Dark End of the Street - v4 (33 page)

I dropped my shoulder an inch. One of the guards screamed for me to raise it back up.

On the other side of me, Bubba had his eyes closed. He was either meditating or sleeping.

Soon another ATV’s engine gunned outside. The sound grew close enough that it rattled the tin above our heads until it pulled inside and shut off the motor.

A dozen or so men formed a line behind the man dismounting from his ride. Short and gray haired. Large, almost comical ears and yellowish eyes. He had an oversized mouth when he smiled, appraising us down on our knees. His hair was cut extremely short with a section on top that struck me as so hard and perfect that it had to be a toupee. His teeth were little, worn-down nubs.

He placed his smallish hands on his waist as he stood in front of me and said: “You with these niggers?”

“Oh, thank God,” I said. “The senator will save us.”

Elias Nix laughed for a moment with me and then kicked out my knees. I landed on my back and then worked my way to a resting position on my elbows.

“They yours?” Nix asked, looking over at U and Bubba.

Some of his group laughed.

He’d left the square headlight of the ATV shining bright in our eyes. I squinted at his face — smooth, thin skin with bluish veins on his cheeks.

I looked over at U but didn’t say anything.

I crept to my knees again, like I was about to get back into the same position, closed my eyes, and waited for Nix to relax. Slowly I opened them, dug in with the balls of my feet, and launched from my knees, grasping for his throat.

I ringed a good grip, feeling the cold, corpselike skin, and yanked him from his feet. The shorter man was level with my eyes. I was throttling even harder when something struck the back of my head and my vision left me for a moment.

I felt a hundred kicks in my side.

U yelled for them to stop.

More yells. Some screams at U to shut up. But they did as he said.

I rolled to my side, coughed several times, and stood as if I were a boxer wavering in the first round. One of Nix’s men, I couldn’t make out his face, pointed a gun into my ear.

“Why are you here?” Nix said, hands behind his back, strutting rooster-proud now. Trying to make up for being the little toy he was.

“You assholes tried to kill one of my friends,” I said, my breath wheezing. “I guess since you killed Bill MacDonald and his wife, you thought y’all were unstoppable.”

“You’re not a friend of Bill’s,” he said. “We’re his friends.”

He said friends as if it had a couple of “e”s in it. Nix jerked his head over at U and Bubba on their knees. “And Lord knows they’re not.”

“Stay out of New Orleans,” I said. “Those people don’t know anything.”

“Son, I haven’t a clue what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Your friends down in Tunica killed the MacDonalds and then sent some assholes to work my friends.” I didn’t want to say their names. I thought by uttering the words in this place I would pollute their dignity.

Nix let out a long laugh. His breath, clouded and foggy, obscured his face. I couldn’t quite make it out anymore. The yellow eyes. Grayed toupee. Nothing was clear anymore.

“Now you’re making sense,” he said, whistling and pointing to a herd of men at the back. Several ATVs, thick tires coated in mud, kicked to life buzzing away into the night. “Son, you boys are so dang thick in a world of shit that you’re drownin’ in it. Little advice: Let the big dogs handle the war.”

I looked at him. Still everything was cloudy and hidden in the lights. I squinted harder.

Two men stood behind U and Bubba and quickly brandished a pair of Bowie knives. I yelled to them but as I did, I could see their hands were already free.

They’d been cut loose.

My friends stood.

“Y’all have ten seconds to get out of my world,” Nix said.

U led the way and Bubba and I followed past the buzz-cut boys, mouths pocketed full of Redman and Kodiak, and onto the same path we’d followed before. We were just walking pretty damned fast, but picked up the pace when automatic weapons sounded from down in the valley.

As we got close to the truck, Bubba’s big ass passed both of us as if he were chomping for the finish line. We all jumped inside and U cranked his Expedition.

As he spun away, I heard Bubba screaming in that same low hoarse whisper. He was yelling with volume set at two.

“Goddamn, I’m hit, they shot me right in the ass,” he croaked. “Y’all get me to a hospital, I’m bleedin’ to death. They got me. They got me with them machine guns.”

U didn’t look back for several miles. He only stopped for a second before we turned onto another highway heading south to Memphis.

He turned on an overhead light, crawled halfway over the seat, looking for the wound.

Bubba yelped.

“Damn, Bubba,” U said, laughing as the truck idled. “That sure was a mean-ass tree.” He showed me the broken-off end of a stick and shook his head as we headed south again. “That tree just jumped up and bit him in the ass.”

The laughter came again in waves. I must’ve laughed for five miles.

“Y’all be quiet,” Bubba croaked, again. “Ain’t funny.”

But soon the laughter spilled back into silence and we were left with the feeling of failure. Even though I knew it would’ve been pretty damned stupid to have stayed, I felt like I’d failed Loretta. I had come to face Elias Nix and left with my tail between my ass.

“Those assholes could’ve killed us,” U said.

“But they didn’t,” I said.

“Ain’t ’cause they’re good people.”

I could feel U’s eyes watching me as I continued to stare out into the darkness and passing signs along the highway. He turned on some jazz and we entered a section of road jammed up with construction and soon I couldn’t see anything around us but flashing yellow signs and orange barrels. U checked in his rearview mirror again as we slowed and waited for a semi to merge.

I watched him as he turned the wheel hard and passed on a closed section of highway before darting in front of the semi.

U punched the accelerator up to eighty and with the windows down I felt like I could breathe again. My blood pressure had slowed and my head no longer buzzed like it had been filled with hornets.

He asked: “Why would them boys want some broken-down soul singer?”

“The only man who can answer that question checked out some time ago,” I said. I didn’t talk for a while, thinking of our meeting with Clyde James. Then I said: “But we could try again.”

Memphis shined loose, bright, and broken before us.

DIDN’T TAKE BUT about two seconds for Perfect Leigh to spot a man in the first floor of the casino, not bad-looking, either, in kind of a bland-businessman way, and get that ride to Memphis. The man was even up about five hundred bucks at the blackjack table, but left it all just for a chance to take Perfect for a spin in his Lexus. He was nice and clean, thirtyish with a couple kids and a wife that didn’t like sex anymore, and even opened the door for Perfect when they got back to Midtown. She gave him a phony phone number, said she couldn’t wait to see him again, and walked the next two blocks to her real apartment.

Now, thank the Lord, she was drawing a bath while she lit a dozen or so colored candles around the big claw-foot tub. Get Tunica out of her mind.

Perfect removed her favorite plush terry-cloth robe and slid into the warm, soapy water. She wanted to lie in this tub till all of Levi Ransom had been soaked away. Then she’d drain the murky fluids that had filled her, towel off, and clean the tub with Clorox.

Only then could she become someone else and forget about this whole damned mess. Just like when she was a teenager and pretended that winning those god-awful pageants was such a wonderful thing, back when she had to grin so hard her gums and lips hurt. Grin till her mother had grabbed the trophy and they were headed back to Coahoma County.

That fat woman would do anything to have her doll win. She’d coat her in that pancake makeup and foul-smelling Wal-Mart perfume she bought by the gallon and just hug and hug her like a prized pet. The thing that Perfect couldn’t understand, she thought as she ran more hot water into the tub, was why her mother had to cheat. Just like Ransom, she had to know they’d won even before she’d taped her daughter’s boobs together or watched her perform the Nancy Sinatra baton routine.

Perfect closed her eyes, submerged her head for a moment, nothing but the darkness and candles in the room, that terrific soapy water flowing, swooshing inside her. She ducked under, bubbles pouring through her ears, water flowing into her nose. She let out a long breath, screaming into the water.

After the bath, she lay naked on her huge red couch watching her legs in the seven antique mirrors that hung along the wall by the television and in a little mirrored jewel box she’d picked up in New Orleans. Mirrors everywhere. Gold. Silver. Antique. Some still in boxes. Sterling silver hand mirrors and ones with beveled edges and maybe thirty compacts she’d collected since she was sixteen, in a little basket on the coffee table.

She yawned and stretched, feeling with delight her rib cage and firm ass.

She picked up one of the many compacts and twirled it in her fingers as she flopped onto her back and moved her hands over her breasts, when suddenly there was a thud on her little balcony.

She saw the shifting figure of a man in black. Had to have crawled up three stories to reach her. Perfect had a gun in her bedroom and a set of steak knives in the kitchen. She slowly let her bare toes touch the carpet; she didn’t want him to think she knew.

But he saw her. He was watching her with those damned black-ringed eyes.

Jon had dropped to his knees in the cold onto a big pile of leaves that had fallen from a nearby oak. He had on this sad face. Humble as hell and holding some more of those nasty grocery-store flowers.

She shook her head and started to drop the blinds over the window. Her heart ramming against her rib cage.

The window exploded with glass.

A large pot filled with a dead palm tree cracked and scattered dirt all over her floor. She scrambled to her bedroom but only got halfway when he jumped her from behind and started prying her mouth open. He stuffed a handful of pills deep down into her mouth, so far that she started gagging, while he rubbed her throat making her swallow.

He pushed her wrists to the hard wooden floor and stuck a knee into her stomach. He lay his head across her bare breasts, like a child would, listening to her heart. She couldn’t move with his sinewy weight holding her. “We just stay here,” he whispered. All right? Then I got somewhere special we can go. It’s a real happy place.”

“I
’ll cut your fucking nuts off,” Perfect Leigh said, slurring her words and walkin’ crooked toward the exit of Libertyland as an orange-black sky twisted overhead. “I want to scream but it makes me sick. I’m not feeling well.”

The little white lights on the trees had just flickered on at dusk. Families pushed strollers and carried huge teddy bears and hustlin’ young black kids in Grizzlies jerseys and gold bracelets prowled nearby. The air smelled like popcorn and hotdogs with an edge of baby powder.

“Miss Perfect, let’s get on the Zippin Pippin one more time,” Jon said.

She still couldn’t see why this place was so important. Jon guessed she couldn’t have known this was the old fairgrounds that E used to rent out all night for Him and the boys. They’d run the whole damned park till the sun came up; E sometimes ridin’ the Pippin all night long.

“Amusement parks are for morons and white trash,” she said. “Goddamn, I feel sick. Jesus.”

Her eyes got real lazy and she stumbled, almost falling to the sidewalk. She caught herself, but one of her high heels came off and Jon walked back to pick it up.

“Here you go,” he said, a true gentleman.

“Take me home now, Jon. Or whatever your real name is.”

“Why do you say such things, Miss Perfect?” He felt his legs starting to jump and a jolt of electricity shoot into the base of his brain. “You doubt my Christian name?”

She laughed it out before she looked at his face and poked out her lower lip. “Oh, little Johnny, did I make you sad? I’m sorry. You are. You are Jon Burrows. Okay. That’s fine by me.”

The lines in her face made puzzles in the falling light. Brown dead leaves skittered down the concrete walkway that led over to the Pippin and for some reason Jon felt very sad. He zipped up his leather coat and checked his new boots for any mess.

But she didn’t move. He felt for a knife in his pocket and it gave him comfort. His breath comin’ real fast through his nose.

She laughed and said, “I’m going to scream now.”

“Cops are lookin’ for you,” he said.

“What?”

“That nigra woman is alive. You didn’t even kill her.” Jon leaned in close and smelled her neck. “You want another ride, then. Right? If not, I’ll take this knife in my pocket and carve up that pretty face.”

He pointed out the Zippin Pippin, one of the holy relics of Memphis, standing tall and wooden against the night sky like a dang wonder of the world. “Come on.”

Her skin was cold at the base of her spine as the Pippin cranked to the top of its wooden platform ready to shoot down that hill and launch into all them curves and twists and gut-churners.

He remembered comin’ to the park when he was a kid and his mamma spendin’ every dime she’d made down at the Zippymart so they could stay all day at the park and get treated like somethin’ special. She’d buy him hotdogs and cotton candy till his belly would swell and them dark circles under his eyes would seem to disappear in the fun-house mirrors.

The Pippin dipped down low again and he heard Miss Perfect scream loud.

And as they cranked real slow up another hill, waitin’ for another drop, he whispered, “I loved you, but Ransom wants you dead.”

P
erfect’s whole body shook and her stomach growled. She tried to run to the dark cove of that bathroom underneath a big oak, but he wouldn’t let go of her wrist. He was just a flurry of white sound and booming and swirling black and red light that ran around her brain making it buzz and fry. Goddamn, what had he done to her? What had he given her?