by Ralph Dennis
I waited. Hump lit one of my smokes and tipped back his chair.
“I’d split the checks up four or five ways. I’d use either one good man or maybe two. I’d dress them in four-hundred-dollar suits and ninety-dollar shoes. The whole successful young businessman thing. Not too mod, not too conservative. I’d take a couple of days and I’d open new accounts in four or five different banks. These could be company accounts. Development corporations or real estate. I’d start the accounts with sizable deposits, one or two of the big checks. Enough to make an impression. And when I talked, I’d make it soft but big. This deal or that one. And in the next few days, I’d deposit more to each of the accounts. I’d make them seem busy. Each day or so another check to the account. At the end of seven or eight days the first big deposit should have cleared. By then I’d have charmed myself a branch manager and maybe a teller. And then I’d start moving money back and forth between the four or five different banks and each time some of the cash would stick to my fingers. I’d be sucking some of the funds out.”
“Big amounts of cash?”
“Sure. If the scam men were good. I could do it.” He lifted the chablis bottle and let some trickle down his throat. “Of course, all this assumes that the back door is covered. That somebody up at that northern company handles those checks when they come in.”
Or that an arson’s been arranged.
“Checks would be flying from account to account, so fast nobody’d know exactly what was going on. And in about a week or ten days, after I started draining it off, they’d find there was two hundred left in each of the accounts. The rest would be in twenties and packed away in a suitcase.”
“Any problems with this method?”
“None that couldn’t be handled if you figured all the traps ahead of time. What could go wrong. What to do when something slips and the red light goes on.”
“It seems too easy,” I said.
“Easy? Who said easy? No, it’s possible. Damned possible. And what makes it possible is that banks are run by greedy little men. Maybe they don’t have the guts but they understand a hustle. And envy. Lord, the envy. The branch manager is sitting there and watching a man his age play with big amounts of money and he’s thinking that with some luck he could be doing the same. And when the scam man leans over and says that he needs twenty thousand in twenties to ice a deal he knows the deal is probably rank but he knows the profits will probably be high. And he goes over and gets together the twenty thousand and wishes the scam man luck.”
I finished the beer and tossed it in the trash can. “There have to be problems.”
“All right. First of all, the way I’ve set it up, you’ve got to deal with four or five branch managers. Maybe one of them doesn’t want to play the right brand of helpful ball. One, just one, can screw it up.”
“So, what’s the better way?”
He lifted the bottle and sucked on it and his eyes were closed for a long moment. When he took the bottle away, he was grinning. “I would buy myself a banker. Hell, I’d buy myself a whole fucking bank.”
We dropped Bill on Peachtree a couple of blocks from the Union Mission. He’d asked to be dropped there. He had a bright new twenty in his pocket and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to join the others in that sun spot.
That twenty was the hope of a fuzzy drunken warm and the way I saw it he wasn’t going to share the better part of it with anybody.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I put in a call to the number Frank Temple had given me. Dialing the number, I flipped the card and looked at the fancy engraving job on the front. It was simple enough: Frank Regent Temple in raised black script and a number. No address. The number, of course, was not the same as the number he’d written on the back.
It was six when I placed the call. A man who sounded as though he had a breathing problem, a broken nose or something like that, answered. When I gave him my name, he said he’d have the call returned as soon as he could.
It was supper time in the living room. On the way home, I’d made a wide loop and we’d bought out a part of the deli counter at Cloudt’s. I’d brought lox and pastrami and corned beef. There’d been a loaf of good dark bread and a jar of hot mustard. While I was on the phone, Hump’d started on the goodies. He’d made himself a corned beef that looked like a catcher’s mitt.
“That Bill …”
“Bothers you, huh?” I stopped in the kitchen doorway. “He used to be good.”
“His head still works.”
“Primed by two bottles,” I said.
“You’re hard on the man. Ever have any drunks in your family?”
“Some.” I went into the kitchen and laid out lox and a block of cream cheese and a sliced pickle. To that I added a couple of slices of black bread and a bottle of Bud. “Had an uncle when I was a kid. Used to breathe pure Four Roses on me. All the time singing about how he’d be glad when I was dead, you rascal you. And he’d rub his whiskers on my face.”
“That explains you and drunks.”
I spread some cream cheese on a hunk of bread and layered on the lox and some pickles. “Look, Hump, I understand it. The shakes got to you. You felt sorry for him and later you realized he hadn’t quite pickled the rest of his brain. Now you want to help him get straight again. But let me tell you. It ain’t that easy. You help him start walking on two feet rather than four and the first thing he’ll do is put on a clean suit, get him some fake identification, and go over and run a scam on your Aunt Edna.”
“Which scam?”
“The bank examiner one. He’d probably find out from you that your Aunt Edna has a big savings account at First Georgia. He’d go to her, charm her a bit, show her those fake credentials, and ask her help in a very, very secret matter. The way he’d tell it they suspect that one of the tellers is dishonest. He’d even have one picked out. Name and description. Now, the way of checking whether this teller is dishonest is for your Aunt Edna to take all her money out of the savings account. He’ll have some reasonable way of explaining how this will reveal the crooked employee. He’ll be so convincing that your Aunt Edna will go to the bank. While she’s drawing out the money, she’ll see Bill over talking to the branch manager. Really all Bill’s doing is asking how you apply for a charge card. Bill shows up at your aunt’s house an hour or two later. It’s probably after banking hours. He’s very pleased, very grateful. They’ve caught the crooked teller. And they’ll talk some more and he’ll never come right out and say anything but your Aunt Edna will suddenly realize that she has got twenty thousand dollars in cash in the house. And she gets so concerned about the money that Bill will offer, even outside of banking hours, to take that money and deposit it for her. He’ll even give her an official-looking receipt. And that’s the last your Aunt Edna will see of the money or Bill.”
“One thing wrong with that story,” Hump said. He tossed a crust of bread in the ash tray. “Where’d my Aunt Edna get twenty thousand dollars?”
The phone rang while I was choking on the lox.
“Mr. Hardman?”
“That was fast.”
“I assume there’s been some progress.”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“But you called,” he said.
“It’s about the original rip-off. There’s been nothing in the papers here yet. I need to know how it was handled.”
“I don’t have all the details yet. All I know is that all the checks went through the Citizens and Farmers Bank in Tiflon.”
“One account, one bank?”
“I don’t even know that for sure,” Temple said.
“My nose is against a stone wall,” I said. “Nowhere to go from this end. I’m going to Tiflon in the morning. I told you I know a lawyer there. I’ll muck around in the scam there and see if it leads me somewhere.”
“They’re in Atlanta,” he said.
“As of a few nights ago. Lord, they could be in South Dakota by now.”
“Go ahead but time’s runni
ng out.”
I said I knew that and I’d be in touch in a day or two. He broke the connection. I sat on the edge of the bed and lit a smoke and had a few drags. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. When I returned to the living room, Hump was playing flip-flip with the TV set. All he could find was local news.
“How strong do you feel that about Bill Heffner?”
He switched the TV set off. “Why?”
“My question first.”
“Strong enough,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking. Maybe we could use an expert. Somebody who’d know the possibilities, what the moves might be in a game like that.”
“Bill?”
“If you’ll nursemaid him.”
“That’s some deal.”
“You’re the one who wants to rehabilitate him so that he can run scams on all your aunts and uncles.”
“All that tough talking didn’t fool me,” Hump said.
“You think you can find him?”
Hump pulled back his sleeve cuff and glanced at his watch. “In a couple of hours.”
“Huh?”
“That twenty still has some dollar bills left in it.”
Hump left a bit after eight. After he left, I made a call to Marcy and told her I’d be going out of town for two or three days. It hit some possessive chord in her. She said she’d be right over.
“No, let’s meet for a drink. You can pick the bar.”
“Why can’t I come over?”
I could feel the stiffness and the suspicion. “All right, come on over.”
“Why didn’t you want me to … ?”
“I said you could come over, didn’t I?”
“Is there some reason … ?”
“Hump’s turning my house into a rehabilitation center for winos.”
“A what?”
“I’ll explain it.”
I did. She picked 590 West, the bar on the top of Stouffer’s Inn on West Peachtree. Over some drinks, I told her about Bill, about Hump’s interest in him, and the way I thought I might be able to use him in the job we were doing.
Marcy, I think, didn’t find much amusement in it. She might do social work for a living but she had a way of locking it in her desk at five in the afternoon.
The living room smelled of vomit. The lights were out and I did some careful walking until I got the lights on. There wasn’t anything on the floor or the chairs or sofa. I checked my watch. It was eleven thirty-four or so.
Light spilled out of the kitchen. I went in that direction. Just before I reached the doorway, I heard Bill Heffner mumble, “Fuck you, you black son of a bitch.”
“Names, names,” Hump said.
I leaned on the doorframe. The vomit was in the kitchen sink. A darkish border was hardening on the front edge. Bill’s back was to me. Hump had a stranglehold on him, a lump of forearm muscle under his chin. There was a coffee cup in Hump’s free hand. He was pouring black coffee down Bill’s throat as fast as it would go. Bill was sweating and his skin was the color of an eggshell. His hair, sparse in the center and needing a trim, was matted and damp.
I shouldn’t have spoken. Hump saw me and if I’d waited a moment his brief, short nod would have stopped me. “How’s it going?”
Bill jerked his head. The cup tipped against his chin and coffee poured down his shirtfront. “Hardman, you tell this nigger here …”
“Tell him yourself.”
“This is kidnapping.”
“Maybe you like that life,” Hump said.
“It’s my life.”
“You told me you’d give it a couple of days,” Hump said.
“You didn’t tell me …”
His mouth was open. Hump raised the cup and braced it against Bill’s lower lip. Bill gagged. I backed out of the doorway and went to bed.
I didn’t sleep well. Maybe I should have stayed and helped. The second time I had that thought I threw it away. They’d been doing well until I’d walked in. Without me there it was one on one and Bill didn’t have anyone to do his abuse act for.
The voices ran on and on. And then, after some twilight sleep, the silence awoke me. I fumbled for my watch on the night table. It was two-eighteen. I got out of bed and eased the door to the living room open.
In the spill of light from the kitchen I could see Bill on the opened-out sofa. He was wrapped in a couple of blankets, directly centered on the sofa. He was exhausted, worn out. Motionless.
I found Hump in the kitchen. He was bent over a plastic trash bag, stuffing Bill’s clothing into it. “You don’t have to whisper,” Hump said. “He wouldn’t hear a shotgun if it went off next to his ear.”
“It worth it?” I got down two glasses and the remainder of the Armagnac.
“Ask me in a day or two.”
The stench was bad. I had a belt of the Armagnac and placed the other glass and the bottle on the kitchen table. I ran some water in the sink. Hump had done a half-assed job of cleaning. I gave it another polish. “You have experience at this?”
“Saw this John Wayne movie once.”
I sat at the table and sipped the brandy. Hump wrapped a tie around the trash bag and carried it outside. When he came back, he washed his hands and poured himself some of the Armagnac. After a swallow he said, “The truth is I had this Uncle Tolliver. That was when I was a kid. Good man. Big dude. But he had this drinking problem. Every three months, right on the tick of the clock, he’d go on a toot. The size of the toot depended on a lot of things. It depended on what cash he had to start with and what he could steal. When it started running down, we’d have to put him back together so he could go and look for another job.”
“Was it this bad?”
“This?” Hump laughed. “This ain’t bad at all. With Uncle Tolliver you had to dodge fists and elbows.”
I offered to spell him but he shook that off. He’d started it and he’d finish it. He’d sleep in the stuffed chair for what was left of the night. But he said he needed a shower. I sat in the kitchen and had another drink. After a time, listening to the shower, I carried my drink in and stared down at Bill Heffner.
He hadn’t moved. He could have been dead. Only a low nasal wheeze said it was otherwise.
I folded the blankets and closed the sofa. I worked the sports page out of the Constitution and made a pretense of reading it. I wasn’t. There was too much going on in the kitchen.
Bill shouted that he wanted his clothes.
Hump said that he’d buy him some new ones after breakfast.
Bill said he didn’t want any fucking breakfast. He wanted a drink.
“Eat your breakfast,” Hump said, “and you can have one beer.”
“I don’t want a goddam beer.”
Hump said that he’d need Bill’s sizes. Underwear, shirts, socks, shoes, and suit, the trouser length.
It went on and on. Hump browbeating and promising, Bill slowly being dragged along by him. Hump got the sizes. A few seconds later Hump leaned through the doorway. “Want some coffee, Jim?”
That was my cue. I could enter the kitchen.
Bill looked green in the daylight. The old terry-cloth robe of mine fitted him like a grave shroud. There was a plate of soft scrambled eggs in front of him and a large glass of milk. I sat down at the other end of the table. Hump placed a cup of instant in front of me.
“I’m going shopping.”
“Need cash?”
“I could use a hundred and fifty.”
I nodded. “You know where the shoe box is.”
Hump reached into the refrigerator and brought out a bottle of Bud. He placed it in the center of the table, next to the sugar dish. “That’s for when he finishes his breakfast.”
Bill looked at the bottle and speared a runny lump of egg about the size of a dime. He got it to his mouth without dropping it. After twenty minutes Bill dropped the fork on the plate and pushed the plate away. My estimate was that he’d eaten about two thirds of the eggs and drunk half of the milk.
I opened the bottle of Bud and dropped the plate in the sink. Bill held the bottle in both hands and had a long gulp of it. “I’d rather have wine.”
“That’s between you and Hump.”
“I don’t want charity off you and that nigger.”
“It’s not charity,” I said. “You’ll earn it or I’ll drop you back in the pit.” I let him have another swallow before I added, “That nigger believes in you more than I do.”
“I’m this far,” Bill said.
“It ain’t that far.”
I could near his nerves screaming. I closed my ears to it and got him talking about banks and banking. Certificates of deposit and fed checks and things like that.
He knew enough about banks to start his own.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was a town of churches. It was low and flat land and driving in, approaching Tiflon, I counted thirteen spires and bell towers. There had to be a lot of sin in a town that small to need that many preachers. Or they’d redefined sin to include a number of pleasures that the rest of us thought little about.
Hump was driving. Bill Heffner was in the front seat next to him. I sat in back like the big daddy rich.
The one beer at breakfast hadn’t cured it for Bill. He was raw nervous and, leaning forward now and then, I’d watch one hand claw at his arm or his thigh. Maybe it was a good sign that he wasn’t breaking skin.
The gray double-knit suit Hump had bought him fitted better than I’d thought it would. There’d been no time for alterations. And he smelled good, if not overpowering, because he’d used about a pint of a bottle of Brut that Marcy had given me a Christmas or so before. That was before I’d told her that I’d rather smell an armpit than those men’s perfumes. But Bill seemed pleased with himself. If there was any nervous sweat under that scent it couldn’t get out.
I’d called Van Green at his home number. He’d said he’d clear his law appointments for the day so he’d be free to see us. In fact, he said, he’d be glad to cancel those appointments even if he had any. I suppose that was his way of telling me that he didn’t have much of a practice established yet. I’d heard a young lawyer say one time that it was mostly a matter of waiting until a few of the old lawyers died off.
