Ace Atkins - Wicked City

“You never drink, do you?”

“Not for a long time.”

“There a story behind that?”

“Not a good one.”

John nodded. “Anyway, I don’t have much to do with this. But this Diamond fella, I think he’s from New York, wants to film it here. He said it’s the kind of story that has to be shot in the South. It can’t be some Hollywood back lot.”

“Seems like a story without an ending.”

“He thinks it’s over.”

“What do you think?”

“Not by a mile.”

“Have you spoken with Sykes?”

John shifted in his chair and pulled a ball cap down in his eyes. He shifted the rod and took a sip of beer. “I have.”

“You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“I don’t know what he’s up to. He must have two dozen prosecutors and investigators interviewing every soul who was even close to Fifth Avenue on June eighteenth. They have maps, building blueprints, models, and photos of every angle of my dad’s Rocket 88. Hundred interviews with people who heard shots, saw someone parking a car, saw anyone walk close to that alley. In my opinion, it’s a calculated mess. An equation that everything implied means absolutely zero.”

“No one who saw anything.”

“Besides Quinnie. But Sykes believes Quinnie will be cut to pieces on the witness stand because he changes his story. At first he saw a man he didn’t know and then later says it was Arch Ferrell.”

“He was scared.”

“Sure he was. But think what they’ll make of those big glasses he wears. You don’t think they’ll call his eyesight into question?”

“And no one else saw a thing.”

“People saw a car. They heard the shots. They saw a man leaving that alley. A group of teenagers moving some office equipment out of the Coulter Building saw my dad dying on that sidewalk. So did Hugh Bentley’s mother, at her grocery, after hearing those shots. They’ve been keeping it real quiet about Fuller’s prints on the car.”

I nodded. “But those can be explained away.”

“Of course they can. Fuller can say he was talking to my dad the day before the killing or accidentally touched the car after the murder. Hell, he was the lead investigator on the case.”

“Now we have Fuller or Ferrell.”

“Or both,” John said.

“Or both,” I said.

John finished the beer and placed the empty bottle back in the cooler. I lit a cigarette and settled back, feeling a little tug on my line and seeing the bobber disappear and then pop back up. I didn’t jerk the rod because I wanted the damn fish to swallow the hook whole and that quick move always lost me the fish.

“Hilda Coulter is getting some threats,” I said. “Someone has been following her, tried to run her off the road.”

“Fuller’s buddies.”

“You know about what happened to that girl?”

“The prostitute?”

“Yes.”

“These are evil people, Lamar. Sodom doesn’t have a thing on Phenix City.”

“Hilda didn’t want Jack in the flower shop, said he’d make a spectacle of himself,” I said. “So he’s just keeping an eye out for her. At night, he has a couple boys keeping watch outside her house.”

“I get those phone calls, too. So many, I don’t even answer the phone. Mostly, they say, ‘Do you want to end up like your daddy?,’ or they threaten my kids. I had a few of them checked out. But they always go back to pay phones. Not a lot you can do. Oh, that was the other thing.”

“What?”

“The picture. In the script, some of the gangsters drive by my house and drop a dead colored girl in the front yard.”

“Why?”

“I think the colored girl has a note pinned to her saying this could happen to my child.”

“That’s pretty rough.”

“Diamond says you have action every five minutes in a picture or else people will fall asleep. How ’bout you? How you like being sheriff now?”

“I make less than half what I made running the filling station.”

“But you are running.”

“You bet.”

“So there must be something you like.”

“I think I look good in a suit.”

“That shiner looks pretty good, too. You mind me asking where you got it?”

I touched the place under my eye that had already turned purple, the swelling almost gone. “Had a little fight with a friend.”

I told him about it.

“So that was the last time you saw Stokes?” John asked, hooking another worm, squinting into the early-afternoon light.

I nodded.

“Did he leave town?”

“I’m not sure.”

“And he knows what happened to my dad?”

“You bet.”

REUBEN DROVE DOWNto Panama City Beach, Florida, one morning in late October, turned in to the Flamingo Motel just around two and parked right in the vacant lot, knowing the beach was a hell of a place when summer died. He killed the Buick’s engine and combed his hair in the rearview, knocking on the door that Johnnie had told him to, right next to the ice machine. The whole motel built of cinder blocks and painted a bright pink, with a big old sign outside with a flamingo in front of a palm tree. Reuben knocked again and heard some movement inside, and the door gave. He stepped back a little.

The door creaked wide open to the cooling breeze off the ocean in the dead motel and the hum of the ice machine.

Reuben pulled out the.38 from the flat of his back and toed the door, opening it wider, and saw a flame kick up in the darkness. Johnnie Benefield, with no shirt and a pair of swim trunks, fanned out the match and showed the palms of his hands, “No tricks, okay?”

“Stand up,” Reuben said.

Johnnie did and he turned around like a little girl in a recital.

“Who’s in the toilet?”

“Nobody.”

“Where’s Fannie?”

“Working on her tan.”

“A little cold for that.”

“Fannie’s a brave woman. Now close the door and let’s talk.”

There was a little table by the plateglass window; big, heavy plastic curtains shut tight. Reuben walked inside and then past Johnnie – but still watching Johnnie – and checked the crapper and behind the shower curtain.

“You are a riddle.”

“Don’t you trust me?” Johnnie said.

“I drove all morning, didn’t I?”

Reuben took a seat. Johnnie plunked down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two of those little motel glasses. He cracked open the fresh bottle, still in the sack, and pushed an ice bucket forward.

“You want some ice?”

Reuben shook his head.

“Go get my fucking money,” Johnnie said.

“I didn’t bring it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Reuben took a sip and tossed him the keys to the Buick. “Check for yourself.”

He shook his head. “You dumb sonofabitch. Where is it?”

“I haven’t touched it since the night we robbed Hoyt. Scouts’ honor.”

Johnnie stubbed out his cigarette and took a seat across from Reuben at the tiny motel table. “Did you know that Fannie sunbathes with no top on? She doesn’t care who sees her, and if some maid or someone says something to her she’ll tell them to eat shit. You don’t believe me, look outside and you can see her big titties from here.”

“I didn’t get the money ’cause I can’t get to it. Every damn move, I’m bein’ watched. I’ve been in jail for four days. Lamar Murphy is riding my ass.”

Johnnie smiled, those big teeth showing like a hick car salesman’s. “I don’t believe a goddamn word you say. I’ll ask you again, where is my fucking money?”

Reuben poured himself some more Jack Daniel’s. “Can you really see her titties from here?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Reuben stood and walked to the back of the motel unit, looked out a little square window and saw a redheaded woman in white sunglasses. She was slick with sweat, red lipstick on, and, as advertised, big titties pointing toward the sky. “Well, I’ll be.”