Ace Atkins
Wicked City
Copyright © 2008 by Ace Atkins
For Billy
You could climb a tall tree, spit in any direction, and where the wind wafted the splutter, there you would find organized crime, corruption, sex and human depravity.
– EDWIN STRICKLAND AND GENE WORTSMAN,
Phenix City: The Wickedest City in America, 1955
Woe unto the fighter that goes into battle with the thought of keeping his features regular and his hair parted neatly in the center. He is a sucker for the rough, tough, one-track-minded youngster who carries mayhem in each foot and murder in his heart.
– Scientific Boxing by a Fistic Expert, 1936
Many of the large events in this novel are true. However, some characters have been drawn as composites to share space alongside historical figures, and in several instances time has been compressed for brevity. That said, no author could ever exaggerate the sin, sleaze, and moral decay of Phenix City, Alabama, in the fifties or the courage of the people who stood up to fight it.
WELCOME TO PHENIX CITY, Alabama, population 23,305. Located across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia, we offer all the basic amenities of small-town Southern life. There’s Cobb’s Barber Shop, where kindly gray-headed gentlemen discuss local politics and current affairs between the buzz of the clippers and local radio ag reports. And we have the friendly Elite Café, where Mr. Ross Gibson will cook you up the best plate of eggs and grits with red-eye gravy you ever tasted. We have a small but bustling downtown filled with Seymour’s Ready-to-Wear Shop, Bentley’s Grocery, the Phenix City Pharmacy, and the wonderful Palace Theater, where on Saturdays a kid can get in for fifty cents and watch the latest B westerns or the new adventures of Francis the Talking Mule.