Atlanta Deathwatch

by Ralph Dennis

  “It’s better than being unemployed.”

  “You sure?”

  I wasn’t. If it was a sex crime or one of those kook crimes, then the victim probably didn’t know the one who committed it. If there was no previous relationship between the murderer and Emily Campbell, then you had something over a million and a half suspects, and no special place to begin. Those were long, long odds.

  “It came as a Crackerjack prize,” I said.

  While Hump dressed, I got Art Maloney at his home number. He sounded surprised to hear from me. It had been some time. And when I suggested supper at the Mandarin he said he could meet us there in forty-five minutes.

  Our drink refills about the same time Art did. He was wearing that same dark suit with the shiny seat that he’d been wearing for the last five or six years. He and Edna had to cut corners to feed and clothe the four kids, and that didn’t leave much for new suits to replace worn-out ones. His hair was a little thinner now, but the flat Irish face looked about the same as it had when we’d shared a patrol car, back when we’d both been starting out.

  He settled for a beer because he had to go on shift later. While he sipped it, he spent a long time trying to decide what to order. Maybe he thought it was Dutch, and wanted to order what he could afford. I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I told a story about losing a bet to Hump. The whole supper, drinks and all, were on me. When that was settled, we ordered enough food to feed a small Chinese village.

  While we were working over the egg rolls, the roast pork and the spare ribs, I decided I might as well begin. “You working on the Emily Campbell thing?”

  Art blinked over that. “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got a slight interest in it. Did some work for her father once.”

  Hump jumped in. “The write-up in the paper didn’t tell much.”

  “Wasn’t much to tell,” Art said. Then he went on to tell us everything he knew. She’d left her dorm at Tech at five, give or take a few minutes. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going. A few minutes after midnight, a wino who was cold and looking for a place to sleep, after watching the Toyota for an hour or so, opened the back door and found the body. It scared him so much that he’d dropped his pint bottle of Rocket and broken it. With the evening a complete loss, the wino had turned into a good citizen and flagged down a patrol car.

  Art stopped talking while the waitress brought out the covered main dishes.

  “Time of death?” I asked.

  Art shrugged. “As close as we can figure, maybe ten.”

  “Killed somewhere else?”

  Art nodded. “We think so. Strangled, her neck broken. Probably dumped in the back seat, and car driven to the downtown parking lot and left. No one saw it get there, and there don’t seem to be any prints so far that mean much.”

  “Robbery?”

  “Not likely.” Art helped himself to the rice and spooned some sweet-and-sour pork over it. “Purse in the back seat with some cash in it, about what she usually carried. A number of credit cards, all there.”

  Hump motioned toward the shrimp in lobster sauce. Art passed it to him.

  “Rape?”

  “I think we’re supposed to believe that. Girl’s underpants torn off, scratches on the legs.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “No sperm on the outside of her or inside her.”

  Hump asked why that meant anything.

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” Art said.

  “Sperm makes a better rape case,” I said. “Not much doubt then. Without it, it might just be a show of some kind, a way of trying to send you off in the wrong direction.”

  “I might be just doing a lot of hoping,” Art said. “Not that much to back it up, not so far.”

  I explained it to Hump. “If it’s not a sex crime, a nut crime, then it was probably committed by someone Emily Campbell knew, and it was probably committed for some reason that Art can dig out.”

  “Given time,” Art said.

  “And luck,” I said.

  Art had played our game long enough. “What’s your real interest in this, Hardman?”

  “Like I told you. Also, I saw the girl once. She seemed like a nice kid.”

  “That’s as far as I’ve gone, too. Nice, bright kid.”

  “A big waste,” I said, and we all shook our heads sadly and went on eating Chinese food.

  When the waitress was up front with the check and the bills I’d given her, I wadded up a fifty and stuffed it into Art’s suit coat pocket. He knew what I was doing but pretended that he didn’t, and Hump pretended that he hadn’t noticed, either. It was hard on Art, but I knew he needed the money. I guess he could convince himself that it wasn’t like “taking” out on the street. Both of us knew, I guess, that it was just a short-term loan.

  “You feel like protecting your old white buddy?”

  We were on the way back from the Mandarin, heading through the downtown part of town. The weather was changing now, getting colder, and the wind was in swirls of dirt and trash.

  “What you have in mind, old white buddy?”

  “A beer in the Dew Drop In Cafe,” I said.

  Hump gave it a bit of time, as if he were considering it from all the possible angles. “A deal,” he said, “if you’ll take me to some redneck hog wallow and protect me some night.”

  “Pick your hog wallow,” I said, but I sounded a lot more sure than I felt.

  You could hear the neon sign buzzing and humming from across the street. We crossed the street together. I pulled up just outside the closed door and said, “You first.”

  Hump pushed the door open and leaned in. At first they didn’t see me behind him. The three blacks at the bar looked him over and then started to ease their looks away. But then I was uncovered, and their eyes whipped back at me. The bartender saw me and moved toward the end of the bar nearest us. Besides the three blacks at the bar, one booth to the left of us was occupied with construction workers. Their hard hats were on the floor outside the booth.

  Hump moved toward the bartender. He was big, with round, thick shoulders and an oily-looking knife scar that began somewhere under the edge of his t-shirt and ran around the left side of his neck. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry, but we don’t serve whites in here.”

  Down the bar, past another black, the big stud with the Afro, from a few nights before, leaned forward and asked, “What you sirring him for, Ad?” Hump turned very slowly and looked at him. He didn’t say anything. He just looked. Even when the stud with the Afro looked away he wasn’t through. He was just waiting to see what happened next.

  I said it loud enough so the blacks at the bar could hear me, too. “You got a phone?”

  The bartender nodded.

  “Call The Man and tell him Hardman’s here and wants to ask some questions, but that you don’t feel like answering them.”

  “I don’t know anybody with that name.”

  “Sure you do.” I remembered the beating out in the car, delivered by Ferd. “You’ve called him at least once before.” I stepped up onto one of the stools. “Now draw me a beer and go call The Man.”

  While he was drawing the beer I could see his lips moving. The stud with the big Afro wasn’t convinced, but he wasn’t arguing much, either. Ad, the bartender, brought us the draft beers and then ducked under the bar to the pay phone in back. Hump and I drank our beers and looked at each other, and very carefully avoided looking anywhere else. A minute or so later, Ad came back from the phone looking like he’d been lightly burned by The Man. He nodded at the big Afro once, and then he reached us, he nodded. “He says I should answer all your questions.”

  “Four nights ago there was a white girl in here.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I remember.”

  “How long did she stay?”

  “Eleven or so.”

  “What did she do while she was here?” I pushed my empty glass toward him.

  “Drank some beer, played the juke box some.” He took my empty gla
ss and Hump’s down to the tap and refilled them. He put them down in front of us. “And she kept making phone calls.”

  “Was she calling The Man?”

  He thought a minute. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so. He had business that night, and he called me and said the girl was coming by, and for me to look out for her. He said he’d send for her when his business was over.”

  “You got any idea who she was calling?”

  “Johnny might.” Ad tipped his head in the direction of the stud with the big Afro.

  “See if he’ll have a beer with us.”

  Johnny came reluctantly. He wanted everybody in the bar to know that he wasn’t in the least bit of a hurry. He put his elbows on the bar next to Hump and looked at the fresh beer as if it were piss or worse. “You want something?”

  Ad asked the question for me. “The white girl in here four nights ago. You know who she was talking to on the phone?”

  “I wasn’t studying any white cunt.”

  Ad grinned at me. “He was trying to make some time. He was trying to mess with her some while she was at the phone. He was going a little strong, so I had to have a word with him.”

  “How was I to know she was The Man’s private stuff? She looked like plain white ass to me.”

  “You hear anything of what she said on the phone?” This from Hump.

  “She said something like, ‘Eddie, Eddie, I don’t want you to do that.’ ”

  “You sure it was Eddie?” I asked.

  He nodded toward me. “I’m sure.”

  “How’d she sound?”

  “Like she was begging,” he said.

  “That’s all?”

  “Whoever Eddie was, I think that stud hung up on her. She got this puzzled look on her face and called his name a time or two more, and then she hung up herself.”

  I thanked him, and he gave me the barest of nods and went back over to his seat. “She leave with The Man that night?” I asked Ad.

  “I don’t think so. You see, he called a few minutes after she left and wanted to talk to her, but she wasn’t around.”

  “She leave by herself?”

  “Nobody in here left with her, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Maybe she drove over to see The Man,” I said.

  “If you know anything at all,” Ad said, “then you know it don’t take long to get there from here.” He emptied the ashtray in front of us. “Not ten minutes, anyway, and that’s how long she was gone when he called.”

  I wanted to pay for the beer, but Ad wouldn’t take the money. So I left a couple of dollars anyway, and said he could let Johnny have a free ride for a glass or two.

  Hump got the car turned around and headed for my house. “Eddie. That’s your man, huh?”

  “It either fits in somewhere, or it doesn’t.”

  Hump grunted. It didn’t sound like agreement. “Three days before the murder. That’s a thin tie.”

  “The Man was going with her, and he said he didn’t kill her. Right at the moment, that doesn’t leave anybody.”

  “A sex nut, maybe,” Hump said.

  “At that gas station she made three calls. One might have been to The Man. That leaves two calls.”

  “It might have taken three calls to find The Man.”

  “Or she called a couple of places trying to find Eddie. I wonder who the hell Eddie is.”

  “Eddie Fisher. Eddie LeBaron. Fast Eddie Felson.”

  He went on naming Eddies until we reached my driveway.

  I got up at nine and had coffee and toast, and dressed in my best Brooks Brothers suit. It was one of those white-gray overcast mornings that looked like snow but usually wasn’t in Atlanta. I pointed for the gold dome of the Capitol and worked my way across town. I found a parking space about five blocks away and walked it.

  Some time later I was getting a hand-shake and a backslap from Hugh Muffin. It was just routine, but he did it so well that sometimes you forgot. He really acted like seeing you made his day. I suspected he’d do the same with an investigator from Internal Revenue. But under that potbelly and friendly Uncle Hugh exterior, there was a ridge of sharp steel about two feet wide.

  It was time to get down to business. “Bad thing about the Campbell girl.” I said.

  He set his face in the sad, funereal look. “Arch’s broken up. His only child, you know.”

  “Is he still in town?”

  “He was yesterday.”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” I said, “but I’m not sure he’d see me.”

  “The guilties, huh?” He pursed his mouth as if he were about to spit out some tobacco juice. “To tell the truth, boy, he was a bit pissed at you . . . at first. He seemed to believe that Emily’d still be alive if you’d done the job you’d agreed to. It took some talking. Lord, I did some real talking before he admitted that you couldn’t watch her twenty-four hours a day, and if somebody wanted to kill her, they could always find a time and a place.”

  “Maybe we could work a swindle,” I said.

  “Love those,” he said.

  “I’ve got a client who wants me to look into the murder but doesn’t want to be known.” I was watching him, and I could see the foxy slipping in. “You knew Emily pretty well, didn’t you?”

  “She was like my own child.”

  “Then he’d believe you if you told him that you’d hired me to look around for a few days.”

  “He might.”

  “Also, I could drop your name here and there, and it might give me a bit of clout when I need it.”

  “Who’s your client?” he asked.

  “I can’t say right now.”

  “But you’ll tell me later, huh?”

  I said I would. He got up and got his topcoat. As he struggled into it, he said, “Might as well seem to be spending money in a good cause when it really doesn’t cost me anything.” He switched out the light and locked the outer door. “But you’re using my name, son, and I’d better not find out that I’m the one being swindled.”

  Hugh didn’t bother with ringing the room from the Regency lobby. We rode the glass-bubble elevator to the ninth floor and walked around the narrow, terrace-like hallway until we reached 922. Before he knocked, Hugh motioned me out of the doorway sightline.

  I sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette. Almost five minutes later by my watch, the door opened again and Hugh said, “Come in, Mr. Hardman.” There were two men in the room besides Hugh Muffin. Arch Campbell sat on the edge of the nearest twin bed, rigid and hard-backed, as if Hugh had seated him there. His face was almost blue with anger and his lips were trembling.

  “Mr. Hardman, just because. . . . I don’t want you to think, just because I agreed to . . . ”

  I said I understood.

  The other man stood in the far rear corner of the room. He was talking softly into the telephone. His face was turned away from me at first, but I could see the blue-black hair worn long and the dark, sun-tanned neck and tanned hand that held the receiver. When he finished and hung up and faced me, I could read in his hard mouth that he wasn’t one of the friendly people.

  Hugh said, “This is Ben Coleman, Arch’s business manager.”

  I put out a hand as he stepped toward me, but he ignored it and leaned over Arch Campbell. “They’re sending up coffee,” he said.

  I looked over my hand to see if it was especially dirty, and then put a cigarette in it and lit it. Ben Coleman, after Campbell nodded, straightened up and looked at me. “I was against using you, all along.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just waited.

  “If you’d been there when. . . . ” Arch Campbell began.

  Hugh sat on the twin bed next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. “Arch, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “Hugh, goddammit . . . oh, all right.” He braced himself. “What do you want to know, Mr. Hardman?”

  “When I had you call your daughter, did you talk about anything else?”

  “I didn’t
talk to her.”

  “You didn’t . . .?”

  “Her line was busy. When I called back a few minutes later, she wasn’t there.”

  That was a possibility I hadn’t considered. When Emily Campbell had run out of the dorm that evening looking frightened, it wasn’t because her father had said he was coming over. It was some other cause that flushed her out into my tail. I ran the film-like memory of that first time I’d seen Emily Campbell, fighting the sweater to get her arms into the sleeves, burning rubber as she left the parking lot. It was a kind of panic that a visit from a father shouldn’t cause. But the facts I’d had at the time had forced me to read it that way.

  “I tried your home number several times,” Arch Campbell said, “but you weren’t there, and when you called later that night, I’d had a few drinks and I forgot . . . ”

  “Did you see her after that night?”

  “No. I sent Ben but . . . ”

  Ben Coleman jumped in. “I spent half the next day trying to find her. I drew a blank, all the way.” He looked at Arch. “Maybe I should have kept trying.”

  Arch shook his head. “There wasn’t any way we could know.”

  “I’d like to look through her belongings, out at Tech,” I said.

  “The police already have,” Arch said.

  “I’d like to look for myself.”

  Hugh stood up. “I hired Hardman. The least we can do is help him cut a few corners.”

  “My sister, Carrie Nesbitt, is going over to the dormitory late this afternoon to pack up her things.” He looked at his watch. “You could meet her there at four o’clock.”

  “I’d rather go sooner than that.”

  He pushed himself up from the bed and walked to the phone. “I’ll call the housemother and tell her I’m sending you over.”

  “That would be better for me,” I said.

  While he made the call, the other three of us looked at the walls and the ceiling. Hugh still had his topcoat on, and he was worrying one of the leather buttons. Ben Coleman, angry and sullen, smoked a cigarette in short puffs. Besides the anger and frustration, there was the stuff of grief in the room, and I wanted to get out into Atlanta’s wind and dirt and pollution. But I had one more question to ask.