Read Online Leavin' Trunk Blues by Ace Atkins - Free Book Online

nodded.
    A black woman with her hair knotted into a gray bun walked out with two Styrofoam containers and two paper cups. She glared at Peetie. The food steamed up some wonderful smells when Nick opened the top. The woman turned on a soul Christmas tape while she cleaned up. Otis singing “Merry Christmas, Baby.”
    “C’mon, man,” Peetie said, leaning close into the table and shaking his head. He ticked his tongue and rubbed his bottom lip over his mustache. He left his food untouched. “Don’t let that old woman confuse you. She just OJin’ on you, man. Prison will do that to a woman, get her mind convinced she didn’t do it. But she got Billy’s blood on her hands. That much I know. Police found Billy’s blood all in her bed.”
    Nick dug into the greens. Crisp with small pieces of salty ham. The corn bread melted in his mouth. He listened to Otis sing and sighed. He thought he was on to something. Pretty stupid, he guessed. People were in prison for a reason. He just trusted too easily.
    Peetie studied his face. “You all right, man?” he asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Listen, them days weren’t all bad. Man, I remember goin’ out drinkin’ with Ruby after her shows down at the Palm Tavern. Guess that about the time when ‘Blues Highway’ came out. She’d have her driver pick us up and we couldn’t pay for a drink all down Forty-seventh.”
    “Must’ve made a good chunk of change to have a driver.”
    “Not really. We had to. Ruby couldn’t drive worth a shit. That country girl never learned.”
    “You know where I can find some other King Snake folks?”
    “Most of ‘em dead, man. Like I said, I been out that loop.”
    “No one?”
    Peetie shook his head. “Sure don’t, man. Wish I could help. I mean, like I seen Moses Jordan around and stuff but you got to have an engraved invitation to say hello to that fat fucker.”
    Nick nodded.
    “Ruby really had the thing. Somethin’ that made people just want to be around her. To this day I don’t know what happened. But I guess I blame Billy. When that fell apart, something in Ruby died.”
    Nick played with his food, sorting the ham from the greens. He’d lost his appetite looking for something that wasn’t there.

Chapter 11
    Annie knew her knives. She didn’t care for a bowie or a switchblade. They were all flash for cash. Just give her something that was made for carving a turkey or skinning a carrot and she was in heaven. So simple. The best knives were carbon steel with some nice wood wrapped around the tang. Most people didn’t know what a tang was, but it was the extension of the blade you didn’t see. You have a short tang and you were really screwed. Kind of like a guy with a short dick. She kept a seven-piece wooden block set on her nightstand beside her lava lamp and vibrator.
    All her knives were forged, hammered out from a thick piece of steel. She liked the blade hand-ground by a master cutler. Make that edge so sharp it could cut through a tin can like it was butter. She loved them all. Willie was a butcher knife but he had friends like a carving knife, boning knife, cleaver, bread knife, and even her little shearpoint paring knife for those special occasions. One time she hid the paring knife in the crack of her ass to get by some club security. She jabbed a guy good as he sat on the toilet snorting coke.
    Dead by the time she and Fannie hit the back door.
    She leaned back into her waterbed, the waves making her a little seasick, and used a sharpener to turn the pages of her Archie comic. Fannie lay on the floor by the bed painting her toenails green.
    “You want to get some coffee? A little latté? Hit the shops?”
    “No,” Annie said, bored and staring at Betty and Veronica playing catch at the beach in bikinis. Archie talking Veronica into playing in a Frisbee contest only to get beaten by a dog. Annie giggled. That Ronnie’s so uptight.
    When they made it big, she and Fannie could live like that. They’d find a little