by Ralph Dennis
We were parked across the street in the lot next to The Garden Spot, a store that specialized in plants and pots and such. I was in Art’s car with Betsy Hart. She filled the center of the front seat, pressing Art against one door and me against the other one. It had been some trouble finding Betsy. It had taken most of an hour to find where she worked and collect her from the ad agency. The resident manager had been helpful when we’d started the trace at the apartment house on Eighth.
We’d been in the parking lot since 4:15. It was cold, and every few minutes Art would run the engine for a few minutes so the heater would kick in.
Hump was parked next to us in his Buick.
At one minute after five, the secretary came out of the office. Art passed Betsy a pair of binoculars and said, “Focus them on her.” The secretary was bundled in a scarf and a knit hat. It was lucky we weren’t trying to identify her. All I could see of her was her nose.
She drove away in a tan Pinto. That left a black Continental in the last space to the far right.
“Got it?”
Betsy nodded and lowered the binoculars. It was five minutes before the heavy door opened again. This time it was a gray-haired man in a black or blue-black topcoat. He locked the door and turned and stood that way for a few seconds before he lifted a dark hat with a gray band and placed it on his head.
I watched Betsy Hart track him to the Continental.
“What do you think?” I had a hand on the door handle.
“He’s the man.” She lowered the binoculars and passed them to Art. “He came to the apartment two or three days after Billie Joe moved out.”
I swung the passenger door open. “Thanks. Mr. Maloney will drop you at your office.” Across the street, Thompson had started the Continental. He was warming the engine.
“Jim .. . ?” Art had some questions.
I didn’t have time. “I’ll call soon as I can.” I slammed the door and trotted around the back of Hump’s Buick. He had the door open for me. The engine was running. “The lady says that’s the sugar daddy.”
The Continental found a hole in the rush-hour traffic and slipped into it. Thompson was headed for the higher numbers, toward Peachtree Road.
Hump butted into the traffic three cars back and we followed.
It had been a dumb argument. Art knew it and I knew it. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. Dumb, dumb, double dumb.
“Look at it this way, Art. Thompson tells the girl’s daddy he dropped her at the bus station the first week in September and pointed her toward Kingstree. If I’m right, if the sugar-daddy type is Fred Thompson, he was lying. He knew the whole time that Billie Joe didn’t leave Atlanta. One month after he’s supposed to have shipped her out of town he’s at the apartment on Eighth asking about her.”
“Weak,” Art had said. “You know how many men there are in Atlanta with gray hair, in the age range from late forties to early fifties?”
“Thousands.”
“Many thousands.”
“All right. But we pick up Brian Case somewhere around noon. It just happens the lawyer he calls is Fred Thompson?”
“That’s a hell of a leap.”
“Not if Thompson is the sugar daddy Betsy Hart saw.”
“Even then,” Art said, “what have you got?”
“Too big a knot.” It was the frustration of grabbing at wispy things. “Look, I called him after Rosemary and I got back from Plainsville. He says he’ll call Buddy and call us back. He doesn’t. I call him and he’s not there.”
“Or he’s there and he doesn’t answer.”
“I think I flushed him. No phone in that apartment on Argonne, was there? I think he drove to the apartment to tell Billie Joe her mother and I were asking about her. He didn’t find her. That was yesterday. Now, today, he talked to Brian Case at the slammer. He has to know that the place on Argonne is being watched. The town is heating up. If he knows how to reach her, he’s probably warned her. If he doesn’t know, then he has to find a way to shortstop her. Either way he’s probably going to contact her.” I stopped and took a deep breath. “I think it’s worth a day or two of watch and follow.”
“If he’s the right gray-haired man.”
“Yeah.”
That was when we drove to Eighth and asked our question about Betsy Hart.
Oddly, in the heavy homeward traffic, there was less chance to lose him than in light traffic. Once you got in one lane you were locked in, nailed down.
Hump cruised two cars back.
Straight out Peachtree Road. Past Brookwood Station. Past Piedmont Hospital.
“Where the hell’s he going?”
“Home,” I said.
Home for Fred Thompson was a condominium in the Farr Hills development. It looked like twenty or so units with another ten or so framed out and underway. We passed under a gray brick archway that had FARR HILL, in wrought iron, dangling, swinging in the wind. All the condominiums were constructed from dark wood that wasn’t painted. It was supposed to weather, I think. It reminded me of houses I’d seen in rural parts of Japan. There, for whatever reason, the wood aged, weathered, until it was like driftwood.
The Continental swung into a parking slot in front of one of the units. Hump drove past. We did a slow tour of Farr Hills. It gave Thompson time to enter his condominium, and it revealed that there was only one way in and out of the development. The way we’d come, through the brick archway.
We waited outside the development, down the road from the archway. We parked on the shoulder next to a construction site where the bunched shells pointed to another apartment complex going up. It was like that all over Atlanta. Boom and bust.
It was twenty after six when the nose of the Continental passed under the archway. It turned and showed its tail to us and sped toward Peachtree Road. I checked the tag numbers. It was the right one.
“Look at that sport.”
I did. It was the new Fred Thompson we were staring at in the side parking lot of Sadie Mae’s Place. He’d changed from suit and tie to one of those faded denim suits, a black turtleneck, and high-heel boots.
At first, for an instant, I reached for my pad to recheck the tag numbers. The gray hair reassured me. I could follow that head of hair through a snowstorm.
Sadie Mae’s is one of the new “in” places on Peachtree Road. A new one opens every three or four months. It booms for a time and then that crowd moves on and another one floats in, getting the scent late. In a year the business falls off and somebody buys the bar. They change the name and some of the decor and a new “in” place is born.
“What drill?”
“Remember the Bill Riley thing?”
“Sure.” Hump got out of the Buick. “I’m thirsty. I go first.”
I waited a couple of minutes. When I entered the bar, it was wall-to-wall armpits and bodies and elbows. The bar was two-deep, men and women pressed against the stool sitters, and all the tables were taken. A blue smoke haze butted the ceiling.
It was a fight, easing and pushing and snaking my way to the bar for a drink. I got a scotch-rocks and lost some of it on my shoe backing away. I found an empty space along one wall, put my back to it, and looked around.
I found Hump first. He was seated at a table with a black couple. I recognized the black guy as a lawyer with E.O.A. The girl with him looked too young to be his wife. That’s Atlanta for you.
Hump’s table was near the front end of the bar. His back was to me for a time. Then he looked over his shoulder. His eyes drifted past me like he didn’t know me. As planned. But there was something else. I followed the direction of his gaze when he turned away and located Fred Thompson.
Thompson was at a table near the back of the bar. He was to the left of the arch that led to the Men’s Room. There were a couple of young chicks with him, the secretary types. He’d have to know them to be sitting with them that soon after entering the bar. I watched the bored, disinterested faces of the girls and decided he was shooting blanks
with them.
That hunch got backing. A young stud had been floating near the table. Now he leaned in and said something. The girls laughed and their heads edged together. I flipped from them to Thompson and saw the annoyed look on his face. He put his back to the stud and the girl and tried talking to the girl on his right. But the stud was spreading his light and the girl Thompson spoke to wasn’t listening.
Thompson pushed back his chair. I leaned away from the wall. He turned and went through the arch. I’d been to Sadie Mae’s one other time and knew the phones were there as well as the john. I clubbed my way through the pack and reached the arch. To the right was the john. To the left a bank of two phones. I dug out a dime.
Thompson was on the left phone. I edged past him and slipped the phone book from the shelf under the phone bank. I stepped back and pretended to flip through the pages. That way I wasn’t bothered by the soundboard that separated the two units.
Thompson said: “… like to come by now if I could.”
A pause.
“In ten minutes?”
Another pause.
“See you then.”
He replaced the receiver and stepped back. He bumped into me and whirled. I said, “Sorry,” and stepped around him. I put an elbow on the shelf.
Behind me, Thompson said, “Do I know you?”
I looked at him, “Not that I know.”
“You Jim Hardman?”
“Who’s that?”
He shook his head and headed for the arch. I dropped in my dime and dialed my number. I let it ring about six times.
I passed his table without looking at him. The young stud was seated at the table. Both girls looked on ready for him. When I passed Hump he was looking up at me. I nodded at him. Even before I got past the table I could hear him begin his “Sorry, but I’ve got to leave.”
I saw a hole at the bar. I drained my glass and pushed my way in. I ordered another scotch-rocks. By the time I paid, Hump had left. The black lawyer from E.O.A. had a hand on the girl’s neck.
A minute later Thompson passed me on the way out. I knew he’d stop at the entrance and look back at me. I kept my eyes on the two girls and the stud at the table he’d left. The way the young man had them jollied he was shooting hot loads.
A bit later a girl passed me on the way out. I followed her with my head. Right to the entrance. Thompson was gone. As expected. I returned to the phone and dialed Art’s home number. I caught him before he left for his shift at the department. I told him where I’d be. He gave me a maybe. I went back into the bar and wasted ten minutes over my drink.
I left my glass on a table on the way outside. I stood on the curb and flagged down the first cab that passed on my side of Peachtree Road.
The cab dropped me a bit later in front of George’s Deli on North Highland. I was having a corned beef and drinking a beer and talking football with the bartender, Sam, when Art sat down next to me. He gave me his now-what-the-hell look.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Next time we do the Bill Riley dance step you’d better remind me where you’re going to be,” Hump said. “This is the third phone call I’ve made.”
I’d carried my beer bottle to the phone. I had a swallow and braced a hip against the beer box. “Tell me how the P.I. work went.”
“You try to spook him?”
“I think he must have seen me around the courthouse some years back. Why?”
“He waited in the parking lot five minutes. Might have been checking to see if you followed him.”
“Then?”
“You didn’t come out and he drove off. I followed him to a duplex on Ramsay Drive. Had a For Rent sign out in the yard. He rang the doorbell. Went in for a few minutes. Came out with another man. The man unlocked the right half of the duplex. They went in, were in there for a time. When they came out the other man was counting some money. Thompson had a key.”
“Would that lead you to believe he’d just rented himself another apartment?”
“That would be my trained estimate,” Hump said.
“What does he need with another apartment?”
“That’s a good question. In fact, this is a bit of a comedown from the place in Farr Hills.”
“Could you see him living in a duplex?”
“A sport like him?” Hump laughed.
Art passed the beer box and leaned in. I nodded at him. “Where are you now, Hump?”
“Followed him to his condominium. I think he might be in for the night. I’m at a service station a few blocks from there.”
“Hold on a minute.” I passed the phone to Art. “Seems Fred Thompson just rented himself half of a duplex on Ramsay Drive. Hump and I can’t see him living in that neighborhood.”
“I can’t either,” Art said. Then, into the phone: “Give me that address.” Art wrote the numbers down on a margin of the phone book and tore it away. He passed the phone to me. “Want to take a ride, Jim?”
I shook my head. “Hump, I’m going home. Meet me there.”
He said he would. I carried my beer down the bar to the end stool and sat down. Art finished his glass and tapped the bar next to me. “What’s wrong? You don’t want to play detective anymore?”
“Not tonight. I’m tired. You call me.”
“All right.”
He left. I finished my beer. Then I sipped at another one while Sam made me a roast beef and a corned beef to go. The sandwiches were for Hump. I didn’t think he’d found time for a bite yet.
The phone was ringing when I unlocked the door. The living room lights were on. Hump stood in the bedroom doorway and shook his head at me. “I know that call ain’t for me.”
I dropped the bag of sandwiches in his hands on the way past him. I answered the phone.
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Rosemary said. She sounded stiff-voiced and a little angry.
“It’s been busy. I just got home.” I switched the phone from hand to hand as I worked my topcoat off. I missed something she said but ran on past it. “We know one new thing. It looks like Billie Joe’s gone out of town for a few days.”
“Where?”
I said we didn’t know that yet.
“Then how do you know that …?”
I told her about the arrest of Brian Case. I said that if he knew where Billie Joe was, he wasn’t saying.
“I see.”
I said I thought he’d talk sooner or later. When he did we’d know.
“You’ll let me know, Jim?”
I said that she’d be the first to know.
She waited. There was silence at the other end of the line. I had the sense that she was waiting to see if I’d ask her over or if I’d offer to drive to the Riviera. I didn’t do either and finally she said, “Well, let me know.”
I said I would and good night.
At the kitchen table Hump was halfway through the roast beef. “You didn’t say which sandwich was yours.”
I shook my head. “Neither.”
“That who I think it was?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I lied some.”
“Why, Jim?”
I shrugged. I carried a beer as far as the opener and changed my mind. I put it back in the refrigerator.
“She coming over?”
“I think tomorrow starts early.”
“That the reason?”
“No,” I said. “I’m afraid the truth might slip out. If we’re right about the duplex apartment, why Thompson rented it, then it’s going to happen one way or the other. No reason for her to lose a night’s sleep over something she can’t do anything about.”
Hump started on the corned beef. “That’s the Hardman I know. Soft and squishy.”
I didn’t like to think that was true.
He finished eating and left, taking a road beer with him. I watched a bit of TV. I clipped my toe-nails. I was undressed and about ready to give up on Art when he called.
“I
t looks promising,” he said. The owner of the duplex, Arvin Baker, had said that a Mr. Roth had rented the other apartment for his niece and her husband. He’d said that the husband, Bob Johnson, would sign the lease when they moved in the next afternoon.
“You set it up?”
“Baker leaves for work at eight. We’ll move in then.”
“Give me that address again,” I said.
“No way.”
“844 Ramsay Drive?”
“Shit,” Art said.
“See you at eight.” I broke the connection.
The lights were off and I was in bed before I remembered that I hadn’t changed the sheets. Rosemary’s smell was in the sheets and the pillow. I was too tired to care. I slept well and if I dreamed at all, I didn’t remember any of it.
I’d set my mental clock. I awoke exactly at 6:30.
I arrived at the duplex on Ramsay Drive exactly at eight. Art’s car was in the drive. He answered the door and waved me in. Ellison was seated in an easy chair that had been positioned near the window. He was drinking coffee from a large paper cup and eating an egg sandwich.
“What happened to what’s-his-name?”
“Baker? He left for work.” Art dug into a paper bag and passed me a cup of coffee. “We were afraid you’d show up.”
I took the cup and pried the top away. “What’s the drill?”
“This.” Art passed me a piece of paper. I read enough of it to see that it was one of the standard-lease agreements you could buy at most of the business-supply stores. “I’m Arvin Baker for the day.”
“Who am I?”
“Nobody,” Ellison said. “You’re a bystander.”
“Goody.” I let the swallow of coffee I took serve as a beat. “Like yesterday?”
Ellison said, “Jesus Christ.” He shoved the rest of his egg sandwich into his mouth and stared out the window at the street.
Ellison didn’t stay mad long. It wasn’t in his nature. As the day went on, I learned a good bit about him. His first name was Bill and he was married and he had two little girls. He’d been hoping for a boy each time and now he wasn’t sure he could afford another baby. “All I got was splittails,” he said about his little girls, but he talked with affection and pride about how bright they were.
