Wicked City (17 page)

“Can I please go? This doesn’t have a thing to do with that grand jury mess.”

“As I’ve said to you, Mr. Ferrell, you will be taken to Birmingham in the morning to answer to your charges of vote fraud. But I’m afraid this is all the same mess.”

“That’s a lie and could be considered slander.”

“How’s your headache?”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you need more coffee?”

“No, I don’t need any more goddamn coffee. And my drinking is my own goddamn business. There was no call to have those boys come in and bust in on me like I was a common criminal.”

“Would you please continue about the morning of June eighteenth?”

Arch’s head fell into his hand and he squeezed his temples with his fingers. “Like I’ve said, I got up and took my daughter’s puppy out. Do you want to know how many times it shit?”

“If you think it would help,” Sykes said.

“Twice. I’ll collect the evidence for you.”

“Then what?”

“I ate breakfast. Bacon and eggs. Grits, too. Then I walked my property. I thought about maybe doing some yard work. My garden needed to be cultivated and weeded.”

“Don’t you work on Fridays?”

“No, I had the day off. I hadn’t had much sleep. Maybe three hours all week.”

“Why didn’t you sleep?”

“You wouldn’t sleep either if you had crusading idiots out there calling you the brains behind the Phenix City Machine.”

“Are you?”

“As I told the press, I think that’s giving my brains too much credit.”

“Did you work in your garden?”

“No, I wasn’t feeling well. This man came over who wanted to buy some timber. His name’s Perdue. Don’t ask me his first name ’cause I don’t recall. He owns a sawmill somewhere around here, and I put my boots on and walked my land showing him what could be thinned.”

“What about the rest of the day?”

“I returned home and, I don’t know, just read the paper. I fell asleep in my chair.”

“Why did you go back to the courthouse, sir?”

“I went back because I had a mess of paperwork. I needed a day off. But, hell, when you’re the solicitor you work all the goddamn time. Can I please get some more cigarettes in here?”

Sykes nodded to another attorney and the attorney set a pack of Camels before Arch. Arch looked up at the boy, who smiled, and Arch gave him an eat-shit grin, popping the cigarette into his mouth. After a few moments of Arch sitting there looking at Sykes, Sykes leaned in with a Zippo and lit the cigarette.

“Hell, I got it,” Arch said, and Sykes pulled the hard flame away with half the cigarette gone.

“What time did you arrive at your office?”

“About eight. Maybe a little after. I can only guess. Jesus Christ, I never figured on this.”

“What work did you do?”

“First, I went to the post office across the street to get my mail, and then I unlocked the courthouse. I walked upstairs and bought a Coke. I read through my mail and drank the Coke. I tried to call your fucking boss, Si Garrett.”

“I’ve heard you state that you spoke to Mr. Garrett. Is that not true?”

“Would you please shut the hell up and let me finish my goddamn story?”

Sykes breathed in deep and looked up to a couple other prosecutors. He took another breath. “Please continue.”

“His wife said he was in Birmingham. So I called the operator and told her to check around for the attorney general at the better hotels in town. She finally called back around nine and connected me to the Redmont.”

“How long did you talk to Mr. Garrett?”

“Twenty minutes or so.”

“What did you talk about?”

“I don’t believe that information is pertinent to this investigation.”

“Did anyone see you come and go from the courthouse?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you leave the courthouse?”

“Shortly after hanging up the phone. All telephone tolls will verify the call. And then I collected paperwork and drove home.”

“Is this when you learned of Mr. Patterson’s death?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see Mr. Patterson on June the eighteenth at any time?”

“No.”

“Would you tell me how you learned of his death?”

“I stopped off right by my house for a beer at Huckaby’s grocery. I was so tired from the week and the lies in the newspaper that I asked for a second, and I had just punched the top on the can when this boy from down the road ran in the store yelling that Mr. Patterson had been shot. Then Mr. Huckaby’s wife ran in the store and said she’d seen it on the television.”

Sykes watched Arch’s face, but Arch didn’t flinch as he reached for another cigarette from the pack. Sykes leaned in with the lighter, faster this time, and caught the cigarette.

“I drove on home, told my wife, and tried to reach Sheriff Matthews and Governor Persons. But all lines were busy. Then Mr. Garrett called and wanted to know what was going on in Phenix City, and, I had to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure.”

Sykes didn’t say a word.

“And that’s when I returned to the courthouse and saw the whole scene down by the Elite, and I walked down there and saw the blood and learned the horrible news.” Arch leaned back and watched the smoke coming from his mouth and through his fingers and up toward the ceiling, scattering in a ceiling fan. He looked toward Sykes, but his eyes were on the suite’s window, watching nothing. “The whole thing was just awful. Mr. Patterson’s blood on the sidewalk where children could see it, and the first thing I thought about was his family. How do you tell a good family that their husband and daddy is dead?”

Sykes reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small notepad, flipping through several pages. He finally looked up with his eyes and said, “This little ledger was in Si Garrett’s briefcase. Does this look like your handwriting?”

9

REUBEN WALKED BACK
through the kitchen screen door carrying a sack of groceries, a carton of Lucky Strikes, and a bottle of Miller beer. His eyes were bloodshot, and his skin glowed with a pasty whiteness, slick from the alcohol, as he slipped by Billy and landed everything on the old wooden counter. Billy had some trinkets he’d found out by the creek laid out on the table, some arrowheads, pieces of old china, a rusted horse bridle, and when the beer landed they all rattled on the planks.

“Where the hell you been?” he asked.

“I’ve been here.”

“Since when?”

“Since two days ago.”

“Where were you before that?”

Billy shrugged. “With Mario.”

“You know that kid’s Italian.”

“I do.”

He nodded and leaned back against the stove. He reached for a box of kitchen matches and lit a cigarette. “Mario, huh?” He squinted those droopy, sad eyes at Billy and said: “I heard you’d shacked up with some whore.”

The words sank like a knife in the gut, and Billy stood and scraped the trinkets he’d collected back into a Hav-a-Tampa cigar box filled with more arrowheads, old bullets, and cracked pieces of china. Last year, he’d found an old bayonet from the Civil War out by the well.

“I don’t want you going around her again. Bert Fuller is one mean sonofabitch. He’d just soon kill you as look at you.”

Billy walked by him and went to his room, locking the door. He had an old baseball mitt under his bed, and as he sat down on his bunk he fired the ball into the sweet pocket over and over until he heard Reuben try the handle. Then Reuben started to bang hard and tell him to open up or he was going to whip his ass, which Billy knew was a goddamn lie.

He stood and unlatched the door and sat back down on the metal bed. The wallpaper was pink and flowered, and drooped and peeled from the summer heat. He looked at his father and waved a fly away from his face.

“Who’s the girl?”

He didn’t say anything.

Billy could smell his breath. It was sharp and smelled like gin and cigarettes, and as he took another sip of beer he tousled his son’s hair — like he did when he didn’t want to talk but only to let him know he was still a kid — and left his room with the door wide open.

Billy stayed there for a while, dropping the mitt and examining the arrowheads and rusted old bits. He studied their grooves and points and thought about them being buried down in the mud for so damn long, and wondered what else was hidden by the creek.

He fell asleep like that until the shadows crept up on the walls and it became a late-summer night and he could hear the whistles and cracks from the back field. At first, he thought Reuben was firing his gun, or someone had come for him. He thought a lot about Johnnie Benefield coming over, and knew if he saw him that he wanted to kill that bastard. Billy thought of the ways. With a rusty knife and with a gun. He thought a lot about knocking Johnnie in the head and old crotch with a Louisville Slugger.

But as he pulled away the sad, yellowed curtains of their old house, he spotted Reuben deep in a cornfield that he hadn’t planted since his father died. He sat on his ass, a hunched figure like a sullen statue, and Billy walked outside, catching some fresh air from the boxed heat.

There was a sizzle and some sparks and a loud whistle and boom. He saw Reuben smoke and stumble from where he sat and affix another bottle rocket into the empty Miller beer.

“Where you get those?” Billy asked behind him.

“Some lady give ’em to me.”

He stood behind his father, looking at his back, the two-tone blue-and-black shirt and wide stance of his legs and cowboy boots. His hair was oiled and pomaded like boys in high school, and although Billy couldn’t see his face he watched as smoke leaked up above Reuben’s head. Then Reuben reached over and touched his cigarette to another bottle rocket.

One started to fizz and smoke without ever leaving the beer bottle, and Reuben laughed and tripped on one knee before pushing Billy a good three feet away as it hissed and burned out. A dud.

“Well, goddamn.”

“I didn’t mean nothin’ about being gone,” Billy said.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I ain’t gonna beat you or nothin’. I ever lay one hand on you? Hell, no, I haven’t. I’ve had enough goddamn beatings from my daddy for ten generations. I ever tell you about this strop he had called the licorice stick?”

“Yes, sir.” Billy had seen the rotting, hard piece of leather hanging from a rusted nail in the smokehouse. He’d never understood why his father kept it there like some kind of trophy.

“I think the sonofabitch enjoyed it. Use to take me and my brother to the shed out yonder.”

“What’d you get at the store?”

“Be careful with those whores,” he said, ignoring the question and getting to his feet, dusting the dirt off his legs. “You know when I was your age, I was so horny I would’ve screwed a snake.”

Billy didn’t say anything.

“Pussy is good, son,” Reuben said. “But it can just about eat a man alive.”

His father reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick Case folding knife and handed it to him. “This was your granddaddy’s. Stick that in your cigar box.”

Billy opened the blade, the unoiled metal hard to pry with a thumbnail but finally coming loose and gleaming back the reflection of his eyes.

Reuben stayed there in the field for a while, and Billy walked back past the empty laundry line and dead peach trees and a rusting, tireless car. And he checked in the grocery bag, placing the bacon and eggs in the icebox and turning on their radio to listen to the late-night radio show out of Birmingham that played “Louisiana Hayride,” featuring Hank Snow and some kid from Memphis named Elvis.

Before he went to bed, the boy looked back out the kitchen window for Reuben but instead saw a massive, crackling fire from one of the old sheds. It was his grandfather’s smokehouse, and the fire inside had grown so hot the red paint crackled and flaked like a snake’s scales. He sprinted down and found Reuben, who didn’t seem fazed at all. He just stood there drinking, two-tone shirt open, with his face and chest shiny from the summertime fire.

He stepped back and wiped his face, black smudges crossed under his eyes and his chin. He laughed at himself.

Billy’s hands and voice shook as he screamed at him, telling him it was gonna burn down if they didn’t get some water. But he was invisible to his father.

“I always hated that fucking place,” Reuben said and threw his beer bottle at the building.

And he tripped and wandered back to the house, grabbed the keys to his baby blue Buick, and sped off into the Alabama night.

THAT SAME NIGHT, JOHN PATTERSON AND I CLOSED DOWN
the Elite Café. We drank coffee down to the dregs and ate lemon icebox pie, having met right after dinner with our families. We smoked cigarettes and talked little except when joined by the cook, Ross Gibson, who’d just scraped off the grill and shut down. Gibson was an old, wiry man with gray hair in his ears and a grease-splattered apron and white T-shirt. He smoked a lot, tired after a long day’s work, and took a cup of coffee while I asked him about the night Albert Patterson had been shot in the alley beside the kitchen.

“I saw just one man,” Gibson said. “I went outside to get some air and I seen that one fella in the tan suit at the back of the alley.”

“And you didn’t recognize him?”

“No, sir.”

“You never saw him before?” I asked.

“No, sir.”

“What kind of tan suit? A uniform?”

“Naw, just a suit. You know. A Sunday suit.”

“How long until you heard the shots?”

“Couple minutes.”

“Would you recognize the man’s picture?”

“No, sir.”

“How come?”

“I didn’t get a good look at his face.”

“Was he a white man?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Gibson excused himself, and John Patterson pulled a notebook from his suit jacket and made a notation. He started to take another bite of pie but instead mashed the crust with his fork and pushed away the plate with a grunt. He just stared into space for a while and breathed.

“You know your mother gave Anne a kitten,” I said, just reaching for something in the silence. He leaned into the table and watched his hands. “Would you tell her thank you for us?”