Authors: Ace Atkins
Since they’d taken away his squad car, he had his girlfriend from church pick him up at the curb, and just as he got to the door he heard the motor running.
The air was thick with heat and crickets, and he tossed the suitcase into the backseat and sat down. He clutched a silver cross that had belonged to his mother in his gun hand.
“Where to?”
“Atlanta. Get me out of Alabama.”
She turned the car around, the headlights catching the shrubs and dense magnolias around his garage apartment, and she headed north, far away from the two bridges that would be watched by the National Guardsmen. Fuller took off his cowboy hat and rested it on his knee. His girlfriend, Georgia, turned on the radio to a gospel station out of LaGrange, and the good ole-time church music made Bert Fuller know that he’d found a new path.
He figured he’d catch a bus or a plane in Atlanta. When he pulled out the whore money he’d been squirrelin’ away, he figured he could pretty much go where he liked.
“Did you tell anyone?” Georgia asked.
“No. This is between us.”
“Take me with you, Bert.”
“I’ll send for you. I promise. I must go where the Lord takes me.”
“You remember when I told you that I was pregnant?”
“I do.”
“I wasn’t. I just had gas. I’d eaten some bad chicken.”
“Well, that’s good, baby.”
“I’m glad you’ve changed, Bert. You sure aren’t the man I used to know.”
“Thank the Lord,” Bert said and gave a drowsy smile, as they rounded their way by the airport and headed fast up Park Hill, up to Summerville and to Lee County, where they’d head east again. “We have the rest of our life together. I know a little spot just on the other side of the Rio Grande where a white man can live like a king for pennies a day.”
“Mexico?”
“You said it, baby.”
“Are those people Christians?”
“They got more churches in Mexico than in Alabama.”
“That a fact? But they speak Mexican.”
“They speak Spanish.”
“When will you send for me?”
“Just as soon as I get my land,” Bert said and placed his mother’s cross in Georgia’s palm.
“Oh, Bert.”
He affixed the cowboy hat on his head and had a big smile on his face, almost feeling that county line coming up. He tapped the dashboard in time with “I’ll Fly Away” and grinned and grinned. That was until the light grew bright on the highway ahead, and he soon saw the red lights and white lights mix and the squad cars and the jeeps and men holding rifles up in their arms.
Georgia slowed the car, and a guardsman asked her for her license. She reached across Bert into the glove compartment, and Bert looked away even as the deputy crossed a flashlight over his profile.
“Good evenin’, Mr. Fuller,” the young boy said. “We been looking for you.”
Fuller squinted into the flashlight’s beam.
“We got a warrant for your arrest.”
He shook his head and rolled down the window, spitting out on the ground. He breathed some more and then simply said: “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
15
REUBEN AND JOHNNIE BENEFIELD
sat on the farmhouse porch and watched the sun go down through a row of diseased pecans planted before both of them had been born. They drank moonshine from a jelly jar and smoked Chesterfields, Johnnie telling him about what had happened out at the Hill Top and how he’d nearly gotten taken by the Guard. Reuben stood and flicked his cigarette out into the bushes and then sat back down in a rusted porch chair. He looked over at Johnnie, who was leaned back with his old boots on the ledge.
“You sure it was Lamar?”
“Sure,” he said. “I know Lamar Murphy.”
“I’m broke, Johnnie,” Reuben said. “I don’t care much for studying on politics right now.”
“Broke?” Johnnie said, cracking a grin and polishing off a good bit of that old ’shine. “You got to be kiddin’ me.”
“I said I wasn’t gonna touch that money and I ain’t.”
“Well, aren’t you the Boy Scout. A gold star for you, Reuben.”
“We dig it up when it settles.”
“So you got it buried out here?”
“Check all you want. You ain’t gonna find it.”
Johnnie laughed some more. He grinned, smashing a cigarette against the sole of his boot. “Listen, I want you to set up a meeting with Lamar.”
“Who wants to talk?”
“Fannie. Some of the boys.”
“What boys?”
“Mr. Davis and his brother. Red. Papa Clark. Maybe Frog Jones.”
“They ain’t gonna change his mind.”
“You know how much he could get paid for just playin’ stupid?”
“I sparred with that man for nearly five years. That man’s got the hardest head ever put on this God’s earth.”
“You know I had to get rid of the Hudson? Them boys had seen it over at Fannie’s and they know I was there over at Britton’s house. I sold it off to some niggerman over in Loachapoka. He was gonna paint it and cut it down a bit. Said he was gonna sell the engine and paint it gold. Ain’t that just like a nigger? Makes me sad to think about that engine in another body. Rips the heart out of her. But I’ll get another. But, man, oh man, I sure loved my little Hornet.”
“Where’d you get this ’shine?” Reuben asked.
“Moon,” he said. “They still ain’t found his still.”
“They ain’t found a lot of stuff. They rootin’ around all around the county. I heard yesterday they busted in at Papa Clark’s farm and found all those brand-new horse-racing games. I also heard when they come for him, he nearly had a heart attack.”
Johnnie nodded and stood, combing the five long black hairs over his head. He cupped his hand and lit another cigarette. He wore a crisp pink cowboy shirt with a bolo tie.
“When did men start wearing pink shirts?” Reuben asked.
“I seen a magazine where Tony Curtis wears pink.”
“You ain’t exactly Tony Curtis, Johnnie.”
He shrugged and picked his nose, snorting a bit as he did. “You want some more ’shine?”
“No.”
“Listen, don’t get all pissy on me. I told you I’d come through for you and I did. Didn’t I tell you that ole Hoyt and Jimmie didn’t trust banks? Hell, Hoyt made his first dollar in the damn Depression. And I was the one who knowed people who used to work for Mr. Hoyt. That’s how I knew about the kind of safe he’d got and just how to blow that baby open.”
Reuben smoked down the cigarette and lit another Chesterfield, liking the design on the pack because he’d seen a picture of Gregory Peck smoking them while filming
Twelve O’Clock High.
Johnnie had brought a carton with him, and it was the first decent cigarettes he’d had in a week. The sun almost gone, just a thin little hot slit through the pecans and down at the dead peach trees. The trees died while he was getting shot at in the Philippines, but if the old man were still alive he’d be blaming him for their loss.
“What’s the split?” Reuben asked. He poured out the last of the ’shine, only a mushy peach left at the bottom, just as ripe as the day it was picked and soaked in corn liquor. “Figured that’s what we’re beatin’ around the bush about. Let’s figure it out.”
“Three ways.”
“Three ways?”
“Cut between some inside folks.”
“I think that’s horseshit.”
“I told you I got an inside man.”
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Why don’t you try.”
Johnnie shrugged and snuffed some smoke out of his nose. “All right, hell. Clyde Yarborough.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit back on you.”
“Clyde trained Hoyt and Jimmie. He’s the one who taught them the whole game.”
“Let’s just say, Hoyt ain’t rememberin’ that in his Christmas list.”
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Reuben said. “I still say we need to keep that money hidden for a while. Wait till the time is right.”
“The time is now. You got other options of feeding that moody-ass boy of yours?”
“Say, why doesn’t he like you?” Reuben asked. “He hasn’t said one word since you showed up. I ain’t seen him all day.”
“You think I give a shit,” Johnnie said, unzipping his fly and urinating right off the porch into what used to be his wife’s flower bed. He grinned, a cigarette clamped in those tombstone choppers of his. “I just got that effect on some people.”
Reuben waited, finished the cigarette, and stood. “You know Hoyt wouldn’t think nothin’ ’bout killin’ both of us.”
“Life ain’t nothin’ but a spin of the wheel.”
THAT SATURDAY, I SPENT THE MORNING ON MY LAND UP ON
Sandfort Road. I brought Anne with me, and together we fed and watered the horses, cleaned out their stalls, and went for a short ride through some cleared trails in and around the pines and oaks, the kudzu beaten to the trail’s edge around our small pond. By the time we returned to the little barn, the horses were calm and gentle, the restlessness and nervousness gone, and Anne brushed them while I hung up their saddles and tack. I nailed up some shoes that the blacksmith had left by the gate and I tightened a loose nut on the water pump. I checked the mineral levels in their tank. I checked the fencing up by the front gate.
I was hammering up some barbed wire that hung loose when I heard the unmistakable high-pitched gears on an Army jeep and saw Jack Black behind the wheel, with his buzz cut and gold aviator shades, stop short of my gate.
“We got him,” he said.
I leaned into the fence and looked back at Anne, who fed Joe Louis an apple. Joe shook his head back and showed her his teeth when he was done.
“The FBI matched the prints taken off Mr. Patterson’s car with the prints we took off Fuller.”
“They sure?”
“They said it looked as if someone had tried to smudge the prints on the door frame, but they got part of a finger and his thumb.”
“That was Ferrell. I have two people who saw him rubbing his arm over the roof of that car. Guess he missed a spot.”
“Guess so.”
“So we can charge him?”
Black shook his head. “Sykes wants to wait. He doesn’t want this getting out too soon.”
“What else does he need?”
“He’s trying to be careful. He says he wants more and doesn’t want to spook Fuller.”
“What about the guns?”
“Nothing yet,” Black said, squinting into the sun behind my back. “They’re testing the bullets they took at the autopsy with those .38s we got at Fuller’s place. There’s also talk about exhuming a couple bodies from men Fuller killed a few years back to compare bullets.”
“You don’t look optimistic.”
“Fuller is stupid.”
“But not that stupid,” I said.
“You never know.”
“I’m ’bout finished up around here.”
“That’s a nice-looking horse.”
“His name is Joe Louis.”
“And the other?”
“Rocky.”
Black smiled. “Of course he is.”
Anne walked up to us, skinny and lean in a pair of crisp blue overalls and little cowboy boots. She climbed up on the swinging gate and said hello to Black.
“You gonna make him work?” Anne asked.
“Just a little,” Black said.
“I liked him better when he pumped gas,” she said.
“Don’t you like that car with a siren?” I asked.
“You don’t even have uniforms,” she said.
I looked over to Black. “I hate wearing those duds they left at the office.”
“No rule you got to.”
“You know when you’re headed back to Birmingham?”
Black chewed some gum and leaned back a bit. “Thought I might stay around here. You know, if there’s a job.”
“You know it doesn’t pay much.”
“My other job ain’t exactly making me rich. Besides, General Hanna thinks it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to have an adviser.”
“Advise away, Major.”
We shook hands, and Black walked back to the jeep. Before he crawled back under the wheel, he yelled: “You ever hear of a place called the Rabbit Farm?”
I shook my head.
“A girl called the office this morning and said her friend was being held at the Rabbit Farm. When I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, she acted like I was crazy. Said she wanted to talk to the sheriff, that he would know.”
“You ask Fuller about it?”
“Of course.”
“Play dumb?”
“Well, he’s so damn good at it. You know that sonofabitch is giving sermons to the inmates? He wrapped a bedsheet around him like it was a robe.”
“I think the only soul he’s thinking about saving is his own.”
“You coming in?”
“Let me drop off Anne. The woman leave a number?”
“She said she would call back.”
“HER NAME IS SHEILA,” THE GIRL, LORELEI, SAID. “I
haven’t heard from her since Mr. Patterson was shot.”
“Where was she working?”
“Last I heard was a place called the Rabbit Farm.”
“You know where that is?”
“No, sir. I don’t know the way back. They’d blindfold you when they’d take you there. That’s why I came here. I thought you would know.”
The girl looked down at her hands. She looked like a girl today, not like when I’d seen her at the Hill Top. She wore a flowered shirt that showed off her long teenage arms and blue jeans and saddle oxford shoes. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she didn’t wear a trace of makeup. It was hard to think this was the same girl that I’d talked to at Choppy’s.
“You doin’ all right?”
She looked to the floor in the office. I sat next to her in another hard wooden chair but not behind the desk. It seemed to go easier that way.
“I’m fine.”
“How’d she get into this mess?”
“She was doing some B-girl work with her mother,” Lorelei said. She chewed gum while we talked and then dropped the gum into her hand and then into the wastebasket.
“Where?”
“Bamboo Club. The Silver Slipper. She worked for a while at Ma Beachie’s.”
I nodded. Beachie’s was a high-end place, mostly stage shows, with the best girls in Phenix City. The clientele was high-dollar, with fraternity boys from Auburn and businessmen in Atlanta. The girls would work out backroom deals only if they liked the offer.
“But she met up with some fella and she fell in love, but it turned out he wasn’t doing nothin’ but tryin’ to turn her out. I heard he worked her out of some motels over on Crawford Road, and when he’d gotten what he wanted he cut her loose, sold her off to this Rabbit Farm, and then left town.”