Wicked City by Ace Atkins Page A

they were about to burst from the sockets as he strained against the ropes.
    “I am,” the man yelled. “I am a Communist.”
    Benefield doubled over from laughter, his teeth like a rotten picket fence, as he searched for some dry branches.
    Reuben spit and pulled out a fat bone-handled pocketknife from his pants. With one hand, he pushed at Fuller and went for the rope, but Fuller caught his hand and easily twisted the knife from his grip.
    “Do you feel what hell is like?” Benefield asked, grinning. “Get used to it, boy. Hellfire, yes, sir.”
    The reporter pleaded. He cried. He said he loved Mother Russia.
    Benefield just added more pine needles to the smoking, curling mass.
    There was a scream, a long, howling animal scream, the smell of burning flesh, and the piercing sound made even Fuller turn his head. He nodded with strong approval and threw the knife down at Reuben like you would slop to swine.
    “Get him down from there.”
    When the man was free, he turned and bolted from the tree like a loose cat. Just as he was about out of sight, jumping a warped run of barbed wire on cedar posts, Benefield leveled a .44 and fired off a hard, booming shot punctuated with a rebel yell.
    The shot missed, and Benefield laughed, the pine needles smoked and burned out into a perfect blackened circle. “That boy shit his drawers. Did you smell it? Did you smell it?”
     
     
    THE NEXT MORNING, ARCH FERRELL AND SI GARRETT waited outside the short driveway leading to a little brick house in Cullman. Si Garrett leaned back in the driver’s seat, having given his man the morning off, and Arch slept one off in the back of the Oldsmobile, just coming awake. Garrett listened to the first morning news out of Montgomery, nothing but more and more reports about the killing of Patterson and his funeral and John’s announcement he was taking his slain father’s slot, and, as Arch sat up, he watched a man emerge from the simple white house with a mug of coffee. The man walked down the drive, careful not to spill the contents, and Garrett opened his door.
    He handed Garrett the coffee.
    Garrett turned down the radio.
    “Mr. Folsom said to set up an appointment for later.”
    “We already tried that.”
    The man squatted, craned his neck toward the house, only one light on showing some movement behind a curtain. “He said he can’t miss his walk. You know how he is about that walk. And after that, he’s due in Montgomery.”
    “We just need a second of his time.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Garrett,” the man said, looking into the backseat at Arch with a wry smile, the cocky sonofabitch, and turning to walk away. “Enjoy the coffee.”
    Garrett cut the radio back on, watching the house with the single light on, tapping the steering wheel. More news about the killing and an interview with John Patterson coming on, piercing Arch’s head. Garrett turned it up after a commercial for Dobbs Buick in Alex City and ads for Vienna sausages and Bama jellies. The very men responsible for the condition of Phenix City are the ones running this investigation. The only true way we will see justice in this case is with the involvement of federal authorities. This whole thing is rotten all the way up to the capital.
    Garrett tuned the radio to a hillbilly station playing an Ernest Tubb number called “Walkin’ the Floor Over You.”
    From the backseat, Arch stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His hair was scattered wild, rat nose twitching and big ears pricked, as he ran a hand over an unshaven face, opened his eyes, and then closed them. He breathed in and coughed and opened the side door and vomited into a drainage ditch.
    After some snorting and gagging, he sat up again and asked Garrett if he had some chewing gum. Garrett handed back some Black Jack gum, and the song changed and this time it was Alabama’s own Hank Williams — that’s the way the announcer said it — and Hank sang “Move It On Over.”
    Arch started to