Memphis Luck Read online

  MEMPHIS LUCK

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  © 2018 Gerald Duff

  All rights reserved.

  A substantially different version of this book was previously published as Memphis Mojo.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 0997832398

  ISBN 13: 9780997832396

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  Also by Gerald Duff

  Memphis Ribs

  Nashville Burning

  Playing Custer

  A Crop of Circles

  Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League

  Decoration Day and Other Stories

  Blue Sabine

  Fire Ants and Other Stories

  Coasters

  Snake Song

  That’s All Right, Mama: The Unauthorized Life of Elvis’s Twin

  Graveyard Working

  Indian Giver

  2004

  The 50th Anniversary Week of Elvis Presley’s

  Recording of That’s All Right, Mama

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  J.W. Ragsdale and Tyrone Walker

  Memphis, three in the morning in the House of Pancakes on Union Avenue, and all of them wanted to talk about the job, about the home invasion deal with the preacher’s house, all but Earl Winston. Earl was complaining again about what had happened to him in his sophomore year in high school, the time he was a starting end for the Memphis Central High Warriors.

  Tonto Batiste was looking right at him as Earl talked, but everybody knew you couldn’t tell when Tonto was listening to somebody or when he wasn’t, no matter how close he might seem to be paying attention. That came from the eyes, the way the pupil merged right into the dark iris surrounding it, and the fact that he hardly ever blinked enough for anybody to notice. He would narrow his lids in broad daylight, though. Not even a full-blooded Cherokee could stare straight into the Memphis sun without flinching a little.

  “I wasn’t but fifteen years old,” Earl Winston said in Tonto’s direction and then looked around the table to see if the other two men were meeting his gaze. Neither was, but Coy Bridges did make a grunting sound to show he was hearing something. Bob Ferry kept his head down, tending to his breakfast, eggs scrambled just this side of too dry, so much so that he was having to chew each mouthful longer than he really wanted to. Why couldn’t they ever get that right?

  “Fifteen, and I didn’t weigh no more than a hundred and fifty seven pounds in pads and cleats,” Earl Winston said.

  Nobody said anything, and in a minute or so, Earl Winston went on. “And you know what?” he said. “You know what else?”

  “What?” Bob Ferry said.

  “I’ll tell you what. No team ever ran but the one play around my end that whole half season I played for Central.”

  “Why was that?” Bob Ferry said. “What would make them avoid you that way?”

  “They felt sorry for him,” Coy Bridges said. “The way Earl fell down that first end-run at him and started squalling and all.”

  “Tell us why,” Tonto Batiste said, still looking into Earl Winston’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t they come at you again there all by yourself?”

  “The way I did that ball carrier,” Earl Winston said, “first time I got a hold of him. How I’d get my hand down there in his helmet and pull at his face.”

  “You couldn’t do that no more,” Tonto said. “Face masks cover everything up these days. They have got away from that single-bar arrangement.”

  “Another thing,” Tonto went on, “I reckon that was all-white teams back then. You try that shit these days, and one of the brothers would show you your liver.”

  “The coach tried to keep me when I told him the old man was fixing to haul all of us out of school and move the whole damn family to the piney woods.”

  “Away from Memphis?” Bob Ferry said. “Where to? Mississippi?”

  “Linden, Tennessee.”

  “Never heard of it,” Bob Ferry said.

  “Exactly,” Earl Winston said. “That’s why I never got no damn show with my football.”

  “They got football at Linden,” Tonto said. “Eleven-man, too. That places’s not that far from Nashville. Why didn’t you play football at Linden?”

  “I did,” Earl Winston said. “Fullback till I quit school. But, hell, they was just in the C classification. Played towns like Bells, Tennessee.”

  “Never heard of that, either,” Bob Ferry said.

  “That’s the point, Bob,” Earl Winston said and pushed his plate of pancakes away from him. “If I could’ve stayed at Memphis Central I’d been recruited to play in the SEC.”

  “Your old man said no to the coach, then,” Tonto said.

  “Yeah, the sorry old drunk,” Earl Winston said. “He made me move with the rest of them way out there in them damn woods.”

  “They let you carry the ball at Linden, though, you said,” Bob Ferry said.

  “A defensive end at Central in them days was worth a whole truckload of backs anywhere else,” Earl Winston said. “That’s back when the Warriors was the stud horses.”

  “But you didn’t get to stay at Central,” Tonto said. “And defend that Warrior line.”

  “That’s right, Tonto,” Earl Winston said. “And that’s why instead of me going on to play in the SEC and maybe go pro, I’m sitting here in a damn House of Pancakes in Memphis with y’all trying to figure out the best way to get all that rich preacher’s money.”

  “You could’ve been that rich preacher,” Coy Bridges said. “That’s what you’re telling us. You could’ve been the one we’re fixing to take all that money away from, I suppose you mean, if you’d a been able to stay in Memphis. You’d have been somebody money would come to.”

  “Yeah,” Earl Winston said. “That’s what always galls me.”

  “Money don’t come to you,” Tonto said. “You go to it.”

  ***

  Across the House of Pancakes dining area, Detective Sergeant J.W. Ragsdale addressed his plate, knowing his partner was going to ask about the bacon. Tyrone Walker would not miss the chance to remark on what J.W. had ordered as a side to his scrambled eggs and was now contemplating before him.

  A wisp of steam arose from the mound of grits situated at two o’clock on J.W.’s plate, but that was nothing to compare visually to the sheen of grease coating the three strips of bacon.
The slices shone as though they’d been varnished.

  “All right, Tyrone,” J.W. Ragsdale said, “let’s hear it, so I can get started on my breakfast.”

  “Hear what?” Tyrone Walker said, “What’re you talking about?” He sipped at his cup of tea, rattled a spoon against the bowl of chopped fruit before him, and directed his gaze straight into J.W.’s eyes. “What?”

  “Tell me about the bacon,” J.W. said. “Let’s hear the damn news about Mr. Hog.”

  “Oh, I suppose you mean about the nitrites,” Tyrone said, laughing in the manner of a scientist who’d just made a breakthrough in the understanding of a problem long plaguing mankind. “You’re referring to its effect on blood pressure and heart function, not to mention weight control. I bet that’s what you’re wondering about bacon and its consumption by middle-aged Caucasian males.”

  “Thanks, Tyrone,” J.W. said, reaching for the outside slice of bacon on his plate, the one with a portion of rind still attached, “for getting me going. Hearing you say that is just like listening for the starter’s gun right before the low hurdles. Turn me loose and let me catch my foot on something I’m trying to jump over.”

  “I said Caucasian, J.W.,” Tyrone went on, “to distinguish between the effect of bacon on a white man like you and an African-American like myself. Not that there’s really such a thing as race to be recognized, of course.”

  “There’s not? Why you look the way you do, then, and me the way I do? Damn, this is good bacon.”

  “What your mouth enjoys your body despises, J.W. Get that by heart.”

  “Get back to this race thing,” J.W. said, loading grits on his fork. “No such of an animal, you say, as that.”

  “That is the latest thinking, Sergeant Ragsdale, and I’m surprised you haven’t come across that in your research into Memphis social structure.”

  J.W. could tell by the tone of Tyrone’s voice that he was willing to keep up his end of the three a.m. banter in the House of Pancakes on Union Avenue, but that he was doing so out of courtesy. Something else was on his mind.

  “What?” J.W. said, breaking off half a slice of hard-fried bacon for transfer from his plate.

  “What what? Memphis social structure?”

  “No,” J.W. said, “not that. What’re you really thinking about this morning? Y’all’s house deal? Getting that financing set up?”

  “No, that’s going all right, it seems like. Loan’s going to go through. Bank told Marvella yesterday.”

  Tyrone looked down at his bowl and speared a slice of something orange colored. Maybe cantaloupe, J.W. figured as he averted his eyes.

  “Nothing domestic then,” he said. “Must be foreign policy.”

  “Don’t look now,” Tyrone said, “but over yonder in that booth is somebody I believe I know.”

  “Where?” J.W. said, looking in the direction Tyrone had indicated. “You mean that bunch that looks like a roofing crew dreading daylight?”

  “Yeah,” Tyrone said. “Don’t break your neck, craning it around like that. I believe all four of them have spent good amounts of time in a tightly confined space, but I know for sure that one of them has.”

  “That Mexican-looking one, you mean. Or Hispanic, I guess I ought to call him. The big guy.”

  “You are so politically correct, J.W.,” Tyrone said. “Yeah, that’s the one, but he’s not from south of the border. He’s an American Indian.”

  “Native American,” J.W. said and ate a forkful of grits, “that’s what you meant to say. You misspoke yourself, that’s all.”

  “Yes, officer, I did. I can’t call his last name right now, but he’s known as Tonto something. I arrested him on suspicion of a killing during an armed robbery on Jackson five or six years ago, but the damned D.A.’s bunch wouldn’t act on it.”

  “You were probably profiling, Tyrone,” J.W. said. “You see a dark skin and you assume guilt. It’s an attitude built into you like a disease. That’s the way I figure it, just like the D.A.’s bunch does. Was it Fran Lever who wouldn’t buy your story?”

  “No, it was before that fat bitch arrived on the scene. It was some young Republican named Fognin or Coffin or something like that.”

  “See, there you go again. Your prejudice about racial characteristics and gender and body configuration choices just jumps out at me, Tyrone. Lord, Lord.”

  “I wonder what he’s doing back in Memphis?” Tyrone said. “Tonto whatever his name is.”

  “Roofing, I expect, like I already said. That bunch is just waiting for the light of day and dreading that hot summer sun.”

  “It’s hot all year around in Memphis,” Tyrone said. “Except when it’s freezing. You about through poisoning your system with pork grease, J.W.?”

  “Yeah, it’s time to go,” J.W. said. “We got to go maintain some order in the Bluff City. But let’s go say hello to your buddy Tonto on the way out the door.”

  “Yeah,” Tyrone said. “You call him by his first name. I want to wait and see if he recognizes me before I say anything.”

  J.W. Ragsdale let Tyrone Walker lead the way out of the booth toward where the four men were seated, and by the time he had gotten fully unlimbered from where he was sitting he could see that two of them were looking up at Tyrone as he approached. Both of them held forks in their right hands and encircled the plates before them with their left arms as though to protect them. Prison etiquette, J.W. thought. These boys haven’t been out in the fresh air that long. Still guarding their grub from misfits.

  The Indian was different, though, the one Tyrone called Tonto, sitting up straight with a paper napkin in his lap and his left hand holding it in place. He also wasn’t looking up at Tyrone or J.W. as they neared him. He’s not about to sweat two men walking toward him at three in the morning in IHOP, even though one of them’s a tall well-dressed black with the build of an NFL linebacker and the other one looking like what he is, a failed cotton farmer from the Mississippi Delta come to Memphis to find steady work.

  Let’s see if I can get him to lose his cool for a second or two, J.W. said to himself as Tyrone drew even with the booth where the men were sitting. Maybe make him drop his napkin on this old nasty IHOP floor.

  “Tonto,” J.W. said, “how’s it going this morning?”

  “Do I know you?” the Indian said, laying his fork on the rim of the plate and looking up at J.W. His eyes were so black there seemed to be no distinction between the iris and the pupil.

  “I expect not,” J.W. said. “I haven’t had the great privilege of meeting you personally, Tonto, but I know who you are. You built yourself a solid little reputation here in Memphis not so long ago.”

  “Oh,” the Indian said after staring at J.W. for half a beat too long, “that was a bullshit charge, officer. They dropped it in a day’s time. A mistake, you understand.”

  “Yeah, I know, Tonto. Ain’t it a sight how so many times innocent citizens get charged with killing people in the commission of an armed robbery? You’d think the police would be more careful before slinging around all these false accusations.”

  “You would think so,” Tonto said. “But you’d be wrong.” He picked up his fork and poked at a sausage on his plate, a Jimmy Dean special it appeared to be to J.W, the one shot through with flecks of something red.

  “Is that the hot and spicy or just the regular?” J.W. said.

  “Supposed to be spicy, but it’s not.”

  “Yeah, Jimmy Dean lies,” J.W. said. “It’s like a disease, this damn mendacity. It’s floating around everywhere these days.”

  The other three men in the booth with Tonto still hadn’t stirred, all staring into their plates as though they saw something strange crawling around on them.

  “Well,” J.W. said, “I guess y’all about ready to go out to that roofing job this morning, huh? Get started while it’s still a little cool and Mr. Sun’s not all cranked up yet.”

  “Roofing?” Tonto said. “No, officer, we’re just passing through town, head
ed for Oklahoma. Got a long drive ahead of us still today.”

  “Way down yonder in the Indian Nation,” J.W. said.

  “I ride my pony on the reservation,” Tonto said and showed his teeth, but it didn’t look like he was grinning.

  “Have a good trip, then,” J.W. said. “You and your war party.”

  Outside in the unmarked Memphis police car instantly recognizable for what it was to any Memphian who saw it, Tyrone Walker looked over at J.W. as he fired up the engine.

  “Mendacity,” he said. “J.W., where did you hear that word?”

  “I read books, that’s where. I read widely in hardbacks.”

  “Yeah,” Tyrone said, pulling into the traffic on Union Avenue, headed for the Midtown station, “Captain Marvel and the super heroes.”

  “Naw, Red Ryder and Little Beaver.”

  “Mendacity,” Tyrone said. “Red Ryder. How old are you anyway, J.W.?”

  TWO

  Jimbo Reynolds

  The job interview was going well. It had reached the point where both prospective employer and intrigued candidate knew an offer would be forthcoming and that it would be acceptable. All things being equal, of course. Now was the fun part, the period in which discussion could become more expansive, more jovial and free-ranging, more open to boastfulness on the part of the employer about the enterprise being represented and the position being offered, and on the part of the applicant a chance to show how supportive, how admiring, how capable of commitment, and how thorough and energetic a job of sucking-up he could do, given the chance, please Jesus.

  It’s like the moment, Jimbo Reynolds thought to himself as he launched into an explanation of his mission statement to the candidate before him, when you realize the woman you’re putting the move on is going to come across.

  Keep it simple, keep it tight, keep the pressure up, and in less than fifteen minutes, you’re going to be seeing that promised land across the valley as you ride the pony home.

  “I didn’t just happen on the concept fullblown,” Jimbo Reynolds said. “It wasn’t like a formula already derived and all I had to do was plug in the values and turn the crank. No sir, not hardly.”