Dark End of the Street - v4 (13 page)

“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 the 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.”

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 weathered 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.

As he turned to go back to the funeral tent and his new collection of friends, a guy with thinning brown hair and a square jaw walked over and clasped his hand on Ransom’s shoulder. The man was in his late forties or early fifties. Handsome in kind of a large-teeth, big smile sort of way. He was trim and tan and wore a black Polo shirt and bone-colored pants. A silver Rolex dangled loose on his wrist.

“Thank you, Levi,” the man said with authority. He gave the ole two-hand handshake and tried like hell to keep that eye contact going as he spoke. “I’ve got to make one more party before kickoff.”

“Jude, appreciate you stoppin’ by,” Ransom said. “Jude? This is a friend of the family’s, Miss Leigh. Miss Leigh, this is Jude Russell, he’s out makin’ the rounds today trying to get to some of his Tennessee constituents who’ve come south. Wants them thinkin’ to that first Tuesday next month.”

Russell. Yeah, she knew him. Liberal senator out of Memphis who wanted to be governor. His father had been some kind of racist pig during segregation. Guy spent every minute trying to tell people that he wasn’t like his dead daddy.

“Nice to meet you,” Perfect said, fishing with a sly little grin.

Nothin’. No smile. No warm shake. He acted like she wasn’t even there.

About ten yards later, Russell was intercepted by another round of the khaki club. He gave more two-handed shakes and wide big-toothed grins. Ransom was watching. He cleaned his sunglasses with a show handkerchief, squinted one gray eye, and looked out through a clean lens.

“I hate that son of a bitch,” he said.

THE TUNICA JUSTICE COMPLEX WAS remarkable for nothing but its newness. Red brick and squat with the architectural detail of a Ritz cracker box, the building sat on the edge of an aging downtown cut in the center by railroad tracks. Outside there was an American flag that flapped stiff and bold from a high pole and a few immature trees — barely rooted in their soil — sitting brown and dead by the front doors.

As I parked in a visitor’s slot, Ulysses jumped out before my truck stopped, sliding his boots on the asphalt. He had on a pair of thin shades and had the collar of his black leather coat flipped up on his neck.

“Hey, Shaft,” I said. “You want to hold up?”

“Oh, yeah, man. Guess you ain’t in a hurry to go to jail.”

I stopped and put my hands in the pockets of my jeans. I looked over at the dead trees and the long shot of the old downtown dressed up with boutiques, antique stores, and a coffee shop.

“Remember that time you locked that weight coach . . . what was his name?”

“Shit,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

“At camp? C’mon. Remember you locked him in that old laundry bin where we used to throw old jockstraps and socks.”

“What made you think of that?”

“Last time I seen you worried about anything. They were talkin’ about cuttin’ you.”

“Shit.”

“This ain’t nothin’. Self-defense. It’ll work out.”

I nodded.

“And the girl gonna be fine, too.”

We’d left Abby in Memphis with an associate of U’s named Bubba Cotton. Bubba was bigger than me and U combined and, according to U, had once killed a man using a shrimp fork at a Red Lobster by the airport. I felt pretty confident that Abby was safe.

A curtain of deep black clouds headed east on the horizon and a stop sign at the crossroads beat in the strong wind. The sun was hard and white but swallowed whole in seconds by the clouds. A whistle could be heard through narrow cracks in the shotgun cottages across the road.

U headed on in the complex, like a man strolling into an A&P to buy a loaf of bread, and motioned for me to follow. I kind of wished I was back at the Peabody now. I’d kick off my boots, watch the clouds drift over the river, and order a club sandwich and a Dr Pepper from room service.

U motioned again.

The building’s stale air hit us as soon as we walked inside to a Plexiglas window protecting a receptionist. She was white and fortyish and as gaudily made up as a corpse on viewing day. She wasn’t chewing gum or smoking a cigarette or seemed to be doing anything active at all. She had her hands flat on a stack of papers across her desk. Her eyes cast downward refusing to admit that she heard us walk through the door.