by Ace Atkins
“You sure aren’t shy about calling on room service,” Fannie said. “First it was a black one. And then it was a black one and a white one. And then you wanted three girls jumping on beds and fighting it out with pillows. Do you have any fucking idea how long it took to clean up all those feathers?”
“Something you need, Miss Hathcock?” Tanner said.
“‘Miss Hathcock’?” Fannie said, placing a hand to her chest, her breasts pointed and proud at the world in a scoop-necked green silk top. “I’ve never asked you for much, Brock Tanner, besides staying the hell out of my goddamn way. And in return, I’ve kept you and your savage thieves neck-deep in old whiskey and young poontang.”
“Not here,” he said, pulling the keys from his pocket and walking over to a new black Jeep parked by the empty swimming pool. “Not like this.”
“Good a time as any,” Fannie said, spewing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “How about you come on in my office and we’ll talk it out.”
Tanner laughed and shook his head. “Me seen across the street with you?” he asked. “Have you lost your damn mind?”
Fannie slid off the hood of her Lexus and pressed unlock on her car doors. She pointed to the passenger side before she crawled behind the wheel and pulled on a pair of Chanel sunglasses, taking the hard, blinding light out of her eyes.
Tanner stood there for a moment, Fannie having half a mind to crank the car and run his ass over. Instead, she clicked her long red nails on the wheel and then lifted up her left hand and crooked her index finger.
Brock Tanner did as he was told, crawling inside to all that fine wood and rich leather. The inside of the vehicle smelled like goddamn money, all the wealth and finery and fucking power that Fannie Hathcock deserved.
“Which one did you like best?” Fannie said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tanner said, face coloring, eyes glancing back in the rearview. “Does it matter? Didn’t mean anything. Not to me. Just a little fun is all.”
“That’s funny,” Fannie said. “Destiny told me that you promised you were going to leave your wife as she walked your bony white ass around on the carpet in a choker and dog leash. Don’t you dare tell me that you were lying to one of my fine ladies. It just might break her heart.”
Tanner swallowed, his neck as long and skinny as Ichabod Crane’s, arms ropy and pale as he turned back to look at Fannie. The man was trying, but failing a great deal, to gain some kind of foothold in their conversation. “What do you want?”
“Don’t you worry, Brock,” Fannie said. “I’m not in the shakedown racket. We didn’t record any of your bowwow fun at the Golden Cherry. That would be unethical as hell. Since I’m the queen of Mississippi hospitality, how would that look to my customers? They’d ruin my fine ass on Yelp.”
Tanner waited. His black eyes narrow pinpoints, looking uncomfortable in all that smoke. Fannie finally leaned forward and crushed out the cigarillo.
“What?” Tanner said. “Get to the goddamn point.”
“Our friends down in Jackson have a problem,” Fannie said. “They’ve asked me to be in touch, as going through the governor would be unseemly as hell. Vardaman has fish to fry and fuck. Same as you.”
“I know what you want,” Tanner said. “It’s been discussed. You don’t need worry your pretty red head about any of it.”
“I don’t give a shit about it one way or the other, but the governor asked for it special,” Fannie said, sliding down the windows, letting the last traces of smoke whirl and spread out into the hot morning. “And this is my fucking show and my fucking county. Got that straight? ’Cause I sure would hate to end these little slumber parties of yours. Pigtails, pom-poms, and pussy ain’t free for the taking, Sheriff.”
“Won’t be long,” he said. “OK? We’re working on it.”
“That goddamn wannabe Cesar Chavez in Crocs is making it hell for some folks in Jackson,” Fannie said. “Make sure that stops now. Until then, you’re cut off from the Golden Cherry, from my girls, and from any dog walking. Understand?”
Tanner didn’t answer, reaching for the door. His face and jug ears lit up in a bright red.
“I said, do you understand Miss Fannie?”
Tanner swallowed again, opening the door. “Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
• • •
“You mind hanging back while the Feds take care of the Ramos Brothers?” Lillie asked. “Or will your masculine pride be too injured?”
“You and Charlie Hodge?” Quinn said. “Sorry. It still makes me think of Elvis. He brought Elvis bottles of Mountain Valley water and silk scarves.”
“Me, Charlie Hodge, and your pal Holliday,” Lillie said. “Since we can’t work with the local assholes down in Tibbehah, the report had to originate with the Feds. Holliday, God bless his weird tattooed ass, made quick work of the warrants. The Ramos Brothers might actually help us grab El Jaguar by the nutsack.”
“My momma says you cuss too much.”
“And Miss Jean thought Priscilla was a virgin until her wedding night.”
“Swears on it,” Quinn said.
He and Lillie had been on the warehouse for the last two hours, twice spotting Angel Ramos coming and going in a Toyota Tundra, navy blue, busted up and dusty. The first time he’d come back with sacks from McDonald’s. But he was gone again, leaving the warehouse back lot empty and wide open. Lillie figured it was best to come in with extra firepower just in case. “I don’t want to skip into some Cartel fuckfest with my thumb jacked up my ass,” she’d said.
The warehouse was about as unremarkable as it gets, blond brick, two loading bays shut off with an accordion gate. Two metal entry doors out front and a single door in the rear. Two security cameras by the front doors. At some point, the old building had several big arched windows, but they had been walled off in the same blond brick, creating a bunker effect to the whole place. Lillie said it was registered to a place called Mid-South Enterprises, LLC. But a little further digging showed the company and all its properties and assets had been in Chapter 7 for years, the property up for sale for almost as long.
“I liked that girl,” Quinn said. “Brandy.”
“Yeah,” Lillie said. “She was a real fucking hero for two hundred bucks.”
“Led us to the Ramos Brothers.”
“I saw you got that Beretta on your hip.”
“Wouldn’t feel right if it weren’t,” Quinn said. “Same as putting on pants.”
“You drop one of these turds and you might have to hire me back,” Lillie said. “Feds are a little nitpicky about shit like that.”
“I’ll hang back,” Quinn said. “Finish this fine Pirtle’s chicken biscuit and cold coffee.”
“Thatta boy,” Lillie said. “Knew you had it in you.”
Forty minutes later, coming up on 0800, they moved two blocks away into a cleared lot and parked beside a black SUV as a silver sedan quickly pulled up beside Lillie’s Charger. A medium-sized man with gray hair and a thick gray beard got out of the sedan. Jon Holliday followed from the black SUV.
“Back door swings out and has a keypad lock,” the gray-headed man said. “No cameras. We bust in and move in fast. You said you think it’s only the two of them?”
“May only be one of them,” Lillie said. “Or none of ’em.”
“How many girls?”
“My nephew said there were about ten of them in the van,” Quinn said. “Don’t know how many got free yesterday.”
The gray-headed man nodded and looked to Quinn. Lillie introduced him as her partner, Charlie Hodge. Quinn decided it would be an inopportune moment to ask him about having a famous namesake.
“I knew your daddy,” Charlie Hodge said. “Long, long time back.”
“How’s that?” Quinn asked.
“Conversation for another time,” Hodge said. “You would
n’t believe it if I told you.”
“Lillie won’t let you come along and play?” Holliday said.
“Says it may complicate matters.”
“Not for me,” Holliday said. “Officially you’re still the sheriff of Tibbehah County. We’re just acting on a tip you provided.”
“Appreciate that.”
Holliday nodded and winked back, the four of them crossing a barren South Memphis street on over to the warehouse, finding a narrow path lined with rusting chain-link fence overgrown with weeds and trumpet vines. The trumpet vines pretty in the early morning heat, growing hearty and free from the cracked asphalt.
Charlie Hodge had brought a nifty little entry tool and a sledgehammer and carried them both as they found an open space in the fence and crossed to a back door. As they got close to the door, he handed the sledge to Quinn and slid the entry tool against the lock.
“Figure you’ve busted in a few doors, Ranger.”
“Just a few.”
“Yeah, right,” Hodge said. Lillie had told him that Hodge had been a Marine back in the seventies. He didn’t look a hell of a lot older than Quinn’s father.
Quinn hammered the tool, Hodge trying to rip the door open. Quinn hammered it again, the tool sinking hard in the metal, getting a solid hold of the door. Two more strikes and they were in, moving into darkness, Lillie turning on a flashlight over her Sig, moving and communicating through the open space, Holliday identifying them as federal officers.
They crossed through one door, and then another, and into an empty warehouse with skylights. They found an abandoned office area toward the front door and two blue doors padlocked from the outside. Charlie Hodge lifted the tool and broke through the chains, moving fast and hard into a cavernous brick warehouse with a lone white van inside.
A black man with long, woven hair came toward them, hobbling on a bandaged foot. As he reached for a pistol in his sweatpants, Quinn swung the sledgehammer into his ribs, dropping him fast and hard.
Somewhere on the far side of the warehouse, they heard a toilet flush.
Another man, shirtless and wiping his hands on a towel, came from the bathroom and looked up in surprise. Lillie, Holliday, and Hodge all had their guns trained on him. He dropped the towel and raised his arms. His flat, skinny chest was decorated with black tattoos, the image of a horned devil on his belly, MS-13 inked on his left arm. It was Ricardo Ramos.
“Where’s your brother?” Lillie said.
He didn’t answer. Lillie walked up hard on him and took his legs out with her shotgun, sending him onto his back. “Pájaro de mierda,” she said. Quinn wasn’t sure if shitbird was an insult in Spanish, but it sounded like it should be.
Quinn and Holliday walked over to the white van, hearing nothing but the moans of the pimp who had tried to shoot Jason. Holliday slid back the van door and they saw three young girls shaking and huddled together, backs pushed against the front seats.
Quinn recognized one of the girls from the picture on Jason’s phone.
“Ana Gabriel?”
The girl’s eyes were huge. She was trembling but slowly nodded.
“I’m Quinn Colson,” he said. “Jason’s uncle.”
* * *
• • •
The chicken plant—HILL COUNTRY POULTRY INC.—had opened back up three days previous, but Hector Herrera had not returned until this morning. He parked his truck near the security gate, the main building surrounded by chain-link fence topped with concertina wire, and smoked several cigarettes while scanning the property for familiar faces. The company had given statements about firing plant managers and said they’d never condoned hiring illegal immigrants. It was just talk, lies that no sensible person believed but that the community accepted.
Hector had worked in plants like this for more than twenty years in Texas and Louisiana, but he’d never been in a state more corrupt than Mississippi. His people, the hundreds of workers who made so much money for the plant owners but earned little in return, had been taken and carted off like animals. Few in the community seemed to realize, or care, they were even gone.
He lit another cigarette and leaned against the tailgate of his truck, feeling blessed that his friend Caddy’s prayers had been answered. He knew her son had been returned and prayed that the other children were safe, too. The arrests at the chicken plant had caused disruptions in families and chaos in their little community, exposing the weak to thieves and criminals.
The morning had grown hot and sweat dripped in his eyes as he held up a camera with a long lens and took photos of several men and two women who worked as managers. The thieves in Jackson had done nothing to change the business, only harass and expel those who dared raise their voices. He wiped the sweat with his forearm and snapped off several more pictures of a grouping of foremen by the intake dock, where the chicken trucks had already started to arrive. White feathers stirred in the gravel lot.
When the arrests first took place, he’d heard from Tibbehah’s citizens that what happened to the people at the plant had been wrong. So many of those arrested had been in the county for years and years, making this place their home. They shopped on the town square, attended many churches, and had their children enrolled in school. Despite what anyone argued, they were here and living the American dream.
Hector scanned the loading dock through his camera lens, looking for more details. He didn’t hear the heavyset man with wild white hair and gold glasses when he first approached Hector. The man wore a blue security guard uniform and held a walkie-talkie. “You can’t park here.”
“It’s a public street,” Hector said. “I can do as I please.”
“Well,” the man said. “Don’t be taking pictures of the plant. You can’t be going and photographing a private business. Do it again and I’ll call the sheriff on you.”
“Please,” Hector said. “Please do. My attorney loves when I get harassed.”
“You that fella Herrera?” the man said. “Ain’t you? Haven’t you caused enough damn trouble? You’re the reason they was forced to round up them illegals. If you’d just kept your damn mouth shut, it’d be business as usual.”
“For men and women to work for next to nothing?” Hector said. “In dangerous and filthy conditions? Let me ask you something, sir. Would you eat a chicken that was slaughtered here?”
The man looked as if he might be choking on a jagged stone and then averted his eyes, heading back down the driveway to the little guard shack. Herrera stayed at the tailgate, taking more photos until the buses began to arrive. At first, he thought perhaps this was another raid, rounding up all new employees who’d just started working at the plant. But these buses were different, old, painted a flat white, and marked on the side NORTHWEST MS CORRECTIONAL.
Hector watched as the four buses parked side by side and men in orange uniforms were marched out onto the loading dock, prodded along by guards holding shotguns.
The sons of bitches hadn’t hired local citizens at all. They were trucking in private prison labor.
Hector took photos until two more men approached the guard shack. The man in the gold glasses pointed up the hill to Hector’s truck. Hector dropped the camera in the passenger seat and crawled behind the wheel. He’d gotten what he came for.
He had so many to call. So many to inform of the situation. Attorneys, journalists, families of those taken. These men who owned the plant had no honor or shame.
Hector drove out of the Johnny T. Stagg Industrial Park and headed back toward the town square. As he sped past that long vacant stretch of road back to town, he began to scroll through the names of television stations in Tupelo and Memphis on his phone. They had covered the raids and later reported without questioning the official lies that the plant would reopen for local citizens in need of work.
He was about two miles from town, passing a stretch of grazing cattle and a few swe
et potato fields, when he saw the blue lights flashing behind him. At first, he thought the patrol car was trying to pass, speeding up closer and closer in his rearview mirror. But then the sheriff’s office cruiser just stayed there, closing in within an inch or two of his rear bumper, hanging there, until Hector slowed and moved toward the side of the back road.
The patrol car followed. And as he jammed the truck into park, another deputy’s car approached from the north, moving close to the front of his truck and boxing him in. The windows were down and the road silent. The blue lights flickering and flashing as two deputies, one from each car, got out and approached him.
Hector placed his hands on the wheel and waited.
“Please step out of the vehicle,” said one of the deputies.
“Sir,” the other one said. “Hands up, move slow and easy.”
“Can you at least tell me what I have done?” Hector said. “I have done nothing. You have no right.”
The men didn’t answer. Both had their right hands resting on the butts of their pistols, watching from behind dark sunglasses.
“I wasn’t speeding,” Hector said. “Wait. Do you wish to see my license? I have insurance as well. Please. Tell me what you want.”
“Get out or I’ll drag your sorry Mex ass out,” one officer said.
“Excuse me?”
The officer reached for the truck door and wrenched it open, yanking Hector from his seat, ripping his T-shirt at the neck and pulling him tumbling to the ground. His Crocs fell off his feet as he fell onto his side and looked up into the men’s grinning faces.
“He has a gun,” one of the men shouted. “Look. Look. He has a gun!”
18
Donnie had to hand it to ole Fannie Hathcock. As far as titty bars went, Vienna’s was a first-rate, top-shelf joint. It may have seemed like nothing but an old metal barn out back of a truck stop, but step inside and your ass was down a magical rabbit hole. The pulsing music, the soft red glowing light, the comfy leather furniture and long onyx bar was something out of a cellblock wet dream. She poured drinks straight and uncut and offered up a stable of women that looked as if they’d stepped right out of the pages of a vintage Playboy magazine. Donnie should know. Despite Luther’s recent return to the cross, his daddy had every issue from 1962 onward wrapped in plastic and organized by date in his work shed. Damn, Donnie thought, holding a cold beer as he watched two women going at it in a brass birdcage. Not a bad place to pass a few hours.