The main tourist attraction in Millhouse is a slave auction block in the center of a little park beside the courthouse. One corner of the block was chipped and blackened in a midnight explosion during the civil rights demonstrations, back in 1964. Other than that, it’s a town of forty thousand that locks up tight at seven every night, except for the two movie houses and two or three hamburger and beer joints.
Hump pulled into an all-night truck stop on the edge of town. While the car was being gassed, I walked back to talk to the attendant and asked directions to the pool hall. He gave them with the ease of someone often asked. He repeated them once more to be sure I had them and, with a look toward the front of the car, where Hump was, he lowered his voice a notch or two. “He won’t be welcome.”
“Him?” I laughed. “He’s my driver.”
We followed the directions. Through the main part of town, one mile past the city-limits sign, left at the first fork, a right on a dirt road just past a combination grocery store
and gas station. Half a mile down that road and you couldn’t miss it.
“From what the gas-pumper said back there,” I said, “you’re not going to be much welcome.”
“That’s your problem,” Hump said. “You owe me for the Dew Drop In visit the other might.”
“That silly promise,” I said, and Hump laughed at me.
It was there, just like the station attendant said, a low, flat building constructed from cinderblocks. There was a narrow door near the left corner and a single window to balance the door on the right. A Coca-Cola sign above the door was flaked around the edges and pocked from what was probably some late-hour target shooting.
The packed-dirt parking lot could have held a hundred or so cars, but there were only a dozen or so there when we drove up, all of them clustered together in the darkness around the right side of the building. Hump avoided them and parked on the left side, nearer the front door. I guess I could have gone in without Hump and asked my questions. But my dealings with rednecks in the past had convinced me that they didn’t like strangers asking questions. That could lead to trouble and, if there was going to be trouble, I wanted Hump’s two hundred and seventy pounds of bad-ass on my side. Hump didn’t like the redneck shit, but he’d spent a lot of time around other parts of the country where the black-hate pushed at him in subtle ways. I believed, without ever talking to him about it, that he preferred it in the open, where he could deal with it in the physically violent way that got respect if not understanding.
I went in first and Hump ducked in after me. The aisle between the pool tables was wide enough for us to walk side by side, and Hump moved up level with me. The pool tables covered about two-thirds of the area of the long room. To the right there was a beer bar, and to the end near the front of the building, a wired-in cage where the business of the table rentals was handled.
We headed for the bar. As soon as a few of the pool shooters saw us, there was a muttered “nigger” or two, loud enough for us to hear but not loud enough to appear to be a challenge. I sat at the curved end of the bar, near the wired-in cage. Hump remained standing, on my left, between me and the length of the bar, where two young rednecks in jeans and denim jackets sat talking to the bartender. The bartender, a thin crew-cut man in a dirty half-apron, ignored us for two or three minutes. Then, wiping the bar top with a rag as he came, he edged toward us. “Yeah?”
“Two beers.”
“We’re out of beer.”
“One beer then,” I said.
The bartender grinned. The gap-toothed pleasure meant he’d won, had put it over on the nigger and the nigger-lover. He went over to the Coca-Cola box and got out three bottles of Bud. He opened two of them and placed them in front of the denim-jacketed young rednecks. Slowly, as if the cap didn’t want to come off, he opened the third one and brought it down to me. He placed it on the counter in front of me, along with a paper cup. I dropped a dollar bill on the counter and watched while he made change from his pocket. He remained there, watching me. I lifted the beer and handed it to Hump.
“He’s the thirsty one,” I said.
Hump took the bottle from my hand and, in one fluid motion, lifted it to his mouth. He didn’t bring it down until it was empty. He put the bottle on the bar top with a loud thump.
“Hey!” The shout was from one of the young rednecks down the bar. It sounded more like surprise than anger, but Hump and I turned to face him as he left his bar stool and walked toward us. He had carrot-red hair, a mass of pimples across the bridge of his nose, and brown acne scars on his cheekbones. Next to me I heard the gritty slip of Hump’s shoes on the concrete floor as he set his feet.
“I might be wrong . . . but aren’t you Hump Evans?”
“You’re not wrong,” Hump said.
The redhead put out his hand. “God, the times I’ve seen you on TV.”
Hump gave the hand a hard squeeze. “This is my friend, Mr. Hardman.”
“Glad to meet you.” But he wasn’t really looking at me. He motioned down the bar. “I want you to meet my friend, Benny. Benny, come down here and meet Hump Evans.”
The boy came, but he came slowly, as if this friendly reaction to a black wasn’t the usual social thing to do in Millhouse. He didn’t offer to shake hands, but there was some of the same awe in his face that I saw in the redhead’s.
I took that moment to see how this registered with the bartender. “Two more beers.”
He stuck to his story. “I’m out of beer.”
“Two beers, Mason,” the redhead said. “If they can’t buy them, I will.”
“Your daddy . . . ”
“My daddy ain’t here.” The redhead sounded hard and mean. I’d seen that before: around Hump, the fans all seemed to grow hair on their chests.
“He ain’t going to like it,” the bartender said, but he went for the beers.
“I’m Marshall Sharp. My daddy owns the place.”
“It’s a nice place,” I said. I even looked around and nodded a couple of times. When the beers came I tried to pay, but Marshall waved my money away and said they were on him. The bartender didn’t like that, either, but he clamped his mouth shut and moved to the far end of the bar. The kids spent the next few minutes asking Hump about other pro players he knew. Hump put on a friendly attitude that I knew he didn’t feel, and the talk went on and on while I tried to think of a way to move the subject matter around to Eddie, whoever he was, and the phone calls.
Sometime later, during a break in the feverish fan talk, Marshall asked what we were doing in Millhouse.
“Passing through,” Hump said.
“We got lost,” I said.
Marshall laughed. “This far off the main highway, you’d have to be.”
I decided to try a story out on the kid. “We’re just kidding. We met a girl at a party a couple of nights ago. When she found out we’d be passing through Millhouse, she asked us to stop off and give a message to a guy who hangs out in here.”
“What’s his name?”
“Eddie.”
“Eddie Spence?” He checked himself. He was suspicious now. He’d made a slip, and he didn’t like it.
I turned to Hump. “Was the last name Spence?”
“You asking me?” Hump took a pull at the bottle. “You were the one doing all the talking to her.”
“But I was smashed, and you know I never remember names the next day.”
“You mean we came all this way out of the way . . .?” Hump let it die out. He tapped Marshall on the shoulder. “If that’s not a fuck-up, I’ve never seen one.”
I waited for Hump’s booming laugh to fade. “All I remember is Eddie.”
“He’d be a young guy,” Hump said.
“Eddie Spence is young,” Marshall said.
“The girl said she called him here all the time,” I said.
The other kid, Benny, decided to chip in. “That would be Spence. She used to call him now and then. I remember one night, she called him two or three times. I know, because I answered the phone.”
Marshall was trying to get his attention. To warn him, I thought. “Has he been in tonight?” I asked quickly.
“He hasn’t been in for three or four days,” Benny said.
“I think he’s been sick,” Marshall said.
Of the two, I believed Benny. I wasn’t sure about Marshall. “Too bad,” I said. “The message was kind of important.”
“You can leave it with me,” Marshall said.
“Eddie only, that’s what the girl said.”
“You a cop?”
Hump and I gave him our best surprised looks. Then we laughed until the back of my throat hurt. “Him?” Hump sputtered, “Him?”
I got out my wallet and handed him a card I’d had printed especially for such occasions. It had my name on it and a phony address and phone number. It said I was an agent for Nationwide. “Not a chance,” I said, while he read the card.
“Why you worrying about a cop, Marshall?” Hump asked. “Has Eddie been in trouble?”
That was one of the benefits of using Hump. Marshall still wanted to trust him. “Yeah, a time or two, but nothing really serious.”
Benny blurted out “You call shooting at a guy at a drive-in . . .?”
The way his face contorted, I was sure that Marshall had stepped on his foot. He choked and swallowed the rest of it. He didn’t like Marshall any better for it, but he’d gotten the message.
Hump saw that we were overstaying our welcome. He changed the subject and told a long, colorful story about one night when he and three other pro players had gone to a bar in Dallas. It was a fairly funny story that I’d heard once or twice before. It sounded like the main fight in a John Wayne movie.
Then, with Marshall and Benny laughing away, we finished our beers, said goodnight and got the hell out of there.
On the way back through town, I had Hump stop at one of the hamburger and beer joints. Hump was moody after we left the pool hall. I think it was because he didn’t like the kind of double-standard that the redneck kid practiced. And maybe, though I wasn’t sure of this, he might have been a little pissed at me for putting him in that situation.
I ordered four burgers to go and a six-pack of Bud. While the burgers were cooking, I went to the pay phone and looked up the Spences in the phone book. There were five listed. I got some dimes from the counterman and started with the first one. On the third call, I had the right one.
“He’s not here,” the woman said.
“I need to get in touch with him,” I said, “and it’s important.”
“He’s in Atlanta.”
“Where can I reach him in Atlanta?”
“Who are you?” the woman asked. “Do I know you?”
I gave her a phony name and said I was from Nationwide.
“We don’t want any,” the woman said, and hung up.
I wrote down the phone number and the address. The burgers and the beer were packaged and ready. I paid for them and carried them out to the car. On the drive back to Atlanta, we took turns driving while the other one ate. I’d considered a visit to the Spence house, but Hump had argued against it. “He’s been in trouble before, and she’s probably had practice lying for him.” I’d given up on it then and decided to put it up to Art Maloney when we got back to Atlanta.
Headed toward Hump’s apartment, I had him stop at a gas station so I could use the pay phone. I called Art, but he was out. I left my home number and said I could be reached there in twenty minutes or so. Hump pulled up beside my Ford, down the street from his apartment building. Before I got out, I said he might as well call it a day. He said he’d be at home all evening if I needed him. He was going to try the grass and hash out on the girl he thought would like them.
“Don’t get too stoned.”
“There’s no such thing,” he said.
I patted the gun in his coat pocket. “And watch yourself.”
He said he would, patting my coat pocket, as if to say the same thing to me.
Art didn’t return my call. Instead, he drove over to my house and found me reading the blue streak edition of the evening paper, The Journal. I’d gone all the way through the paper and found no mention of anyone finding Ferd’s body. There was always the chance they’d never find it if The Man didn’t want it found.
“I was in the area when I heard about your call,” Art said.
I poured us each a good shot of J&B and gave him a brief account of the trip to Millhouse. “There’s some connection between this Eddie Spence and the Campbell girl. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there.”
“He might be able to tell us something,” Art said. He got out his notebook and went into the bedroom, where my phone was. I heard him talking to somebody named Frank for a few minutes, and then he came back. “Frank Ransome,” he explained. “Those local policemen jump a bit faster for the G.B.I. than they do for us.” He looked at his empty glass. “After the Millhouse police talk to the parents, he’ll call me back here”
I put a few ice cubes in his glass and brought the bottle into the living room. “How’s the murder business?”
“Funny you should ask.” He gave me a tight look. “The call just came in that a couple looking for necking space found the body of a naked black male, no identification, head popped open like a watermelon.”
“Nobody I know,” I said. “Where’d they find him?”
“In the woods over near that new Executive Suite apartment complex.” He sipped the scotch. “We’re checking his prints now.”
“Atlanta’s unsolved murder for the day,” I said.
“That’s likely.”
Forty minutes later, the man from the G.B.I. called back. I followed Art into the bedroom and watched over his shoulder as he wrote down Clearview Hotel, off Houston. I left him talking to Ransome and got my topcoat from the closet, careful so that he didn’t see the weight of the gun, and put it on.
Out in the driveway, Art stopped beside the door of his unmarked car. “You planning on coming along?”
“If it’s all right. I’m queer for cop work.”
He nodded, and I went around the car and got into the passenger seat. “The Millhouse police called from the Spence house. Ransome told them to stay there until we call back. That’s so they can’t try to warn Eddie Spence . . . if they haven’t already.” That was aimed at me for the phone call I’d made in Millhouse.
“He might be armed,” I said, remembering what the kid, Benny, had said about Eddie Spence shooting at somebody at a drive-in.
Art called in and asked that a patrol car meet us at the Clearview.
The entrance to the Clearview Hotel is just a narrow doorway leading into a stairwell. There’s an old neon sign over the doorway, but it’s broken and doesn’t light up. I’d been in the place once before, a couple of years earlier, when I’d been looking for a wino who’d cut up another one over a pint of muscatel. It was a rat’s nest for the one- or two-day trade, the drifters.
Before we went up, Art sent the two uniformed cops from the patrol car around the block, to cover the rear exit and the fire escape. He gave them a couple of minutes by his watch to get into position, and then we went up the stairs. The night clerk, a fat, oily man in a dirty blue sport shirt, stood up when he heard us crossing the lobby. He pushed a registration card and a ballpoint pen at us. From the nasty smile, I guessed that he thought we were a couple of queers looking for a door we could lock. Art flipped open his wallet and showed his I.D. The clerk took his time reading it.
“Eddie Spence,” Art said.
“Spence.” The clerk reached under the counter and brought up his metal box of file cards. He slowly worked his way back to the “S” divider. When he found the right card he kept a finger in the space and lifted out the card. He held it out to Art.
The clerk turned and looked at the pegboard where the keys were hanging. “He’s here. His key’s not here.”
I leaned past Art. “He have any calls tonight?”
“Not tonight,” the clerk said.
Art looked at the battered switchboard behind the desk. “No call now either,” he said.
The clerk nodded.
“Does the room face the street or the back?”
“The street.”
Art and I started up the stairs at a run. When we reached the landing and saw the “3” on the door, Art unbuttoned his topcoat and suit jacket. Just at that moment, we heard a door slam in the distance. We hit the hall at a run, going in the direction of the slamming sound. I hesitated at the open doorway about halfway down the hall on the left, just long enough to see the “312” painted there and to be sure that the room was empty. Then I sprinted after Art. I reached the fire-escape door just a step behind him. As Art’s hands touched the push bar, we heard the shots. The shots were very close together, but it sounded like three or four.
The light was out at the top of the fire escape. We had to go down a step at a time, a lot slower than we wanted to. When we reached the dark alleyway, we could hear footsteps running toward us but nothing running away from us. A few feet from the bottom of the fire escape, we found the dark shape slumped and tilted against the wall. The running steps toward us slowed and faltered as a flashlight swept across us and then down at the shape at our feet. It was one of the uniformed policeman. Art squatted beside him in the wavering light. Past Art’s shoulder, I could see that the cop had been hit in the neck and the chest. His gun was still in his holster.
Art straightened up. “He’s dead.” He pounded the butt of his pistol against the brick wall, and a thin powder of brick dust showered down upon the dead man. We left the dead cop with his buddy, and went down the alley to the street. We circled the block, looking, but we didn’t know what Spence looked like. We had to give it up. Art placed a call from his car and we went back down the alley.
It was cold in the dark there. The wind swirled around in its tight confinement. The cop we’d left there was still on guard over his buddy, but he’d turned off his flashlight, as if he’d seen more than he wanted to. I offered him a cigarette and, in the windy flare of my lighter, I saw that he was still in shock.
I patted him on the shoulder, and Art and I went up the fire escape to room 312, to see what the junk in the room could tell us about Eddie Spence.
Art went to the window first. There was an ashtray on the ledge and the single chair was nearby. I moved around Art and looked down into the street. I could see Art’s unmarked car and the patrol car. Eddie Spence had been at the window. He’d seen us, and that was how he’d gotten the jump on us.
Leaving the window, Art pulled an open suitcase from under the bed. He poked around in it with his pen, not because he was afraid of disturbing anything important, but because it seemed to contain mainly dirty underwear. I left him at that and went into the bathroom. There was nothing in there except for shaving gear and a damp towel.
Behind me, Art said, “Look at this, Jim.”
I returned from the bathroom and did a knee bend beside him. He’d worked the dirty clothes around until he’d uncovered a framed photo. It was a shot of a young boy and girl standing in front of a swimming pool. The girl was in a brief two-piece suit. The boy was wearing a cut-off pair of jeans. He had a crew cut and the heavily-muscled torso of an athlete. I leaned closer and looked at the girl. She’d been three or four years younger then, but it looked like Emily Campbell, the girl I’d seen twice, once in the dorm parking lot and again in the Dew Drop In Cafe.
“I think it’s Emily Campbell,” I said.
“And I’d give odds the boy is Eddie Spence.”
“No bet,” I said.
When the rest of the police crew showed up, Art and I went back down to the lobby. The clerk was upset, and he was more cooperative now. From the back of the card, he gave us the information that Eddie Spence had checked into the hotel on the 11th, the day after I’d tailed Emily Campbell and two days before she was murdered.
That, and the death of the young cop downstairs, made him dog meat as far as Art was concerned.