Ace Atkins - Wicked City

Jimmie nodded, dressed in a crisp white shirt and tie, blue suit, and crossed his legs. He acknowledged his partner with a tip of his cigarette. His hair already nicely trimmed and slicked down with a good splash of Vitalis.

“You mark my words, they’re gonna hang me for this. Right? These people, these National Guard Nazis and that green-as-grass prosecutor, Sykes, need a warm body and my fat ass is just the right size.”

Hoyt’s big face turned a hard shade of purple as Mr. Cobb trimmed the hair off the back of his neck and shaved off some black fuzz on his ears. Hoyt’s big jowls flexed and twisted, and when the buzzing of the clippers stopped and Cobb reached for another pair of scissors for a few stray hairs, Hoyt continued: “Let me tell you something. There ain’t no Santa Claus, there ain’t no fucking Easter Bunny, and there ain’t any goddamn Mr. X. It’s the RBA trying to fry my ass for Pat getting himself killed, and they are gonna try every dirty trick in the book till I’m sitting in the hot seat at Kilby waiting for some old boy to flip the switch and grill me up like a side of bacon because it would make a hell of a picture.”

Matthews shifted in his chair and recrossed his legs. He finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in a plastic tray on top of a big fan of Field & Stream and Gent magazines. He shrugged. His diamond cuff links twinkled.

Hoyt plugged the fat cigar back into his mouth and kept reading, Cobb snapping off the stray hairs and giving him a slick comb with some of that jug of Vitalis.

“Part it to the side,” Hoyt said, not looking up from the newspaper. He grunted. “I look like a fucking country preacher.”

The bell jingled above the old barbershop door and in walked Frog Jones and Red Cook, a couple clip joint owners. They walked inside, looking at the floor, no one to beat or shoot or rob, and they looked as dejected to Hoyt as little kids without their toys.

Hoyt looked back to the paper.

“What the hell is wrong with you two? I ain’t seen y’all’s names in the paper in a while.”

The door opened again, and as Cobb removed the apron and Hoyt stood from the chair two guardsmen walked in and waited for Hoyt to turn. But Hoyt watched in the mirror as he counted out the change into the barber’s hand and simply said: “Let me guess: Mr. X sent you.”

One of the young boys held out a piece of paper to Hoyt Shepherd and said: “Sir, Mr. Bernard Sykes would like to see you at the Ralston Hotel immediately.”

Hoyt nodded, walked to the coatrack, and grabbed his porkpie hat. “Well, that is just goddamn fantastic. I can’t wait.”

“THIS SURE IS A NICE SUITE. HOW MUCH ARE THE TAXPAYERS shelling out for such comfort, Mr. Sykes?” Hoyt Shepherd asked.

Bernard Sykes opened his mouth and then closed it, looking to a couple of junior men at the attorney general’s office and then back to Hoyt. In his pleated trousers and tailored shirt with painted tie, he nervously circled the dining room, where Hoyt sat at a long table. Sykes felt for the back of a chair, obvious to Hoyt that the man wanted to continue to stand to get a leg up, but Hoyt didn’t care for games or this nervous kid.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Hoyt asked. “All that walking and talking is getting on my nerves. When you’re trying to gain some confidence, you need to sit down and be a regular guy. Don’t stand over someone and act like a hard-on.”

Sykes’s face changed colors and he crossed his arms. He stood still and placed his hand over his jaw and mouth. He nodded and nodded as if unlocking some kind of secret about Hoyt Shepherd’s character.

“Listen, unless you’re gonna feed me lunch or buy me a drink I think I’ll be on my way. There wasn’t a damn thing on any of the mysterious Dr. X’s recordings about Albert Patterson.”

“Mr.”

“What?”

“It’s Mr. X, not Dr. X.”

Hoyt nodded and pulled out a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket. He unwrapped it, the plastic making harsh, crinkling sounds, and stuck it into his mouth. “Since you’re not from here and don’t know much else besides what the newspapermen stink up in their print, I’ll fill you in. Me and my partner, Jimmie Matthews, sold out our interests in every single club in Phenix City two years ago. You can verify that with anyone in town. And as far as Pat? Hell, Pat and I had some problems, and I never wanted to see him your boss. But there ain’t a criminal in Phenix City with half a brain who’d kill a fella that way. I mean, give me a little credit. I know about fifty better places I could’ve had Pat plugged, if I wanted. But to shoot down the man in an alley on Fifth Avenue on a Friday night is as stupid as it is reckless. Just about dumber than shit, if you ask me.”

Sykes grinned a bit and gave a nervous laugh. “So, you are telling me that you would’ve killed Mr. Patterson in another way?”

“Yes, sir. That is exactly what I said, and you wouldn’t have found him for a long while either.”

“You do that often? Make people disappear?”

“Goddamn. Can we get on with this bullshit? This is the deal, son. My boys and all the gamblers in Phenix City wouldn’t touch killing Pat, because the odds were worth shit. And everyone knew that the house would come a-tumblin’ down.”

“What about the bombing last night? Did you know about that?”

“Read it in the papers same as you.”

“But you’d have reason to want to quiet Mr. Britton.”

“Thought we were talking about Pat.”

“So who killed Mr. Patterson if it wasn’t one of your hoods?”

“I’m gonna let that one slide, kid,” Hoyt said, puffing the cigar up into the air and then right into Bernard Sykes’s eyes and Hollywood hair and ski-slope nose.

“So?”

“Get them out of the room,” Hoyt said, leaning into the table and helping himself to a pot of coffee. As he poured, Sykes cleared the room of all the prosecutors and the stenographer, who’d waited for the official interview to begin.

The table between Sykes and Shepherd was filled with empty boxes from a fried chicken joint and half-drunk cups of coffee and bottles of Coca-Cola. Ashtrays spilled out with ash, and mounds of newspapers and stacks of papers spilled over the table and onto the chairs.

Hoyt took a sip of coffee and then made a face. It was cold.

After some thought, he leaned in and started to talk, and Sykes couldn’t hear so he leaned in, too. Close as lovers across an intimate table, he caught Hoyt’s words: “Do you really need to look much further than Bert Fuller? Let me tell you something, he’d been ratfucking me for the last couple years, cutting the biggest, fattest piece of the Phenix City pie. Did you know someone broke into my goddamn home the night Pat got himself killed? They blew my safe with dynamite, nearly set my office on fire, and took fifty thousand dollars? With all this shit going on, I couldn’t even get a sonofabitch at the sheriff’s office to take down my name. Now, that’s something to make a man a little pissed off.”

Sykes looked up over his notebook. He tapped his pen.

“You got to know something, me and Pat had an understanding. We knew what teams we played for. You can’t hold a grudge if a man’s been straight with you all along. With Pat, he didn’t make no secret of cleaning up this town. But to break into a man’s home, and me knowin’ it had to have been someone I hold close? Now, that is an insult. And let me be straight with you, Mr. Sykes. If I find out the sonofabitch who did that to me, he’s as good as dead.”

“You understand what you’re saying to me?”

“Yes, sir. And I’ll be damned to hell if me getting robbed wasn’t Fuller’s doing, too. If there is slop in the trough, he’s gonna eat.”