The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  K Bo, or it might have been the twin Short Box, walked back out of the kitchen. He had on a black V-neck T-shirt, long black satin running pants, and the goddamnedest white running shoes he’d ever seen. They looked like they’d just been popped fresh out of the box. K Bo slid in besides Nito and said, “That shit’ll be right out. Don’t y’all pussy out on me now. Better eat ’em up.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Nito said. “Yeah.”

  “OK,” K Bo said. “What’s going on? When you called up last night, I thought you was high or something. I couldn’t make out what the hell you talking about.”

  “I got excited,” Nito said. Ordeen hadn’t heard a word about no phone call. But Nito had geeked the fuck out last night, talking about power and protection. He kept on talking about how folks would be trying to jack his ass for things he hadn’t done.

  “What y’all need?”

  “You still like my car?”

  “Hell, yeah,” K Bo said. “That’s how me and you got to talking. What year is it?”

  “’Seventy-two,” Nito said. “Belong to my granddaddy. When he got that lung cancer, it sat up on blocks. I had to work two years cleaning out toilet stalls to get her fixed. That paint made special. Call it Galactic blue. Like something not from this world. Twenty-inch rims.”

  “Yeah, I see ’em.”

  “Sound system rock your ass,” Nito said. “You want me to punch it up?”

  “Naw, man,” K Bo said, sliding back into the booth, getting comfortable. Talking that deal, while Ordeen was thinking, Nito done lost his fucking mind. He loved that ride. And if he sold that bitch, how the hell were they getting back to Jericho? Hitchhiking? “What you thinking?”

  “Some cash,” Nito said. “Some trade. What you got?”

  “I got some spares out by the shop,” K Bo said. “Man. You damn near made my day. Selling me that Here Kitty Kitty. I always said if that car don’t get me pussy, nothing will.”

  “Guaranteed.”

  Ordeen couldn’t stand it anymore and kicked Nito under the table, trying to pass along that What the fuck you doing? look. “C’mon, man,” Ordeen said. “You and me need to talk.”

  K Bo wasn’t no dummy and saw Ordeen was trying to fuck up the trade. He grinned at both of them. “Wings come out in a second,” he said. “Wait till I tell Short Box. He shooting a new video next week for a new boy he producing. That car could be the showpiece.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Nito,” Ordeen said.

  “A’ight.”

  Nito followed Ordeen out of the shop out in the parking lot of the strip mall. Two big tourist buses passed by, making a lot of noise and stirring up that road grit. Ordeen just stood there looking at Nito, not saying nothing, not having to say nothing.

  “I need some money.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah,” Nito said. “Ain’t your car, man. Belong to me.”

  “What’s this have to do with Milly?”

  “You trippin’, bitch,” Nito said, shaking his head and leaving his ass out in the lot. “Come on. Short Box comin’ out with them wings. I don’t want them to cool down or think we bitching out.”

  “Shit,” Ordeen said. “How we getting home?”

  Nito was already gone, walking back into the Wing Machine, door closing behind him.

  17

  Fannie was back in Jericho, running Vienna’s bar at noon, judging some new talent onstage, pouring some beer, and waiting for Lyle and his boys to show up. Lyle didn’t use a cell phone or email. If you wanted Lyle, you had to catch him face-to-face, the only way he’d do business. Which worked most of the time except for when Fannie really needed to talk to his crazy ass and find out just what the fuck was going on. Jericho and the Rebel looked just like Barnum & Bailey had come to town, jamming up the Square and loading down the diner with reporters and their crews. Their head cook, a huge black guy named Midnight Man, said he’d never slung so much chicken-fried steak in his whole damn life.

  Nearing one p.m., Lyle busted open the door, laughing and jawing with three of his boys: Turkey, Q-Tip, and R.C. All of them had that stiff-legged walk, like they’d rode all over north Mississippi without taking a piss. Fannie knew the main goal for men in the motorcycle club was not to work. “Live to Ride” wasn’t bullshit to them, it was part of their crazy-ass religion. They weren’t criminals for the sake of being criminals or to get rich. They were criminals so folks would leave them the fuck alone.

  “Beer,” Lyle said. “And a shot of that Bulleit rye.”

  “We need to talk,” Fannie said.

  “Why?” Lyle said, grinning like he’d drank a half bottle already. “You finally gonna take me up on some fun over at the Golden Cherry? A real long ride? I can promise you, ma’am, you sure won’t regret it.”

  Fannie just stared and his silly-ass grinning stopped. She leaned into the bar, forearms across the antique wood, and whispered, “Outside. Leave your boys here.”

  She poured him a beer and a shot. He knocked back both, wiped his face with the back of his hand, and walked with her out of the darkness into white-hot summer sun. Heat waves shimmered off the truck stop asphalt. He pulled on a pair of sunglasses and lit up a cigarette, straddling his Harley. The blue tank airbrushed with an arrow shooting down a one-way street.

  “What happened?” Fannie said.

  “I don’t know,” Lyle said. “We headed up into Tennessee. Found a good place to get barbecue and then we rode to a new titty bar in Memphis. Half-priced drinks. Girls were OK. We were thinking about riding on over to Nashville, but we ran out of money. Rode back this morning before dawn. Trying to sleep it off, but folks keep bothering us.”

  “The girl,” she said. “The girl, Lyle. How’d you leave it with her?”

  “Listen, don’t talk to me like I’m nothin’,” Lyle said, blowing smoke from his nose. “I did what you said. We took care of business before we rode. No reason to be jumping all over my ass. I was just kidding about the lay. I know what you think of me and the boys.”

  Fannie cocked a hip, snatched the cigarette from his hand, and took a long pull. God damn, how she hated this nasty stretch of highway. Nothing but eighteen-wheelers and cars zipping by, Jericho a place where you got fueled up and fed and moved on down the road. If Fannie had any luck at all, this county would be her personal rest stop on the way to a lot better things.

  Lyle waited, staring at her profile, as she handed him back his cigarette. He had pulled his hair into a black ponytail and wore a fitted black tee with jeans and big black boots. A chain reached from his belt to his empty wallet. On his forearm was a bright red-and-blue tattoo of Woody Woodpecker pecking like hell into a hardwood tree, flattening his beak.

  “You don’t know,” Fannie said.

  “Know what?”

  “The girl’s dead.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked. “I heard something like that.”

  “‘Something like that’?” Fannie said. “Holy shit, Lyle. What the hell did y’all do? I saw it on the news down in Biloxi and sped all the way back here thinking we might get raided. Won’t take long for the law to know she worked here. They’ll bust us wide-open. How did it happen?”

  “Hold up,” Lyle said. “Hold up. Jesus Christ. Law came to the motel this morning and asked me the same shit. We didn’t do nothing.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Fannie said. “Either you or one of your monkeys got into some rough shit. Did you try and burn her alive so she’d just shut her mouth? Did someone rape that girl? ’Cause if one of you raped that little girl, I’m going to slice off your balls and toss them into the barbecue pit.”

  “Fuck, Fannie,” Lyle said. “Calm down. Would you listen to me? Calm down. Jesus. I didn’t know she was dead because she wasn’t dead when we seen her. We did like you said. We scared her and took off. We been riding, drinking, and playing a
ll night long.”

  “Where’d you see the girl?” Fannie said.

  “Up in that little shit village,” he said. “Up in the sticks. Blackjack. That’s where she lives. We found her up at a gas station and I told her, toe-to-toe, she needed to think on what she’d done and bring that cash back to you and apologize. I told her she’d messed up bad, but you were a forgiving woman if she stepped up and handed over what you were owed.”

  “And that was all?” Fannie said, turning her head a bit. “All that happened between you two?”

  “Hell, yes, that was it,” Lyle said, scratching the back of his unshaven neck. “We caught a little shit from that foreigner who ran the station. But he backed the hell off when he saw our patches. He spoke English just as plain as a white man. I said, ‘Inside, Ayatollah, or we’ll drag your ass for a hundred miles.’ You know, ’cause he was Mideastern and shit. It was funny.”

  Lyle’s cigarette had grown down to a hot nub and he tossed it down on the hot asphalt. Two big-ass tractor trailers hauling for a coffin company in Batesville rolled into the lot at the same time. Over at the Rebel, Midnight Man was cooking up a whole hog on the outdoor pit and the woodsmoke and pork smell drifted over the parking lot. The smoke and that burning smell made her think of the girl and the problems that would surely follow. God damn, if Lyle was lying.

  “You think I’m stupid?” Lyle said.

  “If I don’t answer that question, will you be offended?”

  “You told me to talk to that girl,” he said. “That’s what I did. Hell, I didn’t even think it was that much money. What? A couple thousand bucks? Why would I kill a person over a couple thousand? Ain’t even my money.”

  “Did any of the Losers touch her?”

  “Fannie,” Lyle said. “Christ. I was there. I was the only one doing the talking. I had six boys riding with me. They laughed and looked mean. I said my piece and left. Cool?”

  “What’d the girl do?”

  “She didn’t do nothing,” Lyle said. “She just nodded. When we rode off, I thought we had some kind of understanding. I figured she got straight with you.”

  “Would one of your boys have rode back?” Fannie said. “To get mean or fresh with the girl?”

  “You know what?” he said. “You been watching too many goddamn stupid biker movies. You know, where the Hells Angels roll into town and the first thing they do is start busting up the place and raping white women. Shit, Fannie. How long we been knowing each other? I will cheat at cards, hijack trucks, bust some heads, and kill on the occasion for respect or money, but we got a damn code here.”

  “Like when y’all hung that black soldier from a tall tree?”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “That was back in ’77. I was still in diapers.”

  “But your old man.”

  “I ain’t him,” he said. “And that’s all there is.”

  Fannie reached down and nervously fingered the ruby heart pendant on her neck, zipping it back and forth on the silver chain. She hadn’t been outside more than two minutes but could already feel the sweat against her silk top, under her arms and wide across her back. It wouldn’t surprise her a damn bit to see the local law and the state people rolling up to the Rebel and Vienna’s and shut everything down until they got answers. They’d be looking straight at her.

  “That sand nigger who ran the gas station could make trouble,” Lyle said, lighting up a new cigarette. “He ran outside dog-cussing us and I told him to shut the hell up, it’s his people that were intent on blowing up the world. I said that if this country had any sense at all, they’d send him and his people packing. Am I right? Or what?”

  Fannie nodded but wasn’t really listening. She counted out eight news crews, in from all over the state and up from Memphis. They’d be inside, eating, but she’d give them maybe two or three hours before they’d be camped outside Vienna’s, asking questions of the customers and the girls. All she needed was some knuckleheads to start some kind of titty bar vigil with candles and flowers like some kind of pussy-throwing Princess Di.

  “This was a friend of the girl?”

  “I guess.”

  “And he looked foreign?” she said. “Like from the Middle East?”

  “He was some kind of camel jockey,” Lyle said. “You know how it is. They all look the same. Most of the gas stations in north Mississippi are run by those fucking people. They take money from good, hardworking Americans and send it back to al-Qaeda. You know I’m tellin’ the truth.”

  “You know, Lyle,” Fannie said. “I think a lot of people just might believe that.”

  “Believe what?” Lyle said.

  • • •

  Quinn returned to the Big Black River Bridge, where folks had already started a vigil underneath. In the final daylight, a bright, burning orange over the river and the rolling hills, the dark space looked like some kind of cave, flickering with Mexican prayer candles and piled with bunches of flowers still wrapped in cellophane. Quinn watched an old woman and a little girl walking out from under the bridge, empty-handed, both of them crying. The water flowed slow on by, normally filled with johnboats and fishermen. Now a dozen cameras were set up on the bank, eyes on techs and deputies, who kept most of the landing secure even though the Kia was long gone.

  Quinn wanted to come back. See if Kenny or Reggie had found anything, maybe spoken to someone who’d come down to the scene. He stood at the edge of the Big Black, the water turning a nice coppery glow, swarms of gnats skipping over the surface and gathering under trees in shadows. As a teenager, Quinn fished here a lot and never seemed to catch a thing but a few cold beers.

  “It’s almost pretty.”

  Quinn turned to find Ophelia Bundren at his side. She had on jeans and an embroidered peasant top instead of the grim black funeral wear. Her white sunglasses were pushed up high on her head and her dark eyes didn’t meet Quinn’s. She just watched the river and heaved with a lot of sadness.

  “They bring Milly back tonight,” Ophelia said. “I’ll be there. Main autopsy will be performed by two folks from Jackson. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. We pretty much know what killed her.”

  “Anything y’all learn will help.”

  “You believe that?” Ophelia said. “Her skin got burned ’way. Nearly all her clothes. Any bet of finding something was in that car that got burned up, too. How about the foot search?”

  Quinn shook his head. “Two miles and expanding,” he said. “Whoever did this set things down at the landing and drove off.”

  “Tires?”

  “Nope.” Quinn shook his head. “Caddy knew her. Or met the girl. She was in some kind of trouble, got kicked out of her dad’s house. Had been disowned by her mother. Caddy helped her get on her feet out at The River and figured she’d come back.”

  “Did she tell Caddy anything?”

  “Nothing I can talk about,” Quinn said. “But something that might help.”

  “Closemouthed Quinn,” Ophelia said. “Keep all your secrets to yourself.”

  “Right until a steak knife comes whizzing past my ear.”

  “This isn’t the place,” Ophelia said. “Damn you. I just wanted to come out here, lay some flowers, and get ready for tonight.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For me having to dissect the girl or for what you did?”

  “All of it,” Quinn said. “I wasn’t thinking too clear.”

  “And you are now?”

  Quinn looked to Ophelia, her brown eyes finally on his face, studying his sincerity, and then breaking away. “I never met this girl or knew her family,” she said. “But, holy shit, this is a horror among horrors. I try to not focus on Old Testament stuff. But, God, I hope there’s some revenge out there somewhere. I don’t know if there’s another way to make it right.”

  “You can’t make shit like th
is right,” Quinn said. “This is some kind of real sickness.”

  “I know what her family is going through,” Ophelia said. “This shit will destroy you.”

  “I know.”

  “I think about what Adelaide went through every morning I wake up,” she said. “There wasn’t much of her left, either.”

  “I figured this might bring up your sister.”

  “She was the same age,” Ophelia said. “It was the first thing my mom said to me today. This girl is same as Adelaide. Please help her. And so there’s that on me.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Quinn said. “I promise.”

  “How about you do better than that?” Ophelia said.

  • • •

  Quinn reviewed the surveillance tape at the sheriff’s office that night, Lillie still up in Memphis with the girl’s family, and typed out the very little he knew. The video didn’t show much—six bikers at the edge of the pumps, leaning on their handlebars, in silent conversation with Milly Jones. The interaction lasted less than ninety seconds and didn’t seem to be threatening. At least, on video. The men stayed on their bikes while Milly pumped gas, hand cocked on hip. Sammi came out at one point and that’s where you saw a little conflict and finger-pointing. The men rode off, Milly hung up the nozzle and headed off into the night. And an hour and a half later, she was dead.

  He played it over and over, maybe twenty times, using the computer in the sheriff’s office. Nobody knew where she’d been for those ninety minutes.

  At 2100, Jason Colson knocked on the slightly open door and brought in a sack of fried chicken from Varner’s and some sides. He had on his Stuntmen Unlimited hat, red-and-white ringer tee, and bell-bottom jeans with pointed-toe boots. “Didn’t figure you’d be coming home tonight,” he said. “I couldn’t remember if you liked slaw or beans, so I went ahead and got both.”