The Fallen

by Ace Atkins

  “Too late,” Boom said. “That clock sure is a bitch.”

  Quinn rubbed his weathered, lean face. Damn, if he wasn’t coming up on forty and no one had bothered to tell him.

  • • •

  “Please don’t kill me,” said Mr. Berryhill, bank president and, according to the plaques on his wall, a two-time Jericho Citizen of the Year. “I think you broke my nose.”

  “You do as I say,” Wilcox said, “and I give you my word of honor, I won’t shoot your dick off.”

  Mr. Berryhill nodded in total agreement. Damn, it must’ve been a sight to see for those two women at the teller counter, the woman at the front desk, and those three folks—two men and another woman—waiting in line. Two Donald J. Trumps rushing in from the rain and flashing assault rifles as soon as they walked in the door, commanding attention and respect. Berryhill hid under his desk, Wilcox having to pull his fat ass out by the belt and rush him into the lobby. Opie stood on the teller counter yelling out orders, keeping watch over the front and back doors. Wilcox pushed Berryhill through all six of the drawers, two of them empty, as an aged black woman, the loan officer, kept on crying out to Sweet Baby Jesus.

  “Jesus is playing golf today,” Wilcox said. “Don’t you see it’s raining?”

  “Sixty seconds,” Opie said, high up on the counter, roving his AR-15 over the folks lying facedown on the tile floor. On a grease board by the drive-thru someone had written Beautiful things happen when you distance yourself from negativity. Eight cameras placed in various corners recorded every move and gesture.

  “Open the cage.”

  “I can’t,” Berryhill said. “It’s on a timer.”

  “Sir,” Wilcox said. “Do you or do you not value your dick?”

  Wilcox pressed the muzzle hard into the fat man’s crotch. Berryhill nodded again in complete agreement and moved toward the accordion gate shielding the big safe. He reached into his pocket for a key ring and selected a gold one with shaking hands. Opie tossed Wilcox a second black sack and said, “Fifty seconds.”

  The gate was pushed open and Wilcox rushed inside, leaving Opie to make sure Berryhill kept his hands to himself. Wilcox had never seen so much damn money, neatly bundled and stacked on a stainless steel table by the deposit boxes. All that beautiful cash fresh from Walmart’s big Presidents’ Day sale. Wilcox snatched them up in his arms, cramming it all into the black sack, finding more stacks of twenties and hundreds on a second shelf and even more on a second table. “Thirty seconds,” Opie said.

  There was a peace and calmness when you did what you’ve been trained to do. It was like entering a warm bath, everything smooth and fluid. All that bullshit with pills and booze and therapy didn’t matter jack shit right now. Controlled chaos. Speed and violence. Once a Marine, always a Marine.

  “Fifteen,” Opie said.

  Wilcox had nothing but time. He could breathe easy, see everything. He finished up with the bag, zipped it shut, and dragged it out—so damn heavy—into the lobby. Opie had a gun on the neat group of prisoners, telling them all to shut the fuck up. “Get down,” he yelled. “I said get the fuck down.”

  A gray-bearded mountain man in a fringe coat had gotten up to his knees, without being asked, holding his empty hands away from his body. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s all think about this for one moment. ‘Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge: but a fool layeth open his folly.’”

  The old man turned to Wilcox, smiling with an uneven row of brown teeth, arms outstretched and jacket fringe hanging loose like a honky-tonk Jesus. Wilcox looked to Opie, Opie shaking his head, and Wilcox turned back and punched the man square in the gut with the butt of the AR-15. The man fell to the floor on his back, sucking at the air.

  “Time,” Opie said. They rushed out the door to where Cord had backed up the van, rear doors flung open. Wilcox grabbed one handle of the heavy duffel and Opie grabbed the other. The bag from the teller drawers was much lighter and Wilcox easily tossed it into the van and slammed the doors shut.

  Cord mashed the accelerator, and, from the passenger seat, Wilcox turned back to where Opie had pulled off his mask, already into the heavier bag, rummaging through fat bundles and laughing like crazy.

  “Better than cookies and milk,” Wilcox said.

  “I hate milk,” Cord said, driving slow, with purpose, away from the bank and heading around the town square. “I don’t drink it.”

  “Well,” Wilcox said, “you should. It’s fucking delicious.”

  2

  Sometime around two, Quinn got the call that Fannie Hathcock had beaten the shit out of one of her patrons with a sixteen-ounce hammer. His dispatcher, Cleotha, was very specific about the size of the hammer, saying that Fannie had made the call herself and seemed proud of her accomplishment. “Attempted robbery?” Quinn said into the radio.

  “Looks like a truck driver couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

  “Ten-four,” Quinn said, rolling away from a call up in Yellow Leaf and back down to Jericho to the Rebel Truck Stop and the refurbished Booby Trap, which the new owner had christened Vienna’s Place. Even the updated metal siding, new cursive neon, and fancy antique bar shipped in from Kansas City couldn’t change that Vienna’s was a low-rent highway titty bar. The billboards all along 45 promised THE FINEST SOUTHERN BELLES, COLD BEER, and HOT FUN. Not to mention the live advertisements on CB, letting all the truckers know which of their favorite dancers were working and the daily drink specials.

  A big sign outside promised 2 FOR 1 BUDWEISERS and HAPPY HOUR LAP DANCES $20. Just outside, he spotted one of his deputies, Reggie Caruthers, speaking with a man holding a towel to his head. The towel was a bloody mess and the man leaned on the fender of the patrol car, Reggie speaking in patient tones, the man saying he had absolutely no idea what came over the crazy bitch. The guy was redneck skinny, with a patchy black beard and long, stringy hair. One of his eyes was swollen, and his nose swollen and twisted. His bloody T-shirt read BORN TO PARTY, FORCED TO WORK.

  “She just up and hit you?” Reggie said, nodding over at Quinn.

  “I was watching Cinnamon working the pole,” the man said. “She loves that song ‘A-Yo’ by Lady Gaga. You know, the one got that hook about the mirror on the ceiling?”

  “No, sir,” Reggie said. “I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Quinn liked Reggie. Lillie had hired him when she’d been acting sheriff. He was smart and direct. Black, medium-sized, mid-twenties, with four years in the service with the 10th Mountain Division. Good new blood in an aging department, now that Ike McCaslin had retired. Someone Quinn would’ve hired himself.

  “I gave Cinnamon two bucks,” the man said. “Maybe it wasn’t enough.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t try and touch her?” Reggie said. “Or say something inappropriate?”

  “What can you say inappropriate to a stripper?” the man said. “Those girls have heard it all and seen it all. You say, ‘Nice titties,’ and that’ll just put a real shine on their day.”

  Quinn knew the man but didn’t. He looked familiar, like someone he’d seen in the jail a few times for public drunk but not for anything that sent him to court. He looked away as Quinn studied his face, the white towel nearly soaked through with blood.

  “Man says Fannie coldcocked him,” Reggie said.

  “With a hammer,” Quinn said.

  “Sixteen-ounce,” the man said. “Goddamn framing hammer. Made by Stanley, ’cause I seen the yellow on it when she swung it a second time.”

  “How’d you know it was sixteen ounces?”

  “’Cause I’m a damn roofer, Sheriff,” he said. “I put that metal on your home place up in Fate.”

  “Charlie Ray?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Guess you didn’t recognize me with one of my eyes snapped shut. Jesus, Sheriff. You need to do something about this woman. I realiz
e we ain’t at the First Baptist Church, but, Good Lord Almighty, you can’t just walk up to a man and start trying to knock his fucking brains out while Lady Gaga is on.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  Reggie looked to Quinn and shrugged. He’d been taking notes in a little book and he slipped it into the back pocket of his uniform.

  “Miss Hathcock?” Quinn said.

  “Inside,” Reggie said.

  “You spoken to her?”

  Reggie shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “She asked for you personal.”

  “Terrific,” Quinn said, walking through the front door, out of the sun and into the darkness and the smoke, the only light coming from colored patterns on the raised stages and the neon signs along the handcrafted wooden bar. Quinn had always liked the bar, thought it was a nice touch, like something you’d see in Deadwood or Dodge City, looking oddly at home in Tibbehah County, Mississippi.

  The naked girls kept dancing. Behind the bar, a black kid named Ordeen kept on pouring beer. Quinn just made out the curvy shadow of Fannie Hathcock, staring down from the catwalk outside her office, and the faint orange prick of light coming from her cigarillo.

  Quinn nodded to Ordeen and headed up the steps. He found Fannie sitting behind her desk, alligator-hide pumps up on it and the long, thin brown cigar in hand. The desk cluttered with papers, a sixteen-ounce Stanley framing hammer placed at its edge.

  “Thought we’d been over this,” Quinn said.

  “You said, ‘without provocation,’” Fannie said, spewing smoke from the side of her mouth. “That dumb bastard had it coming.”

  • • •

  They followed the county road until it stopped cold at orange traffic drums and NO TRESPASSING signs. A cattle gate swung closed between a couple of 4×4s, showing where the gravel road ended and private property began. The windshield wipers cleared the glass, revealing what lay beyond the dead end.

  “Too easy,” Cord said.

  “You call that easy?” Wilcox said. “I call that perfect execution and timing. In and out in ninety fucking seconds.”

  “All this rain,” Cord said. “They could track us. Maybe we should keep driving?”

  “Nobody’s gonna find this van for a long time,” Wilcox said. “Damn road’s been closed for years.”

  Opie got out, kicked open the cattle gate, and Wilcox got behind the wheel and pulled on through. After closing the gate behind them, Opie jumped back in and they rode on until they spotted the old barn and drove inside and killed the engine. Rain drummed on the tin roof, headlights shining into the kicked-up dust and grit and the Kawasakis where they’d hid them under a brown tarp.

  “If they connect us,” Cord said, “it could put my friend in some real trouble.”

  “From what you told me, that bitch is used to trouble,” Wilcox said. “Besides, with all this goddamn rain coming down, the tracks will be gone. We can ditch the bikes a couple klicks from the cars and hump it on in. By the time we head out, roadblocks will be down and we can roll on back to Memphis.”

  Cord nodded, and the three men divided the cash and packed it in rucksacks, with their discarded clothes and the Trump masks. Once they got to the switch cars, they’d burn everything but the money.

  “This woman must be some friend,” Wilcox said. “How the fuck did she get those cars?”

  “Didn’t ask,” Cord said. “Don’t want to know.”

  Opie leaned into the handlebars, looking like he had something on his mind. Wilcox zipped up his new jacket and stared at him, letting him know to get on with whatever was bothering him.

  “How much do you think we got?” Opie asked.

  “At least a hundred grand,” Wilcox said. “Maybe more.”

  “Getting close,” Opie said.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s good,” Opie said, grinning. “Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “If you don’t care, then why do it?”

  “For the good ole American life,” Wilcox said. “For the money, for the glory, and for the fun. Mainly for the money.”

  “You said you didn’t give a damn about the money,” Opie said.

  “Don’t listen to me,” Wilcox said. “My ex-wife always told me I was full of shit.”

  Opie shrugged and tugged on his helmet, rucksack packed tight with the money, tip of the rifle sticking out the top. He kick-started the motorcycle and turned north, looking back to Cord and Wilcox, waiting for them to follow. As they rode together, the engines sounded like a buzz saw ripping through the trees.

  • • •

  “I know you don’t care for this place and would be damn happy if the county closed us down once and for all,” Fannie Hathcock said. “But I can’t stand for some dumbass redneck to walk into my bar and start feeling up my girls. I know the law. I know what we’re doing is legal. And my girls have every right to be as protected as some Sunday school teacher with locked knees.”

  “Why’d you hit him with a hammer, Fannie?” Quinn said.

  Fannie tapped her cigarette and shrugged a bit. “Maybe because he wouldn’t listen,” she said. “I got a problem with men like that. Or maybe because my girl was scared and I worried she’d get hurt. I was doing some repairs and it was the only thing I could use on him.”

  “That’s not what Charlie Ray said.”

  “Charlie Ray is a crazy-ass meth head,” Fannie said. “I have witnesses. He was unhinged. You think any judge around here is going to believe what that man says? I don’t think he has two teeth left inside his whole head.”

  Fannie was a fine-looking woman, somewhere on the young side of forty, with a lot of red hair, good teeth, and a body some said rivaled the great Blaze Starr. Quinn hadn’t had much dealings with her, as her arrival in the county had come while he was in Afghanistan. But since he’d been back, Vienna’s had been a frequent call for disturbances, assaults, and allegations of prostitution. Fannie leaned forward, the top of her red silk blouse showing a good amount of white freckled skin and black bra, and said, “Are you fucking with me? Or are you going to arrest me?”

  “All these witnesses also happen to be your employees?” Quinn said.

  “Does it matter?”

  “And they’ll say Charlie Ray just got up and went crazy, trying to attack Miss Cinnamon.”

  “Exactly.”

  Quinn shook his head. Fannie leaned back, touching a loose button on her blouse, before pushing forward a big fat humidor with a lot of gold filigree. “Help yourself.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Goddamn, don’t be a such a Boy Scout, Quinn,” she said. “I have to protect my girls. I’m not asking for anything special. I thought you were one of the few locals who had a little bit of common sense.”

  “I prefer my own,” Quinn said, tapping at the two Undercrowns he kept in his right-hand shirt pocket. He crossed his leg at the knee, kicking up his spit-polished Lucchese with its square toe. He nodded at her, waiting for her to explain herself like any normal person might under the circumstances.

  “Talk to anyone you like,” Fannie said, waving her hand down toward the bar. “They’ll tell you what they saw.”

  “You could have killed him.”

  “Damn it, he was gripping my girl like she was a fucking bowling ball.”

  Quinn shook his head, the room getting thick with Fannie’s smoke.

  “Didn’t expect to see you,” Fannie said. “Thought it would be Lillie again. I do believe that woman has some kind of special problem with me.”

  “Just doing her job.”

  “She staying on with the department?”

  “Assistant sheriff.”

  “She didn’t offer that to you when you got run off.”

  Quinn shrugged. “I didn’t care to stay on.”

  “
And now you give a shit?”

  “You’ve got me for the next four years, whether you like it or not.”

  Fannie sucked on the cigarette, the red silk top straining at low buttons, before she spewed more smoke from the corner of her mouth. She tipped the ash and leaned back into her spinning chair, her eyes darting over for a second to the yellow hammer at the edge of the desk. Some dried blood flecked on the claw.

  “Lillie, that tight-ass Skinner, and now you,” Fannie said. “I never thought you’d jump on that goddamn moral bandwagon, Quinn. I always thought you to be your own man, too smart for all this dick wagging from the Baptist pulpit.”

  “Doesn’t take a moralist to keep you from knocking a man’s brains out.”

  “Cinnamon feared for her safety,” Fannie said. “I look after these girls. That’s my moral vision.”

  Quinn shook his head, standing up, reaching for his walkie-talkie to let Reggie know that he’d be taking in Fannie Hathcock himself and charging her with aggravated assault. But before he got the mic halfway from his belt, Cleotha came over the dispatch channel, so flustered she forgot to use the radio code, and just shouted out that the First National Bank had been robbed by two men, last seen heading north in a Ford Econoline van with Tennessee plates.

  Fannie looked to Quinn, smiling big. He nodded back and headed toward the door.

  “Were you really thinking of arresting me?” Fannie said. “No judge in north Mississippi would fault me for what I did.”

  “That’s because most judges in north Mississippi are your best customers,” Quinn said, heading to the catwalk and down the steps.

  “Quinn?”

  He turned.

  “Don’t get wet on the way out.”

  3

  “Holy shit, did I pick the wrong day to take off or what,” Lillie Virgil said. “Two shitbirds in Donald Trump masks robbing the First National? That one guy shooting into the ceiling and yelling, ‘Anyone moves and I’ll grab ’em by the pussy.’ Damn. You have to admit, Quinn, these guys may be some bad motherfuckers, but they got style.”