Dixie City Jam

Then, with Bobo under the table and the cop drawing his weapon, Tommy went through the curtained hallway behind him, stepped inside the men's room, and bolted the door.

For some reason he did it in a toilet stall, seated on top of the stool, with his trousers still on, the revolver pointed awkwardly toward his throat. The impact of the round wedged his head into the corner of the stall; the recoil sent the.38 skittering in a red trail across the tiles; the hemorrhage from the wound covered his chest like a scarlet bib. Later the coroner lifted the gold chain from his neck with a fountain pen. Attached to it were a lead- colored army dog tag and a small gold boxing glove from the Golden Gloves of 1951.

I wondered if Tommy heard the roar of the crowd just as his thumb tightened inside the trigger housing, or the echo of Chinese bugles and small arms through a frozen arroyo, or perhaps the squeal of an ice truck's brakes on a street full of children in the Channel; or if he stared into the shadows, seeking the epiphany that had always eluded him, and saw only more shadows and motes of spinning dust and the graffiti scratched into the paint on the door, until he realized, just as the hammer snapped down on the brass cartridge, that the eruption of pain and fear and blood in his chest was simply the terminus of an ongoing war that he had waged for a lifetime against his own heart.

Later I mentioned my thoughts to Hippo.

'Don't complicate that dumb mick, Dave. He even screwed up his own suicide,' he answered. Then, with his face turned so I couldn't see his eyes, 'He apologized before he checked out. Just him and me in the room. Just like when we were boys.'

And he walked away.

chapter thirty-one

The music store was located between an auto garage and a boarded-up cafe on a nondescript street north of Biloxi. It was still raining; only two cars were parked on the street, and the sidewalks were empty. A block farther north, there was a string of gray clapboard and Montgomery Ward brick houses, their lawns choked with weeds. A neon beer sign burned in the gloom above a pool hall that had virtually no patrons. The street reminded me of a painting I had once seen by Adolf Hitler; it contained buildings but no people. It was the kind of neighborhood where one's inadequacies would never find harsh comparisons.

Was this music store, with cracked and taped windows, moldy cardboard cartons piled by the front door, the headquarters of Will Buchalter, a mail who moved like a political disease through a dozen countries?

I remembered a story about the Israeli agents who captured Adolf Eichmann as he was returning from his job in an automobile plant somewhere in South America. One of the agents was young and could not quite accept the fact that he was now face-to-face with the man who had murdered his parents.

'What job do you perform at the auto plant?' he asked.

'I'm one of the chrome polishers. We polish all the chrome surfaces on the new automobiles,' Eichmann answered.

According to the story, the agent began to weep.

The door to the store was locked, but I could see a man moving around behind a counter. The wind was blowing a wet, acrid stench through the space between the buildings. I tapped on the glass.

The man inside waved his hand negatively. I tapped again. He walked toward me, saying the word Closed so I could read his lips. He wore a sleeveless flannel shirt and black jeans that sculpted his sex. His blond hair was coated and waved with gel, his white arms wrapped with tattoos of green and red dragons.

I shook the doorknob when he tried to walk away.

'I'm a friend of Will's,' I said.

'He's gone,' the man said through the glass.

'Open up. I've got to leave him a message.'

'Sorry, we're closed. I don't know how else to say it.'

'Where's Marie?'

'Come back Monday,' he said, and dropped the Venetian blinds down the glass.

I got back in my truck and drove three blocks up the street. Then I circled back, parked at the end of the alley, and walked toward the rear of the store under the eaves of the buildings. A rusted-out trash barrel was smoldering in the rain, and again I smelled a moist, acrid odor that was like the smell of a dead bat in an incinerator.

Just as I reached inside my raincoat for my.45, he stepped out the back door with a sack of trash in his hands. I slipped my hand back out of my coat and fixed a button with it.

'What's with you?' he said.

'I got to be back at the halfway house by dark, you hear what I'm saying?'

'No.'

'Maybe you think you're doing your job, but you're starting to piss me off,' I said.

'Excuse me.'

'Look, I was supposed to connect with him when I got out. I just had six fucking years of putting up with smart-ass watermelon pickers. I'm begging you, buddy, don't fuck up my day any worse than it already has been.'

'All right, I'm sorry, but it don't change anything. I got to lock up. Will ain't here. Okay? See the man Monday.'

He dropped the paper bag into the trash barrel and turned to go back inside. I shoved him hard between the shoulder blades, followed him inside, and laid the muzzle of the.45 against the back of his neck.

'Get down on your knees,' I said.

'I don't know who you are but-'

'You've got a serious hearing problem,' I said, kicked him behind the knee, and pushed him into the counter. His eyes widened with pain when his knees hit the floor.

'Where is he?' I said.

'He don't tell me that kind of stuff. I work for him, he don't work for me. Who are you, man?'

'What do you care, as long as you get to live?'

'I just finished a bit myself. Why you twisting me? Take your shit to Will.'

'But you're the only guy around,' I said. 'Which means you're all out of luck.'

I pulled my cuffs off my belt and hooked up his wrists. He was facedown now, his eyelids fluttering against the dust and oil on the floor. The rain and the smoke from the trash barrel blew through the back door.

'What's that smell?' I said.

He bit down on his bottom lip.

I glanced around the store. The interior was cluttered with boxes of old seventy-eight records. In one corner was a glassed-in sound booth with an instrument panel and an elevated microphone inside. A mop inside a pail of dirty water was propped against a closed side door. I pulled back the slide on the.45 and eased a round into the chamber.

'I bought this in Bring Cash Alley in Saigon for twenty-five dollars,' I said. 'No registration, completely cold, you get my drift?'

His eyes squeezed shut, then opened again. 'Don't do this to me, man. Please,' he said.

My hand was tight and sweating on the knurled grips of the.45. I looked through the front window at the rain falling in the street. In the distance a stuck car horn was blaring, a stabbing, unrelieved sound in the inner ear like fingernails on a blackboard.

I eased the hammer back into place, clicked on the safety, and slipped the.45 back into my belt holster.

'I'm a police officer,' I said. 'Do you believe me when I say that?'

'Bust me. I ain't arguing.'

'But I'm beyond my parameters here. Do you know what that means?'

His eyes were filled with confusion.