Leavin' Trunk Blues (34 page)

Nothing to it, Annie thought, looking for security guards. Tonight, she just had to make sure Stagger Lee was looking for his own rod when she got him.

Willie II felt grand in her pants as she hopped and skipped. A slight metallic jingle on her leg. She smoothed him like an erection.
Willie, Willie, Willie.
That blade seemed to give her strength.

“
Walkin’ in a winter wonderland
.”

“Where’s Stagger Lee at?” Fannie asked, blowing a bubble as big as a Softball and tearing it down with her fingers. Hot air erupted from its torn edge.

“At the end,” she said, slowing down and laughing. “He said sweep back to the end.”

“That where this King cat at?”

“Yeah, the King got to give up his booty.”

“You ready?” Fannie asked. “Cause we don’t have to do this. We can wait till later.”

“Where?” Annie asked, shaking her head with disappointment. “At Robert Taylor with Twon around? This is it. We have the car, the money in hand, and Stagger Lee’s mind on other things. As soon as I get the cash, Stagger Lee is going to meet Willie Two.”

“Why can’t you just call him Willie?”

“You are so silly sometimes, Fannie. It’s not Willie. It’s his sequel.”

Fannie kept smacking on her gum as Annie looked down toward the end of the pier and saw two men approaching Stagger Lee.

--

Stagger Lee stared into nothing. He could feel the fog roll through him as the snow floated down from above. He wanted to spread his arms wide, stare at the sky, and bark at the moon. He could feel the perspiration beneath his heavy, black leather coat; his own odor sickened him. Behind him, Stagger Lee heard steps cracking and felt for the blue steel. 44. How sweet this was going to he.

He turned and searched through the fog, watching King and the white man called Travers come toward him. It couldn’t get any sweeter. He stood his ground. They would come to him and his girls would clean up.

“You can’t bleed me forever,” King said, a fat leather bag in his hands. The wind ripped between them. “This is it. You hear me? I don’t care anymore. Nothing is worth this kind of shit.”

King stared back red-eyed, breathing quick smoke from his nose. The white man stood by his side. Fool. Stagger Lee could tell his blood raced through Travers’s heart in fear. That sweet fear zipped along those veins.
Keep that fear, boy. Keep that fear.
Stagger Lee crossed his arms and listened to the cold wind howl.

‘You or any of your gang come ‘round my home again and I’ll kill you,” King said.

Stagger Lee smiled at him and watched the white man keep his hand in his right pocket. He knew the girls were right behind them. When the shit went down, they would take care of his ass like they should’ve the other night and the way he should have at Jimmy’s.

“We’re done!” King yelled and threw the bag at Stagger Lee’s head like a medicine ball.

Stagger Lee caught it as the wind howled some more. The snow fell and melted on the crown of King’s cowboy hat.

“I don’t sweat you no more,” King said as he was about to turn away. “We’re done, motherfucker.”

“No,” Stagger Lee grunted. “You’re done.” He whipped out his blue steel .44 and shot Elmore King in his neck and through the heart.

--

As the gunshot thudded off the Navy Pier’s walls, Nick pulled out the Browning from his coat and leveled the gun at Stagger Lee’s head. Stagger Lee disappeared for a moment in the fog and snow. Nick heard a cable snap against a buoy and the cold waves pound against the pier. His hands shook around the stinging metal as he stared down everything he’d searched for since being in Chicago. Stagger Lee.

Back out of the fog, Stagger Lee was a tight cord ready to spring with his gun aiming right at him. Nick squinted his eyes into the wind and snow, waiting for one of them to fire. He was about to squeeze the trigger until he felt a sharp blade at his throat.

A pair of wet lips kissed his ears and then a tongue licked his cheek. Stagger Lee’s arm lowered. A nausea ate at Nick’s stomach as he let out a breath and dropped his gun. A flurry of snow and fog covered Stagger Lee as the white girl from the other night slapped him hard across the face.

“You stupid fuck! What’d you do with my knife?”

Fannie grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. Nick moved slowly, keeping his hands in view, as Fannie walked back. She rubbed his ears then planted a huge wet kiss on his mouth, sticking her tongue almost down his throat.

He pushed her away and spat.

Fannie cackled with laughter as Stagger Lee reemerged and walked toward him, his .44 dangling in his hand.

“Just thought you needed a little goodnight peck,” Fannie said, blowing him a kiss. The white girl slapped Nick again, a long butcher knife in her other hand. Nick was looking over her shoulder at Stagger Lee when she kicked him square in the nuts.

Nick fell to his knees. An immense pain blossomed through his entire body. He saw flashes of red and broken membranes through the back of his eyelids.

On the ground through flickering eyes, he saw Stagger Lee walk over to King and roll his body with a massive black cowboy boot. He planted his foot on King’s stomach, like a safari hunter, then from several feet away aimed his .44 at Nick’s head, and said, “Get your business done, Annie.”

Annie rammed her platform shoe into Nick’s side about a dozen times. He felt every inch of breath escape from his body. It was as if a giant hand had crushed his ribs and taken every bit of life from him. His bare hands groped for the concrete walk. Finally, she finished kicking and Fannie straddled him on the cold ground, gripped his hands over his head, and then began to rub her hips into his. She licked his face again and Nick spit into her eye.

She got off him and wiped the spit with her cheetah-print hat.

Nick felt his jaw clench and his anger beating inside.

Stagger Lee ambled over and looked down on Nick like he was atop a football pileup. Nick could only see his black cannonball head and the white of his eyes framed by the fuzzy snow. He held his breath and closed his eyes waiting for Stagger Lee to fire. A blue steel .44. Lyons, Dawkins, Williams. Stagger Lee gripped Nick by the front of his coat and pulled him to his feet. The whole pier felt like it was rocking and Nick’s head still thudded with the explosion of the pistol. His legs tingled and his nerves buzzed.

Stagger Lee’s breath smelled cancerous and rotted.

“Fuck you,” Nick said.

The white girl stood by Stagger Lee’s side as he put away the .44 and reached against his belt. Nick could feel a thin rod of metal against his ear. Nick had his hand around Stagger Lee’s wrist and could feel the taunt tendons. He knew any movement would cause him to sink the tip into his brain. Nick kept holding his breath, the cold metal playing around his ear canal. The snow caught and burned on Stagger Lee’s fevered head.

“The woman you set up. Her name is Ruby Walker. Remember it.”

Stagger Lee pulled back his fist, holding an ice pick, and punched Nick in the nose. Nick’s mind flowered into colors and jagged black-and-white dimensions as Stagger Lee dropped him. He rolled to his hands and knees on the icy sidewalk as Stagger Lee let a kick fly into his side.

--

The worn leather bag lay by Stagger Lee’s feet. This was it, Annie thought. Everything they’d been waiting for. She thought about the sickeningly sweet smell of the jerk shacks, Stagger Lee beating Fannie with ice cubes rolled into a sock, and the way he’d choked her at the Sears Tower. Annie nodded to Fannie, drew her lips together, and got a good grip around Willie II. She pointed the end into Stagger’s Lee’s side and tore into him with the blade.

The huge man howled.

He clawed at his ribs and yanked the knife from his body before flinging the blade deep into the black water and grabbing Annie by the throat. Her eyes felt like they were about to pop from her head as he yanked her from her feet and held on with both hands. She heard a cracking and popping in her voice box as her vision blurred. She made a gurgled scream as Stagger Lee rammed her head into the sidewalk.

Someone fired two shots and she saw Stagger Lee’s arm explode into a bloody mist. But it was as if he didn’t feel a thing. He reached into his coat for the ice pick and tore into her body. She could feel the steel jabbing through her flesh and into her bone.

As she gagged on the blood in her throat, she imagined a little brick town where sunsets were yellow circles, teenagers met at malt shops, and the world was yours with an ice-cream truck.

--

Fannie stood there paralyzed as the two shots went through Stagger Lee’s body. She had Nick’s Browning loose in her hand as she watched Stagger Lee bend over her friend with a bloody ice pick. Nick rolled to his feet and walked slowly behind her. Startled, she turned the gun on him with shaking hands. Nick looked into Fannie’s almond-shaped eyes and opened his right hand. Her head and body shook as she let the gun drop upside down onto her index finger.

As Nick grabbed the Browning, Stagger Lee aimed his .44 at him and motioned to Fannie with his gun. Nick kept the muzzle in line with the center of Stagger Lee’s bald head. He held Fannie’s arm but she slipped through his fingers and joined Stagger Lee at his side.

The shifting wind blew the snow in drifts like loose sand along the sidewalks.

Stagger Lee was covered in blood, his left arm hanging loose and bloody by his side. His flank coated in a sticky red mess. Nick watched Stagger Lee grab Fannie by the hair and pull her into him, locking her head into the crook of his bloody elbow.

Stagger Lee’s teeth were bare as he grunted, grabbed the leather bag, and walked back into the snow and fog until he disappeared.

Nick called the Palmer House from a downtown pay phone, blocks away from the pier. The phone booth sat near a highway overpass painted with graffiti and next to an abandoned gas station. Place was empty and bare, its gas pumps ripped away long before. Nick coughed in the frozen landscape listening to the phone ring. His nose had finally stopped bleeding but his sides screamed with every breath. As his lungs constricted with pain, he knew Annie and Stagger Lee’s kicks had cracked a few ribs.

But wheezing in the cold air, he thought of Elmore King and felt lucky. The image of King’s slumped body on the cold ground with his eyes staring up into the sky burned in Nick’s mind. The operator patched him through to his room and Kate answered.

“Jesus, Nick, where are you? I was about to call the police.”

“I think they’re already on their way,” Nick said, slumping into the booth and closing his eyes.

“Where are you?”

Nick told her as he lightly felt his broken nose.

“King’s dead.”

“Holy shit, what happened?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here. We ran into Stagger Lee again.”

“Why’d you lie to me?”

“No really, I’m fine,” Nick said.

He could hear Kate’s breathing.

“Just hurry.”

Nick’s mind buzzed with King’s last words as he walked onto the buckled asphalt of the dead lot, leaned over, and threw up. He coughed and almost choked, then stood and paced the lot. When his head stopped reeling, he reached into his wallet for a business card and walked back to the pay phone.

He dropped another quarter into the slot. On the third ring, Doyle’s answering machine picked up.

“It’s Nick. Listen, man, some serious shit has just gone down and I need some help. If you get this, meet me and Kate over at—”

Someone picked up the phone. Dropped it. And picked it up again.

“This better be some seriously serious shit to wake me on my only day off in the world. What time is it, man? Six?”

“Four,” Nick said. “Where does Elmore King live?”

“Place called Woodstock. Why? Beating on doors early on Christmas Eve ain’t a good way to make friends.”

“King’s dead.”

Doyle didn’t say anything.

“I need your help. I need you to give me directions and meet me at his place.”

Doyle didn’t speak for a few seconds and then rattled off where Nick needed to go. The old tracker’s voice brittle on the buzzed connection. But Nick didn’t have time for consolations or eulogies, he only thought about Ruby and a promise made days before. He could almost feel her small hand in his. Fading blues.

Nick hung up and walked over to the white glow of the streetlight. Elmore King was dead. A blues legend had gotten blown away right in front of him over something he’d started. Nick walked to a pile of concrete blocks and sat down. He held his head in his hands as he listened to the traffic race above him. He closed his eyes, trying to keep his mind off King.

He rubbed his temples and rocked back and forth. It was so cold, he felt his clothes were nothing, the inch layer of wool and cotton around him just paper. His teeth chattered and he fought the urge to vomit again.
What have I done? What have I done?

He looked down at the blood covering his boots and jeans. His own? King’s?