Read Online Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels) by Ace Atkins - Free Book Online

said.
    Nick shrugged.
    "Can I trust you?" Brown asked.
    "Hell, if you knew where to find me, that means you already ran my plates and did a criminal-records search. You know about me."
    Brown smiled.
    "So tell me about Cracker," Nick said.
    "I saw Cracker when he was making the rounds, digging through trash around the highway. Told me the man talked to him and left."
    "Did you ask why?"
    "I know why."
    Nick looked at him.
    "Old Cracker thinks he knows who killed Robert Johnson. You know who Robert Johnson was?"

Chapter 14
    Jesse Garon didn't realize how far back in the woods the old man lived. Last time, spying on the sharp-dressed black dude trackin' through the woods like he was Daniel Boone, Jesse hadn't thought about all the shit in between. The damned kudzu, spindly pine trees, and vines. He wished he'd killed them both when he had the chance--would've been a hell of a lot easier.
    He'd followed the smart-ass nigra as he carried a box of records back to the motel. Keith had told him the man would be waiting to make an exchange for some cash. "Take the dude and the records to Puka's," he said, so Jesse put a knife into the nigra's ribs and kept it there all the way back to the junkyard. Long drive, with the man calling him a "little-dick racist."
    Shit, Puka had all the fun killing the guy.
    Tonight, all the crickets, cicadas, wild animals and shit were wakin' up. It was like some kinda fucked-up safari movie. Like Paradise, Hawaiian Style , when E and that good-looking woman were marooned on that island. They acted like they were just roasting marshmallows, singin' and shit. Bet your ass, off camera, they were fuckin' on that island.
    Sure as shit, E could get the pussy.
    He shook his head for thinking that. That was terrible. "Sorry, E," he whispered so low all he heard was the sound of moving lips.
    It was just him and the weird-lookin' nigra man. He'd get in and get out. Take care of business. No guns. He could do this himself--just beat him until he had a heart attack from fright or take 'im with a blade. The old man was weak with the leprosy or whatever God's curse he had.
    From where he squatted and waited, Jesse could smell the ole man cooking in the early dusk. Smelled real wild, like a squirrel or somethin'. He must've scraped the animal off the highway with a shovel, then roasted its smelly, rotten flesh. Maybe he had a sack where he kept all the dead animals he found on the highway. Sure as shit didn't hunt, as slow as he moved.
    But the last thing he wanted was for the old man to get nervous and start shooting at shadows. If he knew someone was out there, the guy could hole up forever. Then everyone would be pissed at him: Keith, Puka, and his momma. Embarrassed 'cause he couldn't kill one old nigra man. This ole nigra probably had an advantage on him. He could sense shit by livin' in the woods so long. Could hear an animal if it licked itself.
    This time he'd be careful, he thought, slowly taking his clothes off and tucking them under a flat rock. He put the switchblade in his mouth and bit down on the handle. He'd be an animal like the old man: no shoes, no clothes, no nothin'.
    Above him, the moon was as round and perfect as the Sun God emblem on E's jumpsuit. He could feel its glowing energy giving him power. The moon had always done that for him--given him that power. If E was the sun, then Jesse was the moon. When it had all its force behind it, so did Jesse. Tonight, killin' was easy. In and out. TCB.

Chapter 15
    Nick and Willie Brown traveled south along State Road 7 to a hamlet called Quito, about ten miles from Greenwood. Outside the arced whiteness of the headlights, there was nothing. A place where people once lived, all the sharecroppers and landowners gone now. Just a few lights in rusted trailers. Hard-core farmers. Men who had worked the rich Delta loam for generations
    "Did he owe the university some money?" Brown asked.
    "Nope. Just stopped checking in," Nick said, chewing a wad of bubble