Dark End Of The Street

Chapter 56

“Cool it,” I said. I spoke as pleasantly as I could to a man I’d brought to his knees with pain. I twisted his arm an inch higher behind his back.

“You motherfucker,” Cook screamed. “Don’t you ever say that, you goddamned cocksucker. Come into my house? I’ll kill your ass.”

I pulled his arm even higher, heard a slight crack, and then let his arm relax about two inches. He grunted; I let him go. He almost fell on his face, but caught himself with the other arm and used the preacher machine to stand.

“They shot her in the chest and left her bleeding on the floor of JoJo’s bar. Nice people. Even set fire to the business that JoJo had run for thirty-five years, man. You know what that means? You know what kind of sweat and patience and hard work that takes? She had to lie on the ground of the bar and watch their whole life burn around her while she waited to either bleed to death or catch on fire. Yeah, Cook, you’re a great friend to her.”

He closed his eyes and stood there for a moment, catching his breath and rotating his arm in its socket.

U walked over and turned off the boombox. He told the men to sit down but one still tried to get to Cook.

“Sit down!” Cook yelled.

We were all quiet for several moments. I think Cook wanted to cry, if he’d had any soul or conscience left. But the only emotion he seemed to possess in grief was shutting his damned mouth.

The wind battered the wall of glass and the sky became dark for a few moments. Then the room became light again, bright yellow beams streaking across the tops of trees lining the Bluffs.

“You come with me,” Cook said, pointing outside. “They stay.”

I followed him to the deck, hanging stilt-legged off the side of the house. The view made my stomach jump a little as the wind loosely blew the tops of the trees and my hair. I put my hands in my pockets and stayed silent. Most of the time when you wanted information, it was best to shut up.

Out in the natural light, Cook looked much older than I thought. Small lines had formed above his upper lip and loose folds of skin fell over his eyelids.

“Eddie Porter was a great friend,” he said, his hands on the railing as he looked down at the river passing in muddy, swirling circles. “I tried to help him even after I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Eddie Porter stole two hundred and seventy thousand dollars from Bluff City.”

I shook my head.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, his voice more twangy than usual. Less controlled. “It wasn’t my money, it was Ransom’s. He floated me for the studio and for an Ampex recorder when I got started. He sometimes used us to run through some cash. He never took anything we made, only got back what he’d given… Porter took it all.”

“So why did he kill Clyde’s wife?”

“Eddie was in love with Mary. Ransom knew it.” Cook wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Killing him would be too easy. He wanted Eddie to watch Mary hurt for a while.”

“Jesus,” I said. “So, if Clyde was there, why didn’t they kill him, too?”

“Ransom didn’t know he was there. Clyde was hiding in some old car outside. Clyde told me about seeing it. I told him to keep quiet, but he’d repeat the story to anyone who’d listen. When Ransom heard about it, he said he was going to go put a bullet in Clyde that night. But I begged him. I begged that hick bastard to leave my friend alone. I told him about Clyde’s mind problems and how he was living on the street now. I said he’d be dead in a couple weeks, and I really believed it. I don’t think Ransom showed him mercy, I just think he couldn’t find him. When Clyde reappeared five years later, everything was buried.”

“And Clyde was lost.”

“At first, he lived on the street because he wanted to. Didn’t want to face nothin’. Then everyone blamed him for Mary’s death. Everyone thought he’d killed both of them because of the affair. He was an outcast among musicians who loved Eddie and the whole damned black community in Memphis. Shelters even turned him away ’cause they thought he was a killer. I heard one story about Clyde trying to sleep in a church basement one Christmas and the preacher dragging him out into the cold by his bare feet.”

“So why now?” I asked. “Why would Ransom send men to look for Clyde and to mess with Loretta in New Orleans?”

“No, sir,” Cook said, as one of his girls came out and handed him a zip-up workout jacket. He slid into it and dabbed his face again with a towel. “Listen, Nick. I don’t really give a fuck about you. All right? But Loretta wouldn’t want you dead. So go back to New Orleans.”

“Will you answer one last question?”

“Your five minutes are long gone.”

“Listen to me,” I said, getting closer to Cook and smelling his vitamin-fused breath and dried sweat. I watched his eyes flicker with a recognition that the balcony may not have been the best place to take me. His fear made me a little uncomfortable. “I will call up Levi Ransom today and I’ll tell him you told me a great story about his life in Memphis music and how you were planning on having lunch with the district attorney next week. I’ll tell him what a nice place you have here and how he’s just a twisted hick who needs you to run his money. Fair enough? Or you want to keep going?”

He looked back through the glass to the other side, to his television room and his curvy houseworkers and sunken pit complete with stone fireplace. Storm clouds were beginning to gather to the north and sootlike black clouds inched toward a white sun.

“She used to cook for me,” Cook said. Sounded as if he was out of breath. Tired.

I sat down and checked my pockets for cigarettes. Old habit.

“Greens. Black-eyed peas and fried chicken that makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Why do you think she did that for me? No one ever treated me like that. I’d been on my own since I was fifteen. This was after she could have left my ass and signed with Stax or Hi or anyone she wanted. Why did she do that?”

“Who was the kid with Ransom? Tell me and I’ll leave. You’ll never see me again.”

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” he said and smiled. He gave a short laugh that I could tell was rare. “But that’s the question. That’s what you’ve been looking for ever since you came to Memphis, even before you started hassling me.”

I rubbed my hands together. My skin was chapped. I wanted to leave Memphis. I was beginning to hate being here. But where would I go now?

“Didn’t have to look too hard, Big Chief.”

I watched his craggy face. I said: “Kid’s name was Judas.”

“Yeah, I know his name. Spoiled punk who wanted to piss off his daddy and thought he was gangster at seventeen. Ran errands for Ransom at his pool hall on Beale after he’d been kicked out of some Nashville prep school.”

“Still around?”

“Oh, yes,” Cook said, smiling. “Might even be our next governor.”

I felt a knot form in my throat and a rush of adrenaline heat my blood. My mouth opened a little, feeling dry, and I watched Cook’s eyes for a hint that this was a joke.

“Now let me ask you a question, Travers,” Cook said. He took off his weathered weight belt, the sun extinguishing on the horizon. “How hard would it be for a U.S. senator to make some nasty crime in the black section of Memphis go away? A U.S. fucking senator. This was ‘sixty-eight. Right? Not too many P.C. cops. Most probably swallowed everything that fucker said about segregation.”

I was half-listening now. My mind already speeding ahead. I felt like I was barely holding on to the edge of the stilted balcony. I could imagine the wood tearing loose from the house and tumbling down the hill and into the water.

“Two dead blacks,” Cook said, now lecturing. “A murder that everyone believed was a domestic thing. Wouldn’t take too much to disappear.”

I thought about the Sons of the South and Abby’s father. An old cop like Raymond L. Jenkins would’ve been the only one who could’ve kept an original file, no names blacked out. A blackmail scheme set in motion by a bitter old bastard and only furthered by a misguided Oxford attorney. They could’ve easily changed the election.

“Russell’s been chained to him ever since,” Cook said. “Now Ransom is just calling in his chips.”

“So Russell flips his stance on gambling?” I asked, looking down at the riverfront and some old tourist paddle wheelers tying up for the storm. “He’ll allow it down there?”

Cook watched me and shook his head. “Now why would the Dixie Mafia invest all that money in Tunica if Memphis wasn’t that far behind?”

I felt a spot of rain on my cheek. The wind began to blow harder.

I understood why Cook lived on the Bluffs.