“Well, wait for me in the lobby, punk. Be through in a second. Antoine here decided to fuck me one time too many. Time to get my money back.”
Abby took a seat in front of a huge plate glass window with a view looking onto the gray coldness of the jail. She was wearing a pair of jogging pants I bought for her in the hotel lobby and another one of my T-shirts.
Outside, cops and worn-out families milled about. A couple of women dressed in pleather pants and halters walked by the glass window with a cold, indifferent affection.
“How do you know this guy?”
“Played football together. He was my roommate on road trips.”
“What can he do?” Abby asked.
“He knows about every cop and federal agent in town.”
Abby was quiet for a moment and picked up an old copy of Black Belt magazine. Chuck Norris was on the cover. Dressed as a cowboy. Kicking some poor bastard in the nuts.
Twenty minutes later, U walked back from the jail where he had deposited the kid. He was rubbing his hands together as if he’d finished cleaning the kitchen.
“Come on back,” he said, taking off his jacket.
Abby found a seat by the desk. I stood. The patchouli continued to burn although Roberts had finished. Now, the stereo played selections from Carmen.
“Last night, I drove out to a casino in Tunica.”
“Figured you would after I ran that plate. Now you wanna tell me why?”
“Looking for a man named Clyde James. Some security guards from the casino had been looking for him, too.”
“Why do you care?”
“He was a big-time soul singer in the ‘sixties.”
“New project?”
“He’s Loretta’s brother.”
“Mmm-hmm,” U said, rubbing his goatee. “And she’s worried.”
“While I was there, I met Miss Abby here. A woman had kidnapped her and taken her to the casino.”
“Which one?”
“Magnolia Grand.”
“I see. I see.”
“While I was getting her out, I killed a man.”
“Ain’t your line of work, is it, Travers?”
“I want to set it right. Where do we go? I don’t want to go back to that place half-assed.”
U nodded. He folded his massive arms – veined and corded – across his chest. “Tunica is a hell of a place.”
“You know what we’ve stepped into?”
“Looks like, brother, you’ve just landed in a steaming pile of the Dixie Mafia.”
I blew out my breath.
“Oh, yeah,” U said. “Buckle your ass up.”
Chapter 17
Perfect Leigh hated rich fucks in blue blazers and khakis. And today, she was surrounded by them. Seemed like all the men she saw thought they wouldn’t be admitted into the damned football game if they didn’t dress alike. She hated the way they waddled because they were full of scotch and the way they held Confederate flags in their hands and gave the ole Rebel yell to passing friends. She was tired of watching them and their female counterparts in flowered dresses and straw hats wander through this oak-shaded part of the Ole Miss campus called The Grove, eating barbecue from toothpicks and finger sandwiches taken from black men dressed in tuxedos as if the ‘fifties never ended.
While she sat on the warm hood of her Mustang and waited for Ransom, she tried to figure out who was worse, the men or the women. The men were just plain pathetic, gawking at her in her red leather pants and leather halter. They didn’t seem to care if their wives were hanging on their arms or if they were holding their kids’ hands. The women were just outright hypocrites, boobs hoisted high in Wonderbras and reeking of perfume, as they scowled at her or pointed from loose circles and laughed.
At least Perfect knew who she was. She didn’t pretend to be an adoring wife, a concerned mother, or proud girlfriend. Perfect Leigh was Perfect Leigh. One hundred and twenty pounds of pure feminine power. She didn’t need a mask or a label. She felt her power and was damned proud of it.
Two black men carrying silver serving trays passed her. One just growled his approval, “Mmm-mmm.” A fat white man in a suit and crooked baseball hat licked his lips, and quickly looked away. Two fraternity boys passing a flask between them about fell over themselves as she recrossed her long legs and looked at her watch.
Her hair fell in loose curls over her head, styled and bleached back to platinum. Cost two hundred bucks and the outfit pushed the hell out of a thousand. She deserved it. Sometimes you had to give yourself a little present every once in a while, to let yourself know you were doing a hell of a job at life.
This time eight years ago, she’d just left Clarksdale after winning the Coahoma County Cotton Queen contest. Then, the possibilities were limitless: sleep with the county judge (a fat-necked man who owned several local gins), go to work trying to bring tourism to a dying downtown, or make some high-dollar bucks stripping in Memphis.
Her mother didn’t seem to care as long as her daughter finally got famous and ended up on one of her soaps. She always pointed to Soap Opera Digest in the checkout line of the Winn-Dixie and said, “Your beautiful little face will end up right there.”
But her mother didn’t know how the world worked. She hid behind a sickeningly large rack of Disney movies and a jelly jar collection of famous cartoon characters. Hell, she named her daughter Perfect because of a stupid mistake. She told Perfect when she was a kid that she’d heard the name in this Rolling Stone song. Said it went, “I saw Perfect-Ly at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand” and that’s not even the way it went. It was, “I saw her today.” How the hell did she hear Perfectly from that?
When Perfect finally heard the song, she was already in high school. Some dorky pothead made her listen to the real version in his crappy van airbrushed with Viking scenes. When it was finally confirmed that her mother was an idiot, her world changed.
She had thought her name was for a purpose, and that it would lead to greater things. But when that didn’t make sense, she thought maybe her whole life would follow into the septic tank. So a couple months later, after graduation and the whole Cotton Queen thing, she ended up moving to Panama City Beach and taking a job at a wacky golf course and bar that featured wet T-shirt contests every Wednesday.
That’s where she met this grifter named Jake, the man she’d lost her virginity to at the Flamingo Motel. Within two weeks she’d moved to Biloxi and he began teaching her about faking out old folks as bank examiners, working Pigeon Drops on rednecks at check cashing businesses, and trying out the Sweetheart Swindle on horny old men who had loads of cash.
She was a natural, Jake said. Of course, he loved everything she did. But she was good. Even as a child, she knew just little changes in mannerisms could make people react in a whole different way. Like that one time when she was at summer camp and started speaking in an English accent telling everyone she was a baroness. Everyone, including several counselors, believed her until one called her mother and spoiled the fun.
But she’d learned from Jake that it was more than the voice. It was the eyes and the shoulders and the way you held your hands. “Everybody wears a mask,” Jake said one night at Wintzell’s in Mobile after they took a bank president for two grand. “Everyone is an actor. See that man? He’s the hard-working father. See that woman? She’s the loving granny who spoils those kids. And him? That man is the funny guy that everyone loves to know ’cause he don’t know shit about himself. See?”
And she did see. Jake showed her all of them. He showed her every species that existed in the world. Probably would have married that smart bastard, too, if he hadn’t tried to cross Levi Ransom and disappeared into
