Ace Atkins - Wicked City

Reuben turned with the glass in hand, and when he fell into a sliver of light from those big plastic drapes Johnnie had a gun on him. It was a.38 just like Reuben’s. Everybody seemed to have.38s.

“What if I decided to paint the fucking wall with your head?”

Reuben walked in front of the mirror and checked his hair again, watching his face, those droopy Mitchum eyes.

“Then you are dumber than I thought. You’ll never be able to cash out.”

The.38 clicked and fell onto a void space in the gun, and Johnnie showed those big old choppers again and said: “Pow!”

THEY TOOK THE BOTTLE AND WANDERED OUT BY THE swimming pool facing the beach, seeing Florida’s Gulf Coast “Famous Sugary Sand,” just like on the billboards. Reuben had also heard it called the “Redneck Riviera,” but it was early fall and the rednecks had all gone, leaving the miniature golf courses, shell shops, and oyster houses empty. And even though Fannie had decided to tan her boobs in the cool air, there was no one around but him and Johnnie to see them.

Reuben walked ahead and Johnnie hung back, finding a place to sit on the diving board. He had the motel glass in his hand and pulled on a pair of black plastic sunglasses, Reuben knowing that Johnnie must’ve thought he looked like a movie star in his head.

Reuben looked down at Fannie, who lay on a pink beach towel protected by a cardboard windscreen, the inside shiny metallic to pull in the sun. With her white sunglasses on, he couldn’t tell if she’d heard him walk up or not until he heard her say, “You’re blocking the sun.”

Reuben looked behind him, squinting, and stepped back.

“You got it?”

“No, ma’am.”

The inside of the silver walls looked like a little nest, with the clear bottle of Johnson’s baby oil and two more pink towels and some copies of movie-star magazines showing off Star of the Year Audrey Hepburn.

“Pull up a seat.”

“You want to put something on?”

“Reuben, how many times have you seen my titties?”

“I don’t reckon I recall.”

“Exactly.”

Fannie’s white skin had grown reddish, her face flushed. She was a curvy woman, with ample hips and just the slightest hint of a belly. She turned to drink a cocktail from the straw, and Reuben noticed her backside was big but nicely shaped. When she finished with the drink, she looked over her shoulder and caught him staring.

“We heard you threw in with Lamar Murphy.”

Reuben laughed. “You lost your mind.”

“Aren’t you two big buddies?”

“Not anymore.”

She nodded and turned back over. “Don’t you hate it when the summer is over and you know everything is going to get all brown and ugly? I try to keep it going for as long as I can. I can tan in this little hotbox all through January. I saw the advertisement in the back of Vogue magazine. It’s all the rage in France.”

“You don’t say.”

“You know Johnnie will kill you if you don’t bring him the money.”

He nodded.

“I heard Clyde Yarborough’s in with you, too.”

“Johnnie sure likes to run his mouth.”

“He talks in his sleep.”

Reuben pulled up a plastic chair and watched as Fannie flipped through the pages of Vogue and then tossed it away and then shielded her face with a copy of Look. Cover story on Deborah Kerr, another crazy redhead.

Reuben just waited.

“What’s it gonna take?”

“Jesus H. Christ. Would you two let things cool off? I just got out of jail.”

“For what?”

“I slept in my court date.”

“Murphy arrest you?”

He nodded.

“He sure has a hard-on for you. What the hell did you ever do to him?”

“Not a damn thing. He just thinks he’s a big man ’cause of the badge. He came out to arrest me at my farm, right in front of my boy. And he kept me there longer than the law said.”

“Why’d he do that.”

“To play with my head. I ’bout knocked him out cold, too.”

“You hit him?”

“Sure did. That’s when he asked me how long it took to rob Hoyt. But I could tell he didn’t know a thing. He just threw it out at me, waiting to see how I’d react, but I didn’t say nothin’.”

Fannie turned back over, sitting on her butt and pulling her knees up to her titties. She tucked her sunglasses up on her head and squinted at Reuben. “Did boxing really mess your brain up that bad, sweetie?”

“What?”

“Murphy has someone who tipped him off, and if you don’t tell the sonofabitch what you saw in that alley he’s gonna let you deal with Hoyt.”

“He didn’t mean it. He’d never do that. He was fishing.”

“How’d you like to make a friendly wager?”

THE COFFEE WAS ON AND THE KIDS IN BED JUST AS I SAW the big headlights flash into my driveway and cross over the television and shine on the knotty-pine wall. It was election night, and I’d just returned from the sheriff’s office, taking phone calls and later meeting with Hugh Britton and some folks from the RBA. I met Jack out back on my porch as Joyce finished up putting up the leftovers. I’d taken off the suit and wore a gray sweatshirt and workout pants from hitting the heavy bag in four rounds counted off by Thomas on my Bulova after supper. He liked to keep the time on me.

Just as he stepped inside, I handed Jack the mug of coffee and could tell by his whiskey breath he needed it. He sat on a folding chair at the edge of the deck.

He shook my hand, “Congratulations, Sheriff.”

“I was the only one running.”

“But now it’s official.”

You could smell the smoldering of burning leaves from my neighbor.

“I let out those two drunks from the other night,” Black said. “That car was a real mess. I don’t think they’re even gonna have it towed.”

I drank the coffee. I lit a cigarette.

There was a harvest moon tonight, and, in the black sky, it looked absolutely huge. One of those times that the moon felt as large as the earth and you could reach out and touch it.

“I need to tell you something, Lamar.”

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

He shook his head. Jack had let his hair grow back like a civilian, and his sideburns had gotten long and dark. He still wore his gray suit and jacket, black tie and shoes, a badge clipped to his belt.

“You know by the time I jumped at Normandy, I wasn’t scared. We’d been in Italy, and those combat nerves were gone. It’s kind of like getting sex – the first time you do it, you worry about not making a mess.”

“I bet it’s a little different.”

“But there was one night in France when the Germans were trapped on each side by some hedgerows. They had to either run through them and get shot down in a big open field or go right for these two big Sherman tanks. Some ran right for the tanks, and, as we followed, we had to step over their bodies. Can you imagine running for a tank? Some of them were dead, flattened like pancakes by the tracks, some of them half dead, crying out in German for their mamas or Hitler or their souls.”

I drank some coffee.

“I spent my twentieth birthday at the Bulge,” he said, not touching his coffee yet. The steam rose off the top, the cup still in his hands. His eyes unfocused and clouded. “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not the sensitive type.”

“Never figured that, Jack.”

“Did you know my real name is Rudolph?”

“I think I saw that somewhere.”

He kept staring down past Joyce’s little beauty shop toward the creek.

“My buddies call me Jack ’cause of Black Jack whiskey. As you can tell, I like to drink.”

“No.”

“Quit kiddin’ around, boss. You know I was here at Benning? That’s something I never told you. Before the war and when we processed out.”