Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels)

by Ace Atkins

  But when he drove into the football dorm's parking lot, there sat JoJo's 1963 El Dorado. He and Loretta were waiting in the middle of a thunderstorm, a muted radio on and windshield wipers ticking back and forth. JoJo didn't say a word, just got out, grabbed Nick's bag, and motioned him to come on.

  They took him for a meal at Felix's Oyster House and didn't prod him with unnecessary conversation. Nick ended up sleeping on the couch of their townhome that night and later spending more and more time down at the bar.

  For some reason, JoJo had decided to take Nick on as his harmonica prodigy. He showed Nick how to make those hard, clean licks that touched a single note at the right moment. JoJo taught him to make the harmonica beat and breathe like it was living animal.

  The way he'd learned from his mentor back in Clarksdale, JoJo said he was just passing it back around the loop. He told Nick a harmonica was the instrument that could most closely mirror the way a man felt. He said he could show Nick how to use it. But the rest would just be what was inside. The harp was just a tool for bringing the soul out. Nick learned to make a harp laugh and cry. It wasn't about being fancy, JoJo told him. It was about bringing the right emotion out at the right time.

  Virginia stirred in her sleep next to him, jarring him back into the night. Somehow with her curled near, he felt more settled and anchored. She was like a stray cat found in a deserted part of town--no way he could've left her. Back in Greenwood, he'd taken her downtown to the spartan room she'd rented and grabbed her canvas duffel bag and guitar case.

  She slept during the whole bumpy ride south and didn't wake up until the doors closed in the garage of the red brick warehouse. The motor turned off, just the clicking sounds of a tired engine. He watched her for a moment, staring at her lips, her red hair tucked behind her ear. He noticed the slack jaw, and freckles on a nose a little too wide.

  She jumped as if startled by a harsh dream and looked wide into his eyes.

  "You okay?" Nick asked as he slid out and grabbed both of their well-traveled duffel bags and her guitar.

  "Please. Let me sleep," she answered, and closed her eyes.

  "C'mon."

  Nick trudged up the metal stairs to the second level and flicked on the long row of industrial switches. All three thousand square feet was how he had left it. He threw his keys onto the kitchen counter, turned on the ceiling fans, and went back down where Virginia still slept. He scooped her up and carried her upstairs.

  "You're a nice man, Travers," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. She smelled like honeysuckle in the spring.

  As soon as he walked in, she tapped his shoulder to be set down, her mouth agape.

  "You could park an airplane in here," she said.

  "I'm slightly claustrophobic."

  She looked from the open kitchen to the bedroom and from the stamped ceiling to the hardwood floors. "I love it."

  "Used to be a hardware storage back in the late eighteen hundreds," Nick said. "Sometimes you can still smell the damp lumber when it rains, but I don't charge much rent."

  "I'm sure we can work something out," she said, walking toward him and putting her arms around his neck.

  "Bribery with sex. I admire that."

  He kissed her.

  "I'm sorry I zonked out on you," she said, massaging his neck. "You gonna be all right? Doesn't feel good when people you know die like that. Makes you realize we're one step away from the long, last Cadillac ride."

  "Really, I'm fine. You want something to eat?" Nick said, shaking off the comment and walking into the kitchen quadrant of the apartment.

  "You cook?"

  "I've got Froot Loops and Cap'n Crunch. I'm a connoisseur."

  "No Frosted Flakes?"

  "I'm trying to quit," Nick said.

  They ate in silence before Nick went to the king-size mattress he kept on the floor and changed the sheets. Virginia followed and unknotted the front of her flannel shirt, stripped off the shirt, her bra, jeans, and panties, and fell into bed.

  "Pajamas?" Nick asked.

  "I'm trying to quit."

  ?

  An hour later, Nick couldn't sleep, so he eased out of bed and pulled on his boxer shorts. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a box of kitchen matches and quietly walked upstairs to the roof. There was light rain like someone flicking damp hands. A warm breeze blew over the few plants, a couple of rusted chairs, and a grill.

  Nick felt as if he'd failed. Why couldn't he have stayed and watched out for Cracker? He knew someone had tried to kill the old man and that someone had probably killed Baker. And what did he do, but take off with a woman. It was selfish and stupid.

  Cracker was dead; Nick knew it. They probably dumped his body in the Yazoo River, and it would wash up in few days. Drained of all his stories and histories. But to stick around Greenwood didn't make sense. The dead kid was from New Orleans and he was the only link to what happened to Brown, Cracker, and the second set of records.

  To punish himself about not being there when they were killed was to wallow in self-importance. He didn't even have a gun and probably would be dead now, too. Just a forgotten shadow in New Orleans. Maybe a plaque or scholarship at Tulane or a good story or two at JoJo's.

  He rested his elbows on the cracked brick wall and looked toward the river. He could see the Greater New Orleans Bridge and Algiers Point. A tugboat flashing a tiny red light passed under the bridge towing a barge.

  Nick wanted to find whoever killed Willie Brown. They extinguished his life too easily. Too cheaply. Like it was the Delta of fifty years ago. This wasn't the way it was supposed to work now. It felt like a violation or a blatant kick to the head.

  Nick knew all he could do was wait for what the Leflore County Sheriff's Department found out. See if they could find a man who looked like Elvis. He felt ridiculous as he explained it was the young one, pompadour and clean sideburns, not Las Vegas. They'd have to pick up half the truckers in Mississippi.

  Nick flicked a long ash over the warehouse edge.

  No one would know what was on those records now. Baker had to have known what was on them. Maybe he told someone about the tracks, and they became so greedy that men died. It had to be something more than just a rare copy of "Terraplane Blues." Maybe they really were those recordings--a huge piece in the ragged puzzle that was Johnson's life.

  Maybe Johnson did record in 1938, like Cracker said. Maybe he wasn't a confused old man.

  That was an opportunity Nick couldn't miss. Men had spent their entire lives trying to find out when Johnson was born, where he'd learned to play, what kind of man he was. Nick knew about Johnson, listened to his music. But he'd never enveloped himself in the actual search. To most researchers, Johnson's life was a beautiful woman better men had tried to court unsuccessfully.

  The answers were as sketchy as the few faded black-and-whites that existed of the man. The ultimate mystery perpetuated in haunting music that inspired so many. Nick visualized Johnson's face, smiling in that tightly creased pinstriped suit. C'mon, Travers. This is what it's all about.

  Chapter 26

  Jesse Garon hung over a wrought-iron balcony looking down on Royal Street early the next morning. In the eye-squinting light, the grillwork looked to him like the lace off an old woman's garter. He grabbed its rusty bars monkey-style and searched for the King Creole Club. Had to be around here somewhere.

  E had turned it into a real big place in the movie. It wouldn't have just gone out of business or somethin', even though that old bastard had tried to fuck it up. 'Cause if there was one thing about Elvis--He always won. E always rose to the top to become whatever He wanted to be: a singer, a race-car driver, a gunfighter, or a goddamned helicopter pilot. E was the shit.

  He pushed up his pompadour with pride and walked back into the apartment where Keith had lived. On a mirrored table, he flipped through a stack of photographs of bikini-clad women from a trip to Panama City Beach. He smiled at Keith flexing his muscles with a Miller Lite can in his hand. The
re were other pictures of Keith, in another stack, with movie stars and a rap singer whose name he didn't know. Jesse stopped flipping when he saw a shot of Puka. Just sittin' there in those same ole bib overalls, a fat wad of Red Man in his cheek. He needed to call that dumb son of a bitch in Mississippi. Tell him 'bout him takin' over Keith's business.

  Jesse took out his switchblade and rubbed the steel along his cheek. Felt real nice and cool. Just a simple rough scrape. The knife like a microphone. Killin' his singing. When E was nine, His momma said, "Son, take this guitar, you're not going to get a rifle. Take it and play it." Well, Jesse's momma had given him a switchblade and said, "Go make us some damned money."

  He tossed the pictures of Keith into the cardboard box he'd brought. Floyd said to clear out anything personal Keith had before the cops got there, especially anything that said something about the Blues Shack. Told him he'd come by in a few minutes and double-check that he got everything out.

  Floyd also said he would meet the big man today--Pascal Cruz. The man sounded real powerful. Maybe Cruz would be his Colonel Parker, the man to recognize his talent and know how to get him exploited. Some people said being exploited was bad, but they were just people no one wanted to exploit. He wanted his face on shot glasses and T-shirts. He wanted people to find the trailer where he grew up and make pilgrimages.

  Maybe he'd make enough money to buy that double-wide for his momma, a black leather jumpsuit like E wore in the '68 Comeback Special, a classic Trans Am, and a woman to be his Priscilla. That wasn't too much to ask for.

  This Cruz dude was his future. At first he wondered about a man who would have such a hard-on for nigra music. But then he thought about it and realized E did, too. Sam Phillips realized E was his man to sound like a nigra. E had taken those old blues songs for his start.

  Hell, that was just like Jesse. Runnin' with the blues.

  Today, he'd clean away everything that remained of Keith Fields and take his place as Cruz's hit man. Yeah, this was it--the first step of coming into the sacred loop that E had always promised in the dream.

  Jesse looked at his watch and saw he had a little time left. After this, Floyd said he needed his help to get that old nigra talking. He said they'd been screwed again and they didn't get what they needed. Why they didn't just kill that ole man was beyond him. He pulled out a compass, faced due north kneeling, and began to pray to E in the direction of Memphis.

  Chapter 27

  "Get yo' ass in here, boy!" JoJo Jackson said, his voice muffled through the glass of the weathered twin Creole doors. He unlocked a tall door and slowly walked back to the bar. On the shellacked wood lay a copy of the Picayune, a cooling cafe au lait, and a half-eaten croissant.

  "They didn't kill you in the Delta?" JoJo said, going back to his paper. He wore a gray sweater over a checked shirt with half-glasses pressed against his nose. The gray in the sweater matched the color of his hair.

  "They tried," Nick said.

  "Hmm."

  "You have any more coffee?"

  "Yeah, Loretta left coffee and milk on the stove in the kitchen."

  Nick walked back and filled a mug with equal amounts of warm milk and chicory coffee. His legs felt shaky from traveling and making love as he returned back to the barstool. He blew on his cafe au lait and spent the next thirty minutes telling JoJo the whole story.

  "Robert Johnson's lost records? Mmm-hmm."

  "I think that's why they went to all this trouble to nab Cracker," Nick said.

  "Man is black?"

  "He's an albino."

  "Man is African?"

  "Yeah."

  "And they call him Cracker?"

  "Yeah."

  "That ain't right," JoJo said as he slurped his coffee and folded back the Metro page. He slid the paper over so Nick could see the Kate Archer byline on a shooting story.

  "I brought a girl back with me," Nick said.

  "The redheaded guitar player you tole me about on the phone? Is she any good?"

  "She could use a gig."

  "That ain't what I asked. I didn't open this bar thirty years ago to get you pussy."

  "I was misinformed."

  "Bring her in," JoJo said. "You need some pussy."

  Nick took a sip of the coffee and asked, "You ever hear of a slide guitarist named Earl Snooks?"

  "Earl Snooks. Snooks . . . yeah," JoJo said, looking away. "Saw him play in a Helena juke back in the late forties."

  "Cracker mentioned something about Big Earl not liking people talking about Johnson."

  "All those people are older than me. I heard of 'em when I was a kid in Clarksdale, but I never talked to 'em. They were kind of like heroes. As far as Robert Johnson, I always thought the man was just a legend, like Stagger Lee, until I met his stepson. My older brother used to scare the shit out of me, tellin' me the devil was waitin' for me at the crossroads with Robert Johnson.

  "One time I was headed home on one of those late afternoons where the sun goin' down looks like a big orange. Anyway, I had to pass the crossroads at Highway Forty-Nine and Sixty-One, where it used to be, and there was this big dead tree without any leaves rustlin' around in the wind. I knew ole Robert was about to jump out and grab my ass."

  The door opened again and JoJo's niece, Keesha, came in popping her gum and waddling as she walked. Her body seemed oddly small, Nick thought, watching her oversize butt. It reminded him of a pack mule's. He thought you could put all kinds of things on that butt: bedrolls, tin pans, mine picks. Nick wondered if she was surefooted.

  "Hey y'all," she said, with about as much enthusiasm as a dying man asking about tomorrow's weather.

  Nick nodded at her. She patted JoJo's back and looked at Nick. No smile. Not a bit of welcome. Maybe she knew about his fascination with her backside resembling a mule's.

  When she walked back in the kitchen, Nick leaned close.

  "Robert Johnson might have been gone a long time," Nick said. "But three men, maybe four, are dead over those records. I think it's all coming from New Orleans. I don't know yet."

  JoJo leaned forward. "Who's dead besides that cop and the kid?"

  "Maybe Cracker and Baker."

  JoJo slammed down his coffee mug.

  "I don't want you foolin' with this mess, no more. You hear me?"

  "Why are you yelling at me all of sudden?"

  "Goddamnit, Nick," JoJo said, his brow furrowing. "I mean it. This ain't your business!"

  Nick laughed, finished his coffee, and stood up.

  "I need your help with this one, JoJo. You know a hell of a lot more about the blues scene in the fifties than I do. Of course, you have an advantage--I wasn't born yet. All I need is a connection to Snooks."

  "I told you I don't know Snooks."

  "You just said you did."

  "I'm gettin' old. Now get your ass out of here and leave this mess alone. And think about that ghost story I just tole you. That man has caused a lot of misery."

  Chapter 28

  Cracker's eyes burned somethin' terrible. That hot white light they'd been shinin' in his face made him want to scream. Even when he closed his eyes, the light came through the blood in his eyelids with red-hot intensity. His whole face and body felt red, raw, and irritable. He wanted to find a cool clump of leaves near a tree, where the moss was free to grow, and fall asleep. Wake up when it came natural.

  "Wake that old fuck up," a deep, scratchy voice said. It sounded like a white man, but when he tried to open his eyelids a little to see who was talking, he had to shut them right away.

  "Sir, we want you to go back home real soon," the voice said again. "We'd like you to be comfortable, get a shower, and sleep. Hell, we'll even find you a juicy steak and a baked potato. Whatever you want. We just want to know what happened to those records your buddy Robert Johnson recorded. That's it. Very reasonable."

  The voice was scratchy and raw from booze and cigarettes but kind of rough and soothing like the ole preacher who left him tin cans of food outside the church.
Made him want to sleep.

  "D.r Baker told me you used to work for a record producer in Texas. Said that man recorded Robert Johnson before he died, and you kept those records all these years. We know you didn't give Baker or that deputy the real thing. But I know what I want, so you can't pass another bad set off. Understand? Now, we don't want you to be up all night, and that hot light must be botherin' you. What'd you do with those records?"

  "You stole my records," Cracker muttered. "I ain't got nothin' left. You stole 'em, and you kilt Willie. Damn, you sons a bitches k-kilt W-Willie."

  "Those records weren't worth shit. Most of the ones you gave Baker were warped like a fried egg. Almost all the others were a goddamned hillbilly band, only one blues song."

  Cracker could see that fat green moss clinging to the tree and shafts of sunlight that cut wildly through high, leafy branches. The forest was a canopy over him, and he was safe. All that green protected him from the light and the dirty outside world. The very thing that killed R.L.

  "I can make him say all kinds of shit," a black man's deep voice said. Sounded like the same man who found him hiding under the car and tied him up. Mouth of gold.

  Gold Mouth found him huddled underneath that old car in Greenwood. Man took an old tree branch and poked him in the head until he had to come out. Then a young white boy grabbed him, tied him, and threw him in the back of a big truck. They covered him with a plastic sheet and let him ride on the wet metal for what seemed like days.

  "Keep him up," the white man said. "He'll tell us what we want. If not, tell that new kid to come in here and keep watching him."