Down Among the Jocks Read online

  “I read that part last night.” After Hump had left the night before I’d taken the magazine to bed with me and I’d gone through the fifteen pages or so. It had to do with the typical Saturday night before a game, when the team is taken out to a motel in the boondocks, shut away from all the big city temptations so they’d be in good shape for the next afternoon’s exertions. Mostly it seemed to be about the lengths the players would go to get a few drinks or get close to a woman. It did have energy and vitality and he’d used just first names. Still, I figured some players who’d been on teams with Ed Cross were going to be pretty damned mad when they read the excerpt or had it read to them. Or just heard about it.

  Hardee was smiling at me hopefully. “What’d you think?”

  “It surprised me,” I said. “It was pretty damned funny.”

  “That was one of the tame chapters. Even so, it had to be cut some and the language toned down.”

  Hump put an elbow on the seat back and turned to face Hardee. “You have any idea what was supposed to be in the chapter Ed was going to bring up to you yesterday?”

  “We talked about it some. He was going to tell about finding himself, about starting a new life.”

  I remembered what I’d heard about him and what Hump had told me. I couldn’t see him beginning any kind of worthwhile life. So it was probably a lie, but one of those lies that would round out the book.

  “What happened?” Hump asked.

  “He changed his mind. He said it was shitty dull. That was how he said it. Shitty dull.”

  “He give you any idea what he planned to do?”

  Hardee shook his head. “He was vague. All he said was that he wanted to add some spice to it.”

  “Some kind of scandal?” I asked.

  “I asked him that myself. He changed the subject.”

  “So it wasn’t clear what the new chapter was about?”

  “No.”

  We were silent the rest of the drive into town.

  “I’ve got a feeling about you two.”

  We’d gone by the Regency and waited while he checked in and sent his bag up to his room. When he returned, he said he was hungry and I drove us down to Eng’s on Peacetree and 10th. It was his choice. He said he could eat Chinese food once a day, seven days a week.

  I stuffed a slice of Chinese roast pork, dripping with hot mustard and sweet and sour sauce, into my mouth and let Hump ask him what he meant.

  “I’m a freelance hustler myself,” Hardee said. “I can smell another one a mile away.”

  “It’s a good guess,” I said as soon as I could talk.

  “What do you do for work?”

  “Odd jobs. Anything that pays.”

  He was neat. I watched him cut an egg roll and use his knife to tamp back in the stuffing that spilled on his plate. “I need that last tape, either the one he’d already finished or the new one.”

  “If he finished the new one,” I said.

  “He finished it. We’ve been working together more than six months. He was an asshole but you could depend on him. He met every schedule on time or ahead of time. And he said he was going to record the new chapter yesterday morning or afternoon. If he didn’t die until the evening you can bet he completed it.”

  “It wasn’t in the apartment,” Hump said. “Maybe he mailed it to you.”

  “No. That wasn’t the way we worked. The usual procedure was for him to do three or four tapes and then he’d come up to New York with them and we’d listen to them together and I’d make sure I understood exactly what he meant to stress and what he thought wasn’t important.”

  “How much do you want these tapes?”

  He gave me a sharp look, reading me. “You have them?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll pay a thousand for the tape or tapes.”

  “Your money?”

  “Mine if I can’t talk the publisher out of it.” Hardee took his time wiping his hands on his napkin and taking out his checkbook. “I assume you’ll need expense money.”

  I looked at Hump and he nodded. “A couple of hundred ought to get us started.”

  He wrote the check.

  We had a client. It was about time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was one in the afternoon before we dropped Ron Hardee across the street from the Regency. He seemed subdued. Either it was the meal or he didn’t trust us. All the time since he’d written out the check he’d been working it around in his head, looking at it this way and that. Did we already have the tape or tapes? If we did, weren’t we just going to pretend to look for a few days and then come after the other $800, tape or tapes in hand and a cock-and-bull story to tell? On the chance that that was true, wasn’t there some way he could fox us out of the tapes without having to pay the other cash? It was all New York street hustle in his head. And it made him draw back in himself and not show us anything.

  Before he got out, I asked what he planned for the day.

  “A wash and a change of clothes and then I’ll go looking for that detective … what’s his name?”

  “Rex Martin,” I said. “He doesn’t like me much but he seems straight. If the tape is at the apartment I think he’ll let you have it. Or they might have found the tape on his body.”

  “Will I have to grease him?”

  That was New York for you, that way of thinking. I shook my head at him. “Just prove to him you’re who you say you are and what you say you are. No problem after that.”

  “What happens if I find the tape?”

  “I tear up the check,” I said.

  “What will you two be doing?” he asked as he opened the car door and stepped out on Peachtree.

  “Tracking Ed Cross backwards.”

  “What?”

  “Trying to find out what Cross has been up to in the time he’s been in Atlanta.”

  He looked puzzled. “What will that tell you?”

  “Who his friends are. Who his enemies are. Maybe what he planned to write about in that new chapter.”

  He stepped away from the car. “Call me later.”

  I said we would.

  “Sounded great back there,” Hump said. “The question is: where do we start?”

  “You. You start. I want you to find Eartha and pick her head clean. I want the names of everybody she met while she was with Cross. And I want the names of everybody he mentioned to her. The whole list.”

  He folded back his jacket sleeve and checked his watch. “That’s not much you want.”

  “Of course not.”

  “From what Eartha said there’s cattle call today, starting right now.”

  “A what?”

  “Auditions for a movie being shot in Atlanta. A low-budget one.”

  “Where?”

  “Out at the model agency that handles Eartha.”

  He directed me out West Peachtree. A block or so from Pershing Point he said, “Over there.”

  It was a low brick colonial building set up high on the lot, with a neat lawn sloping down to the street. There was an entrance to the side, up a flight of steps and down a flagstone alley.

  “See what I mean?”

  I did. The alley was packed with bodies. It was a sardine pack of humanity, shoulder to shoulder in the alley and three abreast on the steps and curling out on the sidewalk. It surprised me. I didn’t know there were so many actors in Atlanta. Or, to be exact, so many people who said they were.

  I drove on past and entered a packed lot a few doors away. “You see Eartha?”

  “In that crowd? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  We walked back down the street and stood at the edge of the curling line. Near us a cowboy in a pair of ragged jeans and a red T-shirt looked us over and leaned over and said something to the girl with him. She was red-haired and thin and almost concave in the chest. She tilted her head backed and laughed, a high trilling laugh that must have been the new way actors were laughing this year. It wasn’t the way anybody I ever knew really laughed.


  “Something funny?” Hump asked him.

  “Not a thing,” the cowboy said in full, round, pear-shaped tones.

  “You mean you just go around laughing when nothing’s funny?”

  The cowboy and the red-haired girl moved up a step, away from us.

  In front of us the line wavered and parted and a gray-haired guy in jeans and men’s clogs came down the steps. The white linen jacket he was wearing must have cost twenty times what the jeans did. As he came toward us he was passing out pencils and file-card-sized pieces of paper. “Fill these out, please, fill these out, please.”

  Gray Hair reached us. The paper rattled in his hands when he looked up at Hump. “You Equity?”

  “What?”

  “You belong to Equity?”

  Hump looked beyond him. “I’m not here for that.”

  “Then, tell me why …” Gray Hair began in a waspish voice.

  “There she is,” Hump said.

  Eartha was at the top of the steps, coming down. I moved over and waited for her.

  Gray Hair persisted. “There might be a part in the …”

  Hump moved around him. When Eartha saw us, he stepped up to meet her. “How’d it go?”

  “It’s hard to tell. There’s a part but most of the black models in town were there.”

  Hump put an arm around her and led her away from the steps. “When do you hear?”

  “They said they’d call. They always say that.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Hump said.

  “They never do.”

  I leaned in. “You sound down.”

  “I guess I do. So much has been happening. And there was last night.” She took a deep breath and tried to put it away from her. “You want to see me for some reason?”

  “You pick up your car this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can give me a lift home,” Hump said.

  I backed away. “Give me a call later.”

  I left them. When I looked back Hump was having a time folding himself so he’d fit into her VW.

  He didn’t call. He drove out to my place instead. He leaned his face into the air conditioner vents and cooled himself while I went into the kitchen and got him a Bud. He took a couple of slugs before he could talk.

  “I got a couple of names.”

  “Such as?”

  “He ran around with Hal Franklin for a time.”

  I said, “I don’t place him.”

  “He had a couple of tryouts with the Hawks. Always got cut late. Spent last year playing with an Italian pro team.”

  “He in town?”

  “As far as I know.”

  I went in and washed up and changed my shirt. When I returned Hump had finished the beer and dropped the bottle in the trash bag in the kitchen. “Where? His apartment?”

  “Wouldn’t do any good. I hear he’s on a toot. We try a couple of places. One’s a bar out near Emory, a student pub called Jaggar’s.”

  “We’re out of place here,” I said. “That’s twice today, if we count the cattle call.”

  “Pretend you’re Emory faculty,” Hump said.

  It wasn’t a large place: about six or seven booths on each side. The center of the room was packed with tables. Posters hung on the walls. An L-shaped bar filled the rear. Up near the front was a nickel-a-play juke box and a pinball machine.

  “You want me to make some intellectual conversation?”

  We took a booth. It was still early for a college place: only about a dozen student types. One thing I did notice: the girls from Emory looked a lot cleaner than the girls down on the Strip.

  We had some time to do. I spent a quarter on the juke box, on Lady Day and Dave Brubeck, and we drank a couple of beers. We were starting a third when Hump, who was facing the door, leaned across the table and touched my arm. “That’s Franklin.”

  “Toll him over,” I said.

  “You want to know what?”

  Hal Franklin was about 6’ 4” with blond hair worn a little long and a wispy mustache. His eyes were a pale green, ringed now with the red lines of the hangover. He’d ordered a large carafe of Mountain Red and the cheese platter. The platter had about five kinds of cheese on it and a fresh loaf of French bread.

  “What Ed Cross’s been up to here in Atlanta?” I asked.

  “That’s what I thought you said.” His hand shook when he lifted the wineglass but he steadied it and didn’t waste a drop. After a long swallow he broke off a hunk of bread and used the plastic knife to cut a wedge of cheese. “That’s a lot to tell.”

  “Make a start,” Hump said.

  “Mainly sucking and fucking,” Hal said.

  “A bit more specific than that.” I leaned over and helped myself to a tear of bread. “You knew he was writing a book?”

  “I heard.”

  “You know what he was writing about?”

  He gulped some more of the wine. “What they all write about. Inside stuff for the jock-lovers.”

  At first, I’d thought maybe he hadn’t shaved on this day to give his face a rest. I did that now and then. But I was watching the bread and cheese and the wine, and the wine seemed to be winning. Eating just seemed to be a cover and he could have been eating old newspaper for all it mattered to him. And, watching the shakes he had, I knew why he hadn’t shaved.

  “You in the book?”

  Hal ignored me. He was watching Hump, who’d turned away and was staring at one of the coeds who was playing pinball. She wasn’t wearing a bra and the jumping around she did made interesting watching.

  “Hump?” Hal prodded.

  Hump pulled himself away from the pinball game and faced Hal. “Yeah?”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill that rank motherfucker?”

  Hump shook his head. “I wanted a pound or two of his ass, though.”

  “I would have.”

  “You’d have killed him?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t have laughed while I did it. But I wouldn’t have felt any more than if I’d killed a bug.”

  “What was it?” Hump’s voice was low, gentle, kind. “Was it Bruna?”

  “You know about it too?” He shook his head and I could see the water collecting in his eyes. “I guess everybody in town knows about it.” He nudged Hump with an elbow. “Let me out for a minute. Got to make a pit stop.”

  Hump let him out and we watched as he moved out, at almost a trot, toward the back of the place where the rest rooms were.

  “Who’s Bruna?”

  “A girl Hal married in Italy. A pretty little thing.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “A nickname,” Hump said. “Means little brown one or something like that.”

  “You know her?”

  “I’ve seen her a time or two.”

  “You know about Cross and her?”

  “No. But I saw how shaky he is and I made a guess.”

  Hal came back to a booth a few minutes later. His hair was damp and darker now, like he’d held his head under the tap. When he reached the table, Hump pushed in and took the inside seat and placed the carafe and the wineglass in front of Hal.

  “Sorry,” Hal murmured. “I guess I just wasn’t prepared for everybody to know.”

  “Nobody knows,” Hump said. “It was a wild guess that hit dead center.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “That motherfucker has been backdooring half the men in the city of Atlanta.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “To tell the truth I didn’t.” He lifted the wine and the hand was steady. So much for the hair of the dog. “We’d had some troubles and we’d separated. I was pretty sure it’d blow over. Maybe it was my fault. I guess I was taking her for granted. And then yesterday …”

  I showed my guesses were as good as Hump’s. “You got a copy of the film.”

  Hump’s eyes whipped over toward me.
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  “How’d you know?”

  Hump didn’t wait for me to answer. He said, “Join the club. We can swap films.”

  “You too?”

  “ ‘Happy Birthday to Me?’ ”

  “That’s the one,” Hal said.

  “You find him yesterday?” I asked.

  “If I had, I’d have killed him. By the time I found out what was on the film and understood what he was saying to me, he’d already left his apartment. I looked for him in some bars and I kept calling his apartment but I never did reach him.”

  “The same with me,” Hump said.

  “I didn’t know he was dead until I heard about it on the late news,” Hal said. “God, I don’t know when I’ve been so happy.”

  “If the police ask you, can you account for your time? Say from seven to a bit before nine?”

  “You think they’ll ask me?”

  “We found you,” I said.

  “I was at the Coachman from a little after six until around nine.”

  “The place out on Peachtree Road?”

  He nodded. “Bruna’s got a job there. Oh, she’s not a cocktail waitress. She’s the—I forget what they call it—she handles the wine.”

  “Sommelier?”

  “That’s it.”

  Hump turned and waved an arm over the back of the booth. While he waited for the waitress he said, “You thought Cross might drop in.”

  “The bartender got all embarrassed when I asked if Ed Cross ever came in. You know, like he knew something he didn’t want me to know. And I saw the way he looked at Bruna the next time she passed through the bar. So I just camped on a stool and waited. I guess I stayed too long.” He touched the wineglass and shook his head slowly. “I was drinking wine and these grapes make you feel awful the next day.”

  “It sounds like you’re covered.”

  “The bartender was with me the whole time. And I waited around until Bruna got off at nine and I offered her a ride home. She didn’t want one. I guess she doesn’t want me to know where she’s living.”

  “It might be different now,” I said.

  “I don’t know.” I could see that he wanted to believe it but there was a hard ridge of pride in him that was giving him trouble. “I think she made up her mind I wasn’t what she wanted.”