Hump said, “You keep a messy kitchen, Hardman.”
“What?”
“I can smell it all the way in here.”
It was noon on Saturday, the day after the raid on Clinton Stubbs’ apartment. It was a clear, cold morning, and Hump and I had driven over to my house to pick up a change of clothing. It was oppressively hot in the living room, and I caught a whiff of it, too, but I hadn’t been sure what it was.
“I guess I didn’t put out the garbage.”
In the kitchen, the smell was even stronger. And then I saw what it was. The kitchen table was loaded down with pickles, olives, a couple of kinds of cheese, an open foil package of sliced roast beef, and a large mound of lox. Closer up, I could see that someone had tried the lox, hadn’t liked it, and had spit out the piece he’d been chewing. The partly chewed wad of lox was on top of about half a pound of Nova Scotia.
“That boy’s childish,” Hump said.
“Or scared to where he doesn’t give a damn.” I got out a large trash bag and dumped his leftovers into it. “But at least, now we know where he spent yesterday and last night.”
When I came back from the garbage dock, Hump was calling me. “In here, in the bedroom.”
Hump was seated at the foot of the bed. He pointed at the large dresser mirror. Spence had written a message on it, using the wet edge of a piece of soap. I DIDN’T KILL EMILY. I WANT TO TALK TO YOU. E.S.
“This was on the floor.” Hump held up a blue denim shirt. “And this on the bed.” It was the plastic cover and shirt board from a laundry. “It looks like he swapped you a shirt.”
The closet door was partly open. I pushed it the rest of the way, and spent a minute or two sliding the jackets and suits around. A gray Harris tweed jacket was gone, and so was a blue raincoat. “Well, he’s got good taste in my clothes. How’d he get in?”
Hump nodded at the bedroom window that faced out into the backyard. As soon as I got close enough I could feel the cold draft from outside. A pane was missing. He’d tapped it out, reached in, and unlocked the window catch.
“That boy’s learning bad habits.”
I was stripping the sheets from the bed when the phone rang. It was Hugh Muffin.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. You don’t watch out, I’m going to quit paying you.” He laughed. “How’s it going?”
I told him we’d missed Eddie again the night before. He was lucky, but the luck would change.
“I went to Emily Campbell’s funeral day before yesterday.”
I didn’t know what to say. I let the silence say it for me.
“Arch remembers the Spence boy, after all. He says he never was any good. The Mason police got him for drunk and disorderly while he was still in high school.”
“That’s not the way I heard it from the Spence family. The ‘D and D’ was a frame, and a beating went along with it, to tell the kid to stay away from Emily.”
Hugh snorted into the phone. “A dead daughter is a hell of a price to pay for keeping the blood lines neat.” He paused. “The reason I called. Ben Coleman wants to talk to you.”
“Who?”
“Ben Coleman, Arch’s business manager. You met him at the Regency that time.”
“Yeah.” I remembered him. He hadn’t seemed to care much for me at the time. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done that would make him change his mind. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know.” Hugh gave me the number. “Keep in touch.”
Hugh hung up, and I dialed the number. A woman answered and stirred me, and called him to the phone. “I need to talk to you, Hardman.”
“What about?”
“I’d rather not talk on the phone,” he said.
“I’m busy.”
“This is important, and it might be worth your time.”
I didn’t like it, but I agreed to meet him for a drink. He let me pick the place, and I picked a topless bar on West Peachtree, just for the hell of it.
I finished with the bed and then threw some underwear, socks and shirts into a suitcase. I changed into a fresh suit and put the one I’d been wearing since Thursday into the cleaning bag.
Hump sat on the edge of the bed and smoked. “The way you were talking to old Hugh, you don’t sound as mad at Eddie as everybody else does.”
“It’s all so fucking dumb and useless, the whole thing.”
Hump nodded at the writing on the mirror. “You believe that?”
“Too many people lie face to face for me to put much stock in mirror writing.”
“But if it’s true?” Hump asked.
“You believe him?”
“I’ve never met the dude,” Hump said.
“That’s the problem. Neither have I.” I lifted the suitcase, and we went into the living room. “But I’d like about ten minutes with him. I need some answers. What bothers me is that Spence might be after The Man, and he might be after me. If this whole mess goes back to a high school romance . . . ”
“The father,” Hump said.
“He’d be my first choice. He’s the one crapped on paradise. Arch Campbell himself.”
“Unless we’ve got it all wrong,” Hump said. “All the pieces have to fit together, and if they don’t, that means we don’t have all the pieces.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said. I turned down the thermostat as low as it would go and we headed downtown.
We loafed over a light lunch and a second and third beer. I pushed the plates aside and, because of what Hump had said about the pieces, I got out my pen and pad. I began to list the possibilities.
1. Eddie killed Emily C. because of the old romance. He wants to kill The Man for the same reason. Why not Arch C. also?
2. Eddie killed Emily C. but for some reason not connected with the old romance. He wants to kill The Man for that same reason, whatever it is.
3. Eddie killed Ferd because he saw Ferd with Emily. That would go back to #1.
4. Eddie killed Ferd for some reason not involved with Emily C.
When I paused, Hump reached across the table and picked up the pad. He read what I’d written and then looked at me, his face closed and bland. “For somebody with a lot of sympathy for Eddie, you’re missing about half of it.”
I handed him the pen. “Write a few.”
Hump spent a few minutes writing, then pushed the pen and pad back across the table to me.
5. Eddie did not kill Emily C. If he didn’t, then maybe he thinks The Man did, or you did.
6. If Eddie didn’t kill Emily C., then why would he kill Ferd?
I looked up from the pad. Hump was grinning at me.
7. Somebody else killed Emily C. and Ferd. Why?
8. Two different people killed Emily C. and Ferd, for different reasons. Who?
9. Back to #6. Eddie didn’t kill Emily C. but he killed Ferd because he thought Ferd had something to do with Emily’s death.
I closed the pad and put the pen away.
“The first mistake was natural enough,” Hump said. “You just wanted to question Eddie about Emily. No proof of any kind that linked him to it. But he flipped out and shot the cop in the hotel alley. Then the logic got all screwed up. Eddie is a killer. He killed a cop. Therefore he also killed Emily Campbell. Therefore he killed everybody who’s been killed lately and everybody who gets killed next week.
“We got locked into it too early,” I said.
“Locked in tight,” Hump said.
I bought the lunch. It was the least I could do after being stupid.
We parked in the lot about half a block from the Pirates’ Cove on West Peachtree. It had a clapboard front painted sort of driftwood brown, and there was a topless girl in a pirate’s outfit and an eye patch painted on the sign that hung over the sidewalk. It was five of two, and the place had just opened, but there was the smell of warmed-over stale beer and cigarette smoke in the heating system.
There were two convention types at the bar having pick-me-ups. Otherwise, it was empty. Hump and I took a table near the low performer’s platform, and the bartender came over and took our orders. When he brought our beers, he clipped us a buck and a half each for them and, perhaps to soften that, said the go-go girls would be starting up soon.
“Why this place?” Hump asked.
“You never see enough titties,” I said, and let it go at that.
Ben Coleman came in around ten after two. The first go-go dancer was on, a fat blonde girl with skin that had the color and dull sheen of biscuit dough. Her breasts were like soggy dumplings that had been cut out with a quart jar top. As soon as I saw Ben Coleman’s dark hair and aggressive walk, I started clapping for the fat girl. Hump looked at me like I was going crazy, but I nodded at him and he joined in. The fat girl thought we were crazy, too, but it was better than being ignored altogether. “Whip it, sugar.”
A waitress, one of the other dancers, followed Coleman over to our table and took his order for a Jack Daniels Black, on the rocks.
Coleman looked irritated. “Hardman, I . . . ”
“You mind waiting until this pretty lady finishes?”
“Lady . . .?” He gave the blonde a sour look. “Hardman, I called you for a good reason, and . . . ”
“Coleman, this is my partner, Hump.”
Hump and Coleman nodded at each other. Coleman said, “Is this your idea of some kind of a joke?” His drink came and he looked at it and paid for it, but he didn’t touch it. “I’m too busy to spend my time . . . ”
He broke off because I wasn’t listening. I was getting out a five and passing it to Hump. “Stuff her for me, Hump.” Holding the bill out in front of him, Hump went over to the fat girl, waved it at her and, when she smiled and pulled out the front part of her bikini bottom, he folded the bill and dropped it into the opening. The elastic popped back into place, and Hump came back to the table. “Fat girls appreciate little kindnesses like that,” he said, winking at me.
“Shit,” I said, “it’s only money.”
“It’s money I wanted to talk to you about,” Coleman said.
“Really?” I looked at him and then away, up to the platform where the blonde was finishing up and blowing Hump and me kisses. Hump blew one of the kisses back at her, and I reached up and fielded one like a low, hot line-drive.
Coleman was getting angry. “Aren’t you interested in money, Hardman?”
I mugged over at Hump. “Are we interested in money this week?”
“This is the week for trim,” Hump said. “You remember? We said last week was for money.”
“Right.”
“Are you two crazy or something?”
The platform lights dimmed, and the loud music went down a notch or two. “All right,” I said, “tell us about money.”
“That’s more like it.” He waved his glass at the waitress and I held up a beer bottle and two fingers. “Since the funeral Thursday, friends of Arch Campbell have been getting together a reward fund. The last figures I saw, it was almost ten thousand dollars, and it might go as high as fifteen.”
“Arrest and conviction?”
“Yes,” Coleman said. “That’s the way it’ll be worded.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it, Hump?”
“I could use a cut of it,” Hump said.
“I just thought you might want to know,” Coleman said. Then he leaned back, waiting for his drink and waiting to be thanked.
“A lot of money,” I said.
Coleman was expansive now. “I was at the meeting when part of the reward was collected. Mr. Campbell and others as much as said that the reward would be paid whether Eddie Spence went to trial or not.”
“You mean . . .?”
“He might resist arrest and get killed. If it happened that way, it might be easier for everybody concerned.”
“Everybody but Eddie Spence,” I said. “You see, we know that Eddie killed the cop out behind the hotel. No doubt about that. But we’re beginning to wonder if he killed Emily Campbell.”
Coleman looked astounded.
“So far, it’s just a hunch,” I said. “Nothing to hold it down. Just a feeling.”
“But the police seemed so sure, and you seemed so sure . . . ”
“Right now, until we’re really sure, that reward is just a lot of blood money, and a lot of trouble.”
“And wrong-man blood money, at that,” Hump said.
“That kind of money draws flies,” I said.
The drinks came. Coleman sipped at his. “What do you mean by flies?”
Hump gestured with his beer glass. “Every small town stud who always wanted to be a private eye is going to show up in Atlanta, packing the Saturday Night Special he borrowed from his cousin. Buddy. God, it’ll almost be a convention of guys who read Travis McGee novels.”
“That kind of money buys a Judas, and . . . ”
“Judas?” Coleman broke in on me.
“Say you committed a murder, and your girlfriend knew about it. Somebody offers a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer. There’s a good chance you’d end up minus a girlfriend, and she might end up plus fifteen thousand dollars.”
“You think the reward’s too high, then?” Coleman asked.
“No. It’s not my place to say. It’s their money, and they can spend it the way they want to.” I stopped to top off my beer and take a long swallow. “But unless there’s a Judas around, it’s not going to speed up things one damn bit.”
“I see.” He looked put down.
“It’s not your fault,” Hump said. “It’s just that there might not be anybody who knows enough to be the Judas.”
Coleman looked at me, and then at Hump. “It seems this business is a lot more complex than I thought it was.”
“With some luck, we might get a chunk of the fifteen thousand,” I said. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” Coleman said.
I sat back and belched politely into my hand. “How long have you been working for Campbell?” The way I put it, it was just talk among the boys.
“Three years . . . a bit more.”
“He an easy man to work for?”
“Sometimes, sometimes not. Just between you and me . . . ” He hesitated until I nodded that it was. “ . . . he can be hell on hot wheels when he doesn’t get his own way.”
“I guess I can see that,” I said.
“He’s like a lot of those self-made men, the ones who drop out of school in the seventh grade and think they know all there is to know.” A note of high sharpness had come in, and he smiled and shook his head, going back to being the little boy. “Of course, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. He wouldn’t be where he is now if he wasn’t a pretty damn smart guy.”
I thought we’d gone as far in that direction as it was worth. Hump leaned in and said, “You’ve been with him over three years, so I guess you were around when Eddie Spence was courting Emily.”
“It was just one of those high school crushes. It wouldn’t have lasted past her first year in college, but Arch wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“You tried to talk him out of it?” Hump saw me lift an eyebrow at him. That meant to carry it on, string it out.
“I did everything but beg him. But what worried him was the possibility that they might run off and get married before she got to college and met those handsome college men.”
“How’d he handle it?” Hump asked.
“Just a phone call. The sheriff . . . his name is Todd Blaney . . . was happy to do a favor for Arch. There was a beer joint outside the city limits that sold beer to under-age kids. Eddie and some of the other boys hung out there. The sheriff just picked a night when Eddie was there, and came in and did some rough arresting. Maybe Eddie put up a struggle out in the parking lot, like they said. Maybe not. He got a bit of a beating, either way.”
“How did Emily take all this?”
“She was mad, at first.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Arch lied to her and said he hadn’t had anything to do with it, that it had just been the sheriff enforcing the law, like he was elected to do.”
“And she believed that?” Hump signaled the waitress for another round.
“Not right away. But then Eddie left town and ended up in the Navy, and not too long after that, she started dating other boys.”
“Young love don’t last long, does it?”
“About two jumps,” I said.
Hump laughed and Coleman looked a little stunned, like he didn’t understand.
It was my turn. “You look like a guy who’s been around, Coleman. How did you see this Emily girl?”
“Young, very pretty, not as much sense as she’d have had in another year or two. Lord, she was a pretty little thing. Made your teeth ache, just to look at her.”
“You ever take her out, Coleman?”
“Me? She was a little young for me.”
“She wasn’t that young,” Hump said.
“You ever get any of it?” I asked.
That seemed to shock him. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “That’s a terrible thing to say. You know that, don’t you?”
“If it was so nice,” Hump said, “I’d feel better knowing that it wasn’t wasted.”
“God, you two are a pair of ghouls.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” I said.
Ben Coleman strode out of the bar with a heavy-footed, aggressive walk.
“You’re right about one thing,” Hump said. “He didn’t answer the question.”
The waitress brought over the round of drinks, including the Jack Daniels for Coleman. I paid for the drinks and Hump took the Jack Daniels, to sip along with his beer.
“At first, I thought you were being unkind to that poor fellow,” Hump said.
“That’s right,” I said. “And after he came all the way down here, to tell us where the treasure was hidden.”
“He seemed like such a nice, open fellow . . . so honest.”
“Right.”
“But when I got to know him, I didn’t like him very much,” Hump said.
“That’s the second time I didn’t like him.”
We sat around for a few more minutes and watched the next go-go dancer. It turned out to be our waitress, and she must have been new at it or extremely modest, because she didn’t take off the top of her costume the whole time we watched.
On the drive back over to Hump’s apartment, I made myself a note in my pad. Find out relationship Emily and Coleman. Where was Coleman the night of murder?
While I unpacked the clothing I’d brought from my house, I asked Hump if he was doing anything that evening. “Nothing the rest of the afternoon, and nothing this evening.”
“I want you to cruise some of the black bars. Now that we’re working on the assumption that Eddie didn’t do it, let’s touch all the other bases.” Without pushing, I wanted him to find out anything he could about how The Man and Emily C. got along. Any recent trouble? How were things between The Man and Ferd? And with any free time left over after that, I wanted to know anything he could find out about The Man’s organization.
“That could be rough, asking those questions in his home territory.”
“That’s why you’re doing it instead of me, Tonto,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve had my beating for the month.”
Hump put on his coat “I might as well start now. The sooner I start, the sooner the bruises start healing.”
“The word that we’re working for The Man might cover you.”
“Maybe. But not when you’re asking questions about The Man.”
He left, and I got a beer and sat and watched part of a college football game between a couple of Ivy League Schools. I was kind of sorry that Hump had left, because he’d have got a laugh out of the single-wing that Dartmouth was using. At five, I turned the sound down and called Art.
“News for you.”
“If you’ve got any more wild-goose chases, you fly after them.”
I told him about Eddie’s note on the mirror.
“That’s horseshit and you know it. The slugs from the tree behind the pool hall match the ones we took from Reese . . . the cop in the alley.”
“That’s the cop,” I said. “Emily wasn’t shot.”
“Just a second.” I could hear him talking with Edna away from the phone. In a few seconds he was back. “Edna says you’re to come to supper. She’s fixing a roast the way you like it, cooked in wine.”
“I don’t know whether I can.”
“Come on,” Art said. “She wants to see your homely face.”
“As long as it’s not my beautiful body.” I said I’d be over around six-thirty.
On the way over to their place, I cut into Piedmont and followed it until I reached Ansley Mall. I stopped there long enough to visit the wine shop and buy a couple of bottles of Mouton Cadet. I knew it was a wine that Edna liked. Raising four kids on a cop’s pay didn’t leave much for even an inexpensive wine. I knew we’d probably only drink one bottle. The other bottle would make Edna happy one day next week.
I heard the tap, tap, tap as I was going up the front walk. I changed directions and cut across the lawn to the driveway. I followed the driveway and found Mickey, aged six, and Andrew, aged eight, playing one-on-one at the basketball hoop that Art and I had put up on the side of the garage a couple of years ago. They were so intent on the game that they didn’t see me, and I stood and watched. Then Andrew got a rebound and dribbled out toward me. He saw me, stopped, and whipped the ball to me. I batted it down with my free hand and trapped it with one foot. I put the wine down to one side and dribbled over to the corner and did my one-hand jump. I missed the hoop and all.
“Hardman, you’re out of shape,” Mickey said.
“You’re right.” I got the wine and went up the back steps to the kitchen. Edna had her back to me, cutting up celery, carrots and green peppers at the cutting board. She is a red-haired woman in her early thirties, with wide hips and the shoulders of a swimmer. She has a flat, round Irish face, with about the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. When she heard the door and turned and saw me, her hands were full of chopped vegetables. I lifted the top from the large skillet and leaned over it, smelling the winy liquid the roast was cooking in. She reached in to drop the vegetables in and I replaced the skillet top.
“Jim, it’s good to see you.” She gave me a firm hug, holding it for a long time, as if she wanted me to feel the warm flow from her to me. “It’s been too long.”
“I’ve been busy. You know how it is.” But I couldn’t meet her eyes when I lied to her.
“That’s a lie, isn’t it, Jim?”
“Yes.”
“The way you left the force, you thought it would hurt Art if you hung around with him?”
“Nobody worth knowing believed that shit.” Shit was a strong word for her to use. I’d never heard her say more than a lower-case damn now and then.
“Careful now,” I said. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“I mean it.”
I took the two bottles of Mouton Cadet out of the bag and put them on the counter. “I don’t have to work tonight. You and I can get a little tipsy, even if Art can’t.”
She grinned at me and I went through the dining room and into the living room, where Art was in his stuffed chair reading the Journal. I got out of my topcoat and sat down on the sofa.
Edna came in with two bottles of beer, “It’s all done but the sauntering. I can sit with you for a minute.”
“Where are the girls?” I meant Connie and Agnes, the oldest children. I’d been around when they were born, and I’d had to suffer with Art when it looked like he wasn’t going to get the sons he wanted.
“A slumber party down the street.” She sipped on Art’s beer before she passed it on to him.
Art put down his paper when he took the beer. “You believe Eddie Spence, that he didn’t kill Emily Campbell?”
Edna stood up. “If you’re going to talk shop, I’ll fix the salad.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But if it’s true, it muddies the waters.”
I heard the kitchen door close behind Edna.
“But why you? Why’d he go to the trouble?”
“I’m dogging him, and he doesn’t like it.”
“If he sets up a meeting with you,” Art said, “you’ll have to tell me in time to set it up so that we can take him.”
I shook my head. “I want to know what he has to say.”
“We’ll take him after you’re through talking.”
“I don’t think it’ll work.” I leaned toward him and made it as forceful as I could. “Look, he’s scared and he’s getting a lot of practice at running. If I see him at all, it’s going to be without much warning. No time to stake out a place. He’ll step out of a doorway with the safety off, and the cannon pointing at me. I don’t love you enough to get killed for you.”
“Try to talk him into coming in.”
I nodded. I could do that. I didn’t think he’d listen, but I could try.
Twenty minutes or so later, while Art was setting the table in the dining room, the door bell rang.
“Get that for me, will you?” Art said.
I went to the door and opened it. The breath went out of me like I’d been kicked.
Marcy King stood in the doorway, smiling at me.