by Eyre Price
The Kia pulled out of the lot, and by the time he’d turned on to Mississippi Boulevard, Daniel’s mood had begun to match the gathering gloom of the coming evening. If he couldn’t find the money—and he was beginning to doubt whether he’d ever had any real possibility of recouping the cash—then there was only one way left to save his son.
With or without the money, his own fate was almost certainly sealed. But maybe if he returned to Las Vegas on his own—and groveled sufficiently—maybe Filat might be satisfied with just one body cracking the sidewalk outside the Hotel du Monde. Maybe Daniel’s body contained all of the blood the Russian would need to consider the debt satisfied.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the only way Daniel could think of to protect Zack now. In his mind, at least, it was settled: the quest was over. He’d just go back to Vegas.
Not tonight, though. He was too tired to spend another night on the highway. He could spend one last night on the River Belle Hotel’s soiled sheets and then start for Vegas in the morning. His only goal now was simply to find the dive he’d call home for one last night.
The traffic in downtown Memphis had thickened with rush hour, and the early descent of evening made navigating his way more difficult than he would have thought. Daniel carefully watched the cross-streets go by. Walker. Saxon. Edith. McLemore.
An old man stepped off the curb and straight into the street without looking toward oncoming traffic. Daniel stomped on the brake. The Kia’s nose dipped and tires squealed as the subcompact came to a sudden stop. With 500cc of adrenaline coursing through his system, Daniel drew a pained breath of relief and looked for the pedestrian he’d almost made into a hood ornament. The old man was nowhere to be seen, but above him hung a street sign. McLemore.
McLemore.
McLemore.
And suddenly he heard music. With his memory unexpectedly prompted, he heard a tune he couldn’t place at first. He hummed the melody and that brought back the image of a kid. With a guitar. The busker outside Tipitina’s. It was in the chorus of the song the kid had been singing.
He struggled to pull the words back to his consciousness, but nothing came.
Nothing, at first, and then suddenly he could hear—not the busker—but Mr. Atibon’s raspy voice:
And she won’t come back
To see me no more
She won’t ever come back
926 East McLemore
Leaving by degrees
Leaving by degrees
Daniel stepped on the gas and made a quick, unannounced left turn from the right-hand lane. Horns blared and well-deserved obscenities were shouted in his direction, but he didn’t care. He turned onto McLemore and in two short blocks everything made all the sense in the world.
And she won’t come back
To see me no more
She won’t ever come back
926 East McLemore
When he recalled his friend’s rushed last words, Daniel remembered that Mr. Atibon had sent him to Memphis not because the song rocked or carried on the blues, but based on the soulfulness of the song they’d heard.
The marquee over 926 East McLemore proudly proclaimed: STAX STUDIOS—SOULSVILLE, USA. Somehow Daniel instantly knew he’d finally arrived at his destination. And if that was the case, then maybe there was still some small sliver of hope left.
In its glory, Stax Studios was home to a roster of incredible talent. Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Isaac Hayes. And in its time, it produced a sound that was every bit as unique and musically important as anything Sam Phillips created across town at Sun. Yet despite its musical and social significance, when changes in the industry ultimately led to Stax’s demise, the original building at 926 East McLemore Avenue was allowed to fall into disrepair and it was eventually demolished.
After the original Stax Studios met the wrecking ball, a replica was constructed on the site and converted to a museum. Perhaps it was a testament to what Mr. Atibon had described as the quality of hope at the foundation of music.
Daniel parked in the lot behind the building and excitedly walked around to the front doors. He took a deep breath—said a quick, silent prayer—and pulled on the doors.
They didn’t budge.
The place was closed.
He cupped his hands over his eyes to steal a look through the small diamond-shaped window in the locked door, but couldn’t see anything except a completely deserted lobby. Renewed resignation descended on him and he was just about to turn and go when he thought he noticed something move back in the far shadows of the lobby. He banged on the doors, enthusiastically but respectfully.
Nothing.
He saw something again. He was certain this time. There was someone just at the far edge of what he could see of the museum’s interior. He banged again. More enthusiastically, perhaps less respectfully.
Still nothing.
He banged on the door like his life depended on it—because it kinda did.
A young man appeared at the window in the door, his chubby face framed in ringlets of long red curls. “We’re closed,” he shouted as he brushed errant curls out of his eyes and then returned to whatever he’d been doing.
Daniel banged again, desperate to get the kid back to the door. “Please.”
The round face appeared at the glass again. “I said we’re closed.” He looked hard at Daniel, like he didn’t want any trouble but if that was what Daniel was bringing, he was more than able to finish whatever was started—or call someone for help.
“Please,” Daniel pleaded again.
“No.” The kid turned.
“Please.” This time Daniel banged like his son’s life depended on it. The doors rattled like they might come off their hinges. “Just listen to me.”
The kid appeared again, this time clearly angered. “Look, man, I said—”
Daniel held up his hands as a thought struck him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He fished out one of the two twenty-dollar bills he still had left and slid it through the slight space between the twin doors.
The kid just looked insulted.
Daniel dug out the other and pushed the pair through.
The kid looked suspiciously from side to side, like he was concerned the transaction might be a trap set by his employer. He thought about it for a moment or two and then with a single motion snatched the bills. He checked them over and then—satisfied they were legit—slid them into the front pocket of his baggy jeans.
Daniel smiled broadly and looked expectantly at him.
“Thanks, man,” the kid grinned triumphantly. “I’m up forty and you’re still locked out.”
“Please.” It was all he could say, all he could do.
“We’re closed, man!” There was a plaintive note in the young man’s voice, like Daniel was just killing him with all the banging and the begging. “Whatchu want?”
This again. He wasn’t sure exactly how to explain what he didn’t understand. “I’m looking for something,” he began. “Something very important.”
“You lost something?” The young man seemed more responsive.
It wasn’t exactly what Daniel had intended, but it suddenly seemed like the best chance for getting inside. And it was, in a way, the truth. “More than you could ever imagine.”
“Don’t bet on it.” Whatever the kid was referring to, he took a deep breath and let it go. Then he pulled a ring of keys from his pocket, selected one, and opened the door. “You can have a quick look at the lost and found, but then you’re gone. Start any trouble with me and you’ll be gone even sooner. Understand?”
Daniel nodded enthusiastically. “Thank you.”
“It’s over here.” The kid led Daniel over to a circular reception desk. On the wall behind it was a large silver plaque bearing the name Led Zeppelin along with artwork from several of the band’s album covers.
It struck Daniel as curiously out of place in SOULSVILLE, USA. He was facing more important
dilemmas, but Daniel couldn’t help asking, “What’s with the Led Zeppelin?”
The kid looked over his shoulder and then answered proudly, “Robert Plant’s, you know, a big fan. When he was recording up in Nashville he came down here to check us out and gave us that.”
Daniel just shook his head. “Nothing like paying homage to the music you sampled for your entire career by presenting a nice big plaque—of yourself.”
His sarcastic observation completely obliterated whatever goodwill his forty bucks had bought him. “You want to check the lost and found or not?” the kid asked, clearly personally offended by the observation.
“Please.” Daniel smiled as innocently as he could, thinking to himself he should introduce the kid to the fat lady at the Graceland gift shop.
The kid handed Daniel a cardboard box filled to overflowing with an astonishing variety of items anyway. “If you lost it here and someone turned it in, it’s in there. Find it and get out.”
The box was heavier than Daniel thought it would be. “There hasn’t been anyone here, has there?” he asked, as casually as he could while sorting through dropped mittens and abandoned binkies. “Some guys dropping off a package maybe for a Daniel Erickson?”
“Look it,” the kid snapped, regretting he’d ever taken the strange man’s money. “If what you’re looking for isn’t in there, you need to go.”
“No,” Daniel covered. “I’m still looking.”
He went through the box item by item. The expected hats and sweaters. Some notebooks forgotten by kids on field trips. A hairdryer? A set of keys. A surprising number of single shoes.
At the very bottom of the box was a manila envelope so tattered and worn it looked like it might have been a remnant from the original structure. It was postmarked from Nashville and addressed to Mr. Danny Erickson.
“This is it,” Daniel announced as he held his prize up triumphantly.
“Good.” The kid was obviously still fuming over the whole Plant thing. “Now take it and get gone.”
“Sure.” Daniel followed him to the door and offered his hand. “Thanks.”
The kid just looked at the hand and then pointed the way through the door he was holding open. Daniel nodded and stepped back out into the night without another word.
The door locked behind him.
With his package in hand, Daniel started walking back to the lot behind the museum. His attention was so focused on this newest clue that he’d turned the corner around the building and taken a dozen steps into the parking lot before he noticed the Kia was completely surrounded by Memphis Police Department squad cars, their sirens silenced but their redtops flashing.
Gerald Feller had turned down his father-in-law’s offer to join him in his personal injury practice in Peoria. He’d suffered instead through the rigors of Quantico and then a revolving door of seven different field offices over the course of his career. Thirteen years of paperwork and bureaucracy. Thirteen years of watching less-qualified candidates skip past him on their ascent up the bureau’s ladder of command. Thirteen years and all he had to show for it was a failed marriage, a set of swollen ankles that warned him when it was going to storm, and a personnel jacket stuffed full of mediocre agent evaluations.
But this. This one was a redeemer. This was a game breaker. A career maker. It was six o’clock news—worthy. Front-page photo fodder. It was the case he’d been waiting thirteen years for. And he was determined that the locals weren’t going to fuck it up on him.
Clyde Mosby had been born and raised in Memphis. Ward 232. The fact that he’d lived to adulthood put him ahead of too many of the kids with whom he’d run those mean streets. That he’d become a Memphis homicide detective made him notorious in the old neighborhood. That he’d been tapped as a featured detective in the cable reality show Murder Squad had made him into a celebrity. Memphis was his city and he was the Man. It was not a title he was willing to relinquish to some tight-ass fed.
The two men met in the center of the parking lot, coming together like Frazier and Cooney out of their corners.
“Look sharp, boys,” Mosby called out to the uniformed officers who were stringing tape around their crime scene. “J. Edgar’s on the case.”
“Special Agent Gerald Feller.” He flipped his credentials too quickly to be read, a gesture he meant to convey his lack of interest in anything the cop with the camera crew had to say. “What’ve we got here?”
“We’ve got what we got.” Detective Mosby looked at the crime scene and then smiled smugly at Agent Feller like he was standing pat with three kings and a pair of aces. “What you got?”
“Jurisdiction.”
“Well, you better get DC to recalibrate your GPS for you, J. Edgar, ’cause this vehicle is parked right here in Memphis.” He pointed over to the gray compact as proof.
Special Agent Feller wasn’t impressed. Or entertained. “Well, it was taken from the scene of a murder in California. And the suspected driver is connected to a second murder out there. He’s also a suspect in the murder of a gas station attendant in New Mexico. And we believe he ignited a riot in New Orleans. So what we have here is a one-man crime spree. A crime spree across state lines. And that gives me jurisdiction.”
“Gives you? Or the bureau?”
“As far as you’re concerned, they’re one and the same.”
“Oh, is that right?”
The special agent and the detective continued the heated discussion without ever noticing the man who walked around the corner from the Stax Museum and blended into the crowd that had gathered along the sidewalk. Neither one paid attention to the man as he nervously watched what was unfolding in the lot.
Daniel suppressed his first impulse, which was to turn and walk (very quickly) away. As casually as he could, he sidled up to the gathering of gawkers and tried to mix right in. “What’s goin’ on?”
“Car must be stolen,” a pear-shaped man in a University of Memphis hoodie guessed, never taking his eyes off the action in front of him.
“Shit, man, that ain’t it,” a young man in a fur-trimmed parka disagreed. “They got two suits over there,” he said, pointing to a pudgy white guy in a trench coat and a tall black guy in a leather car coat. “They ain’t rollin’ out on a night like this for no stolen fuckin’ Kia. If they here, you best better believe someone call in a one-eighty-seven.”
“A what?” Daniel wondered aloud.
The kid in the parka turned to take a look, curious about someone in his neighborhood who didn’t know the police code for: “Murder, man.”
The explanation sounded more like an accusation to Daniel. “Murder?” he repeated nervously. “That’s crazy.”
With that, one of the other onlookers, a heavyset woman whose nurse’s whites were showing from beneath her black London Fog overcoat, looked over at Daniel, focusing on him until she was confident enough to call out. “Ain’t that your car?”
As if on cue, everyone turned, clearly considering this stranger’s probable guilt.
“Me? That’s not my car.” For someone who’d spent his adult life in the music industry, his lie was surprisingly unconvincing.
“Yeah, it was you,” the heavy nurse said with conviction. “I was just comin’ home and saw you parking. Thought to myself, ‘He shouldn’t be parkin’ there. Museum’s closed.’”
Daniel tried to laugh the accusation off, but the little noise came out as more of a weak, pained shriek. “Heh.”
It was as good as a confession.
“That’s him,” the nurse repeated, this time pointing a thick finger at him like it was a pistol. She turned and called out to the cops, “Hey! That’s him! That’s the guy!”
The detective and the FBI agent ignored her completely. But the volume of her voice was enough to make of some of the uniformed officers look up from the dull routine of securing and processing a crime-scene vehicle.
At first, all any of them noticed was the woman pointing excitedly. None of them was sure what she was
doing and it took a moment before they realized she was trying to call their attention to a man at the edge of the crowd. By that time, however, all any of them could see was the back of the man as he ran from the scene as fast as he could.
There was confusion at first as the detective and the fed finally broke from their conference. One of the patrolmen filled them both in on what had just happened and they walked over to question the woman who claimed to have seen the driver of the impounded car. She pointed off in the direction he’d run down McLemore, but no one was quite sure where he’d gone.
“How far can he get on foot?” Agent Feller asked as Detective Mosby arranged for all responding units to perform a street-by-street sweep for their fugitive suspect. Suddenly, sirens screamed from all directions, howling in the night like hound dogs converging on a kill.
“Catching a fugitive is just a mathematical operation,” Detective Mosby confidently told the patrolmen (and the cameramen). “We’ll get a perimeter set up. Then we just tighten the noose. Block by block. Street by street. It’s only a matter of time.”
Agent Feller looked off into the distance like his ankles hurt and he was unconvinced by the detective. “You better hope so.”
Mile after mile went speeding past, but every one of them looked just like the last.
“My head is killing me,” Rabidoso complained, rubbing his temple. “I woke up this morning feeling like I freebased a rock the size of your head.”
Moog’s recollections of the night just past were hazy too, but he didn’t let on. Or acknowledge his partner’s latest attempt to start a conversation.
“How long we gonna keep driving?” Rabidoso asked when he realized there would just be more silence if he didn’t. “It’s like being on a redneck safari.”
The big man shot his unwanted partner a stern look. “We’re gonna keep going from one jerkwater town to the next till we get a line on our man, ’cause without him—and without his money—he ain’t the only sonbitch running for his goddamn life. Got it?”