Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

A few minutes later, he and Perfect rounded the turn of a forgotten section of the Quarter at the place Ransom told them about. JoJo’s. Jon remembered the place from a dream somewhere. The lights were off with only a couple of neon signs burning purple and green in the long, fat window.

A sad old blues song played from the jukebox and floated out the open doors as a couple of men walked out carrying guitars and drums. One had a saxophone. The man with the sax, dressed like a Sun Records daddy in bowling shirt and baggy pants, hugged the neck of a large nigra woman before piling into the van with the others and disappearing down toward the Mississippi River.

“That her?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “If he comes back, Ransom said you could.”

Jon felt for the gun in his pocket. “It’s been a long time, Jack.”

“What?”

“It’s like a surge of electricity goin’ through you when you kill,” he said. “It’s almost like making love, but it’s stronger than that… Sometimes I think my heart is gonna explode.”

“He’s not here yet.”

“He will be,” Jon said. “I sense him.”

“Jon?”

He stopped halfway across Conti. A gaggle of businessmen in crooked party hats and drunker than a herd of goats filtered by them. Jon rubbed his beard, nodding at the neon lights quittin’ in the bar’s windows and the front door beginning to close.

All along the street, the buildings were real dark and vacant and seemed to wrap over him in a curve like in King Creole. Midnight in the French Quarter. Wooden business signs flappin’ from under balconies. Gas lamps burnin’ from a corner restaurant. He reached into his jacket for the pistol and nodded.

They hustled inside the bar, front door unlocked, as they saw the nigra woman turning chairs upside down onto the tables scattered by a stage.

“We closed,” she said, not even turning to look at them.

The woman moved real careful, unlit, and kind of shadowed across the dance floor. Jon walked backward to the door and slid the dead bolt into place with a solid thunk.

The woman slapped another chair onto the table and sunk her hands onto her tremendous hips: “Money gone, you sons a bitches. Got a couple cops about to roll by in two seconds, so you best get yo’ trashy asses back to Bourbon Street.”

Jon struck a match to his cheroot.

The jukebox glowed green and scattered twirling patterns across Perfect’s face and the woman’s. He hung back and waited for Perfect to begin the show. He watched through random spots in the glass for Travers.

Perfect walked four steps forward. The gun inches from the big woman’s heart. “No money,” she said.

The big woman nodded in the darkness, her face crossed with the knowin’.

“Your brother,” Perfect said. “Where is he? We’re not leavin’ till you tell us.”

“Well, then I’ll be cookin’ y’all breakfast,” she said. “ ’Cause I don’t know. Why? He owe y’all some money, too? If you see him, tell him he still owes me from nineteen sixty-five.”

Jon clamped the cheroot between his teeth and blew smoke into the green light. Funny twirling patterns of color and grayness passed over his eyes.

Perfect pressed a gun into the woman’s ribs and the woman held still. She glanced at Jon’s face and then returned her gaze to Miss Perfect. She nodded slowly and pressed her palms flat upon a barroom table. Leaning. She kept nodding.

“Okay,” she said. “I got you… But what you want Clyde for? He’s a sick man.”

Perfect ground the gun into her ribs. “Where is he? Where in Memphis? You give us an address, we have someone check it out and we’re out of your life. All right?”

“Okay,” the woman said. “Okay.”

“Where is he?” Perfect screamed. Then she looked over at Jon and the woman and shook her head like the whole dang situation made Miss Perfect sad. “I’m way too good for this,” she said.

The woman gave Perfect a good ole once-over from the shoes to her uncombed hair. She shook her head like Perfect wasn’t fit to spit-shine the bar’s toilets. “Sister, I don’t know what your man got on you, but you need to get your trashy country ass out of the big city. It’s showin’ all about you.”

Perfect gritted her teeth and rammed the handle of that old Colt she was carryin’ into the woman’s stomach, making her drop to her knees and start coughin’.

“I ain’t trash,” Perfect screamed. “Now where is he?”

Jon knew time was short. Answers had to come.

He knelt down and whispered, “Ole woman, where is he?”

Perfect grabbed Jon by the edge of his collar and yanked him away, “This is mine. Go outside!”

She pushed the gasping woman onto her back and began knocking beer bottles and half-filled glasses to the floor. Perfect kicked the jukebox, stopping some sad blues song cold, and walked over to a row of black-and-white photos of people Jon guessed were famous singers. She started cracking the glass frames with the butt of her gun. A bunch of ’em came crashing down and Perfect kicked and skidded them in jagged pieces across the floor.

She yelled again, “Where is he?”

The old woman got to her feet and smoothed her dress over her hips. Jon wandered over to the two, big ole roughshod doors and looked out the window. No one. Dead street. He crossed his arms across his chest and looked at the floor.

“We know he’s in Memphis!” Perfect said, walking real quick like across the wooden floor and aimed the gun straight at the woman’s forehead. “You have two seconds.”

“Sister, you trip on power. Don’t you?”

“Shut up.”

“Think it brings you out of that backward upbringin’?”

“Shut up!”

“Look at you, gun in hand. Greasy-ass boyfriend. No five-hundred-dollar shoes can change what you are. You left the country but that pig shit sure stuck to you.”

Miss Perfect looked down for a moment at some fancy shoes she’d been wearin’ since Memphis, her mouth forming a big O.

She jumped a step back in surprise before she shot that big ole nigra woman right in the chest.

The woman reeled backward, knockin’ down and crackin’ chairs as she fell. Her scream deep and throaty and seemed to shake the whole dang bar. Everything vibratin’ around Jon’s head.

His head jammin’ and heart jackknifin’ in his chest.

Perfect looked down and admired the gun in her hand. She watched the fallen woman, loose and bleedin’ on the floor, and started to grin. She didn’t know she had it in her.

“Miss Perfect,” Jon yelled. “We didn’t come for that. Dang, you screwed us all now. We ain’t got squat.”

He ran to the window and looked outside. All right. They hadn’t worn gloves and he didn’t know what kind of gun she’d used or who owned it. This wasn’t a hit. You set a dang hit up real different. If he’d killed Travers tonight, his gun would come back to a crack dealer in south Memphis.

“Miss Perfect. Miss Perfect.”

“Let’s go.”

“We can’t. That your gun?”

She nodded.

“Where’d you get it?”

“I bought it.”

Jon’s leg started aheavin’ and jumpin’ right where he stood until he ran over to the long wood, Mardis Gras beads drippin’ down from glass rack like a fancy curtain. He plucked a couple bottles of gin and whiskey from a row of booze and started pourin’ all over the place. Over the scarred ole bar and the floor and the jukebox and even the old nigra woman who lay still on the floor.

“Goddamn,” Perfect screamed. “What the hell are you doin’?”

“Savin’ your skin, woman.”

He kicked the backdoor with the heel of his boots. His mind racin’ back in time to a day locked away in his soul. Mamma wasn’t breathin’ either. Mamma wasn’t breathin’ either.