The background bits and pieces came in on Eddie Spence all through the morning hours. Art didn’t leave his office while the manhunt got mounted, and he was still there when I dropped by at nine a.m. after a few hours sleep. He was red-eyed, and cigarettes had soured his tongue, and he walked like he had a hundred-pound pack on his back. I brought him a pint of coffee and he looked at it like he might throw up. But for all that, he’d pieced together a pretty good background on Eddie Spence. I sat down across from him, lit my first cigarette of the day, and listened to it.
Up until a year ago, the Spences had lived in Mason, Georgia, the small farming town where Arch Campbell and his family were the rich and powerful planters and landowners. Eddie Spence and Emily Campbell were in the same class in high school, and they’d gone together until late in the first semester of their senior year, when Arch Campbell had somehow contrived to put pressure on the Spence family. That pressure had probably been economic, and the end result had been the breakup of the romance between Emily and Eddie. Eddie Spence was an all-state halfback with scholarship offers from the big schools up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and he’d been leaning toward Dooley and Georgia until the breakup. Not long after that he’d disappeared from Mason, and the next time his family heard from him he was in boot camp in San Diego. From San Diego, after boot camp, he came East again, to aviation electrician school at Jacksonville. At the end of the twenty weeks, he ranked high enough in his class to be allowed to pick the billet he wanted, a VU squadron based at the Naval Air Station at Jacksonville. His work with the squadron had been excellent, and he’d been in no trouble until the spring before, when he’d gone AWOL. A routine check of liberty cards and leave papers in the Jacksonville bus station had sent him back to the base for a Captain’s Mast and a sentence of restriction to base and extra duty. As soon as he was free to leave the base, on his first liberty, he took off again. This time he reached Atlanta, and was there for a whole day before he was caught.
“That must have been the day he called Emily at her dorm and her roommate took the call,” I said.
“We don’t know whether he saw her that time or not.”
I said I was fairly certain that he hadn’t.
This time when Eddie was returned to Jacksonville there’d been a court-martial, and he’d been given an undesirable discharge. He joined his family at Mason and told them a story about receiving a medical discharge because of an old football injury. Not long after that, the Spence family moved from Mason to Millhouse. Eddie had taken night courses to finish high school and had worked as a mechanic at one of the body shops in town but, according to his family, he kept talking about moving to Atlanta and went there several times to look for a job. Then, two days before the death of Emily Campbell, he’d packed a suitcase and moved to Atlanta. He checked into the Clearview Hotel and paid a week in advance. In his five days in the hotel, the clerks said, he’d seldom gone out. Just for breakfast, lunch and supper.
“I doubt that,” Art said. “You keep the key, go out the back way, and the clerks would swear you were still in.”
The night clerk remembered that Eddie Spence had gone out for supper the night the girl had been murdered and had been back by seven. He hadn’t gone out again that night.
“But he admits he didn’t see Eddie again that night,” Art said. “All he knows is that Spence didn’t pass through the lobby again that night.”
Art shook his head. That meant, I thought, that he wasn’t sure that Eddie would ever get to trial. The slip between the cup and the lip was to be a cop bullet or two. I’d seen it happen once that way. The pimp who’d shot old Johnny Freeman, one of the department favorites, had been standing with his hands coming up empty when Ben Evert shot him twice. Then Ben had jammed a “clean” gun in the waistband of the pimp’s trousers, and that was that. Shot while resisting arrest.
“We’re looking at him for a couple of other jobs, too,” Art said.
That was the police mind at work. Eddie Spence had a gun and he’d used it, and that meant he was a “possible” for every crime committed in the area since he’d moved to town. There was a cabbie murder-robbery in Sandy Springs, the shooting of a service station attendant in Northeast Atlanta, and the holdup of a fried chicken hut out on Ponce De Leon. It would clean up a lot of paperwork if he measured up for one or all of those. The only crime that they didn’t have him tabbed as a “possible” for was the murder of “that spade” who’d been found out near the new housing development. That was Ferd, and there just wasn’t any way I could let Art know there was a chance that Eddie Spence might really have had a hand in that one.
I was getting ready to leave, when a man from the photo lab brought in a stack of prints and put them on Art’s desk. They were dupes they’d made from a recent photo of Eddie Spence that the Millhouse Police had found somewhere. I pocketed twenty or so. I got as far as the door before Art stopped me.
“You keep acting like you’re a private investigator without being one, and you’re going to get into trouble.”
I gave him my best go-to-hell grin. “Nothing in the law that says I can’t ask a few questions, or a do a favor or two for a friend.”
“On that fire escape last night, I thought I saw you carrying a shooter.”
“Made out of soap,” I said, “just like the one that John D. used in his jailbreak.”
“I’d like to see it,” Art said.
“Sorry. I showered with it and it all went down the drain, but I’ll carve you another one.”
“Just don’t let me find you with a gun,” Art said.
“You won’t find me.”
Once I was out on the street, I found a pay phone and called the number The Man had given me.
The Man looked up from the photo of Eddie Spence. “So this is the one?”
I said it seemed that way at the moment. “He and Emily had a thing back in high school. Maybe he never gave up on it and didn’t like it when she did.”
“And Ferd?”
I shook my head. “That’s the hard one, unless he’d been watching Emily and saw Ferd with her.”
“It’s possible,” The Man said. “He picked her up a few times for me . . . not out at Tech, but from some places around town.”
“That might be it. He’s from redneck country. Maybe he thought Ferd was a boyfriend.”
“That would take some imagination.”
“He might just have one.” I got up from the sofa and crossed in front of the guard with the pump gun. His eyes were closed, but his finger was curled around the outside of the trigger guard. “But he’s got trouble. He killed a cop, and the holes are going to close up. If he had any sense, he’d get the hell out of town and head for the boondocks. The only thing is that he might be too crazy-mad to do that.”
The Man lit one of his special-blend cigarettes. I watched the hand with the lighter, and there wasn’t a tremor.
“If he’s still in town,” I went on, “then he’s got a reason to be here.”
“What reason?”
“If he knows about you, then you’re probably his reason.”
“You’re saying I’m the target?”
“Or I am.”
“Why you?” The Man asked.
“If he’s watching this place, he’s seen me coming and going. And last night, at the hotel, he got away because he was watching the street. I think he knows what I look like, and he might want some of my hide for bringing the trouble down on him.”
“You can move in with me, Hardman.” There was a wry curl to his lip.
“I’ve still got some moving around to do.” I got out a scrap of paper and wrote down Hump’s phone number and his address. “You can reach me here.”
He raised his eyebrows in a question.
“Hump Evans’ place.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Pass the photos around. Anybody sees him, calls you.”
“If anybody sees him,” The Man said, “he’s blood meat.”
“No. You call me, and I’ll get a few carloads of cops with riot guns, and we’ll get him.”
“I want him dead.”
I let that hang in the air for a moment or two. “The cops just might want him dead, too.”
He understood that.
“He’s got a shooter, and he’s good with it. You try to take him by yourself, and it’s going to be a bloody mess. You’ll lose a couple of people, and the cops’ll end up there anyway.”
“They call me, and I call you.”
“Right.”
He nodded. “Done.”
“I miss all the fun.” Hump was padding around the kitchen in his big, wide bare feet. He was frying up half a dozen eggs and half a pound of bacon. That was his breakfast. I’d already eaten.
I opened the paper bag and got out a couple of changes of underwear and socks and three new shirts. I’d picked them up downtown at Davidson’s. “You might not miss the next fun. Your uncle has come to visit for a few days.”
“Why has my uncle come to visit?”
“He’s too scared shitless to go home,” I said.
“And you think this Eddie might come visiting, too?”
“Yes.”
“Watch my eggs.”
Hump went into the bedroom and I could hear him rooting around in some junk, probably in the closet. I scooped the eggs onto a plate and put them on the table. Hump came out of the bedroom a few seconds later with an ornately-worked double-barreled shotgun. He’d broken it open and was thumbing shells into it.
“Had a Day for me the year after I got hurt. Hump Evans Day. Got given some silly things, but the silliest was this Austrian hunting gun. Liked to laughed my ass off when they gave it to me.” The shotgun loaded and closed, he leaned it against the living room wall, behind the easy chair. “Be my guest, if you happen to get to it before me.”
He sat down at the table across from me and began eating. Between mouthfuls, he said, “Never fired it but once . . . went out in the wood one morning . . . gave a tree both barrels from about ten feet . . . damned near blew that tree down . . . damned near tore my shoulder off.”
I got the coffee pot and filled our cups. “How was last night?”
“That Campbell girl had good taste in grass.”
“And the girl?” I asked.
“Is that why they call you Hump?”
He grinned. “That came later. My first year in the pros, we had this defensive end coach. When we’d do wind sprints, he’d yell, ‘Hump it! Hump it!’ and one day I got so wore down, I said I just couldn’t hump anymore.”
“And the name stuck?”
“Like the fat girl you always get introduced to at a party.”
I spent the afternoon on the sofa snoozing, while Hump watched the soap operas. I got up around five and showered. I put in a call to Art’s home number but his wife, Edna, said he was still asleep after the double shift. I gave her Hump’s number, and she said she’d have him call when he got up.
Art didn’t call until around seven. “You got anything, Jim?”
“I ran out of miracles.”
“You change your phone number?”
“I’m at Hump’s, in hiding.”
A pause. “From what?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe some crazy with a gun.”
“With the whole force after him, he hasn’t got time to worry about you,” Art said.
“Wish I could believe that.”
“If he’s in Atlanta, he’s dug himself a deep hole.”
“He might be in Millhouse,” I said.
“Not as far as we can tell. We’ve got the Spence house staked out, and we’re watching the pool hall, too.”
“Bet the redneck pool sharks like that.”
“They don’t know about it,” Art said. “G.B.I. put a couple of working-stiff types in there, drinking beer and shooting eight-ball.” He paused. “Before I forget about it, it seems there’s some hard feeling about a white man who brought a spade in there last night.”
“Just my bit for civil rights,” I said.
“That’s the way they see it, too.”
“Tough titty.”
Art laughed and hung up.
Around ten, while we were watching the Bulls gut the Hawks on the tube, Art called back. “Just got word from a patrol car. They think they saw Spence, or somebody damned near like him. They lost him on Trinity Avenue. We’re flooding the area.”
When Art hung up, I dialed The Man’s number. Trinity Avenue was only a few blocks from his place. It could mean that Eddie was headed in his direction. On the third ring, The Man answered. He heard me out and thanked me.
“If this shit doesn’t ease off,” he said, “I’m thinking about a long trip to Europe.”
“Raise my pay and I’ll go with you.”
He laughed and the line went dead.
A bit after midnight Art called and said they’d given up the search around Trinity Avenue. If the man seen there had really been Eddie Spence, then he’d dropped out of sight again.
Around one, we gave up on the Randolph Scott movie and called it a night. I slept on the sofa, with the Police Positive on the floor nearby in reaching distance. During the night I dreamed, and the odd part is that I remembered the dream afterwards. Usually I don’t. I guess it was a deal I made with myself years ago, that I wouldn’t remember the dreams. And now, some twenty years later, I’d forgotten why I’d ever decided to block the memory of the dreams. I guess it’s just habit now.
It was too real, that dream. It was about betrayal, and it was a long time before I understood why. It was about a young boy and a young girl, and the final day of a summer, when the love went sour. I was that young boy, and the girl was Maryann, and it was late August of the year we graduated from high school. A summer spent at the lake or the tennis court. And the last day. The week before she was to leave for Agnes Scott. For me, there wasn’t anything ahead. A job, or maybe the service. No money for college. That day: seated on a bench in the fenced-in tennis court at the city park. Waiting. Cool shadows pacing across the court, so that it would soon be completely in shadows. Clocks and the shadow-time telling me that she was late. Then, when I’d just about given up on her, the little brother riding his bike down the dirt path around the court toward me. Note in hand. Not liking me and glad that he could deliver the note. A note from Maryann’s mother that said Maryann had left a week early so that she could visit an aunt in Little Rock. Regrets for not having reached me earlier. The dream ending with the little brother riding his bike away, like the final crane shot in some goddamn movie.
And waking on Hump’s sofa, I wondered how dreams used to be before we had movies to structure our dreams out of single shots, and out of camera movement.
And before I went to sleep again, I asked myself why I’d had that particular dream, and what the hell it meant, anyway.
And then I knew. There was Eddie Spence and Emily Campbell, and maybe what had happened to them some two or three years ago. Maybe that triggered the dream. The betrayal that’s behind a lot of dreams.