Wicked City

18

ARCH FOUND HIMSELF AWAKE at three a.m., walking the woods near his house with a whiskey bottle, wandering around the endless acres of pine trees with deep thoughts of Bastogne and those holes that would explode and swell like an open wound and bullets that would whiz by your ear but miss you, as if you were protected by the hand of God. His men buried deep in foxholes, their feet frozen black and purple, the snow mixed with the ash from the broken forest. As Arch weaved in and out of the maze, the fall moon hanging low, full and bright, he lost himself for a moment, half expecting to see his breath crystallize before him. Instead, he stopped, his heart jackhammering in his chest, and took another drink. He decided to walk back to his house for his keys and shaving kit. He stopped for only a moment, Madeline awake now, and kissed her on the cheek and told her he’d be right back.

“Arch?” she asked. “Where are you going?”

But he had already started his car, a new-model Pontiac, and he turned quickly from the gravel and the new boxed ranch with big modern glass windows that let in plenty of light and out onto the open road, the moon a traveling friend as he headed back to the soft glow of Phenix, soon finding the turn to Highway 80 and Montgomery. He lit endless cigarettes and finished the last of the Jack Daniel’s, both hands on the wheel and sweating, hearing only the purr of the big motor and the warm morning air coming in through the windows as he got to Montgomery, quickly cutting south and soon finding daybreak just around Fort Deposit. But it was a false dawn, just purple and black, and in the darkness he watched the Alabama city signs flash by, in minutes and hours or seconds, coming right after one another. GREENVILLE, CHAPMAN, EVERGREEN, CASTLEBERRY, POLLARD, FLOMATON, ATMORE. And soon it was midmorning, and he looked at the scruffy, unshaven face in the rearview mirror before crossing the bridge over Mobile Bay and through the little town of Grand Bay – where he stopped for two cups of coffee, gas, and to use the bathroom – and then over the Mississippi line, hugging the green shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and the little beach towns mixed with the big ones, taking him to places he hadn’t been in years, not since becoming county solicitor in ’47, and he crossed through Pascagoula, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian, and over the St. Louis Bay. It was late summer, and children played on wide green lawns and people sat on wide stately porches built sometime around the Civil War, living in their own world covered in a canopy of ancient oaks disguised in those sloppy beards of moss.

Before he knew it, he was in Louisiana, with New Orleans seeming like a dream. In the roughneck town of Morgan City, he stopped for a piss again and found himself in a vile, filthy bathroom puking in a dirty toilet, and when he washed his face in the lavatory he had no idea why his nerves had acted up.

He bought a Coca-Cola and a piece of fried chicken to settle himself, pumping gas, and moving on over the bayou in New Iberia and Lafayette. It all was a storybook down there, with the wildness of it all and all the little waterways and clapboard shacks and sunburned people with sharp eyes who seemed to see something in the man with the Alabama plates that made them stare. Hell, he wasn’t even tired by the time he hit the Texas line and Port Arthur by Sabine Lake and hugged the lapping green waves of the Gulf, feeling stifled and hot and sweaty even though the windows were down, the Gulf and Texas bringing him nothing but humidity and hellfire gospels and twangy country music on the radio.

He knew that if he was caught, they’d revoke his bond, but he was sick of just sitting on the couch smoking cigarettes and drinking Jim Beam and watching The Lone Ranger and the Adventures of Superman on television with his daughter. And Madeline not talking to him, lying next to him at night, wide awake with worry because she just knew he’d killed Mr. Patterson even though he’d sworn he had nothing to do with it.

When he got near Galveston, he found a city park to change into a seersucker suit and black shoes. He mopped his face with a fresh handkerchief the whole ride out onto Galveston Island, listening to a sermon about the dangers of vanity and how even the slightest bit could invite the devil for dinner in your very home. The man said it as if the devil was a little red man in a red satin suit who could pass you the peas.

Arch found a circular drive winding its way to a grand old Victorian with a big wide porch where people in white spoke to each other from rocking chairs and played chess and cards. It looked like a postcard of heaven.

There was a nurse and then a doctor and then another nurse, and then finally they brought him out back to a soft little garden under two big oaks, a fine view facing the Gulf. A group of five or six people played croquet, and they laughed and cheered with each other, in their short pants and knit shirts, and, to Arch, they didn’t seem to be all that crazy.

He took off his coat and sat by the fountain under the canopy of oak arms with curtains of Spanish moss. He unbuttoned his tie and lit a cigarette, the aftereffects of the booze from a day ago floating through his head. He took a long breath as if it was his first since first starting his car early that morning.

Then he heard the squeak and turned to see Si Garrett being pushed along in a wheelchair, one arm and one leg in a cast, his neck in a high brace, looking like a curious turtle, his eyes magnified by those great circular glasses.

The nurse in the little white hat left them. Si didn’t say anything, and Arch just sat on the edge of the fountain, it trickling down in a soothing way along the rocks, mixing in a nice way with the Gulf surf.

“They don’t keep score,” Si said, finally.

Arch looked to him.

“Every one of them is crazy but doesn’t know it,” he said. Arch could tell it was hard for him to enunciate with the brace on his neck. “I told them I could keep score, you know. I can write with my left hand, and since I don’t seem to have much else to do I thought they would appreciate it.”

“When are you coming back?”

“That’s up to Dr. Edwards.”

“Who’s that?”

“My physician.”

“I didn’t figure he was your barber.”

“It’s in God’s hands now,” Garrett said. “I tried to come back. You know that. But it wasn’t meant to be.”

“You think God made you crash that car?”

“I felt the strangest sensation in my fingers before I veered off the road, as if someone had pulled my hands from the controls, to show me the way.”

“They showed you into a fucking tree.”

“Perhaps.”

“That’s funny,” Arch said, squinting into the smoke and watching the surf, feeling like Seale, Alabama, was on the other side of the earth. But he was ready to take that drive back just the same because it wasn’t a place he wanted to leave. It was a place where he wanted to make a stand. “I just kind of wanted to hear you say it.”

“Say what?”

“That you are a coward in hiding.”

“Are you angry?”

“Hell, no. I’m not angry. Why in God’s name would I be angry? My life has just been flushed down the toilet.”

“Would you push me to the ramp over there? The sunset looks so beautiful out in the ocean. The water looks like emeralds and gold.”

Arch stood behind Si Garrett and pushed his heavy mass around the garden and the croquet court and up onto a wooden landing and a small boardwalk. They were in full sun now, but every few moments the sun would dip back into a stray cloud or two.

The two men watched the surf. They watched the sun drop near the lip of the ocean. They didn’t speak for a long time.

“Just what happened in that alley, Arch? Where did all this go so very wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong,” Arch said. “Everything went according to your plan. You said what we did was for the state of Alabama and that you’d protect us all. But where did you go, Si? Are you hiding in there?”

Si just looked out at the water.

“I never hurt a soul,” Arch said. “I dare any man to say that what I did was wrong.”

A COUPLE OF GUARDSMEN FOUND HER LATER THAT NIGHT. She must’ve been there for at least a day, they said, broken and bleeding on a big gray slab of rock on the banks of the Chattahoochee. Her dress had been torn away, and the hard rains from the night before had left her shriveled and pale, her body curled and white on top of the rock dimpled with pocks of green mossy water. The men had been walking patrols and had heard her animal cries, until the swath of their flashlights found her body. She was naked and bloody and resembled something out of an old mariner’s book. Her breathing came in ragged gasps of air and muddy water.

They’d figured her ribs were broken, from the redness and black bruises. She’d lost a lot of blood.

I figured she probably had been dumped upriver, and kept alive in the current until she hit that big rock, somehow climbing to the top, finding a foothold in the night. It took the guardsmen an hour to make it out to her and pull her into the boat, covering her with a standard-issue Army blanket.

She was nearly dead by the time she got to the hospital, in shock and vomiting buckets. They gave her a shot and pumped her stomach.

The doctors told me she’d been junked full of heroin and raped. Her face had been beaten bloody by fists, not the rocks, and both arms were broken and a leg. They told me how many ribs were broken, but I don’t recall.

I didn’t even recognize her, the only identifying mark came from Billy, who had told me about the number tattooed on her bottom lip.

“Will she live?” he asked me later that night. He sat in the front seat of the black Chevy. The only illumination came from the panel’s dash and the red light on my radio.

The radio clicked on, and our dispatcher said an old woman needed help starting her car. I turned it off.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He just looked ahead through the big, broad front windshield. We didn’t talk for a long time. It was night and no light came from his house. I asked him if he needed any money.

“No, sir.”

“Would you like to come home with me? Just for a few days.”

“No, sir.”

“You can talk to your daddy, if you like.”

He shook his head. He started to cry, but his voice was firm as he spoke. He told me about his daddy being a worthless drunk and having friends who were mean and violent, his father too stupid to know he was being led around by his nose.

“When are y’all gonna arrest the man who killed Mr. Patterson?”

“That’s a question I get about every day. It’s real complicated.”

“But you know who killed him.”

I nodded. I leaned my head back and took a deep breath. “Listen, let me buy you dinner over at Kemp’s.”

“What if someone saw what happened? Could you get them?”

“Yes, we could,” I said.

Billy nodded, agreeing with a decision he’d already made.

LATER ON, I STOPPED BY THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE AND WENT down into Reuben’s cell to give him a cup of coffee and a pack of cigarettes. He was up off his bunk and pacing, and when I walked in he knocked the coffee out of my hand, telling me that I was no better than Bert Fuller.

It was past midnight and hot as hell down in the jail basement. Most of the cells were full of prostitutes and some negro Bug writers we’d picked up. They groaned and insulted me as they saw me, calling me “mister” and “boss.” Reuben should have been gone, but I went ahead and kept him an extra couple days to see if he’d open up a bit.

I was glad now.

“I seen the judge. He set a court date. I know my bond is paid.”

“How do you know that?”

“’Cause my dang lawyer was just here and he told me. He said you’re hiding behind this martial-rule thing and don’t have a lick of sense when it comes to the law.”

“He’s probably right.”

“Don’t you smile at me, you goddamn sonofabitch.”

“Take it easy, Reuben.”

“Take it easy? You ain’t been kept in this hellhole for four days. I need a shower and shave. Do you know I got to shit in that toilet over there that doesn’t have a seat? About every time I get close to using it, they bring in some whores down this row and they look in on me like I was a monkey in a cage.”

“You’ll be out tomorrow.”

“I want out tonight.”

“You sure you don’t want that cup of coffee?”

He snorted and sat back down on the bunk. He ran his hands through his hair like he thought about tearing it out. The oil had dried on his pompadour and it stuck up wild. He wore a pair of beige slacks and a men’s undershirt that was stained with sweat, dust, and dirt.

His shoes sat near the bunk without laces.

“Look at you, with that fifty-dollar suit on with that ruby pin and slick tie. Don’t give me no pity, Lamar. That just about turns my stomach.”

I tossed him the pack of Lucky Strikes. He shook his head and tore open the pack, tucking a dry one in the corner of his mouth and continuing to talk. “You didn’t have to do me like that. Arrest me in front of my boy. You have a son. You didn’t have to do that.”

He looked straight at the brick wall, away from me, and stared.

“A while back, we found a whole barn full of girls, most of them children,” I said. “They’d been locked up without food or water. One of them died. Another one of them was twelve. Tonight, we fished your boy’s girlfriend out of the Chattahoochee. She’d been beaten to the point Billy couldn’t recognize her. She’d been stomped and her ribs went into her lungs.”

He nodded. “Did I have anything to do with that? I run a beer joint. I got some slots. How in God’s name can a man make money in Phenix any other way? This town has always been like that. You know it was an Indian outpost before the war, that this was the last place to get a woman and a drink before sliding into redman’s land?”

I shook my head. “You don’t get it. She was a friend of Billy’s.”

“That girl knew what she was into.”

“That’s pretty rough.”

He lit the cigarette and shrugged. “Don’t you drag me into your morality play.”

“I need your help,” I said.

“If that don’t beat all.”

“I can get you a deal with the judge. He can get you in and out of Kilby in less than six months.”

“That’s mighty white of you, Lamar.”

“You were there when Mr. Patterson was gunned down. You were parked across from the Elite.”

Reuben stood, just inches away from my nose. His face had turned a shade, his breathing quick, that sly, perpetual cockiness melted away. “Where did you hear such a god-awful lie?”

“I didn’t say you killed him. I said you were there. You saw something important. On that street.”

“I didn’t see a thing.”

“You’re a liar.”

“You wouldn’t even been on half the title cards if it wasn’t for me. You rode my coattails for five fucking years. You know the Kid didn’t even want to train you till I begged him. You remember when he’d be gone for the night and I’d stay and I’d teach you to keep your feet, keep your head in a fight. You remember how you were all arms and elbows, tripping over your legs? Who stayed with you in that shithole gym till somethin’ clicked in your head and you could move your goddamn feet?”

“You didn’t correct me.”

“’Bout what?”

“Bein’ a liar.”

He stepped back.

“You don’t know half the things I done for you since Mr. Patterson gone and got himself killed. If I hadn’t stepped in, we wouldn’t be talking.”

I waited. I watched him.

He paced.

“You hear me?”

“Billy needs a daddy,” I said. “Make a deal, serve your time, and get out. It’s over.”

He pushed me with the flat of his hand and spun to face me, jabbing me hard in the eye with the left and knocking me back. I lost my feet for a moment and then caught myself against the row of bars.

I used the bars to right myself.

Jack Black appeared on the other side, his hand on his gun.

“It’s okay, Jack,” I said. “Let him out.”

“Sir?”

I felt the egg forming under my eye. I looked at Reuben and shook my head. “Go ahead and let him go. I’m done with him.”

Reuben spit on the ground between us, his fists hanging ready at his side.

“Just one question,” I said. “Just how long did it take y’all to blow Hoyt’s safe and get back to town?”

A FEW DAYS LATER, JOHN PATTERSON INVITED ME TO GO fishing with him on Lake Harding. It was a brisk fall day, and we stood on the shoreline of some cleared land and cast our Zebcos out into the dammed-up Chattahoochee. We sat in easy chairs, talking about our children and the weather, and some about his mother, Agnes, and some man from Hollywood named Diamond who wanted to come to Phenix City and make a picture about what happened to his father.

“He has a script,” Patterson said. “I’ve seen it. He has me in a slugfest with some kingpin named Red. I’m pretty sure he got the idea for this Red fella from Hoyt Shepherd. He’s a fat, good-ole-boy type who pretty much runs the town.”

“Maybe he’s based on Red Cook.”

“No, this guy is more likable. He’s the kind of guy quick with a joke and a wink but will kill you all the same. And then there is an honest girl who deals cards in a casino. She’s smart and beautiful but can’t find her way out.”

“Who else is in it?”

“He’s made me into some kind of hero. He liked the idea of me taking over the martyred father’s nomination. But he said it wasn’t dramatic enough, so he has me calling the governor at the end of the film and has everyone in Phenix City yelling into the phone for justice.”

“How are they all on the phone?”

“It’s some kind of crowd scene. Who knows?” John stood and cast his hook again, and let the bobber stay, and then sat back in the chair and offered me a beer, which I declined.

“You never drink, do you?”

“Not for a long time.”

“There a story behind that?”

“Not a good one.”

John nodded. “Anyway, I don’t have much to do with this. But this Diamond fella, I think he’s from New York, wants to film it here. He said it’s the kind of story that has to be shot in the South. It can’t be some Hollywood back lot.”

“Seems like a story without an ending.”

“He thinks it’s over.”

“What do you think?”

“Not by a mile.”

“Have you spoken with Sykes?”

John shifted in his chair and pulled a ball cap down in his eyes. He shifted the rod and took a sip of beer. “I have.”

“You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“I don’t know what he’s up to. He must have two dozen prosecutors and investigators interviewing every soul who was even close to Fifth Avenue on June eighteenth. They have maps, building blueprints, models, and photos of every angle of my dad’s Rocket 88. Hundred interviews with people who heard shots, saw someone parking a car, saw anyone walk close to that alley. In my opinion, it’s a calculated mess. An equation that everything implied means absolutely zero.”

“No one who saw anything.”

“Besides Quinnie. But Sykes believes Quinnie will be cut to pieces on the witness stand because he changes his story. At first he saw a man he didn’t know and then later says it was Arch Ferrell.”

“He was scared.”

“Sure he was. But think what they’ll make of those big glasses he wears. You don’t think they’ll call his eyesight into question?”

“And no one else saw a thing.”

“People saw a car. They heard the shots. They saw a man leaving that alley. A group of teenagers moving some office equipment out of the Coulter Building saw my dad dying on that sidewalk. So did Hugh Bentley’s mother, at her grocery, after hearing those shots. They’ve been keeping it real quiet about Fuller’s prints on the car.”

I nodded. “But those can be explained away.”

“Of course they can. Fuller can say he was talking to my dad the day before the killing or accidentally touched the car after the murder. Hell, he was the lead investigator on the case.”

“Now we have Fuller or Ferrell.”

“Or both,” John said.

“Or both,” I said.

John finished the beer and placed the empty bottle back in the cooler. I lit a cigarette and settled back, feeling a little tug on my line and seeing the bobber disappear and then pop back up. I didn’t jerk the rod because I wanted the damn fish to swallow the hook whole and that quick move always lost me the fish.

“Hilda Coulter is getting some threats,” I said. “Someone has been following her, tried to run her off the road.”

“Fuller’s buddies.”

“You know about what happened to that girl?”

“The prostitute?”

“Yes.”

“These are evil people, Lamar. Sodom doesn’t have a thing on Phenix City.”

“Hilda didn’t want Jack in the flower shop, said he’d make a spectacle of himself,” I said. “So he’s just keeping an eye out for her. At night, he has a couple boys keeping watch outside her house.”

“I get those phone calls, too. So many, I don’t even answer the phone. Mostly, they say, ‘Do you want to end up like your daddy?,’ or they threaten my kids. I had a few of them checked out. But they always go back to pay phones. Not a lot you can do. Oh, that was the other thing.”

“What?”

“The picture. In the script, some of the gangsters drive by my house and drop a dead colored girl in the front yard.”

“Why?”

“I think the colored girl has a note pinned to her saying this could happen to my child.”

“That’s pretty rough.”

“Diamond says you have action every five minutes in a picture or else people will fall asleep. How ’bout you? How you like being sheriff now?”

“I make less than half what I made running the filling station.”

“But you are running.”

“You bet.”

“So there must be something you like.”

“I think I look good in a suit.”

“That shiner looks pretty good, too. You mind me asking where you got it?”

I touched the place under my eye that had already turned purple, the swelling almost gone. “Had a little fight with a friend.”

I told him about it.

“So that was the last time you saw Stokes?” John asked, hooking another worm, squinting into the early-afternoon light.

I nodded.

“Did he leave town?”

“I’m not sure.”

“And he knows what happened to my dad?”

“You bet.”