by Ace Atkins
“Persons wasn’t behind the desk; he was standing at the side, feeling around that Nazi belt buckle and the little buttons and springs. He said, ‘Can you put this in a report?’ and Hanna said, ‘Goddamn, it’s been five weeks since this man’s father was gunned down. The local police haven’t interviewed a single suspect.’”
I smiled at him, knowing what was about to come, knowing John had told me every detail because I knew where all this was headed.
“Britton gave you the Mr. X records, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Well, Hugh let some of the newspaper boys take a listen this morning. But, for some reason, he wanted a couple of them held back. He wanted me to deliver them to the governor. I guess he thought Persons should be well versed on the entire situation.”
“How long did it take for him to call you?”
John smiled. It was the first time I’d seen him smile since his father’s death. “The governor left a message for me before I pulled into my driveway.”
“And what did it say?”
“Apparently, that recorded conversation he had with Hoyt Shepherd about campaign contributions came through clear as a bell.”
“Can I ask what happens next?”
“I guess he saw the big splash Mr. X made in the afternoon papers. Did you see Hugh was quoted with saying that there was more where that came from? Well, the governor said he had some phone calls to make.”
“WHO THE FUCK IS MR. X?” HOYT SHEPHERD SAID, PULLING a big, fat cigar from the side of his mouth as he spun in the chair of Cobb’s Barber Shop and rattled the front page of the Ledger. Jimmie Matthews sat in a waiting chair, next to the coatrack and by the plateglass window, and nodded. “Did you see this bullshit? Did you read it?”
Jimmie nodded. The barber, a relative of the former mayor, stepped away, added his scissors to the blue Barbicide, and walked over to grab some electric clippers.
“It says right here that this goddamn, mysterious Mr. X turned over plastic recordings of crime kingpin Hoyt Shepherd having intimate phone conversations with known state and local politicians, including Big Jim Folsom, winner of the Democratic ticket for governor. Hell, they even say I had a talk with – get this – an unknown party about the killing of Fate Leburn. Hell, that damn bootlegger’s been dead almost ten years. Who’s digging up this shit on me? Let me tell you one damn thing. Jimmie, are you listening to me?”
Jimmie nodded, dressed in a crisp white shirt and tie, blue suit, and crossed his legs. He acknowledged his partner with a tip of his cigarette. His hair already nicely trimmed and slicked down with a good splash of Vitalis.
“You mark my words, they’re gonna hang me for this. Right? These people, these National Guard Nazis and that green-as-grass prosecutor, Sykes, need a warm body and my fat ass is just the right size.”
Hoyt’s big face turned a hard shade of purple as Mr. Cobb trimmed the hair off the back of his neck and shaved off some black fuzz on his ears. Hoyt’s big jowls flexed and twisted, and when the buzzing of the clippers stopped and Cobb reached for another pair of scissors for a few stray hairs, Hoyt continued: “Let me tell you something. There ain’t no Santa Claus, there ain’t no fucking Easter Bunny, and there ain’t any goddamn Mr. X. It’s the RBA trying to fry my ass for Pat getting himself killed, and they are gonna try every dirty trick in the book till I’m sitting in the hot seat at Kilby waiting for some old boy to flip the switch and grill me up like a side of bacon because it would make a hell of a picture.”
Matthews shifted in his chair and recrossed his legs. He finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in a plastic tray on top of a big fan of Field & Stream and Gent magazines. He shrugged. His diamond cuff links twinkled.
Hoyt plugged the fat cigar back into his mouth and kept reading, Cobb snapping off the stray hairs and giving him a slick comb with some of that jug of Vitalis.
“Part it to the side,” Hoyt said, not looking up from the newspaper. He grunted. “I look like a fucking country preacher.”
The bell jingled above the old barbershop door and in walked Frog Jones and Red Cook, a couple clip joint owners. They walked inside, looking at the floor, no one to beat or shoot or rob, and they looked as dejected to Hoyt as little kids without their toys.
Hoyt looked back to the paper.
“What the hell is wrong with you two? I ain’t seen y’all’s names in the paper in a while.”
The door opened again, and as Cobb removed the apron and Hoyt stood from the chair two guardsmen walked in and waited for Hoyt to turn. But Hoyt watched in the mirror as he counted out the change into the barber’s hand and simply said: “Let me guess: Mr. X sent you.”
One of the young boys held out a piece of paper to Hoyt Shepherd and said: “Sir, Mr. Bernard Sykes would like to see you at the Ralston Hotel immediately.”
Hoyt nodded, walked to the coatrack, and grabbed his porkpie hat. “Well, that is just goddamn fantastic. I can’t wait.”
“THIS SURE IS A NICE SUITE. HOW MUCH ARE THE TAXPAYERS shelling out for such comfort, Mr. Sykes?” Hoyt Shepherd asked.
Bernard Sykes opened his mouth and then closed it, looking to a couple of junior men at the attorney general’s office and then back to Hoyt. In his pleated trousers and tailored shirt with painted tie, he nervously circled the dining room, where Hoyt sat at a long table. Sykes felt for the back of a chair, obvious to Hoyt that the man wanted to continue to stand to get a leg up, but Hoyt didn’t care for games or this nervous kid.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Hoyt asked. “All that walking and talking is getting on my nerves. When you’re trying to gain some confidence, you need to sit down and be a regular guy. Don’t stand over someone and act like a hard-on.”
Sykes’s face changed colors and he crossed his arms. He stood still and placed his hand over his jaw and mouth. He nodded and nodded as if unlocking some kind of secret about Hoyt Shepherd’s character.
“Listen, unless you’re gonna feed me lunch or buy me a drink I think I’ll be on my way. There wasn’t a damn thing on any of the mysterious Dr. X’s recordings about Albert Patterson.”
“Mr.”
“What?”
“It’s Mr. X, not Dr. X.”
Hoyt nodded and pulled out a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket. He unwrapped it, the plastic making harsh, crinkling sounds, and stuck it into his mouth. “Since you’re not from here and don’t know much else besides what the newspapermen stink up in their print, I’ll fill you in. Me and my partner, Jimmie Matthews, sold out our interests in every single club in Phenix City two years ago. You can verify that with anyone in town. And as far as Pat? Hell, Pat and I had some problems, and I never wanted to see him your boss. But there ain’t a criminal in Phenix City with half a brain who’d kill a fella that way. I mean, give me a little credit. I know about fifty better places I could’ve had Pat plugged, if I wanted. But to shoot down the man in an alley on Fifth Avenue on a Friday night is as stupid as it is reckless. Just about dumber than shit, if you ask me.”
Sykes grinned a bit and gave a nervous laugh. “So, you are telling me that you would’ve killed Mr. Patterson in another way?”
“Yes, sir. That is exactly what I said, and you wouldn’t have found him for a long while either.”
“You do that often? Make people disappear?”
“Goddamn. Can we get on with this bullshit? This is the deal, son. My boys and all the gamblers in Phenix City wouldn’t touch killing Pat, because the odds were worth shit. And everyone knew that the house would come a-tumblin’ down.”
“What about the bombing last night? Did you know about that?”
“Read it in the papers same as you.”
“But you’d have reason to want to quiet Mr. Britton.”
“Thought we were talking about Pat.”
“So who killed Mr. Patterson if it wasn’t one of your hoods?”
“I’m gonna let that one slide, kid,” Hoyt said, puffing the cigar up into the air and then right into Bernard Sykes’s eyes a
nd Hollywood hair and ski-slope nose.
“So?”
“Get them out of the room,” Hoyt said, leaning into the table and helping himself to a pot of coffee. As he poured, Sykes cleared the room of all the prosecutors and the stenographer, who’d waited for the official interview to begin.
The table between Sykes and Shepherd was filled with empty boxes from a fried chicken joint and half-drunk cups of coffee and bottles of Coca-Cola. Ashtrays spilled out with ash, and mounds of newspapers and stacks of papers spilled over the table and onto the chairs.
Hoyt took a sip of coffee and then made a face. It was cold.
After some thought, he leaned in and started to talk, and Sykes couldn’t hear so he leaned in, too. Close as lovers across an intimate table, he caught Hoyt’s words: “Do you really need to look much further than Bert Fuller? Let me tell you something, he’d been ratfucking me for the last couple years, cutting the biggest, fattest piece of the Phenix City pie. Did you know someone broke into my goddamn home the night Pat got himself killed? They blew my safe with dynamite, nearly set my office on fire, and took fifty thousand dollars? With all this shit going on, I couldn’t even get a sonofabitch at the sheriff’s office to take down my name. Now, that’s something to make a man a little pissed off.”
Sykes looked up over his notebook. He tapped his pen.
“You got to know something, me and Pat had an understanding. We knew what teams we played for. You can’t hold a grudge if a man’s been straight with you all along. With Pat, he didn’t make no secret of cleaning up this town. But to break into a man’s home, and me knowin’ it had to have been someone I hold close? Now, that is an insult. And let me be straight with you, Mr. Sykes. If I find out the sonofabitch who did that to me, he’s as good as dead.”
“You understand what you’re saying to me?”
“Yes, sir. And I’ll be damned to hell if me getting robbed wasn’t Fuller’s doing, too. If there is slop in the trough, he’s gonna eat.”
“Deputy Fuller?”
“Hell, you catch on fast, kid.”
“Who else? Other policemen?”
“Policemen? Bert Fuller is a shakedown artist and a pimp, and since I’ve grown comfortable in my retirement he’s about bled me dry on protection. But I don’t know about other folks with the sheriff. If it were my guess, I’d say Fuller and Johnnie Benefield.”
“Who?”
“Say, you are new to this town. As I told John Patterson, Johnnie Benefield is only the most coldhearted, sadistic sonofabitch I’ve ever met.”
Sykes wrote down the name on a yellow legal pad and looked up.
“That’s with one n.”
Sykes nodded and made the correction.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Hoyt Shepherd said, plugging the cigar in his mouth.
JOHNNIE BENEFIELD AWOKE IN A DARK ROOM, THE LIGHTNING cracking outside the window. The bed sat in a metal frame, and in another flash of light he saw there were clothes folded for him on an old ladder-back chair. His boots clean and shined sitting right under them. He leaned back against the pillow, his head feeling as if it was about to rip from his skull, a knifing, hot pain in his shoulder. Reaching over, he felt for the bandages and found crusted blood on the tape. He moaned and closed his eyes. The room smelled like dried flowers and vinegar.
He heard footsteps down a long hallway. The steps were hard and clacked as they do against wood, and when the walking stopped he saw the slice of light from under the door go black for a moment and then the squeak of hinges.
A woman’s shadow stood before him, carrying a bucket and a leather pouch.
She pulled up another chair and sat and held his cold, clammy hands.
Her face was darkened, and he only could see the outline of her hair. His eyes fluttered open and closed.
“You hurt?”
“Fannie?”
“It’s me. You been out for some time.”
“How long?”
“Two days.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Thirsty, too, I reckon.”
“Can I get some whiskey?”
“You bet.”
“I got the shakes, too.”
“I know, baby.”
Fannie opened the bag and pulled out a silver spoon and toyed with it a moment before clicking on a lighter and heating its contents. She grabbed a syringe and soon filled it and tapped the vein in his arm. She shot down the plunger, and he was filled with the most quiet, wonderful sensation, as if having sex to the point of climax and having it last and last. He closed his eyes and smiled.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Hill Top.”
“You keeping me in a whorehouse?”
“That I am.”
“A dream come true.”
“I need you well, Johnnie.”
“You got me.”
“Everyone is gone.”
Johnnie opened his eyes and breathed through his nose. He closed his eyes again.
“The Guard. They got orders from the governor to bust up this town. I need you, Johnnie. Don’t leave.”
He reached up with his left hand and had a bit of trouble finding Fannie’s heart-shaped face. She shifted his hand over to her left breast and said everything was going to be all right. “Don’t you worry, baby.”
A flame struck again in the dark little room, and he saw Fannie Belle’s face and red lips and intent green eyes, and then it was clouded again in a puff of smoke. He heard her inhale, and then she passed the cigarette between his lips.
“I got the door locked,” she said. “I turned the lights off and closed the gate. If they even think about busting down the door, I’ll take a few of those bastards with me.”
“I love you, baby.”
“Johnnie, how ’bout you tell me more about this money you took from Hoyt. I sure like that story.”
12
THE RAIDS STARTED that Thursday at exactly 4:30 with a proclamation from Governor Persons that Phenix City was under martial rule. That gave Hanna and the Guards the go-ahead to surround the Russell County Courthouse and relieve all law enforcement and city officials of their duties and make them surrender all weapons, squad cars, and badges. Just as General Hanna and Major Black burst into the sheriff’s office, they found Sheriff Ralph Matthews sitting behind his desk, a big wad of chaw in his cheek, playing gin rummy with four deputies and a jailer. Another jailer was within earshot of the men, sitting on the office toilet and reading a copy of Gent magazine. As soon as the Guard leveled their shotguns and.45s at the boys, Matthews looked from deputy to deputy and then over to the jailer on the toilet.
He shook his head and threw the remainder of his cards into the pot.
The other deputies did the same and they all slowly stood, hitching up their gun belts on their uniforms.
“What can we do you for, General?”
“Not a goddamn thing,” Hanna said, walking over to Matthews’s desk and pulling a Hav-a-Tampa from a box. “Just leave your guns and badges on the way out.”
“Sir?” Matthews laughed, the big plug in his cheek. His face turned a bright red.
“You heard me, you hick bastard,” Hanna said. He lit a match against his thumbnail. “Now, take off those guns nice and slow.”
Matthews shook his head again. He dramatically spit in a wastepaper basket and smiled with a lot of pity. He was a fat man with a big belly and a small mind, and he didn’t quite catch on to what was happening. His fat cheeks looked like apples.
Just then there was a creak and the men turned, seeing the jailer stand from the little box bathroom and raise a pistol, his trousers at his ankles.
Jack Black fired off a round over the man’s head. And although the shot missed him by a foot, the man ducked and landed back with a hard thud onto the commode and dropped the pistol into the water.
“Now,” Hanna said.
Matthews went first, unhitching his belt and guns, laying them atop the big wooden desk. His deputies followed, and they all
stood shoulder to shoulder as five-foot-five bulldog Hanna passed by them as in an inspection line, never once saying a word but eyeing the men as if they were the sorriest bunch of bastards he’d ever seen in his life.
It was raining, and the thunder belly-grumbled outside as the water pinged against the pane glass and slid down the windows. Hanna pulled his MacArthur hat off his head and held it out to Matthews, “I said badges, too.”
“Murphy?” he called out to me. I entered the room.
Hanna handed me Ralph Matthews’s badge and pinned it over my Texaco star. “I kind of like that one better. It suits you, Sheriff.”
FOUR HOURS EARLIER, I’D SAT IN JOYCE’S BEAUTY SHOP drinking a cup of coffee and explaining to her the job I’d just been offered by the state. She was between appointments and cleaning out a sink full of brunette hair dye. The room smelled of burnt chemicals and sweet shampoos, and as I tried to make sense of the offer she just nodded and nodded, keeping her hands busy with the washing and some sweeping and some straightening of a couple of helmet dryers by a back wall under framed pictures from Vogue.
“Why you?”
“I have an honest face.”
She nodded. She sat down in a stylist chair and faced me. I was still dressed in my coveralls, my Texaco baseball cap in my hands, as I looked down at the floor and waited for what was about to come.
But she didn’t say a word for a long time, and when she spoke it was calm and confident. “Is this temporary?”
“It could be,” I said. “It’s just until the election.”
“If the Guard is taking over, why do they even need you?”
“It was the best we could get. Something called limited martial rule. They have to have local police. The Guard can’t make arrests on their own.”
“You don’t know a thing about being a sheriff.”
“I tried to explain that to them.”
“And what did they say?”
“They said John Patterson recommended me for the job. Jack Black, too.”
“Can’t they just find someone else?”
“Bernard Sykes already offered it to George Findletter.”
