Free Wicked City by Ace Atkins Page B

listening, watching the pool, watching Hoyt and silent Jimmie.
    Jimmie looked to me and nodded with recognition.
    “I’m not a stupid man,” Hoyt Shepherd said. “I know that the killing of your father wouldn’t do a thing but topple down my world. The man who did this just stopped business in Phenix City cold. What do we have now? No GIs in bars. Girls off the streets. National Guardsmen on every corner. That’s not something I ever wanted to see in my town.”
    John watched him. Hoyt offered his hand, again.
    Not caught off guard, he just looked at it. Out in the valley, the cattle grew nervous and groaned and called out, sounding almost like screams, and I could hear their heavy feet shuffling and brushing against each other, frustrated under the moon.
    I started a new cigarette.
    “Last night, that nutcase Si Garrett and his trained monkey, Arch Ferrell, hauled me into the courthouse at three o’clock in the morning,” Hoyt said. “Ferrell was as drunk as a skunk, and Garrett talked so fast I couldn’t even understand most of what he said. But most of what he said, Jimmie, correct me if I’m wrong on this—”
    Jimmie nodded.
    “They like both of us for this,” he said. “Garrett called us the crime lords of the den of iniquity. And I’ll be goddamned if I didn’t have to look up what that meant in the dictionary when I got home. And, men, it wasn’t good.”
    “What do you want us to do about it?” John said, standing.
    I joined him.
    “Just keep an open mind,” Hoyt said. “I hear you’re aiming for your dad’s spot.”
    John nodded. “I am.”
    “I understand,” he said. “I wish you luck.”
    “You don’t mean that, Hoyt.”
    The air smelled of chlorine and the gardenias and cow shit.
    Hoyt smiled and kind of laughed, his face clouded in his exhaling breath. “Guess I don’t.”
    “I haven’t been back in Phenix City long, but I know to watch where I step.”
    “That’s not what this was about,” Hoyt said. “I just wanted you to know this isn’t my deal. I have no part in this. I didn’t leave my neck out for no misdemeanor vote fraud. We’re all hurting. Did you know the same night your daddy was killed, someone broke into my other house and blew a safe bigger ’an a truck? They ’bout cleaned me out.”
    “What does that have to do with my father?”
    “Everything,” Hoyt said. “You can’t trust a crook no more. There was a time when a man’s word meant something. This town has gone to hell.”
    John simply nodded. He then looked over at Jimmie and said, “Good night.”
    Jimmie gave a soft smile and both older men remained seated.
    “You boys listen to me,” Hoyt said. “I will cut out my heart and place it here on the table if Bert Fuller and Johnnie Benefield didn’t have something to do with your daddy. Benefield is the most coldhearted, sadistic sonofabitch I’ve ever known.”
     
     
    THEY FOLLOWED A LONG PATH INTO THE WOODS, PUSHING along a fat man in handcuffs, Fuller knocking him in the back of the head with a revolver when he’d slow down. The man wore pressed pants, no shirt, and a tie, his shirt torn away after they’d run his car off the road. Reuben walked between Fuller and Benefield, who wore a brown western suit with gold stitching.
    There was a path, but it hadn’t been trod since hunting season, and Fuller swatted away branches that slapped back and hit Reuben in the face and eyes as he struggled along half drunk on Jack Daniel’s. He still carried the open bottle from Club Lasso, where he’d gotten the call, and quickly met the men in the woods.
    Benefield had worked PC for years and had taken on jobs in Atlantic City and in Tampa for some Italian boys down there. He was a natural-born killer, loved the job, and had killed so many in Phenix City that Reuben had lost count. Benefield and Fuller were as thick as thieves, and, under Fuller’s protection, Benefield could do about whatever he wanted. The man’s eyes were black and