Fat City. Act Three. Damage Control

The Hudson was more than just a clunker on the outside, it had its fair share of engine trouble as well. He had tried for several minutes to get it started for her, but to no avail. The battery was dead, and the engine itself was terribly over heated. How could a car that was only four years old be in such bad shape? Someone had driven it very hard. Being between a rock and a hard place was nothing new for Clive Carew, so yeah, he’d been there before. He reluctantly agreed to let Shelly Dolls tag along with him when he went to Jimmy Royals place uptown, but only after she had agreed to wait in the car if he smelled any signs of trouble once they got there. He arranged for a mechanic to come fetch the Hudson, and they drove to Haney St. It took twenty five minutes because it was clear across town, four miles down Laurel Blvd, then right on Pratt St, and then go another two miles and take a left on Lakeside and follow it for another five miles until you reached Bankhead avenue. Then it was a left on Ardmore and onto Pershing St and then to Haney. It was another five story complex that looked more than a little rough around the edges. A stones throw away from becoming a full blown flea bag to be certain, but it looked safe enough so he let Shelly Dolls come with him to the apartment. He stopped outside the door of Apt 6 B and faced her.

“The first sign of trouble and you scram. Got it doll?” he told her.

She slowly rolled her eyes and smiled sweetly at him nodding her head. The door wasn’t locked so he let himself in, standing on the threshold he turned to Shelly Dolls and whispered to her.

“Wait here until I clear the joint.” He said.

Seeing the seriousness of the situation, she drew in a deep breath and agreed. Moments later he reappeared in the door way and ushered her inside away from any possible prying eyes. Once inside a distasteful look spread across her face. It was a small studio apartment, with one large room acting as the kitchen, living room and dining room, there was a hide a bed, and a small closet. Just before you entered the cramped bathroom, and there wasn’t much else to it.

“Ugh! What a dump!” She exclaimed. “And who paints their walls brown anyway?"

He smiled to himself at her obvious disgust of her surroundings.

“They aren’t brown. They’re white. they’re just stained from all of the nicotine from all the people that have smoked cigarettes in here.” he told her.

Her nosed wrinkled.

“So. Clivey. What are we looking for in this dump?”

“Anything that will tell us something about Jimmy Royals that we don’t already know. Which precinct did he work for? What were some of his habits? who did he hang around with? Those types of things.” He told her.

She rummaged through the closet, in his clothes, his trouser pockets, through everything while Carew went through Jimmy’s desk drawers. Finally she turned to face him.

“Nothing in his pockets Clivey, other than his clean suit’s the closet is empty.” She said.

Clive Carew was having a little more success with his search of the desk, one drawer was kept locked but with a little coaxing he was able to get it open. Inside Jimmy was hiding his own little black book.

Clive stood up to examine it. he looked over at Shelly Dolls.

“This should give us something to go on there are a lot of names, numbers and photo's in here.”

Most of the names and numbers didn’t ring any bells to him, he had similar photos to those of Annabelle Stanton’s mostly they were of him though, posing with other cops. He thought little more of it until he turned to the last page where the very last photo almost jumped out at him. He stared at it for a moment before turning to Shelly Dolls.

‘We have to get to a pay phone, I’ve got to make a call.” He told her.

They made their way back to the parking lot where the Champion was sitting, they got in and he drove three blocks to where there was a pay phone. He dropped the coin in and dialed the number.  The receptionist answered the phone and he requested Captain Chet Belleville.

“Chet? It’s Clive. Yeah. Can you meet me later? Maybe back at the Night Owl? No Chet, not on the phone, we gotta talk, in person.” a brief silence. “Yeah ok. Six thirty tonight then, yeah, I’ll buy you dinner.”

He drove Shelly Dolls downtown to the Palace where she had to work that night.

“Do you have to go home first or do you have everything that you need at the club?”

She told him that she had everything that she needed in her dressing room and that he could just drop her off at the back door. He pulled into the alley and stopped at the rear entrance to the night club called The Palace, he reminded her not to speak to anyone about anything that they had talked about or done for that entire afternoon, for her own safety the less that she knew the safer she’d be.

“I called a mechanic friend of mine, he’ll fix the Hudson for you, what time do you get off tonight? I’ll come by and pick you up.”

She told him that the last show was at eleven pm, and she would meet him at the front entrance of the club to which he agreed. He watched her perfect backside sway back and forth as she walked up the stairs to the rear entrance of the Palace. He still had time before his six thirty meeting with Captain Belleville tonight, there was one more thing that he’d found in the desk drawer at Jimmy Royals that he wanted to check out, he’d found a room key for the Harbor View hotel on Spring St. He would have to drive almost the entire length of Laurel Blvd to get to Spring St. a hilly winding stretch of road that lead to a seedier section of town called Beacon Hill, The Harbor View hotel as it turned out was aptly named because of its panoramic views of the shipyards on the shores of Bay City’s main harbor. It was all of ten stories tall and boasted over one hundred and fifty first class rooms. Yeah, maybe it was first class in 1910, but in 1940 it was just another dive where the dregs of society would come to congregate and mingle. He entered the lobby and asked the desk clerk how far up room one thirteen was, he told him that it was up on the seventh floor, but he would have to take the stairs because the elevator had been out of commission for the past month or so, and was still waiting to be fixed.

”Has anybody been up there recently?”

He shook his head no.

“Naw. The guy paid two months rent for it, but he ain’t been back in like two weeks or so.”

Clive Carew produced a picture of Jimmy Royals.

“Is this the cat that you rented it to?” He asked.

The balding, short, plump desk clerk, slowly reached for his spectacles, and leaned forward to inspect the photograph.

“Yeah that’s the mutt.”

“Have you ever seen anyone go up there with him?”

“Yeah, some hot little blond dish, quite the looker that one. She came looking for him on the last day he showed up here, she came in about fifteen minutes later asking what room he was in, so I told her and she went up after him.”

He showed him a picture of Annabelle Stanton. The desk clerk nodded.

“Yeah that’s the dish.”

“She ever come in with him before that?”

“Naw, he seemed like the kinda guy that liked to be left alone. I only saw her that one time.”

“And your sure it was her?”

“Yeah that’s the dish, who could forget a dame that looked like that?”

“How long ago was this?”

“Like I said, that was about two weeks ago ain't seen either one of them since.”

“Mind if I go up a have a look around for myself?”

The desk clerk raised his hand.

“Naw. Go on ahead it ain’t MY room.”

He took the stairs to the seventh floor and immediately located room one thirteen, he stopped to look both ways up and down the hallway before opening the door. He turned the key and cracked the door open slightly and was immediately struck by a strange odor. The room was musky smelling, like the windows had all been kept closed all summer long and some sort of condensation had built up on the walls. it had a dark, damp feeling to it. A lone fan sat on the nightstand by the closed window, the blade slowly turning as the fresh air from the opened door had hit it. He turned on the lamp on the other night stand beside of the bed. One room, one double bed and a bathroom. There was a bureau of drawers against the far wall, above it suspended from a wire hung a broken mirror. In a half open drawer he found four used syringe’s along with a rubber tie off. And two small copper spoons, with remnants of an almost delicate white powder in the bottom of the drawer itself. On the floor beneath the bathroom sink he found two cans of Sterno one empty, one as of yet to be used. All of the evidence was now telling him that something very bad had happened in this room, and someone somewhere had a serious heroin addiction. He ripped a piece of sheet off of the bed and with it carefully collected all of the syringes along with the two copper spoons and the Sterno. He put them in an empty brown paper sack that he retrieved from the waste basket next to the bureau.

Still somewhat disturbed by what he’d found, he began to slowly walk around in the room trying to piece together the images that were dancing around in his head. Every picture that he had seen of her, every single still, she was wearing the long silk gloves all of the way up her arms, was she covering up the needle marks, could that be it? Did she get mixed up with Jimmy Royals and he got her hooked on heroin? Or maybe Jimmy was the addict and she was trying to help him kick it. And how did Eddie Valentine fit into this? There were a lot more questions at this point than answers. He walked back out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He needed to get back to the Champion to take another look at all of the photos. He took out the pocket watch, it was closing in on five o’clock, just enough time to give the evidence one more going over, just enough time to give closer inspection to all of those photo’s. He put the brown paper sack in the trunk and returned to the drivers seat and started the Champion. Soon it would be time to go meet up with Chet Belleville they would have some very uncomfortable subjects to discuss over dinner that evening.

~Scratch A.B.T. copyright © 2009~