Tishomingo Blues Read online

“Tells ’em you won’t say nothing, but you not sure they believe it. They know if you point ’em out they gone.”

  “That’s where I am,” Dennis said.

  “Saying to yourself, what the fuck am I doing here? Thinking it might be best to take off.”

  He watched Dennis frown and shake his head saying he wasn’t going anywhere, he had his show set up.

  Good. He was cool, gonna face whatever, ride it out.

  “Let’s me and you,” Robert said, “stay close. You know what I’m saying? Help each other out. Like I wouldn’t mind you coming with me to see Mr. Kirkbride.” It got Dennis frowning again. “For fun. Watch the man’s face when I show him the picture. Watch how I play him.”

  “You want an audience,” Dennis said, getting up from the sofa. “I have to go.”

  “I watch you perform, you watch me. Listen, I phoned, the man’s over at his Southern Living place today.”

  “And you know who works there?” Dennis said, wandering over to the balcony. “The Lone Ranger.”

  “I heard that,” Robert said. “Understand he did some time, too. See, the security brother still has friends on the Memphis Police. They look up sheets, tell him, and he tells me what I need to know.”

  “You pay him, huh?”

  “Way more than he earns making people feel secure.” Robert watched Dennis step out to the balcony and remembered he wanted to play a CD for him. He heard Dennis say Billy Darwin was down there. Talking to the hotel electrician.

  “What’s he doing? I told him I’d set the spots tonight.”

  Robert was up now shuffling through his stack of CDs, telling Dennis, “I arrive, check in, I give the cashier ten thousand in cash, so they know I’m here.”

  “You said you don’t gamble.”

  “I put on a show, play some baccarat like James Bond. I’m using the cashier as a bank for my tip money I don’t have to carry around. Understand? I get the suite comped, I get tickets to the shows in the Tom Tom Room, and I get to meet Mr. Billy Darwin, shake his hand. Mr. Billy Darwin is cool. He looks you in the eye and you know he’s reading you. Mr. Billy Darwin can tell in five seconds if you for real or you hy ciditty. You know what I’m saying?”

  Dennis turned from the balcony. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “From that Shemekia Copeland song ‘Miss Hy Ciditty’? Means a person puts on airs, fakes it.” He found the CD he wanted and replaced John Lee Hooker with it.

  Dennis said, “So how’d you come out with Darwin?”

  But the CD came on, a dirge beat, and Robert said, “Listen, see if you can name who this is.”

  Dennis heard a baritone male voice half singing half speaking the words:

  I got a bone for you.

  I got a bone for you.

  I got a little bone for you.

  I got a bone for you ’cause I’m a doggy

  And I’m naked almost all the time.

  “The harmonica could be Little Walter,” Dennis said, “but I don’t know.”

  “Little Walter, shit. Man, that’s Marvin Pontiac and his hit song ‘I’m a Doggy.’”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “Shame on you. Marvin’s my man. Marvin Pontiac, part of him came out of Muddy Waters. Another part was stolen from him by Iggy Pop. You know Iggy?”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. Iggy’s ‘I Want to Be Your Dog’ must’ve come from . . . yeah, ‘I’m a Doggy.’”

  Marvin Pontiac’s voice saying, singing:

  I’m a doggy.

  I stink when I’m wet ’cause I’m a doggy.

  “Some of his music,” Robert said, “he calls Afro-Judaic blues. Marvin always wore white robes and a turban like Erykah Badu’s before she went baldheaded. Had his own ways. Lived by himself. . . . Listen to this. A producer begged him to cut a record? Marvin Pontiac said yeah, all right, he’d do it—if the producer would cut his grass.”

  “His lawn?”

  “Yeah, his grass, his lawn, the man did it to get Marvin in the studio. That’s what you listening to, The Legendary Marvin Pontiac Greatest Hits. ‘Pancakes’ is on there. ‘Bring Me Rocks’ is on there. It’s the one has the line ‘My penis has a face and it likes to bark at Germans.’ That’s funny ’cause Marvin Pontiac’s face was never photographed. There shots of him taken from far away, you see him in his white robes and the turban? But there’s not any up close.”

  “He still around?”

  “Died in ’77 in Detroit. Got run over by a bus and they picked his bones, Iggy and some others, David Bowie. But listen, you better get ready, do your dive. You know what one you gonna do?”

  “Not till I’m up on the perch. This afternoon’s a warm-up.”

  “Look over the house. Big crowd, give ’em the triple somersault with some twists and shit. Small crowd—”

  “Flying reverse pike. I gotta go,” Dennis said, “meet the CIB guy.”

  Robert said, “Wait,” and edged toward the balcony. “Remember I was telling you about the famous crossroads?”

  He saw Dennis shake his head.

  “Last night in the car, driving you to Tunica.” Robert paused but didn’t get a reaction. “I’m telling you about the great Robert Johnson the bluesman and the cop cars go flying past?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  Robert pointed out at the sky. “That way thirty miles down the road, where Highway 49 crosses Old 61.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s the famous crossroads. Where the great Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

  No, he didn’t.

  He didn’t understand half of what Robert said to him.

  Was Robert here because this was where some serious blues got started? The way tourists visit Elvis’ house in Tupelo with the bed in the living room? Robert was too cool to be a tourist. Robert wouldn’t visit a site, Robert was the site. Was he here looking for talent? Some forgotten bluesman missing link, another Marvin Pontiac, and take him back to Motown?

  Or was that a side deal while he set up Mr. Kirkbride?

  Why would he show Kirkbride the photograph of a man hanging from a bridge unless he expected to get something out of it? Restitution. Play on Kirkbride’s sympathy. Hope the man is a rich bleeding heart. Willing to contribute to . . . what? Some kind of appeal, the Robert Taylor scholarship fund for the heirs of a man who was lynched. Robert drives up in his cool S-Type Jaguar looking legit, Robert soft-spoken . . . and the man hanging from the bridge isn’t even his great-granddaddy.

  This is what Dennis was thinking in the elevator, cutting across the lobby and down the hallway past the rest rooms, the beauty shop, the workout room and sauna toward the patio bar.

  Robert had the confidence to be a confidence man. You believed him. He said in the car last night, “That man gives you any shit, tell me.” Dennis believed him as he said it and still believed he was the guy he could go to. Robert knew what was going on here. He knew Arlen Novis had been to prison and worked for Mr. Kirkbride, because Robert had looked into Mr. Kirkbride, he must have, to see if the man was worth going after.

  Dennis pushed through the glass door to the patio.

  “Mr. Lenahan?”

  It was the CIB man, John Rau, it had to be, getting up from a table, his hand extended. Dennis walked over and they shook hands. John Rau, in his shirtsleeves but wearing a tie, his navy-blue suitcoat on the back of his chair, gave Dennis his card and asked in a pleasant voice if he’d like a cold beverage. Dennis said no thanks, feeling the grass laying him back now just enough. Good stuff.

  John Rau had a Coca-Cola and a dish of mixed nuts on the table. They sat down and Dennis let him explain who he was and what he was investigating, John Rau saying it shouldn’t take too long, he understood Dennis was getting ready to do a show.

  Dennis was staring at John Rau’s tie, blue, with an American flag in the center of it. He said, “It’s more of a warm-up than a show. I haven’t gone off the top in more than a month.” He l
ooked at the mixed nuts now and wanted some. “Of course anybody who’d like to watch is more than welcome.” He said, “Do you mind?” reaching for the nuts.

  “Help yourself.” John Rau gestured and looked out at Dennis’ setup. “I was telling Mr. Darwin the investigation could help your show.”

  Now Dennis turned enough to look over his shoulder. Billy Darwin was still out there with the electrician.

  “He seemed to agree. He sees the local people as your main audience.” He waited for Dennis to turn to the table again. “What time was it you left here last night?”

  “Going on seven.”

  “Showers was still working.”

  “Checking the pressure on the guy wires.”

  “You trusted him to do that? Wasn’t Showers a rummy?”

  “He knew what he was doing,” Dennis said, looking at the American flag on John Rau’s necktie. There was something wrong with it.

  “He tell you he was a confidential informant?”

  “No, he didn’t. He barely spoke to me.”

  Dennis reached for the mixed nuts and John Rau pushed the dish closer. He looked in it to see cashews, peanuts, almonds, one pecan . . . Dennis came away with a fistful of nuts.

  John Rau saying, “You know about his background?”

  “I know he was in prison. And from what I’ve heard, talking to people, Floyd was in the Dixie Mafia and they didn’t trust him.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “Charlie Hoke and our landlady.”

  “They said he was in the Dixie Mafia?”

  Dennis watched John Rau pick out a single nut, the pecan, and put it in his mouth. “I guess I just assumed it.”

  “What do you know about this Dixie Mafia?”

  “Nothing. The first time I heard of them was in Panama City, Florida. Maybe a couple years ago.”

  John Rau took a little round hazelnut. “They’re not like the organized crime families. There’s a bunch right here that deals drugs. There’s a bunch that hijack trucks and commit armed robberies. A bunch in prison who extort money from homosexuals on the outside. There’re moonshiners, bootleggers, methamphetamine manufacturers . . . they’re not associated with each other. The only thing they have in common, they’re all violent criminals.”

  “Was Floyd one of them?”

  “You saw the type of person he was. Can you see him pulling any kind of rough stuff? Showers said if we’d reduce his sentence to time served he’d work for us, keep us informed.”

  Dennis said, “I wouldn’t think he was that smart.”

  “He wasn’t. I had him down as an idiot. It turned out he wasn’t even close to what was going on. He’d tell us things were already common knowledge, in the newspaper, or he’d make something up. I don’t know why they shot him. Five times, as a matter of fact. The medical examiner said, ‘This man was harder to kill than a cockroach.’”

  Dennis was staring at John Rau’s tie again. He said, “I think there’s something wrong with your flag but I don’t know what it is.”

  John Rau smiled. “You count the stars?”

  “I tried, they’re too small.”

  John Rau picked up the wide part of the tie and looked down at it. “There are only thirty-five stars, the number of states in the Union by 1863. Even though we were now at war with the states that seceded, Lincoln would not allow the stars representing those states to be removed.”

  There was something wrong with that, too.

  Dennis scooped another handful of nuts, craving them, but held off stuffing them in his mouth. “You said the states we were at war with, sounding like a Yankee.”

  John Rau said, “You know what it is? Whenever a reenactment’s coming up I begin to assume the attitude of the side I’ll be on. This first Tunica Muster won’t be a major one, Yankees’ll be in short supply. Since I can go either way, I’ll wear Federal blue this time. Probably represent the Second New Jersey Mounted Infantry. They were at Brice’s.”

  “Brice’s Cross Roads,” Dennis said.

  And John Rau’s eyebrows raised. “You’re taking part?”

  “No, but Charlie Hoke is, and I hear Mr. Kirkbride’s gonna be Nathan Bedford Forrest.”

  John Rau was smiling again. “Walter loves old Bedford. Yeah, it was Walter and I put this one together. I happened to mention there’s terrain east of here reminds me of Brice’s, full of that scrub oak they call blackjack. I’d see it driving up from Batesville. Walter jumped on it. He said, ‘You want to do Brice’s?’ I hesitated because we have the Battle of Corinth coming up in September, one we do over there. Usually we feature the assault of Battery Robinett, which most every Southerner knows about. You’ve heard of it?”

  Dennis said, “Battery Robinett?”

  “It was a Confederate assault on a Federal gun position. One of the heroes was a colonel of the Second Texas, William Rogers, KIA, shot seven times as he stormed the redan.”

  “Who won?”

  “The Federals pushed them back. I reminded Walter of Corinth. Also the fact that Brice’s Cross Roads was two years after Shiloh and Corinth. Not that it matters, but I felt I should mention it. Well, then Billy Darwin heard about it. Right away he saw it as a promotion, a minor reenactment but a major annual tourist attraction. The crowd gets tired of standing in the hot sun and comes in the casinos to play the slots.”

  John Rau stopped, his gaze raising, squinting as he said, “Is that Darwin up there?”

  Dennis looked around and the next moment was on his feet because it was, Billy Darwin standing on the top perch of the ladder. Dennis watched the way he was holding on with both hands looking up at the sky. “I think he froze,” Dennis said. “I’ll have to bring him down.”

  “That fella by the tank,” John Rau said, “he’s shining the spotlight on him, but you can’t see it.”

  “I gotta go,” Dennis said.

  “Mr. Lenahan, one more question.”

  Dennis stopped and looked back. “Yeah?”

  “If you were to think of Floyd Showers as an animal, what kind would he be?”

  Was he serious? Dennis said, “I don’t know,” and took off across the lawn, a picture popping into his mind now, too late to tell the CIB man: some kind of roadkill out on a highway, brown fur that looked like Floyd’s suitcoat.

  He kept his gaze on Billy Darwin up there in shorts and a T-shirt, holding on to the ladder with one hand now, looking down, waving. Dennis reached the hotel electrician hunched over a spotlight mounted on the ground, aiming it toward Billy Darwin.

  “The hell you doing?”

  The electrician, bib overalls and a hunk of snuff behind his lower lip, said, “You tell me and I’ll know.”

  “I told you I set the spots.”

  “You the boss or him?”

  “You think he’s gonna place the ones up on the ladder, forty feet and at the top?”

  “What do you want ’em up there for?”

  “To light the pool. So I can see the goddamn water. I told him, I light the show. And I do it when it’s dark, not in bright sunlight.”

  Dennis stood looking up at the top perch again.

  “You think he can get down?”

  “He went up there like a monkey.”

  “Coming down,” Dennis said, “isn’t the same as going up.”

  Not more than a few minutes later Dennis was watching Billy Darwin start down: careful at first, both feet on the same rung before taking the next step, descending a whole section of the ladder this way. But then he seemed to have the feel of it and the goddamn wavy-haired show-off was coming down one rung after another, his hands sliding down the outer sides of the ladder. Dennis waited for him to come over.

  “You made it.”

  “I had to see what it was like,” Billy Darwin said. “A great view of the river, all the bends in it. But you know, I think the tank looks bigger than a half dollar. More like a teacup.”

  “You have to see it at night,” Dennis said, “after somebody climb
s up there one-handed carrying spotlights.”

  The son of a bitch said, “Oh? I thought you’d use a hoist. What do you call it? That thing you hauled up the ladder sections with—a gin pole?”

  By two o’clock Dennis had counted thirty-eight people gathered on the lawn, some with plastic chairs they’d brought from home. These would be local residents, Dennis believed, though they didn’t look much different from the hotel guests who wandered out. He spotted Robert Taylor and Billy Darwin standing together, a couple of dudes in sporty summer apparel.

  Vernice was supposed to be here—see for the first time what high diving was all about—but she was home studying the script for tonight. Charlie Hoke would call the dives. He’d stand on the plywood deck below the three-meter board, no mike, he’d announce through a bullhorn he used to attract contestants to his pitching cage. Dennis said that each time he came out of the water he’d tell him what the next dive would be and Charlie would announce it. “Be sure to tell them,” Dennis said, “this will be my first performance in over a month and it’s only a warm-up for the show at nine-fifteen tonight. You’ll have to ad-lib, too, use some of the information that’s on the poster. ‘From the Cliffs of Acapulco,’ ABC Wide World of Sports world champion, I’m good to my mother . . . Tell them not to applaud until I’m out of the water or I won’t hear it. Also, not to get within ten feet of the tank. That’s the splash zone.”

  Charlie introduced Dennis and he opened with a flying one and a half somersault from the forty-foot perch to get the crowd’s attention.

  “Remember,” Charlie told all the faces looking up at him, “Dennis is only warming up, keeping his best stuff for the big show tonight.”

  Dennis did a triple somersault from the three-meter board, and Charlie said, “I can tell you personally, having pitched eighteen years in organized baseball, that you better take enough time to warm up before you go in there to face some of the sluggers I’ve pitched to. Wasn’t that a beauty? A triple somersault. Come on, let Dennis hear it.”

  Dennis did a back one and a half pike from the forty-foot perch. “That was a back dive with a flip,” Charlie said. “I knew I was in shape the times I faced legendary hitters like Don Mattingly, Mike Schmidt, and was fortunate enough on occasion to put ’em down swinging. Let’s hear it, folks, for world champion Dennis Lenahan.”