Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders Read Online Free Page A

road, through the big shrubs on the other side, and on through the
field.   The sheriff called for an
ambulance but it didn’t matter.   Mr.
Paley was already dead when the sheriff rolled him over; several of his teeth
were on the pavement.   His face was
covered with pinkish spit and gravel and there was a box of Dr. Porter’s
Headache Powder poking out of his shirt pocket.

 
 
    5.

 
    Biloxi , Mississippi

 
    Jimmy Rogers was a member of the Fourth Estate, but only in
the loosest sense of the word.   He was
really just a freelance writer with a fondness for music and a girl named
Megan.   Jimmy had been a reporter for a
couple of the state’s newspapers but had quickly tired of the assignments they
foisted on him — puff pieces on this year’s debutante fashions, that sort of
crap.   He knew the only way to get the
assignments he wanted was by surrendering the security of a paycheck and going
freelance, so he had resigned and started writing concert reviews and artist
profiles.  
    Jimmy had been doing it long enough and well enough to
become the unofficial ‘official’ reporter-and-photographer covering the entire Mississippi
music scene.   At one end of the spectrum
this meant reviewing the occasional big concert at the Coliseum in Jackson
or the one in Biloxi.   At the other end of the continuum he covered
small clubs, like Mr. T’s, where local talent got its start.   But he spent most of his time at the state’s
thirty-some-odd casinos.
    On any given night, 365 days a year, there was at least one
‘newsworthy’ concert somewhere in the state.   He covered any show he wanted, wrote reviews, then tried to sell them.   Regional magazines
and newspapers occasionally hired him to do interviews or review specific shows, and the tabloids were always interested in
photographs — preferably scandalous ones — of anyone approaching celebrity
status.   The World Globe once paid Jimmy $2,500 for a photo of a drunk Jim Nabors impersonator throwing a punch at a woman
who heckled him at a show in Vicksburg.   “Faux Nabors, Real Punch!” was the
headline.   The casinos, which had
descended on the state like a plague in the early ‘90’s, were Jimmy’s bread and
butter.
    As a kid Jimmy was a devotee of the old James Bond movies —
the ones with Sean Connery.   It was
through these films that Jimmy formed his image of what a casino should be
like.   They were elegance and
sophistication, royalty and worldliness.   Casinos were glamor palaces filled with beautiful, witty people and
debonair espionage agents drinking martinis while surrounded by alluring decor.
    So Jimmy was understandably disappointed the first time he
walked into one of the casinos on the Mississippi
Gulf Coast.   There wasn’t a tuxedo or a martini in sight,
and Jimmy would have bet his own mother’s life that no one in the building was
associated in any way with the intelligence community.   The place was ten million watts of tackiness
with all the glamour of a neon-lit cock fight.   But it was where he plied his trade and tonight was no different.   He was there to cover Eddie Long’s first
appearance at The Gold Coast Extravaganza Casino in Biloxi.
    Jimmy had asked Megan, his girlfriend of three months, to
join him.   As they walked through the
casino’s main room, he turned to her.   “Is
it just me, or does it feel like we’re inside a giant Dukes of Hazzard pinball machine?”   Despite being a native Mississippian, Jimmy
sounded only vaguely southern.
    “Granted,” Megan said, “it’s not Monte Carlo.”   She stopped at a slot machine.   “But it’s still fun.”   She dropped four quarters into the slot and
pulled the arm.
    Just then a man who looked like he would have been rejected
by the producers of Hee Haw for looking too much like white trash walked past
wearing a Who Farted? t-shirt and a big smile.   Jimmy wondered if the
man had hit a jackpot or if he was just happy he still had those