Dark End of the Street - v4

by Ace Atkins

  “How do you know my cousin again?” Abby asked. Still not looking Perfect in the eyes.

  “One of her friends is big buddies with my boyfriend, and Jamie — that’s my boyfriend — throws these massive parties after football games. Last year he had this crawfish boil where we all just got sloshed and ended up fighting with those little buggers. Shells in my hair and in my ears. Maggie was there. Funny, I haven’t seen you at one of those parties, too.”

  “Doesn’t sound like something Maggie would do,” Abby said. “She’d rather spend the night at Square Books reading Eudora Welty and drinking coffee than vomiting with a bunch of ex-frat boys.”

  “C’mon, Abby,” Perfect said. Never give them the time to follow your eyes or reverse your flow. She gripped Abby’s hand in hers. “Follow me on back to Oxford. You need a decent meal and a warm bath. I’ve got buckets of bath beads and this big old copper tub with claw feet. You can soak away everything. Please. If I left you and saw Maggie later I’d just die.”

  Abby pulled away and looked down at her hand as if it had been infected. Her fingernails were cut close and her hands dry and chapped. Moisturizer.

  “Well,” Abby began, staring at the purse that Perfect had by her side, a Navajo-print bag slightly open. At the top edge, a handgun’s muzzle poked out. Son of a bitch.

  Perfect covered up the edge of the gun, politely smiled, and said, “Woman has to watch out for herself.”

  Perfect then rolled her eyes like it was the silliest thing she’d ever done in her life and again cupped Abby’s hand in hers. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Abby excused herself and walked back to the bathroom where she brushed her teeth with a portable toothbrush and twice had to push away the urge to vomit. Just the thought of having to face the fucking town again made her sick.

  Since she left the house that morning, she couldn’t even bring herself to look through her father’s files. The thought of seeing his signature or any bit of his work made her feel the decay of his body. Some kind of direct connection to the physical presence she knew was rotting away.

  She felt the bile rise in her throat and threw up a thick wad of the cheeseburger into a brown-stained sink.

  When nothing else would come but dry heaves, she brushed her teeth again, stepped into a stall, and changed into a long-sleeved gray T-shirt and clean underwear. At the sink counter, she carefully folded her dirty clothes on top of the duffel bag and stared at her reddened eyes.

  For a few moments she cried until a hillbilly-looking woman, who didn’t have a neck and kept a slight moustache, came in and sat down on a toilet. The door was wide open.

  If it got too bad, she could always get Maggie to take her back here. Abby grabbed her bag and decided she’d leave with Ellie.

  On the way out, she paused and looked down the long hallway. Some video games plinked nearby in a desolate video arcade. A long row of lockers with orange turnkeys lined a far wall.

  Abby emptied the duffel bag into a small blue locker and filled it with her old T-shirt and panties. She dropped in her remaining four quarters and turned the key.

  Chapter 8

  THE GOLDEN LOTUS OOZED with sex and tired Chinese food. Just sitting in the parking lot with the sound of my Bronco’s motor ticking in my ears, I could tell that the vegetables would be overcooked, the snow crab frostbit, and the egg rolls soggy. Of course, the patrons probably didn’t give a shit. The little cinder block building topped with a pagodalike tile roof near the airport also offered table dances with your egg foo young and a shower show with your moo goo gai pan.

  I shut off my engine and walked to an ornate red door guarded by a teenage girl in a bikini top and hip-hugger jeans. She wore stiletto heels with rabbit fur straps, and an angoralike sweater hung loose off her bony shoulders. She smiled briefly at me, remained perched on her barstool, and took a five buck cover.

  Her fingers slowly traced a vertical scar that ran from her navel to the clasp of her bikini top as her gaze drifted to a long black row of clouds rolling across the flat land of the airport where a 727 rumbled overhead.

  Inside, the floor was concrete and the room smelled of clove cigarettes and cherry air freshener. There were three amoeba-shaped elevated stages throughout the shadowed bar pumping with a slow Ann Peebles song. Couldn’t stand it, baby, if you said we were through. That’s what you keep on doin’ to me. Heartache. Heartache. Heartache.

  A brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty wearing only pearls looped in a knot like a man’s tie stooped to the floor of the center stage and pulled off a balding patron’s glasses. She crushed the frames between her breasts and placed them back on his head upside down. Throughout the bar, there were only six guys — most eroded businessmen with wrinkled shirts, slightly untucked — watching the matinee show. Pink and green neon glowed in the dark cave while a soft gray rain began to patter the sun-bleached parking lot framed by the open door.

  I lit a cigarette and took a seat at the long bar and ordered a cup of coffee. The waitress was about my age, somewhere between thirty and forty. She had short brown hair, not boy short, but cut just below the ears and tosseled in her eyes.

  “Mr. Cook around?” I asked.

  She shrugged. She had a sharp nose and full lips. I could tell she worked out by the shape of her biceps as she poured the coffee and firmly shoved a cracked mug before me.

  “Could you check?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Her man’s ribbed tank top didn’t quite touch the edge of her dark blue jeans held together with a Western belt.

  “Health inspector,” I said. “Somebody found a G-string in his wonton soup.”

  “That’s funny,” she said. She chewed gum, keeping her eyes trained to a soap opera. The television was muted and suspended by chains from the ceiling. “I never heard shit like that before.”

  “It’s true, and the other day someone reported the indecent use of a fortune cookie.”

  “How would that work exactly?” she asked. She turned away from the television and wiped off the angry head of the dragon carved into the cherrywood bar. The bartender’s eyes were deep blue and the whites had the clarity of someone who didn’t drink.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I bet it could be done.”

  “You want to tell me what you want, or do I just introduce you as the funny guy at the end of the bar?”

  “The funny guy works.”

  I smiled. She smiled back.

  The song ended and the naked woman plopped off stage and took a seat next to me. She was sweaty and out of breath and played with the pearls around her neck like a rosary.

  “Hey, cowboy,” she said.

  “Ma’am,” I said, tipping my imaginary hat.

  The girl behind the bar disappeared and I watched her jeans as she did. I took a sip of the burned coffee and watched the rain beat on the worn streets outside. The thunder growled in the distance as the naked woman sighed and disappeared. A moist print of her butt stayed on the vinyl seat after she was gone.

  More Ann Peebles played on the jukebox. I sipped the coffee and watched some bikers play pool in a back cove. All but one stripper had stopped dancing and she seemed to be doing her act completely from a lone brass pole.

  The woman inverted herself into a handstand against the pole and a couple businessmen clapped and high-fived each other.

  As the rain drummed harder the coffee felt even more comforting in my hand.

  I can’t stand the rain. Against my window. Bringin’ back sweet memories.

  “He said give him a few minutes,” a voice called out.

  I turned back to the bartender. She’d tied her undershirt up high on her stomach and was cleaning the bar again.

  She wrung the cloth into the sink and soapy water twisted down her lean brown arms. For a moment I could feel my lungs tighten. She noticed my glance and smiled to herself and continued to wipe down the bar.

  “I’m Nick,” I said when my voice came back.

  “Good,”
she said.

  “You want to arm wrestle?” I asked. “You have great arms.”

  “Nope,” she said, going back to twisting the dirty cloth. Some of the soap brushed across her stomach and she raised her tight shirt even more to wipe it away. Her abs were tight with a small waist and perfect rounded hips.

  “I was wondering . . . ,” I began.

  The dancer with the pearl necklace walked behind the bar laughing to herself like drunk women sometimes do and latched her hands around the bartender. She kissed the nape of the woman’s neck and I felt my face flush with embarrassment.

  “What were you wondering?” the bartender asked with a cocked eyebrow. The gesture sort of reminded me of my occasional girlfriend, Kate.

  “Nothing,” I said, feeling for the warmth of the cup. “Nothing.”

  A few seconds later, I heard a toilet flush over the slow, grinding funk coming from the jukebox and out walked a muscular man with gray hair holding a stack of newspapers. He looked to be in his fifties with the build of an avid weight lifter. His clothes were Italian and tight. Ribbed black T-shirt. Pleated trousers. Tassled loafers. He threw the papers onto the bar and took a seat next to me.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he asked. His face was craggy with lines around his mouth. His teeth were yellowed and he wore thin oval glasses that were popular with effeminate yuppies back in New Orleans.

  “You Cook?”

  “No, I’m the fucking Easter bunny,” he said, shaking his head and watching one of the strippers in a Catholic school-girl outfit. “Hell, yes, I’m Cook. So what? April said you wanted to see me.”

  “I want to talk to you about Bluff City Records.”

  “Sold that in ‘seventy-four,” he said. “I guess you’re shit out of luck.”

  The bartender had pried herself away from her friend and was running the blender in between eavesdropping. She poured a pink slushy mixture into a tall beer mug and laid down a handful of pills by Cook.

  He swallowed them all and gulped down half the drink.

  “Amino acids. Vitamin B, and yohimbi bark. You want the rest of my shake?”

  I shook my head.

  “April? April?” he yelled. “Shit, go get Lola, would you? Goddamn it. I left her back in my office and she’s probably shittin’ all over everything.”

  “Women,” I said, shaking my head again and finishing the last of the coffee.

  “So, you gonna tell me what the fuck you want?”

  “I’m looking for Clyde James.”

  Cook belched. “He’s dead. Shit out of luck again.” He smiled. “You’re oh for two, fella. . . . What are you, one of those crazy collector types? Had this British guy come in here once and offer me two thousand dollars for some of our recording logs. Now, that’s just fucking sick. Or is it sad? April? Goddamn it.”

  April walked back to the bar tugging on the leash of a Boston terrier wearing one of those inverted-lampshade looking things that kept them from licking themselves. Didn’t help the dog’s looks any. The dog was just plain ugly with a severe crooked underbite and low-hanging tits.

  And damn if she didn’t smell funny when Cook plopped her on the bar and let her lick the glass of his protein shake. She smacked and licked, facing her butt to me until she finally gave a grunt and farted.

  “Ain’t she a beaut?” Cook said.

  The dog turned and gave a cross-eyed stare at me, waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t thing I’ve ever seen a dog like her. Makes Lassie look like a skank.”

  When Cook turned away I grimaced at April. She grinned.

  “Listen,” I said, watching Cook push the sleeves higher on his Italian T-shirt to show the world his biceps. “I heard you found him.”

  “C’mon, podna. What do you want to get into that mess for?”

  “I work for Tulane University and I’m working on a project about the last of the soul singers.”

  Cook turned back to me with a look like he was just starting to take this conversation seriously. He nodded and crossed his arms and then unfolded them and scratched his dog’s flank. The cross-eyed dog twisted her head when she heard a high-pitched woman begin to sing some tired-ass Chitlin’ Circuit soul ballad.

  “He was good,” Cook said. “Best I ever heard.”

  “You saw him dead?”

  He nodded and cleaned off his glasses.

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, shit, I don’t know.”

  “Months, years, what?”

  “I don’t know. Four years maybe.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Why do you care? You work for who?”

  “Tulane University.”

  “He’s dead, what the fuck’s the difference?”

  “I need to know when and where,” I said. “Did he shoot himself?”

  “Goddamn,” Cook said. “Get out of here.”

  “C’mon, man, these aren’t hard questions.”

  “I said get the fuck out of here.”

  “You know Loretta Jackson?”

  “Hell, yeah, I do. So what?”

  “She sent me.”

  “Why don’t you make up your fuckin’ mind why you’re here.”

  “She wants to know what happened to her brother.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I need some help, man. Give me something.”

  “Get out,” Cook said, rising to his feet and puffing up his chest. He was one of those men who believe weight lifting has made them invincible. They have so much testosterone pumping through their body that it messes up their perception of reality.

  “Five minutes,” I said.

  “Now,” Cook said, his face full of blood and anger.

  April shrugged and turned back to her soap opera.

  Lola continued licking the last of Cook’s drink.

  And I left the bar smiling. For the first time, I knew I’d find the answers that Loretta needed.

  Chapter 9

  RAIN SPLATTERED the hood of my Bronco while I waited at an Amoco station across from the Golden Lotus, watching a couple of strippers in black kimonos walking to their cars. To pass the time, I whistled along to Johnnie Taylor’s Wanted: One Soul Singer album and examined a patch of hair I’d missed while shaving and emptied my truck’s lockbox. I found a carton of Bazooka bubble gum, a spent Bic lighter, a dirty Scooby Doo coffee mug, a pair of red lace panties bought at a Clarence Carter concert, numerous cassette tapes, and a copy of Texas Music by Rick Koster. The book still had sauce stains from Stubb’s in Austin.

  I’d been waiting on Cook for the past hour and a half. Sure, I could leave, go back to the Peabody and watch reruns of Josie and the Pussycats on Cartoon Network. But what would that accomplish? Maybe Cook had told me to fuck off and said he didn’t know anything. So what? I remembered trying to talk to this old man in Algiers a few years back and getting met at the front door with a shotgun. Man knew something about the death of blues legend Robert Johnson and I’d wanted his story pretty badly.

  Getting a gun in the face was a lot worse than some jackass trying to be rude.

  Cook had worked with Clyde James in 1968 and was rumored to have claimed the body. He had every answer I needed. So I’d wait it out and harass the son of a bitch until he told me what he knew. Loretta deserved that.

  My gaze turned to a high pile of rusted cars in a nearby auto salvage yard and across the highway was a church built in a defunct stand-alone bank. IS THE DEVIL GETTIN’ YOU DOWN? its small billboard read.

  I answered under my breath: “Bet your ass.”

  I cracked the window to blow out smoke from my Marlboro Light. I’d just started re-examining the spot of hair on my cheek when I saw a purple Cadillac — looked to be brand-new with shiny chrome rims and whitewalls — pull from behind the Golden Lotus and turn north toward the airport. I cranked the Bronco and followed.

  I could see the top of Cook’s gray spiky head through his rear window as he took Airways Boulevard north for what seemed like
forever past fast-food franchises and pawnshops until the road turned into East Parkway. He cut west by Overton Park on Poplar then down Evergreen to Madison.

  The whole way I watched Cook playing with his hair and performing neck exercises by pushing his head against his palm. Cook was so busy working himself out that he didn’t notice the gunmetal-gray truck following his ugly-ass purple Cadillac across Midtown Memphis.

  I just smiled — a wad of Bazooka now working in my back teeth — when he made a left turn into a Piggly Wiggly. Maybe I’d grab Cook in the frozen-food aisle and lock him inside a freezer until he gave it up.

  I pulled into a parking space as Cook parked, got out, and strolled past the entrance to the grocery store — PORK TENDERLOINS $1.49 A POUND/SIX PACK OF DR PEPPER $1.99 painted across its plate glass windows. Cook kept walking beside a high brick wall and around a corner.

  I decided to cut him off and drove back behind the store into an alley where men unloaded tractor trailers. I slowly pushed the brake, the Bronco’s engine growling under the hood, and stuck the truck into neutral, gassing the motor, scanning the loading dock and back street. A couple of butchers in white shirts splattered with blood hung their legs off the dock and puffed on cigarettes. A homeless man pushed a shopping cart full of tin cans toward a Dumpster.

  Maybe Cook had spotted me, doubled back, and was spinning away in the Cadillac right now. Shit.

  As I turned the corner, rain splattering harder on my windshield, I caught a glimpse of Cook walking down a stairwell from an elevated brick enclosure next to the grocery store. He held a newspaper over his head and ran in a fast jog down to the store, where he ducked inside out of the rain.

  I revved the motor again and wheeled toward the stairwell. I got out and bounded up the steps to a grassy hill. The hill looked as if it had once been part of a great mound cut away for the construction of the Piggly Wiggly.

  I followed a narrow entranceway cut into a wall wrapping a large square of earth. Looked almost as if it had once been some type of garden. The ground was uneven and covered in grass. Old brown cords, tattered blue jeans, a single mattress, and numerous empty Miller and Colt 45 beer bottles were strewn on the ground. I almost tripped over a foam plate of molded chicken covered in maggots as rain beat into my eyes.