Ace Atkins - Wicked City

“Deputy Fuller?”

“Hell, you catch on fast, kid.”

“Who else? Other policemen?”

“Policemen? Bert Fuller is a shakedown artist and a pimp, and since I’ve grown comfortable in my retirement he’s about bled me dry on protection. But I don’t know about other folks with the sheriff. If it were my guess, I’d say Fuller and Johnnie Benefield.”

“Who?”

“Say, you are new to this town. As I told John Patterson, Johnnie Benefield is only the most coldhearted, sadistic sonofabitch I’ve ever met.”

Sykes wrote down the name on a yellow legal pad and looked up.

“That’s with one n. ”

Sykes nodded and made the correction.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Hoyt Shepherd said, plugging the cigar in his mouth.

JOHNNIE BENEFIELD AWOKE IN A DARK ROOM, THE LIGHTNING cracking outside the window. The bed sat in a metal frame, and in another flash of light he saw there were clothes folded for him on an old ladder-back chair. His boots clean and shined sitting right under them. He leaned back against the pillow, his head feeling as if it was about to rip from his skull, a knifing, hot pain in his shoulder. Reaching over, he felt for the bandages and found crusted blood on the tape. He moaned and closed his eyes. The room smelled like dried flowers and vinegar.

He heard footsteps down a long hallway. The steps were hard and clacked as they do against wood, and when the walking stopped he saw the slice of light from under the door go black for a moment and then the squeak of hinges.

A woman’s shadow stood before him, carrying a bucket and a leather pouch.

She pulled up another chair and sat and held his cold, clammy hands.

Her face was darkened, and he only could see the outline of her hair. His eyes fluttered open and closed.

“You hurt?”

“Fannie?”

“It’s me. You been out for some time.”

“How long?”

“Two days.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Thirsty, too, I reckon.”

“Can I get some whiskey?”

“You bet.”

“I got the shakes, too.”

“I know, baby.”

Fannie opened the bag and pulled out a silver spoon and toyed with it a moment before clicking on a lighter and heating its contents. She grabbed a syringe and soon filled it and tapped the vein in his arm. She shot down the plunger, and he was filled with the most quiet, wonderful sensation, as if having sex to the point of climax and having it last and last. He closed his eyes and smiled.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Hill Top.”

“You keeping me in a whorehouse?”

“That I am.”

“A dream come true.”

“I need you well, Johnnie.”

“You got me.”

“Everyone is gone.”

Johnnie opened his eyes and breathed through his nose. He closed his eyes again.

“The Guard. They got orders from the governor to bust up this town. I need you, Johnnie. Don’t leave.”

He reached up with his left hand and had a bit of trouble finding Fannie’s heart-shaped face. She shifted his hand over to her left breast and said everything was going to be all right. “Don’t you worry, baby.”

A flame struck again in the dark little room, and he saw Fannie Belle’s face and red lips and intent green eyes, and then it was clouded again in a puff of smoke. He heard her inhale, and then she passed the cigarette between his lips.

“I got the door locked,” she said. “I turned the lights off and closed the gate. If they even think about busting down the door, I’ll take a few of those bastards with me.”

“I love you, baby.”

“Johnnie, how ’bout you tell me more about this money you took from Hoyt. I sure like that story.”

THE RAIDS STARTEDthat Thursday at exactly 4:30 with a proclamation from Governor Persons that Phenix City was under martial rule. That gave Hanna and the Guards the go-ahead to surround the Russell County Courthouse and relieve all law enforcement and city officials of their duties and make them surrender all weapons, squad cars, and badges. Just as General Hanna and Major Black burst into the sheriff’s office, they found Sheriff Ralph Matthews sitting behind his desk, a big wad of chaw in his cheek, playing gin rummy with four deputies and a jailer. Another jailer was within earshot of the men, sitting on the office toilet and reading a copy of Gent magazine. As soon as the Guard leveled their shotguns and.45s at the boys, Matthews looked from deputy to deputy and then over to the jailer on the toilet.

He shook his head and threw the remainder of his cards into the pot.

The other deputies did the same and they all slowly stood, hitching up their gun belts on their uniforms.

“What can we do you for, General?”

“Not a goddamn thing,” Hanna said, walking over to Matthews’s desk and pulling a Hav-a-Tampa from a box. “Just leave your guns and badges on the way out.”

“Sir?” Matthews laughed, the big plug in his cheek. His face turned a bright red.

“You heard me, you hick bastard,” Hanna said. He lit a match against his thumbnail. “Now, take off those guns nice and slow.”

Matthews shook his head again. He dramatically spit in a wastepaper basket and smiled with a lot of pity. He was a fat man with a big belly and a small mind, and he didn’t quite catch on to what was happening. His fat cheeks looked like apples.

Just then there was a creak and the men turned, seeing the jailer stand from the little box bathroom and raise a pistol, his trousers at his ankles.

Jack Black fired off a round over the man’s head. And although the shot missed him by a foot, the man ducked and landed back with a hard thud onto the commode and dropped the pistol into the water.

“Now,” Hanna said.

Matthews went first, unhitching his belt and guns, laying them atop the big wooden desk. His deputies followed, and they all stood shoulder to shoulder as five-foot-five bulldog Hanna passed by them as in an inspection line, never once saying a word but eyeing the men as if they were the sorriest bunch of bastards he’d ever seen in his life.

It was raining, and the thunder belly-grumbled outside as the water pinged against the pane glass and slid down the windows. Hanna pulled his MacArthur hat off his head and held it out to Matthews, “I said badges, too.”

“Murphy?” he called out to me. I entered the room.

Hanna handed me Ralph Matthews’s badge and pinned it over my Texaco star. “I kind of like that one better. It suits you, Sheriff.”

FOUR HOURS EARLIER, I’D SAT IN JOYCE’S BEAUTY SHOP drinking a cup of coffee and explaining to her the job I’d just been offered by the state. She was between appointments and cleaning out a sink full of brunette hair dye. The room smelled of burnt chemicals and sweet shampoos, and as I tried to make sense of the offer she just nodded and nodded, keeping her hands busy with the washing and some sweeping and some straightening of a couple of helmet dryers by a back wall under framed pictures from Vogue.

“Why you?”

“I have an honest face.”

She nodded. She sat down in a stylist chair and faced me. I was still dressed in my coveralls, my Texaco baseball cap in my hands, as I looked down at the floor and waited for what was about to come.

But she didn’t say a word for a long time, and when she spoke it was calm and confident. “Is this temporary?”

“It could be,” I said. “It’s just until the election.”

“If the Guard is taking over, why do they even need you?”

“It was the best we could get. Something called limited martial rule. They have to have local police. The Guard can’t make arrests on their own.”

“You don’t know a thing about being a sheriff.”