Memphis Luck

by Gerald Duff

  “None of them damn cowboy assholes are with him then, she says, right?” Tonto said. “We don’t have to worry about them showing up. And what about the damn boyfriend? Is he going to be mooning around?”

  “The cowboys’re never there in the afternoons when he’s counting,” Bob Ferry said. “Wednesdays and the weekends he’s got to do the worship services and he’s getting ready for that. Weekday afternoons he doesn’t want anybody around until nighttime.”

  “Not even that assistant, that Condon guy?” Tonto said. “He won’t be there?”

  “No,” Bob Ferry said. “Not even Condon’s there when he’s counting.”

  “What’s Reynolds doing then by himself there in that big old house, you reckon?” Coy Bridges said. “Fucking Fulgencia?”

  “No, Coy,” Bob said. “Jimbo Reynolds is tending to business, the financial side of things, and he doesn’t want anybody around to see him doing it or where he’s stacking that money up.”

  “He’s fixing to get somebody around to help him with his money,” Earl Winston said. “I flat guarantee you he is.”

  “How do you know Jimbo Reynolds ain’t doing Fulgencia?” Coy Bridges said. “They in there in the house by themselves, ain’t they?”

  “I know he’s not because Fulgencia told me he wasn’t,” Bob Ferry said. “He has no carnal interest in Fulgencia. She’s his goddamn housekeeper, Coy. Jesus.”

  “Why were y’all talking about who she was banging anyway?” Earl Winston said. “If a woman talks about fucking, she is either been doing it or is getting ready to.”

  “A woman will always lie about who’s been fucking her,” Coy Bridges said. “The truth ain’t in them when it comes to who they been letting get at that hairpie.”

  “Bullshit,” Bob said. “You can’t generalize like that about every woman.”

  “The hell I can’t,” Coy said. “My first wife was letting my own damn brother fuck her every time I’d leave the house. And I was letting the son of a bitch live there for free. I know the bitches.”

  “Why was he living with y’all, Coy?” Earl Winston said. “That don’t make sense.”

  “He was between jobs at the time, and he was my own brother, sorry as he was, and I was weak in the head about it.”

  “How long between jobs?” Earl said.

  “Right at two years,” Coy said. “The lazy little fuck. He was too sorry to even sell dope to help out with household expenses.”

  “O.K.,” Tonto Batiste said. “Are we going to sit here until sundown talking about Coy’s brother fucking his bitch of a wife, or are going to get this thing done?”

  “What I want to do,” Bob Ferry said, “is wait for us to go until there’s a good long line of cars and service vehicles all stopped and waiting at the entrance. Then we’ll drive up and take our turn to be checked in by the guard. That way, he’ll be less likely to hold us up long or take a hard look at this damn green van.”

  “Bob’s right,” Tonto Batiste said. “So get in the van and get ready.”

  “Me in the passenger seat,” Coy Bridges said, “Tonto driving, y’all two in the back, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tonto said. “Just like I already said.”

  Ten minutes passed before Bob Ferry judged the moment was right for Tonto to drive onto the street from where the plumber’s van was parked by the rent house. He leaned forward, tapped Tonto on the shoulder, and they eased over the broken curb and the remains of sidewalk which at one point had led past other mansions of cotton brokers and bankers, long vanished from the scene.

  Three cars waited in the approach to the guard booth of the Nathan B. Forrest Estates, a Lexus, a blue VW bug, new series, a Lincoln Navigator, and behind them an electric company pickup and a catering service vehicle with a mass of inflated balloons crowding the rear window.

  “Reckon it’s a kid’s party fixing to happen,” Coy Bridges said to Tonto as they sat in line. “See all them balloons?”

  Tonto lit a cigarette and flipped his match out the window. The line of cars moved up a space as the Lexus won entry and drove ahead.

  “How’d you find out your brother was humping your old lady?” Earl Winston said from the back area of the van. “Walk in on them when they was doing it?”

  “Naw, not really doing it,” Coy said. “David Lynn had done fucked her, I guess, that time, and he was in the bathroom washing his dick off. Tiffany, she was in the bed playing like she was taking a nap. She closed her damn eyes when I walked in the room like she was asleep, but I seen her doing that.”

  “Heartbreaking,” Bob Ferry said.

  “It wasn’t David Lynn’s heart I ended up breaking,” Coy said. “I flat ass tell you that.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Tonto Batiste said, “and sit back real far from the windows. We’re next.”

  The Mexican in the guard booth motioned Tonto forward with a flip of his hand and punched a button somewhere not visible which allowed him to speak over a sound system.

  “What residence?” he said.

  “I don’t know what one it is,” Tonto said. “But I got a number here for you to call that they give me back at the office.”

  “You don’t know the name?” the Mexican said, now taking a closer look at the driver of the plumber’s van.

  “Yessir, I know the name, but they didn’t write down the street address on the order form. See, the name is James D. Reynolds, and the street name is Fallen Timbers, but it ain’t no street number. Just a telephone one, that’s what they give me to work with, that’s all.”

  “No, that’s right,” the Mexican in the guard booth said. “That’s what they always give vendors and service personnel, nothing but the names and telephone. Not no street address. Let me see it, and I’ll call.”

  Tonto handed the form through the window toward the booth, and the guard slid the pane of glass open and took it.

  “Particular, ain’t they?” Earl Winston said to Bob Ferry in the back of the van. Ferry shook his head and touched his forefinger to his lips, causing Earl to imagine himself rummaging around in the plumber’s tool kit riding in the floor of the van until he found just the right sized monkey wrench he would need to tap Bob Ferry across the mouth hard enough to give him some of his own front teeth to eat.

  The Mexican guard looked at the number on the plumbing company order that Bob Ferry had worked up back in the rent house on his lap top and printed out for the purpose at hand, and then the guard punched the phone pad before him.

  In a few seconds he began speaking in Spanish, and Tonto Batiste felt a little of the tightness in his shoulders and neck ease. Fulgencia was on the job.

  “Gracias, senora,” the Mexican guard said, hit a button, and handed the order form back to Tonto. “The housekeeper says you are to pull off the street up the driveway and park in behind the house. Don’t block the middle garage door none, no.”

  “All right,” Tonto said. “What number is it, and how do I find that street it’s on?”

  “Go straight on Battery Lane, right on Fallen Timbers to number four, and be sure you ain’t got no oil leaking out of the pan to get on the driveway. She said that, not me.”

  “We ain’t,” Tonto said. “All our vehicles is well-maintained. I read you.”

  The guard was wearing shades tinted the color of midnight, so Tonto Batiste couldn’t see his eyes, doing both men some good. Tonto didn’t have to see the Mexican judging the mealy-mouthing he was having to do, and the guard didn’t have to run the risk of being recognized by anybody he cross-examined later on somewhere out on the streets of Memphis. Everything was business, nothing personal, no blow-back.

  Fallen Timbers was the third street off Battery Lane, just past Holly Springs and Tupelo. The house at 4 Fallen Timbers, like the others around it, was set well back off the street, surrounded by a headhigh brick wall with shards of multi-colored broken glass cemented on top of its entire length, and the driveway was doublewide and curving, planted professionally with flowering shr
ubs and flower beds.

  “High dollar motherfucker, ain’t it?” Coy Bridges said, his head swiveling back and forth as he surveyed the scene.

  “That’s exactly why we’re here,” Tonto said, pulling the plumber’s van in behind the house and parking as close as he could get to the far-left side of the four doored garage.

  “I sure hope we don’t drip no cheap oil on the preacher’s driveway,” Coy said, “while this thing’s sitting here.”

  “If we don’t, I’m going to find something greasy to pour all over it before we leave,” Tonto said. “That I guarantee you.”

  The back gate through the shard-topped wall was wrought iron, and Fulgencia Villareal as visible through it, her hand lifted to the lock fitting a key into it. She was wearing a maid’s uniform, every man in the van could see, her outfit starched and so white it seemed to be projecting a light of its own in the July sun of Memphis. It couldn’t hide the depth of her breasts and the swoop of the line in and down from there to her waist and hips, though, Bob Ferry considered as he watched Fulgencia get the gate opened.

  “I defy any garment manufacturer to cover that up,” Bob Ferry said to Earl Winston, wishing instantly that he hadn’t said a word.

  “What?” Earl said. “You mean them big old tits?”

  “No, forget it,” Bob said. “I was talking about how uniforms look on some people, that’s all.”

  Fulgencia beckoned toward the van and opened the gate, stepping back to let Tonto walk past, first out of the van.

  “Que pasa?” Tonto said. “Where is he?’

  “He’s in his office,” Fulgencia said as they all moved into the house down a hall, into a room which looked like a kitchen in a display home in East Memphis, “like he always is this time of day.”

  “Counting his money, huh?” Coy Bridges said. “Suppose he needs himself some help?”

  “I don’t know what he’s doing,” Fulgencia said. “He’s got his door locked, though. I do know that much. He always does when he’s in that room.”

  “He don’t notice people driving up?” Earl Winston said. “Slamming car doors and talking and shit?”

  “Mr. Jimbo don’t notice nothing when he’s in his room,” Fulgencia said. “Like I told Bob, it’s his safe room, and he can’t hear or see nothing outside of it, even if he wanted to, when he’s inside of it. That’s how he’s got it fixed.”

  “Let’s go bust in his door for him,” Earl said. “See can we get his attention.”

  “I hope you’re trying to be funny, Earl,” Bob Ferry said. “If you are, I’m ready to give you a chuckle or two. But if you’re serious, that lets me know you haven’t been listening to a word Tonto and I’ve been saying for the last week.”

  “Fulgencia,” Bob went on, “is everybody and everything where it’s supposed to be? Is it business as usual here in the reverend’s house?”

  “Yes,” Fulgencia said. “Pretty much. It’s the first week of July, and Jimbo’s getting it all together for the transfer to New Orleans like he does every time. It’s half a year’s worth, he keeps saying to everybody and it’s nervous-making, like he always calls it.”

  “So we’ll just wait for him to come out of his hidey-hole, and bring it right to us, then, huh?” Coy Bridges said. “All them old worn-out bills, stacked up in boxes.”

  “Well,” Fulgencia said, looking at Tonto Batiste with her head turned to the side as though she had just remembered something minor and unlikely to be of much interest. “There is one thing that’s different, though.”

  “What?” Tonto said. “Has he got somebody else here with him?”

  “Si,” Fulgencia said. “El muchacho negro.”

  “Talk right, girl,” Earl Winston said. “Don’t jabber that shit. What’s she saying?”

  “The black boy,” Bob Ferry said. “That’s what she’s saying, right?”

  “Yeah,” Fulgencia said. “He showed up with Jimbo, and he’s in there with him in the room.”

  “That ain’t right, is it?” Coy Bridges said. “That ain’t supposed to happen. Who is he? You say black. Is he strapped?”

  “He’s just a kid,” Fulgencia said. “I don’t know who he is or where he comes from. But him and Jimbo is been praying together all last night and half of today.”

  “Praying?” Tonto Batiste said. “Is the reverend believing his own shit?”

  “I never knew him to before,” Fulgencia said. “I’m just telling you what’s been going on, just what I been seeing. I don’t know what it means.”

  “We’ll take care of him,” Earl Winston said. “Kid or not, no matter what color he is.”

  “He wears cowboy clothes,” Fulgencia said. “Hat, chaps, spurs, the whole enchilada.”

  “But you saying he’s not one of Jimbo’s cowboy guards, right? Am I understanding this?” Bob Ferry said. “This muchacho negro is not hired heat?”

  “I ain’t heard them called negroes in a long time,” Earl Winston said. “Hell, they don’t even call themselves that no more. That ain’t the deal now, is it? They particular about that name shit.”

  “Naw,” Coy Bridges said. “It’s African-American now, what they label their own selves these days. I’m talking about right now, understand. Today, I mean. This minute. They likely to change it this afternoon.”

  “Let’s see if we can get this thing back on the road,” Tonto Batiste said. “Y’all quit worrying about what to call folks and get ready to do what we come here for. Fulgencia says this little colored cowboy ain’t nothing but a kid, and we can handle him if we have to.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Bob Ferry said. “Let’s get on upstairs and get ready to get the job done. Fulgencia, it’s to the left at the top of the landing, right?”

  “Just like I draw it for you on the paper, yes,” Fulgencia said. “But y’all got to put the duct tape on my hands and feet first before you do anything else upstairs, now. I got to make a living in Memphis after y’all are long gone.”

  “You not going to take any time off?” Coy Bridges said. “Ain’t you planning to use your money to kick back a little bit? Drink you some top shelf Margaritas and eat you some tamales? Quit work? Take your boyfriend on a trip?”

  “You don’t need to know what I’m going to do,” Fulgencia said. “Except that I got plans for my twenty thousand dollars that don’t include blowing it or quitting my job.”

  “What are you going to blow then?” Coy Bridges said, looking around to see if anybody had picked up on what he was saying, grinning a little as he waited for someone to laugh.

  “Leave Fulgencia alone,” Tonto said. “She ain’t got time to fool with you.”

  “I want to be the one that duct tapes her up,” Earl Winston said. “I know just how to do. Let me show you.”

  “No, you won’t,” Tonto Batiste said. “You go up with Coy and Bob, and get set up, Earl. I’ll do the taping to give Fulgencia the cover she needs. Don’t make a lot of racket up yonder.”

  “I agree completely with Tonto,” Bob Ferry said. “I suspect that if a man looks forward to taping a woman’s hands behind her back to put her in a posture of bondage then that’s exactly the reason he shouldn’t be allowed to do it.”

  On the way up the stairs to the second floor of the big house in the Nathan B. Forrest Estates at 4 Fallen Timbers, Coy Bridges lagged behind Bob Ferry so he could say something to Earl.

  “I’m counting them up, Earl,” he said, looking at Bob moving ahead at a good clip up the carpeted stairs. “Ever damn one of them.’

  “What? Counting what?”

  “Ever word Bob says like suspect and posture and bondage and all like of that shit.”

  “Why?”

  “Time comes when I let myself do just what I been dying to do, I’m going to match up the number of times I bust him with ever one of them words he’s throwed at me like that.”

  “Posture,” Earl Winston said. “That’s like when you stand up straight, with a book sitting on your head, right?”
<
br />   “Yeah, that’s it, I believe, and walk around,” Coy said. “Bob’s going to think standing up straight when I turn loose on the motherfucker. He’s going to wish he’s able to.”

  TWENTY

  Jimbo Reynolds and Colorado

  Colorado was what he’d asked Jimbo Reynolds to call him, putting it in a mild even tone as he said it, that alone making Jimbo realize how important the request was to the kid.

  They had been praying together for almost two hours there in the Cathedral of the Big Corral, Bob Condon and all of the boys in the Cowboy Combo of Grace gone except for Arleigh who knew to stay around unless told to leave, and during a breathing spell Jimbo had called to rest for a few minutes, the kid had declared what he wanted to be called now.

  It wasn’t unusual in Jimbo Reynolds’s professional experience as a minister of the gospel, a proclaimer of the crucified and risen Christ, for a man under conviction undergoing a conversion episode to want to rename himself. New body in Christ, new soul in Christ, new name in Christ. So the colored kid saying he wanted to be called by a new label, one more fitting and proper for a man newly joined to the flesh of the Redeemer, was understandable. No big deal, unremarkable in itself. It was like getting a tattoo, Jimbo imagined, the way kids these days will mark themselves to show they belong to something or that something belongs to them. Some rap group logo or football team or computer fantasy game character. A thing to make them feel real.

  “Son,” Jimbo had said, sipping at a diet cola and dabbing at his forehead with a red bandanna, “I see where you’re coming from, and I hope you do, too. You’re a new creature now, the Boss has done seen to that. He has slapped His brand on you. That old marking and that old handle, they just don’t apply anymore, do they?”

  “No sir,” the colored kid said. “When I say my old name to myself now, it is just words in the air. They don’t mean me now, the way I feel now. They’re nothing to me. It’s like I’m a chess piece somebody else has won. I’m not what the old sounds say.”