Dark End of the Street

“You know any FBI folks we can talk to?”

“Let me check into it,” he said, sighing. “Adios.”

The hippie was wide awake at my feet and petting a small ferret; apparently he’d kept it in his ragged green book bag. He smiled and fed it some biscuit. The ferret took the morsel and then crawled back into the bag looking for more.

“Nothing, huh?” Abby asked. “Not much. He said he’ll start asking around this week.”

“Asking who? Cops?”

“Yep.”

Abby watched me from a little chair she’d found. Wobbly legs. A thousand coats of paint. She said while I’d been on the phone, she’d arranged everything we found in the library by subject and chronology. Sons of the South. Elias Nix. She said she’d look through her father’s papers when we got back to Maggie’s and talk to me about maybe finding some more. When I asked where, she changed the subject.

“What about criminals?” she asked when we got outside.

I played with the keys in my hand as we walked down a hill and over to a parking lot where we’d left my truck. Dead leaves twisted around in a dust devil and I could hear oak branches clicking above us. The rain had stopped. A mean cold front had dipped all across north Mississippi.

“I know a few,” I said, smiling. “But not good ones.”

“I do,” she said.

“You know criminals?”

“I know one,” she said, a slight grin crossing her lips. “And he’s pretty good. Runs most of the marijuana for north Mississippi.”

“And how does a little girl like yourself get to meet such characters?”

“He used to come out to Maggie’s stables last year for riding lessons. He didn’t even know how to get on a horse. We taught him. Didn’t know who he was till later.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Son Waltz. He’s just a kid, only a few years older than me. His godfather runs a pool hall near the Square and set him up with his own bar when he turned twenty-one.”

“What is he, your boyfriend?”

“Hell, no,” she said, her face flushing. “I just taught him a little about horses.”

“And you think he’ll know something about the Dixie Mafia and Tunica?”

“Raven knows everything.”

“Thought you said his name was Son?”

“He goes by Raven.”

I smiled at her. “All right, we’ll find him tomorrow. I’m pretty beat.”

“Tonight,” she said, stopping and tugging at my sleeve. I looked down at her and gave a fake scowl.

“What about Hank?”

“He can come, too,” she said. “C’mon. The Highpoint is just over on the county line and open till dawn.”

Chapter 29

THE HIGHPOINT ROADHOUSE was packed early that morning with dozens of pickup trucks, German sedans, and motorcycles. The bar was nothing more than an old Quonset hut held together with pounds of battleship-gray paint and spackling. The building stood on a little gravel neck off Highway 6 in Panola County and didn’t advertise with anything but a single blue light that burned by the front door. There, a skinny kid with a ponytail smoked a cigarette and seemed to be scraping some shit off his boot.

The sky above us shone blackish blue as a slight patter of rain smacked big chunks of gravel in the parking lot alongside a narrow creek bed. I could hear the dull pounding of gutbucket blues playing inside. Reminded me of all the time I spent at Junior Kimbrough’s place before it burned.

The door had been cracked open and the smell of smoke and sweat rushed outside. Almost seemed as if the old building was exhaling a mighty breath. I had on my old boots, now coated in murky gray mud, jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and my jean jacket. The jacket wasn’t cutting it tonight. My face felt tight from the cold.

I lit a cigarette, mainly for warmth, and also because that’s just what you do when walking in a bar, and passed by the kid at the door. He was a little shorter than me with Indian-black hair and eyes. He looked up at my face and nodded me in as if I’d just asked his permission. I gave him my world-famous what-the-fuck look and brushed by him waiting for Abby.

The boy didn’t give the same look to Abby. He just stared at her and, for a moment, I thought he was going to cause trouble. Then his face just kind of broke apart with this really nice smile and he hugged her. He had a St. Christopher’s medal around his neck and wore a dirty white tank top under a long black leather jacket.

“Nick?”

I looked back.

“This is Raven.”

I shook his hand and he gave me his own version of the what-the-fuck expression looking to Abby for some kind of explanation.

“You have beer?” I was tired as hell and probably a little tired of explaining myself.

“Coldest in the state.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Raven apparently did his business in public. He found a little enclave, far from the stage where a black man in an undertaker’s suit played a bright green Fender, and took a seat in a ratty brown plaid sofa. All around the big wide room people sat in folding chairs and recliners and other similar ratty coaches drinking cans of beer and smoking dope. The floor was buffed concrete.