Mickey struggled to fix focus, asking, “Is something wrong, Pop?”
“Authorization signed by Alice Buckingham, as clear as can be to let you go about our business, but the handwriting, that’s something else again. Her handwriting was always as distinctive as her signature, any time I saw it, so I’m ready to swear it on your dear mother’s gravestone that we just said goodbye to Diana Demarest.”
Mickey was discharged from Cedars-Sinai the next morning. Murray drove them to the house in Atwater.
There was a FOR LEASE sign posted on the parkway lawn. No evidence inside of its most recent occupant.
The next stop was the storage garage.
There was no space with the numbers indicated in the letter of authorization. No record of any space ever having been rented to anyone named Alice Buckingham.
Forbes Coopersmith took Mickey’s call on what was either the seventh or eighth try. He was cordial and polite while advising him, “My client’s changed her mind about your show. Your advance in full will be in the mail to you by the end of the week.”
For months afterward, Mickey startled himself awake in the middle of the night, always trying to hold on to his recurring dream about Diana Demarest, believing the dream held the key to her disappearance, but the dream always evaporated—
As Diana Demarest had.
The Road to Memphis
by L. A. Wilson, Jr.
Travis Redmond awakened to the heat of the midday sun whose rays had burned through the early morning mist. Its blinding brilliance ravished his face for several minutes, causing him to shift his position in an effort to avoid the discomfort. He rolled his shoulder against the unexpected hardness of the adjacent wall and flinched in response to an intense pain followed by a shaking chill. He reached for a blanket that was not there. A sticky wetness on his skin disturbed and perplexed him. He strained against heavy eyelids and was assailed by the realization that he was not in bed but lying on concrete in a pool of blood — his blood.
Memphis Red watched Ray Mayweather from across the dimly lit expanse of the musty dance hall. They called it The Pines — a glorified juke joint just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. The forlorn twang of country rhythms reverberated off the walls. Ray was draping himself over a melancholy blonde woman who seemed less than thrilled to be the object of his affection.
He waited until the beer began needling Ray’s bladder to make his move.
“What would it take for a woman like you to dance with an old cowboy like me?” he asked.
The woman’s eyes smiled upward at him, and she teased him with contrived reluctance.
“You ain’t no cowboy,” she chuckled. “And you damn sure ain’t old.”
“Will you dance with me anyway?”
“I’m waiting on somebody,” she replied softly, as a barely perceptible shadow seemed to creep into her mood.
“That beer will keep him peeing for the next half hour. The song will be over by then.”
Her smile returned and quickly progressed into a laugh as she took his hand and stood.
The woman settled in against him more quickly than he had expected. She molded the full length of her body to his as they swayed to the mournful strains of the music.
“Doesn’t that fellow know that you’re too beautiful to be left alone?”
“You trying to come on to me?” she asked playfully.
“Yeah.”
“Hmmmph, just asking,” she replied.
“What the hell are you doin’!?”
The unexpected outburst unnerved the woman, and she turned anxious eyes toward its source. Ray Mayweather stood in the middle of the dance floor, wavering unsteadily from the effects of his last ten beers. She stiffened and moved away from Memphis. Her face tightened at Ray’s abrupt hostility.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Ray asked again. “Get the hell away from him!”
Ray savagely grasped the woman’s arm.
That was all that Memphis needed. He grabbed Ray’s right wrist and twisted it until he heard the bone pop. Ray howled in pain, but Memphis wouldn’t release his arm. He twisted it back under his shoulder blade, forcing Ray to the floor. As he crumpled, Memphis straightened the arm and forced it across his knee. It either broke or dislocated at the elbow, not that it mattered. He wasn’t through yet. He seized the helpless man’s left arm and dragged him back to his knees. Ray could only moan in protest. Memphis jerked him harshly, then tried to sling him across the dance floor. He landed on his face with both arms twisted at awkward and unnatural angles.
“You want me to go with you?” the woman asked as Memphis walked away.
“Hell no.” Memphis’s answer was terse and unemotional. The response had been calculated, and he didn’t bother to look at her again as he walked out into the warm Carolina night. He had done everything he needed to do for the moment.
“Memphis Red, hmmph.” Rufus Johnson looked the well-dressed redhead up and down. “When did you start callin’ yourself that? I remember folks callin’ you Ahoskie Red.”
“Things change,” Memphis replied.
“I guess they do,” Rufus observed as he scrutinized Memphis’s expensive suit. “I guess Ahoskie was too small a town to be the nickname of an important gentleman like you, or did it tell too much about you? Why you wanna know about Angus Haynes anyway?”
“Just curious.”
“Sure, Angus Haynes killed his wife. Beat her to death in broad daylight right in front of the courthouse.”
“How’d he get away with that?” Memphis unconsciously brushed the lint from the lapels of his double-breasted suit as he spoke.
“Everybody said she fell down the steps and hit her head,” Rufus answered.
“Everybody?” Memphis’s intense green eyes seemed to question Rufus’s veracity.
“Killin’ women and niggers ain’t never been a serious crime down here, Red. Killin’ don’t mean nothin’ unless you kill somebody important. What’s it to you anyway?”
“It’s nothing to me, but hell, it’s 1958. Times are changing. It ought to be important to all of y’all who have to live down here with his sorry ass.”
“Like that don’t happen up in New York.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, you need to get your ass back to New York,” Rufus suggested. “Ain’t nothin’ for you down here but trouble, and if you get in trouble you won’t have no friends — not the law, the church, lawyers, nobody.”
Memphis turned to meet Rufus’s eyes again.
“What about you, Rufus?”
“I ain’t got no white friends, Red,” he answered succinctly. Memphis nodded his understanding of the remark. For a fleeting second he considered making a retort, but it would have been wasted. Being colored in the South required survival skills, and picking friends wisely was an essential part of it.
“Hello, cowboy.”
Memphis stood in response to the soft intrusion of the female voice before looking for its owner.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” she continued.
“The only restaurant in town,” he explained casually. “Where else you gonna get breakfast?”
His hand made an inviting gesture toward an empty adjacent chair, and she accepted.
“I mean I’m surprised that you’re still in town after what you did to Ray.”
“I don’t suspect that Ray is in any condition to object. Do you?”
“Ray has friends,” the woman said.
“Are you one of them?” he asked.