Southern Select (The Dutch Curridge Series Book 2) Page 6

  I knew one man, a guy named Junious Banks, who was an officer in the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, and he talked me into taking a job there. Shelby Stubblefield had just won election and was putting together his posse. For once, I was in the right place at the right time. I loved my job. I was the worst damn cop that ever put on a uniform, but I loved it. Then, after a while, I didn’t love it so much anymore. Like I always say, I was too good to be a bad cop and too bad to be a good one. When Stubblefield asked me to plant evidence in an effort to shut down an illegal gambling operation called Top Of The Hill Terrace, I quit and went to work providing security for the place. I wasn’t Mr. Popular with the Sheriff’s Department.

  The security job lasted until the Top Of The Hill closed down, and then I went into private business. Detective work. I liked the hours. I liked the environment. Noreen said I didn’t take the job seriously, but it was Noreen that didn’t take it seriously. She was forever trying to get me to go back to the Sheriff's Department.

  Ruthie Nell Parker was the first woman who ever seemed to take me for what I was. She didn’t want to change me or rescue me, even took an interest in what I had to say about things. I first met her, she was settling into her first big girl job. She’d been with the Press for a couple months and was starting to get itchy for some kind of a break. A story that would grab the attention of readers and, more importantly, her bosses. Detective work looked interesting to her. Compelling, she said. I was compelled to let her ride along with me and see a side of Cowtown that most young ladies never knew existed. She ate it up and asked for more.

  Slant didn’t like Ruthie around at all in the beginning, but mostly because the Chummy only had room for two people, and I preferred her riding shotgun. She took a natural interest in the cases I was working, and she even talked about becoming a business partner. A Miss Marple to my Sam Spade. Looking back, I sometimes wish we had pursued it. At the end of the day, though, I didn’t like the thought of her mixing it up with the kind of people I came into contact with. People like Cecil Green. And JP Crum. Plus, she was more valuable to me at the newspaper.

  Thing is, we spent a lot of weekends watching movies at the Deal or very occasionally at the Majestic. We liked the same movies and books. We liked the Crystal Springs. We liked being around each other.

  For all my talk, I wasn’t a whole lot of action. Slant and James Alto were forever razzing me about it. I had kissed Ruthie Nell on three different New Year’s Eves, but months had gone by in between each one without so much as a batting of the lashes.

  If it hadn’t been for the professional ladies up and down Jacksboro, I’d have been as pure as a priest. A tough lot the ladies on Jacksboro were, cold and steady as threshing machines. They would stand out in front of clubs or even right in the motel parking lots, and everyone knew what they were there for. I knew a few of them on a first name basis, but I don’t think any of them used the names their mamas called them.

  In my world, there was Ruthie Nell on one side of the road and the other girls on the other. Dulcie was somewhere in the middle, maybe trying to cross over. Pearl Salinas, like Big Rube before her, was a side road I didn't even need to look down. That didn't mean I wouldn't flirt with her a little though.

  “This might be your lucky day,” Pearl Salinas said.

  She had been gone for considerably longer than I'd expected, and I was starting to think otherwise.

  “I’ve heard that line before,” I said.

  She was walking at a greater clip now, and she had an excitement in her voice.

  “First off, Mr. Merriweather says he don’t know no Patrick Cavanaugh. That name didn’t ring a bell. But I knew he was lying. He don't get that worked up when I let Nurse Carolyn wash his privates.”

  “He didn't know anything?”

  “He had more questions than I did. What am I asking him for. Who wants to know. Why does anybody care who he knows. I thought I was gonna have to call for something to settle him down."

  Pearl was still clutching my piece of paper in her hand, so I guess she’d forgotten all about burning it. I wouldn’t ask for it back.

  "I say, Mr. Merriweather, how much would a bottle of Smirnoff help to loosen up your memory?" she said.

  She laughed out loud and then stopped it with the back of her hand.

  "Smirnoff leaves you breathless," I said.

  "Yes, sir," she said, "don't it though?"

  I wasn't a doctor, but anyone knew booze wasn't the doctor recommended treatment for liver ailments.

  "He admitted he knew this fella," she said.

  "You mean to tell me just a promise of a drink got him talking?" I said. "He must have a lot of faith in you, Pearl."

  She scoffed.

  "Promises my foot. He's in there knocking one back right this very minute. He'll sleep like a baby tonight."

  Did Pearl Salinas walk around the halls of Harris Methodist with a bottle of Smirnoff under her uniform? I'm sure it would have made the long hours on night shift easier to endure. I had to ask.

  "You kidding me, right?" she said. "I got it out of the doctor's cabinet. He'll never know."

  She looked down like some dull stitch of remorse had moved through a secret part of her. There was a lot to like about Pearl Salinas, if you asked me. I decided then and there that if I ever ended up in a bad way and needed someone to look after me, I could pick far worse.

  "So did he sing for his supper?" I said.

  "He did," she said. "He says he last saw this man, Mr. Cavanaugh, playing blackjack at the 2222 Club on Jacksboro Highway."

  "He say when?"

  "He said a month and a half, maybe a couple months ago. Said he went looking for him before he came in here and couldn't turn him up anywhere. Said he intended to pay Mr. Cavanaugh a visit just as soon as he could walk out of here."

  I asked her if he'd said anything else at all, and she said he'd thrown in a few choice words here and there that, if she was to repeat them, she'd have to go to the nurse's station and wash her mouth out with lye soap.

  I thanked her for her help and told her I would let her know if I needed anything else. She seemed to take that with more regard than I intended. Before I let her get back to her reading, I asked the name of the book was.

  "It's called A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories,'" she said, holding it up so I could read it for myself. "And ain't it the truth."

  "Ain't what the truth?" I said.

  I didn't recognize the author's name.

  "A good man's hard as hell to find, and once you find him, you can't do a damn thing with him."

  "Is that a mystery?" I said.

  "You could sure enough say that," she said.

  16

  Obviously, if Merriweather could place Cavanaugh in the 2222 Club less than two months previous, it was something worth checking out. He had, at that point, still been the Patrick we all knew and loved, and yet, he was rolling steadily and surely toward his undoing. Anyone that could tell us more about the man who sat at the blackjack table might very well give us an idea of what or who was leading him wrong.

  In one scenario, I had Cavanaugh gambling away a big chunk of his brother's money. Maybe Merriweather was his partner. So they took a dive, lost big. His brother found out and lost his head. I drop this one pretty fast because I have a feeling Anthony Cavanaugh would pop Merriweather first, and he wouldn't feel the need to leave a warning for doing it.

  The next theory found Cecil Green and his goons coming after Cavanaugh and Merriweather. The fact that Patrick was seen playing blackjack really didn't prove anything except that Patrick had played blackjack, but it did put him and, if it were all to be believed, Adolphus Merriweather both in the middle of Eggleston's backyard. I couldn't discount this option.

  “It does open a big door,” I said.

  I had already diagrammed all of this and more out at home, carefully crossing out one line after another. As James Alto said, I was a pro at finding doors, mostly because I wasn�
��t easily distracted by windows.

  “You boys up for a night on Jacksboro Highway?”

  Slant and Alto were sitting in the bed of my truck, swinging their legs over the back like kids on a playground. The gate had been taken off long before it rolled into my life, so it wasn’t good for much except sitting. I was standing in front of them, making a pork sandwich disappear and catching them up on things.

  We were at The Pig Stand, the main one out on the Dallas-Fort Worth highway. They had been laughing too hard at the Pearl Salinas parts of the story. Other people were starting to look at us funny and pull their kids back.

  “It's pretty likely that someone at 2222 might remember Patrick,” I said.

  "A month ago wasn't yesterday," Slant said.

  “If someone walked into Peechie’s and asked if you’d ever known anybody named Ruthie Nell Parker, you think you might stir up some kind of recollection?” I said.

  Alto said he wasn't sure he could trust this Alphonso guy as far as he could throw him. I said it was Adolphus, and I couldn't see why he would have cause to lie to anybody. Alto pointed out that a bottle of Smirnoff could be seen as motivation for changing a story. Especially to an acknowledged drunk.

  2222 was not the kind of place you started your night out with. It was more the kind of bar you worked your way up to. Where you ended up, sometime about two or three in the morning, when all the bands started breaking down at the others places or when the cops started chasing people out of parking lots and side streets.

  Knowing this, we started out at the Green Parrot, where drinks were half price as long as the strippers were onstage, so that patrons would send a little money to the ladies too. There were some lookers there, but not like the ones at the Skyliner. We stayed at the Skyliner for the biggest part of the night. I preferred it, partly because they got the top bands— even Bob Wills had played it— but mostly because it was a union club. Even the strippers were union at the Skyliner.

  Tincy Eggleston and his gang hung out at the Skyliner. That night, they’d taken over a whole corner of the building. We moved to the opposite end, which put us at a table next to Cat Man Simms and Mercy Baby, two musicians who played up and down the Jacksboro Highway. Cat Man was a guitar player in the T-Bone Walker style. People talked about a night at the Rose Room where T-Bone had invited him up on stage, only to have the younger upstart outplay him. From that night on, so the story went, T-Bone instructed clubs that Cat Man was not to be allowed in under any circumstance. Mercy Baby was a singing drummer, which you didn’t see very often. I called myself a fan and took the opportunity to go over and tell him so.

  “So while I’m here, Cat Man, I’ve gotta ask you. Is it true that T-Bone won’t let you into his shows anymore?”

  Cat Man looked at me like he’d never heard such a thing, which probably would have made him the only one on the Jax who hadn’t.

  “Who the hell told you that?”

  He might have been angry at absurdity of such a story, but he seemed to be mad at me. As if I'd thought it up myself and was just trying it out of him.

  “That’s the rumor," I said. "You made him look so bad, he won’t even let you in the door anymore.”

  He looked incredulous.

  “Let me tell you something,” he said. “What makes anyone think I want to go see T-Bone Walker anyhow? You think he can show me something I don’t already know?”

  Mercy Baby was shaking his head and laughing. Meanwhile, Slant Face had joined me, concerned, I think, that I was about to get myself into more trouble than I could talk my way out of. Slant repeated most of what I said, but it all came out sounding totally different.

  Cat Man and Mercy Baby, as usual, were taken with his accent.

  "Where did you come from?"

  Slant Face skipped his usual comeback and obliged them with the complete story, from setting sail out of Manchester Bay with the Merchant Marines all the way up to taking the job at the waste treatment plant in Richardson. Cat Man and Mercy Baby listened as hard as I’d ever listened to a musician play the blues, and, when the story came to what Slant felt was a satisfactory ending, Mercy Baby looked at me.

  "That the truth?"

  I threw up my hands.

  "Search me," I said. "I came from Weatherford."

  Cat Man looked at me like he still didn't trust a word that was coming out of my mouth.

  “So what kind of story you got?”

  I said I was a private eye. Plain and simple.

  “Plain and simple private eye,” said Cat Man. “Like a spy?”

  “Slant Face and I both take care of people's shit,” I said. "He does it in the daytime and I do it mostly at night."

  “Like Sherlock Holmes,” Mercy Baby said.

  Cat Man laughed.

  “Well, you just who I been needing to talk to then. You a mister detective private eye, why don’t you see you can find Miss Kay.”

  “Who is Miss Kay?” Slant Face said.

  “The mystery of disappearing Miss Kay,” Mercy Baby said.

  “Miss Kay’s my guitar,” Cat Man said. “Disappeared from the Red Room on Ninth Street two nights ago. Turned my head and off she went.”

  “Ain’t that just like a woman,” Mercy Baby said.

  Kay guitars were cheap guitars, maybe even cheaper than Stellas. Cat Man had picked his up in a pawn shop on Elm Street in Dallas years earlier. Paid five dollars.

  “You can get another one for a lot less than it would cost to track that thing down,” I said.

  “It’s worth ten of that to me now, brother” he said.

  A guy from McKinney named Uncle George, who wasn’t really anybody’s uncle, had modified the body of the guitar, building a hidden compartment where Cat Man stored traveling money. Fifty dollars. Not a fortune, but everything Cat Man had to his name.

  “How you gonna pay this man to investigate the fact you ain’t got no money?” said Mercy Baby.

  I didn’t see why anyone would steal a Kay guitar. It was a waste of time to check pawn shops. No pawn shop would want it at this point.

  “How many people knew it had this compartment?”

  “Nobody knowed.”

  “I did,” said Mercy Baby.

  They put their heads together and came up with three people that might have been hip to the hidden compartment. Joe Dolly, Pudsey Robinette, and Earnest Muchado. Cat Man said he was sure that none of them would have done such a thing. Baby Man said it had to be Muchado.

  “Earnest Muchado that runs the Rose Room?”

  Baby Man nodded. Muchado was a high roller. He dealt in high-priced commodities. Bootleg liquor, Cuban cigars and smack. I couldn't see him taking an interest in a cheap guitar, even if there was a fifty note tucked in it. I crossed him off the list.

  James Alto suggested that I take on Cat Man’s case with the understanding that he would pay me out of any money I was able to recover. If I had any inclination to dismiss the idea, he took care of that with another round of drinks for us and our two new friends. The 2222 Club wasn’t half a mile up the highway, but it was looking further and further away every minute.

  17

  We didn’t make it to the 2222 Club that night or the next night either. The morning after our Jacksboro adventure, I awoke from a dream in which I walked out of the Skyliner and right into Ruthie Nell Parker. It was one of those dreams that seems so real, you’re convinced it can’t be a dream. Then you wake up and you realize it didn’t seem any kind of real at all.

  She was wearing that new green dress and a hat that looked like mine. I reached up, suddenly self-conscious that I wasn’t wearing one. I had to get my hat back. It was as if the world itself depended on it. I tried to get her attention, tried to say something that would turn her head, but she kept walking and kept walking. I woke myself up yelling at the foot of the bed.

  The last person I expected to see that day hunted me down in my own front yard. It was a nice morning, and nobody else in the house was home, so I took a chair an
d the radio out on the patio— a six by six slab of concrete— sat in the shade and read a Ring Lardner book I'd just gotten. We had one oak tree in the yard, and there was a squirrel up in it barking at me, but other than that, it didn't seem there was another soul anywhere in Tremble.

  I heard the car coming up Viola, but I didn't put the book down until it pulled up in front of the house and stopped. I knew him as soon as he rolled down the window.

  "Mr. Curridge?"

  "Hello, Melvin," I said. "How in the hell did you find me?"

  I didn't like being found at home. It was my refuge. No one came there but Slant and Alto. And Ruthie Nell, a time or two.

  "You're a hard man to find," he said. "I drove up and down every road in town until I saw you. Thank God you were out in the yard."

  "I should've stayed inside," I said.

  He got out and walked across the yard.

  "I got your address from Ruthie Nell Parker's files. I hope you don't mind."

  I would have offered him a chair but there was none to offer.

  "You'd have to take that up with Ruthie Nell," I said.

  I was listening to KNOK, which was playing Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald’s “Stone Cold Dead In The Morning.” It was a current favorite, and I hated to spoil it with conversation.

  "The FBI is looking into the Cavanaugh murder too," he said. "Thought you might want to know."

  Alright. He had my attention.

  "Why?"

  "That's what I'm trying to figure out," he said. "They must think there's something big behind it."

  "How do you know this?"

  "One of their agents talks to me."

  He pulled out the same file folder he'd read from at Dulcie Boon's and waved it.

  "I have a few things I thought you might be interested in."

  We might have been the only two people in Tremble, but I suggested we go inside. There was another chair and a table there. And no barking squirrels.