Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

I suddenly had the urge to wash my hands. Maybe take a shower. I could smell the burn of the rifle on my fingers – I’d later dumped both guns in the Mississippi – and could still feel their heat in my hands. I remembered the sound the man’s body made as it dropped with bloated weight into the cotton field. That wicked moon bathing his dead face with a bright glow.

Abby steadily got to her feet and joined me at the window. Small city noises bleated inside. Abby wasn’t that tall, came up about to my chest. Her hair was bobbed to her chin. She had the kind of face that could wear her hair like that. Delicate. Chin like the point of a heart. Bet she had a dynamite smile if she’d ever smile.

A warm breath of wind washed over my face and I kept staring at the downtown buildings and the bridges crossing the Mississippi. I’d fucked up last night. No matter what was going on in the casino, I’d killed a man. I’d shot him right in the heart. My head pounded and my mouth tasted like cotton.

I tried to take a deep breath but the air felt shallow in my lungs. I’d been in several scuffles and I’d fired my gun a few times. But each time I awoke not truly knowing myself.

All of a sudden Abby asked me, “You ever feel like you could stick your hand in a fire and not feel a thing?” She was rubbing the reddened marks on her calves and sort of talking to herself.

I listened. A couple of horns honked from down on Union. Scooby and the gang ran from the space ghost. I looked down at my bare toes. I wiggled the ones on the left foot. “Sometimes… You want to tell me what was going on?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

“Who were they?”

Abby sat on the floor, pulled her knees to her chest, and started rocking. I came to her, bent down, and put my hand on her back. I dropped into this awkward half crouch, my knees aching like hell, but didn’t move my hand.

“I don’t know who they are,” she said again.

“Why would they want to hurt you?”

“You can’t help me.”

“Why would they want to hurt you?”

Abby placed her head on her forearms. “You tell me who they are and I’ll tell you everything,” she said.

“I have a friend we need to see,” I said, standing. “He’ll know.”

“You trust him?”

“Like a brother.”

ULYSSES DAVIS RAN a bail bonds business down off Poplar not far from the courthouse and the Shelby County Jail. The neighborhood had nothing but bondsmen for several blocks, their neon signs advertising in the windows with telephone numbers and assurances: ANYTIME, ANY PRICE. But you couldn’t miss ole U’s place. At first, it looked like a damned art gallery. A lot of blue neon and pictures of martial arts film stars lining the walls. I once kidded U about it, said it looked like these were the folks he’d bailed out of jail. But U didn’t think that was funny. Since the time we played on the same Saints’ defense, U rarely thought I was funny.

He was sitting at this big presidential wooden desk when I walked in with Abby. From his stereo, Marcus Roberts played jazz piano while patchouli incense burned from a nearby shelf. He’d tied his braided hair into a ponytail, sweat burned off his dark brown skin. A black leather jacket lay on the edge of his desk where he was filling out some papers.

Almost didn’t see the young black kid sitting across from U. Kid had a shaved head and multiple nose- and earrings. Couldn’t help notice there was a jagged slot in his left ear where he was bleeding pretty badly. Kid had duct tape across his mouth and was handcuffed to a ladderback chair.

“Hey, motherfucker,” I said.

U kept his eyes down on the paperwork and broke into a broad grin. “And how is your momma, Dr. Travers?”

Abby gave me a skeptical stare.

The kid handcuffed to the chair started making groaning noises.

U finished dotting some “i” or crossing some “t” and threw down his pen. He stood up to his six-foot-four, 240-pound frame and grasped my hand. Felt like he’d been working out. ‘Course that was all U seemed to do. Lift weights, practice tae kwon do, and eat his health food. Tofu and wheat grass. God. I had spent three years trying to get him to eat some ribs and drink some beer without luck.

“What the fuck do you want?” U asked.

“Tell you that I’ve always loved you. Make up for lost time.”

“Well, wait for me in the lobby, punk. Be through in a second. Antoine here decided to fuck me one time too many. Time to get my money back.”

Abby took a seat in front of a huge plate glass window with a view looking onto the gray coldness of the jail. She was wearing a pair of jogging pants I bought for her in the hotel lobby and another one of my T-shirts.

Outside, cops and worn-out families milled about. A couple of women dressed in pleather pants and halters walked by the glass window with a cold, indifferent affection.

“How do you know this guy?”

“Played football together. He was my roommate on road trips.”

“What can he do?” Abby asked.

“He knows about every cop and federal agent in town.”

Abby was quiet for a moment and picked up an old copy of Black Belt magazine. Chuck Norris was on the cover. Dressed as a cowboy. Kicking some poor bastard in the nuts.

Twenty minutes later, U walked back from the jail where he had deposited the kid. He was rubbing his hands together as if he’d finished cleaning the kitchen.

“Come on back,” he said, taking off his jacket.

Abby found a seat by the desk. I stood. The patchouli continued to burn although Roberts had finished. Now, the stereo played selections from Carmen.

“Last night, I drove out to a casino in Tunica.”

“Figured you would after I ran that plate. Now you wanna tell me why?”

“Looking for a man named Clyde James. Some security guards from the casino had been looking for him, too.”

“Why do you care?”

“He was a big-time soul singer in the ‘sixties.”

“New project?”

“He’s Loretta’s brother.”

“Mmm-hmm,” U said, rubbing his goatee. “And she’s worried.”

“While I was there, I met Miss Abby here. A woman had kidnapped her and taken her to the casino.”

“Which one?”

“Magnolia Grand.”

“I see. I see.”

“While I was getting her out, I killed a man.”

“Ain’t your line of work, is it, Travers?”

“I want to set it right. Where do we go? I don’t want to go back to that place half-assed.”

U nodded. He folded his massive arms – veined and corded – across his chest. “Tunica is a hell of a place.”

“You know what we’ve stepped into?”

“Looks like, brother, you’ve just landed in a steaming pile of the Dixie Mafia.”

I blew out my breath.

“Oh, yeah,” U said. “Buckle your ass up.”

PERFECT LEIGH HATED rich fucks in blue blazers and khakis. And today, she was surrounded by them. Seemed like all the men she saw thought they wouldn’t be admitted into the damned football game if they didn’t dress alike. She hated the way they waddled because they were full of scotch and the way they held Confederate flags in their hands and gave the ole Rebel yell to passing friends. She was tired of watching them and their female counterparts in flowered dresses and straw hats wander through this oak-shaded part of the Ole Miss campus called The Grove, eating barbecue from toothpicks and finger sandwiches taken from black men dressed in tuxedos as if the ‘fifties never ended.

While she sat on the warm hood of her Mustang and waited for Ransom, she tried to figure out who was worse, the men or the women. The men were just plain pathetic, gawking at her in her red leather pants and leather halter. They didn’t seem to care if their wives were hanging on their arms or if they were holding their kids’ hands. The women were just outright hypocrites, boobs hoisted high in Wonderbras and reeking of perfume, as they scowled at her or pointed from loose circles and laughed.