Dark End of the Street

by Ace Atkins

  Apparently the roadwork had only gone so far. It ended over the gully where my Bronco had simply dropped down into its muddy bucket, struck a fat little oak, and slammed to a stop. My front windshield was cracked pretty badly on the driver’s side and the front end was smashed in pretty good, too.

  “I’m so sorry, Nick.”

  “How far do you think we’re in this place?”

  “Couple miles,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking back down the road we had traveled. “Let’s follow the edges but keep out of sight. Okay?”

  I walked over to the Bronco, feeling pretty damned bad about what had happened to her, not thinking about me or the two psychos that were tramping around the woods looking for us. Nope, just thinking about the old Gray Ghost and wondering if she was salvageable.

  I pulled open the passenger door; it rocked open slightly ajar and completely fucked up, and leaned inside.

  I grabbed my Army travel bag and for some reason the stupid face plate from my CD changer, like theft was my biggest worry, and opened the lockbox for the papers.

  But it had already been opened.

  The metal top ripped from the hinges. My CDs were there. My old Ford manuals. My coffee mugs and crap.

  I felt her behind me looking over my shoulder. She began to cry.

  I snaked back out of the truck.

  I felt like crying, too.

  Whatever it was, they had it.

  Chapter 36

  LEVI RANSOM WASN’T so scary. He didn’t talk in a whisper or have some kind of weird quirk like rattling off the names of venomous snakes or collect stories of particularly gruesome suicides. He didn’t like to watch videos with little girls wrestling in their panties or have a fetish about smelly feet. Nope. Levi Ransom was just a man. Maybe a cutthroat bastard. Maybe the kind of guy who’d bury you in three southern states if you lied to him. But he also liked good bourbon, cheap drugstore cigarettes, and quick meaningless sex. He had his sex like some ate a damned cheeseburger. Didn’t even taste it, just devoured the whole thing as fast as he could.

  When old Jake died, Perfect didn’t have anybody. She’d been stuck at that stupid carnival he was running in Biloxi for almost a week until Levi showed up. She just remembered sitting in that L.S.U. beanbag chair and listening to Ransom run down her options. Most of them sucked. Dancer. Hooker. Back on her own.

  But then he asked if she’d come with him to Jamaica that same day. His voice was so damned warm and it was hot as hell outside. Jake hadn’t paid the electricity for the carnival to run and most of the carnies had moved back down to Gibtown or wherever they lived. She had on a dirty tanktop with no bra and red silk panties.

  He just kept looking at her legs, waiting for her to decide.

  “Beach or shithole city,” he said, opening the door, allowing the hot-ass air that smelled like stale cotton candy to brush into the room.

  The next day, he’d mounted her. He pressed her face into a pillow and took about five minutes to do his work. Then, he jumped up and told her to get dressed, talking about steaks and whiskey. She barely had time to catch her breath.

  The dominance and the short sex continued for two years till he found a cocktail waitress with thirty-six double Ds and rusty-red hair.

  Tonight, in one of the thousands of honeycomb rooms at the Grand, he had the same look on his face as he did that day in the trailer. She had no false notions that he was recalling that walk up the long waterfall when he swatted her ass and told her dirty jokes or when he was arrested after shooting an alligator in some run-down zoo.

  No, he was just thinking about eating another cheeseburger. And while he flipped through those papers Jon had pulled from that wrecked Bronco, she knew she’d done pretty good.

  He stubbed out another Vantage. A dozen already curled up like little blackened worms in the ashtray.

  “They’re alive?” he asked.

  He was alone with her and Jon. The room was just a double. A lacquered two-seater table. Bolted-down television and phone with a red bubble light for messages.

  Jon looked at his zip boots. She looked at Ransom’s eyes. Pissed off, but not really. He just kept watching her damned tits.

  “We walked those woods for two hours, Levi. Don’t give me any shit. I have leaves in my hair, blisters on my heels, and dirt up my ass. So don’t start.”

  He cackled out one of his bourbon-soaked laughs and gathered the papers before him. His gray hair dropped over his skin, weathered the color of an old horse saddle. His eyes blue and hard.

  “Y’all did fine. Kid?”

  Jon walked forward.

  “Ten thousand sound all right to you?”

  “No.”

  “No? For not doin’ shit.”

  “I don’t want nothin’. I always finish.”

  Ransom, dressed in a white suit and black linen shirt, got up with a groan and walked into the bathroom. Place smelled of plastic and fresh paint. She didn’t believe it had ever been used.

  She followed and watched his back and heard the click of a lighter. He turned and she saw the papers starting to brown and curl in his hands edged with orange and blue flames. The air now smelled rancid.

  Not like paper. Like some kind of animal cooking.

  She walked back to the two chairs and the small table overlooking the Grand’s parking lot. She wondered what it had all been. What was so damned important that he’d had two people killed and wanted to do in two more?

  Perfect watched a real junker car turn into the lot. Car held together with duct tape and Bondo and glue. A man in his early twenties got out. White. Blue jeans and NASCAR T-shirt.

  He stood for a moment watching the neon twirl round that silly fake Gone with the Wind facade as a teenage girl, pregnant as hell, followed and came around behind him. He snapped back to her and fired off some mean words. And the teenager kept moving to him. She reached out and held his hand. The man turned to watch her in the glow of the parking lot lamps.

  Perfect couldn’t quite see what was happening. But she thought they were both crying. Yeah, pretty damned sure.

  “Perfect?”

  She turned.

  “Y’all have two hours to get to Memphis for a flight.”

  Jon hung back. His face half hidden by shadows, split down the middle by a tableside light.

  Levi said, “New Orleans.”

  She looked at him. Her mind still kind of on the sad little couple.

  “One last piece.”

  She looked back at Jon. Nothing. Just the split face.

  “Last week, I sent some people down to take care of a man I should’ve killed thirty years ago. They didn’t get shit. But I know his sister is shielding him. I know it. You get her. All right? You find out. This is your thing, Perfect. They always open up their damn souls to you in five minutes. Find out where he’s hidin’.”

  He smiled.

  Thirty years ago. That was a long time to be pissed off, she thought. But it made sense. Those papers were a bunch of police reports and court files from Memphis.

  All seemed to be from December 1968.

  The Waffle House was the place to be when people were trying to kill you. I mean, you’d really have to work at it. Shoot through about a dozen grizzled old fuckers cutting waffles and greasy eggs. They’d probably catch the bullets in their teeth and keep on chewing, I thought as I pressed a wet napkin filled with clumped ice to my head. I still felt sick as hell. Almost as bad as when this 330-pound tackle for the 49ers sat on me during an exhibition game and kicked me in the helmet as he walked away. I remember trying to jump on his back but someone yanked me off. Then I blacked out.

  Abby watched my eyes, her brows drawn together.

  “You ever been kicked in the head?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Kind of feel that way.”

  She shrugged and finished her cheeseburger.

  A cheeseburger. A Coke. A pat on the head. Sorry someone was trying to kill us.


  Man, ole Abby was taking it in stride, though. You’d think she’d be pissed off as hell, or frightened. But she wasn’t. She was resolved. Fucking resolved. Wanting to track all her worries to the source.

  “You look terrible,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “No, really. Your forehead is all swollen. You look like that kid from that movie. You know, where he wants to drive motorcycles across Africa and Sam Elliot is his adopted dad?”

  “Mask. And thanks again.”

  “No problem,” she said, and smiled.

  “That’s the second truck I’ve killed in as many years.”

  “What happened to the other one?”

  “Some old man I’d been tracking paid a couple of Haitian guys to ram me. Broke my arm. I guess I’m lucky tonight. Just broke my head.”

  “You look terrible.”

  “You said.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  The waitress walked over and plunked down the check in front of me. Kind of surly about it. One of those you-cheap-bastard-for-not-ordering-a-thing looks. She had, honest to God, two gold teeth, a tattoo of Jim Morrison on her neck, and a nose ring. This was Mississippi, not Los Angeles. Everything was a mess. Cable television had fed us into a blender that made social clusterfuck cocktails from pop culture.

  She chewed gum. Stared for a second, gold teeth bright as hell, and walked away.

  “Peace,” I said to myself.

  “So?” Abby asked.

  “I called U.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He made fun of me.”

  She looked concerned.

  “Oh, don’t worry. It’s what we do to each other. One time this little sawed-off halfback cut-blocked me while I was rushing a quarterback.” I smiled at her. “Just a footnote, I’m not going to talk football with you a bunch. Who gives a shit, right? Just about U. Anyway, this little sawed-off dude cut me at the knees and really made me twirl in the air. Quarterback ran around my end for a TD. U bent over, offered his hand, just smiling and laughing like hell, and said, ‘Man, I never knew you could fly, Travers.’ “

  I laughed, pain shooting through my head, and dropped the iced napkin to the floor. “Shit.”

  Abby grabbed my hand. “You all right?”

  I nodded. The world stopped spinning. For a second.

  “He also thought it was pretty damned funny that I’d drive the old Ghost into a hole. Why did I tell him? A hole.”

  Abby watched me.

  “He’ll be here soon and we’ll go back to Memphis.”

  “And then what?”

  I watched the road waiting for my friend. Nowhere, Mississippi. For some reason I thought about one of my favorite lines from The Magnificent Seven.

  “You hear what the man said right after he jumped from the twenty-story building?”

  She shook her head, eating her cheeseburger. Dirt all in her matted hair and in loose clumps over her shirt.

  I smiled at her. “So far so good.”

  Chapter 37

  WHEN WE GOT BACK to Memphis, U had a big surprise for me. He had me kind of wondering anyway; I thought he’d at least ask Abby and me to stay with him at his place in Midtown. But when he didn’t, looping back to the Peabody after getting my head checked at some doc-in-the-box, I should’ve figured he was up to something.

  Man, we looked terrible walking into the hotel lobby, some kind of convention just breaking up around the bar. The Peabody was all dark wood and marble, brass rails and oriental carpets. The smell of aged whiskey and the gentle notes of a jazz piano. The kind of place that made you feel you had a couple more zeros in your bank account. The hotel had given lodging to Faulkner and Robert E. Lee, and local legend says the Delta begins right in its lobby and stretches out to Vicksburg. Still, most tourists just remember their mascot ducks that paddle around in the fountain all day before returning to their rooftop roost.

  But the ducks were long gone by the time we got back. It was late, approaching midnight, when we tracked mud over those oriental carpets looking for a place to fall asleep. U’s truck would’ve done nicely.

  But instead of heading with us to the front desk, U stopped cold and pointed to a couch in the center of the lobby. I could barely make out who was waiting for us. I mean, it was a convention of real jackasses. Laughing at bad jokes. Drinking that free company alcohol. A couple slow dancing without music.

  But then she turned around.

  Loretta.

  Dressed in a floor-length black suede coat, a black turtleneck sweater dress, and tall black boots. She was smoking; Loretta hadn’t smoked for two decades.

  Suddenly, I felt like I was about ten and my mother had come down the street to make me come home for dinner. My face and neck heated with embarrassment.

  “Said not to tell you,” U said.

  “Thanks.”

  This was all I needed, Loretta coming up to check on me. She did the same damn thing when the Saints threw me off the team and about everyone I knew had quit me. My girlfriend at the time was sleeping her way through New Orleans social hounds and I had gotten myself into an intimate relationship with bottles of Jack and Beam.

  Loretta found me at this biker bar by the Riverbend puking in some bushes. She didn’t say a word but grabbed my ass, stuck me in the back of JoJo’s El Dorado, and drove me back to my warehouse. Never did ask how she knew I was there.

  “What, you ain’t happy to see me?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said. My head beginning to throb. “Where’s JoJo?”

  “Lord, look at you. Ulysses, you do this to my boy? I told y’all, you ain’t young men anymore. Fightin’ like kids.”

  “I was in an accident.”

  She touched my head and then patted my face. “You’ll be fine. And JoJo ain’t here. I took the train myself this afternoon. He had the damned nerve to ask me how he was supposed to eat. I told him to serve himself some of that “jump up” breakfast. He asked what it was and tole him that was the kind where he jump up off his ass to make it.”

  U laughed. My head kept throbbing so I didn’t try.

  “And who is this?” she asked, looking over at Abby.

  I introduced her to Loretta, and for a moment – knowing every one of her facial expressions – she thought I was scamming on one of my students. Abby was in her twenties, but I was well aware she looked about fifteen. She was polite to Loretta, even offered her hand while looking at the ground.

  Loretta just reached over and held Abby to her fattened bosom. Loretta always had the ability to find people who were in pain. Sometimes in her show, she’d spot some poor bastard who truly was living the blues and start making him laugh. It was beautiful. It was a gift.

  U said, “Good to see you, Loretta. You got him now?”

  She smiled and wrapped her other thick arm around my waist.

  “Hey, man,” U said. “Come on with me for a second.”

  I got untangled from the family hug, Loretta already seated with Abby and plying her with questions, and followed U back out to his Expedition parked in the Peabody’s mammoth parking garage.

  “You sleep,” he said. “I’ll watch.”

  “Go home. I’m fine.”

  “Woman got your gun?”

  I nodded.

  He laughed again. Maybe even harder than when he found out that I’d driven the Gray Ghost into a hole. He punched a button on his keychain, the truck chirped, and locks clicked in his doors.

  “What were you packin’ anyway?”

  “Browning nine.”

  “What the fuck did you have that for?”

  “Worked great for me.”

  “How’d you keep that under your coat? I mean, you got to holster the damn thing and you can’t move and anyone with any sense can see it. This ain’t the Wild, Wild West, man. Get in.”

  I got in the passenger side. The parking lot bare and quiet.

  He opened his glove compartment and pulled out a Glock 9mm. Smaller than th
e ones I’d seen. Must’ve been a new model.

  “Stick this in your coat. Don’t know where you found it. Understand? Has a hell of a history I’m sure. Took it off that peckerwood from the other night.” He widened his eyes. “Holds seventeen motherfuckin’ rounds. Take both clips.”

  I did.

  “Be careful, brother.”

  Loretta had already gotten a suite for us. I always knew Loretta and JoJo made a nice living but they usually lived pretty simply except when Loretta traveled. When we played the Chicago Blues Festival last year she’d rented out a hell of a room at the Palmer House. She said life was too short to stay in those “Holidaze” Inns.

  I agreed. It was nice to be in the big sprawling room filled with heavy wood furniture and gilded lamps. Big-ass bathtub where I took a thirty-minute shower cleaning dirt from every inch of my skin. Loretta had ordered me a couple beers and a sandwich from room service.

  I thanked her, but the thought of food made me sick as hell.

  I exchanged places with Abby and a quick silence fell between me and Loretta. Her face had been in such a tight grin since she’d met Abby that it took it a few seconds to fall. She had her long coat draped over her chair and had propped open a window listening to the sounds of the city where she’d made her name.

  “You want to tell me why you’re really here?” I asked.

  “You need help.”

  “Shit.”

  “Watch your language, boy.” Her face didn’t break, just kept on listening to those city sounds like it was music.

  “Bluff City was a long, long time ago. All of us in that same neighborhood. Stax. Hi. Called it Soulsville.”

  I watched her as I took off my boots. Then I stretched out on a rollaway that had already been laid out, smelling of the bleach in the sheets. I closed my eyes still listening to her stories.

  “Why are you here?” I asked in a groggy voice. “I can handle it.”