Second Chance (11 page)

"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 Ta1madge'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 offce 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."

Rol1man's was a state psychiatric hospital in East
Walnut Hills.

"This McMicken address is from '76?"

"Yeah. A1 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."

"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.

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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
smelled 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?"