Leavin' Trunk Blues (29 page)

Florida sat for a moment at the kitchen table. Her head fell into her hands and her body shook for what seemed like several minutes. Kate looked away. Nick watched her sob as he felt the weight of a woman’s cries in the silent room. He walked over and looked out the leaded glass window to the street below. He saw Kate’s car on the cold, wet streets and the blackened edge of a vacant lot covered in snow.

A hulking man disappeared into the shadows. Nick peered into the night, saw nothing, and walked back in the room.

Florida was crying. The old scars on her cheeks filled with water.

“She’s had it, Florida,” he said. “I think she’s ready to die. So if you don’t want any more regrets than you already have, I say let’s talk.”

“I don’t want this conversation going any further than this here room,” Florida said, wiping away brief tears. “You hear me? I don’t want to be in no paper.”

Florida’s head bent down to her hands. She sat there for a few minutes with her eyes closed. She looked like she was praying. Nick didn’t move. No one spoke.

She began to play with the gold cross around her neck. She tossed the bag of ice into the sink. It made a harsh, cracking noise as it hit.

Florida finally spoke, her voice shaky.

“So long ago,” she whispered. “So long ago.”

She exhaled a long, deep breath.

“The only thing I never figured out was how she did it,” Florida said as she looked down at her linoleum floor and then back at Kate. “We found that man in her bed, but the next day I went to the studio to get some things of Billy’s for Nat and I seen it.”

Nick watched her face, unable to breathe, like she would suddenly stop and change her mind.

“There was blood all over the wall in the recording booth. Big pieces of the wall were chipped away with blood running down its sides like it was crying. Now, why did she move him after killin’ him there?”

Nick gritted his teeth. “You could have told somebody, Florida.”

“I did. I tole that detective man. But he tole me to keep my mouth shut or else he’d get Nat sent down to an orphanage and stick my ass in prison. Me and Nat left the next day for Memphis and didn’t come back to Chicago for ten years.”

Nick looked at Kate: “1 got to find Jimmy.”

Annie glided around the ice rink at Navy Pier and thought this was going to be the best Christmas ever. She darted in and out of a bunch of wobbly kids and sprayed some old coot in a wool hat with ice shavings. Fannie waved to her from the opposite side of the rink where she was doing her Dorothy Hamill twirl and talking to some yuppie dude and his two kids. That girl was always working it. But Peetie was no fun. That dumb-ass was sitting on a park bench blowing on his hands. She wasn’t sure about trusting him, but it could work. Stagger Lee would never suspect a thing. The man was just looking for King to bring the cash and then haul ass to Robert Taylor.

What a gift.

The last Christmas gift she’d gotten was from her mother when she was a kid. Her mother had worked a couple of extra hours bagging groceries so she could buy her three plastic figures: Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio, and that evil Fox guy. Her mother had wrapped them all up in newspaper and tucked them under a bare tree branch. Annie loved those hard, plastic toys. Slept and played with them until their heads fell off.

She wanted something like that again. Something she could love until its head broke. Something like poor old Willie, God rest his soul. She wondered where he was tonight, was he thinking about her? She tried not to cry as she gave a good run on the blades and then flew around a curve by the Crystal Gardens. She shot a bird to Peetie and kept going around.

Maybe since they were coming into all this cash, she should get Fannie something like thongs and a box of jawbreakers. Or a pack of Bubblicious and a tiara. She remembered Fannie pointing one out in a magazine and saying that thing would make her feel like a princess.

On the next loop, she passed Fannie and told her she was going to take a break. Fannie gave a lazy grin and kept giggling at something the rich white dude said. Annie skated up onto a blade-scarred piece of plywood and walked on quivering heels to a bench. Peetie strolled over with another one of those stinky cigars in his mouth. She stared up at the huge Ferris wheel looming over his head.

“Glad you got wise,” Peetie said as the park lights glowed around them in the deep blackness. The snow had piddled down to some grainy microflakes. “Seem like the only thang you two got. Right? Stagger Lee’s old. He ain’t gonna get no sweeter deal than the one he got in Robert Taylor. Ain’t the ole days no more. He don’t have the sense to start over. It’s like this old goat–”

Annie held up her hand. “Cool it. I got it.”

“Girl, you ain’t got nothin’. You even look at that man wrong–”

“Listen, you’re not even going to be there. Let me and Fannie handle Stagger Lee.”

“He ain’t going for that circus sex thang. He’s the one who taught you that trick.”

“That’s not what I have in mind.”

“Then you mind tellin’ me what y’all gonna do?”

“We wait till King gives him the money, then we shoot him.”

“Here?” Peetie asked as they sat sandwiched between blasting lights of Chicago and the cold black lake stretching for an eternity beyond them. The wind was a son of a bitch on that little piece of land sticking out into the water.

“Why not? Annie asked, slipping off her skates. “We get the cash and get gone. Nobody will shed a tear for him, ‘specially the cops.”

Peetie rubbed his mustache like he was thinking. “And why didn’t you do that before, Miss Annie?”

“ ‘Cause we just got a king-size reason,” she said.

“Ooh, well, well,” Peetie said. “Work with me, Annie. Work with me, Annie.”

Annie rubbed Peetie’s face like he was an old cat. If there came time, she’d kill him too, especially if he got too close to the money. Without Butcher Knife-Totin’ Annie and Fast-Fuckin’ Fannie, he was nothin’ but an old cockroach.

Fannie sat down beside her, all out of breath. She slipped off her skates and grabbed Annie’s. She reached into her purse, pulled out a compact mirror, and checked her lips.

“That man said he’d give me two hundred to go in the bathroom with him.”

“What about his kids?” Annie asked.

“What you think they got a playground for?”

Fannie walked back to return the skates and Peetie took a seat. He puffed the cigar into the snowy wind as a man on a loudspeaker called out that the rink was about to close.

In a few minutes, Fannie walked back and sat down. She had on the cutest cheetah-print hat she’d ever seen. They bought it over at Urban Outfitters after they rode the El back from the South Side.

“I’m with you, Peetie, but Fannie … See, Fannie ain’t so sure. She kind of believes Stagger Lee can’t die. Kind of like a ghost or that thing if you cut off its head, it grows three new ones.”

Fannie tossed her hair behind her shoulder: “I’m serious. I don’t want that motherfucker coming after me. I love myself too much for that.”

Annie looked over at Peetie and shrugged.

“You know how much money King gonna have tonight?” Peetie asked.

“Yeah, we know,” Annie said.

“Little man, you think we ain’t thought about this already,” Fannie said. “You know Stagger Lee once beat me with a tire iron ‘cause I kept ten dollars from him. This ain’t no revelation.”

“What about the money?” Annie asked. “This could be the way. This could be it, Fannie.”

Fannie watched the yuppie guy disappear with his kids and then reached deep into her shopping bag. She pulled out a long, flat box covered in reindeer wrapping paper. Annie felt her fingers tremble as she took the gift and tore into the box. Inside lay the most beautiful butcher knife she had ever seen. Chicago Cutlery. High carbon stainless steel.

Annie squealed and gave Fannie a big hug. “So, we’ll do it?” she asked.

Fannie nodded and smacked her gum.

“Willie Two,” Annie said, examining the blade.

“But what if King brings his own help?” Fannie asked.

“Like who?” Peetie said, twisting up his face. “That old man ain’t got the guts to get mean. Besides, he bring someone and then they know his business, and King don’t want no part of that. That’s like pissin’ in the punch bowl and tellin’ your guests.”

Dirty Jimmy looked stone-cold tired in the lobby of the ragged brick motel near Forty-seventh Street where he lived. He’d sunk his old frame into a ratty plaid sofa, smoking filterless Lucky Strikes and calling out the answers to
Jeopardy
. The coathanger antenna on the fuzzy Zenith caught and sputtered a signal making Alex Trebek’s face look green. Didn’t seem to matter to Jimmy, he was on a roll with Potent Potables. He kept bragging all that time in bars was finally paying off.

“No, no, no,” he shouted, smiling a scruffy toothless grin. “That’s a goddamned mint julep. Man said it had mint in it. What is a mint julep? Shit! That woman ain’t never touched alcohol. Must be a Baptist.”

“Hey, man,” Nick said, taking a seat beside him on the couch. Yellowed foam sprouted from its holes. The room was as cold as a mausoleum and smelled like Lysol and old lettuce. “We need to talk.”

“Yeah, all right,” Jimmy said, still staring at the television set. “Ain’t no use in trying to talk to these folks. They don’t listen. You want to tell me how you make an old-fashioned without Bourbon?”

“Can’t do it.”

“1 know you can’t do it,” Jimmy said. “See, Trebek likes to drink. That’s why I believe him when he acts like he knows the answers. The only thing I don’t like is that you never see black people on here. Why’s that? I could be on
Jeopardy
. But 1 don’t have the look. You got to be white and have the personality of a dildo.”

Nick tapped Jimmy on the shoulder. “I brought a friend with me. We wanted to talk to you a little more about the night Billy Lyons died.”

Kate sat down in a chair beside them. She had a notebook in her hand and leaned forward listening, her hair dropping across her face like a veil. Jimmy smiled when he noticed her in the warm glow of the television.

“Say, man, this yore woman?” Jimmy asked.

“Friend,” Kate said, looking over at Nick. She arched her eyebrow and patted Nick’s leg. “He wishes, Jimmy. No … he’s still dating his right hand.”

Jimmy rolled with laughter in the old lobby. The sound of his cackling warmed the dark, cracked edges of the old brick building and down through the caged reception desk. There was a half-eaten can of pork and beans on the table. A thin layer of gelatin on the top like this wasn’t the first time he had opened the can.

“Say, man,” Jimmy said, his face clouded with cigarette smoke, “I got a friend like that and I’d never leave the house.”

“That’s a nice shirt,” Kate said. “Where did you get it?”

“Maxwell Street,” Jimmy said, absently looking at the image of Olive Oyl giving Popeye a blow job. It read well, blow me down, olive. “It’s just funnin’, ma’am. I can change it.”

“Then you wouldn’t be Dirty Jimmy.”

“Well, no, ma’am,” he said, looking down at the dusty floor. “Guess I wouldn’t.”

Jimmy smiled, stubbed out the cigarette in a tin ashtray, and looked over at Nick. “You bring any more whiskey? Love that black Jack.”

“So do I. Man, I need some direction,” Nick said. He put his elbows on his knees, the material of his 501s frayed at the edges. “Okay? You were there the night Lyons died; you were recording with King. Did you give Ruby a ride home from the Palm Tavern later that night?”

“On what, my bicycle?” Jimmy asked. “Or in my Rolls-Royce?”

“How’d she get home?”

“She was to’ up. I think King helped her home. Probably tryin’ to get a little sweet on the side. Man, he had a thang for that woman. Man, his Alabama ass had just dreamed about a woman like that in the glow of a jukebox. Ruby could do that to you. Her voice was like sweet, sweet, cherry wine.”

“Let’s go back,” Nick said. “The day of September twenty- second, 1959. What were you doing?”

He placed the tape recorder in front of him, but Jimmy continued to be hypnotized by the television. “Aw, man, medieval history. 1 don’t know jack shit ‘bout no knights.”

Nick looked at Kate and could tell she was trying not to crack a smile. She turned down the volume on the television.

Just as they had Jimmy’s attention, it sounded like someone was dancing upstairs. Jimmy reached for a broom handle, stood, and poked the ceiling.

“Shut up, shut up,” Jimmy said. “Goddamn Indians. Cookin’ some cats up there. Cookin’ curry that make your eyes water.”

Jimmy ran his hands over his T-shirt like he had pockets and Nick reached into his jacket for a pack of Marlboros. He lit another cigarette with his stainless-steel lighter and handed it to Jimmy. The old man settled back into the musty couch.

“I thought I told you this shit the other night?” he asked.

“You passed out,” Nick said.

“Oh yeah,” he said, laughing. “Well, all right. Let’s see, I told you about Ruby waving a gun around and all that mess. Let’s see. You know, Billy stayed upstairs in the studio. He used to walk back and forth. Go up and down to get somethin’ to eat or make a call. We was recordin’ Elmore. Last song for King Snake.”