Second Chance Page 8

  Talmadge was clearly a bad character, and that bothered me. But the newspaper picture itself, the tiny mugshot, was just as unsettling. I sat there and stared at it dumbly for a full minute, wondering whether my lack of sleep and the general weirdness of the Pearson case were combining to unhinge me. Simply put, Herbert Talmadge had the same face as the man in Ethan Pearson’s drawing—the same V-shaped goatee, the same pointed chin, the same peppery hair and slanted, menacing eyes.

  Even allowing for the crudity of a ten-year-old’s drawing skills, the resemblance was close enough to give me a feeling of déjà vu. It must have scared hell out of Ethan Pearson. What I couldn’t imagine was where a ten-year-old kid had run across the likes of Herbert Talmadge. He had to have seen him somewhere, because the likeness he’d drawn was just too damn close to be coincidental.

  I made a dozen copies of the article on a Xerox machine. Then I found a phone in the lobby and called Al Foster at CPD.

  “I need another favor, Al,” I said. “Get me a last known address on an ex-con named Herbert Talmadge. He just did thirteen years in Lexington for rape and murder.”

  “This have something to do with your missing persons?” he asked.

  “It might.”

  “I’ll see what I can turn up.”

  “One more thing?”

  “We’re here to serve and protect you, Harry.”

  “Can you dig up a file on Estelle Pearson?” I spelled the name for him. “She committed suicide in September, 1976. I’d like to see the examining officer’s notes and the coroner’s report.”

  “What’s this one for?”

  I didn’t tell him, but I was curious to see if Talmadge’s name popped up anywhere in the case as a witness or a bystander. He had to be connected to the woman or to Ethan in some way, even if it was only by chance.

  ******

  I went back to my office in the Riorley Building and managed to sneak in a couple of hours of sleep on the couch before the phone woke me around one p.m. At least my eyes felt better. I couldn’t speak for the rest of my body—it wasn’t speaking to me.

  The phone call was from Sid McMasters of the CPD. “Al Foster told me to give you a buzz,” Sid said. “We got a previous address for Herbert Talmadge.”

  I picked up a pencil and said, “Go ahead.”

  “Sixty-seven fifty-five West McMicken. Al said to tell you that Talmadge was a mental case. In and out of Rollman’s before he got busted.”

  Rollman’s was a state psychiatric hospital in East Walnut Hills.

  “This McMicken address is from ‘76?”

  “Yeah. Al tried to get in touch with the Newport cops to get a current address. But the P.O. in Newport said Talmadge hadn’t reported since his release.”

  “So he’s in violation?”

  “He will be if he doesn’t come in before this Friday. Al also said for you to pick up a report he dug up for you. I’ll leave it at the front desk.”

  “Be right over.”

  Before I left I called Louise Pearson at the number she’d given me.

  “I need you to ask your husband a couple of questions.”

  “You’ve made some progress, then?” she said hopefully.

  “A little. I’ve got a name, at least.”

  “What name?”

  “Herbert Talmadge. I think he’s the guy that Ethan and Kirsty are looking for.”

  The woman went off the line briefly. When she came back on she said, “Could you repeat that? I want to write this down.”

  “Herbert Talmadge,” I said again. “Ask your husband if he recognizes the name. You might also ask him if he worked at Rollman’s hospital in the mid-seventies. I’ll drop Talmadge’s picture off to you later this evening.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to the club this evening,” the woman said apologetically. “Goddamn cocktail party. I was planning to cancel, but Phil insisted I attend. Perhaps you could meet me in the bar for a drink afterward. Say, around nine?”

  “All right.”

  She gave me the address of the country club and promised to ask Pearson about Talmadge.

  After hanging up on Louise I went down to the Fifth Street garage, found my car, and drove over to CPD headquarters on Ezzard Charles. I double-parked in front of a police cruiser, ran in, and picked up the sealed envelope that Sid McMasters had left for me at the front desk. I didn’t open the envelope until I got back in the car.

  A photo of Estelle Pearson’s body, taken at the scene of her death, was the first thing I pulled out. I was sorry I’d looked. If Ethan or Kirsten had seen what was pictured on that riverbank, it was no wonder they’d been severely traumatized. I stuffed the grisly snapshot back in the envelope and tossed it on the front seat. The police and coroner’s reports would have to wait—I just didn’t have the stomach to go through them at that moment.

  ******

  Herbert Talmadge’s last known address on West McMicken was only about five minutes north of the police station, off Central Parkway in the slum neighborhood called Over-the-Rhine. As far as I knew Over-the-Rhine had always been a slum—crabbed, dismal, little streets lined with brick tenements and abandoned warehouses. A place for German and Irish Catholic immigrants to live at the turn-of-the-last-century. A place for poor blacks and Appalachians to live until the turn-of-the-next.

  An elderly black man and a young black woman were sitting on folding chairs in front of 6755. A couple of children were playing in a patch of snow on a nearby stoop. From the way the kids kept glancing at the man and woman, I figured they were more or less tethered there, waiting for the big folks to call them in. I parked across the street from the brownstone, got out into the sun, and crossed over to the shaded side of McMicken.

  The man and woman watched me closely. The kids dropped their snowballs and stared.

  “I’m looking for somebody who used to live here,” I said to the old man.

  The woman snorted disgustedly and turned her chair away from me, as if she was blocking me from her mind.

  The man said, “You with the Welfare?”

  “‘Course he with the Welfare, foo,” the young woman said over her shoulder. She looked rather pretty in profile, in spite of the huff she was in. Pretty and tough and proud.

  The man had a porkpie hat tilted back on his head and a checked overcoat wrapped around his body. His skin was very black, and his yellowed eyes had the rheumy, unfocused look of old age. His voice was deep and deliberate, while the woman’s was all speed and contempt.

  “I’m not with the Welfare, and I’m not a cop. I’m just a guy looking for somebody.”

  “Who’d that be?” the old man said.

  “Don’ you talk to him, Uncle. Don’t you say nothin’,” the young woman snapped.

  “His name is Herbert Talmadge. He used to live here back in the seventies.”

  “Sho,” the man said. “I remember Herbie.” He looked at the girl. “You ‘member Herbie, Lorraine.”

  Lorraine continued to stare indignantly off into space.

  “Ain’t seen Herbie in ten, twelve years,” the man said.

  “Ain’t none of my business,” Lorraine said in a singsong voice. “Ain’t none of yours neither.”

  “Don’ know where he went to,” he said, ignoring her. “Herbie had him a temper, though. I can tell you that.”

  “He was crazy,” the girl said suddenly and decisively, as if that was her only word on the subject.

  “She’s right,” the man said. “Herbie was crazy. Think he might have had him some trouble with the law.”

  “He was in jail,” I said. “He was released last week.”

  “That so? And you huntin’ for him, huh?”

  I nodded.

  ‘Tell you what. You go look up some of his old girlfriends, ‘cause that’s where Herbie gone to. He liked the ladies.”

  “Anybody in particular?”

  “Woman who used to own this house, Miz Thelma Jackson. He liked her pretty good. You go on and talk to her.”r />
  “Know where I can find her?”

  “She moved out to Carthage, I think. Don’ come by here no more.”

  I reached in my pocket for my wallet and started to take a ten out. The old man looked offended.

  “Ain’t no call for that,” he said. “We just talkin’ like folks. Don’ pay folks for talkin’, do you?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  As I walked back across the street to my car I heard the girl say to him, “You is a foo,” in a loud, contemptuous voice.

  13

  I STOPPED at a phone booth in Clifton and looked up Thelma Jackson in the phone book. I didn’t find a “Thelma” proper, but there were several listings for T. Jackson, and one of them lived on Anthony Wayne in Carthage.

  I dialed the number and a woman with a deep, friendly voice answered.

  “Thelma Jackson?” I asked.

  “That’s me, sugar. Who’s callin?”

  “My name is Stoner, Ms. Jackson. I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

  “You sellin’ something, sugar?” she said cheerfully.

  “I’m not selling anything. I’m looking for somebody you used to know.”

  “Now who’d that be?”

  “Herbert Talmadge.”

  There was a momentary silence on the line.

  “You a police officer, ain’t you?” she said in a slightly less cheerful voice, as if the mention of Talmadge had knocked some of the fun out of her.

  “I’m a private detective.”

  She laughed. “Like Magnum?”

  “Like Magnum. I’m just looking to find Talmadge, Ms. Jackson. I’m not going to arrest him.”

  “Shoot! It wouldn’t bother me any if you did arrest him. Herbie was a mean little son of a gun. But the truth is I ain’t seen him in going on fourteen years. Don’t want to see him again, neither.”

  “You think I could come out and talk to you about him? I promise not to take much of your time.”

  “I guess that’d be all right,” she said, “seeing how I ain’t never met no detective before.”

  ******

  I could smell Carthage as soon as I got to North Bend Road. The juniper scent of gin, the cooked fruit smell of brandy. The huge brick smokestacks of National Distillers, on the south side of Carthage, left liquor on its breath every afternoon.

  Thelma Jackson’s house was near the distillery, where the liquor smell was thickest. Perhaps that was what accounted for her good humor. You could see the smokestacks from her front yard. You could also hear the traffic on the expressway, below the retaining wall on the opposite side of Anthony Wayne.

  She was sitting on the porch of her bungalow when I pulled up. A plump, sixtyish black woman with short grey hair and a pretty brown face. She was wearing a housedress with a heavy knit sweater over the shoulders.

  “You’re the detective, ain’t you?” she called out as I walked into the small front yard.

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t look like Magnum,” she said with mock disappointment. “You ain’t got no moustache. You big enough though. And good-looking.”

  She gave me a bold look, for a sixty-year-old woman.

  “Come on inside. Too damn cold out here.”

  Thelma Jackson got up, and I followed her through the front door into a prim living room filled with floral-print furniture. I sat down on an overstuffed couch. A vase full of artificial flowers sat on a coffee table in front of me. The room smelted sweetly of air freshener and the brandy smell of the distillery.

  The woman tugged at her girdle before settling on a chair across from me. “Why you all looking for Herbie?”

  “Somebody hired me to find him.”

  “In other words, it ain’t none of my business, right?”

  I smiled at her. “It isn’t a criminal matter—I can tell you that.”

  “Have to be criminal if it come to that nigger. Either that or he got himself locked up in the crazy house again.”

  The woman’s pretty face turned sober-looking. “Herbie wasn’t never right in the head. He’d fool you, though, being so quiet all the time.”

  “What was his problem?”

  “Got no idea. He had brains. Been in the service a couple of years, I think. And he was good-looking, too. Had him plenty of women.”

  Thelma Jackson glanced at me and laughed.

  “You heard somethin’ about him and me, didn’t you?”

  Whether she’d read it in my face or just guessed that that was the gossip which had led me to her house, I didn’t know. “I heard you used to be his landlady, yes.”

  “Heard more than that,” she said shrewdly. “But it ain’t so. I never did take up with Herbie Talmadge, ‘cept once. And that once was enough.”

  The woman yanked at her girdle again. “Never was no prude. I like men. Always will. But Herbie . . . ” She shook her head decisively. “Uhm-uh. Girl could get killed by a man like that. Isn’t that what he went to jail for—messing with some woman over in Newport?”

  “Yes. Rape and murder.”

  “Being with Herbie,” she said in a dead serious voice, “was always what you call ‘rape and murder.’ You lucky if you didn’t die, you spent a night with him. Police had him in and out of Rollman’s ‘bout every month ‘cause he done some woman wrong. Sent him there myself, once. They couldn’t do nothing to change him though. He wanted to change. Used to cry about it when he got high. But the doctors said there just wasn’t nothing they could do for him.”

  “When was the last time you saw him, Ms. Jackson?”

  She squinted her eyes, thinking back. “Seems like that would be the summer of ‘76. Right before he moved to Newport. He got out of Rollman’s in the spring and started taking up with some white girl. Herbie followed that ofay ‘round like a dog on a chain. Only time I ever seen him act that way.”

  “Do you remember what this woman looked like?”

  “Not much. She never come in the house. She was always waiting on him out in the car. She’d honk and he come running. She had blond hair, I ‘member that. Might be she was a nurse, ‘cause I ‘member she wore a white uniform once. Herbie just crazy about that ofay woman.”

  “You don’t know her name, do you?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to have nothing to do with Herbie, after that one time.”

  “Is there anyone who might know? A friend of his from back then?”

  “Herbie didn’t have no friends,” the woman said with a dry laugh. “He just have himself.”

  “Did he have a job?”

  “Got him some money from the Vets, I think. Most times he got hard up, he’d just go on back to the hospital. Rest of the times he’d lay up in his room, stoned on them painkillers he got from the doctors.”

  “Finding him is important, Ms. Jackson. Is there anything else you can remember that would help me?”

  “I can poke around,” she said gamely. “See what I can dig up. Meantime, you check with that hospital. They gotta know something ‘bout him, seeing how he was practically a permanent guest.”

  ******

  I didn’t take Thelma’s advice about checking at Rollman’s. Not that it wasn’t a good idea. I just knew from experience that no one at a hospital was going to talk to a private cop without word from somebody higher up. So I went searching for that word at Sheldon Sacks’ office on Burnett, a couple blocks east of the psychiatric hospital and just a few blocks north of where I used to live in the Delores.

  Sacks’ office was on the second floor of a duplex he shared with another psychiatrist. There was a hall at the top of the stairs, with office doors opening off it to the left and a small, glassed-in receptionist’s room to the right. I gave the secretary my name and she told me that she’d buzz Sacks when his four o’clock appointment was up. In the meantime I took a seat in a wainscoted waiting room, beside a couple of middle-aged women who were doing their best to keep from screaming.

  Just sitting there made me queasy
. When the secretary finally called my name, I jumped. She led me back down the hall to one of the office doors and knocked. Sacks called out, “Come in.”

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting, Stoner,” he said as I came through the door.

  He waved me over to a stuffed leather chair then sat down behind a large desk. There was a half-empty box of Kleenex on an end table by the chair. Half-full or half-empty—I could never see the fucking difference.

  There were a dozen Kleenex on the floor, as if his last patient had had a real crying jag.

  The room was paneled in oak and lined with bookshelves on two walls. There was a psychiatrist’s couch on the third wall with a framed steamship floating above it. Sacks’ desk was on the far wall, in front of a bank of louvered windows. Just enough sunlight was filtering through the slats to backlight his head and throw his face into shadow.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  I told him about Herbert Talmadge. He listened intently, moving forward in his chair so that a bit of his round face came into the desk light.

  “When did you say he was treated at Rollman’s?”

  “1976. Possibly earlier.”

  “That’s odd,” he said thoughtfully. “I think Phil did part of his residency at Rollman’s, in ‘75.”

  “Perhaps he treated Talmadge?”

  “It’s possible,” Sacks said, joining his hands.

  I waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t. He just sat there with his hands knitted together and a blank look on his face, as if he hadn’t drawn any conclusions from what he’d said.

  “You and Pearson are close friends?”

  He nodded. “Since med school. He and Stelle and I were in the same graduating class.”

  “She was a psychiatrist, too?”