When I walk through the door, the club’s patrons don’t turn to me and freeze, nor does the jukebox screech to a halt, as it does in schlock movies. About half the patrons glance in my direction, but most quickly go back to their business. Only the bartender stares, waiting to see what my intentions might be.
I scan the room, searching for the man I’ve only seen up close in a pickup truck window, and for a brief time in the Justice Court. The interior of the juke isn’t as dim as I expected, but it smells like every other one I’ve entered in my life. The first wave of odors confuses the olfactory senses—a strange brew of delicious aromas and suspicious funk. Frying chicken, sizzling lard, baking biscuits, fresh corn bread, and onions battle dead fish, stale beer, old garbage, disinfectant, sugary wine, and cigarette smoke that’s permeated even the cinder-block walls. Eight tables with red-checkered cloths have been squeezed between the bar and the corner stage, and four more stand along the far wall beneath narrow windows that actually allow some daylight through. A painting of a naked and bejeweled black girl floating above a smoldering volcano serves as a backdrop for the stage, where a glittering red drum set awaits the next show. The flashing jukebox in the corner sends Bobby “Blue” Bland throughout the club with bone-shaking bass. I can guess the other artists in that machine without looking: Little Walter, B. B. King, Big Mama Thornton, Wilson Pickett, Muddy Waters, Irma Thomas, Robert Johnson, Beverly “Guitar” Watkins, Ray Charles, and probably a couple of tracks by Merle Haggard or Hank Williams to round out the list.
No one in CC’s is younger than forty, except a tall, skinny busboy moving between the tables with a mop and bucket. It’s too dark to see faces clearly, so I try to differentiate Lincoln by his size. As I search the tables, a woman wearing jeans and a red bandanna tied around her head walks up and gives me a skeptical look. “What you lookin’ for? Your car break down or somethin’?”
“No, ma’am. I’m Mayor Penn Cage, from Natchez. I’m looking for a man from Chicago. His name is Lincoln Turner.”
She looks at me like I just announced I’m selling burial insurance. “Don’t know him.”
“His truck’s parked outside.”
“Well, you can look around, if you buy a beer.”
“Budweiser.”
She spins and heads for the bar.
The scents of cooking food are emanating from the ramshackle kitchen beneath the vent pipe I saw outside. Only a greasy curtain separates it from the main room, and it’s near this curtain that I spy Lincoln Turner, sitting alone at a half-size table. Did he consciously choose the table with the shortest path to the back door? Maybe not. He’s sitting hunched over a Colt .45 tallboy, facing away from me, and he seems oblivious to my entrance.
When the waitress places a sweating beer can in my hand, I move cautiously toward Lincoln’s table. He’s actually bent over a plate, not his beer, eating as though he hasn’t had anything for days.
“Mind if I sit down?” I ask from four feet away.
Lincoln doesn’t turn at first, and when he does, he turns slowly, as though already certain of what he’ll see.
“Take a seat, Mayor,” he says, not smiling. “I can’t say I was expecting you.”
As I slide into the chair opposite him, he says, “How’d you find me? Put your local Gestapo on the case?”
I don’t answer, and it’s several seconds before I realize why. I’m searching his broad face for similarities to my father’s—or my own. I see no obvious resemblance, but it’s strange to search for your own features in a face of a different color. Lincoln is an imposing man, if not conventionally handsome. He has an oval face, as I do, but not the prominent jaw that my father and I share. His eyes are brown, like mine, but almost disturbingly dark. I don’t recognize his nose or cheekbones, and his hair is as nappy as that of any black man I ever knew. Only Lincoln’s high forehead strikes a resonant note and, if I’m honest, reminds me of my father. The lack of overall similarity comforts me, and yet … something bothers me that I can’t put my finger on.
“I’m surprised you had the nerve to walk in here,” he says. “White boy like you in a black jook? Out on the edge of nowhere? Most white boys would be nervous as a whore in church.”
“I’d be a lot more nervous in a shitkicking honky-tonk. People come here for the food and the music.”
Turner chuckles. “You’re right. When rednecks drink, they want to fuck or fight, and not necessarily in that order.”
I want to ask him what he was doing outside my house earlier this afternoon, but that might force our conversation to an abrupt conclusion. Better to learn what I can before confronting him. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”
He looks around as though appraising the value of the place. “When I was a boy in Chicago, there were jooks like this on the South Side. No name, usually, just an address. Mississippi folks who moved up there re-created what they’d known back home. My stepfather did a lot of his business in corner jook joints. He’d sit there eating pork sausage and cat-head biscuits, running half a dozen scams from the pay phone while he ate. I guess I got to like it. The funk of it, you know?”
My stepfather. I try to recall what Dad told me about the man Viola married in Chicago. The phrase “charming rogue” comes back to me.
“I know why you’re here,” Lincoln says, his dark eyes suddenly serious. “I see you studyin’ my face.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“No. I’ll let you tell your lie before I tell the truth. Why do you think you’re here?”
“I came to find out why you’re trying to railroad my father for murder.”
He shakes his head with confidence. “That’s no mystery. What son wouldn’t want vengeance on the man who killed his mama? That’s logic, plain and simple. No, Mr. Mayor … you’re here to answer a deeper question. And you’re scared.”
“What were you doing parked outside my house an hour ago?”
Lincoln shrugs. “It’s a free country, ain’t it?”