by Ace Atkins
Abby. Her name was Abby.
Last night, I could barely get her to eat the chicken sandwich that I’d ordered from the Peabody’s room service. Kept on saying she had to go, and made it to the door twice before I convinced her to stay. I showed her my driver’s license, scattered notebooks, and even the battered cassette recorder I’d used in the Delta. I tried to make her relax and even laugh.
She never did trust me. She was just beaten and scared. Absolutely no place to go. She spent the few hours before she went to sleep silently watching Letterman and then the last half of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in a worn JoJo’s Blues Bar T-shirt and pair of my Scooby Doo boxers. Didn’t even blink when Holly lost Cat.
She must’ve fallen asleep with the television on, I thought as I rolled on my back, still wearing the same clothes from last night but missing a sock, and stared up at Saturday morning cartoons. I got to my feet, scratched the back of my neck, and flipped the channels until I found Scooby. One of the originals with the miner 49er and the ghost town. Man, I loved that one.
“It’s the innkeeper,” the girl said in a sleepy voice.
I turned to see her hugging the pillow, her brown eyes underlined with dark circles.
“He found uranium in the mines.”
I turned back to the television and watched Scooby eating Shaggy’s sub sandwich topped with whipped cream and olives. I pulled the loose sock off my foot and took a seat by the girl. Canned laughter filled the room.
“You ever see the one with Mama Cass?”
“She owns a candy factory,” Abby said.
“Wow,” I said. “Thought you had to be a child of the ‘sixties to understand.”
“Cartoon Network.”
“Ah,” I said. “Probably watched Smurfs.”
“What?”
“Blue people,” I said, shrinking the distance between my fingers. “Real small.”
Abby looked away, her hair wired with static electricity, and clutched the pillow tighter to her chest. She exhaled a long breath as if she were trying to expel a sickness. “You going to tell me who you are?”
“I did.”
“What’s that then?”
I looked over to my Army duffel bag topped off with the Stones and North Mississippi All-Stars CDs and a stainless-steel Browning 9mm. A leg of clean 501s poked from the top.
She said: “Doesn’t look like teacher’s shit to me.”
I smiled at the girl. “I have a slight inferiority complex.”
I covered the gun with the leg of my worn jeans and opened a window. I looked out at the new baseball stadium built for the Memphis Redbirds and lit that first morning cigarette. As soon as I took a drag, the smell got to me.
I suddenly had the urge to wash my hands. Maybe take a shower. I could smell the burn of the rifle on my fingers — I’d later dumped both guns in the Mississippi — and could still feel their heat in my hands. I remembered the sound the man’s body made as it dropped with bloated weight into the cotton field. That wicked moon bathing his dead face with a bright glow.
Abby steadily got to her feet and joined me at the window. Small city noises bleated inside. Abby wasn’t that tall, came up about to my chest. Her hair was bobbed to her chin. She had the kind of face that could wear her hair like that. Delicate. Chin like the point of a heart. Bet she had a dynamite smile if she’d ever smile.
A warm breath of wind washed over my face and I kept staring at the downtown buildings and the bridges crossing the Mississippi. I’d fucked up last night. No matter what was going on in the casino, I’d killed a man. I’d shot him right in the heart. My head pounded and my mouth tasted like cotton.
I tried to take a deep breath but the air felt shallow in my lungs. I’d been in several scuffles and I’d fired my gun a few times. But each time I awoke not truly knowing myself.
All of a sudden Abby asked me, “You ever feel like you could stick your hand in a fire and not feel a thing?” She was rubbing the reddened marks on her calves and sort of talking to herself.
I listened. A couple of horns honked from down on Union. Scooby and the gang ran from the space ghost. I looked down at my bare toes. I wiggled the ones on the left foot. “Sometimes. . . . You want to tell me what was going on?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“Who were they?”
Abby sat on the floor, pulled her knees to her chest, and started rocking. I came to her, bent down, and put my hand on her back. I dropped into this awkward half crouch, my knees aching like hell, but didn’t move my hand.
“I don’t know who they are,” she said again.
“Why would they want to hurt you?”
“You can’t help me.”
“Why would they want to hurt you?”
Abby placed her head on her forearms. “You tell me who they are and I’ll tell you everything,” she said.
“I have a friend we need to see,” I said, standing. “He’ll know.”
“You trust him?”
“Like a brother.”
Chapter 16
ULYSSES DAVIS RAN a bail bonds business down off Poplar not far from the courthouse and the Shelby County Jail. The neighborhood had nothing but bondsmen for several blocks, their neon signs advertising in the windows with telephone numbers and assurances: ANYTIME, ANY PRICE. But you couldn’t miss ole U’s place. At first, it looked like a damned art gallery. A lot of blue neon and pictures of martial arts film stars lining the walls. I once kidded U about it, said it looked like these were the folks he’d bailed out of jail. But U didn’t think that was funny. Since the time we played on the same Saints’ defense, U rarely thought I was funny.
He was sitting at this big presidential wooden desk when I walked in with Abby. From his stereo, Marcus Roberts played jazz piano while patchouli incense burned from a nearby shelf. He’d tied his braided hair into a ponytail, sweat burned off his dark brown skin. A black leather jacket lay on the edge of his desk where he was filling out some papers.
Almost didn’t see the young black kid sitting across from U. Kid had a shaved head and multiple nose- and earrings. Couldn’t help notice there was a jagged slot in his left ear where he was bleeding pretty badly. Kid had duct tape across his mouth and was handcuffed to a ladderback chair.
“Hey, motherfucker,” I said.
U kept his eyes down on the paperwork and broke into a broad grin. “And how is your momma, Dr. Travers?”
Abby gave me a skeptical stare.
The kid handcuffed to the chair started making groaning noises.
U finished dotting some “i” or crossing some “t” and threw down his pen. He stood up to his six-foot-four, 240-pound frame and grasped my hand. Felt like he’d been working out. ‘Course that was all U seemed to do. Lift weights, practice tae kwon do, and eat his health food. Tofu and wheat grass. God. I had spent three years trying to get him to eat some ribs and drink some beer without luck.
“What the fuck do you want?” U asked.
“Tell you that I’ve always loved you. Make up for lost time.”
“Well, wait for me in the lobby, punk. Be through in a second. Antoine here decided to fuck me one time too many. Time to get my money back.”
Abby took a seat in front of a huge plate glass window with a view looking onto the gray coldness of the jail. She was wearing a pair of jogging pants I bought for her in the hotel lobby and another one of my T-shirts.
Outside, cops and worn-out families milled about. A couple of women dressed in pleather pants and halters walked by the glass window with a cold, indifferent affection.
“How do you know this guy?”
“Played football together. He was my roommate on road trips.”
“What can he do?” Abby asked.
“He knows about every cop and federal agent in town.”
Abby was quiet for a moment and picked up an old copy of Black Belt magazine. Chuck Norris was on the cover. Dressed as a cowboy. Kicking some poor bastard in t
he nuts.
Twenty minutes later, U walked back from the jail where he had deposited the kid. He was rubbing his hands together as if he’d finished cleaning the kitchen.
“Come on back,” he said, taking off his jacket.
Abby found a seat by the desk. I stood. The patchouli continued to burn although Roberts had finished. Now, the stereo played selections from Carmen.
“Last night, I drove out to a casino in Tunica.”
“Figured you would after I ran that plate. Now you wanna tell me why?”
“Looking for a man named Clyde James. Some security guards from the casino had been looking for him, too.”
“Why do you care?”
“He was a big-time soul singer in the ‘sixties.”
“New project?”
“He’s Loretta’s brother.”
“Mmm-hmm,” U said, rubbing his goatee. “And she’s worried.”
“While I was there, I met Miss Abby here. A woman had kidnapped her and taken her to the casino.”
“Which one?”
“Magnolia Grand.”
“I see. I see.”
“While I was getting her out, I killed a man.”
“Ain’t your line of work, is it, Travers?”
“I want to set it right. Where do we go? I don’t want to go back to that place half-assed.”
U nodded. He folded his massive arms — veined and corded — across his chest. “Tunica is a hell of a place.”
“You know what we’ve stepped into?”
“Looks like, brother, you’ve just landed in a steaming pile of the Dixie Mafia.”
I blew out my breath.
“Oh, yeah,” U said. “Buckle your ass up.”
Chapter 17
PERFECT LEIGH HATED rich fucks in blue blazers and khakis. And today, she was surrounded by them. Seemed like all the men she saw thought they wouldn’t be admitted into the damned football game if they didn’t dress alike. She hated the way they waddled because they were full of scotch and the way they held Confederate flags in their hands and gave the ole Rebel yell to passing friends. She was tired of watching them and their female counterparts in flowered dresses and straw hats wander through this oak-shaded part of the Ole Miss campus called The Grove, eating barbecue from toothpicks and finger sandwiches taken from black men dressed in tuxedos as if the ‘fifties never ended.
While she sat on the warm hood of her Mustang and waited for Ransom, she tried to figure out who was worse, the men or the women. The men were just plain pathetic, gawking at her in her red leather pants and leather halter. They didn’t seem to care if their wives were hanging on their arms or if they were holding their kids’ hands. The women were just outright hypocrites, boobs hoisted high in Wonderbras and reeking of perfume, as they scowled at her or pointed from loose circles and laughed.
At least Perfect knew who she was. She didn’t pretend to be an adoring wife, a concerned mother, or proud girlfriend. Perfect Leigh was Perfect Leigh. One hundred and twenty pounds of pure feminine power. She didn’t need a mask or a label. She felt her power and was damned proud of it.
Two black men carrying silver serving trays passed her. One just growled his approval, “Mmm-mmm.” A fat white man in a suit and crooked baseball hat licked his lips, and quickly looked away. Two fraternity boys passing a flask between them about fell over themselves as she recrossed her long legs and looked at her watch.
Her hair fell in loose curls over her head, styled and bleached back to platinum. Cost two hundred bucks and the outfit pushed the hell out of a thousand. She deserved it. Sometimes you had to give yourself a little present every once in a while, to let yourself know you were doing a hell of a job at life.
This time eight years ago, she’d just left Clarksdale after winning the Coahoma County Cotton Queen contest. Then, the possibilities were limitless: sleep with the county judge (a fat-necked man who owned several local gins), go to work trying to bring tourism to a dying downtown, or make some high-dollar bucks stripping in Memphis.
Her mother didn’t seem to care as long as her daughter finally got famous and ended up on one of her soaps. She always pointed to Soap Opera Digest in the checkout line of the Winn-Dixie and said, “Your beautiful little face will end up right there.”
But her mother didn’t know how the world worked. She hid behind a sickeningly large rack of Disney movies and a jelly jar collection of famous cartoon characters. Hell, she named her daughter Perfect because of a stupid mistake. She told Perfect when she was a kid that she’d heard the name in this Rolling Stone song. Said it went, “I saw Perfect-Ly at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand” and that’s not even the way it went. It was, “I saw her today.” How the hell did she hear Perfectly from that?
When Perfect finally heard the song, she was already in high school. Some dorky pothead made her listen to the real version in his crappy van airbrushed with Viking scenes. When it was finally confirmed that her mother was an idiot, her world changed.
She had thought her name was for a purpose, and that it would lead to greater things. But when that didn’t make sense, she thought maybe her whole life would follow into the septic tank. So a couple months later, after graduation and the whole Cotton Queen thing, she ended up moving to Panama City Beach and taking a job at a wacky golf course and bar that featured wet T-shirt contests every Wednesday.
That’s where she met this grifter named Jake, the man she’d lost her virginity to at the Flamingo Motel. Within two weeks she’d moved to Biloxi and he began teaching her about faking out old folks as bank examiners, working Pigeon Drops on rednecks at check cashing businesses, and trying out the Sweetheart Swindle on horny old men who had loads of cash.
She was a natural, Jake said. Of course, he loved everything she did. But she was good. Even as a child, she knew just little changes in mannerisms could make people react in a whole different way. Like that one time when she was at summer camp and started speaking in an English accent telling everyone she was a baroness. Everyone, including several counselors, believed her until one called her mother and spoiled the fun.
But she’d learned from Jake that it was more than the voice. It was the eyes and the shoulders and the way you held your hands. “Everybody wears a mask,” Jake said one night at Wintzell’s in Mobile after they took a bank president for two grand. “Everyone is an actor. See that man? He’s the hard-working father. See that woman? She’s the loving granny who spoils those kids. And him? That man is the funny guy that everyone loves to know ’cause he don’t know shit about himself. See?”
And she did see. Jake showed her all of them. He showed her every species that existed in the world. Probably would have married that smart bastard, too, if he hadn’t tried to cross Levi Ransom and disappeared into the parking lot of a Sears.
But she grew to love Ransom, too. Or wear the mask that loved Ransom. It was self-preservation and truly a tribute to that ole boy Jake. He would’ve appreciated it.
As the P.A. system started droning out today’s roster from the stadium, Perfect looked down at the wonderful slickness of her new nails. The sounds of The Grove coming back into her ears as the heat from the fall sun baked the red hood of her Mustang.
“Start talkin’,” Ransom said. She looked up and there he stood all weathered and styled like Kris Kristofferson with his shoulder-length gray hair and whiskey-soaked voice. He dressed more like a golf pro than the head of a bunch of good-ole-boy cutthroats. Wrinkled linen shirt, blue trousers, and loafers without socks.
“I want in,” she said, biting off a stray cuticle. “I want that man.”
“Get over it.”
“I want him to hurt bad.”
“Perfect, you don’t kill people,” he said, looking at the crowd milling toward the stadium like goats through a chute. “You have your talents and others have theirs. Really, I need to get back to my guests.”
“Levi, you hate those fucks. Don’t tell me you don’t.”
He gave a weath
ered grin. That’s the one thing she’d never fake about liking. Levi Ransom looked as if he’d lived his life twice and on the third time around would just sit back and watch everybody fuck up.
Behind him, she saw loose groups of women in straw hats and more dorks in ties and khakis under a funeral tent.
“Let me go,” she said, reaching out and touching his pocket. “I want to learn.”
“I don’t know this boy,” Ransom said finally after rubbing his beard and taking a seat beside her on the car hood. “Heard he’s got a mile of experience but kind of cocked in the head. You don’t understand that part of the business, hon. These folks get off on watchin’ people bleed. They’re kind of like baseball players. Real shootin’ stars. Burn out real fast.”
“Who is he?” she asked.
“First time we used him. Said he knows the man we’re looking for and can take him out quick. Good references from Vegas.”
“Let me in with him,” she said, looking sad and poking out her lower lip. Then she looked into his eyes. More serious. Pressing.
He grinned: “I don’t know you.”
“I don’t know you,” she said back.
“Memphis. Hell, go. Call C. J. from there and he’ll tell you what you need.”
She slid off the hood of the car and planted her Manolo Blahnik stilettos in the grass. She winked at Ransom and said, “We had a hell of a time for a while. Didn’t we?”
“We did.”
“What happened?”
“You grew up,” Ransom said, giving what Jake would have called the Wistful Face. Better times, an older, wiser man that had seen it all. He almost had her until that phony-ass move.