Wicked City

8

BILLY WOKE from an afternoon nap with a hot, bright light in his eyes, as if looking directly into the sun. He swatted at the light, blinked, felt a big hand grip his wrist, and stared straight up into the jowly face of Bert Fuller. Fuller yanked him out of bed and threw him to the floor and then he reached into the bed for Lorelei, who was dressed only in the boy’s white undershirt and her underwear. He wrenched her wrist, pulling her from the mattress, and twisted her arm behind her, forcing her nose to the floor, where he kicked her in the side like a dog. The flashlight fell from his hands in his fury of kicks and punches and the light went scattering in circles on the wooden floor. Billy reached for the scattering light, but, as he moved, Fuller let go of the girl and went for him, kicking the boy in the head and sending him reeling, tumbling up and then backward, knocking him against the wall.

Fuller kept a hand on the butt of his revolver and reached down with his pudgy fingers for Lorelei’s thick black hair, and he pulled her like a caveman across the cabin floor, kicking away a small card table that held their dinner from the night before and sending Coke bottles rolling in the drum of the little room.

Fuller moved his left hand from the gun and punched at the screen door, while Billy lay on his back, bleeding. Billy moved to his knees and then found his feet, wobbling, and then ran for Fuller. But Fuller paid no mind when he sent pounding fists against the back of his shaved head, knocking off the Stetson.

The white hat rolled to the floor like a half-dollar.

He turned and looked at the boy, standing there with his fists at awkward angles near the steps to the cabin, Lorelei’s head crooked into Fuller’s arm, face turning red as she tried to breathe. He smiled and laughed at Billy, a big goddamn joke, and reached down and retrieved his western hat. All around Moon Lake sat families on blankets and in boats and eating Fourth of July cold fried chicken and ice-cold watermelon from the backs of cars and trucks.

“Does Reuben know you consort with whores?”

The boy’s vision faded for a moment, and Bert Fuller appeared to him in wavy lines like an apparition but with a strong, solid voice that laughed.

“You got your dick wet. Now, go back inside before I stomp the shit out of you. Don’t make a scene.”

He took Lorelei as if leading a calf, half walking and half pulling, to where he’d parked his car along the banks of Moon Lake.

“Come on, you filthy little cunt,” he said. “Back to work.”

I SAT WITH MY FAMILY NEAR THE BOATHOUSE ON A RED-and-white tablecloth Joyce had packed along with deviled eggs, fried chicken, pimento cheese, potato salad, cut tomatoes, and a gallon of sweet tea. I wore a cool short-sleeved shirt and straw hat that day and pretended I was asleep, the hat over my eyes, as I heard my children trying to wake me up. I started to snore, Thomas poking me with a piece of grass in the ear, and then Anne pulling at my foot, trying to remove my shoe, before I roused and made sounds like a bear trying to catch them. Anne ran off, and Thomas grabbed another deviled egg, licking out the inside and leaving the egg white.

Joyce poured some more sweet tea and sat down next to me, and we sat there, looking out at the boats on Moon Lake and at the little bandstand where we’d met in ’38. We’d danced there until the band stopped playing, and I kept moving with her, in my own romantic, ridiculous way, taking her for more light turns across the dance floor with my nimble boxer’s feet. I reminded her of my good feet as often as I could.

“Anne wants a dog.”

“Then let’s get a dog.”

“I don’t want a dog.”

“Then don’t get her a dog.”

“Do you always have to be so damn agreeable?”

I smiled at her and kissed her on the forehead. “No, Pieface. I’ll work on becoming a real pain in the ass.”

“Won’t take much,” she said and pinched my arm. “Pieface? I wish you’d quit calling me that.”

I kissed her again. “Okay, Pieface.”

Thomas walked up and stood before us, smiling. He handed me three empty egg halves and worked on a fourth.

“Thanks, boy. I sure do appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, adding the last, and laughed.

On the small shore of the lake, I saw Anne talking to another young girl who was about her age. She stood tall like an adult, with hands on her hips. I knew the boys would be coming around soon and that was okay with me because I knew she’d gotten pretty damn good on the speed bag. And for an eleven-year-old, she had a killer jab.

“Who is that Anne’s talking to?”

Joyce squinted down to the shore, the darkness finally setting on, lights clicking on at the old bandstand. “That’s the Ferrells’ girl.”

“Are they friends?”

“I guess so. They’ve been going to school together from the start.”

“You know they officially removed Arch as county solicitor yesterday?”

“I saw that.”

I lay down on my back. “When are these damn fireworks going to start?”

Down toward the Idle Hour parking lot, I heard a woman scream and a car door slam.

BILLY FOLLOWED. HE WAS SHIRTLESS IN BLUE JEANS AND no shoes, face a bloody mess. He breathed, a hot ticking in his ears, as he watched Fuller open the back of his squad car and point inside. He saw Lorelei pull away from Fuller and shake her head, and he saw Fuller’s hand spring back and slap her across the mouth. Billy jogged toward them, yelling obscenities and picking up rocks to throw at Fuller. He ran through the crowd huddled near the shore of the lake and pushed and moved, some heads turning to Fuller, who reached for the back of Lorelei and pushed her to the car door. She clutched her hands on the door frame and pushed back, digging in her heels and refusing to get inside. Billy yelled for her and hoped others would hear and stop Fuller. But Fuller looked across at the crowd, maybe fifty people forming a circle around them, and told them all to mind their own fucking business, this was police work. Billy saw the backs turn, almost orchestrated on cue and trained, as Fuller knocked Lorelei across the ear and dumped her purse out on the sidewalk and gathered up the last two dollars in change they had.

When Fuller felt the coins in his hand, he punched her hard in the stomach and she deflated, crushed to the ground and trying to suck in air like a dying fish.

Billy pushed and ran up the slope to the parking lot, his feet cut on the stones and crushed glass but not even knowing pain, only feeling the wetness of blood between his toes. And he slowed and walked toward Fuller, his heart beating hard and steady like an Indian war drum, and he gritted his teeth and brushed the girlish tears from his eyes and yelled to Fuller that he was a fat, pig-eyed sack of shit.

Fuller smirked, red-faced. “Just because you got your dipstick working doesn’t mean you’re a man. But if that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get.”

Fuller reached for his revolver and, as Billy stepped back, turned the barrel away and raised the butt like a club, pulling back to wallop the boy.

But the butt got only halfway.

BILLY PROTECTED HIS HEAD AND WAITED FOR THE BLOW that didn’t come. He peered up to see me catching the gun in the palm of my hand and wrenching it from Bert Fuller. Fuller grinned back at me and spit some tobacco on the asphalt.

“You want to hand that back, palooka?”

I smiled back at him and then turned and pitched the gun over the crowd and into the lake. Kids and teenagers stood up on the hill of Idle Hour and looked into the parking lot. Most of the adults still turned away.

“Shouldn’t have done that.”

I looked over at Billy, the blood on his face and skinny chest and arms. Fuller shook his head.

“You know my guns come in a pair.”

“Just let ’em go, Bert.”

“Maybe that’s just what I was aimin’ to do before you came up and involved yourself once again in a police matter. For your information, this isn’t some nice little old gal. This is a common whore who was sucking this boy’s peter for a quarter out in the woods. We can’t have something like that with decent people about.”

“Decent people,” I repeated. “What’s wrong, you didn’t get your cut?”

“Take it back.”

I looked down, hands on my hips, and shook my head. “No, I don’t think I will.”

Fuller put his hand on his remaining gun and walked toward me. “Maybe you were waiting in line to get your damn cock sucked, too.”

I saw women hustling their children away. A young boy not much older than my own son stared at the scene, his jaw hanging loose. And there it was, better than television, and in live Technicolor: a bloodied girl in panties and ripped shirt, an angry boy with a bloody face, and Deputy Bert Fuller, standing and spitting, hand on his gun, ready to make his order and sense of it all.

The girl moved to her knees and found purchase against the car, one hand covering the ripped place on the thin shirt, her legs scraped bloody. Her cotton underwear had turned a damp yellow from where she’d urinated while being dragged and beaten.

“You are the worst kind of coward,” I said. “I know your secret. You hide behind the gun.”

Fuller nodded with the words and then went for the belt and unlatched it, the leather and gun falling to the asphalt.

“Come on.”

“Let them go. I don’t want to fight.”

“They’re coming with me. And so are you, after I whip your ass.”

The crowd became a ring, the asphalt the canvas, and my vision shifted from the kids and townspeople, and even the two men in khaki uniforms who stood just on top of the hill but didn’t move.

I put my hands out, showing my palms, and shook my head and turned my back.

And that’s when Fuller rushed and tackled me to the ground and pounded into my kidneys with his fat fists. But I was up and standing, with Fuller grasping for his feet and then taking huge, muscled punches toward me that I sidestepped without losing a breath. And more wild punches did not even make a bit of breeze near my ears, as I moved and bobbed and weaved with an instinct that came to me as natural as walking, although I hadn’t practiced the science for more than fifteen years.

I found my feet and balance and kept my fist raised to my jaw, although Fuller never connected a single punch, finally growing out of breath and red-faced. He jumped on me again and pummeled with his fists, but I wrenched from Fuller’s grasp and moved backward, the ring disappearing now, seeing the faces and people yelling and cheering, and Fuller’s uniform coming undone, his deputy’s star clapping to the ground from his wrinkled, sweaty shirt, the hat laying crown down on the ground. And I moved more, working him into a slow circle, keeping him slow and ragged and awkward and clumsy, as cheers and yells came from more faces perched on the hill. Backs that had turned before now turned and watched us, and I took a breath, feeling all of them behind me and not wanting to, knowing the ease of what I was about to do was not even a task. I sidestepped Fuller and moved him about, setting him in a perfect stance, posing him as a sculptor works his model, and then with Fuller leaned back, hands dropped by his potbelly, I worked three quick punches. One, two, three. Again. One, two, three. Kid Weisz screaming in my ears.

The two, the cross, connected with the head, spewing a plug of tobacco from Fuller’s mouth, and the three, the hook, connected with sinew and bone of the ribs and I felt the crack and compression up through my knuckles. Fuller lost his balance, his eyes wide in surprise as his body failed him, and he teetered backward, falling toward Moon Lake and onto his back, rolling and rolling down a hill of stone and scree, coming to rest in a defeated heap as, up on the hill, people pointed at him as they would a circus oddity. I knew what would bother Fuller most was the laughter, the laughter coming from grown men and women, not just the awkward, bloody humor of it all, but like a great rush of wind coming through in gigantic release.

I felt hands on my back and words in my ears. But I walked through them and reached down for the girl, unbuttoning my shirt and handing it to her. I stood there in my undershirt and turned to Reuben’s boy, asking him if he needed a ride home. But he didn’t answer. He just nodded over and over, too shaken to talk, and grabbed Lorelei’s hand and disappeared into the crowd.

When I returned to the blanket, Joyce held Thomas up in her arms and to her chest and she paced. Anne looked to me and then back to her mother. I looked to my wife and she just shook her head. “They wanted to go see the show,” she said. “But I kept them here. Right here on this damn blanket.”

“What was it?” Anne asked.

I got down on my knee and pretended to pull a quarter from her ear.

“I haven’t fallen for that one for five years, Dad.”

I shrugged, hearing the sounds of sirens in the distance.

Two men approached from the lakeshore and walked toward us. One was Jack Black, the big soldier who reminded me of a professional wrestler.

Joyce handed me some ice wrapped in a towel and I placed it over my knuckles.

“I could’ve sworn I saw you watching up on the hill, Major Black.”

Black crossed his arms over his massive chest and smiled: “You must be mistaken. We’re just here to restore order.”

“What do you call that?” I said. “Pretty stupid, huh?”

“I’d call it a hell of a start, chief.”

ARCH LIT HIS NINETEENTH CIGARETTE OF THE NIGHT, BORROWING a second pack from one of Bernard Sykes’s young prosecutors, who hovered in the room like it was a stag party, and sank back into the uncomfortable chair, answering more questions. A negro man in whites brought another pot of coffee up to the suite of the Ralston Hotel, and Arch drank another cup and answered the questions with a firm yes or no, trying not to elaborate any more than was necessary. Sykes paced the room. They’d been there all day and night, and Arch had lost track of the time hours and hours ago, and the little man at the desk would peck away on his little machine, taking down every word they said.

“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?”