Wicked City (22 page)

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 rings, 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.

“I want something from you before you leave,” she said.

He turned at the front door, suitcase in hand. She whispered into his ear, and her breath was warm and sweet.

“You got to be kidding,” Johnnie said. “You mention me and the Hoyt Shepherd job again and you gonna get me killed. Hoyt Shepherd will drop me in that ole river loaded down with logging chains just as easy as takin’ a mornin’ piss.”

And, with that, he opened the front door and walked out on the old rotted porch and out to the Hornet hid back by some privet bush. He tucked the suitcase into the trunk and turned to the bush, where he started to take a leak.

He heard her walking behind him and he started to whistle.

“Listen, they may not even find you, Fannie,” Johnnie said. “Hell, the Hill Top is two miles from the highway. You’re the only goddang thing out here.”

“Not far enough.”

He zipped up and turned to her, jingling the keys in his hand. The old, rotten Victorian behind Fannie looking to him like a haunted house from a picture show.

“Why do you say that?”

She didn’t say anything, only turned to the north and pointed to the dust buckling and rising from the dirt road. From the looks of things, a mess of cars was headed that way.

“Who else is in the house?”

“Few girls. Them twins. Some more from town that got scared.”

“Get back inside.”

“Why?”

“I said get the fuck back inside,” he said, popping his trunk again and pulling out a Winchester Model 12. “Get your clothes off and put on a robe. Something sexy. Tell the girls to stay in their rooms. I said now.”

Johnnie clenched his jaw, stocking extra shells in his pant pocket and down into the shaft of his pointed boots. He eyed a place up in the turret on the second floor, and looked to see the first flashes of the windshields of the approaching cars.

EVERY CLERK, PROSECUTOR, DEPUTY, AND JUDGE HAD BEEN
cleared from the Russell County Courthouse. Only the Guard remained, with Bernard Sykes setting up command in Arch Ferrell’s old office and Sykes’s team from the state attorney’s office already tearing through Ferrell’s personal files and papers. General Hanna’s stepson, Pete — an eighteen-year-old kid working as the general’s personal driver — had taken us through the courthouse and out back to the brick sheriff’s office, where Hanna ushered me down into a basement storage room filled with dozens of cardboard boxes. “These look familiar?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Why don’t you call your buddy Britton and John Patterson down here? It looks like a mess of uncounted votes going back to 1945.”

“They kept them?” I asked.

“Sheriff Matthews may be everything else, but he’ll never be accused of being a genius.”