To Live and Die In Dixie (15 page)

C
ALLAHAN, GOOD TO HEAR from you,” Jake Dahlberg said warmly. “I hope you're calling to firm up our dinner plans.”

“Dinner?” I had to think quickly. “Well, yeah. I was hoping we could do it one night this week. Can we say Friday, tentatively? I'll have to call you back to confirm, but it looks like my week should have stabilized by then.”

“Friday,” Dahlberg said. “Seven thirty at my house.” His voice had a note of finality in it.

“Wait,” I blurted. “I, uh, was hoping you could help me with something else.”

“Sure,” he said affably, “what's up?”

“I'm looking for some information about a homeless man who apparently hung around your neighborhood.”

“There are at least half a dozen regulars, and then we have seasonal ones too. Most of them I only know by their street names, of course, but give me a description and maybe we can figure who it is.”

“All I have is his name: Gordon Allan Madison. Does that ring a bell?”

“Gordo?” Dahlberg said. “Yeah, sure. I know Gordo.
Sort of. I met him a couple years ago when I caught him sleeping in the crawl space under my back porch. What do you need to know about him for?”

“It's in connection with Bridget's murder,” I said. “He tried to mug a young girl in the neighborhood last night, and now it looks like he could be a suspect in the thing at Eagle's Keep. The cops haven't charged him yet, but it looks like they're pretty damned interested in him.”

“Whoa. Hold the phone,” Dahlberg said. “Gordo Madison a murder suspect? Your client Littlefield must be working overtime to shift the blame. Gordo's harmless.”

“How do you know?”

“Gordo's a Vietnam Vet,” Dahlberg said. “Came home with the usual drug and alcohol problems. Told me he used to live in a rooming house here in the neighborhood, before people like Littlefield started buying up houses and fixing them up. Now he just hangs out, sleeping in cars or porches, or sometimes, if somebody leaves a window open, in an empty house. I'm no psychiatrist or anything, but from what I've seen, Gordo's mentally disturbed. Sometimes he's so shy he won't even look at me. Other days, he stands outside and roars and curses, raising all kind of hell. But really, I'm sure he's harmless.”

I wasn't convinced. “The cops say he jumped out of some bushes Tuesday night, knocked a teenage girl to the ground and tried to rob her,” I said. “That must be the connection they're looking for, young girls.”

“No, no, no,” Dahlberg said. “This makes no sense. I tell you what. Talk to Verna Dykes over at the night shelter on Moreland Avenue. I took Gordo over there a couple times in the winter, when it was too cold to sleep outside. I think he stayed there on and
off, when he had the two-dollar cover charge and wasn't hitting the booze.”

“I will,” I said. “And thanks for the help. See you Friday, I hope.”

“You bet. Call me if you find the cops are going to charge Gordo, will you? Maybe there's something I could do for the poor guy.”

 

The Praying Hands Night Shelter was housed in an old elementary school. Weeds had grown up in what had once been the playground, and graffiti had been sprayed all over the outside walls.

Verna Dykes's office was in the former principal's office. She was talking on the phone when I pushed open the frosted glass door. A petite, round black woman with cornrowed hair and a pair of hornrimmed glasses that seemed to cover two-thirds of her face, she was distressed about something.

“He is indigent,” she was telling someone on the phone. “Yes. And if you'll call the Veteran's Administration and talk to Graham Keithley, his doctor, you'll know Gordo is not a violent person. Yes. Do that. All right.”

She hung up the phone, took off her glasses and polished them with the hem of her T-shirt. That's when she noticed me standing there.

“Are you Detective Nickells?” she asked, standing up to greet me.

“Afraid not. I'm just a private investigator. My name's Callahan Garrity. I've been looking into the burglary at Eagle's Keep for the owner, Elliot Littlefield.”

“Sit down, anyway,” she invited. “Elliot Littlefield. That's the man lives in the big red house looks like a castle? Got Confederate flags flyin' all over the place?”

“Afraid so.”

“Honey, I don't mean to offend, but that man is plain bad. Anytime he sees any of our clients in that ritzy neighborhood of his, he calls the cops and has 'em hauled to jail.”

Verna Dykes shook her head vigorously. “So much meanness in the world.”

“I know,” I said. “Just between the two of us, I'm not real fond of him either. But could we talk about Gordon Allan Madison for a minute? Someone else in the neighborhood told me he doubts Mr. Madison would have killed Bridget Dougherty or even have burglarized Eagle's Keep.”

“That's what I been trying to tell the cops,” she said. “That was Gordo's public defender on the phone just now. I told him, Gordo wouldn't kill nobody. He talked loud and cursed sometimes, but that's what schizophrenics do. Hell, honey, I talk loud and curse sometimes, but I wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“Was he ever violent?”

She took a deep breath. “When he was sober and doin' right, Gordo was so bashful he couldn't hardly talk to a stranger.”

“So he was an alcoholic?”

“About eighty percent of our clients are,” she said. “Gordo's doctor over at the VA had him on Antabuse. You know what that is, right? If you're taking it and you drink, even a sip, you'll puke your brains out. Now, when he took the Antabuse, and took his seizure medicine, he was just fine.”

“But he didn't always take it?”

For an answer she rummaged in the scarred oak teacher's desk drawer and came up with a Ziploc sandwich bag. It was labeled
Gordo Madison
and contained three half-full pill bottles.

“The thing about schizophrenics is, they forget they are schizophrenics,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “When Gordo was here, he brought his medicine in, and we gave it to him, just like clockwork. Then he'd do his share of the chores. We got rules about that. And he was fine.”

“You said ‘when he was here,'” I said. “He didn't come every day?”

She folded the bag in half and placed it back in the desk drawer. “This is a night shelter. Our clients come at seven
P.M.
, eat a meal, and it's lights out by ten. They gotta be back out on the streets at six
A.M.
They pay two dollars a night to stay, and we got strict rules about fighting, stealing, drugs, and alcohol. Gordo didn't always feel like following the rules. Like a lot of our clients, if he got a little piece of money, say from working a labor pool or a disability check, he'd stay somewhere else, like at one of the SROs. Gordo liked the Clermont over on Ponce. They got a nudie show in the lounge there, you know.”

“I know.”

“On the other hand, if he was broke, or drunk, Gordo'd sleep where he could. He liked Inman Park.”

“He'd been on the streets a long time, hadn't he?”

Verna nodded. “I been knowing Gordo since we opened up here in 1982, right in the middle of the first Reagan administration. He'd been on the streets long before that, maybe since '78 or so. Most people can't last that long on the streets. Gordo's been lucky.”

“Did he have a criminal record?”

“Honey, we don't ask. If they're hungry, we feed 'em. If they need a place to sleep, we give 'em a bed. Got showers if they're dirty. But if they act out, we put 'em out. Next night, mostly, they come back all sorry and apologizin'. And we take 'em in again. That's Christianity.”

“Was Gordo here Saturday?”

Her face fell. “No. I checked. Didn't come in Saturday or Sunday.”

“What about Monday?”

“He came in, but we wouldn't let him stay. Drunk as a lord. I tried to talk to him about gettin' right, but you can't do nothin' with 'em when they're like that.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “He'd been drinking, but he had the money to stay here.”

“That's right,” she said. “Kept waving around this little change purse, like it woulda made a difference.”

“Where would he have gotten money this late in the month? Don't Social Security and disability checks usually come at the beginning of the month?”

She nodded grimly. “First of the month is Christmas, Easter, Father's Day, and birthday for these guys. They drink it, smoke it, eat it, whore it, maybe remember to buy a MARTA card or send some money to their kid or their old lady. Then it's gone. I wondered myself where he coulda gotten money this late in the month.”

“Verna, whoever broke into Eagle's Keep took some very valuable stuff. Some of it could have been pawned. Maybe that's where Gordo got the money to drink. Maybe he was in an SRO Saturday and Sunday, too.”

She shook her head violently. “No, ma'am. That's not Gordo. He wouldn't kill nobody.”

I pointed to the desk drawer where she'd stashed the pills. “There's his medicine right there. He hadn't taken his Antabuse or his seizure pills. And there doesn't seem to be any question that he tried to mug that girl last night.”

Verna folded her arms defiantly across her chest. She was a tough cookie, to be able to run a place like this full of used up, burned-out street people. I liked that she still believed in something.

“No, ma'am,” she repeated again. “That ain't Gordo. Okay, maybe he did the burglary. I'll give you that much. But not murder. Not Gordo.”

I got up to leave. “I hope not,” I said.

On the way out of the building, I ran into Linda Nickells.

She flashed me an apologetic smile. “C. W. ever call you back?”

“Nope.”

“I tried,” she said. “But this case is making him nuts.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. Linda, could I talk to you about Gordo Madison?”

She glanced down the hall. “You've already talked to Ms. Dykes?”

“She's insisting he wasn't violent, but admits he hadn't been taking his medication and hadn't slept here in two nights.”

Nickells nodded. “That fits. We know he was at the Clermont Hotel Sunday and Monday nights. The desk clerk ID'd him and so did some of the girls in the lounge. He was hollerin' at them so loud the bouncer threw him out.”

“What about Saturday?”

“We're working on that. But it looks like we're gonna be able to charge him with the murder and burglary.”

“You must have more than you've already told me.”

She frowned. “You know I can't tell you anything else.”

“Come on,” I pleaded. “My client was the number one suspect up until now. Hell, I halfway believed he did it too. And I know Hunsecker wants Littlefield's hide. Why the change of heart? You ask me, Gordo Madison's just another down and out.”

“You baiting me?” she asked. “If C. W. finds out I
told you this, he'll chew my ass raggedy. All right. I think they're gonna try to charge Madison sometime today, so it won't make that much difference if I tell you now. We found a Confederate Army doodad wrapped up with a bunch of Madison's clothes and stuff, in a shed down the block from Littlefield's house. The owners said they've seen Madison sneaking around there, and chased him off before.”

“A doodad?” I thought back to the typed list of missing relics Elliot Littlefield had given me. “Could it be a cartridge box plate?”

“Search me,” Nickells said. “I just know it matches something on Littlefield's list.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “Have you or C. W. talked to Littlefield yet?”

“Not yet,” she said. “And you keep your mouth shut, too. It's funny. Here we get a guy caught red-handed with stuff from the burglary and C. W. still can't let go of the notion that Littlefield's behind all this. We'll notify Littlefield after we finish talking to Madison and check out his story.”

“What is his story?”

“Not much of it makes sense,” she said. “He freely admits to having the Civil War thing. Says he found it in the neighborhood.”

“Where? Have you searched for the other missing things? There's a diary that's incredibly valuable.”

“I know,” she said. “We've got teams of uniformed officers with metal detectors working all the vacant lots. All Madison knows is that he saw something shining in some tall grass and he picked it up. He claims he kept it because he thought it might be worth something.”

“Linda,” I said excitedly. “If he had that cartridge thing, that's what it is, by the way, and it's worth about five thousand bucks. If he had that, he must know
where the other stuff is too. He must have pawned something to get the money to stay at the Clermont. Did he have a lot of cash on him?”

Nickells laughed. “He had about four bucks in his pockets and he doesn't even remember being at the Clermont. He says a guy in a gray pickup truck picked him up at the Big Star Shopping Center Saturday afternoon, and had him move some furniture. Guy gave him fifty bucks. We've checked the room he stayed in, nothing. It's early yet, but the pawn shops within staggering distance of Poncey Highland haven't seen any of the other stuff taken in the burglary.”

“What's he say about the murder?”

“Can't remember,” Nickells said.

“Have you got anything to tie him to Bridget?”

Nickells eyed me up and down. “C. W.'s right. You are a pushy bitch. That's all right though, so am I. The assistant manager at that health food store on Euclid Avenue, what's it called?”

“Sevananda.”

“Yeah. Well, the woman says Madison was hanging around there Saturday morning, trying to get people to let him carry their grocery bags for tip money. Bridget came out of the store and apparently he cussed her when she wouldn't let him carry her bags. She ran inside and hid there until Gordo wandered away. But she wouldn't let the manager call the cops on him. Said she'd seen him around the neighborhood and felt sorry for him.”