Dark End of the Street - v4

by Ace Atkins

  “Who was the kid with Ransom? Tell me and I’ll leave. You’ll never see me again.”

  “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” he said and smiled. He gave a short laugh that I could tell was rare. “But that’s the question. That’s what you’ve been looking for ever since you came to Memphis, even before you started hassling me.”

  I rubbed my hands together. My skin was chapped. I wanted to leave Memphis. I was beginning to hate being here. But where would I go now?

  “Didn’t have to look too hard, Big Chief.”

  I watched his craggy face. I said: “Kid’s name was Judas.”

  “Yeah, I know his name. Spoiled punk who wanted to piss off his daddy and thought he was gangster at seventeen. Ran errands for Ransom at his pool hall on Beale after he’d been kicked out of some Nashville prep school.”

  “Still around?”

  “Oh, yes,” Cook said, smiling. “Might even be our next governor.”

  I felt a knot form in my throat and a rush of adrenaline heat my blood. My mouth opened a little, feeling dry, and I watched Cook’s eyes for a hint that this was a joke.

  “Now let me ask you a question, Travers,” Cook said. He took off his weathered weight belt, the sun extinguishing on the horizon. “How hard would it be for a U.S. senator to make some nasty crime in the black section of Memphis go away? A U.S. fucking senator. This was ‘sixty-eight. Right? Not too many P.C. cops. Most probably swallowed everything that fucker said about segregation.”

  I was half-listening now. My mind already speeding ahead. I felt like I was barely holding on to the edge of the stilted balcony. I could imagine the wood tearing loose from the house and tumbling down the hill and into the water.

  “Two dead blacks,” Cook said, now lecturing. “A murder that everyone believed was a domestic thing. Wouldn’t take too much to disappear.”

  I thought about the Sons of the South and Abby’s father. An old cop like Raymond L. Jenkins would’ve been the only one who could’ve kept an original file, no names blacked out. A blackmail scheme set in motion by a bitter old bastard and only furthered by a misguided Oxford attorney. They could’ve easily changed the election.

  “Russell’s been chained to him ever since,” Cook said. “Now Ransom is just calling in his chips.”

  “So Russell flips his stance on gambling?” I asked, looking down at the riverfront and some old tourist paddle wheelers tying up for the storm. “He’ll allow it down there?”

  Cook watched me and shook his head. “Now why would the Dixie Mafia invest all that money in Tunica if Memphis wasn’t that far behind?”

  I felt a spot of rain on my cheek. The wind began to blow harder.

  I understood why Cook lived on the Bluffs.

  Chapter 57

  JUDE RUSSELL DIDN’T want him here. He hated every time that son of a bitch ever tried to make contact. The last time he’d seen him was about a week ago when Ole Miss was playing Auburn and Ransom had shown up at a party thrown by the CEO of a company that made kitchen appliances. He stood there and ate fried chicken and drank whiskey with one of his whores like he belonged among them. But Levi Ransom would never belong. He had the stink of gutter trash that seeped from his pores like urine and testosterone. No matter how many millions he stole or killed for, Ransom would always be that yellow-toothed hood that for some twisted reason he’d found so damned appealing when he was a teenager. How stupid could a boy be? He’d alienated everyone who’d tried to help him, thought his daddy was the Antichrist and his mother a babbling drunk. But Levi Ransom, with his greased ducktail and hot-rodded Mustang, was about the coolest thing he’d ever known.

  At sixteen, he’d met Ransom at this little pool hall down on Beale. He’d liked the street before it had changed. Blues. Beer. Good dope. Women. Ransom knew every darkened corner of the street. He’d buy him pitchers of beer and let him play pool for free and get women to do things to him that he’d never imagined in the bedroom of his Germantown mansion.

  He’d walk over to Russell stretched over the cigarette-burned felt of a pool table and stick two fingers under his nose. He’d point to some teenager, drunk or stoned, leaning against the old brick wall of the bar, and let him know it was his turn. Ransom was like that. He tried to make you think he shared it all.

  Russell didn’t have too many friends. How could you when you changed boarding schools about every month and most people only wanted to talk about your daddy? Ransom was twenty-five and had a look like he’d been around the world a dozen times and was not too impressed with what he saw. He’d brag about setting fire to a courthouse in south Mississippi when he was fourteen by using a cigarette and pack of matches. He said he’d killed thirteen men, two of them with a buck knife, for not paying their debts.

  Most of all, when he was drunk, he’d brag about being part of an organization out of Biloxi. He said he’d gotten in good because his granddaddy had ties with a man who owned a club down there. Said when he got kicked out of the service, he started running poker and blackjack tables for the man. And pretty soon, Ransom said, he was involved in more complicated games like turning out little girls and using them to bait businessmen. He said a pack of Polaroids could net you a mighty nice return.

  He called his pool hall on Beale just a little starter kit. Said it was an office for much bigger things that were happening. But he never did explain what those things were until the night of Russell’s seventeenth birthday when they sat loaded up on Falstaff outside a little grocery in south Memphis. Ransom handed him a .45 and told him to go in and get back some change.

  Funny how one moment can change your life forever. He should have walked away. He should’ve understood that Ransom was only using him the way he’d used the little girls he’d turned out. But he didn’t. He only thought of a daddy who returned to Memphis from D.C. to talk about the safety of keeping blacks in their place and a mother who had her maid drop off a birthday cake while she drove to Florida with the church deacon.

  Russell knew that .45 felt good that night. Felt so good he’d even smacked the head of the fat-ass clerk who’d laughed at him when he asked him to empty the drawer into a paper sack.

  Ransom had called that night his baptism. And anytime that he tried to resist the jobs, usually only when he was sober, Ransom would smile at him like he’d been there himself and laugh. “We ain’t like other people, you and me. We are takers.”

  The money didn’t mean shit. But the you and me part meant everything.

  They probably robbed twenty-five stores over the summer of ‘sixty-eight while the world fretted over Kennedy and King, men who later became his heroes.

  He never knew how much they got. Never really asked. He’d blow almost the whole thing at strip clubs and on whiskey and weed.

  He might have stayed in it forever if he hadn’t begged Ransom to take him along that night around Christmas. He’d shown up at the pool hall, pissed off at his parents for having some big party that spilled into his bedroom where he’d found some old gray-headed woman looking through his record collection and making fun of the singers’ clothes. She said Mick Jagger looked like a girl and dropped the record on the floor like it was infested with bugs.

  The woman didn’t see him till he called her a withered bag of shit and stole the keys to his mamma’s Buick station wagon. He’d found Ransom rolling the pool balls around the table with his fingers and absently looking at his watch.

  He could tell that Ransom was awful mad about something as he guided each ball into pockets as if he were their God.

  When he saw Russell, he said he didn’t have time.

  And damn if Russell didn’t beg to help. Ransom wasn’t even listening to him as he slipped into his coat — that is, until he mentioned stealing his mamma’s Buick. At the time, Russell had actually believed Ransom was impressed, not that he didn’t want to use his own ride.

  Ransom made him drink half a bottle of tequila on the way to that house on Rosewood and handed him a pair of leather gloves. Sh
ut up. Follow me. Listen to what I say, kid.

  Jesus Christ, Russell thought, his mind a blur of blood and gunshots. Jesus Christ.

  Russell broke from the memory and walked along the high log fence around his hunting lodge in Alligator. He heard the hum of a car’s motor on the other side and wanted more than anything to keep him out. Especially now.

  But just as if he were still seventeen, he pressed the button for the gate to slide open and waited for Ransom to drive through. It was important, Ransom assured him. It was about the election.

  The election was two weeks away and he was having nighttime meetings with one of the leaders of the Dixie Mafia. Jesus.

  Russell didn’t take him inside his hunting lodge. Didn’t even offer. He knew Ransom expected to be treated like a guest. Served warm Bourbon on the cold night, maybe a sandwich or dinner prepared. He had to be crazy.

  Russell would keep him outside with the rest of the dogs.

  Russell had a Browning tucked in the side pocket of his slicker and a flashlight in his hand. They followed a path next to a little creek wrapping the eastern edge of his property as a light, cold rain began to fall.

  “I want your word on this, Jude.”

  Russell kept on walking down the same path he’d been clearing for years. He kicked away some stones from the dirt and looked into the distance where the trees began to gather in a thicket of forest.

  Russell stopped, feeling strong on his own land with his own gun. He looked at Ransom’s tanned face and bleached teeth. Ransom had animal smarts but didn’t know about educated people. He was so stupid, thinking he could still control him after all these years. Russell had left that all behind. He’d gone back to college. Gotten a Masters in business from Vanderbilt, brought his uncle’s cotton business into the modern age and doubled their profits, married a fine woman, and raised a good Christian family.

  “You listen to me,” he said, trying to stop his voice from shaking. “Don’t you ever come to my house, walk in my presence, or call me again. Do you understand? I made some mistakes when I was a child. But I am about to be governor of the state of Tennessee. I will have you put in prison if you approach me again. I let you come here only as a warning.”

  Ransom started cackling and pulled his loose gray hair into a ponytail, knotting the wet mass at the back of his head. His gray hair was receding. His eyes were black.

  He smiled at Jude and put his arm around him. Russell felt dirty just smelling the man’s rancid breath and pushed him away.

  “All right, Jude,” he said with that same loose, rotten grin. “That’s fair. We’ll call it even. You keep those casinos out of Memphis like we agreed and I’ll call it square on that couple I killed in Oxford. For you.” Ransom spoke a little louder when he said that, like the killings were his present. “I think that’s a good old trade. Filled that couple full of holes myself. That fat country boy squirmed on the floor in his own piss talking shit about the South rising again.”

  “I never asked you.”

  “No, you never asked. But I’m sure you wanted to be questioned about killing some niggers back in ‘sixty-eight. During the election? Didn’t you? Would’ve kind of gotten away from them issues you love so much.”

  “I didn’t even know that lawyer.”

  “Why’d you send me that file then, like it was a burnin’ sack of dogshit left on your porch?”

  “That night involved you. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yeah, we are all dirty in this.”

  Ransom got closer and stuck two fingers under Russell’s nose. “We share it all.”

  The gesture sickened Russell and he felt like he might vomit. The trail grew rockier and suddenly ended in a stretch of high weeds. The wind was cold as hell and made his face feel tight. “How do we know there isn’t another copy of that file?”

  Ransom shrugged. “We don’t.”

  Russell spit on the ground and kept walking away, back to his house.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Ransom said. “Seems that someone saw you killin’ them niggers that night. Right there in that report. Since you’re done with me, I guess I’ll leave him.”

  Russell stopped and turned. “We talked about this. That man is legally insane.”

  Ransom nodded and stroked his salt-and-pepper beard, taking a wider stance on his land. He was wearing all black with crocodile boots. Silver rings and a turquoise bracelet.

  “Seems like he’s getting better,” Ransom said. “And he’s gettin’ some help from some man named Travers. Guess you know about him already. Don’t you? Hard when they come and knock on your door.”

  “Why is he doing this?”

  “Some nigger woman is his friend. Her brother is Clyde James. But don’t worry, Jude. We’re takin’ good care of you, son.”

  Jude Russell opened his mouth to speak and felt for the gun in his pocket. His fingers couldn’t grip it. He couldn’t grip the damned gun even though Ransom was right there on his ground. But if he killed him, what would come of that? Shooting any man wouldn’t win any votes. And Ransom was just an arm of the Dixie Mafia, others would follow. More powerful men than him in Biloxi.

  He pulled his hand from his pocket.

  Ransom laughed. “You gonna say something, Jude?”

  Chapter 58

  SINCE I LEFT New Orleans, I’d been trying to reach JoJo. I’d let the phone ring a million times at his house and then, almost in a masochistic way, I’d listen to Loretta greet me on the bar’s voicemail. At home, I’d left him a message with U’s number telling him that I was thinking of him. I felt that was all I could do. But that morning, I finally got in touch with Loretta at the hospital. She answered the phone in her room like she owned the whole damned place and didn’t have time for small talk.

  “You shouldn’t be answering the phone.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “They got that bullet out, boy.”

  I asked how she’d been feeling and she told me they got her out of bed last night and that she was finally walking again. She gave me some pretty gruesome particulars on the surgery and how the Lord had kept the bullet away from the important stuff. She said a quarter of an inch either way would’ve killed her. She told me the story like a testimonial on faith, but it only made me madder and more determined.

  “How’s JoJo?”

  She was quiet for a second. “He ain’t happy.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said. “I’ll rebuild that bar with my teeth if I have to.”

  “Give him a while,” she said. “He ain’t so sure he wants it back. Insurance made him a decent offer and we thinkin’ about headin’ up to Clarksdale for a while.”

  “The farm?” I asked, knowing all about JoJo’s dream to clear out land that his family had owned since Reconstruction and renovate the old farmhouse where he grew up. He talked about it all the time. But that’s what I always thought he was doing, talking. A few beers always led to discussion about that old farm in Clarksdale. Sometimes I swore he was about to run for the back door with his toolbox.

  “You tell me what y’all need,” I said.

  She paused for a second. Again. “Nick, come home. It’s over.”

  “Not quite.”

  I told her that I loved her and hung up the pay phone. I sat there for a moment watching a business across the street. Still didn’t see what I wanted.

  Then I made a call to U. I told him what I’d been doing and asked him to make a few calls. I finished a bottle of Coke and continued to watch the front entrance of a defunct grocery store. A place that Jude Russell had been using for his campaign headquarters.

  It was about 11:00 and I hadn’t slept since leaving Cook’s place last night. Eventually U had turned off the light at his apartment while I watched flickering images from Support Your Local Sheriff. Sometime around 2:00 A.M. ole James Garner gave me an idea while Abby slept on a nearby futon.

  I had watched the early gray light leak through the curtai
ns and made coffee before driving down Poplar for some hot biscuits from a Krystal. There, at a greasy table, I’d worked out my ideas on a notebook that contained interviews on the life of Guitar Slim.

  At the south Memphis grocery, now teeming with Russell supporters, I saw political wrangler Royal Stewart get into an old Audi and drive east.

  I smiled.

  I had a plan.

  By God, I had a plan.

  I never gave a shit for country clubs. First off, I hated golf more than cocktail parties of any type, Cajun food served at chain restaurants, the work of Tom Clancy, New Age music, those annoying posters about success and priorities and all that shit (do you really need a poster to remind you?), and men who compete in X-treme sports.

  Maybe I was generalizing, but judging from a few fellas I saw grab-assing on a nearby green, I had the feeling that the Memphis Country Club boiled with such high-minded individuals.

  The club was pretty much what I expected as I hopped a side fence, watching some security guard, and waded through the Land Rovers and BMWs and other jackass vehicles.

  Nearby, Royal Stewart’s dirty Audi stood out like a turd on a wedding cake.

  Huge oaks and magnolias with wide branches filled the grounds near the main building. I buttoned up my suede coat, stood a little straighter with a manila envelope stuffed with papers, and walked right through the glass doors with purpose. It was about the same way I acted when I walked through the projects; I made myself look like I had somewhere to be.

  Inside, the walls were painted green and pink with lots of stained wood. Several glass trophy cases where people stored insignificant awards.

  As I rounded a turn, a white-headed woman with impossibly high eyebrows stopped and asked if she could help me. I told her I had plans to meet Mr. Stewart for lunch. With a grunt, she said she didn’t recognize the name.