Wicked City

by Ace Atkins

  “You’ll be out tomorrow.”

  “I want out tonight.”

  “You sure you don’t want that cup of coffee?”

  He snorted and sat back down on the bunk. He ran his hands through his hair like he thought about tearing it out. The oil had dried on his pompadour and it stuck up wild. He wore a pair of beige slacks and a men’s undershirt that was stained with sweat, dust, and dirt.

  His shoes sat near the bunk without laces.

  “Look at you, with that fifty-dollar suit on with that ruby pin and slick tie. Don’t give me no pity, Lamar. That just about turns my stomach.”

  I tossed him the pack of Lucky Strikes. He shook his head and tore open the pack, tucking a dry one in the corner of his mouth and continuing to talk. “You didn’t have to do me like that. Arrest me in front of my boy. You have a son. You didn’t have to do that.”

  He looked straight at the brick wall, away from me, and stared.

  “A while back, we found a whole barn full of girls, most of them children,” I said. “They’d been locked up without food or water. One of them died. Another one of them was twelve. Tonight, we fished your boy’s girlfriend out of the Chattahoochee. She’d been beaten to the point Billy couldn’t recognize her. She’d been stomped and her ribs went into her lungs.”

  He nodded. “Did I have anything to do with that? I run a beer joint. I got some slots. How in God’s name can a man make money in Phenix any other way? This town has always been like that. You know it was an Indian outpost before the war, that this was the last place to get a woman and a drink before sliding into redman’s land?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t get it. She was a friend of Billy’s.”

  “That girl knew what she was into.”

  “That’s pretty rough.”

  He lit the cigarette and shrugged. “Don’t you drag me into your morality play.”

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “If that don’t beat all.”

  “I can get you a deal with the judge. He can get you in and out of Kilby in less than six months.”

  “That’s mighty white of you, Lamar.”

  “You were there when Mr. Patterson was gunned down. You were parked across from the Elite.”

  Reuben stood, just inches away from my nose. His face had turned a shade, his breathing quick, that sly, perpetual cockiness melted away. “Where did you hear such a god-awful lie?”

  “I didn’t say you killed him. I said you were there. You saw something important. On that street.”

  “I didn’t see a thing.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “You wouldn’t even been on half the title cards if it wasn’t for me. You rode my coattails for five fucking years. You know the Kid didn’t even want to train you till I begged him. You remember when he’d be gone for the night and I’d stay and I’d teach you to keep your feet, keep your head in a fight. You remember how you were all arms and elbows, tripping over your legs? Who stayed with you in that shithole gym till somethin’ clicked in your head and you could move your goddamn feet?”

  “You didn’t correct me.”

  “’Bout what?”

  “Bein’ a liar.”

  He stepped back.

  “You don’t know half the things I done for you since Mr. Patterson gone and got himself killed. If I hadn’t stepped in, we wouldn’t be talking.”

  I waited. I watched him.

  He paced.

  “You hear me?”

  “Billy needs a daddy,” I said. “Make a deal, serve your time, and get out. It’s over.”

  He pushed me with the flat of his hand and spun to face me, jabbing me hard in the eye with the left and knocking me back. I lost my feet for a moment and then caught myself against the row of bars.

  I used the bars to right myself.

  Jack Black appeared on the other side, his hand on his gun.

  “It’s okay, Jack,” I said. “Let him out.”

  “Sir?”

  I felt the egg forming under my eye. I looked at Reuben and shook my head. “Go ahead and let him go. I’m done with him.”

  Reuben spit on the ground between us, his fists hanging ready at his side.

  “Just one question,” I said. “Just how long did it take y’all to blow Hoyt’s safe and get back to town?”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, JOHN PATTERSON INVITED ME TO GO fishing with him on Lake Harding. It was a brisk fall day, and we stood on the shoreline of some cleared land and cast our Zebcos out into the dammed-up Chattahoochee. We sat in easy chairs, talking about our children and the weather, and some about his mother, Agnes, and some man from Hollywood named Diamond who wanted to come to Phenix City and make a picture about what happened to his father.

  “He has a script,” Patterson said. “I’ve seen it. He has me in a slugfest with some kingpin named Red. I’m pretty sure he got the idea for this Red fella from Hoyt Shepherd. He’s a fat, good-ole-boy type who pretty much runs the town.”

  “Maybe he’s based on Red Cook.”

  “No, this guy is more likable. He’s the kind of guy quick with a joke and a wink but will kill you all the same. And then there is an honest girl who deals cards in a casino. She’s smart and beautiful but can’t find her way out.”

  “Who else is in it?”

  “He’s made me into some kind of hero. He liked the idea of me taking over the martyred father’s nomination. But he said it wasn’t dramatic enough, so he has me calling the governor at the end of the film and has everyone in Phenix City yelling into the phone for justice.”

  “How are they all on the phone?”

  “It’s some kind of crowd scene. Who knows?” John stood and cast his hook again, and let the bobber stay, and then sat back in the chair and offered me a beer, which I declined.

  “You never drink, do you?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “There a story behind that?”

  “Not a good one.”

  John nodded. “Anyway, I don’t have much to do with this. But this Diamond fella, I think he’s from New York, wants to film it here. He said it’s the kind of story that has to be shot in the South. It can’t be some Hollywood back lot.”

  “Seems like a story without an ending.”

  “He thinks it’s over.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Not by a mile.”

  “Have you spoken with Sykes?”

  John shifted in his chair and pulled a ball cap down in his eyes. He shifted the rod and took a sip of beer. “I have.”

  “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

  “I don’t know what he’s up to. He must have two dozen prosecutors and investigators interviewing every soul who was even close to Fifth Avenue on June eighteenth. They have maps, building blueprints, models, and photos of every angle of my dad’s Rocket 88. Hundred interviews with people who heard shots, saw someone parking a car, saw anyone walk close to that alley. In my opinion, it’s a calculated mess. An equation that everything implied means absolutely zero.”

  “No one who saw anything.”

  “Besides Quinnie. But Sykes believes Quinnie will be cut to pieces on the witness stand because he changes his story. At first he saw a man he didn’t know and then later says it was Arch Ferrell.”

  “He was scared.”

  “Sure he was. But think what they’ll make of those big glasses he wears. You don’t think they’ll call his eyesight into question?”

  “And no one else saw a thing.”

  “People saw a car. They heard the shots. They saw a man leaving that alley. A group of teenagers moving some office equipment out of the Coulter Building saw my dad dying on that sidewalk. So did Hugh Bentley’s mother, at her grocery, after hearing those shots. They’ve been keeping it real quiet about Fuller’s prints on the car.”

  I nodded. “But those can be explained away.”

  “Of course they can. Fuller can say he was talking to my dad the day before the killing or accid
entally touched the car after the murder. Hell, he was the lead investigator on the case.”

  “Now we have Fuller or Ferrell.”

  “Or both,” John said.

  “Or both,” I said.

  John finished the beer and placed the empty bottle back in the cooler. I lit a cigarette and settled back, feeling a little tug on my line and seeing the bobber disappear and then pop back up. I didn’t jerk the rod because I wanted the damn fish to swallow the hook whole and that quick move always lost me the fish.

  “Hilda Coulter is getting some threats,” I said. “Someone has been following her, tried to run her off the road.”

  “Fuller’s buddies.”

  “You know about what happened to that girl?”

  “The prostitute?”

  “Yes.”

  “These are evil people, Lamar. Sodom doesn’t have a thing on Phenix City.”

  “Hilda didn’t want Jack in the flower shop, said he’d make a spectacle of himself,” I said. “So he’s just keeping an eye out for her. At night, he has a couple boys keeping watch outside her house.”

  “I get those phone calls, too. So many, I don’t even answer the phone. Mostly, they say, ‘Do you want to end up like your daddy?,’ or they threaten my kids. I had a few of them checked out. But they always go back to pay phones. Not a lot you can do. Oh, that was the other thing.”

  “What?”

  “The picture. In the script, some of the gangsters drive by my house and drop a dead colored girl in the front yard.”

  “Why?”

  “I think the colored girl has a note pinned to her saying this could happen to my child.”

  “That’s pretty rough.”

  “Diamond says you have action every five minutes in a picture or else people will fall asleep. How ’bout you? How you like being sheriff now?”

  “I make less than half what I made running the filling station.”

  “But you are running.”

  “You bet.”

  “So there must be something you like.”

  “I think I look good in a suit.”

  “That shiner looks pretty good, too. You mind me asking where you got it?”

  I touched the place under my eye that had already turned purple, the swelling almost gone. “Had a little fight with a friend.”

  I told him about it.

  “So that was the last time you saw Stokes?” John asked, hooking another worm, squinting into the early-afternoon light.

  I nodded.

  “Did he leave town?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “And he knows what happened to my dad?”

  “You bet.”

  19

  REUBEN DROVE DOWN to Panama City Beach, Florida, one morning in late October, turned in to the Flamingo Motel just around two and parked right in the vacant lot, knowing the beach was a hell of a place when summer died. He killed the Buick’s engine and combed his hair in the rearview, knocking on the door that Johnnie had told him to, right next to the ice machine. The whole motel built of cinder blocks and painted a bright pink, with a big old sign outside with a flamingo in front of a palm tree. Reuben knocked again and heard some movement inside, and the door gave. He stepped back a little.

  The door creaked wide open to the cooling breeze off the ocean in the dead motel and the hum of the ice machine.

  Reuben pulled out the.38 from the flat of his back and toed the door, opening it wider, and saw a flame kick up in the darkness. Johnnie Benefield, with no shirt and a pair of swim trunks, fanned out the match and showed the palms of his hands, “No tricks, okay?”

  “Stand up,” Reuben said.

  Johnnie did and he turned around like a little girl in a recital.

  “Who’s in the toilet?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Where’s Fannie?”

  “Working on her tan.”

  “A little cold for that.”

  “Fannie’s a brave woman. Now close the door and let’s talk.”

  There was a little table by the plateglass window; big, heavy plastic curtains shut tight. Reuben walked inside and then past Johnnie – but still watching Johnnie – and checked the crapper and behind the shower curtain.

  “You are a riddle.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” Johnnie said.

  “I drove all morning, didn’t I?”

  Reuben took a seat. Johnnie plunked down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two of those little motel glasses. He cracked open the fresh bottle, still in the sack, and pushed an ice bucket forward.

  “You want some ice?”

  Reuben shook his head.

  “Go get my fucking money,” Johnnie said.

  “I didn’t bring it.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Reuben took a sip and tossed him the keys to the Buick. “Check for yourself.”

  He shook his head. “You dumb sonofabitch. Where is it?”

  “I haven’t touched it since the night we robbed Hoyt. Scouts’ honor.”

  Johnnie stubbed out his cigarette and took a seat across from Reuben at the tiny motel table. “Did you know that Fannie sunbathes with no top on? She doesn’t care who sees her, and if some maid or someone says something to her she’ll tell them to eat shit. You don’t believe me, look outside and you can see her big titties from here.”

  “I didn’t get the money ’cause I can’t get to it. Every damn move, I’m bein’ watched. I’ve been in jail for four days. Lamar Murphy is riding my ass.”

  Johnnie smiled, those big teeth showing like a hick car salesman’s. “I don’t believe a goddamn word you say. I’ll ask you again, where is my fucking money?”

  Reuben poured himself some more Jack Daniel’s. “Can you really see her titties from here?”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Reuben stood and walked to the back of the motel unit, looked out a little square window and saw a redheaded woman in white sunglasses. She was slick with sweat, red lipstick on, and, as advertised, big titties pointing toward the sky. “Well, I’ll be.”

  Reuben turned with the glass in hand, and when he fell into a sliver of light from those big plastic drapes Johnnie had a gun on him. It was a.38 just like Reuben’s. Everybody seemed to have.38s.

  “What if I decided to paint the fucking wall with your head?”

  Reuben walked in front of the mirror and checked his hair again, watching his face, those droopy Mitchum eyes.

  “Then you are dumber than I thought. You’ll never be able to cash out.”

  The.38 clicked and fell onto a void space in the gun, and Johnnie showed those big old choppers again and said: “Pow!”

  THEY TOOK THE BOTTLE AND WANDERED OUT BY THE swimming pool facing the beach, seeing Florida’s Gulf Coast “Famous Sugary Sand,” just like on the billboards. Reuben had also heard it called the “Redneck Riviera,” but it was early fall and the rednecks had all gone, leaving the miniature golf courses, shell shops, and oyster houses empty. And even though Fannie had decided to tan her boobs in the cool air, there was no one around but him and Johnnie to see them.

  Reuben walked ahead and Johnnie hung back, finding a place to sit on the diving board. He had the motel glass in his hand and pulled on a pair of black plastic sunglasses, Reuben knowing that Johnnie must’ve thought he looked like a movie star in his head.

  Reuben looked down at Fannie, who lay on a pink beach towel protected by a cardboard windscreen, the inside shiny metallic to pull in the sun. With her white sunglasses on, he couldn’t tell if she’d heard him walk up or not until he heard her say, “You’re blocking the sun.”

  Reuben looked behind him, squinting, and stepped back.

  “You got it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The inside of the silver walls looked like a little nest, with the clear bottle of Johnson’s baby oil and two more pink towels and some copies of movie-star magazines showing off Star of the Year Audrey Hepburn.

  “Pull up a seat.”

&n
bsp; “You want to put something on?”

  “Reuben, how many times have you seen my titties?”

  “I don’t reckon I recall.”

  “Exactly.”

  Fannie’s white skin had grown reddish, her face flushed. She was a curvy woman, with ample hips and just the slightest hint of a belly. She turned to drink a cocktail from the straw, and Reuben noticed her backside was big but nicely shaped. When she finished with the drink, she looked over her shoulder and caught him staring.

  “We heard you threw in with Lamar Murphy.”

  Reuben laughed. “You lost your mind.”

  “Aren’t you two big buddies?”

  “Not anymore.”

  She nodded and turned back over. “Don’t you hate it when the summer is over and you know everything is going to get all brown and ugly? I try to keep it going for as long as I can. I can tan in this little hotbox all through January. I saw the advertisement in the back of Vogue magazine. It’s all the rage in France.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “You know Johnnie will kill you if you don’t bring him the money.”

  He nodded.

  “I heard Clyde Yarborough’s in with you, too.”

  “Johnnie sure likes to run his mouth.”

  “He talks in his sleep.”

  Reuben pulled up a plastic chair and watched as Fannie flipped through the pages of Vogue and then tossed it away and then shielded her face with a copy of Look. Cover story on Deborah Kerr, another crazy redhead.

  Reuben just waited.

  “What’s it gonna take?”

  “Jesus H. Christ. Would you two let things cool off? I just got out of jail.”

  “For what?”

  “I slept in my court date.”

  “Murphy arrest you?”

  He nodded.

  “He sure has a hard-on for you. What the hell did you ever do to him?”

  “Not a damn thing. He just thinks he’s a big man ’cause of the badge. He came out to arrest me at my farm, right in front of my boy. And he kept me there longer than the law said.”

  “Why’d he do that.”

  “To play with my head. I ’bout knocked him out cold, too.”