by Ace Atkins
“Come on,” Caddy Colson said. “Come with me. We all need to get out of here now. People are asking me questions I don’t like.”
“Where is she going?” Sancho said. “Where are they taking our mother?”
“I don’t know,” Caddy Colson said, wrapping her arm around them both. “But I promise you, we will find out.”
2
The son of a bitch was late. Fannie Hathcock had been waiting for Buster White to show for more than two hours and still no sign of his private plane. She stood there, stiletto heels wobbly in the gravel near the airfield and Quonset huts, staring up into the starry sky, checking the narrow gold watch on her wrist while burning through three cigarillos. “That fat cocksucker does this shit on purpose,” Fannie said, spewing smoke from the side of her mouth. “Pissing me off must make his little Twinkie hard.”
Midnight Man didn’t answer. He was a half-ton black man who’d worked for her since she first came from Tibbehah County, promoting his big ass from barbecue pit master at the Rebel Truck Stop to running security at Vienna’s Place, an all-nude bar that operated right off Highway 45. In all the years she’d known him, he rarely spoke, mainly nodding or saying “Yes, ma’am.” Tonight, he was dressed in a black silk shirt, black pants, and black leather shoes to run the show at her new place out on the lake.
“Are the girls ready?”
Midnight Man nodded.
“Is the barbecue and chicken ready to be served?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Those dealers in from Tunica yet?” she asked. “They should’ve gotten to the club three hours ago. I promised the deluxe poker room would be primed and ready for Buster and whoever the fuck he’s flying up with him.”
Midnight Man nodded.
“He came to inspect the goods, see what kind of show we’re floating up on Choctaw Lake,” she said. “He’s worried as hell that once we open up some high-dollar gambling in north Mississippi, it’s gonna chip away at the swinging dickwads who come down to Biloxi for his potato chip and dip parties at the Grand. Probably thinking, Oh shit, this bitch’s gonna poach all my big dogs from the back room and he’s gonna be stuck with gallon tubs of caviar from China and teenage Mexican cooze that can’t speak a lick of English.”
Midnight Man grunted and pointed up to the red flashing lights in the sky. She heard the high whine of the jet engine and fished out the cell from her purse. Within a few seconds, the freshly paved tarmac glowed with pulsing blue lights, a roving beam of white light circling the narrow valley and over the pine trees and kudzu-choked ravines. The crickets and cicadas started to go silent as the plane started its descent.
“And Midnight Man?” Fannie asked. “Don’t trust any of these bastards. They’d just as soon shoot you in the back of your big head as pat you on the back.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The small white jet landed quick and hard, skidding to a stop just a few feet shy from the barricades at the end of the tarmac. It was flat-ass dark, nothing but the pulsing lights in the valley. The pilot turned and began to double back, jets cooling, engines at a high whine.
“The bastard’s got a big set of balls on him,” she said. “Not many folks would have the guts to fly into my damn world, wanting to get a grand tour of a place they’re no longer welcome. You know what he’s gonna say? He’ll want to sweet talk me about the old times, twenty years back, when I was a knobby-kneed piece of country trash with long red hair and teeth spread out like a rake. He’ll say that he made me, saw promise in my intelligence and sizable attributes, and say something about friendship and a shared history. He still wants to be a part of a good ole boy club that doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with boys at all. Does it, now?”
Midnight Man stood still, a dark shape cut from onyx. Fannie spewed out more smoke, waiting, hand on one hip, the other ashing the tip of her cigarillo. She tapped her right foot fast as a piston, already sweating through her thousand-dollar silk dress from Neiman Marcus.
The plane door opened with a hiss and the stairs unfolded down to the landing strip. She watched as two older white men walked down the steps. They both wore blue blazers and khaki pants, pistols bold on their hips. One was chubby with a graying goatee, and the other seemed a decade or two older, someone she’d seen before, Irv or Merv or some shit. Ole Merv had been working for Buster since before Buster got his cherry popped in Angola doing a ten-year stretch for racketeering and mail fraud.
Buster White walked out of the plane last, waddling down the steps in long blue shorts and a gigantic Hawaiian shirt with palm trees and parrots. He looked like Jimmy Buffett had wasted away on too many margaritas and fucked a killer whale.
“Fannie Hath-cock,” Buster White said, opening his arms. “Baby. My sweet, sweet baby girl.”
She stood rigid for the embrace, feeling it linger like a wayward preacher, his whopping stomach against her, smallish hands brushing across her ass. Fannie tried not to think about acts she’d done for that man when she was younger, happy, and eager to rise in the favor of the Syndicate, up the damn food chain of morons, and learn the business from the dirt up.
“You can let go of my ass now,” she said, pushing him away.
“Gimme a while to take it all in,” he said, licking his lips, looking her up and down, and stifling a belch with his fist. His breath smelled like dead shrimp and onions. “They don’t make women like you anymore. So many curves and bumps, a man could get lost in the topography.”
“Did you forget the party?” Fannie asked.
“Just me and Merv,” he said. “And Frank. You know Frank? Used to work the blackjack table at the Beau Rivage. Don’t you worry. They’re just here so we can have a proper visit, sit down nice and easy over fine whiskey and catch up on old times. And maybe, just maybe, conduct a little business.”
“We don’t have business,” she said. “Not anymore. I made that damn clear.”
“I know what you said on that telephone,” Buster said. “And I know how you felt about me since ole Ray kicked the bucket. But fuck me five times in the ass, we got things that need to be hashed out. We don’t have no Ray to sit down in his white linen suits and fine New Orleans manners to work out the details. We got to come to the fact that it’s just me, you, and the savages down on the Rez now. It’s best for everyone we play safe, baby. Besides, I missed your sweet fine ass. I could bounce a half-dollar off it from here to the moon. I’ll be goddamned if you didn’t dab those tatas with a little Chanel Number Five.”
“Chanel Gardénia is what I wear,” she said. “You must’ve sent me a dozen bottles. Or don’t you recall?”
“Did I now?” Buster said. “How about you tell me more about this place you set up on Choctaw Lake? I heard it’s a hell of a step up from selling flat champagne and lap dances for twenty bucks a throw on the highway.”
“You know it,” she said. “It’s a real class joint.”
“A class joint?” Buster said. “Well, shit. Can’t wait to see it. Might just redneck up the place a little. I’ll even let you sit in big daddy’s lap on the ride over. How would you like that, Miss Fannie? Just like old times with you and me.”
Fannie felt the heat in her neck and face as she ditched the last of her cigarillo onto the gravel, watching it spark into the night. The pulsing blue lights and rotating white light on the airfield fell fast and dark, and it was hot and dry out in the north part of the county. She could hear the brittle leaves in the trees, starved of moisture and burned up in the heat of a summer drought. The cicadas started again as two SUVs flicked on their headlights and rolled to where Buster and his men waited. As one of the white Escalades slowed to a stop, Midnight Man reached out and held the door open for their guests.
“Sure is good to see you, Miss Fannie,” Buster said. “Feels like an ole-time family reunion.”
Fannie watched as Buster and his men disappeared into the SUV and it
rolled off the gravel and away from the landing strip.
“Call Vienna’s,” Fannie said, hands shaking as she lit a new cigarillo. “Let ’em know we’re headed out to the lake. And Midnight Man?”
The big man turned, eyes dark and leveled at her.
“Chill the beer,” she said. “But lose the dealers and the fucking girls. Looks like this is gonna be a goddamn private show.”
* * *
• • •
Quinn stood with Boom in the hills overlooking the landing strip. When he’d been a kid, he and Boom used to wander all over the old airfield, shut off from the main highway with concrete barricades and NO TRESPASSING signs and barbed wire and all those good things that made boys have to know what it’s like inside. But the airstrip and old outbuildings had been updated in the last few years. The busted old tarmac had been recoated with slick black asphalt, brand-new equipment set up along the strip. Most recently, five new Quonset huts shuffled between the old relics, painted a flat green. He and Boom had been visiting the airfield a lot lately, noting the traffic in and out, logging tail numbers and photographing new visitors in Tibbehah County.
They were both dressed for hunting, dark green T-shirts, camo pants, and armed with shotguns and rifles. Quinn carried his Beretta M9 that had accompanied him on thirteen tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. The walk in from the road hadn’t been easy, tough as hell on his back and lungs. But Quinn liked being back in the quiet woods, doing work he’d been trained to do and spent half of his life doing. He lifted his night vision goggles to the airfield just as the two white Escalades pulled away toward the highway.
“You recognize the fat man?” Boom said.
“Maybe.”
“That man’s shirt bigger than a circus tent,” Boom said. “But if he’s standing toe to toe with Queen Fannie, he must be important.”
“Fannie wants everyone to know Tibbehah County is open for business.”
“Sure am glad the new sheriff is keeping a lid on the corruption since you did such a horseshit job of it.”
“Maybe I should read his damn book,” Quinn said. “Pick up a few things about honor and duty.”
“You know Maggie knows what we’re up to?” Boom said. “She don’t believe for a damn second that we’re running the back roads for the hell of it. She knows even shot up, you can’t just sit on your ass and do nothing.”
“Ain’t that the reason I came home?”
Boom nodded, sliding the shotgun onto his back with the sling, his metal hook glinting in the soft glow of the moon. Quinn caught something in the corner of his eye and headed a few meters down the hill, through a thicket of pines. He got on his haunches and pulled out a penlight from his ruck. He looked up at Boom, who saw just what he was seeing.
“Trip wire.”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t get my ass patched up at Walter Reed just to get it blown up in the hills of Tibbehah County,” Boom said. “Just what all is Miss Fannie moving through north Mississippi?”
Quinn scanned the trees for cameras, the ground for more wires. He looked down at the big collection of new Quonset huts and back up at his friend. “Everything.”
* * *
• • •
“Where is everybody?” Buster White said. “I thought you said y’all were open for business.”
“We are,” Fannie said. “I just figured you and I might have a little privacy before the party started. You can’t get a lot done once we truck those girls in from Vienna’s Place. Never met a man in my life who could think with his pants down around his ankles.”
“Don’t know about that, doll,” he said. “That’s how I study on things best.”
Buster followed her through the brand-new sprawling cabin out on the northeastern tip of Choctaw Lake. Fannie had secured fifty acres of privacy around the parcel, setting the main cabin so far into the tree line that passing boaters couldn’t see it. She’d built a dock from stone trucked in from Tupelo and a large kidney-shaped pool out back of the gaming house where special guests could drink cheap champagne and make small talk with topless women. Fannie taught her girls to make ’em feel special. Always look the man in the eye, give him a reassuring touch on the forearm, toss the hair, lick the lips, and smile. Don’t ever stop smiling through whatever kind of bullshit he was telling you. His goddamn bitch of a wife. His bad luck at golf. They all had busted egos and walnut-sized brains and would put their peckers into a ring of fire to get laid by some young tail.
“Damn, this place is sharp,” Buster said, strolling through the expansive house, letting his fat little fingers trail on the green felt of the craps table. “Y’all sure went all out.”
Buster White eyed the big mahogany tables for late-night poker games for the high rollers and a billiard table up by the bar where you could challenge a girl in short shorts or lingerie to play a game of straight pool or foosball. He stopped when he saw the tall wooden Indian by a glass cigar humidor. He patted the big Indian on his chest and turned back to Fannie.
“I bet you call this ole chief Kaw-Liga,” Buster White said. “If it were mine, that’s what I would do. Fell in love with that ole Choctaw maid at the Georgia store. So tell me this, Fannie. Just what are you expecting as a monthly take in a place like this, going with the seasons as they are, up and down. Just what do you hope to average?”
Fannie rested a hand on her hip, the sweat drying across her neck and her chest in the cool refrigerated air, and looked Buster up and down. They were alone. Midnight Man stood outside with Merv and Frank, showing them the big stone pool filled with salt water that would be heated in the cooler months, and maybe on out to the special dock they planned to build next year. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Come on now, baby,” Buster said. “Ain’t no secrets between me and you.”
Fannie told him. Didn’t seem to make much of a difference now. Buster made a low whistle and shook his head.
“Honey, hush your mouth.”
Fannie shrugged. The gaming room smelled of heart pine and fresh leather and the faint trace of cigar smoke from the weekend before when she had folks flying in from damn near everywhere. Fannie stopped by the bar to open up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, knowing it was Buster’s favorite and that he liked to see a fresh bottle opened just for him. Buster would never forget the SOB who put paint thinner in some Jim Beam nearly thirty years ago and took out a good chunk of his throat and stomach.
She clinked in a few ice cubes in a crystal glass, poured in three full fingers, and walked slow and easy back over to him. His pig eyes full on her tall, long-legged strut, the slit in her black silk dress running damn near up to her coot. The room was so silent and shadowed that it hummed.
Buster accepted the whiskey and put his big nose to the edge of the glass, sniffing. “Did you expect me to wish you all the damn luck in the world with my thumb jacked up my ass?”
“I don’t recall asking permission to run my fucking business,” Fannie said.
Buster swallowed down nearly half that brown water and rested his hands on the edge of a pool table. He picked up a cue ball and absently sent it barreling through the other balls arranged on the green felt. The balls cracked and spun, wheeling out in chaos from the center. Buster set down the drink and stared down at the table, hands resting on the edge.
“Ray’s dead,” Fannie said. “I do as I please.”
“I am truly sorry about Ray,” he said. “But you and me was tight, too. Good ole times back in the day.”
Fannie didn’t answer.
“You sure did know how to please a man,” Buster White said, his upper lip wet from the scotch. “You were so damn strong, too. Like some kind of wild woman loose from the swamps. So damn eager. Yes, ma’am. I always asked for you personal. Send that redheaded country girl. She knows how to work that ole gear shifter. She doesn’t just dally around.
No, sir.”
Fannie’s hands shook as she lit a cigarillo and gritted her teeth. “I’m sorry you came all this way,” she said. “For nothing.”
Buster grinned and shrugged, strolling through the wide-open space of cabin built for gaming and entertaining, his fat ass making the heartwood pine floors creak as he walked. He headed over to the wall and selected a pool cue, testing its weight and size in his hands. He held it tight in his right hand and tapped it lightly into his left. Something in his pig eyes had changed, giving them a flat coldness that Fannie had only seen a handful of times. Only half the house lights were on, leaving most of the floor in shadow.
“Sorry, baby,” Buster White said. “Ain’t no way ’round this. How about we talk this over like a couple of civilized white folks?”
“You trying to intimidate me?”
Buster White seemed to relax, his hand holding the pool cue falling to his side. His eyes met hers and he slowly nodded. He handed her the crystal glass. “Oh,” he said. “I think we’re long past that. How about we just skip ahead to the good part.”
“And what’s that?”
“A drink to seal the damn deal.”
* * *
• • •
Boom cruised by the dozen diesel pumps at the Rebel Truck Stop, turning down toward the diner’s plate-glass windows. Truckers and old folks huddled over steaming plates of the best chicken-fried steak in the state and the worst catfish in the county. Boom had a Charley Pride album in the tape deck, playing “Just Between You and Me.” The neon lights blazed along the roof of the truck stop and the titty bar behind it, Vienna’s Place. Quinn thought back on the time when a crew of bank robbers had holed up inside and later blew up his favorite truck. Damn, he sure did miss the Big Green Machine.
“Did you hear anything about a party out at the lake?” Quinn said. His arm hung out the window, fingers touching the top of the truck cab.