Ace Atkins: Wicked City

“Wait till we see if the boy’s in there,” I said.

The guardsmen nodded and fanned out back of the stucco-and-tile units behind the big Casa Grande façade. The old motel probably seeing better days when car travel was a novelty, a place where Model Ts huddled up for the night and folks ate chicken dinners Mamma had packed herself. The road sign was missing several white bulbs, had been ever since I’d known the place, no one giving a damn to replace them.

In the parking lot, we’d spotted three cars. No one on desk duty, the motel closed down during the raids for running whores.

“Jack, would I hurt your feelings if I told you I hated guns?” I asked. “I never even liked to hunt.”

“No kidding.”

“No kidding.”

“That.45 on your belt loaded?”

“Oh, yes.”

BILLY DROVE RIGHT THROUGH THE CASA GRANDE PORTICO and parked right in the middle of the center lot, the stucco-and-tile units fanning out in a U shape. He shifted in his coat, feeling the gun on his spine, and outside let out a deep breath, clouding his eyes. When he popped the trunk, the money still let off an awful reek – even after being repacked – of being deep down in that shitter for months, and the smell about made him want to puke.

He grabbed the burlap bag, PURINA FEEDS printed on the side, and walked toward the only unit with the lights on in the entire place. He heard the sound of foot stomps and laughter.

Billy gritted his teeth and speeded up his walk, but, as he did, he tripped and the gun loosened from his back, slipping down his butt and down the leg of his saggy jeans. He stopped, looked around to see if anyone noticed, feeling the gun come to rest on the top of his shoe.

But as he bent down, the door opened and out walked Johnnie Benefield in a man’s tank top and plaid pants and boots. He was eating an apple and ambled down to meet Billy, who stood up, not moving, that gun sliding over his shoe and down onto the gravel.

Johnnie just kept chomping on the apple, working it like a wheel in his mouth and then tossing it in the bushes, before shaking his head and reaching down to get Reuben’s pistol.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “You brought me a Christmas present.”

And then he yanked Billy by the neck, slapped the boy hard across the mouth, and tugged him to the door and then threw him in the room, the big bag of money in his right hand. “Man, it’s colder than a Minnesota well-digger’s ass.”

Billy fell to the floor of the efficiency, looking up into the face of that fat bootlegger Moon. The fat man ate at an orange from a giant fruit basket set in the center of the room. He didn’t say a word, just ate, and then took a drink from a whiskey bottle, warming himself by a gas heater.

Johnnie turned over the burlap bag and let the money snow out on the bed. He smiled and smiled as Billy wavered to his feet, inching backward to the door, before Johnnie said, “Where in the name of baby Jesus is the rest? This ain’t all of it. It ain’t all by a mile.”

Moon got off the bed and set the orange on the nightstand with a thud. He unlatched his big overall and let the straps drop, pulling up his flannel shirt and mammoth stomach, telling Johnnie to bring the boy to him. He licked his lips as he used the flat of his hand to test the bed springs.

“It’s all there was.” Billy’s voice shook.

“You know, Moon ’bout split your girlfriend in two. He’s hung like a goddamn donkey. But I guess you’ll figure that out.”

He threw down an apple at Billy’s feet. “Just bite down when it hurts,” he said.

FROM THE OTHER SIDE, I WATCHED AS TWO NEGRO MEN moved from the shadows on top of two motel units with pistols in their hands and whispered back and forth to each other. We had four of the Guard boys right behind them, two more at the far end of the motor court and two with me and Jack. We told Quinnie to wait by the radio for when all hell broke loose, and the little man’s face turned red with frustration, but he said, “Yes, sir.”

The guardsmen had the pair of negroes in the sights of their rifles and could drop them in a second. They stood ready.

But then another door opened at the bottom of the motel’s U and out walked Clyde Yarborough with a big.44 in his hand, looking around the empty motor court. He passed the blue Buick and circled around, eyes darting up to the negros and then back over to us. Not seeing us in shadows, he tilted his head like an animal.

That bandit bandanna covered his face as he moved forward, his feet crunching on the gravel lot. It started to sleet, and in the streetlight it looked like sharp little silver pins.

Yarborough got within maybe ten yards from us when we heard the scream of a child and his head quickly turned. He tucked the.44 back in his belt and yelled and pointed to the negroes on the roof, making noises with his destroyed mouth.

MOON WAS ON HIM, CRUSHING OUT ALL THE BREATH FROM Billy’s lungs, the last sound being that of a scream, and Billy felt the sick flesh against his leg and the whispering weird voice in his ear, so high-pitched and sugar sweet it sounded like that of a little girl. Moon’s breath was hot and old and smelled dead and cancerous, whispering to Billy, as he was pushed facedown, and calling him his little baby. All Billy could see was Johnnie Benefield laughing at him, sitting across from the iron bed in a chair and smoking a cigarette, coolly taking a sip of whiskey from a bottle. Billy’s face felt as if it was about to explode from blood, unable to breathe or scream but just eyeing Johnnie, wanting to kill him so badly that he ignored Moon grunting on top of him, trying to motivate his weak flesh.

Johnnie pulled the cigarette from his mouth and said, smelling a pack of hundreds, “Why does this cash smell like assholes?”

WHEN YARBOROUGH POINTED, THE TWO NEGROES TURNED and spotted us, raising their pistols and squeezing out several shots before the guardsmen opened fire, hitting one direct, the back of his head bursting in the harsh white lights before he twirled and fell from the roof, and clipping the other, who scrambled and tried to crawl back in the shadows, his feet losing the roof tile under him like the shuffling of cards.

Jack hoisted up the Thompson in his arms and walked dead center into the motor court, calling out for Clyde Yarborough to drop his gun, but Yarborough didn’t hesitate when he saw him, drawing and leveling the.44. The chatter of bullets from Jack’s Thompson raked across him and kept him up in the air, in a marionette’s dance, until Jack let go of the trigger, letting the man twirl and fall in a heap.

I kicked in the front door and found a fat bootlegger named Moon, his pants around his ankles, his tiny penis flaccid and stuck to his leg as he reached for a shotgun on the bed. As Billy crawled into a corner, he reached for the gun, too. As the fat man struggled for it, I blasted him three times with the sawed-off, splattering his grease and blood against the far wall. When Moon fell, Billy yelled, seeing Johnnie Benefield coming from behind the front door, a pistol pointed at me, smiling in the bright light as he crossed the door’s threshold and jerked Billy off the bed, my gun on him and his on me.

He held us both there.

And I didn’t breathe for half a minute, as he plucked Billy from that room, the barrel of his gun shifting from my face and onto the boy’s neck, and he walked backward, me coming into the light, the sleet stinging my face, those small, sharp needles pinging me, as I moved slow down out of the motel unit and onto the gravel. The guardsmen out now, all guns on Johnnie, who crept back with the kid and moved to Reuben’s baby blue Buick, smiling, holding the gun with one hand and saluting the guardsmen with the other.