Wicked City

13

WE PARKED DOWN the road from the old Victorian, the windshield wipers keeping our view clear, and watched the two lights from the upstairs windows. A dark figure appeared up in the turret and then was gone. The old house was unpainted, with a sagging porch and crooked columns; a red bulb light rocked in the light wind. A couple cars were parked down the road, but it was growing late and raining, and I could barely make them out where we’d parked. Major Black sat at the wheel, with me in the passenger’s seat and Quinnie Kelley behind us. Since we’d left the sheriff’s office, Kelley had talked nonstop, in between the occasional directions out to the Hill Top. His big bug glasses were fogged, but he hadn’t seemed to notice.

“Now, don’t be thinking that I know this place ’cause I’m a customer. I’m a married man.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Quinnie,” I said.

“I mean, I knowed plenty of men who’d gone out here. But, see, the house used to be a place where this old woman lived when we was kids. We called it the Spook House, on account of it looking broken down and all. You know, like a haunted house?”

I nodded and looked over to Black. He wore no expression.

“When that old woman died, me and my brother used to play games outside there, and we’d bet each other that we couldn’t last five minutes in that place. I took the bet one time, and I promise you it was the longest five minutes I ever spent in my life. I walked up to the stairway and, when I reached the bottom step, I felt a cold spot go through me. I’m not saying it was a ghost or nothin’. I’m just sayin’ it scared the piss out of me.”

“What do you say we ride down by the cars?” I asked.

Black cranked the jeep and we bumped along the dirt road, and hit the high beams on a Cadillac coupe and a brand-new Hudson. I’d seen the Hudson before.

“That the one from the other night?” Black asked.

I nodded.

Black killed the engine.

“You wait here,” Black said.

“Hell with that,” Quinnie said. “I ain’t scared.”

“It’s not on account of those ghosts,” Black said.

“I knowed what you meant. But I ain’t scared, just the same.”

Black told him to wait in the jeep, and, if he heard shots, to call it in on the radio. “It’s important.”

Kelley nodded, a serious expression on his face. “Yes, sir.”

We mounted the old creaky steps and knocked on the front door. We heard movement inside and shuffling, and Black knocked again. His shotgun rested in his left hand while he knocked with his right.

There was a window in the top half of the door, but some yellowed lace obscured a good look inside. Black knocked some more and then finally stood back to kick it in.

I held up my hand, moved past him, and tried the knob.

The door opened.

Black grunted and moved inside, calling into the big, vacuous space and twisting his neck up to a wide staircase that stretched far and high along the right wall.

He called out again and then mounted the steps. He pointed me to the parlor and a long hallway that led to a swinging door.

THE WHORE HAD ABOUT BIT THROUGH JOHNNIE’S FINGERS, as he held her tight in the upstairs bedroom, listening to the boots on the wooden landing. She shuffled and cried in his hands but didn’t make a sound, only bit down hard and tried to wriggle free.

There were two more whores down the hall and another downstairs with Fannie.

The door to the bedroom opened, and Johnnie waited there behind it. Through the crack between the door and frame, he saw a big man in a khaki uniform pass and then move out of sight.

As the man walked slow through the room, the young whore tried to twist free. But Johnnie held her there until the heavy boots passed and the rhythmic thumping was gone.

He let out his breath. The damn twisting and gyrating kicking up the pain in his shoulder something fierce. He twisted the whore’s hair into his fingers and pulled out his wet fingers from her mouth.

Into her ear, he whispered: “You scream and I’ll plug you a brand-new hole. You got me?”

The girl nodded.

And then he heard the shot downstairs.

The boots ran back down the landing and then hit the staircase.

“Goddamn,” Johnnie said to the young whore. “That bitch is crazy.”

The girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She was doughy fat and white, with brown eyes the size of saucers. “Y’all got a back door here?”

The girl didn’t speak.

Johnnie pointed the gun at her.

“I said, y’all got a back door?”

THE SALON LOOKED TO BE SOMETHING OUT OF THE OLD West. Red velvet couches and heavy oak furniture. Cut-glass whiskey decanters and boxes of cigarettes and cigars. Old-time paintings of fat naked women with red hair and red lips. I passed through the room and followed the long hallway, trying to keep quiet on the wood floors. The hallway seemed to elongate as I walked, hearing Black’s boots overhead and then opening the swinging back door and hearing the crack of a shot.

I dropped to the floor and saw a woman pointing a pistol back down at my head. Before she could take aim, I tackled her to the ground and wrestled the gun free. Someone else in the room screamed, and I pointed the gun to her and she held her hands over her mouth and screamed and screamed, although she tried to stop.

She fell to her knees, and I pulled the woman to her feet and pushed her against the kitchen table.

“What are you doing here? This is my house.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Miss Fannie Belle, and if you don’t leave my home immediately I will have you arrested.”

Black ran into the room, his shotgun tucked into his shoulder, and pointed from corner to corner in the room. He held the gun on the redheaded woman.

“Ma’am, just whose Hudson is that parked outside?” I asked.

“It’s not mine.”

Just then, a car horn started honking and an engine started. I ran for the front door and out onto the porch, as the Hudson fishtailed and twisted in the mud and then broke free and shot right for the main highway.

Quinnie ran after the car for a long time, yelling for it to stop, until I lost sight of him.

I walked back into the house and held the women, while Black made a call on the radio for some help. Three girls he found upstairs waited in the hallway, toward the door.

“You want to tell me what you do, Miss Belle?” I asked.

I sat down across from her at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette while she and another girl, too old for the pigtails she wore, stared at the floor.

“I don’t work.”

“Then what do you do here?”

“Nothing.”

“Who are these girls?”

“They are my nieces.”

“Even the black one?”

Fannie turned her head and coughed, as if my cigarette smoke had invaded her space. I smoked it down a little more and squinted at her through the haze, reaching into my shirt pocket and pulling out the folded piece of paper Jack Black had given me.

I smiled, the cigarette clamped in my teeth. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m kind of new at this.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Reading you your rights.”

“I’m under arrest?”

“You did try to kill me, Miss Belle.”

“You broke into my home.”

“Sorry, I thought this was a cathouse.”

She looked at me and snorted a bit, then reached down and squeezed my knee. I looked up at her and she smiled. “We can work something out, baby.”

I didn’t move, just started to read the paper in my hand.

“You goddamn sonofabitch,” she said, as Black pushed the three girls into the kitchen. I started to finish reading but glanced up again, noticing something familiar about one of the girls.

She looked away as I stared. Black hair and blue eyes, china-white skin. I watched her cross her skinny white arms over a low-cut red velvet dress. She wore a lot of red lipstick, rouge, and she’d taken a heavy black pencil to her eyebrows like a Hollywood actress.

“Didn’t I meet you on the Fourth of July?”

She didn’t answer.

“You were with Billy Stokes,” I said.

TWO HOURS LATER, I SAT WITH THE GIRL IN A BACK BOOTH of Choppy’s Diner. The young girl looked as if she hadn’t eaten for days, the way she scraped the eggs off her plate and cleaned the last bit of it with a piece of toast. I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and asked her if she wanted another plate, and she looked up at me from where she’d leaned into the table and shook her head, her mouth full of food.

My arm rested on the back of the booth, a cigarette between my fingers. Jack Black had taken the others to the jail. This one, too scared to talk, didn’t say a word to me, as I drove past the courthouse and took the upper bridge over into Columbus. I had to ask her three times to get out of the car.

“You work for Fannie Belle?” I asked.

She shook her head. Her hair hung down over a face that was so white it looked like it belonged on a porcelain doll.

“How old are you?”

She shrugged.

“You sure you don’t want more to eat?”

She shook her head, her eyes still tilted toward the table but not chewing anymore.

I waited and didn’t speak. The waitress came over and placed the bill on the table, and I put down a dollar and a fifty-cent piece.

“You the new sheriff?”

“That’s what they’re telling me.”

Her hands shook so hard on top of the table that the salt shaker began to bounce and move. She started to cry but didn’t move, even as I put my hand over hers. I gave her fingers a squeeze to reassure her.

She looked up at me and nodded and nodded. “I’m ready. I can do it. Let’s go.”

“Do what?”

Her chin tilted up and she looked at me, confused at what she saw, or didn’t see, in my face. She shook her head and just watched me. The waitress came by once more and refilled my cup of coffee, and I lit another cigarette.

“Coffee and cigarettes are a fine thing,” I said.

“That’s all you want?”

“She speaks.”

“Where’s Bert Fuller?” she asked.

“Still lying in bed.”

“He doesn’t work for you?”

“You were there,” I said. “We’re not exactly good friends.”

“So who’s in charge?”

“The Guard. Town is under martial rule.”

“What’s that?”

“That means the town was so rotten that the governor replaced everybody. I’m the temporary sheriff till they can find someone better.”

She nodded.

“You going to tell me how old you are?”

“Sixteen.”

“Where’s your family?”

She shrugged.

“Where are you from?”

She looked at me and excused herself from the table. I watched her leave for the bathroom, and she returned moments later. She’d washed her face of the makeup, and her hair had been tucked into a ponytail.

“Am I going to jail?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“I could use some help.”

“What?”

“Did you see a man inside the Hill Top tonight? The one that drove that Hudson parked out front?”

She nodded.

“You know his name?”

She nodded again.

“But you won’t tell me.”

“They’d kill me.”

“They won’t kill you. We arrested that Fannie Belle woman and we’ll find him. If I could get some help understanding all this, maybe we could arrest a lot more.”

She nodded.

“Did you ever go to school?”

She shook her head.

“How did you end up here?”

She shook her head and looked back down at her hands. I didn’t say anything, just sat there smoking and watching it rain on Eighth Avenue and all the cars roaring by on the wet asphalt. I was thinking of home and getting some sleep when she spoke.

“I wasn’t always a whore.”

“You try to escape?”

“Can we get out of here, please? People are staring.”

I looked around. There was no one in the diner but a fat trucker and his wife in curlers, and they seemed more interested in the chicken-fried steak than us. I shrugged and grabbed my hat.

Soon, we were on a back highway, just driving. The talking seemed to come easier the more we moved out of town, and she bummed some smokes from me and squinted into the hot wind as we rounded our way around Russell County.

“I tried a few times. To leave, I mean.”

I just drove, listening and taking the curves as they came. I noticed a couple houses being built up on Sandfort, not far from where I kept my horses. Just a few years ago, it had been nothing but trees, most of the turnoffs unpaved.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what it was like? How I could do those things?”

“Nope.”

“How come?”

“You want to tell me?”

“Not much to tell.”

“How often did you see Fuller at Fannie Belle’s place?”

“Every night,” she said. “That’s when he came by to get his cut.”

I drove some more and then found a good road, a paved road, and took it, and soon the lights down on Crawford were shining, and I passed the turnoff to my house and Slocumb’s and kept on going to downtown. The service station looked oddly quiet closed up, with only some dim lights over the pumps. I wondered how my father-in-law was making out.

“I can find you a place to stay.”

She shook her head and asked me to take her to the bus station.

“You have money?”

She didn’t say anything.

At the bus station, I gave her a twenty-dollar bill and wrote out my home number. I told her to call anytime.

“I’m no snitch.”

“Wonder who made that call from the Hill Top? Figured it came from inside. Nobody else lives around there.”

She shrugged.

“Bert Fuller will get his due,” I said.

“Did you know he had a pecker the size of a stickpin?”

“Nope.”

“I figure that was why he was so mad.”

I nodded. “It couldn’t have helped.”

IT WAS MIDNIGHT IN THE LIVING ROOM OF ARCH FERRELL’S house, and Madeline had finally gotten some sleep, the baby growing restless inside of her. When Arch knew she couldn’t hear him, he slipped off to the sofa and dialed the number in Texas. He let it ring and ring, in that static connection, all the way over to Galveston. Finally, a man answered, and he sounded as if he’d just been roused from a dream.

“Si?” Arch said, whispering.

What?

“Si, listen-”

Arch?

“Hell, yes, this is Arch. Things are a mess. Governor Persons gone and did it. He finally did it. They shut down the whole town.”

Everything?

“Every goddamn thing, you hear me? They’re busting up slots and tables and arresting folks left and right. They got the goddamn jail so packed that the Guard’s holding folks in pens like they were dogs. You got to get back.”

I’m coming back.

“You mean it?”

I do.

“They even arrested Hoyt and Jimmie. Bernard Sykes questioned them up in the Ralston Hotel for nearly eight hours. This Sykes boy smells political blood, Si. And if you don’t come back soon, I’m gonna be sitting in Kilby come Christmas. You left my ledger in your briefcase. Damn thing shows every penny I collected in Phenix City against Patterson.”

Si coughed. He put down the phone, and Arch heard his echoed voice speaking to someone.

“Who was that?”

My nurse. She is the kindest colored woman I’ve ever met. She gave me a sponge bath yesterday and was so gentle.

“You know there is talk of putting you up on some kind of lunacy hearings if you come back. You understand that?”

I’m still the elected attorney general of the state of Alabama. I’ve read law since I was a child. When I’m well, I can resume my duties.

Arch crooked the telephone between his shoulder and ear. He lit a cigarette and poured himself a triple bourbon. A light flashed on in the bedroom, and he saw Madeline cross the threshold of the door in a nightgown, holding her big stomach and looking like a ghost.

She glowered at him from the door. He looked away.

“Well, you better get your goddamn head screwed on right quick or we’re all gonna hang for this mess. You gave me your word you’d take care of this. You said you’d handle all of it.”

I just needed some rest. I’ll come back and everything will be fine. Just fine.

But Si’s voice sounded sleepy and satisfied, the way an adult reads a storybook to a child with no sense. As Arch smoked down the cigarette and knocked down the rest of the drink, Madeline looking through the refrigerator for a nighttime craving, he wondered if Si Garrett wasn’t gone forever.

“I’m coming to see you.”

Not here. Not now.

“I’m coming to Texas. We need to talk. You gave me your goddamn word. What are you without your word?”

The phone line went dead, and Arch left it there buzzing in his lap for a long time, his face growing hot.

JOHN PATTERSON AND HUGH BRITTON MET ME AT THE sheriff’s office the next morning. I opened some of the windows behind my desk to let in some air. It took some work, because the sills had been painted over and the windows didn’t budge until I used a flathead screwdriver and a hammer. Finally, I got some air going and set a fan on top of the desk, where I sat on the edge and listened to Hugh Britton tell us both what he’d heard.

“Fuller is leaving town,” he said. “I hear it’s tonight. He’s waiting till it gets dark and then he’s gonna slip out past the roadblocks.”

“You know where he’s headed?”

“I don’t.”

“Can we hold him on anything?”

Patterson shook his head. “We could charge him with neglect of duty, but he’d be out within an hour. We’d need something that would stick, and let the judge set his bond high enough that he won’t be able to leave.”

“What about pimping?” I asked.

“You know anyone who’ll testify to that?”

I thought of the girl and then shook my head.

“This whole town is still scared to death of that sonofabitch,” Britton said. “But if y’all don’t do something, Bert Fuller will be sitting on a beach in South America and we’ll never see the bastard again.”

I lit a cigarette and tried to open another window. It was only early morning but hot and muggy, and the office smelled of old tobacco and sweat.

I reached into a desk and found what I wanted and tossed it across the desk. “Found this in the files last night.”

Patterson opened up little books of prints lifted from the Patterson Oldsmobile and handed them to Britton.

“I don’t know if these are duplicates. Can we get these sent up to Washington to go with the prints on your daddy’s car?”

Patterson nodded. He looked better than I’d seen him in a while. He was freshly shaven, wearing khakis and a light blue shirt. He stood up and helped himself to a mug of coffee from the pot we kept on the hot plate. His eyes clear and focused, black hair combed straight back. Not a single Democratic candidate had challenged him for the AG position, and he was already making plans to move to Montgomery come January.

Behind him, the gun rack sat empty. The only guns in the jail were on the Guard troops and the.45 Jack Black had given me. I had no uniforms. I had no deputies.

The file cabinet drawers were open and cleared, most of the contents being pored over by assistant state attorneys. One of the young boys – fresh out of University of Alabama law school – had brought the print book to me before I left my house.

“Where’d you hear this about Fuller?” I asked.

“A friend of his girlfriend,” Britton said. “She thinks he’s gonna skip out on her, too. She may be pregnant.”

“You want to take a visit?”

“Sure thing,” Britton said.

“I don’t want to see Bert Fuller till he’s in jail or sitting before a judge,” Patterson said. “I don’t trust myself with him.”

I grabbed my hat.

“Aren’t you gonna carry a gun?” Britton asked me.

I shrugged. “Not right now.”

“You got your badge?” Britton asked.

“He knows who I am.”

“I’d carry a badge.”

“I think it’s in my car,” I said. “Hugh, how’d you like to be my deputy?”

“How much you pay?”

I told him.

“Think I’ll stick to layin’ carpet, if it’s all the same,” he said.

As we left, John Patterson sat in my office in a hard wooden chair, staring out my open window.

SOMETIME AFTER OUR RUN-IN ON THE FOURTH, FULLER had decided to move into the second floor of Homer C. Cobb Memorial. The hospital was named in honor of the former mayor, mostly known for allowing gambling to run wild during the Depression to keep Phenix from falling into receivership, and the two major donors to the building fund had been Hoyt and Jimmie. It was one of the finest hospitals in east Alabama.

Fuller was in bed reading a Zane Grey novel. He wore a pair of red-and-blue-striped pajamas and smoked a cigarette, and when we entered the room he smiled weakly and reached out his hand to me.

“Congratulations,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

I looked over to Hugh Britton and he looked back to me.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Fuller said, crushing out the cigarette in an ashtray that rested on his belly and setting down the book on a nearby food tray. “I’ve been meaning to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For helping me.”

He put out his hand again, but I still didn’t take it, and he smiled a little at that, fully understanding the situation.

“I was a sinner,” he said. “But I’m not a sinner no more.”

“That’s nice for you, Bert,” I said. “But I need to ask you some questions.”

“Won’t you pray with me?”

“Maybe later.”

“I love you, Lamar. I love you for what you done.”

I nodded and looked back to Hugh Britton. Britton was chewing a big wad of gum, and his jaw muscles flexed and worked as he eyed the big tub of guts in the bed. He just shook his steel gray head over what Bert Fuller had become.

“You want to tell me where you were when Mr. Patterson was shot?”

“Sure thing. It’s no secret. I was at the jail with Sheriff Matthews. I’ve already told all this to Mr. Sykes.”

“Well, tell me again.”

“I’m ashamed to admit it, but we were playing cards. But let me tell you something, that’s in my past. I don’t gamble, and my lips won’t touch a drop of whiskey. I am cleansed. Yes, sir. I just heard on the radio that Billy Graham wants to come to Phenix City for a revival. If that don’t beat all.”

“Bert, can you tell me how long you were at the jail?” I asked, pulling a little notebook from my shirt pocket. I clicked open a pen and took some notes.

“’Bout an hour,” he said.

“What time did you get there?”

“’Bout eight, it was gettin’ dark.”

“And when did you leave?”

“When we got word what had happened to Mr. Patterson,” he said. “I just grabbed my hat and ran out of the office.”

“Did you leave your office any time before that?”

“No, sir. There were four other deputies with me there, and Sheriff Matthews, of course, and the jailer.”

“I don’t doubt those men will vouch for you.”

“Mr. Murphy, you got to know I had nothing to do with this, and I’d give my right arm if I could find out who killed Mr. Patterson like that. I swear before my Lord Jesus Christ that I did not kill that man. Won’t you pray with me?”

I looked down at him and then over at Hugh Britton. I shook my head.

“No, thanks, Bert. I don’t think I will.”

I turned to leave and Britton followed me, walking down the long hospital hall. “You believe that song and dance?”

“No, sir.”

“What can you charge him with?”

I punched the button on the elevator.

“What about vote fraud?” Britton asked.

“Keep talkin’.”

“What if someone was to file charges against Fuller for loading the ballot box?”

“You see that?”

“No, but I know someone who did.”

“You think he’ll testify before a judge?”

“Can’t hurt to ask her.”