Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels) (14 page)

The way he'd learned from his mentor back in Clarksdale, JoJo said he was just passing it back around the loop. He told Nick a harmonica was the instrument that could most closely mirror the way a man felt. He said he could show Nick how to use it. But the rest would just be what was inside. The harp was just a tool for bringing the soul out. Nick learned to make a harp laugh and cry. It wasn't about being fancy, JoJo told him. It was about bringing the right emotion out at the right time.

Virginia stirred in her sleep next to him, jarring him back into the night. Somehow with her curled near, he felt more settled and anchored. She was like a stray cat found in a deserted part of town--no way he could've left her. Back in Greenwood, he'd taken her downtown to the spartan room she'd rented and grabbed her canvas duffel bag and guitar case.

She slept during the whole bumpy ride south and didn't wake up until the doors closed in the garage of the red brick warehouse. The motor turned off, just the clicking sounds of a tired engine. He watched her for a moment, staring at her lips, her red hair tucked behind her ear. He noticed the slack jaw, and freckles on a nose a little too wide.

Nick trudged up the metal stairs to the second level and flicked on the long row of industrial switches. All three thousand square feet was how he had left it. He threw his keys onto the kitchen counter, turned on the ceiling fans, and went back down where Virginia still slept. He scooped her up and carried her upstairs.

"Used to be a hardware storage back in the late eighteen hundreds," Nick said. "Sometimes you can still smell the damp lumber when it rains, but I don't charge much rent."

"I'm sorry I zonked out on you," she said, massaging his neck. "You gonna be all right? Doesn't feel good when people you know die like that. Makes you realize we're one step away from the long, last Cadillac ride."

"Really, I'm fine. You want something to eat?" Nick said, shaking off the comment and walking into the kitchen quadrant of the apartment.

"You cook?"

"I've got Froot Loops and Cap'n Crunch. I'm a connoisseur."

"No Frosted Flakes?"

"I'm trying to quit," Nick said.

They ate in silence before Nick went to the king-size mattress he kept on the floor and changed the sheets. Virginia followed and unknotted the front of her flannel shirt, stripped off the shirt, her bra, jeans, and panties, and fell into bed.

"Pajamas?" Nick asked.

"I'm trying to quit."

An hour later, Nick couldn't sleep, so he eased out of bed and pulled on his boxer shorts. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a box of kitchen matches and quietly walked upstairs to the roof. There was light rain like someone flicking damp hands. A warm breeze blew over the few plants, a couple of rusted chairs, and a grill.

Nick felt as if he'd failed. Why couldn't he have stayed and watched out for Cracker? He knew someone had tried to kill the old man and that someone had probably killed Baker. And what did he do, but take off with a woman. It was selfish and stupid.

Cracker was dead; Nick knew it. They probably dumped his body in the Yazoo River, and it would wash up in few days. Drained of all his stories and histories. But to stick around Greenwood didn't make sense. The dead kid was from New Orleans and he was the only link to what happened to Brown, Cracker, and the second set of records.

To punish himself about not being there when they were killed was to wallow in self-importance. He didn't even have a gun and probably would be dead now, too. Just a forgotten shadow in New Orleans. Maybe a plaque or scholarship at Tulane or a good story or two at JoJo's.

He rested his elbows on the cracked brick wall and looked toward the river. He could see the Greater New Orleans Bridge and Algiers Point. A tugboat flashing a tiny red light passed under the bridge towing a barge.

Nick wanted to find whoever killed Willie Brown. They extinguished his life too easily. Too cheaply. Like it was the Delta of fifty years ago. This wasn't the way it was supposed to work now. It felt like a violation or a blatant kick to the head.

Nick knew all he could do was wait for what the Leflore County Sheriff's Department found out. See if they could find a man who looked like Elvis. He felt ridiculous as he explained it was the young one, pompadour and clean sideburns, not Las Vegas. They'd have to pick up half the truckers in Mississippi.

Nick flicked a long ash over the warehouse edge.

No one would know what was on those records now. Baker had to have known what was on them. Maybe he told someone about the tracks, and they became so greedy that men died. It had to be something more than just a rare copy of "Terraplane Blues." Maybe they really were those recordings--a huge piece in the ragged puzzle that was Johnson's life.

Maybe Johnson did record in 1938, like Cracker said. Maybe he wasn't a confused old man.

That was an opportunity Nick couldn't miss. Men had spent their entire lives trying to find out when Johnson was born, where he'd learned to play, what kind of man he was. Nick knew about Johnson, listened to his music. But he'd never enveloped himself in the actual search. To most researchers, Johnson's life was a beautiful woman better men had tried to court unsuccessfully.

The answers were as sketchy as the few faded black-and-whites that existed of the man. The ultimate mystery perpetuated in haunting music that inspired so many. Nick visualized Johnson's face, smiling in that tightly creased pinstriped suit.
C'mon, Travers. This is what it's all about.

He tossed the pictures of Keith into the cardboard box he'd brought. Floyd said to clear out anything personal Keith had before the cops got there, especially anything that said something about the Blues Shack. Told him he'd come by in a few minutes and double-check that he got everything out.

Floyd also said he would meet the big man today--Pascal Cruz. The man sounded real powerful. Maybe Cruz would be his Colonel Parker, the man to recognize his talent and know how to get him exploited. Some people said being exploited was bad, but they were just people no one wanted to exploit. He wanted his face on shot glasses and T-shirts. He wanted people to find the trailer where he grew up and make pilgrimages.

Maybe he'd make enough money to buy that double-wide for his momma, a black leather jumpsuit like E wore in the '68 Comeback Special, a classic Trans Am, and a woman to be his Priscilla. That wasn't too much to ask for.

This Cruz dude was his future. At first he wondered about a man who would have such a hard-on for nigra music. But then he thought about it and realized E did, too. Sam Phillips realized E was his man to sound like a nigra. E had taken those old blues songs for his start.

Hell, that was just like Jesse. Runnin' with the blues.

Today, he'd clean away everything that remained of Keith Fields and take his place as Cruz's hit man. Yeah, this was it--the first step of coming into the sacred loop that E had always promised in the dream.

Jesse looked at his watch and saw he had a little time left. After this, Floyd said he needed his help to get that old nigra talking. He said they'd been screwed again and they didn't get what they needed. Why they didn't just kill that ole man was beyond him. He pulled out a compass, faced due north kneeling, and began to pray to E in the direction of Memphis.

"They tried," Nick said.

"Hmm."

"You have any more coffee?"

"Yeah, Loretta left coffee and milk on the stove in the kitchen."

"Yeah."

"That ain't right," JoJo said as he slurped his coffee and folded back the Metro page. He slid the paper over so Nick could see the Kate Archer byline on a shooting story.

"All those people are older than me. I heard of 'em when I was a kid in Clarksdale, but I never talked to 'em. They were kind of like heroes. As far as Robert Johnson, I always thought the man was just a legend, like Stagger Lee, until I met his stepson. My older brother used to scare the shit out of me, tellin' me the devil was waitin' for me at the crossroads with Robert Johnson.

"One time I was headed home on one of those late afternoons where the sun goin' down looks like a big orange. Anyway, I had to pass the crossroads at Highway Forty-Nine and Sixty-One, where it used to be, and there was this big dead tree without any leaves rustlin' around in the wind. I knew ole Robert was about to jump out and grab my ass."

The door opened again and JoJo's niece, Keesha, came in popping her gum and waddling as she walked. Her body seemed oddly small, Nick thought, watching her oversize butt. It reminded him of a pack mule's. He thought you could put all kinds of things on that butt: bedrolls, tin pans, mine picks. Nick wondered if she was surefooted.

"Hey y'all," she said, with about as much enthusiasm as a dying man asking about tomorrow's weather.

Nick nodded at her. She patted JoJo's back and looked at Nick. No smile. Not a bit of welcome. Maybe she knew about his fascination with her backside resembling a mule's.

When she walked back in the kitchen, Nick leaned close.

"Robert Johnson might have been gone a long time," Nick said. "But three men, maybe four, are dead over those records. I think it's all coming from New Orleans. I don't know yet."

"I need your help with this one, JoJo. You know a hell of a lot more about the blues scene in the fifties than I do. Of course, you have an advantage--I wasn't born yet. All I need is a connection to Snooks."

"I told you I don't know Snooks."