The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “Dang,” Larry said. “I’d rather be shot than listen to that rap shit. Sounds like a man bein’ tortured.”

  29

  Quinn drove up on Lillie and Reggie Caruthers, who’d parked down the road from the old cotton compress, near the vacant train station north of town. With his truck windows open, he could hear the band playing a half mile away at Tibbehah Stadium and see the bright lights shining all the way from Jericho. Kenny followed Quinn in his cruiser, parked, and met them at Lillie’s Jeep, the deputy moving with a slight limp after getting shot last year.

  “Game’s tied,” Kenny said. “Twenty-one, twenty-one. Don’t know if they’re gonna pull it or not. Defense is weak as hell.”

  “What got y’all here?” Quinn asked.

  “Nito’s ex-girlfriend told us he came here some,” Lillie said. “When we checked it out we spotted a red-and-white Sierra Classic parked out back. The truck had water lines running from a portable tank into the building. Heard some music and a motor running from inside. Truck’s registered to one of the Norwood brothers.”

  “Sounds like a dang keg party,” Kenny said. “Those Norwoods like to drink and fuck shit up.”

  “We think Nito’s with them,” Lillie said. “And I believe they got Coach Mills with them.”

  “Why the hell would Nito Reece be running with the dang Norwoods?” Kenny asked.

  “They go way back,” Reggie said. “And do a lot of business. Only color those boys care about is that green.”

  “If Nito’s got him, you really think that man’s still alive?” Lillie said.

  “Any word from Coach’s wife?” Quinn said.

  “Yeah,” Lillie said. “After he walked off from the high school, she went home to find their house had been robbed. Someone took a couple TVs, some pistols and shotguns, and raided their deep freeze of two quarts of butter pecan ice cream and six Red Baron pepperoni pizzas.”

  “What’d I tell you?” Kenny said. “A party. We used to raise hell in that place. Everyone used to meet up there after the law ran us off cruising the Square. Damn, I hated the police back then, always messing up the fun.”

  Reggie grinned and showed them all a little sketch on a yellow legal pad he’d been working on, diagramming out the guts of the old building. Quinn, Lillie, and Kenny watched as he marked off what he recalled from playing hide-and-seek there as a kid. “I don’t think that place has changed much in twenty years,” Reggie said. “Offices up high on a platform, looking down on where the machines had been. Only closed-off spaces I know of.”

  The diagram showed a wide-open, empty floor plan, lots of room to cross with absolutely no cover or concealment.

  “How do you get to the second floor?” Quinn asked.

  “There’s a staircase,” Reggie said.

  “Open or closed-in?” Quinn asked.

  “It’s open,” Reggie said. “Maybe twenty steps up one way and then curves back around to the top.”

  “Y’all stay here,” Quinn said. “I’ll do a quick walk-around. See what we’re dealing with.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Lillie said.

  “Up to you, Sheriff,” Quinn said. “But I can do it quicker alone.”

  “OK, Gary Cooper,” Lillie said. “But be quiet and please don’t fuck it up for everyone.”

  “Yeah?” Quinn asked, smiling. “Love you, too.”

  Lillie looked down at the diagram’s fluttering pages and then met Reggie’s eyes from across the Jeep’s hood. Her face colored a bit, Reggie grinning at her as Quinn turned away, confused, and walked toward the road, the far-off sound of the crowd roaring and the band starting up. Tibbehah must’ve pulled ahead.

  • • •

  They’d stripped his ass naked and tied him to a school chair with duct tape. The chair had a big old hole through the plastic and the coach could feel every time a warm breeze ran through the cracks in the roof. At first, he thought he could talk his way out of this, always knowing how to work over Nito Reece, until they wheeled in that fucking pressure washer and set it on high. And then all bets were off. Nito and that dumb-ass kid, D. J. Norwood, shooting it around the small room, playing with it, zapping at Coach’s bare feet while someone played some loud-as-hell rap music down the steps from where they came.

  “What do you want, Nito?” Coach said. “Money? I’ll give you money.”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what is it?” Coach said. “What the fuck do you want, boy?”

  “The truth,” Nito said. “I want the truth, Coach. Every time you open your mouth, a damn lie comes out.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  Nito walked up on him fast and raised that water gun, shooting fast and hard at his nut sack like it was dead center on a dartboard. A red-hot, mean pain shot through Coach’s whole body and he yelled every profane word he knew until he backtracked to prayers with tears in his eyes. “Lord God Almighty,” he said. “Help me, Lord.”

  “Jesus ain’t on the premises, motherfucker,” Nito said, pacing the room with a .45 stuck in his waistband. “I want you to tell folks what you done. I want you to take back what you told the law about my car. I want my name clear. I want you to tell them you the one who killed Milly Jones.”

  “She was alive, Nito,” Coach said. “I just shook her around a bit. Tried to knock some sense into her. You the one who poured gasoline into her mouth.”

  “You damn knocked her brains out with that tire iron,” Nito said, blasting him across the chest and over his big round stomach, feeling like a needle poking right through his organs, his skin tearing away. “You tole me to fix it. You’re gonna tell the sheriff what you done to her and then you gonna tell them what you did to me and all those other boys.”

  “Drugs,” Coach said, shaking his head sadly, feeling tears running down his face. “Kills our community.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he shouldn’t have said it, damn Nito shooting another direct hit right on his low-hanging sack and trying to knock ’em out of the ballpark and on over to China. The second hit was even worse than the first, the nerve endings good and heated up, ready and willing to receive that pain. He started cussing some more, using words he’d vowed to erase from his vocabulary last Easter, and then going back to ask Jesus to save him.

  As soon as he stopped screaming, he turned his head to the white boy, Norwood. “Help me,” he said. “This nigger’s gone crazy.”

  The skinny, bucktoothed shitheel just shrugged, took a long pull of some clear liquor in a pint bottle, and turned to Nito as the man in charge. “I had a cousin who said Coach Mills liked to stay a long time in the shower, licking his lips, and rubbing himself. Said he nearly tripped over himself running when them freshman boys got off practice. Couldn’t wait to get to the locker room.”

  “That’s a lie,” Coach said, screaming. “A black lie.”

  Nito shook his head sadly, “You just don’t get it, Coach,” he said. “We got your number.”

  “Then leave me the hell alone.”

  “Damn,” Nito said. “I don’t know if I can do it anymore.”

  “Now you’re talking some sense. Me and you are in this together. And we’re gonna get out of it together. OK? We good on that, boy?”

  Nito lowered the spray gun and shook his head at his white buddy, Norwood. “I can’t be having all the fun. You try it, man. Coach leans a little to the right, you got to shoot right at the curve of his little thingamajig.”

  Norwood, with his caved-in, skinny chest tattooed with some kind of Indian nonsense, stepped right on up, took the gun, and scored him a direct hit, laughing, the damn jungle music and the roaring pressure washer drowning out all Coach’s screams for help. Coach screamed and screamed, all the noise echoing and drowned out in the big concrete hole.

  “Hold on. Hold on,” Norwood said, giddy. “Let me go get
Larry. This is more fun than busting balloons at a county fair.”

  • • •

  Quinn walked the perimeter of the old building, still sweating on a dark, humid night. The sliver of a moon above had a heat haze around it. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his uniform shirt and made his way close to the concrete-block wall, edging through privet bush and weeds, broken glass and trash. The walls vibrated with loud rap music and the chugging sound of a small work engine. The engine buzzed from up on the second floor, but from what he’d seen on the layout, he’d have to enter the building to know everything that was going on. As he moved around the north side of the building, he spotted the old red-and-white GMC Sierra that Lillie and Reggie had seen. A water hose ran from a tank in the back of the truck bed up the stairs to the offices. Quinn moved close to the wall, through the shadows, but saw no one near the truck. Toward the east wall, the road sloped upward, and as he moved away from the building, the more he saw into the gaping hole of the roof.

  Quinn kept walking up the hill toward the train tracks, where he looked down into the building and saw bright headlights on in a sedan, shaking with the music, but with no one around it. No one was up on the landing to the offices.

  He used his cell to call Lillie, telling her what he’d found. The way the old cotton compress had been torn apart by the storm made him think of Kabul, of a forgotten textile building, half-blasted to shit, torn strands of material buffeting around in busted-out windows. They’d tracked three insurgents through a graveyard of Soviet tanks and into the ruined building. Two men and a woman, the woman walking toward Quinn’s team with a detonator in her hand. So much yelling and screaming, the woman refusing to back down, headed straight for them. Looking back once to get a strong nod from her husband before she pressed the button, taking a couple of Quinn’s soldiers with her. Jesus. He hoped Nito had less conviction.

  Quinn moved clockwise around the building a second time, hearing but still not seeing anyone, the sounds of a party but without the guests. At the south side of the building, a big bay door had been ripped away and Quinn used his right knee to press himself up onto the landing, catching a quick glimpse inside the old factory. He was closer to the sedan but stayed well in the shadows and away from the bright shining lights of the car. As Reggie had drawn, most of the building had its guts ripped away, leaving a wide-open floor under the torn roof and an east wall for offices that had looked down on the workers. Water poured over the lip of the second-floor landing, dripping down in a heavy sheet, splashing down in a black pool below.

  Quinn took a quick shot of the interior with his cell phone, glancing up at the hose trailing up the staircase. He got close enough to the sedan to note the make and model matched Nito Reece’s new ride. He stayed in the darkness by a far wall for ten minutes, waiting for more faces to appear. Instead, he barely made out the screams coming from one of the open doorways on the second floor.

  He made his way back out and then ran down the road to Lillie, Kenny, and Reggie, telling them it looked like Nito had someone up that landing and was working him over. He had a good sweat going as he met up with them.

  “Coach?”

  “Don’t know,” Quinn said. “Pretty sure they’re not running a Sunday service up there. Someone is getting a good workover.”

  “How many?”

  “Two vehicles,” Quinn said. “Someone was screaming. But no one entered or left that one room. I stayed as long as I could.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Kenny said. “If they got Coach, let’s go get him. Last thing we need is some kind of Waco situation.”

  “What do you say, Sheriff?” Quinn asked.

  “Can’t be more than three or four of them,” Lillie said. “I say enter with caution and assess the situation.”

  “We get closer than me and the only assessing you’ll be doing is when to pull the trigger.”

  Lillie met Quinn’s eye, took in a deep breath, and nodded. She had on her sheriff’s office hat with the gold star, the brim pulled so low, she had to lift her chin to get a good look at things. “I’ll head up on that roof,” Lillie said. “You take Kenny and Reggie with you. That’s what you’re thinking, right?”

  “Your call, but I’d feel better with our best shooter watching my damn six.”

  Quinn glanced up the hill, beyond the cotton compress, to the abandoned brick train station. “Nice big hole and enough light to work,” he said, nodding behind him. “You think you can get up there?”

  “Just watch me.”

  • • •

  Where’d your damn brother go?” Nito said.

  “He wanted to smoke,” he said. “It’s Friday night and he’s been painting all week. What do you care if he wants to get fucked up?”

  “Who’s watching the road?” Nito said.

  “Hell,” Norwood said. “I damn near forgot about that. Aw, fuck it.”

  “And this pressure ain’t worth shit,” Nito said. “How much water we got left?”

  “How much you need?”

  “Enough to stick this wand straight up Coach’s ass until he bust apart.”

  “Hey now,” Norwood said. “I didn’t sign on for no shit like that. I ain’t gonna get involved in any homicide of our own Jericho, Mississippi, legend.”

  “He’s a piece of shit, is what he is,” Nito said. “Come on. Come on. Go fix that shit so we can shut it down and get the fuck out of here.”

  “Don’t kill Coach.”

  “Why you want to save that white man?” Nito said. “Don’t be a pussy, Norwood. You want to work with Nito Reece, you need to buck up and be a goddamn man.”

  “That sounds like Coach talking.”

  “Fix that shit,” Nito said. “Get me some damn water here. And Norwood?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make sure you bring back that vodka and whatever y’all smoking,” he said. “That shit sure do hit the spot.”

  • • •

  After Lillie called Quinn from the train station roof and said she was in place and had overwatch, he told Kenny and Reggie to turn off their cells, their police radios, and anything that made any noise. Lillie said she’d seen D. J. Norwood leave the third doorway from the landing, walk out on the balcony, and piss far and wide into the old factory. As far as she could tell, all the activity was happening in that one room.

  “A dang herd of elephants could bust into that place and they wouldn’t notice,” Kenny said.

  “We move just as I’ve shown you, Kenny,” Quinn said. “Reggie, you’re the last man through the door. I’ll hit the far left corner, Kenny heads to the far right. We keep moving from corner to corner until we know it’s all clear. We used to practice this at the shoot house with Ike McCaslin. Ike’s a good man, but I bet you’re a hell of a lot faster.”

  “About twenty years younger,” Reggie said.

  Quinn drew it out twice on Reggie’s legal pad and then they walked through the way it should work. “Let’s hit that room hard and fast.”

  “And don’t shoot Coach Mills,” Kenny said. “That might really piss him off.”

  “We can be surgical,” Quinn said. “We have at least two bad guys, D. J. Norwood and Nito Reece. But we can’t be sure there aren’t more.”

  “Those Norwoods are some mean sonsabitches,” Kenny said. “Two of ’em put a friend of mine in the hospital for spilling their beer down at the Southern Star. That damn redneck shithead mentality you’re dealing with.”

  “You see a gun,” Quinn said. “Shut ’em down.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kenny said.

  “Guess you did this kind of thing a few times?” Reggie asked. “Over in Iraq and all.”

  “A few.”

  “My unit didn’t do much close combat,” he said. “What’s it like?”

  “Dirty and messy,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah?” Reggie sa
id. “That all?”

  “And almost never what you expect.”

  • • •

  Dance, motherfucker,” Nito said, hitting Coach’s little fat toes. “Dance, you fat bastard.”

  “Larry said he’s running out of water,” Norwood said.

  “How much do we got left?”

  “Don’t know,” Norwood said. “Larry said he’s too goddamn high to make a fucking important judgment like that.”

  “OK, Coach,” Nito said, hitting that lighter below the crystal pipe. “It’s drill time. I want you to get on all fours and open wide.”

  Coach was sitting on his ass, covering himself with closed legs, shivering, although it hadn’t dropped below ninety all damn day. He just kept shaking his head, pretty much realizing that he wasn’t about to get out of this place alive. ’Course Nito never saw that kind of concern on his face when he’d bashed in Milly Jones’s head, only when they set that car on fire and that dead girl come to life, walking out the open passenger door and headed for the road. He and Coach jumped in their vehicles and got the hell out of there.

  “You’re going to have to kill me,” Coach said. “I won’t be violated.”

  “Bend over, Coach Bud,” Nito said, taking in the hit, letting it out real slow. “Take it like a man.”

  “Why?” Coach said. “What are you gonna do to me?”

  “Time you learn to get some of that intestinal fortitude you always talking about.”

  • • •

  Quinn was right. Lillie had a nice viewpoint on the train station roof, watching as Quinn and the other two deputies filed into building from an old loading dock. Nearly half of the roof had been ripped off by the tornado two years ago, letting some moonlight shine in, the entry to the staircase illuminated by the headlights of Nito’s Caprice Classic. She was no expert on this stuff, but she was pretty sure he was now playing Yo Gotti, featuring Boosie Badazz and Blac Youngsta. “The Good Die Young.” Lillie had gotten hooked on Hot 107 in Memphis, hard music to stop liking. I see the hate on their face. Praying for better days.