Bluff City

By Jay Busbee

Welcome to Memphis, a.k.a. Bluff City. Hope you brought your camera, because no one's going to believe you when you tell them what you've seen.

Luther Washington is the last of the great bluesmen, a legend now reduced to playing a fourth-rate Mississippi casino bar. But when two down-on-their-luck gamblers, flat busted and cleaned out from a bad night's run at the casino tables, decide to kidnap Luther, he suddenly becomes famous all over again. Everyone from bumbling white supremacists to militant church congregations wants to get their hands on the old bluesman, and things descend into bad craziness in a hurry. In the mix are a housewife who finds her true calling as a grifter; a disgraced former heavyweight champ seeking a shot at redemption; a hotshot sportswriter running for his life after writing a too-revealing profile of the city's star athlete; and a reverend who knows a lot more about the kidnapping than he's telling his flock. The whole crew comes together at the Elvis Brawl, a worldwide pay-per-view extravaganza starring wrestling Elvis impersonators, while outside, the city nears its boiling point...

Bluff City will have you packing your bags for Memphis ... and locking your door once you get there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Busbee
• Release date: Jun 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458198785

Jay Busbee

Jay Busbee writes for Yahoo! Sports, where he edits the NASCAR blog From the Marbles and the golf blog Devil Ball. He has also contributed to Esquire, ESPN.com, Slam, Atlanta and many other publications. And he often veers from journalism and just makes stuff up, writing comic books and the occasional novel. BLUFF CITY, a crime/comedy set in Memphis, is his first ebook, with RUN & SHOOT, a college football murder mystery, set to follow.

Book preview

Bluff City

By Jay Busbee

Smashwords Edition.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All real locations and individuals referenced in this book are used in a fictitious fashion.

BLUFF CITY. Copyright © 2011 by Jay Busbee. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the author at [e-mail].

For more information on the author, including updates on future works, visit http://www.jaybusbee.com.

FIRST EDITION.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

.

For Annie, Riley and Logan

With love, gratitude and barbecue

Memphis was [in the 1820s] a small town, ugly, dirty, and sickly…Everything pointed to the certainty that in a short time this squalid village must grow to a great and wealthy city…but for many years, the population would be rough and lawless, and the locality and sanitary conditions of the town promised that disease and death would hold high carnival there.

—Reuben Davis, Recollections of Mississippi and Mississippians

What is the American dream? It’s different things to different people. To a farmer, it’s a bountiful harvest that he can sell for a lotta money. To a photographer, it’s a beautiful picture that he can sell for a lotta money. To a soldier, it’s becoming a general, so that he can sell weapons to a foreign country for a lotta money. But maybe I can best express the American dream in a story. It’s about a kid who grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, in the early 1950s. He was a poor kid, but he had a rockin’ guitar, some flashy clothes, and a wiggle in his hips—and he had that certain something, called ‘talent.’ Of course, he never made a nickel, because he was black, but two years later Elvis Presley made a fortune doing the same thing.

–A. Whitney Brown, Saturday Night Live, 1987

As a whole, we Southerners are still religious, and we are still violent. We’ll bring you a casserole, but we’ll kill you, too.

—Lee Smith

WEDNESDAY

One Last Spin Around Town

When you come to Memphis, you don’t ever leave unchanged.

Maybe it’s the climate, the hot Delta air that’s heavy enough to wear. Maybe it’s the history, decades upon decades that lie on Memphis even thicker than the wet heat. Maybe it’s the blues that run through the heart and soul of every single person who’s spent a day here.

And maybe it’s just that this is one seriously strange piece of real estate. It may look like a sleepy river town, but it’s changed the world a dozen times over.

Depending on your perspective, the city of Memphis stretches east from the Mississippi River like either a beckoning seductress or a sprawled drunk—sometimes both at once. As he sped alongside the river on Riverside Drive, the Delta wind whipping through the cab of his pickup, Kevin Madden, soon-to-be-erstwhile reporter for the Memphis Herald Examiner, looked up at the city’s skyline for what he expected would be the last time. He loved this town, he did, but within days he’d be leaving it all behind, and so tonight he wanted to take a long last look, breathe in the incomparable Bluff City one more time—

Jesus, it stinks down here. When can we leave?

Kevin rolled his eyes at the cantilevered blonde sitting in the passenger seat, knees pulled up under her and white iPod headphones jammed deep in both ears. Mandy Swinks—a.k.a. ‘Cherry Potter,’ an enthusiastic young dancer who specialized in clothes-free engagements—drummed an arrhythmic cadence on Kevin’s dashboard, finishing with a cymbal shot off Kevin’s forehead.

You’re cruising the shores of history here, sweetheart, Kevin said, rubbing off the smear of glitter. He pointed at the dark river, more than a mile wide here where the Hernando De Soto Bridge arced from Memphis over into Arkansas. That river there has been this city’s backbone for millennia. Before there was a Memphis, the Chickasaw Indians—

Whoop-oop-oop! Mandy hollered, Indian-style, patting one hand over her mouth and tomahawk-chopping with the other. Whoa-oh-oh-ohhhh…

—and I’m sure they love your tribute. Now pay attention; this town is weirder than you can even imagine. Get this—back in the 1800s, Andrew Jackson bought up pretty much all of Memphis, sight unseen, for five hundred bucks—

Five hundred bucks? Pffft. I make that much in twenty minutes in the Champagne Room.

No doubt well earned, sweetcakes, Kevin said, running his eyes over her figure and wondering where he’d stashed his earplugs. Point is, right after the Civil War, this city had absolutely everything going for it…and still managed to screw things up royally.

As Mandy leaned her head out the window, Kevin ticked off the fumbles of the Bluff City: Poor sewers contributed to the yellow fever epidemic that killed tens of thousands in the late nineteenth century. Poor bookkeeping a couple decades later led to the city’s bankruptcy and loss of its charter, keeping it in a rut while Atlanta and Charlotte conquered the South. Poor race relations led to the sanitation strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King on his final trip to Memphis. And poor foresight tried to keep Elvis Presley in his place, deriding the poor kid from Mississippi as lucky trailer-trash, even when he bought Graceland and made Memphis one of the most famous cities on the planet. It was only after the city realized that other people—outsiders, yes, but still good folks—actually admired Memphis that the Bluff City finally embraced The King.

Elvis stinks on ice, Mandy cut in.

Bite your tongue—it’s Death Week, Kevin said. Show a little respect for the man who may or may not be dead. At the moment, Memphis was well into its annual August commemoration of the passing of one of the most famous human beings in the history of the planet. Elvis faithful had made pilgrimages from all over the world to watch Elvis imitators preen through all stages of The King’s career; listen to Elvis contemporaries recount the time they made Mr. Presley a sandwich; and tour locations such as Elvis’s old high school, where savvy students sell vials filled with ElviSweat or chunks of The King’s homeroom desk, bits of Elvisiana that the faithful hold as sacred as bits of the One True Cross. Death Week culminates with a candlelight vigil, as thousands of devotees bearing their own little flames gather on Elvis Presley Boulevard before Graceland, then file past his grave wearing all manner of garish sideburns, jumpsuits, pompadours, medallions and platform shoes.

Those Elvis freaks are just insane, Mandy said. One of ‘em used to cry ‘Sorry, Momma’ every time I gave him a lap dance. I’m already booked tomorrow to dress up in a jumpsuit for some get-together. I just hope it ain’t gonna go like last year.

What happened last year?

This dude wanted me to wear an Elvis wig and sideburns while I was grinding on him. Strangest grand I’ve ever made.

You know, I think I’d pay good money to see that.

Even though he was barely born when the King bowed out, Kevin looked past the bloat and the peanut-butter-and-Quaaludes sandwiches in his appreciation of The Man, who’d been more dangerous in his day than three Escalades’ worth of jock entourages. But Kevin’s faith in The King had been sorely tested by Elvis’s heirs and executors; sensing the waning of Elvis’s legacy, they’d cranked up the merchandising machine, spitting out infinite remixes, commemorative coins, breakfast cereals, satin capes, and knickknacks beyond compare. Kevin had thought Lil’ E and The Blues Crew, a kiddie cartoon starring an eight-year-old Elvis and his sidekicks, a hound dog and a chicken named Colonel Tom as a mystery-solving rock band, scraped bottom.

I gotta say, the cartoon is cool, Mandy said. My son loves that stuff. Runs around singing ‘Shake, Rattle, and Roll’ until I’m ready to hit him with a skillet.

Son? How old are you?

Did I say son? I meant little brother.

Whoever he is, he’s getting the wrong idea about Elvis. He wasn’t a friggin’ cartoon character. He wasn’t a chocolate candy. And he damn sure wasn’t a wrestler.

Wrestler…? Oh, wait—you’re talking about The Brawl! That’s gonna rule!

Two days from now, in the Pyramid Arena that now rose up glowing before Kevin, the city of Memphis would mark the anniversary of Elvis’s death with its most bizarre idea yet—the inaugural Elvis Brawl, a no-holds-barred bastard marriage of professional wrestling and Elvis imitation, presided over by a hillbilly Barnum named Tank McNutt and beamed via satellite to every corner of the globe. It seemed like genius Americana, insanely profitable cheese and cheesecake. This was Memphis, though, and something was going to go horribly, embarrassingly wrong—it was only a question of what.

Hey, can you get me tickets to that? You’re like, on tv or something, aren’t you?

I write for the newspaper.

Oh. Mandy thought for a moment. Well, that’s cool too. So can you get me tickets? We can go with all my friends! It’d kick ass!

Sweetie, all due respect, but if you see me in that Brawl, you are more than welcome to shoot me.

Kevin swung away from the river and started down Poplar Avenue. Tonight, he didn’t want to weep over the sadly debased legacy of his hero. He didn’t want to think about how his hometown was the kind of place that would chainsaw down the trees to make for a prettier view of the forest. He just wanted to enjoy his final night in the city before departing for Yankee pastures.

Hang on, honeybutt, Kevin said, wheeling into his newspaper’s parking lot. Got one last bit of business to do.

I know what you’re up to, she said, waggling a finger at him. You want to do it on your boss’s desk.

Kevin paused. Mindy—

Mandy.

Mandy. That is a wonderful idea. That’s why you’re going to be earning that big tip tonight, my dear.

Kevin parked the car, jumped out of the cab, and circled around to open the door for Mandy. As he did, he fingered the flash drive on his keyring, a drive containing the culmination of seven years’ worth of work in the Bluff City. Just this one more little story—one more itty-bitty story—to push live, and Kevin was gone, leaving the city with one last bang.

Are you looking at my boobs again?

Okay…two bangs.

And Kevin Madden, who would witness more bad craziness in the next 48 hours than most people see in a lifetime, actually thought he could just walk away from this city…and that Memphis would let him go that easily.

Fools’ Gold

The two-lane road that stretches from Beale Street straight into the heart of the Delta carried history back and forth, but you’d never know it by looking. Driving south into Mississippi, stately 1920s mansions quickly give way to gray rows of peeling-paint general stores, ramshackle strip clubs, blighted industrial lots, and gas stations dating back decades. Generations of sharecroppers, bluesmen, drifters and dreamers cruised up and down this highway, and not one of them had their eye on the world around them—only on the road ahead. Along this road, it could be World War II just as easily as the twenty-first century.

A few miles into Mississippi, though, everything changes once the lights of Tunica County come into view. Tunica is a county so poor, the saying goes, the folks there can’t even afford to pay attention. And yet, every week millions of dollars flow in and out of its borders, thanks to the dozen casinos that sit like corpulent land barons at the edge of the Mississippi River. Oases of opulence amid acres of poverty, the casinos have brought both power and ruin to Tunica.

Interstate 61, the legendary blues highway, runs right past the casinos. Seductive as a neighbor’s lonesome wife, they loom over the fertile, glass-flat Delta landscape casting a neon glow visible clear north to Memphis, thirty miles on up the road. Driving south from Memphis, you pass the Horseshoe, Bally’s, the Hollywood, and others, each with its own gimmick, its own baited hook. And then—like it was waiting for you, like it knew you would come—there stands The Tank.

The Tank—modestly named after its creator, Tank McNutt—is the unrivaled champion of the Tunica County casino sweepstakes, the Madonna to their streetwalkers—same planet, different worlds. Where the other casinos advertise thousand-dollar paydays as if a win would bring instant passage straight to heaven, The Tank gives away a million-dollar jackpot each week. Where other casinos fight for B-listers and one-hit wondes, Tank McNutt could pick up a phone and get Beyonce or the Stones onstage in three hours.

So when Robert Ray Krunt and his best friend Gordon Creech—a.k.a. Geech, the nickname his constantly-pickled uncle had given him as a child—wheeled into the casino this warm August night, they not only felt they’d arrived, they felt they belonged. Every ounce of the place radiated shared privilege, from the free valet parking (free, at least, to those too cheap to tip) to The Tank’s roaming drink hostesses, whose plunging camo-fatigue necklines and lightly scented cleavage snared men of all ages.

For a long minute, the two men just stood on the red-carpeted landing overlooking the casino floor. The seizure-inducing strobe lights and scantily-clad women, the sonic overload of jingling bells and sirens, the senses-jacking jolt of megarefined air—everything combined to give the two an instant, raging casino hard-on. Come ride me, the casino whispered to the men. You know you want it. Show me who’s The Man.

As they stood transfixed, Geech lasered in on the first roaming waitress, a blonde-haired beauty of maybe twenty-two with the kind of body men sell their mothers to ravish. As she walked past them, carrying a tray of drinks with the kind of hip-shaking saunter that indicated there was something she’d much rather be doing, Geech reached out and snapped his fingers at her.

Yo! Baby! How about a hot cup’a Back That Ass Up?

The waitress turned slowly, raised an eyebrow, then looked Geech up and down. He was thirty-five, single, and almost entirely bereft of sexual experiences with conscious partners. His dishwater-brown mullet hung low and greasy on his shoulders, and his stubble stood out on his cheeks like badly fertilized grass. But shave the boy down and clean him up, and you’d just have a whole new kind of ugly—he looked like some sort of mutant offspring of a vulture and a frog, red-rimmed eyes poking out over a nose that looked like someone had stuffed gravel under his skin.

The waitress slid up close, and Geech trembled just a bit as her perfume wafted over him. Show me some colors, player, and I’ll serve up this ass on satin, she cooed softly.

Geech just stared at her. Colors? What, like, Bloods, Crips, shit like that? Geech started slinging signs he’d picked up from Snoop Dogg videos, looking like an arthitic third-base coach.

The waitress rolled her eyes, and her breathy voice turned Mississippi drawl. Chips, dumbass. Better luck next time.

And then she was gone, one hand running over the curve of her ass just to show Geech what he’d fumbled away.

Wait—chips? I don’t—what? You can’t do that, you—you—drink skank! Geech turned, stunned, to a grinning Robert Ray. She can’t do that, can she? I thought she had to—wait, this ain’t right— The whole seductive aspect of her approach had thrown him for a loop, and the sudden door-slam of rejection had damn near sent him into vapor lock. Robert Ray took pity on the poor horny bastard and slung an arm over his shoulder.

Geech, my boy, you have much to learn, he said in a booming someday-all-this-will-be-yours voice. Where we’re going, the drink skanks are gonna be piled like firewood. We’re gonna be neck-deep in breast meat. Robert Ray stood well over six feet tall, with a thick chest and a thicker waistline that strained the fabric of his red company-logo golf shirt and khaki slacks. His thick pouf of hair was shellacked solid, and his beefy mustache rested atop his upper lip like a chunky caterpillar.

Robert Ray was lead sales rep for Jack n’ Tan, a soon-to-be-franchised-but-for-now-one-of-a-kind store that featured both tire services and a tanning salon. And even though the likelihood of someone needing a tanning bed at ten o’clock on a Sunday night was slim indeed, Robert Ray nonetheless wore his cell phone on his belt like a pistol, looking to communicate player to anyone who still didn't have a cell phone in this day and age.

With the skill of Wall Street financiers, both men had floated enough bills to bring two paychecks apiece to the casino this evening. Their plan was to play Paycheck Pachinko, The Tank’s most insidiously popular game. Contestants who cashed their paychecks at the casino – free of charge! – would receive a card imprinted with a series of numbers. They’d then take a turn at a pachinko machine so gigantic its steel balls were the size of cantaloupes. If the balls bobbled, bounced, juked and jived their way into a slot that matched the contestants’ numbers, they’d double or triple their paycheck. The best part of the game, as far as guys like Geech and Robert Ray could see, was that there was absolutely no down side. If your number never came up, well, it wasn’t like you lost any money.

All that happened was that you ended up holding your entire paycheck in cash, standing in the middle of a place expressly designed to separate you from that cash, swiftly, relentlessly and remorselessly. It wasn’t within shouting distance of a fair fight.

The Dope Is Roped

Yo! Yo, punchy!

Not far from the Paycheck Pachinko booth, Cudgel T. Ware, chief of pit security for The Tank, felt his stomach curl into a tight knot at the voice of his pit boss. He set his still-heaping plate of celery and green pepper slices behind a row of slots and dabbed a handkerchief at the corners of his mouth.

Dog, you pumpin’ groceries down the cake hole again? Boss McNutt ain’t payin’ you to sit there chompin’ on rabbit food, bro! The pit boss, a reedy Ivy League MBA named Brad Maisy, was so white he was nearly transparent, but learned in a Harvard Business School correspondence seminar entitled Keepin’ It Real And Comin’ Correct Wid Da Home Bizzoys: Enfranchising Your Demand Management With Urban Linguistic Facility that talking some of that fresh jive lingo would get him straight chilling with the peeps down here in Mississippi. He sidled down the fourth aisle of Mongolian Cluster Bucks slot machines, attempting to look like a smooth operator but succeeding only in looking like a diarrheic man seeking a toilet.

As Brad approached, Cudgel looked down at himself, smoothed his suit, and straightened to his full six-foot-seven in height. Just before Brad could begin his latest rant, Cudgel tilted his head down genially, his thick dreadlocks spilling down around his opaque shades. What can I do for you, boss?

His basso rumble almost stopped Brad cold. Almost. My brotha, how long we known each other? Brad said, folding his arms in front of him. Two teeth-grinding months, Cudgel thought. And in that time, how many times I gotten up in yo’ bidness about bringin’ that chow to the floor?

I’m sure you’ve told me plenty, boss. Cudgel, a onetime boxer of no small repute, had fists that could have driven Brad’s patrician little nose straight out the back of his head and halfway to Biloxi. But Brad hadn’t yet figured out that the madder Cudgel got, the more polite he got. When Cudgel began breaking out the sirs and bowing deferentially, it was best to get yourself into a different time zone.

You straight pimpin’ now, dog! Brad beamed. Now, unless you want this fly job of yours to go one-eight-seven, I suggest you get down with the program. Got me, bro? Cudgel couldn’t decide whether to laugh or vomit at the painful sound of street language forced through a nasal Boston bray, so he settled for a simpering smile. Two of his fellow security guards saw the smile and decided it was best to take their breaks right now.

Gotcha, B.

Solid, Brad said. We’re homeys, you and me, am I right? See, if you had listened to people like me rather than your own instincts, you would’ve won that heavyweight championship, knowhamean?

You know it, boss. Mm-hm, you do know best, don’t you? Cudgel’s right fist tightened on a handle of a slot machine and slowly bent it backwards toward the wall.

Coo’. Catch you on the down low, Brad said. He reached out and patted Cudgel’s belly. A bartender across the aisle gasped, certain he was about to see instant homicide. But Cudgel stayed calm as Brad winked. Easy on the eats, big dog. Shorties don’t like a fat brother, am I right?

Right and tight, boss, Cudgel said, and offered a small salute. As soon as Brad rounded the corner, Cudgel reached for another celery stick. He nibbled impassively, staring at absolutely nothing. He wasn’t a man given to self-pity. As a youngster, he’d grabbed life by the throat and taken what he wanted. But now, he was starting to realize that he might just have been getting reeled into a rope-a-dope all along.

The Reverend Opens His Eyes

Right about then back in Memphis, Reverend Slidell Jones, unquestioned lord and master of Righteous Mount Baptist Church, sat back in his burgundy leather chair and steepled his thick fingers in front of his lips. Knotty matter, this. One of his deacons, a notable City Council member and longstanding moral crusader by the name of Demetrius Swift, had been caught in a sweep of Memphis’s houses of ill repute, carrying a wad of singles—offering-plate donations—and a jugful of communion wine, wearing nothing but a silk tie and a love for the Lord. All this, just weeks before Reverend Slidell—Sly to both friends and foes—planned to take his Fall Focus on the Family daylong seminar before a national audience, drilling into the heads of his congregation and millions of television viewers the virtues of a moral life. And this jackass under his own roof could ruin it all.

Not that the reverend could completely fault Councilman Swift, a tall, caramel-colored fellow with a weakness for both booze and a nice rump. The reverend had done his own catting about, but always under the strictest, most controlled of conditions. His concubines—he liked that word, mainly because nobody around him knew what the hell it meant—were as rigorously scrutinized as prospective CIA agents. They were well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed in Atlanta or Birmingham or Little Rock, with the understanding that a single wrong word from their mouths would make their prosperity vanish as if it had never been. The reverend treated his trusted advisors the same way, and preferred to discipline them privately, without even informing their colleagues of the reasons for their fall and dismissal. Nothing like an occasional bolt of Old-Testament justice to keep everyone on their best behavior.

Reverend Sly kept his office humble, with only an austere cross and a picture of himself, as a schoolboy, with Dr. Martin Luther King adorning the beige walls. Such sparseness came in handy when news crews showed up—and they always did, for every reason imaginable. Reverend Sly knew the stereotype of the shrieking, fervent black preacher adorned in gold regalia and shiny suit, whoring out their congregation and their faith to the highest bidder. The true power players didn’t need such trappings to demonstrate their might.

This, gentlemen, will not do, he said slowly, his voice a resonant rumble. He’d been the starting middle linebacker on two University of Miami national championship teams, and he’d lost none of his ability to intimidate with but a phrase. Even now, his deacons almost visibly quailed before him.

Reverend Sly placed his palms on his desk and rose to his feet. I want Swift in here at six o’clock tomorrow morning. I want news crews from every network in here fifteen minutes after he arrives. I want the mayor ready to supply a statement which I will provide. And I want every bit of information you can dig up— he paused for emphasis—on the arresting officers. I want the councilman’s case tried and judged before Memphis leaves for work tomorrow morning, gentlemen. There was no need to ask whether they understood.

The reverend walked to a wet bar hidden between bookshelves and poured himself a glass of lemonade. He walked to the window and watched the traffic to and from the airport dart past his church. This Swift, he would be no problem. He was a weak man, and even the mistakes of weak men were generally of no consequence. The family season would go off as planned; in fact, a suitable mea culpa by Swift would only enhance the event’s prospects. Reverend Sly was more concerned about the long-term effects. Memphis was not so large a town that it would long turn a blind eye to the bizarre peccadilloes of one of its alleged moral and civic leaders.

Swift wasn’t the only man the reverend had in city government, but he was one of the most tractable. And one could reasonably expect that the white power structure would be marshaling its forces to pick off the weakest of the reverend’s governmental flock.

The reverend glanced at his watch, then stood to face his deacons. As he did so, all in the room could feel, then hear, a low, dull rumble. Within moments, the rumble had become deafening, the picture and cross on the wall jittered like wind chimes in a hurricane, and some of the deacons put their fingers to their ears. As quickly as it had arrived, the sound vanished.

For the reverend had done a very clever thing. He had placed his church directly at the end of one runway of the Memphis International Airport and the worldwide hub for Federal Express. Every so often, with watch-setting regularity, planes would roar directly overhead, nearly deafening the people in church and adding weight and thunder to the reverend’s every pronouncement. Like now, when he began speaking while ears still rang:

Go in the name of the Lord, and don’t come back without some scalps! he bellowed. The deacons scattered, and the reverend sat back down as the silence reasserted itself.

Clearly, a smokescreen was needed. Something to distract the fine people of Memphis from asking the hard questions which he couldn’t answer, questions of how he would ever again be able to tolerate a spineless viper like this in his home. The reverend closed his eyes and began to pray.

As he did, he smiled. He knew that if Memphis could provide him with nothing else, it could always be counted on to provide a bizarre storyline or two every month. The reverend hoped August’s version would show up in time to suit his purposes.

Flat Busted

Just forty-five minutes after being handed his cashed paychecks and a voucher for a foot-wide steak, Geech threw down his two useless Jacks, staring dumbfounded at the dealer’s natural blackjack leering up at him from the green felt.

The fuck we do now? Geech shrieked. We’re flat. Stinkin.’ Broke! Heads turned in their direction, then just as swiftly turned away, as if their fetid bad luck was contagious.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, Robert Ray said into his fists. His elbows were propped on the table, his eyes watching the chips that held his mortgage, his car payment, his daily donuts, and his stripper-bait vanishing into the dealer’s chip rack like chum down a shark’s gullet. He could already hear the buzzsaw whine of his wife Tammy’s words slicing into his skull.

He sighed deeply and motioned at a passing hostess. Hey, honey. Two more Jack and Cokes here.

She looked down her nose at him, then at the vast expanse of chipless green. I’ll see what I can do.

You do that, he said. After absently watching her tightly-wrapped back end swivel away, Robert Ray’s eyes narrowed, the waitress joining that ever-growing line of uppity broads who failed to fall prostrate before the greatness of Krunt. Geez. Fifteen minutes ago, she’d’ve blown us for a couple chips.

Haggh on, Geech said, one hand buried wrist-deep in his mouth. He yanked it out with a wet sucking sound and a yelp, and extended a bloody tooth toward the dealer. Y’all think I can trade this in for a few bucks? It’s got a gold filling. He poked at the yellowed tooth in his palm. Aw, shit. Grabbed the wrong one. Waitaminute, here we go—

Gentlemen. The dealer, his slick hair shining in the artificial light, leaned forward. If you won’t be wagering, I have to ask you to vacate the seats.

Hey, sonny, we’d still be wagering if you knew how to fuckin’ deal, Geech said, tossing the tooth on the floor and wiping the blood from his whiskery face. Losing twenty-seven straight hands—it ain’t right! Y’all are a pack’a cheatin’ sumbitches!

Perhaps, the dealer said, his countenance impeccable, if the gentleman would learn mathematics, he would not hit while holding a ten, an eight and a two.

Hey! One time, Alice! And it was because your little liquor chickie over there was flashing them fake titties like high beams— His torrent unleashed a new spattering of blood from his gums, and he began looking for cocktail napkins to staunch the flow.

The dealer nodded at someone over Geech’s shoulder, and each man felt a gentle but firm hand the size of a catcher’s mitt come to rest on the back of his neck. Boys, boys, came a velvety voice from behind them. Can’t we all just get along here?

They turned and stared directly into the chest of the hulking Cudgel. He had a smile on his face, but with his hands at the base of their skulls—within easy spine-snapping distance—Robert Ray shrugged, broken, and got up off his chair. Geech stumbled out of his own seat, waving a bloodstained finger at Cudgel like an angry grandmother.

No way! No way! I seen them movies! You’re gonna go back and hammer our fuckin’ hands now, aren’t you?

Cudgel laughed, a warm rumble that made both men smile involuntarily—and nervously. No, of course not. We wouldn’t dream of bringing harm to fine customers such as yourselves. Besides, he leaned in conspiratorially, hammers are such crude tools. These days, Mr. McNutt prefers drills. Black & Decker cordless. Goes through bone like it was Jell-O. Leaves a lot less for the maids to clean up, know what I mean?

Robert Ray fancied himself the mastermind of the duo—which, given Geech’s general mental condition, was usually possible simply by remaining conscious. He also thought of himself as a slick gambler, and his astonishing run of bad luck had so addled his thoughts that he could do no more than nod glumly at the genial Cudgel. Geech’s eyes darted about like a caffeinated ferret as he kept his mouth stuffed full of napkins.

Well, then. Now that all that’s settled, what say we get you two gentlemen a Coke? For the road, he added, kindly but firmly. Cudgel motioned at a new hostess—a perky young Ole Miss coed working her way through nursing school here—and in an instant, she stood between both men. Kitty, how about escorting our guests to the Backstage Bar?

Kitty grasped Geech’s right and Robert Ray’s left arm and pulled them close to her, careful to press their biceps ever so gently into the sides of her breasts. Each man’s back straightened noticeably. Now boys, what can we get you two this evening...? She let the question hang tantalizingly in the air as she led the men, like tired puppies, directly toward the bar closest to The Tank’s parking lots. One drink, and they’d be double-D— driving and dreaming—casino parlance for patrons sent home robbed blind but holding on to the casino’s illusions that fortune was but another spin away.

Cudgel