Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time

by M. P. Wright

  “Yeah, yeah . . . He brought her in here just the one time, some time last month, I think. He was showing her off like some circus freak.”

  “And where’d they go to after they left here?”

  I squeezed a little harder into Hurps’ jaw and could feel his molars pressing onto the tips of my fingers from inside of his mouth.

  “To his shebeen on Richmond Road, I suppose, same place he always takes those girls.”

  “Those girls . . . what you mean by ‘those girls’?”

  “Fuck it . . . No way, you had all you gonna git outta me, Ellington. You think I’m gonna dig my own grave spilling my guts out to you so that Papa can fill it in when you done with me? Shit man . . . you got another think coming, you think I’m that crazy?”

  I took a hard look at the scared face of Elrod Haddon and knew that he was right. In my experience, there comes a point when a man who lives constantly in the company of true malevolence and now facing a new threat will seriously consider what he fears more: the demon he knows or the monster staring back at him. Tonight, for Hurps it was a simple case of the lesser of two evils, and I’d just crapped out. But I had one ace left up my sleeve. If you can’t hurt the skin and bones, hurt ’em in the pocket.

  I wandered back round the bar and stood admiring the rows of expensive cut glass and lead crystal that were Hurps’ pride and joy and worth a pretty penny. They were neatly lined up on three shelves between the optics of martini, vodka, whisky and gin.

  “This is some snazzy glassware you got here, Hurps.”

  I lifted my arm, bat in hand, and brought it down on the first row of finely etched goblets, shattering them across the dance floor and across the back of Hurps’ head and neck.

  “Oh you prick!”

  I lifted the bat to start on the rest of Hurps’ chalices, to given him a chance to recant his last comment and tell me what I wanted to know. But something inside of my head snapped and I unleashed all my pent-up anger on the rest of the club owner’s precious collection, then started on the bottles of drinks and his beloved aged teak bar. Glass shards, alcohol, optic heads, bent-up metal and splinters of cracked wood were strewn all over the place. I finally flung the bat into the large glass mirror that hung as the centrepiece of the bar, then turned and grabbed Hurps by his lapels and heaved him close to me. The aged boxer finally submitted to the inevitable.

  “Papa brings his special girls in here, the ones he picks to visit some white cats out in the sticks. He gets Warren to take ’em out there once they’re boozed up or as high as a kite.”

  “Who the hell’s Warren?”

  I shook the old prizefighter, bringing him closer towards me, slapping him hard across his face to keep him focussed and scared.

  “Mickey Warren . . . The honky copper you saw me out front with. He’s the middle man between Papa and the countryside club all those honkies meet up at to mess round with black chicks. One night he came down here, got himself filled up with ale and Scotch, sat in one o’ them booths over there and started telling me ’bout this place he takes these special girls of Papa’s. He said they call it the Erotica Negro!”

  “You better not be shitting me: they call it what?”

  I drove my fist into the side of Haddon’s head and watched as his eyes rolled uncontrollably round in their sockets.

  “No . . . stop, I swear that’s the name the place goes by. The Erotica Negro club. All I know is it’s a strictly invite-only kinda place. Papa picks up hot-looking coloured woman, clean and no previous dealings with johns on the streets. These honeys are definitely not his usual cock-rats, they’re all top grade, and he arranges fo’ ’em to do the dirty with a bunch o’ well-heeled dudes who pay him a hefty sum fo’ the privilege.”

  “What’s your end in the deal?”

  Hurps wilted at the bar.

  “I keep an eye out fo’ any fresh skirt that comes into here. I give ’em some shit ’bout looking fine and how they could earn themselves some easy money. I introduce ’em to Papa if they take the bait: that’s it, I swear.”

  “How does Stella Hopkins fit into all this, Hurps?”

  “I don’t know . . . your guess is as good as mine. I only seen her the one time. Like I said, Papa brings her in, it was a Saturday night. He was as high as a kite on grass and he has her sat at his side at that table he always sits on by the door. I knew someting wasn’t right with her, though.”

  “How come . . . Tell me, what was different ’bout her?”

  “Well, she was dressed up to the nines, face full o’ make-up that even an old bastard like me could tell she never wore. Ting is, she still looked like a child. You could tell she was outta her depth . . . real scared. She just sat there next to Papa stiff as a board, drinking a Britvic orange and clutching hold of a teddy bear or someting.”

  I let go of Hurps and he slid to the floor with a heavy thud. I bent down and picked up the phone from underneath the bar and dropped it on the counter before walking back round to Haddon, treading broken glass under my feet as I did, and stood over him.

  “You’re gonna call Papa. You tell him that I’m onto him, that I know that he’s involved in the disappearance of Stella Hopkins and the murders of Virginia Landry and Jocelyn Charles. Let him know that if he’s got an ounce o’ sense in that drugged-up head of his he’ll meet me in the back bar of the Star and Garter pub at ten o’clock tonight.”

  I lifted the phone off the bar and dropped it into Hurps’ lap, then walked back up the stairs and out into the sleet-drenched street, leaving Haddon to make the call.

  As I drove away, I was unaware that my demand to meet Papa would set in motion a series of tragic events that would haunt me for the rest of my days.

  34

  It was just after eight fifteen by the time I got to the Star and Garter. Outside it was still hammering down with heavy sleet and yet another blanket of thick freezing fog had dropped over the streets. I was grateful to get inside and out of the constant downpour of watery snow.

  I walked over to the bar and was confronted by the pub’s grumpy landlord, Eric, who was ready to take my order, a pint pot glass already held in his big mitt.

  “What d’you want?”

  It was the kind of warm welcome that kept me coming back to the place. I was still fired up after just tearing the Speed Bird to pieces and nearly putting Elrod Haddon into hospital, but I had no quarrel with Eric and chose to ignore the gruff publican’s manner. I leant at his bar and flashed him a smile to try and lighten his mood; it had little effect.

  “Evening, Eric, I’ll take a pint o’Dragon . . . Thanks.”

  I watched as the miserable licensee clasped at a ceramic and copper-tipped beer pump and drew up the dark, treacle-coloured stout from his cellar. He let the liquid settle for a moment and then topped up the remainder of the pint before setting it down; the tanned head spilt over the side of the glass and the residue was soaked up by a cloth bar towel that had the word Guinness printed on it.

  “That’ll be one shilling and three pence.”

  Eric held out his huge calloused hand palm up, for prompt payment; his other was tightly gripped in a distrusting manner around the pint of ale until I’d paid up. I fished about in my wallet for the right money and slapped the coins down into his eagerly waiting paw, then took my beer into the snug in the back room to wait for Carnell while Eric went about polishing the part of his bar I’d been leaning on with an old rag.

  My friend didn’t keep me hanging around for long and it was just before nine when Carnell showed up through the pub door. He stood for a moment at the entrance to wipe the wet sleet that had drenched his face. He wore a dark-brown velvet jacket and matching pants, with an open-necked purple flower-print shirt. He was soaked through from head to foot. It came as no surprise to find that despite leaving his house in a winter storm, he’d not thought before walking out that he may need something on his back that would protect him from the dire weather, such was his eagerness to get to a poker table, never min
d to meet me. I thought of my aunt Pearl and her comment about him earlier that day and smiled to myself: “Food an’ cards only tings that stupid head o’ yours has ever been interested in.” She was probably right, but that’s what made Carnell such a good guy: what you saw was what you got, and it was why his wife, Loretta, loved him so much.

  I watched him from the snug as he casually brushed off the wet snow that had accumulated on his jacket and trousers with big strokes of his hand, and laughed to myself as it flew across the pub, splashing the other customers who’d been sitting quietly supping their drinks until Carnell had showed up. Eric mean-spiritedly leant across the bar and pointed a stubby finger at his most recent but unwelcome customer.

  “Oi, jungle bunny!”

  Carnell looked up and then around himself, unsure if it was he that the none-too-pleased landlord was so rudely addressing. He gestured to himself with his own hand, confused.

  “Yes you, Nat King Cole, if this lot in ’ere had wanted a bleedin’ bath they’d ’ave bloody well stopped at home . . . Pack it in, slinging all that crap round my lounge, you arse’ole!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry Mr Eric . . . I didn’t mean to cause no offence.”

  Carnell circled the room on the spot, waving apologetically at the other customers, who grumbled and groaned under their breaths, before walking up to the bar to get his order in. He peered through the serving hatch in the wall behind the bar into the room where I was sitting and grinned at me. Drips of water continued to run from his face, head and clothes and splashed down onto Eric’s polished bar. Carnell good-naturedly attempted to wipe the mess up with the sodden sleeve of his jacket but was making more trouble for himself. Eric seethed, and I watched in amusement, desperately trying not to burst out laughing again.

  “Come on . . . Stop buggering about, do you want a drink or what?” Eric snapped impatiently at my beleaguered buddy.

  “T . . . two pints o’ Dragon, please, Mr Eric,” Carnell stammered. He dropped his head in embarrassment and stared at his feet while Eric pulled the two glasses of beer and again shot out his greedy hand for payment.

  By the time Carnell finally came and pulled up a stool and sat across the table from me in the snug, he had successfully managed to upset every punter in the pub and had given the place a good washdown. Eric stared suspiciously through the serving hatch at the two of us, and I grinned back at him, then raised my glass to sarcastically toast our cantankerous host. Eric blew out a contemptuous jet of air from his inflated cheeks and went back to polishing his bar.

  “Cheers, Carnell.”

  I put my arm out towards him and he did the same, beers in hand as we clinked our glasses together to salute our camaraderie before necking back the ale.

  “That Mr Eric, he sure is one sour old muthafucka, ain’t he, JT?”

  “Oh, he’s sour all right, Carnell; take no notice of the fool, he just full of his own spite and bile, that’s all. So c’mon, tell me, what’s so important that you need to bring me into this nasty rathole on a miserable night like tonight?”

  I watched as Carnell nervously squirmed about on his seat before setting down his drink in front of him and placing his hands flat onto the table either side of it, considering carefully what he wanted to tell me.

  “Come on, out with it; I ain’t got all night, brother.”

  “It’s Lor . . . Loretta . . .” he stammered again. Unusually for Carnell, he’d said his wife’s full name rather than Lolly or honeybunch or any other of the stupid names he would normally address her by. The expression on his face was solemn and reflective, very unlike the look he normally carried.

  “What ’bout Loretta, she caught you sticking your hand in her purse again? Cos if you have, I’m surprised you’ve manage to walk in here with a set o’ balls still attached to that fat ole dick o’ yours.”

  Carnell laughed at me before replying and winced as he thought about his ill-tempered wife.

  “No . . . I ain’t been pinching her housekeeping; you really think I’m that stupid, JT?”

  I kept my mouth shut as he smiled to himself briefly before his face became serious again.

  “So what you so vexed about? You look like you damn near fit to shit.”

  “Lor . . . Loretta’s gone and got herself pregnant.”

  He flung the words out of his mouth like they didn’t belong in there.

  “Yeah?” I gasped out in surprise. “Who the hell by?”

  “Me, you damn fool, who’d you think?”

  He huffed about like a sullen teenager before the penny dropped and he realised that I was having him on.

  “Git the fuck outta my face, who by . . . You a real bastard sometimes, JT, you know that, don’t ya?”

  We roared with laughter, our thunderous merriment causing Eric to stick his head through the serving hatch to complain.

  “You pair, keep the bleedin’ noise down. This happens to be a public house, not Saturday night at the London Palladium.”

  “Hey Eric, be cool, man, can’t you see we celebrating here? Carnell just found out he’s gonna become a daddy!”

  Eric gawped at the two of us in dismay, an abhorrent look on his face. He shook his head slowly from side to side before adding his heartfelt congratulations to Carnell: “Not another o’ you black bleeders to contend with.” He turned to his regulars on the other side of the bar and cursed again before bellowing out across his pub to his unsuspecting punters, “I warned you lot this is what we’d have to put up with years ago.” He pointed to a mystified old fella who was sipping his pint of mild in a seat by the door. “What’d I say would happen if we let all these coons shack up here? That there’d be thousands of the buggers crawling about the place in no time; well, I was right, St Pauls has gone to the shithouse!”

  Still happy at Carnell’s’ news, I got up and took his big chubby cheeks in my hands, squeezed them then planted a big kiss on top of his head. Eric was furious, staring back at us through the hole in the wall, and when I winked at him he promptly threw his cloth onto the floor in disgust.

  One pint later, I nervously looked at my watch. It was just after nine twenty-five. I reckoned I’d got around twenty minutes before I expected Papa Anansi or one of his dogsbodies to hang about early, then stride through Eric’s gate door at ten and turn the place sour. I didn’t want Carnell to be around when somebody too shady showed up, but at the same time I felt bad about asking him to leave after he had told me about Loretta and the forthcoming birth of his child. I decided to get another round in to further celebrate Carnell’s good news and I returned to where we were sitting with more stout.

  “Here’s to Loretta and the little one, Carnell. You one lucky fella, you know that, don’t ya?”

  He grinned at me, and nodded in agreement, then put the glass to his lips and swiftly sank the pint in a single draught. I decided now was the best time to tell him that he needed to be on his way.

  “Carnell, seriously, brother, I’m really pleased fo’ you both, it’s real great news. Look, I got a spot o’ bidness I gotta deal with. There’s a guy meeting me here in around five minutes or so. I think it’d be better if you got yourself off to that game o’ cards you were telling me about earlier befo’ he shows up here, hey?”

  My friend stared stonily back across at me.

  “JT, if you in trouble I don’t mind hanging about to watch your back, you know that, don’t ya?”

  “Course I do. Hey man, it’s no sweat, I got this covered, thanks fo’ thinking of me, but you know I’m gonna be fine.”

  Carnell nodded at me, then rose out of his seat and stuck his hand out to say farewell to me. I raised my arm and we shook our goodbyes without speaking. I could hear the sleet pounding outside against the pub’s windows as Carnell turned to leave. I stood up, took off my old duffle coat and threw it over to him.

  “Here, you chump; you can’t show up at no card game looking like some drowned rat. I got your car parked down the street; at least I can git back to my place dry in it!�
��

  I laughed as he fumbled to catch it, then struggled to put the ill-fitting coat on. He buttoned it up and it looked like it was about to burst at the seams before he drew the hood over his head. I sat back down and lifted my glass up to him in a final tribute of congratulations and took a sip of the darkened ale before he left.

  “Thanks, man . . . that’s real kind o’ you.”

  He raised his hand and waved at me almost like a child would when saying farewell to a parent at the school gates. Then my friend cheerfully walked out into the frozen rain and dense smog. His simple words of gratitude to me would be the last I’d ever hear him utter.

  35

  The word “anansi” means trickster. I’d been a fool to think that Papa Anansi would agree to my demand to meet in plain sight and I should have realised that men like Papa never take commands from people they have little or no regard for. Elrod Haddon would have made the call warning Papa that I had paid him a visit, smashed up his bar and beat him around his club with a cricket bat, but it had been foolish to think that Papa would have been spooked enough to meet me. I’d waited for an hour and a half hoping he would show so that I could put the squeeze on him. I’d let my quick temper and hunger for retribution cloud my judgement. The Caribbean folklore title that Papa had adopted had a great deal of veracity behind it, even though I didn’t know it as I left the Star and Garter and walked back to my car.

  The sleet had stopped hammering its way out of the night sky, but the thick smog still floated about the streets in thick, impenetrable swathes. It was just before eleven o’clock when I pulled up outside my digs and made my way up to the front door to let myself in. I stuck my hand into my back pocket to pull out my keys but realised that they were still in my room and that all I had with me was the brass Yale key that Aunt Pearl had given me for my new bedsit door. Mrs Pearce, my cranky old neighbour downstairs, was most certainly in bed, but unless I wanted to spend a night sleeping in the car I had little choice other than to rap her front window and get her to let me in. I leant over the wall and gave her sitting-room window three hard knocks, then stood back. A few moments later the curtain was pulled back and her grumpy, wizened old face appeared behind the glass and she peered out suspiciously at me.