Wicked City

by Ace Atkins

  “And what did he say?”

  “His wife said there was no way in hell. She’d divorce him.”

  Joyce nodded. She inspected her painted nails and turned back and forth in her seat. There was a knock at the front of the little shotgun house, and she walked to the door and told a woman that she’d be right with her. She shut the door with a little click and walked back. You could only hear the air conditioner humming in a small window facing our yard.

  “You already said yes, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  She nodded back. Her hair was freshly done and curled, and she wore a powder of makeup on her face. Her cotton skirt hit her at the knees, and when she walked she sometimes put her hands in the pockets.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You need this, don’t you?”

  “For a long time.”

  She looked at me. The woman outside walked back and forth on the little porch, impatient. I crunched the bill of my ball cap and then looked back at Joyce. She was looking right at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see our images in a bank of mirrors.

  “I don’t want our kids hurt.”

  “They won’t be.”

  She shook her head and stood and reached down her long, lithe fingers to me. I looked up at her, confused, until I saw the way she held her hand. I took her hand and stood, and we shook on it.

  AT MIDNIGHT, I WAS WITH THE GUARD DOWN ON DILLINGHAM Street in the rain. I wore my civilian clothes under a yellow slicker but carried a standard-issue.45 Colt Jack Black had given me earlier. Black carried a pump shotgun in one hand and leaned against a jeep, while Hanna sat up in the driver’s seat smoking a cigar and talking to someone on a field telephone. The street was dead and filled with rain and quiet and dark in the absence of all the neon. You could hear the roar of the Chattahoochee, filled with storm water and rolling and breaking over the dam, but Phenix City was still, not a car heading down the road besides Guard troops. In the silence, we heard a grunt, and Hanna climbed out holding an ax.

  “Come on,” he said. We headed over to the Bridge Grocery, and Hanna began to pound on the front door, about twenty uniformed men behind him. He banged some more, until I heard fat little Godwin Davis call out from behind the door that ain’t nobody shown him a goddamn warrant.

  “I got a warrant,” Hanna said. He stood back and began to tear into the door with the ax, and when the splintering set in good he nodded to Black, who just stepped up to the door and kicked it in. I followed and walked into the dimly lit space, the lights with red bulbs looking onto a dirty concrete floor filled with one-armed bandits and horse-racing machines. Davis was shirtless, a portly little man with white chest hair, a fat, distended stomach, and breasts like a woman. He strutted around the room calling the troops names with a cigar between his teeth.

  A tabletop projector showed a black-and-white stag film against the cracked plaster wall. A woman was having sex with a mule. Black shut off the projector and the reel stopped with a click, click, click.

  When I got close to Davis, I could smell his peculiar barnyard odor and winced. He looked me over and saw the badge pinned to my slicker and shook his head, saying, “Well, I’ll fuck a monkey.”

  “I bet,” I said.

  He grunted and turned away, wiping under his underarms with a rag and sitting down on a vinyl diner’s chair and watching the troops carrying out the machines and tagging the equipment for evidence. Black nodded to me and handed me a piece of paper running down Davis’s rights.

  I read it to him. And he laughed the whole time and then spit right in my face.

  I wiped it away while Jack spun him around and clamped cuffs on his wrists.

  THREE HOURS LATER, WE STOOD NEAR THE UPPER BRIDGE, and for the first time in ten years I walked into one of the clip joints, a place called the Atomic Bomb Café. It took four men there to restrain old Clyde Yarborough, his jawless face worked into a howl, his long ape arms tearing and pounding against the soldiers’ backs until they restrained him.

  I turned on the house lights, and we walked behind the bar, finding three sawed-off shotguns, two.38s, and a.44 Magnum.

  I pointed to the.38s and asked for a couple of the guardsmen to bag them as evidence.

  “Not bad, chief,” Black said.

  “I watch Dragnet on occasion.”

  The guardsmen pushed Yarborough past me, and his misshapen flesh flexed like the skin on heated milk. His black eyes watched me, and then he grunted deep in his destroyed, toothless mouth with a bellowing laugh.

  Black reached out and patted the man’s ruined face. And while the guardsmen held him there, Black bent down and whispered something into the old man’s ear. His black eyes grew wide, before he was pushed out the door.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Just saying hi.”

  “You know him.”

  Black shrugged.

  “Clyde Yarborough. He’s been here since the twenties. Taught Shepherd and Matthews everything they know.”

  “He looks like something out of Dick Tracy.”

  “But he’s beautiful on the inside,” I said.

  “I bet,” Black said.

  We had to use a crowbar on a back storage room and then run flashlights over the endless rows of slots and card tables, roulette wheels, and soiled rollaway beds. There was a door off to the right of the room and a long row of blinds that a soldier opened to reveal a row of stalls. Soldiers appeared on the other side and tapped against the glass.

  “Two-way mirror,” Black said.

  In each room, there were tools of the trade, boxes of jimmies and lubricant, some whips and handcuffs, long plastic devices shaped like a man’s peter, and bottles of Lysol spray.

  “God, it’s awful in there,” a soldier said. “It smells like rotten tuna.”

  A couple of the guardsmen showed off a long, socketlike device that could plug into a wall and they burst into laughter, holding it away from them with a handkerchief.

  “What the hell is that?” Black asked.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Not really.”

  Boxes were brought in to gather the devices and the slots, and soldiers cataloged every single item, which were soon loaded onto trucks by hordes of other soldiers and driven back to the armory outside town. Several of the men explored the back rooms of the club, and one of them called over to Black about a door he found leading to a staircase. I followed and hit the beam of my flashlight, the steps running right into a tunnel of rock and dirt, a long, dirty hole that pinged in silence with the dripping of water.

  The staircase stopped at a big metal door, and we had to use a pair of bolt cutters to free the lock to get into a huge storeroom. The room was filled with uncountable slots and roulette wheels, gaming tables, and box upon box of decks of cards and pairs of dice. Soon we found a large metal cabinet that held hundreds of canisters of eight-millimeter film.

  I put a flashlight against one strip, and you could see the negative of two women having sex.

  One of the boys found a junction box and hit the lights, each of them cutting on one by one in a domino lighting of the room. Against a back wall, a long case held an unlimited supply of sawed-off shotguns and pistols. Enough for a small army. There were boxes of dynamite and grenades, and even two Tommy guns.

  All.38s were immediately tagged and bagged, and as the boys continued to go through the endless boxes and cases of guns, games, and whiskey Black and I found yet another corridor and we followed it. We figured it ran back under Fourteenth Street. At the end of maybe a hundred feet was a wooden door, rotten and falling from its hinges. We pushed our way through to a short row of blue-carpeted steps, stained and muddy, and up to a door that Black had to blast open with his shotgun.

  He was smoking a cigar he’d bummed off General Hanna, and the smoke clouded the flashlight beam that crossed over the big room of Davis’s Pawn, full of gold watches, engagement rin
gs, government-issue pistols, and two full rows of paratrooper boots.

  “They took their goddamn boots,” Black said.

  “You were in Airborne?”

  He nodded, the smoke bleeding out of the corner of his mouth, the shotgun up in his arms. He used his own flashlight to cross over the endless pairs of gleaming black boots.

  “You did basic at Benning,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “So you’ve been here before?”

  He spit on the floor just as we heard steps from the hidden staircase and a voice calling out. “Major, we have something you need to see.”

  REUBEN KNEW THEY WERE COMING AND HE OPENED THE door for them and even chilled the beer. But the Guard boys didn’t want any of it and sat him right down in the corner and ripped through Club Lasso as his jukebox played out some of his favorite Luke the Drifter songs he’d loaded down with five dollars in dimes. He smoked and sat across from Billy, and Billy looked nervous as hell, and Reuben tried to comfort the boy by telling him dirty jokes and things he’d heard about the time they broke down ole Phenix in ’21.

  “Where’s your girl?” he asked.

  As the jukebox played, there were sounds of doors opening and closing in the little café and the clatter of liquor bottles – all those goddang liquor bottles – being raked into boxes and carried out in jeeps.

  “I don’t know,” Billy said, finally.

  “You think she was picked up by the Guard?”

  “I don’t know,” Billy said. His face looked as drawn as an old dog, and he smoked a few of his father’s cigarettes as he talked. His little fingers shook against the pack.

  Two guardsmen lifted the long oil portrait of a nude Mexican woman from above the bar and let it fall to the floor.

  “Now, don’t scratch that. Jesus Christ, boys. Have some fucking respect,” he said, shaking his head, and turned back to his boy. “You know what a dog and pony show is?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Good, ’cause you’re seein’ one right now. It’s all for the papers.”

  One of the troops heard him and yanked him up to his feet, and Reuben looked bored with it all as the man turned him against the brick wall and searched him, removing a little.22 from his boot.

  “What’s that?” the boy soldier said. Hell, he wasn’t even twenty.

  “I’m gonna guess it’s a gun of some sort.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yep.”

  Reuben sat back down and drank down some more of his Budweiser and lit another cigarette and handed his boy the pack of Luckies. Billy looked dirty, grit up under his fingernails and his face shiny from oil and heat. He smoked and looked down at the table.

  “Love is funny,” he said.

  Billy looked up from his hands.

  “You ain’t got a fucking thing to do with it.”

  Billy wouldn’t look his father in the eye.

  “Just like that whore. I know you say you didn’t know she was a whore, and I don’t mean any disrespect by calling her a whore. That’s just the situation that little girl found herself in. Hell, we all got to eat.”

  The bar was empty of booze now, and the troops had even removed the kegs and taps. The walls were cleared of the old-time photos of the naked women, and soldiers walked back and forth from his storage room with boxes and boxes of stuff. Reuben didn’t know what, probably just junk. Old guns and some 45s and all the slots.

  They heard a diesel engine sound outside, and a large truck backed up to the door and the soldiers lifted up the boxes and some tables and chairs and even the neon beer signs that had hung in the window. Then the boys set to work on the old bar with crowbars and sledgehammers. And Reuben sat there and talked about love and women with his boy, smoking cigarettes and even sharing a beer, until they unplugged the jukebox and rolled it into the truck.

  After the truck lumbered away, Hoyt Shepherd and Jimmie Matthews wandered into the old building and inspected the damage. Hoyt tipped his hat to the boy and Jimmie gave him a wink.

  Hoyt wore a pair of overalls and an old straw hat, and Reuben figured that he didn’t want any of the news boys recognizing him. Of course, Jimmie couldn’t have cared less, dressed in gray pants, a dress shirt, and a thin knit tie.

  “Took the jukebox, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the booze?”

  “I hid a bottle under the table.”

  “You got some glasses?”

  “I do.”

  Hoyt sat down at the table, and Reuben sent Billy to fetch what he could for cups. The bottle was black label Jack Daniel’s, and when Billy returned he laid down four cups. Reuben looked up at him, and as the boy sat back down he just shrugged.

  He poured out a double in every glass.

  Hoyt took a sip and made a face. “What do you cut this with?”

  “Grain alcohol.”

  “Good God Almighty.”

  “How long is this mess gonna last, Mr. Shepherd?” Reuben asked.

  Billy took a big sip and tried not to react, but Reuben saw that it had burned his throat something fierce.

  “We’re out,” Hoyt said. “How ’bout you and your boy joining us down at Panama City Beach? I have a piece of a little putt-putt golf place that could use some new management.”

  Reuben took a sip. The whiskey tasted like gasoline.

  “They’re gonna put together a new jury pool. Get together something called a blue-ribbon grand jury, with some old-fart Bible-thumper to run it. You ever hear of Judge Jones? I heard last year he personally handed out five thousand Bibles. Now, I’m just guessing me and that man ain’t gonna have a lot in common.”

  Reuben watched Jimmie look around at the brick walls and the destroyed bar, the empty place next to the stage where he’d painted up and around the heavy jukebox last year.

  “Thank, you, Mr. Hoyt. But I’m gonna play things out here. I don’t ever figure on leaving Phenix. They can arrest me if they want. Billy can run things till I’m out. Right, Billy?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Can we speak in private?”

  “Whatever needs to be said can be said in front of my boy.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Reuben nodded to Billy and Billy walked toward the front door and hung out by Fourteenth Street, watching the raining gray dawn from underneath a tin canopy.

  “Reuben, you stay away from Fannie Belle and Johnnie Benefield. You hear me? They will lead you down a path of blood and you’re too smart for that. Only reason Johnnie hasn’t wised up is because his mind is run by pussy, and that redheaded demon has the best pussy in the South.”

  Reuben nodded and shifted in his chair.

  “They’ve been reckless,” Hoyt said, smiling. “I don’t know what they got to do with killin’ Pat. But they sure as shit know who robbed me. There’s some money in it if you can find out about Benefield. That old safe I had was solid. A sweet Wells Fargo number that cost me nearly a thousand dollars. Let’s just say it took some real talent to bust her open.”

  Reuben nodded.

  “I’m not asking for much. I just want to know if Benefield was in on the job. I can take it from there.”

  Reuben nodded again.

  Hoyt watched him, studying his face, and then looked over at Jimmie.

  Jimmie shrugged and finally tasted the whiskey, downing it without a wince. Hoyt slipped the beaten straw hat on his head and over his eyes and walked to the open glass doors. His voice sounded gruff and booming in the empty bar.

  The rain had slowed to a patter, and Reuben could see the shape of his boy against the growing morning light.

  “One more thing,” Hoyt said, turning. “The Guard put up your old buddy, Lamar Murphy, for sheriff.”

  “He take it?”

  “Don’t know. If he did, I’d watch my step.”

  Reuben shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve known Lamar since we were ’bout Billy’s age.”

  Hoyt looked up and then around the empty
room. “You ever seen that cartoon with the sheepdog and wolf where both of them are friends until they punch the morning clock?”

  Reuben shook his head.

  “See, when that clock is punched and they are at work, they try like hell to kill each other. But then when the sun goes down and they punch out, they are as gooda friends as you ever saw.”

  “Which one am I?”

  “If you don’t know, then you got more troubles than I thought,” he said. “You let me know what you know about Benefield, you hear?”

  Hoyt left with a tip of his hat. Reuben and his boy sat there in silence until dawn cleared and a soft, gray summer morning arrived at the last two chairs in Club Lasso. They could hear nothing but the soft patter of rain against Fourteenth Street and the running of rainwater down the gutters and along the soft slope of the street to the Chattahoochee.

  “WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO?” JOHNNIE BENEFIELD asked, tucking in his cowboy shirt and slipping into his boots.

  “Does it matter?” she said.

  Fannie Belle sat in the salon of her empty whorehouse, chain-smoking cigarettes, a pearl-handled.32 on the plush velvet seat next to her. The furniture and lamps in the other room reminded Johnnie of something from the last century.

  “They just better not lay a finger on my Hudson.”

  “You better worry about more than your car.”

  “Once I get Bert, we’re blowin’ this town.”

  “Cuba?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Fannie blew out some smoke and crossed her legs. Johnnie watched her, and walked back upstairs for his clothes and a suitcase he’d packed. She was at the landing when he returned, and she watched him as he slowed his walk and hit the first floor with his boots.

  She kissed him hard on the mouth. And he pulled away.

  “I got to get Bert.”

  “He’s not going with you.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “He’s got a platoon of soldiers up and around his house. They believe he’s getting ready to split town, and they don’t buy his religious act.”

  “Do you?”

  Fannie just looked at him, cocking her head slightly to the side, and lit another long cigarette. She leaned her head back, pulling in the smoke, and drew a sweep of her red hair to one side.