by Ace Atkins
“Is this comped?” she asked.
Wilcox nodded, taking a sip of a Coors Light. “Baby,” he said. “Don’t you want to hear me sing?”
Crissley straightened in her seat, patting at the sides of her perfect blonde hair, sprayed and teased high and full. She looked around the open walls of the little restaurant inside the Southland dog track and casino, listening to the bells chirp and watching the bright lights flash. Endless red carpet for country folks walking around with quarters in to-go cups. She sighed.
“With all that money you cashed in for chips,” she said, “they sure as hell should comp you. Why’d you bring so much anyway?”
“Just some cash from a few gigs,” Wilcox said. “Figured we might play a little blackjack, maybe watch me sit in for a few rounds of poker.”
“Last time I watched you play poker down in Tunica, we didn’t sleep for three days straight,” she said. “Please don’t do that to me again. Please do what you need to do and then let’s leave. Don’t lose everything.”
“What song?”
“Whattaya mean what song?” Crissley said. “You bring me out to the damn dog track and you better sing that song. You know, our song.”
“I’d sell my soul just to see your face.”
Crissley beamed. She placed her well-manicured hands together, giggling, Daddy’s little girl, with those big ole Ds shaking.
“And I’d break my bones just to heal your pain.”
“Lord, Rick,” she said. “When so much bullshit doesn’t come out of your mouth, I remember that God gave you a gift.”
Wilcox lifted a Coors Light her way and winked. “First song of the set,” he said. “After, we can play a few games and I’ll cash back out. I’ll get the money returned in a check. Lot easier than cash.”
“Things are really turning around,” she said. “I remember you just singing for tips down on Beale Street when we met. And now people are just throwing money at you. Do you think we might be able to keep that Shelby just a little longer?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But tonight, you drive.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope,” he said. “I’m a hell of a boyfriend. Besides, I plan to leave here so shit-faced drunk that you better take the wheel.”
The waiter set down a Sammy’s Rockin’ Steak Burger for Wilcox and a Crabby Sammy sandwich for Crissley, as it appeared to be the healthiest thing on the menu. A crab cake with coleslaw slapped between a bun. Before the waitress left, Wilcox said he’d really like to try one of those I Can’t Drive 55 iced teas.
“I don’t get it,” Crissley said. “Who the hell is Sammy Hagar?”
“A redheaded rock god who couldn’t live by the rules.”
“A personal hero?”
“Sure,” Wilcox said. “We’ll go with that. John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, and Sammy Hagar. That sounds just about perfect.”
• • •
“I heard you got straight, Boom,” Cho Cho said. “Right with the Lord. Come to the Cross. Ain’t no more fucking, fighting, and drinking. What the hell you doing here?”
“We looking for someone,” Boom said.
“And who’s this skinny white girl?” Cho Cho asked. “Don’t have no ass at all. This what happened to you? You get some white girl playing with your mind? What you need is Goddamn Cho Cho Porter to get you correct. When you hungry, you want some candy or a goddamn Whopper?”
“This is Caddy Colson,” Boom said. “She runs The River up in Jericho. They’re good folks. Help out a lot of people with a food pantry and ministry.”
“Well, ain’t that shit grand,” Cho Cho said. “What the fuck do y’all want? ’Cause if you ain’t come to get high, drink, or party, you lost as hell. I don’t run no ministry.”
“We’re looking for two girls who like to party,” Caddy said. “You know Tamika Odum? She’s fifteen, maybe five feet tall. Light skin, long hair with a red streak in it? Runs with a little Mexican girl named Ana Maria?”
“You know how many folks come here to the Change?” she said. “And you know how many damn Odums we got round here? Shit, half Tibbehah County’s named Odum. Two motherfucking Odums smoking blunts in my kitchen right now. Y’all want something to eat? I got grilled cheese, hamburgers. Some fruit punch with likker in it.”
“I heard she was friends with Kiara Pitts,” Caddy said. “Do you know her?”
“Kiara?” Cho Cho said. “Ain’t that the motherfucking girl cat on The Lion King? I watch that shit with my grandbabies. They just love that show. All those crazy cubs getting lost, getting into shit. Poking their noses around until they get bitch-slapped by a hyena. You know what I’m saying?”
“You know the girls, Cho Cho?” Boom said. “Or not? I ain’t got time to play.”
“No drinking, fucking, dancing, and now you ain’t playing,” Cho Cho said. “Ain’t you the man, Boom Kimbrough. Come on to me, baby. Be good to Goddamn Cho Cho Porter and Goddamn Cho Cho be real good to your big black ass. How about you, white girl? You want to get high and party?”
Caddy shook her head, sticking her hands down in her jeans pockets. Everything in the room was too familiar, the burnt weed smell, the alcohol smell of people’s breath, the booming bass music, and the lazy eyes following her wherever she went. She felt things get real small, tight in her chest, swallowing, trying to keep her footing, while Cho Cho stared at her.
“What’s wrong wit her?” Cho Cho said.
“You help us,” Boom said, “and I’ll owe you. OK?”
Cho Cho, her big eyes glassy, moved on Boom, lifting the back of her hand up to his scarred face and chin, and said, “Oh, I sure as hell like that.”
“The girls?”
“I don’t fuck with any of that kiddie shit,” Cho Cho said. “You need to be a grown-ass woman, you come in here. You better be a grown-ass woman if you want to get high. Get laid. I had my first when I was twelve motherfucking years old. I think that’s some sick shit to do to a girl. My baby’s daddy was old. Had kids, grandkids, himself. Yeah, I know them. But I don’t like those girls in here. First, they gonna get themselves in trouble and then they gonna get Cho Cho’s big ass in trouble. I told them whatever kind of business they doing with that freak, they keep it on the street.”
Boom looked to Caddy, Caddy feeling that room twist and turn, music coming out of those speakers taking her back years ago into those broken apartment buildings, derelict projects. She felt those hands on her, being passed around, her mind separating from her body, like watching a damn movie, not feeling or worrying. Things just happening to her. She could’ve stuck a knife in her hand and she wouldn’t have screamed.
“Girls getting pimped?” Boom said.
Cho Cho nodded.
“Who’s that pimp?”
“You owe me, handsome.”
“I said I would, woman.”
“You know.”
Boom gave her a hard, mean look. He plucked another cigarette into his mouth, reaching back into his jacket pocket for a Zippo and lighting it. “Yeah?”
“You gonna kill him this time?” Cho Cho said.
“He ain’t worth going back to jail,” Boom said. “But he sure as shit won’t know what hit him. Come on, Caddy.”
“What is it?” Caddy asked, swallowing, finding her feet. “What’d she say?”
“Goddamn Cho Cho gave us what we wanted.”
7
“Still no sign of that van,” Lillie said. “Samantha Adams is damn sure she saw it, though. At about the time it would have been shagging ass from downtown. We got three witnesses who saw it, too, heading north off the Square, moving in the direction of Yellow Leaf. I figured they would have hit 45 and been long gone. But if Ms. Adams is within a minute or two about the time, the roadblocks would have been set. They would’ve had to gone a different route.”
Quinn was i
n the break room with Lillie, Lillie about to head off for the night and finally get home to her adopted daughter, Rose. A little Mexican girl she’d personally rescued from a child-trafficking ring run by a three-hundred-pound nightmare named Janet Torres. Lillie reached over Quinn to get a little bowl filled with sugar packs, ripping open three and dumping the packs into her tumbler, saying that Samantha Adams may be a busybody but she was a reliable busybody. She stomped her size-ten boot on top of a nearby seat to add emphasis to her point.
“Only two roads out from Yellow Leaf,” Quinn said. “Unless they doubled back to the Square in a new car.”
“Sure.”
“Or maybe they didn’t go anywhere,” Lillie said. “Have you considered that? Maybe they ditched the van and roughed it or had locals who kept them hidden until everything got quiet.”
“Crime lab folks didn’t get much,” Quinn said. “Robbers wore gloves with those stupid masks. Lab has a bullet and some photos of that mud they tracked in. Might be able to get a boot print. Looks like they were both wearing hiking boots, from the video.”
“Guys who like Donald Trump and hunting,” Lillie said. “Damn, that narrows it.”
“Maybe they don’t like Trump at all,” Quinn said. “Maybe they think he’s a complete soulless asshole and it’s all a big joke.”
“I ain’t laughing,” Lillie said. “You figure these bank robbers have a sense of humor?”
“Something like that,” Quinn said. “Feds connect this one with ten more. So far, they’ve hit a few banks outside Memphis, two in northwest Alabama and then four in Mississippi. Holliday will let us know about the next one.”
“We have five banks in Tibbehah,” Lillie said. “We got six deputies. That leaves one of us to keep law and order while we keep watch. Assuming we work ’round the clock.”
“They won’t be back,” Quinn said. “They switch up states, counties, each time. They’ve never gone back to the same county or town. Before the First National, they’d laid low for a few weeks. They’re patient, good at choosing easy pickings.”
“I never thought of them as stupid.”
“These boys did the job quickly and effectively,” Quinn said. “Every damn time less than ninety seconds.”
“Hell, that’s better than Patrick Swayze and those surfers,” Lillie said. “You seen that movie Point Break?”
“Yeah, I saw it on cable one time,” Quinn said. “But I always think about Swayze in Road House. What was his name, the guy who ripped out people’s throats?”
“Dalton,” Lillie said. “You’re just like all the boys I know, can’t help but watch a movie about fighting, titties, and monster trucks.”
Mary Alice, now in her mid-sixties, gray-headed and big-bottomed, with half-glasses down on her nose, walked in. “Got two calls within the last two minutes from a woman over on Stovall Street,” she said, hand on hip. “Says her house got broken into. Whoever it was is gone. But the woman’s scared. Said things have been busted up real good.”
“Send Kenny,” Quinn said.
“Kenny’s ten-seven,” Mary Alice said.
“Reggie?”
“Domestic up in Carthage,” Mary Alice said. “Dan Easley’s drunk again. Says his wife hid the keys to his dump truck.”
“I’ll go,” Quinn said. “What’s the name of the woman with the burglary?”
“Powers,” Mary Alice said. “Y’all know anyone named Powers? I sure as heck don’t.”
Lillie looked at Quinn and raised her eyebrows. “Signs and wonders, Mary Alice,” she said. “New people in Tibbehah County.”
Quinn smiled.
Lillie asked, “You want me to come with you?”
Quinn shook his head. “Get on home to Rose,” he said. “Need you back here in the daylight to go hunt for that van. If what you’re saying is right, it’s got to be out there somewhere.”
• • •
“I’m flattered,” Fannie said. “You flew in just for me?”
“No, ma’am,” Ray said. “Not that I wouldn’t. You caught me straightening out some issues down in Tunica.”
She and Ray sat together in his ninth-floor suite at the Peabody in downtown Memphis surrounded by elegant if aging furniture, thick, billowy drapes, and satiny pillows. Ray had a drink cart brought up, with a nut bowl, fine cheeses, and meats. He was a class act, talking criminal activity over cocktails.
“You get things straight?” she asked.
“More or less,” Ray said. Still good-looking after all these years. His salt-and-pepper hair and mustache had now grown to mostly salt. But he still had that dark Italian skin and those smiling eyes that crinkled at the corners. He looked like a country club playboy but had been a hell of an enforcer for Buster White back in the day.
“I half expected for Mr. White to come up with you.”
“Mr. White doesn’t leave the Coast too often,” he said. “He’s got a routine, family obligations.”
And enemies in about every major city—women he owed alimony to and payoffs and men to whom he’d made big promises while doing the long stretch at Angola. Fannie couldn’t imagine crawling out of a hellhole like that richer than before. But she’d always heard most of what Buster White had built had been done out of boredom down on The Farm. Grew his operation to three times its size, edging up into north Mississippi and west Alabama.
“So you got some Mississippi troubles, too?” Ray said.
Fannie nodded. She’d worn one of her favorite dresses, a black off-the-shoulder, with some real fuck-me pumps, velvet, with killer heels. Not to mention the perfume. A dab of Chanel Gardenia right between her tits.
“I got a goddamn puritanical motherfucker riding my ass down in Jericho,” Fannie said, tapping her bare leg, really wanting a cigarette. “He wants to shut me down and won’t take cash or pussy to keep us open.”
“That’s trouble,” Ray said, crossing his legs. He had a nice khaki suit on, it being a little early for khaki since it was well before Easter, but people who lived on the Coast really could give a shit. They were on their own time. “What’s this asshole’s name?”
“Skinner,” Fannie said. “He runs the board of supervisors. Says he’s going to make a motion to pull our liquor license and make damn sure every dancer is properly dressed and keeps their snatch shut as tight as a bear trap.”
“I can’t imagine any of those north Mississippi good ole boys immune to your charm.”
Fannie smiled at him, tilting her head, red hair draping her bare shoulder. “I agree,” she said. “But you’re not some dickless prude.”
“No, ma’am,” Ray said. “I’m not. Just what would you like me to do?”
“I’m new to town,” Fannie said. “I’d like to know more about Skinner. He fancies himself as a real insider in Jackson, lowering himself to run business in his hometown. I want to know who he fucked in the ass, how many times and how often he did it.”
“Done,” Ray said. “Nothing to it.”
“Did you know you just get more handsome as you age?”
Ray grinned, stood up, showing a little bit of wear as he gripped a stiff right knee, and made his way to the drink cart. He fixed a drink for Fannie, her usual, and then a simple scotch and soda for himself with some Johnnie Walker Blue. He hobbled back to the couch and took a seat. Fannie recalled all the times they’d spent in bed. Ray, being twenty-five years her senior, had been sweet, kind, and giving. Taking his time, making sure she got hers, and always taking her out for a big steak dinner after. He was an old-school gentleman and it pained the damn hell out of her to see him becoming an old man.
“We have some problems, too,” Ray said. “I know I can help you with yours. Maybe you help out with what we got?”
“Anything, Ray.”
“First off,” Ray said, holding up a finger, “can you stay for dinner?”
; Fannie smiled.
“I went ahead and got us a table at Chez Phillipe downstairs,” he said. “I recall you liking a good bloody steak.”
“The bloodier, the better.”
Ray smiled, took a breath, and looked at her a moment, almost making sure of what he was about to say next. Finally, he nodded, more to himself than to her. “Memphis has been kind of a clusterfuck since Bobby Campo and Stagg got taken down,” he said. “Lots of blacks and wetbacks shooting each other. Those goddamn Mexicans now trying to cut us out of the equation. Of course you know those local boys, K-Bo and Shortbox.”
“The Twins,” Fannie said. “Last I heard, we were all one big happy family.”
“They won’t work with Mr. White,” Ray said. “Not anymore. They buddied up with a new group of Mexes rolling in from Houston and New Orleans. And you know how that stands with Mr. White.”
“I can imagine.” Fannie leaned in from her seat, putting her hand on Ray’s bony knee. “How can I help?”
“Well,” Ray said. “Those Twins got a chicken-wings business and detail shop down on EP Boulevard. Lots of money being run through there.”
“How much?”
“Jesus, Fannie,” Ray said. “If I told you, you’d call me a goddamn liar.”
“Try me.”
• • •
Quinn left the engine running on the Big Green Machine and reached for his Maglite, heading up the walkway to the bungalow a few blocks off the Square. It was one of those white houses he’d known since he’d been a boy, where old women had lived and died tending to their flower beds and little vegetable gardens. Most of the original Jericho houses fell on hard times in the eighties, few surviving, some being bulldozed, but a few had come back as of late. He had the lights shining up the path and onto the steps and the porch. No one coming out, a light on in the window. A tire swung slow from a giant oak in the front yard.