Ace Atkins: Wicked City

Patterson looked across at Garrett, the man fumbling with his hands and looking away. John’s jaw clenched. I waited to hold him back.

“I’d really like you to explain to my mother why you killed her husband over a political pissing match.”

He shook his head. He looked down. A scolded child.

He looked eighty years old.

“It doesn’t take much to keep you quiet. It took three bullets for my father.”

“As you can see-” the doctor started.

“He looks fine to me,” I said.

“Under no circumstances,” the doctor said, already walking out of the room. “Rest, Mr. Garrett. Please, just rest.”

He turned off the lights, arguing with us out in the long, endless linoleum hall. As he spoke, I watched the door close, the narrowing of artificial light, that swath cut down to just a sliver, and I saw Si Garrett fall back into that far corner, bracing his back and sliding down to his haunches. Doing nothing but staring into the dark as the door closed with a click.

IT WAS THREE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, AND I WAS DOWN at Slocumb’s checking up on how my father-in-law was making out with his other son-in-law who’d taken my place. Anne and Thomas rode over with me and were raiding the ice-cream freezer, to the great aggravation of their grandfather, who had always been known to be stingy with the cones. I talked to my brother-in-law a little about the dozens of fugitives we were looking for, including Fannie Belle and Johnnie Benefield, and gave him a wanted poster to tack on the wall by the cigarettes.

He commented that Benefield’s picture was enough to scare off customers.

We were going to swing by and pick up Joyce and then head down to Columbus and Broadway to spend the rest of the day Christmas shopping. Thomas and I talked about maybe catching a movie after paying a visit to Santa Claus.

I excused myself, as Thomas was trying to climb into the cooler with his grandfather pulling him back by his sneakers, and walked around out back to smoke a cigarette. From around the garage, Arthur joined me and I gave him a cigarette, and we stood there looking across at the muddy creek and the path that had led to my house, now tangling up in weeds.

Arthur wore grease-stained denim overalls and a wide smile on his worn negro face.

“You miss me?” I asked.

“Not at all.”

“You ready for Christmas?”

“You know it, Sheriff.”

“You know you can just call me Lamar. I’m no different.”

“No different, except you can put my ass in jail.”

“You do have a point.”

He smoked the cigarette fast and crushed it under his work boot. He looked around, just to make sure no one was in earshot, and said, “I was listenin’ to the radio in the shop the other day. You know, like I always do. And, anyway, Mr. Patterson come on and started talking about Phenix. He was talking about the way the sheriff and the police didn’t let no one have any rights. He said livin’ in Phenix City was like livin’ over there in Russia.”

I nodded.

“He said a man’s vote didn’t mean a thing here. He said there hadn’t been an honest election in a hundred years.”

“That’s probably true,” I said. “So what’s the point?”

Arthur shook his head. “No point, just something I found mighty interesting.”

“You’re talking about the negro situation.”

He caught my eye. I smiled at him, my cigarette burning down to a nub, singeing my fingers.

“Fella came by to see you the other day. I told him to find you at the jail, but he left a number. Wanted to talk about that reward you put up.”

I shook my head. “People been calling for two weeks about that reward money.”

“I figured,” Arthur said. “That’s why I didn’t think much of it. Hell of a car, though.”

“What’s that?”

“That fella that stopped by. Had the longest goddamn car I ever seen. A ’39 Lincoln, black, and about a mile long. That’s what I call an automobile.”

“Where is that number?”

“By the register.”

He followed me back into Slocumb’s, where I shuffled through some receipts and deposit slips and found a phone number for a man named Padgett. I showed it to Arthur and he nodded.

I had the phone in my hand and started to dial.

“I’ve been prayin’ y’all catch the fella that did that to Mr. Patterson,” Arthur said, wiping the sweat off the back of his neck with an oil-stained rag. “I prayed for it since it happened. Figured it’s my town, too. Ain’t that right?”

“I’M NOT GOING TO LIE TO YOU, MR. PADGETT,” I SAID. “IT’S not a position I’d want to be in.”

Cecil Padgett was in his late twenties. A slender, handsome man with intense blue eyes and that kind of tanned skin that comes from hard outdoor labor. He smoked and listened to me, sitting on a sofa in the center of an Airstream trailer he shared with his wife. He nodded with everything I said, grounding out his cigarette in a tin can on the coffee table.

His wife hovered around in their tiny kitchen, pretending to be rearranging dishes but exchanging glances with him until he stopped looking to her.

“So they might try and kill me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I read about that other fella. Not a good way to go.”

“He was connected with the rackets. The man who we think killed him probably did it because he switched sides.”

“Those gangsters probably wouldn’t be pleased with me either.”

“We would ask that you and your wife stay in a hotel with protection until the trials.”

He nodded.

His wife dropped a tea cup and it shattered on the floor. She put her hand to her mouth. I looked to Padgett and he stood, asking if we could get some fresh air. It was night, and we stood out by our cars, the fat ceramic Christmas lights hung over the little canopies set up from all the Airstreams at Tropical Paradise Court in Columbus.

“Why were you downtown?”

“We wanted to see a movie,” he said. “I was checking the times.”

“Did you stay?”

“No, sir,” he said. “It was a western, and those things always leave me feeling kind of low.”

“How’s that?”

“Too many people have to die.”

I nodded, and reached out to shake his hand and said, “Merry Christmas.”

He looked past me. From one of the trailers, a fat woman in a big red sweater walked outside, waiting for her little dog to squat and go to the bathroom. Another trailer door opened, and a man threw out a bucket of dirty water, heat steamed up off the gravel. Nearby, Padgett’s ’39 Lincoln sat with the hood open, its engine in pieces.

“So when do I have to let you know?”

“When you can.”

“How ’bout now?”

“Now is good.”

“This ain’t about the reward.”

I nodded.

“When I read about that fella dying and me not standing up… It’s hard to put into words.”

“I understand, Mr. Padgett. You’re standin’ up now.”

“Guess I am.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

ON CHRISTMAS DAY,Thomas got duded up in his brand-new Roy Rogers gear, complete with vest, hand-tooled belt with R.R. written in studs, and a deluxe holster filled with a pair of toy six-shooters loaded with caps. He’d already shot at Anne’s cat four times, and that caused a minor break in the peace. But she’d forgiven him and gone on outside after breakfast to try out a pair of white J. C. Higgins roller skates and say hello to a schoolmate who lived two doors down. Santa had also brought Thomas a junior boxing set, and Joyce, as a joke, had bought him a Happi Time service station set that came complete with plastic figures of the attendants who worked the grease rack, platform, and pumps. All this coming as a joke, because he liked to see me work at the station more than sit behind a desk at the sheriff’s office.