Fannie, still as nude as a jaybird, lifted her arms up in the weak light of the Capitol Motel neon sign and played with and straightened her red hair, still stiff with spray. She cocked a hip and smoked a cigarette, looking down at the huge man watching a kids’ show, a glass of Jack Daniel’s in his hand.
“What do you say, Governor? You gonna give Phenix a break?”
“Sure thing, baby. Whatever you want.”
She moved over to the TV and pushed in the knob. The shooting and yelling stopped and the screen went dark.
“Now, why’d you do that, baby?”
She kept the cigarette in her mouth, hands on her hips, and stuck her big chest out. “Figured we need to talk a little.”
“I told you not to worry. Them boys will be out of Phenix City before I even take my oath.”
“Your friend Bert Fuller is gonna fall hard.”
“He didn’t kill Patterson.”
“I want your word you’ll get those troops out of Phenix.”
“Let them make their arrests and give a little show.”
“What about Fuller?”
“There is no one in their right mind who would testify against Bert. I have it on rock-solid authority that Bernard Sykes will never make a case for the Patterson killing. Hell, he has about fifty investigators who can’t even turn up a witness. What are the chances of them finding one now?”
“You think you can talk to Mr. Sykes? Get him thinking about his future in politics?”
“I better leave that one alone, sweetie.”
“You wanna bet?”
Fannie opened up the bedspread and crawled inside, laying her body across Big Jim and moving herself against him. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
“You don’t tire much, do you?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I guess I never get tired of bourbon and pussy.”
“That’s why you’ll always have my vote, Governor.”
Big Jim leaned back and Fannie straddled him, as he hummed the opening notes to Gene Autry’s theme song.
QUINNIE KELLEY STOPPED BY AFTER SUPPER, MAYBE A week after those first raids. He was sweating and hatless, and it was one of those hot summer nights where the temperature only seemed to grow in the darkness. I invited him in, but he shook his head and wanted to talk outside. So I walked him around back, near the shed and Joyce’s beauty shop, and we sat at a little picnic bench right near my canvas heavy bag.
Quinnie took off his glasses and cleaned them on the lip of his light green shirt and put them back on his face. He put his hands in the little pockets of his pants and rocked back on his heels, looking down into the dirt.
“You got something to tell me, Quinnie?”
The night air was filled with night sounds, and among the crickets and cicadas, head still down, Quinnie told me that he was sorry. He said he’d lied.
“I did see someone that night Mr. Patterson was killed.”
I waited.
“I seen a man come around the back of the post office and cross Fourteenth. I was standing right on the stoop of the courthouse, on account of making sure they was done with that Boy Scouts meeting. But I don’t think he saw me ’cause I’d just cut off the lights. He passed right in front of my face, right on the courthouse lawn, and ran around back behind to the jail.”
I rubbed my face and massaged my wrist, which had grown sore from a loose punch on the heavy bag. I walked over to it and let it rock on its chain, and it groaned and squeaked with its weight and gently pushed back on me.
“You see his face?”
He nodded, staring up at me. His face filmed with a light, sweaty sheen. “I haven’t been able to sleep. I prayed about this. I talked to my wife and my minister. Don’t get me wrong, I never met a fella more evil in my life than Bert Fuller. But when I heard y’all was about to charge him with murder, well-”
“Who was it, Quinnie?”
“Ferrell.”
Quinnie stood before me and shook, his glasses fogged from the humidity. But he held his ground and returned my stare.
“You can’t be sure of that. Can you, Quinnie?”
“I heard them shots. I thought they was kids playing with firecrackers, but not ten seconds later did I see Mr. Ferrell in an all-out run pass right in front of my face.”
“You sure it was Arch Ferrell?”
He nodded.
“Will you testify to that?”
Quinnie looked away for a moment. In the little back window of my house, I could see Joyce and Anne doing the dishes. One of my neighbors played a ball game on the radio.
“If they let me live,” Quinnie said. “What are the chances of that?”
“I want you to do me a favor.”
“Anything,” Quinnie said, hitching up his pants and standing as tall as Quinnie Kelley could ever stand.
“I don’t want you to tell a soul what you told me tonight.”
His face dropped.
“You’re not hearing me,” I said. “Just keep it to yourself until the time is right. And when it is, I’ll protect you.”
“How you gonna do that, Mr. Murphy?”
I looked away. I shrugged and put my hand down on his shoulder. “I guess I’ll figure it out.”
BERT FULLER HAD TOLD EVERYONE THAT HE WAS INNOCENT, but not a damn person would listen. He knew what people had been sayin’ about Arch Ferrell protecting him, but that was the biggest dang lie that had ever been told. Arch Ferrell thought just because he was a college boy, a war hero, and his daddy was a judge, that he couldn’t be soiled. But Judgment Day would be comin’ on that man’s soul, and all the stones he’d been throwin’ wouldn’t protect him a lick. When Phenix came a-tumblin’ down, every finger came pointing at the sheriff and his right-hand man, because that was easy. Those newspapermen couldn’t know what it was like to keep order in a town like Phenix. Sure, he’d kept a little nut away for himself, but he’d deserved it, trying to keep those Machine boys in line. It would take a powerful man to try and walk a mile in his boots.
Fuller finished up adding some clean shirts, blue jeans, and underwear to his old leather suitcase, and tossed in his pearl-handled.357s and his family’s King James Bible. On last thought, he grabbed the framed picture of him with Lash LaRue and buckled it closed. He buttoned his shirt, put on his boots, and tried on his Stetson hat.
It was midnight and time to get the hell out of Dodge. He wasn’t taking the rap for this mess.
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.”