Ace Atkins - Wicked City

Reuben smoked down the cigarette and lit another Chesterfield, liking the design on the pack because he’d seen a picture of Gregory Peck smoking them while filming Twelve O’Clock High. Johnnie had brought a carton with him, and it was the first decent cigarettes he’d had in a week. The sun almost gone, just a thin little hot slit through the pecans and down at the dead peach trees. The trees died while he was getting shot at in the Philippines, but if the old man were still alive he’d be blaming him for their loss.

“What’s the split?” Reuben asked. He poured out the last of the ’shine, only a mushy peach left at the bottom, just as ripe as the day it was picked and soaked in corn liquor. “Figured that’s what we’re beatin’ around the bush about. Let’s figure it out.”

“Three ways.”

“Three ways?”

“Cut between some inside folks.”

“I think that’s horseshit.”

“I told you I got an inside man.”

“Who?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Why don’t you try.”

Johnnie shrugged and snuffed some smoke out of his nose. “All right, hell. Clyde Yarborough.”

“Bullshit.”

“Bullshit back on you.”

“Clyde trained Hoyt and Jimmie. He’s the one who taught them the whole game.”

“Let’s just say, Hoyt ain’t rememberin’ that in his Christmas list.”

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Reuben said. “I still say we need to keep that money hidden for a while. Wait till the time is right.”

“The time is now. You got other options of feeding that moody-ass boy of yours?”

“Say, why doesn’t he like you?” Reuben asked. “He hasn’t said one word since you showed up. I ain’t seen him all day.”

“You think I give a shit,” Johnnie said, unzipping his fly and urinating right off the porch into what used to be his wife’s flower bed. He grinned, a cigarette clamped in those tombstone choppers of his. “I just got that effect on some people.”

Reuben waited, finished the cigarette, and stood. “You know Hoyt wouldn’t think nothin’ ’bout killin’ both of us.”

“Life ain’t nothin’ but a spin of the wheel.”

THAT SATURDAY, I SPENT THE MORNING ON MY LAND UP ON Sandfort Road. I brought Anne with me, and together we fed and watered the horses, cleaned out their stalls, and went for a short ride through some cleared trails in and around the pines and oaks, the kudzu beaten to the trail’s edge around our small pond. By the time we returned to the little barn, the horses were calm and gentle, the restlessness and nervousness gone, and Anne brushed them while I hung up their saddles and tack. I nailed up some shoes that the blacksmith had left by the gate and I tightened a loose nut on the water pump. I checked the mineral levels in their tank. I checked the fencing up by the front gate.

I was hammering up some barbed wire that hung loose when I heard the unmistakable high-pitched gears on an Army jeep and saw Jack Black behind the wheel, with his buzz cut and gold aviator shades, stop short of my gate.

“We got him,” he said.

I leaned into the fence and looked back at Anne, who fed Joe Louis an apple. Joe shook his head back and showed her his teeth when he was done.

“The FBI matched the prints taken off Mr. Patterson’s car with the prints we took off Fuller.”

“They sure?”

“They said it looked as if someone had tried to smudge the prints on the door frame, but they got part of a finger and his thumb.”

“That was Ferrell. I have two people who saw him rubbing his arm over the roof of that car. Guess he missed a spot.”

“Guess so.”

“So we can charge him?”

Black shook his head. “Sykes wants to wait. He doesn’t want this getting out too soon.”

“What else does he need?”

“He’s trying to be careful. He says he wants more and doesn’t want to spook Fuller.”

“What about the guns?”

“Nothing yet,” Black said, squinting into the sun behind my back. “They’re testing the bullets they took at the autopsy with those.38s we got at Fuller’s place. There’s also talk about exhuming a couple bodies from men Fuller killed a few years back to compare bullets.”

“You don’t look optimistic.”

“Fuller is stupid.”

“But not that stupid,” I said.

“You never know.”

“I’m ’bout finished up around here.”

“That’s a nice-looking horse.”

“His name is Joe Louis.”

“And the other?”

“Rocky.”

Black smiled. “Of course he is.”

Anne walked up to us, skinny and lean in a pair of crisp blue overalls and little cowboy boots. She climbed up on the swinging gate and said hello to Black.

“You gonna make him work?” Anne asked.

“Just a little,” Black said.

“I liked him better when he pumped gas,” she said.

“Don’t you like that car with a siren?” I asked.

“You don’t even have uniforms,” she said.

I looked over to Black. “I hate wearing those duds they left at the office.”

“No rule you got to.”

“You know when you’re headed back to Birmingham?”

Black chewed some gum and leaned back a bit. “Thought I might stay around here. You know, if there’s a job.”

“You know it doesn’t pay much.”

“My other job ain’t exactly making me rich. Besides, General Hanna thinks it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to have an adviser.”

“Advise away, Major.”

We shook hands, and Black walked back to the jeep. Before he crawled back under the wheel, he yelled: “You ever hear of a place called the Rabbit Farm?”

I shook my head.

“A girl called the office this morning and said her friend was being held at the Rabbit Farm. When I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, she acted like I was crazy. Said she wanted to talk to the sheriff, that he would know.”

“You ask Fuller about it?”

“Of course.”

“Play dumb?”

“Well, he’s so damn good at it. You know that sonofabitch is giving sermons to the inmates? He wrapped a bedsheet around him like it was a robe.”

“I think the only soul he’s thinking about saving is his own.”

“You coming in?”

“Let me drop off Anne. The woman leave a number?”

“She said she would call back.”

“HER NAME IS SHEILA,” THE GIRL, LORELEI, SAID. “I haven’t heard from her since Mr. Patterson was shot.”

“Where was she working?”

“Last I heard was a place called the Rabbit Farm.”

“You know where that is?”

“No, sir. I don’t know the way back. They’d blindfold you when they’d take you there. That’s why I came here. I thought you would know.”

The girl looked down at her hands. She looked like a girl today, not like when I’d seen her at the Hill Top. She wore a flowered shirt that showed off her long teenage arms and blue jeans and saddle oxford shoes. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she didn’t wear a trace of makeup. It was hard to think this was the same girl that I’d talked to at Choppy’s.

“You doin’ all right?”

She looked to the floor in the office. I sat next to her in another hard wooden chair but not behind the desk. It seemed to go easier that way.

“I’m fine.”

“How’d she get into this mess?”

“She was doing some B-girl work with her mother,” Lorelei said. She chewed gum while we talked and then dropped the gum into her hand and then into the wastebasket.

“Where?”

“Bamboo Club. The Silver Slipper. She worked for a while at Ma Beachie’s.”

I nodded. Beachie’s was a high-end place, mostly stage shows, with the best girls in Phenix City. The clientele was high-dollar, with fraternity boys from Auburn and businessmen in Atlanta. The girls would work out backroom deals only if they liked the offer.