“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.”
19
REUBEN DROVE DOWN to Panama City Beach, Florida, one morning in late October, turned in to the Flamingo Motel just around two and parked right in the vacant lot, knowing the beach was a hell of a place when summer died. He killed the Buick’s engine and combed his hair in the rearview, knocking on the door that Johnnie had told him to, right next to the ice machine. The whole motel built of cinder blocks and painted a bright pink, with a big old sign outside with a flamingo in front of a palm tree. Reuben knocked again and heard some movement inside, and the door gave. He stepped back a little.
The door creaked wide open to the cooling breeze off the ocean in the dead motel and the hum of the ice machine.
Reuben pulled out the.38 from the flat of his back and toed the door, opening it wider, and saw a flame kick up in the darkness. Johnnie Benefield, with no shirt and a pair of swim trunks, fanned out the match and showed the palms of his hands, “No tricks, okay?”
“Stand up,” Reuben said.
Johnnie did and he turned around like a little girl in a recital.
“Who’s in the toilet?”
“Nobody.”
“Where’s Fannie?”
“Working on her tan.”
“A little cold for that.”
“Fannie’s a brave woman. Now close the door and let’s talk.”
There was a little table by the plateglass window; big, heavy plastic curtains shut tight. Reuben walked inside and then past Johnnie – but still watching Johnnie – and checked the crapper and behind the shower curtain.
“You are a riddle.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Johnnie said.
“I drove all morning, didn’t I?”
Reuben took a seat. Johnnie plunked down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two of those little motel glasses. He cracked open the fresh bottle, still in the sack, and pushed an ice bucket forward.
“You want some ice?”
Reuben shook his head.
“Go get my fucking money,” Johnnie said.
“I didn’t bring it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Reuben took a sip and tossed him the keys to the Buick. “Check for yourself.”
He shook his head. “You dumb sonofabitch. Where is it?”
“I haven’t touched it since the night we robbed Hoyt. Scouts’ honor.”
Johnnie stubbed out his cigarette and took a seat across from Reuben at the tiny motel table. “Did you know that Fannie sunbathes with no top on? She doesn’t care who sees her, and if some maid or someone says something to her she’ll tell them to eat shit. You don’t believe me, look outside and you can see her big titties from here.”
“I didn’t get the money ’cause I can’t get to it. Every damn move, I’m bein’ watched. I’ve been in jail for four days. Lamar Murphy is riding my ass.”
Johnnie smiled, those big teeth showing like a hick car salesman’s. “I don’t believe a goddamn word you say. I’ll ask you again, where is my fucking money?”
Reuben poured himself some more Jack Daniel’s. “Can you really see her titties from here?”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Reuben stood and walked to the back of the motel unit, looked out a little square window and saw a redheaded woman in white sunglasses. She was slick with sweat, red lipstick on, and, as advertised, big titties pointing toward the sky. “Well, I’ll be.”
Reuben turned with the glass in hand, and when he fell into a sliver of light from those big plastic drapes Johnnie had a gun on him. It was a.38 just like Reuben’s. Everybody seemed to have.38s.
“What if I decided to paint the fucking wall with your head?”
Reuben walked in front of the mirror and checked his hair again, watching his face, those droopy Mitchum eyes.
“Then you are dumber than I thought. You’ll never be able to cash out.”
The.38 clicked and fell onto a void space in the gun, and Johnnie showed those big old choppers again and said: “Pow!”
THEY TOOK THE BOTTLE AND WANDERED OUT BY THE swimming pool facing the beach, seeing Florida’s Gulf Coast “Famous Sugary Sand,” just like on the billboards. Reuben had also heard it called the “Redneck Riviera,” but it was early fall and the rednecks had all gone, leaving the miniature golf courses, shell shops, and oyster houses empty. And even though Fannie had decided to tan her boobs in the cool air, there was no one around but him and Johnnie to see them.
Reuben walked ahead and Johnnie hung back, finding a place to sit on the diving board. He had the motel glass in his hand and pulled on a pair of black plastic sunglasses, Reuben knowing that Johnnie must’ve thought he looked like a movie star in his head.
Reuben looked down at Fannie, who lay on a pink beach towel protected by a cardboard windscreen, the inside shiny metallic to pull in the sun. With her white sunglasses on, he couldn’t tell if she’d heard him walk up or not until he heard her say, “You’re blocking the sun.”
Reuben looked behind him, squinting, and stepped back.
“You got it?”
“No, ma’am.”
The inside of the silver walls looked like a little nest, with the clear bottle of Johnson’s baby oil and two more pink towels and some copies of movie-star magazines showing off Star of the Year Audrey Hepburn.
“Pull up a seat.”
“You want to put something on?”
“Reuben, how many times have you seen my titties?”
“I don’t reckon I recall.”
“Exactly.”
Fannie’s white skin had grown reddish, her face flushed. She was a curvy woman, with ample hips and just the slightest hint of a belly. She turned to drink a cocktail from the straw, and Reuben noticed her backside was big but nicely shaped. When she finished with the drink, she looked over her shoulder and caught him staring.
“We heard you threw in with Lamar Murphy.”
Reuben laughed. “You lost your mind.”
“Aren’t you two big buddies?”
“Not anymore.”
She nodded and turned back over. “Don’t you hate it when the summer is over and you know everything is going to get all brown and ugly? I try to keep it going for as long as I can. I can tan in this little hotbox all through January. I saw the advertisement in the back of Vogue magazine. It’s all the rage in France.”