seemed like a stretch, but I knew they had records of all kinds of crazy things. I’d dug through them on occasion myself.

  “Never heard of the guy, and I don't really see that it's a story for our readers," he said, "but I’ll see what I can do.”

  I made plans to come back at the end of the week. He thumbed through his schedule and made an act of working me in. Not letting him get away with it, I pulled out my notebook and did likewise.

  “Also, be sure and check the archives at the old place,” I said. “They’ve got stuff that isn’t in the records here.”

  I’d only known Ruthie to find information there in the main office a time or two. Usually, we ended up at the old headquarters up the street. They’d outgrown it years ago and now kept it mostly for storage. It had proven valuable to me a handful of times.

  “Why don’t you plan to meet me over there on Friday then, Mr. Curridge,” Melvin said. “I wouldn’t mind get
ting out of here a little early anyway."

  The old place was less than a block away, but hidden back behind a row of newer, more modern storefronts. I told him I’d meet him after lunch and thanked him for his time. As I made my way through the lobby, I caught a glimpse of the receptionist, skipping across the floor in a direction that aligned with me just inside the entrance.

  “Mr. Curridge,” she said, low enough to let me know that her message wasn't intended for public consumption.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You really haven’t seen Ruthie?”

  She seemed about Ruthie’s age, and I guessed that they’d probably been friends. Ruthie had spoken of one or two women that she enjoyed working alongside.

  “I'm pretty busy,” I said. “I don’t see too much of anybody.”

  “Well,” she said. “We used to talk pretty regular, but I haven’t heard from her in some time. But I’ve heard rumors that she’s seeing Jerry Paul.”

  “Jerry Paul Crum? The Jerry Paul Crum?”

  As if there were two. Crum was the Assistant District Attorney for Tarrant County, a guy I’d known for fifteen years and fought for fourteen. He was making a name for himself, launching a personal war against the gangsters and gamblers who ran things all up and down Jacksboro Highway. People like Tincy Eggleston and Cecil Green. Everyone knew he was really gunning for the DA job, and some thought he was looking higher than that.

  “So I’ve heard,” she said.

  “From?”

  “Our courthouse reporter.”

  I knew the Press didn’t have that many reporters. Ruthie had once been a courthouse reporter, which, come to think of it, would have put her right there with the bastard Jerry Paul Crum on a regular basis.

  “Who would that be?”

  “Melvin Chambers, the man you just talked to.”

  I never did make it to Harris Methodist that day, but Adolphus Merriweather’s questions would wait. I had a few other questions to work through. The truck was headed toward Peechie’s when I realized it wasn’t where I wanted to go either. I made a turn for Brown Street. Some days, I didn't want any Dr Pepper with my Jack.

  8

  Way back in 1940, Jerry Paul Crum ran for Sheriff against Shelby Stubblefield, who I called Stub. As much as I didn't like Stub, I preferred him to Crum. Crum had been a thorn in my ass at several different points down through the years. He was gung ho for cleaning up the streets of Cowtown, a sentiment I might have supported, except he made sure I knew that his vision of the clean up would take me off the streets as well.

  To Crum's way of thinking, I was a loose cannon, which is to say, I didn't go along with the system. Fortunately, if I wasn't good enough to be a good old boy, I also wasn't bad enough for him to haul me in.

  For years, it was just a back and forth that brought out the best in me and the worst in him. As a lawyer, he didn't run in my circles, but more than once, he'd thrown people off juries for no greater offense than knowing me, and he'd once summoned me to court as a hostile witness, just to prove that he could.

  On the other hand, I'd threatened to turn him into the Bar a few times, although it was usually just idle talk to keep him in check.

  The whole thing got personal in the spring of 1952, after he became the Assistant D.A. and started poking around in the Ninth Street bordellos and the illegal gambling dens up on Jacksboro. I was ambivalent about all of that, but when word got out that he was using teenage boys to do his dirty work, sending them into harm's way in order to keep his own ass clean, I took note.

  I was working the Royce Pickett case at the time. Royce had been accosted by a deputy in Douglass Park, and the powers that be tried to cover it up, but word got out that the deputy had been drunk as a skunk and out looking for a scuffle. Royce was in the wrong place at the right time and got a vacation in the colored hospital with a bunch of broken ribs and a collapsed lung for his troubles. When he healed up, he started talking, and, pretty soon, lots of people were talking. Some said he was raising up a gang, and they were coming after the deputy in question. No one even knew for sure which deputy had done it. Everybody on the force was watching over their shoulders. It scared the blue blazes out of the Sheriff's Department. They started setting Royce up so they could send him away for good.

  Right about then, one of Royce's friends, a sixteen year old named John Roy Pate, was found dead up on Jacksboro Highway. By that, I mean he was lying out in the middle of the road, run over more times than a skunk on Sunday morning. The medical examiner couldn't even count up the times.

  Cecil Green put out word that he'd done it. Cecil Green didn't consider himself above the law back then. He considered that he was the law. And it pissed him off, because he knew someone had sent that sixteen year old boy to rat him out. Well, I knew the real rat was J.P. Crum. Most of the town— at least the civilized portion— blamed Green. I held Crum responsible.

  That summer, I came as close as anyone ever had to bringing Crum down. I put his fingerprint all over the John Roy Pate murder. Serious questions were being raised. As usual, Crum talked his way out of it. On July 10, 1952, a new conference was held with Sheriff Stubblefield and J.P. Crum, at which, John Roy Pate's prior convictions were hauled out into the light.

  "This young boy was not of legal standing as an adult," Crum said, "so we were hesitant to publicize any of this. Unfortunately, the public claims of Mr. Alvis 'Dutch' Curridge have made it necessary."

  Good lawyers are the slimiest things that ever crawled out of the muck, and Crum was a doozey. Out came records of Pate's arrest on charges of prostitution, lewd conduct and sodomy. My case was closed down and sent packing.

  Crum was right about a few things. John Roy Pate was just about all the things Crum said he was. He was kind of a lousy guy. But it was largely because of those traits that Crum was able to lean on him, to coerce him into doing his dirty work. And when Pate found himself in way over his head, when Cecil Green or one of his henchmen beat him into a bloody pulp and left him in the middle of Jacksboro, then ran over him for sport, it was written off as the price of battle.

  Crum never came after me again. I think he knew better. At city functions and social shindigs, he was quick to smile and knock me on the shoulder, but it was the smile of a victor and a knock that felt like a knife.

  I didn't like the man. What's more, Ruthie Nell knew how I felt about him. I didn't believe for a minute that she had fallen for him. If it were true that she was seeing him, she had to have had other reasons.

  9

  It had stayed in the back of my mind, this young fellow moving so quickly into Patrick Cavanaugh’s apartment, and I decided if I had enough cojones to walk into the Fort Worth Press, I could walk back over and ask a few questions there too. I wondered what had been done with Patrick’s belongings, as meager as they might have been. Had someone come and taken them? If so, who? Were they still there? I parked at Peechie’s and retraced my steps, going backward this time so that I passed the hat shop first. I liked my new hat. It felt lighter than the old one, as if it hadn’t been weighed down with bad memories and hard times. It had never known Ruthie Nell either, so it made me feel like I was moving on.

  As I passed Peters Brothers, I also got to thinking about the deputy we’d seen on the beat that night. I had no idea who he was, but there were lots of them that I wouldn’t know from Adam. It had been years since I’d worn a uniform. But, for whatever reason, it seemed odd that the man had been sitting in Peechie Keen’s when Slant Face and I walked in and was within spitting distance of Peters Brothers just an hour later when we were there.

  I knocked on the door of the little apartment, but all the lights were off, and there was no noise coming from inside. The place was as small as mine, and the building was even older, but it had character. It had a balcony looking down over the street, and even if the view wasn’t much to look at, you were at least looking down on it. I stood there for a while, smoking a cigarette and watching a handful of boys playing hide-and-go
-seek down the block. When a couple started up the stairs toward me, it startled me.

  “Hey you,” the man said, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  I tossed the cig.

  “I was hoping to speak with the occupant of this apartment.”

  As they moved up onto the balcony and into the light, I could see their faces. They were young. She was a beauty, hair done up just so and wearing the kind of clothes that Ruthie always pointed out in society magazines or in Press ads. He scarcely looked old enough to shave.

  “I’m not gonna hurt ya,” I said. “Just wanted to ask you a couple questions, you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” the girl said.

  “Of course, we do mind,” he said.

  “Look,” I said. “I used to be a cop. I ain’t a cop no more. However, I do know a lot of cops. So I could ask you a few questions and be on my way, or I can go get the Sheriff and me and him can take you downtown for questioning. Are you aware that you moved into the apartment of a recent murder victim?”

  The young man breathed in real sharp. The girl held her composure. I smiled at her, and I hoped it ticked her boyfriend off.

  “No, we didn’t,” she said.

  “My uncle leased the room to me,” the boy said. “We’re students at TWU.”

  I wasn’t too dumb to size up the situation.

  “Uncle Wiggily don’t know you’ve got your girl sleeping over to keep you warm at night, I would guess.”

  “Are you working for him?”

  “I work for myself,” I said.

  “What is it you want?” the girl said. The sensible one.

  “My friend was killed last week. This was his home. They planted him in Mount Olivet yesterday morning. No service, no guests. I stood and watched 'em do their work. They didn’t say a prayer over him, not that it would have made any difference. But today, life goes on as if his life made no damn difference either. Did someone come and pick up his things?”