Dark End Of The Street

Chapter 28

I called U from a pay phone at the student union building and bought a Coke to wash the blue off my tongue. Abby had printed off dozens of articles and sat by a long row of vending machines, shuffling and marking pages. A few feet from me, a hippie-looking kid slept with the Cliff Notes for Crime and Punishment in his hands. He smelled pretty damned bad and I turned to face the other way, toward a long row of windows as I waited for Ulysses to pick up. He didn’t. I tried his beeper number and within about thirty seconds he called back.

“Mrs. Davis’s cathouse; may I take your order?”

“Yeah, I’m looking for a punk named Travers. Has to pay for his pussy.”

“Hold on,” I said in a high voice.

“Nick, quit fuckin’ around. What do you want? Man, I’m sitting outside some peckerwood’s trailer waiting for him to come back and get some money from his wife. I’m down to my last bottle of water and I’ve only got that bootleg Marsalis CD you sent me. It’s gettin’ old as hell.”

“At least it’s not that shit you listened to on road trips. What was that, Grand Master who?”

“Flash,” he said and took a deep breath.

“That and the Sugarhill Gang and Run DMC.”

“Man, I’m fine with that. I still love it. I have faith in the old school. And you better, too.”

“All right, listen,” I said, the hippie starting to stir at my feet. He smelled his armpit, rubbed the peach fuzz on his chin and tried to hug the brick wall. “I’m still with Abby and we found out a few things. First off, her father had hired a P.I. in Memphis to find Clyde James.”

“Your Clyde James?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whew.”

“Second, her old man was connected to a group called Sons of the South. You know them.”

There was silence.

“You’re a charter member.”

U laughed.

“Anyway, this group is apparently connected to this state senator Elias Nix who’s running for governor.”

U coughed and I heard the static of his cell phone as he moved around. “You had me for a while. Now your ass is talking about conspiracy theories and governor’s candidates and… man, I think that peckerwood is coming in…”

“U?”

“Hold on,” he whispered. “All right, had to scrunch down in my seat again. Thought that was him.”

“Was it?”

“We’re still talkin’, ain’t we?”

“This whole thing connects back to the casinos for Abby and for me and for Clyde… Nix wants to bring casinos to Memphis.”

“That’s all we need. We’re a broke-ass city as it is.”

“Hey, man, we have them in New Orleans, too.”

“So you want me to go to Nashville and wake up Nix? Ask him why he wants to make money off all these broke motherfuckers?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe later. What do you know about Tunica and the Dixie Mafia?”

“What I told you.”

“What about property records? Can we find out who owns the Grand?”

“Man, that’s a great idea. I’d call you Sherlock but that’s more an idea from Larry Holmes.”

“So you did?”

“Yep,” he said. “Hey, man, look. I got to go for real. Peckerwood is home and he’s walkin’ up the steps with a Budweiser tallboy and a fuckin’ Glock. Shit. All right; real quick: That casino is buried under corporate names so thick it would take your whole life and a NASA computer to find out who owns it.”

“You know any FBI folks we can talk to?”

“Let me check into it,” he said, sighing. “Adios.”

The hippie was wide awake at my feet and petting a small ferret; apparently he’d kept it in his ragged green book bag. He smiled and fed it some biscuit. The ferret took the morsel and then crawled back into the bag looking for more.

“N othing, huh?” Abby asked. “Not much. He said he’ll start asking around this week.”

“Asking who? Cops?”

“Yep.”

Abby watched me from a little chair she’d found. Wobbly legs. A thousand coats of paint. She said while I’d been on the phone, she’d arranged everything we found in the library by subject and chronology. Sons of the South. Elias Nix. She said she’d look through her father’s papers when we got back to Maggie’s and talk to me about maybe finding some more. When I asked where, she changed the subject.

“What about criminals?” she asked when we got outside.

I played with the keys in my hand as we walked down a hill and over to a parking lot where we’d left my truck. Dead leaves twisted around in a dust devil and I could hear oak branches clicking above us. The rain had stopped. A mean cold front had dipped all across north Mississippi.

“I know a few,” I said, smiling. “But not good ones.”

“I do,” she said.

“You know criminals?”

“I know one,” she said, a slight grin crossing her lips. “And he’s pretty good. Runs most of the marijuana for north Mississippi.”

“And how does a little girl like yourself get to meet such characters?”

“He used to come out to Maggie’s stables last year for riding lessons. He didn’t even know how to get on a horse. We taught him. Didn’t know who he was till later.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Son Waltz. He’s just a kid, only a few years older than me. His godfather runs a pool hall near the Square and set him up with his own bar when he turned twenty-one.”

“What is he, your boyfriend?”

“Hell, no,” she said, her face flushing. “I just taught him a little about horses.”

“And you think he’ll know something about the Dixie Mafia and Tunica?”

“Raven knows everything.”

“Thought you said his name was Son?”

“He goes by Raven.”

I smiled at her. “All right, we’ll find him tomorrow. I’m pretty beat.”

“Tonight,” she said, stopping and tugging at my sleeve. I looked down at her and gave a fake scowl.

“What about Hank?”

“He can come, too,” she said. “C’mon. The Highpoint is just over on the county line and open till dawn.”