Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5)

by Bill Fitzhugh

  When they got to Rick’s place, Crusty went straight to the litter box. Rick put on a Delta blues anthology that opened with “Stack-a-Lee,” then he made martinis and got out his cigar box. He loaded the little pipe and handed it to Lollie. She took a hit and coughed. “Heap powerful stuff,” she said. “I hope you’ve got some Oreos in the kitchen for later.”

  He sat on the sofa and took a hit, then leaned back and started to sing along with Big Bill Broonzy. “‘Stack-a-Lee turned to Billy Lyons and shot him right through the head. It only took the one shot to kill Billy Lyons dead.’ ”

  “This is such a happy song.” Lollie listened for a minute. “All that over a hat?”

  Rick smiled but didn’t say anything. He figured he’d just stay quiet until she decided to tell him her idea about finding Pigfoot’s name. Lollie didn’t seem to mind. She sipped her martini and listened to the song. It was two in the morning when the cops finally caught Stack-a-Lee and put him in jail and the song ended. Lollie looked at her watch and said, “Okay. Time to make a call. You do your long distance on your cell or your land line?”

  “Cell. Why?”

  “This is business, so I figure it ought to be on Rockin’ Vestigations’ dime.” His curiosity piqued, Rick handed her his cell phone. She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and began punching in a number.

  “That’s a pretty long number,” Rick said.

  “It’s a pretty long distance.” She covered the mouthpiece and looked at the stereo. “Could you turn that down?” Rick did, and a moment later someone came on the line causing Lollie to say, “Bonjour!”

  Rick turned and looked. “Bonjour? You better be calling New Orleans.”

  Lollie’s French was flawless. Rick’s wasn’t. “Bonjour” was the last thing he understood until she said, “Pigfoot Morgan,” which sounded funnier in a French accent than Rick would have imagined. She chattered exuberantly with whoever was at the other end. At one point she said, “Vicksburg, Mississippi,” which apparently caused a great deal of excitement for someone in France. “Oui, le lieu de naissance de Willie Dixon!” She and the French person carried on for a few more minutes before Lollie said, “Merci beaucoup, au revoir!” She ended the call and handed the phone back to Rick.

  “You’re grinning like a smug French possum,” he said. “Or are you just stoned?”

  “That was Renaud Chassery,” she said. “His company produces blues and folk festivals in Europe. He says Pigfoot’s real name is Clarence Ezekiel Morgan.”

  “Ezekiel?” Rick stood there shaking his head. “Can’t find a soul in the whole state of Mississippi with the answer, but a guy in Paris knows Pigfoot’s middle name.”

  “That’s why we had to wait,” Lollie said, tapping her watch. “Seven-hour time difference. He just got to work, so …”

  “You couldn’t just tell me that’s what we were doing?”

  She gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. “What’s the fun in that? Don’t you like surprises?”

  Rick gestured for her to follow as he walked over to his computer and logged on to the state correctional institution site. He typed “Clarence E. Morgan” in the search field. A second later a record blipped on the screen. “I’ll be damned,” Rick said. “That’s him. Born in 1931. Sentenced to fifty years for murder in 1953, which would put him in his early seventies if he’s still alive.” He scrolled down the page reading Morgan’s file until he said, “Well now, you see? I do like surprises.” He pointed at the screen. “Clarence Ezekiel ‘Pigfoot’ Morgan was released from Parchman two days before your grandfather was killed.”

  15

  RICK AND LOLLIE stayed up for a while trying to figure out how this new piece of information fit into the overall puzzle. It didn’t help that they were stoned and more than a little drunk as they attempted this, but that didn’t keep them from trying. Lollie was on her third martini when she said, “I’m just saying it seems like an awfully big coincidence that a convicted murderer with connections to guys who were connected to my grandfather gets out of prison after fifty years and two days later my grandfather gets killed.”

  “We agree on that,” Rick said as he looked out the window, toward the red lights moving on the river. “But what’s his motive? The only thing that makes half a teaspoon of sense would be if your grandfather and Suggs cheated him on a record deal.”

  Lollie wagged a finger at him. “There you go again casting dispersions on my family.”

  Rick looked over his shoulder at her and said, “Aspersions.”

  “What?” Her bloodshot eyes were beginning to droop as she lay down on the sofa.

  “One casts aspersions,” Rick said as he finished his second martini. “Though I suppose one could disperse aspersions. Anyway, I didn’t say for a fact that your grandfather was a crooked record producer. I’m just supposing, looking for a reason worth killing over.”

  “Fine. Thank you so much for restoring his good name.”

  “And besides, even if they did cheat the guy, it was half a century ago. I can’t believe any deal they might’ve made would be worth killing over now. Which brings us back to motive.”

  “Hey!” Lollie held a finger in the air as if she suddenly had the answer. “Maybe,” she said. Then she fell silent and pursed her lips in confusion.

  “Maybe what?”

  “I forgot what I was going to say.” She sat up. “Hey, you got any cookies?”

  Rick went to the kitchen. He called out, “No cookies.” He came back a moment later and handed Lollie an old jar of olives. “Best I could do,” he said.

  “I love olives!” She opened the jar and began trying to fish one out. She tilted it this way and that and shook it and looked inside and said, “Why do they even make these jars with this tiny opening? I can’t get two fingers down there and my fingers aren’t that big.” She held her hand up to examination. “Do you think my fingers are fat?”

  “I think we’re getting off point,” Rick said on his way back to the kitchen. “Let’s start over.” He returned with a fork, which he handed to Lollie. “All along we’ve been assuming that the killer is after the tapes, right?” He plopped into his BarcaLounger and kicked back, putting his feet up. “Now, what would Pigfoot Morgan want with the tapes?”

  Lollie held up the fork and, switching to a British accent, said, “Elementary, my dear Watson. He’s been in prison for fifty years and now he’s dead broke and too old to work, so he plans to sell them to fund his retirement.”

  Rick figured the third martini had just reached her head. “He wouldn’t have the slightest idea how or where to begin selling the tapes. I mean, I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you learn in the prison yard or the fields of Parchman farm. Besides, why would he risk going back to jail?”

  Lollie was chewing a mouthful of olives and looking at her hands. “I think I have very elegant fingers.” She wiggled them in front of her face. “Look at that, slender and graceful. I could have been a piano player. Or a surgeon. Or a jeweler.”

  At this point she’d gone from cute to useless, so Rick continued theorizing on his own. “Maybe we’re looking for the motive to the wrong killing,” he said. “Maybe the connection has to do with why he killed Hamp Doogan. Didn’t Tillman say witnesses saw Pigfoot and Doogan arguing outside that juke joint the night everything happened?” He thought about it for a moment. “No, it was Suggs, so that doesn’t make any sense. Damn.”

  Lollie was curling up in the fetal position on the sofa just as he said this, tucking her elegant hands between her knees. She said, “Hmmm?”

  “It’d be good to know what they were arguing about, though.”

  Eyes closed, she responded with a lazy “Mmmm.”

  Rick figured that would be something to ask Buddy Cotton when they saw him. He sat up in the chair. “What do you say we call it a night?”

  There was a short pause before Lollie responded with the sort of snoring Rick imagined Keith Richards might be capable of. Rick pushed himself
out of the BarcaLounger and went to his room, returning a moment later with a blanket. He covered Lollie and said, “Sweet dreams, Sherlock.”

  “ BITE IT,” RICK said. “Don’t just lick it.” He looked at Lollie. “Does that seem weird to you?”

  “Yeah, he’ll bite my head but not his food?” She was rooting through her purse looking for the Advil. “Listen, do me a favor,” she said. “Next time you see me going for a third martini, stop me.” She opened the fridge and found some orange juice. She drank straight from the carton.

  Rick pointed at Crusty, hunched over his food. “He just licks the stuff around the dish until it’s all in the corners and then he just stares at it until I scrape it all back into a pile in the middle of the dish for him.”

  “Maybe if you make it into the shape of my head.”

  “I don’t think he’d make it in the wild.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” Lollie said, turning to head for the bathroom. “I couldn’t live without a hot shower.”

  Rick made coffee while she steamed up the apartment. Afterward, they walked down to the casino to get Rick’s truck. It was a soft summer morning, billowy clouds drifting across the Mississippi. Lollie was wearing jeans and a “Springsteen 2003 Tour” T-shirt she’d borrowed from Rick since she hadn’t thought to bring a change of clothes. She admitted this was at least partly her fault, as she had failed to anticipate three martinis and the improvements they’d made in marijuana over the past ten years. Lollie had Crusty, in his case. “You know, a certain someone crept into my bed late last night and cuddled up with me.”

  “Fickle slut,” Rick said.

  “What?”

  “The cat.”

  “Oh. Well, at least he didn’t bite me again.” She stuck a finger into the carrier and stroked his head. “I tell you what surprised me, though. He snores like a goddamn Harley.”

  Rick wagged a finger at Lollie. “Uhh, people in glass houses.” He shook his head.

  She stopped cold and said, “I don’t snore.”

  “No, you’re right,” Rick said, stopping to look back at her. “There’s probably a better word for that noise you were making, a medical term perhaps.”

  After her momentary huff, she started walking again. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  “Have you tried those adhesive strips?”

  They got in the truck and headed for Shipley’s Donuts. They picked up a couple of chocolate-glazed donuts and two coffees for the road before starting the drive to Ruleville.

  Lollie asked if Blind Buddy Cotton knew they were coming. Rick said he hadn’t called ahead, said he’d found people will tell you not to come or they’ll be gone when you get there if they know a private investigator is coming to ask a bunch of questions. “If you just show up,” he said, “and catch them off guard, you have a better chance of getting them to talk, at least a little.”

  When they got to Ruleville, which was essentially the intersection of Highways 8 and 49, they pulled into a convenience store to ask for directions. There was a guy milling around in front, apparently working on the old Ford Galaxy with the hood popped open. Lollie kept her eye on him while Rick went inside.

  The guy looked worse than Merle Haggard at the end of a bender. He was shirtless and his right arm was in a filthy sling. Lollie thought it looked like somebody had tried to skin the guy, starting with the arm, but had stopped when they saw the stringy quality of the meat. It was the sort of wound most people would gob up with ointment and cover in gauze, but this was open to the air, all raw and nervy. He was smoking a cigarette like it would save his sorry life if he sucked on it hard enough, and his eyes had that I-stopped-taking-my-meds look: angry, agitated, and one false move from making the news.

  Rick came out with a paper sack and directions. He handed Lollie a cranberry juice. “The guy said it’s the first left after the Murray Gin sign.”

  Five minutes later they turned onto a dirt driveway. They could see the house up ahead. Getting closer, they spotted an old man sitting on the porch in the heat of the day. He was wearing a brown suit, dark glasses, and a gray felt hat. He was rocking slightly in a metal lawn chair, a guitar at his side. Rick said, “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s your Blind Buddy Cotton.”

  IT WASN’? EVERY day that a car turned onto Buddy’s property. And on those days when it did happen, Buddy never knew what to expect. Sometimes people just got lost and needed to ask directions, other times it was a writer working on a story about the lost bluesmen of the Delta. Every now and then it was a carload of newly hatched blues fans who thought they could just show up and get him to play a song or two, as if the Mississippi Board of Tourism had installed him on that porch for their personal entertainment.

  Over time Buddy had come to look forward to these unannounced visits; they gave him a chance to puff up and strut a little about his place in what used to be. It was the taste of fame he hungered for, the recognition he felt he’d been denied. But lately, every time a car pulled onto his property, Buddy tensed up, thinking the Grim Reaper might be in the driver’s seat. He didn’t know if Pigfoot would just pull up in broad daylight to take care of his business, but he might. So Buddy sat on his porch with his guitar, his walking stick, and his pistol in his pocket.

  At first, from a distance, all he could see was a truck he didn’t recognize. When it got closer, Buddy could see it was just a white couple, so he relaxed a bit. They looked like the types who might be looking to do some kind of interview, so he got his Blind Buddy persona ready to go. He let loose of the pistol and picked up the guitar just as Rick pulled to a stop in front of the house.

  They got out and approached the front porch. Buddy gave a courtly nod and, aiming his glasses slightly off center from where his guests were standing, said, “All right now, who’m I talkin’ to?”

  “Mr. Cotton? My name’s Rick Shannon. This is Lollie Woolfolk.” They were standing directly in the sunlight, shading their eyes to see. Rick’s shirt was already sticking to his back.

  Lollie said, “Good afternoon.”

  Buddy touched the rim of his hat. “Aft’noon,” he said, thinking that since they already knew who he was, they probably wanted to do an interview with him. He gestured for them to join him on the porch. “C’mon up here in the shade,” he said.

  They stepped up to the porch and shook hands. Rick pulled out his business card; it had “Rockin’ Vestigations” on one side and “WVBR” on the other. He held it out to Buddy without considering his eyesight. To his surprise, Buddy took it, slipped it in his pocket, and said, “Tell me what I can do for you.”

  “Thanks,” Lollie said. “We’d like to talk to you if you have a moment.”

  Buddy nodded. Just as he’d suspected. He said, “Well now, lemme guess. You wanna interview me for something you writing? About my music?” He held the guitar and lightly brushed the strings. “Well, you come to the right place. But I ain’t gone tell you I played with Robert Johnson, ‘cause I didn’t. Most people say they did are lyin’ anyway. But I did spend some times on Stovall’s Plantation and I made plenny sounds with Muddy Waters and Elmore James and whole bunch others and—”

  “No, sir,” Rick said, cutting him off. “That’s not why we’re here. I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into a couple of murders.”

  Buddy’s surprise was obvious. “Two murders?” The words gave him pause. He figured it had to be Crippled Willie and Crazy Earl. Damn. Pigfoot wasn’t wasting any time, probably because at his age he didn’t have much to waste. He would come gunning for Buddy any day now, that much was certain. And he’d be expecting it to be easy. But he was gone get a fight. Not like his friends. Earl was probably drunk and Willie probably just stood there and prayed. Easy targets.

  But what about these two standing on his porch? he wondered. If they looked hard enough, they might start shining a light on things Buddy would just as soon keep in the dark. He figured the best thing was to play along, give ’em some answers that’d send �
�em the wrong way, act like none of it mattered. He turned his dark glasses toward Rick and said, “What’s it got to do with me?”

  “Nothing directly, as far as we know,” Rick said.

  By this point Buddy’s expression and tone changed from happy ambassador of the blues to fearful and wary prey. “Wha’ choo mean by ‘nothing d’rectly’?”

  “Well, it’s sort of a roundabout connection,” Rick said, sensing the sudden tension. “I was talking to the man who runs the blues museum in Vicksburg and he told me about a recording session in the early 1950s with you and Crippled Willie Jefferson and a guy named Earl Tate.”

  “That’s who been killed, innit?” He said it like he already knew it to be true.

  “No, sir,” Rick said. “It was Tucker Woolfolk and Lamar suggs.”

  Buddy shook his head, his expression still grim. This news wasn’t any better. It just meant Pigfoot was working off a longer list of people. He turned his face toward Lollie. “You say your name is Woolfolk?”

  “Yes, sir, Tucker was my grandfather. I hired Mr. Shannon here to find out who killed him.”

  Buddy touched the rim of his hat again. “My condolences,” he said. “When’d all this happen?”

  “In the past week or so,” Rick said. “A couple of days after a man named Clarence Morgan got out of Parchman. He used to go by the name of—”

  “Pigfoot.”

  “Yes, sir. You knew him?”

  “Just narrowly. We wasn’t associates or anything. I considered myself about ten years elder to him. He used to work at this cotton-compress company where I—” Without warning, Buddy hunched over and launched into a deep, rasping cough. He reached to his pocket, then covered his mouth until the spasm passed and his tongue pushed the matter into the waiting handkerchief.

  Lollie bent down, putting her hand on his back. “Are you all right?”