Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

Miss Perfect. He saw her beautiful back, shoulder blades movin’ up under her tanned skin and that heart-shaped butt wigglin’ in those leather pants.

The door opened down the hall; Jon ducked back into a little cove. Listening. Long caves of sound. A thousand rooms not yet used. The building just a castle for Ransom.

Bristlin’ fibers. Hands over flesh and body. The smack of a kiss and a moan of pleasure from Miss Perfect. He didn’t care. He had to see it.

Jon gave just enough of himself to look into the hall and see craggy-ass Ransom in a blue velvet robe pushin’ Miss Perfect against the wall, pinnin’ her arms over her head and buryin’ that nasty wrinkled face into the two most perfect scoops of flesh he’d ever seen.

But Jon knew who’d started the business. He knew Ransom was just followin’ her lead. That woman knew how to control the action.

Jon heard a pop in his own head and saw Perfect look down the hall.

He ducked back, sure she didn’t see him, and tongued a bit of tooth out of his mouth. He felt a wash of blood on his tongue, his heart racin’ like an overused mule’s. He tried to think about that cool ice in the metal bin before him and the way it just lay there, cold and unchanged. He fingered the chip of tooth off his tongue and spit out a long string of blood. Makin’ it loop back up to his lip, tastin’ himself and likin’ it.

Down the hall the door shut with giggles and laughter.

Jon walked back to his room, closed the door, and flicked on the television. Nothin’ but three channels and dirty movies. He watched a couple featurin’ Asian women and waterfalls and things. Didn’t help. He flipped back through to Spiderman and that only bored him.

He pulled the curtains, makin’ it dark as hell, slipped on his metal shades and picked up his Beretta. Jon swallowed some more blood, movin’ his mind away from Miss Perfect and them things that troubled him.

Hidden people laughed and squealed from the bolted-down television. Some boy in high school named Screech who kept screwin’ up. A blond girl with a tight little ole stomach who did nothin’ but roll her eyes at him.

The laughter playin’ over and over in his mind until his temples started to hurt a mess.

That was it.

He felt the silence of the vacant hall – TV light flickerin’ over his face – and pulled the trigger.

The television exploded into white, blue, and yellow sparks sending the smell of burning plastic swirling around him.

THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS rolled into Memphis a little after 3:30 P.M. I’d spent most of my trip awake on the train watching the Mississippi Delta flash by in scattered bits of old rusted trailers, eternal acres of fattened white cotton ready for the gins, and crevices of cypress swamps, morning light hard and gold on the green skin of the water. I prayed a little, thinking about Loretta, wanting God to help. Help me put things back in order. Help me, knowing I shouldn’t ask, find whomever was responsible and take them out. I couldn’t stop seeing the face of that Elvis freak in my mind. He’d been there. That piece of shit broke into JoJo’s. Set fire to my second home.

I could still smell the smoke on my shirt as I reached up and grabbed Abby’s bag from the overhead bin. She thanked me and I followed her off the train and onto a wide concrete platform with a tall view of short buildings built along the bluffs. Mostly old warehouses, a few bars, and art studios.

We followed the herd down some marble steps into a wide train terminal filled with long wooden benches and lit with green neon signs marking the ten tracks out of town. U was at the foot of the steps, arms crossed over his body, broad smile on his face, as he walked up a few steps to meet us. He surprised me with a huge hug – U wasn’t what I’d call an emotional man – and yanked the duffel bag from Abby’s hand.

“I got it,” I said, taking the bag back from him. Carrying both outside.

“Just talked to JoJo,” U said. “Said Loretta’s awake. Said she was sorry about the bar… but glad she got the day off. She asked ’bout you, thought those people coming for your ass next.”

I felt my breath drain from my body, thick and polluted. I took in some new air, watching the uncluttered blue sky. A perfect crispness seemed to be wrapping the whole world. But I felt stale. I couldn’t fall asleep or focus on anything but my anger.

He’d parked across the street at the Arcade diner and we found a little cove by the kitchen where we ordered a couple plates of sweet potato pancakes and coffee. Place hadn’t changed in fifty years. Same torn vinyl booths. Squiggly ‘fifties Orbit impressions on tables worn out in spots by years of elbows and coffee mugs.

“How you doin’, Miss Abby?” U asked.

“Fine, when one of y’all tell me why we’re back in Memphis,” she said. She sat taller in her seat. Hair in a ponytail. My Tulane football sweatshirt. “Whatever it is, I’m in.”

U raised his eyebrows. A green-haired waitress in a black T-shirt poured us some coffee. I passed U the sugar first. He watched me. He watched my hands shake.

I drank some coffee. I said: “Obviously you got my message.”

“Big job.”

“At least point the way.”

Abby picked at her food. Her fork clanked to the rim of her sticky plate. The green-haired waitress refilled our cups. A kid in the booth behind us sported a nose ring and a Britney Spears T-shirt. He looked like he liked Britney about as much as I liked the Dave Matthews Band.

“Said it was big,” U said. “Didn’t say I wasn’t coming.”

He looked over his shoulder, the leather of his jacket squeaking along the booth. The Britney kid was watching the green-haired waitress’s ass. U turned back and pulled a map of southern Tennessee before us, already marked in red pen. A big red circle had been drawn around an area south of Jackson.

“That’s it?”

He nodded, and as quickly as he slid it out, folded up the map carefully and stuck it back into his pocket. “We could be there by sundown. And that’s what we want.”

Abby was quiet. But she watched. I looked at her eyes; she stared back.

“How’d you find it?” I asked, still watching Abby. I smiled. She didn’t.

“Heard it was near Bemis, this little town that was some kind of social experiment around the turn of the century. Yeah, I checked it all out. Anyway, I called in a favor from a good ol’ boy I just keep on bringin’ back to jail,” U said, dropping into an imitation he believed sounded like a redneck. “Met this peckerwood at a bar. A biker bar. Imagine me in a biker bar. It was like Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours. ‘There’s a new sheriff in town,’ and all that.”

“So peckerwood-biker boy told you where to find the compound?”

“His nasty ass – and I do mean nasty – wore a leather vest and no shirt, even drew a little map for me. One electric fence. Some surveillance.”

“Two of us can do it?” I asked.

“Hold on,” Abby said, pushing her plate out of the way. “What are you going to do with me? You’re not leaving me here. I’m the one whose parents were killed. I’m the one who found Nix. What are you going to do, drop me at the mall with your credit card?”

“Nick ain’t got no credit,” U said.

She made a grunting noise. “I want to go back to Oxford.”

“Not till this is over.”

“I’m not moving in with Bubba so I can sit around and watch Ricki Lake,” she said. “Besides, do you even know how to shoot that gun?”

“Yes.”

“How? I hunted with my father; what did you do?”

“I used to-”

“Hold up,” U said, raising his palm out. “I got this. See, Nick is from Alabama.”