the parking lot of a Sears.
But she grew to love Ransom, too. Or wear the mask that loved Ransom. It was self-preservation and truly a tribute to that ole boy Jake. He would’ve appreciated it.
As the P.A. system started droning out today’s roster from the stadium, Perfect looked down at the wonderful slickness of her new nails. The sounds of The Grove coming back into her ears as the heat from the fall sun baked the red hood of her Mustang.
“Start talkin’,” Ransom said. She looked up and there he stood all weathered and styled like Kris Kristofferson with his shoulder-length gray hair and whiskey-soaked voice. He dressed more like a golf pro than the head of a bunch of good-ole-boy cutthroats. Wrinkled linen shirt, blue trousers, and loafers without socks.
“I want in,” she said, biting off a stray cuticle. “I want that man.”
“Get over it.”
“I want him to hurt bad.”
“Perfect, you don’t kill people,” he said, looking at the crowd milling toward the stadium like goats through a chute. “You have your talents and others have theirs. Really, I need to get back to my guests.”
“Levi, you hate those fucks. Don’t tell me you don’t.”
He gave a weathered grin. That’s the one thing she’d never fake about liking. Levi Ransom looked as if he’d lived his life twice and on the third time around would just sit back and watch everybody fuck up.
Behind him, she saw loose groups of women in straw hats and more dorks in ties and khakis under a funeral tent.
“Let me go,” she said, reaching out and touching his pocket. “I want to learn.”
“I don’t know this boy,” Ransom said finally after rubbing his beard and taking a seat beside her on the car hood. “Heard he’s got a mile of experience but kind of cocked in the head. You don’t understand that part of the business, hon. These folks get off on watchin’ people bleed. They’re kind of like baseball players. Real shootin’ stars. Burn out real fast.”
“Who is he?” she asked.
“First time we used him. Said he knows the man we’re looking for and can take him out quick. Good references from Vegas.”
“Let me in with him,” she said, looking sad and poking out her lower lip. Then she looked into his eyes. More serious. Pressing.
He grinned: “I don’t know you.”
“I don’t know you,” she said back.
“Memphis. Hell, go. Call C. J. from there and he’ll tell you what you need.”
She slid off the hood of the car and planted her Manolo Blahnik stilettos in the grass. She winked at Ransom and said, “We had a hell of a time for a while. Didn’t we?”
“We did.”
“What happened?”
“You grew up,” Ransom said, giving what Jake would have called the Wistful Face. Better times, an older, wiser man that had seen it all. He almost had her until that phony-ass move.
As he turned to go back to the funeral tent and his new collection of friends, a guy with thinning brown hair and a square jaw walked over and clasped his hand on Ransom’s shoulder. The man was in his late forties or early fifties. Handsome in kind of a large-teeth, big smile sort of way. He was trim and tan and wore a black Polo shirt and bone-colored pants. A silver Rolex dangled loose on his wrist.
“Thank you, Levi,” the man said with authority. He gave the ole two-hand handshake and tried like hell to keep that eye contact going as he spoke. “I’ve got to make one more party before kickoff.”
“Jude, appreciate you stoppin’ by,” Ransom said. “Jude? This is a friend of the family’s, Miss Leigh. Miss Leigh, this is Jude Russell, he’s out makin’ the rounds today trying to get to some of his Tennessee constituents who’ve come south. Wants them thinkin’ to that first Tuesday next month.”
Russell. Yeah, she knew him. Liberal senator out of Memphis who wanted to be governor. His father had been some kind of racist pig during segregation. Guy spent every minute trying to tell people that he wasn’t like his dead daddy.
“Nice to meet you,” Perfect said, fishing with a sly little grin.
Nothin’. No smile. No warm shake. He acted like she wasn’t even there.
About ten yards later, Russell was intercepted by another round of the khaki club. He gave more two- handed shakes and wide big-toothed grins. Ransom was watching. He cleaned his sunglasses with a show handkerchief, squinted one gray eye, and looked out through a clean lens.
“I hate that son of a bitch,” he said.
Chapter 18
The Tunica Justice Complex was remarkable for nothing but its newness. Red brick and squat with the architectural detail of a Ritz cracker box, the building sat on the edge of an aging downtown cut in the center by railroad tracks. Outside there was an American flag that flapped stiff and bold from a high pole and a few immature trees – barely rooted in their soil – sitting brown and dead by the front doors.
As I parked in a visitor’s slot, Ulysses jumped out before my truck stopped, sliding his boots on the asphalt. He had on a pair of thin shades and had the collar of his black leather coat flipped up on his neck.
“Hey, Shaft,” I said. “You want to hold up?”
“Oh, yeah, man. Guess you ain’t in a hurry to go to jail.”
I stopped and put my hands in the pockets of my jeans. I looked over at the dead trees and the long shot of the old downtown dressed up with boutiques, antique stores, and a coffee shop.
“Remember that time you locked that weight coach… what was his name?”
“Shit,” I said. “I don’t remember.”
“At camp? C’mon. Remember you locked him in that old laundry bin where we used to throw old jockstraps and socks.”
“What made you think of that?”
“Last time I seen you worried about anything. They were talkin’ about cuttin’ you.”
“Shit.”
“This ain’t nothin’. Self-defense. It’ll work out.”
I nodded.
“And the girl gonna be fine, too.”
We’d left Abby in Memphis with an associate of U’s named Bubba Cotton. Bubba was bigger than me and U combined and, according to U, had once killed a man using a shrimp fork at a Red Lobster by the airport. I felt pretty confident that Abby was safe.
A curtain of deep black clouds headed east on the horizon and a stop sign at the crossroads beat in the strong wind. The sun was hard and white but swallowed whole in seconds by the clouds. A whistle could be heard through narrow cracks in the shotgun cottages across the road.
U headed on in the complex, like a man strolling into an A amp;P to buy a loaf of bread, and motioned for me to follow. I kind of wished I was back at the Peabody now. I’d kick off my boots, watch the clouds drift over the river, and order a club sandwich and a Dr Pepper from room service.
U motioned again.
The building’s stale air hit us as soon as we walked inside to a Plexiglas window protecting a receptionist. She was white and fortyish and as gaudily made up as a corpse on viewing day. She wasn’t chewing gum or smoking a cigarette or seemed to be doing anything active at all. She had her hands flat on a stack of papers across her desk. Her eyes cast downward refusing to admit that she heard us walk through the door.
For some reason, I wasn’t sure why, her attitude was pissing me off. I wanted to reach through that little cut-out circle, where you were supposed to speak, and flick her in the head.
“Miss?” U asked.
She continued her daze.
