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

ain't nothin' open 'cept the Purple Heart tonight. We only went there once."
    Across the highway, clapboard shacks intermingled with trailer homes. Faded wash hung on lines like old flags, not moving in the breezeless air.
    "Did he ever say anything to you about an old, albino man?"
    Darnell nodded.
    "What?" Nick asked.
    Darnell toed the loam with his work boot.
    Nick reached into his wallet and handed him a fifty.
    "Thought you said a hunnard?"
    Nick sighed and handed him another fifty.
    "Yeah, I took the professor to see the ole man. He's a crazy ole son of a bitch. Says a lot of weird things when he talks which ain't that much 'cause he don't like people. In fact, I don't even known his name. Everyone jes' call him Cracker."

Chapter 10
    Nick drove back to the motel and slept for an hour. He'd tried to squeeze Darnell a little, get him to hint where Cracker lived, but it didn't work. He just kept on saying, "Talk to Deputy Brown." Yeah, right. The local cops would enjoy Nick's presence about as much as a mangy dog at a cocktail party. But Darnell did promise to take him to see Cracker tomorrow--said it took awhile to get back into the woods to the albino's shack. The old man was apparently a little Robinson Crusoe and a lot of Kurtz.
    After Nick woke up, he showered and stretched. His legs ached from the long drive and the morning jog. Too much drinking and smoking had made him soft. He needed to limber up joints still damaged from years of football and numerous fights. Jesus, his joints felt like rusted hinges on an antique puppet. In his thirties with a sixty-year-old's body. He looked in the bathroom mirror at his mildewed reflection. His dark hair was going gray on the sides and down on his chin, where he hadn't shaved for the last few days. A recent girlfriend had told him that he was starting to resemble a pleasant old dog, meaning it as a compliment. .
    His long fingers, slightly crooked from so many breaks, turned on the water. He had a sliver of scar tissue cut through his left eyebrow and thick lateral scars on both shoulders from a probing scope. He remembered how his shoulders felt during Saints training camp. Sometimes they ached so badly from the cracked cartilage he couldn't even raise a squirt bottle to his mouth. The trainers would shock them with electricity, rub them with heat creams, and wrap them in an Ace bandage almost every practice and game.
    Just thinking of the pain made him grit his teeth. A lot of friends thought it took a lot of character to leave football the way he did. But he didn't walk away from a very bright future. His shoulders were pumped so full of cortisone that he couldn't feel his upper body.
    The reason he knocked the coach down was simple: it just felt right. Nick's specialty was pass rushing. He was pretty good at it. He wasn't the biggest defensive lineman, but he was quick and could anticipate the snap and be in the backfield before the quarterback raised his arm. He could see the ball out of the corner of his eye and sense the count in a Zen-like way.
    However, starting his third season, his coach had little use for him. Even on passing downs, Nick sat there on the sidelines and watched this pile-of-crap rookie get pummeled yards off the ball. The rookie was a lazy shit-bag, but to the coaches he was a big investment--someone they must develop. Screw that, Nick thought. You play who could get the freakin' job done. But game after game, he had to endure this pudgy dude's less-than-inspired play. The coaches kept on coddling the man for the future.
    The only future the rookie worried about was thinking about new ways to fuck his stripper girlfriend and hold homemade porno movie parties for his friends.
    That year was the toilet. Nick's move on the coach wasn't planned. In fact, he played a great deal of the third quarter that night, racking up two sacks while the rookie complained of some dirt in his eye. When the coach sent the bastard back in, Nick snapped. He tried to calm