Ace Atkins: Wicked City

I told him I didn’t want any trouble.

And he spent the next forty minutes witnessing to me, quoting parables from the Bible, casting himself as Phenix City’s Prodigal Son. When he’d finished, I asked him again about what had happened to Mr. Patterson, telling him he didn’t have a thing to lose now that he’d served his time. I told him how much it would mean to the Pattersons to know how their father died.

But his face was filled with ignorance and questions, and in a soft child’s voice he said, “I don’t know any more ’an you what happened in that alley. I guess that’s something we’re all going to have to live with.”

“You know I’m going to keep asking?”

Fuller nodded. “Say, you know what’s showing at the Palace?”

“Bert, they tore that place down two years ago.”

He looked sad but pumped my hand again as I left, and I drove away, heading out to the farm.

Two nights later, he made his move.

RAIN HIT THE TIN ROOF OF THE BARN, AND I HAD BOTH MY horses in. Old Braddock was still hanging on, his back sloped and teeth worn, and I had a new one, a sweet filly I’d bought from a man in Auburn. The zap of the electric storm in the bright blue daylight made them skittish and they shook their heads, their eyes wide. I soothed them with talk.

I put up some rope, coiling it in my hands, and went to close a back gate after letting them in. A long row of tiny white bulbs lit the interior of the barn but flickered and sputtered out with a harsh boom, lightning hitting not a mile from where I stood.

The ground shook. The horses raised up on their hind legs.

Without their bridles, I smoothed their rumps, and they turned and turned, wide-eyed, until they slowed in the cooling darkness of the storm.

He appeared as a shadow to me at the mouth of the barn. The storm moving away now, the thunder retreating and cracking from far away. Wind rocked the flypaper that hung from the rafters of the loft, and I didn’t move, I just stood there, seeing the shadow man, and simply said, “Come on in, Bert.”

But he didn’t say anything, the dark shape shifting, studying me in the wide box of light. His hand disappeared for a moment and then reappeared with a pistol. He aimed the pistol at me without threats or words and drew a close bead down the sights.

The gun fired and fired again.

The shadow tilted and then fell back, trying to stand his ground, but losing a grip on the barn door and falling into the light, half man, half shadow.

One of my young deputies climbed down the loft ladder and walked toward Fuller, slowing as he grew close, making sure it was really him, and then he fired again. Twice more. Fuller in the mud, rain streaking across him, blood coming from his mouth. He fired twice more into the mud and blood.

I was outside with the deputy.

“I think he’s dead now, Billy,” I said.

He looked over at me, shaken awake from the dream.

“I want to be sure.”

I looked down in the mud, Fuller’s head sinking into the places that my horses had made soft with their hooves.

NOT LONG AFTER, BILLY AND I RODE THE TRAILS ON MY land, hearing the sounds of the bulldozers and earthmovers cutting Phenix City in half with a highway bypass to Columbus. We found a spot at my small pond to let the horses drink, calm and sweaty from the ride, and they felt gentle and tired as they filled themselves with cool water and we made our way back up that well-worn path to the barn.

“Did I tell you my wife was pregnant?”

“Must’ve slipped your mind,” I said. “Her folks okay with y’all living here? Or they still want you in Atlanta?”

He shook his head. “They didn’t know things had changed.”

We were silent for a moment, just the sounds of hooves on earth, as we crested the hill.

“You like being a father?” Billy asked.

“Very much,” I said.

I dismounted and walked back to my patrol car, pulling out a beaten cloth book that’d I’d found deep in our evidence locker and carried the great weight of it back to the barn, chaining the gate behind me.

“What’s that?” Billy asked. He dismounted and tied the horse to a post.

I handed him the book and he flipped through all the pages, all the black-and-white photographs of all the girls and all their statistics and numbers that corresponded with the tattoos in their mouths.

He flipped through a few times and then stopped on one picture. He stared at it and then closed the book with a thump.

“Thinking about burning some of that old hay,” I said. “Want to join me?”

Billy grinned, a tall, skinny man in his deputy uniform.

He helped me toss some of the old bales into a heap and I put my Zippo to the edge of them, the dry grass quickly catching and igniting in a rush of fire. Billy picked up the book and tossed it into the dead center of the bales. We stood there for a long while and watched it catch and burn, seeing some of the faces of all those lost girls from long ago curl and smolder and turn to nothing.

As we walked back to the horses, taking off their bridles and slipping the saddles from their backs, I asked, “Did you ever hear from Lorelei after she left?”

“A few times. I got postcards from North Carolina, and even one from New York. She never left an address. After a couple years, they just stopped.”

“You ever get your daddy’s Buick back?”

He shook his head.

“Or the money you cut from the Hoyt Shepherd job?”

“Wasn’t much.”

“Enough to start over.”

“I guess.”

From the damp earth, you could smell the last bits of the fire, dying and smoldering, and leaving the smell of fall on the wind.

Background information provided by: Ed Strickland and Gene Wortsman, Phenix City: The Wickedest City in America ; Margaret Anne Barnes, The Tragedy and the Triumph of Phenix City, Alabama ; Alan Grady, When Good Men Do Nothing: The Assassination of Albert Patterson ; the film and newsreel The Phenix City Story ; the Albert Patterson murder trial transcripts; and files of the Columbus Ledger.

Nuria Chaparro, your constant friendship, support, and tireless replies to my questions were the foundation of this book. Thank you for introducing me to your father, the heroic Lamar Murphy. I’m better for knowing him.

Thanks to the entire Fussell family for the round of introductions in Phenix City and Columbus, Georgia. And to the Carson McCullers Center, for shelter while I researched this novel, and to Tim Chitwood at the Ledger , who went above and beyond to get me the Phenix City files.

For my two important friends in New York: Neil, wasn’t that easy? You’re a tough, demanding trainer. And I’m grateful for it. Esther, what can I say? You are the greatest agent of all time. I’m honored to know you.

A special thanks to two great writers: Elmore, the knock-out artist, for his continued wisdom, humbling example, and great work, and Bob Crais for a much-needed pep talk and brainstorming session.

Thanks to John Patterson, a man who lived this story, for giving me his valuable time and patient answers that meant so much. And to Joe Atkins, my great friend and brother in noir, who brought me back to Phenix City and showed me a story that lived in my family’s backyard.

For all of those who provided support or took me back to the wickedest days of Phenix City, thank you: Jim Cannon, Charley Frank Bass, Jan Shepherd, Rankin Sherling, Ray Jenkins, Billy Winn, John Lupold, Pete Hanna, Jere Hoar, and my boxing trainer, Larry Greene.

Norwood Kerr and Rickie Brunner at the Alabama Department of Archives and History opened their doors and made me feel right at home. And Jake Reiss, who has been pushing me to write about my home state for some time – Jake, here’s that Alabama book!