Ace Atkins - Wicked City

“You want to tell me where you were when Mr. Patterson was shot?”

“Sure thing. It’s no secret. I was at the jail with Sheriff Matthews. I’ve already told all this to Mr. Sykes.”

“Well, tell me again.”

“I’m ashamed to admit it, but we were playing cards. But let me tell you something, that’s in my past. I don’t gamble, and my lips won’t touch a drop of whiskey. I am cleansed. Yes, sir. I just heard on the radio that Billy Graham wants to come to Phenix City for a revival. If that don’t beat all.”

“Bert, can you tell me how long you were at the jail?” I asked, pulling a little notebook from my shirt pocket. I clicked open a pen and took some notes.

“’Bout an hour,” he said.

“What time did you get there?”

“’Bout eight, it was gettin’ dark.”

“And when did you leave?”

“When we got word what had happened to Mr. Patterson,” he said. “I just grabbed my hat and ran out of the office.”

“Did you leave your office any time before that?”

“No, sir. There were four other deputies with me there, and Sheriff Matthews, of course, and the jailer.”

“I don’t doubt those men will vouch for you.”

“Mr. Murphy, you got to know I had nothing to do with this, and I’d give my right arm if I could find out who killed Mr. Patterson like that. I swear before my Lord Jesus Christ that I did not kill that man. Won’t you pray with me?”

I looked down at him and then over at Hugh Britton. I shook my head.

“No, thanks, Bert. I don’t think I will.”

I turned to leave and Britton followed me, walking down the long hospital hall. “You believe that song and dance?”

“No, sir.”

“What can you charge him with?”

I punched the button on the elevator.

“What about vote fraud?” Britton asked.

“Keep talkin’.”

“What if someone was to file charges against Fuller for loading the ballot box?”

“You see that?”

“No, but I know someone who did.”

“You think he’ll testify before a judge?”

“Can’t hurt to ask her.”

“HOW MUCH YOU GET?”

“Two dollars.”

“That’s it?” Reuben asked. “Big old house and that’s all they got to give to a poor orphan?”

“The woman didn’t believe I was an orphan,” Billy said. “She said my teeth were too good.”

Reuben nodded and wheeled the car out from the oak shadows by the wide-porched, white-columned house in Columbus. He whistled while he drove in and out of the shadows and wheeled down by Broadway, and asked Billy to count out the change.

“How ’bout a hot dog?”

“I thought we were buying groceries,” Billy said.

“Hot dogs are groceries. It’s food, ain’t it?”

They stopped up on the bluff and bought a couple hot dogs from a little brick stand and ate them in the car, the windows down, a nice little breeze coming down the street, working in the shadows. Billy watched his dad load them down with plenty of that free stuff, chopped onions and relish and the like, and part of it spilled down on his hands as he washed it down with a bottle of Coca-Cola.

“You think you could do a cripple?” Reuben asked.

“I guess,” Billy said. “I can do a limp and make my eyes go kind of funny.”

“If you could make yourself drool, we’d hit the jackpot.”

Billy finished up his hot dog and watched the people come and go from the little stand. His father flicked on the radio, and they listened to reports about some A-bomb tests in the desert, and knowing all that was close kind of made him feel better about the day. Before everything was blown to hell.

“I know of a few more neighborhoods we can hit tomorrow.”

“If you buy whiskey, I won’t do this again.”

“Goddamn it. I’m not going to buy whiskey. I told you that.”

“You did last time.”

“Well,” Reuben said, starting the engine and twirling the car around. “Well, last time I needed it.”

They drove over the bridge into Alabama and up the hill on Fourteenth Street, past all the jeeps and Guard troops. Billy saw a couple boys with rifles walking under the dead marquees smoking cigarettes. He turned back straight ahead, and soon they were headed up Summerville Road and home.

“I don’t think they’re going to leave till they find out who killed Mr. Patterson.”

“Shit, they know who killed Mr. Patterson,” Reuben said. He reached under the seat and pulled out a pint of Jack Daniel’s, taking a hit. “They just are doing this for the newspapers. Soon as Governor Folsom comes in, these people will be gone, and me and you can start making some money again.”

“Who was it?”

“Bert Fuller.”

“I guess everybody knows that,” Billy said. “Problem is that nobody saw him.”

Reuben took a hit of the whiskey and wheeled onto the long dirt road that would take them home. The sun had started to dip to the west, and everything was nice and gold and warm on a hot August day.

“Someone saw him,” Reuben said.

Billy looked over at his dad and pulled a cigarette from his pack of Luckies. He fiddled with the lighter in the dash.

“I seen that sonofabitch standing in that alley beside the Elite not two minutes before Mr. Patterson was shot. He was crouched down behind a car. I wasn’t the only one either. I seen two more people walk right by that sonofabitch and look him right in the face.”

Billy stared over at his father and couldn’t breathe for a moment. His father shook his head and put an index finger to his lips. “You think I’m messin’ with that clusterfuck and get myself killed? Hell, no, son.”

He parked the car in front of the farmhouse but only got halfway there when the screen door of the porch creaked open and out walked Johnnie Benefield with a sling on his arm and a smile on his face.

WE FOUND HILDA COULTER IN TOWN AT THE LITTLE flower shop she ran right next door to Hoyt Shepherd’s pool hall. In back, she arranged some spindly white flowers at a table with what seemed to be some kind of fern. Hilda was in her late twenties or early thirties, and wore a blue dress with a tiny belt at the waist. She was a brunette, with big, perfectly done hair, and looked downright annoyed when we walked in and she had to turn down a small radio that played Rosemary Clooney.

We all knew each other. Hilda had started the RBA’s women’s auxiliary in ’52. She was a firecracker. A female version of Hugh Britton who would run with any assignment that old Albert Patterson had given her, from campaigning to visiting officers at Fort Benning. She didn’t think anything of talking down to some generals in the most genteel language about what services were offered for the soldiers.

She kept on with the arrangement, adding in some long-stemmed roses, measuring the stem and then cutting a bit back.

“Hey there, Hilda,” Britton said.

“What do you boys want?”

“We need some help.”

“Lamar, can you tell Joyce to call me? I’ve been trying to get an appointment all week. I need to get my roots done.”

“She’s been a little busy.”

“’Spec so, with you playing sheriff.”

“I’m not playing sheriff, Hilda. I am the sheriff.”

“Appointed, Lamar. Don’t let it go to your head,” she said. “So what’s the favor?”

Britton ran a hand over the back of his neck and remembered to take off his hat. “We want you to swear out a warrant on Bert Fuller.”

She kept on arranging. No expression on her face as she pulled out the ferns and then added some sprigs of little white flowers. She poured some water on a green sponge and set it back in a vase.

“Can you believe the cost of roses these days?”