The Fallen

by Ace Atkins

  Kenny nodded, watching the boys fit a four-by-four up under the overhang, propping up the tin roof. He was a short, plump little guy with a heart bigger than an Indian elephant. He’d been in gunfights well beyond his skill set, found his momma impaled with a metal gutter after a twister decimated his family’s house, and been shot in the leg and left for dead in a ditch by a crew of thieving peckerwoods. And every day he came to work with a big smile.

  “Heard you were quitting,” Kenny said. “Boom told me.”

  “Not for a few weeks,” Lillie said, a couple of county workers sweeping up the broken glass littering the street.

  “Good money up there?”

  “Could be worse,” Lillie said. “It’s been coming for a long while. I told Quinn I never intended to stick around. Shit got serious when Sheriff Beckett died. Made it hard to leave.”

  “Or if these turds would’ve made you sheriff.”

  “I don’t dwell on that stuff,” Lillie said. “Things happen for a reason. If I’d been elected, I would’ve been the Tibbehah County janitor way past my prime. Up in Memphis, I can work as a detective, get a retirement going, and maybe do some good.”

  “You’ve done real good around here,” Kenny said, smiling at her. “Hope you know that. I appreciate you.”

  For some reason, the fat little bastard getting all serious was breaking her heart. Lillie smiled back and punched him in the shoulder. “I may be working vice,” she said. “I’ll call you if we need an undercover john to help us out at those jerk shacks by the airport.”

  “Thanks, Lillie,” Kenny said. “You’re too good to me.”

  “How else would you ever get some?”

  Lillie’s phone rang and she stepped away from the sound of drills and hammers so she could hear whatever the fuck Mary Alice was screaming in her ear. “We’re still at the scene,” Lillie said. “What is it?”

  “I didn’t put it out on the radio ’cause it may be a prank,” she said, “but we just got a call from a woman claiming to be an exotic dancer over at Vienna’s Place. She said she’s hiding under the bar and having to be real quiet because two men just burst into the place with machine guns.”

  Lillie said, “They didn’t happen to be wearing Donald Trump masks, did they?”

  “Sure did,” Mary Alice said. “Just like those damn bank robbers who made such a mess at the First National and broke poor Mr. Berryhill’s nose.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Lillie said.

  “You think it’s real?”

  “Can’t take a chance that it’s not,” Lillie said. “Put it out, Mary Alice. Right now. I’ll call Quinn.”

  • • •

  “What’s the matter?” Maggie asked, pushing herself up on the iron bed. Quinn had come over after Brandon had gotten to bed and things had gotten a little heated.

  “It’s trouble when Lillie says drop your cock and grab your socks.”

  “She’s a strange woman.”

  Quinn found his jeans and kicked into them. Maggie walked across her bedroom to find his shirt and holster hanging on an antique ladderback chair. She handed him both. The moonlight coming through thin white curtains, Maggie not having a stitch on, a silver slash across her small breasts and flat little stomach.

  “Lillie thinks your husband is back.”

  “Goddamn it,” Maggie said. “He’s not my husband.”

  “Sheriff’s office just had a call that some boys in Donald Trump masks are robbing Vienna’s Place. Sound familiar?”

  “That strip club out by the highway?”

  “Could be a copycat thing,” Quinn said. “Or it could be those Marines out for some action.”

  “He wouldn’t come here.”

  “Why not?”

  “What reason would he have?” Maggie said. “He doesn’t know anyone here but me. And why would he be robbing some strip club if he’s been robbing banks? The banks I could believe.”

  Quinn pulled on his cowboy boots and started to button up his shirt. Maggie walked over and tried to help him. He pulled her hands away and said it was fine, he could get it, and threaded on his belt with holster and Beretta.

  “I didn’t do this,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I can’t control what that moron does.”

  “If it is him,” Quinn said, “maybe it’d be a good idea if we kept a little space. At least for a while. This could be a big embarrassment to me. And my deputies.”

  Maggie nodded but didn’t speak, looking small in the moonlight, barefooted and working on a cuticle in the corner of her mouth. Her being naked seemed to be least of her concerns.

  “I’ll call when I can.”

  “Do what you think’s best.”

  “He’s crazy, you know.”

  Maggie dropped her chin and set her jaw, her hands on her hips and her small breasts jutting out. “I need you to tell me this?” she said. “You’re getting to the show a little late, Sheriff.”

  29

  “Is this some kind of fucking joke?” asked the fat biker working the door.

  “Yes,” Wilcox said through the Trump mask and shot him right in the chest.

  He and Opie moved on into the room, all of it coming back to him so nicely, the narrowed vision, the deafening shit music pumping around him. The way the bad guys would stand up while the good guys dropped to the floor to make themselves smaller. A big bald guy with a wispy beard stood up at the bar, reaching for the gun on his belt, and boom. Point and shoot. Man down. Opie crossed the floor, jumping up onto the circular stage, a buck-ass naked black chick covering her knockers, sweeping his weapon over the room, shooting another tough guy in one of those black leather vests, the earring and long hair spinning as he dropped to the ground. Two in the chest. Wilcox rounded the bar, checking for more heroes. The two boys from Bravo Company flowing like damn water through all the stink and sweat, twirling colored lights and half-naked women screaming and yelling, dropping to the floor or running backstage. Eliminate, dominate, control.

  A black kid at the bar raised his hands up high while a goofy-looking motherfucker with a ponytail popped up by the toilets with a shotgun. He and Opie shot the son of a bitch at the same time. The shit music still pumping, fucking lights twirling. A DJ up onstage held his hands high, not looking like trouble other than the crap he was playing. Some bullshit about “Started from the bottom now we’re here. Started from the bottom now my whole team fucking here.” Wilcox raised his gun and shot the DJ and sprayed his laptop until everything went quiet.

  Wilcox crawled up on the bar, long and wooden like something you’d see in an Old West movie. “The beauty of me is that I’m so fucking rich,” he yelled.

  He checked the big space from the floor to the catwalk that looney girl told them about. Opie didn’t even need comms, watching the floor, just waiting for some heroic motherfucker to stand up and volunteer to get shot. Wilcox had that catwalk, waiting for someone to bust out of that office with the safe, the redhead, and the cash they were owed. One man, maybe two, watching the woman. Wilcox knew that redhead would never get small. She’d stand right the fuck up from that desk and start firing.

  All the screaming had stopped. The girls and the customers getting used to the movie they were in, Wilcox telling everyone to keep their fucking hands on top of their heads. “Don’t even think of scratching your ass,” he said. “No matter how much your crack itches.”

  He looked at Opie, the kid in all-black with the Trump mask on crooked, eyeholes askew, yellow hair all wild, and nodded at him. Opie would control the floor while Wilcox got up to the catwalk and into the office. So far, they’d taken control in less than a minute. And, in another minute, they’d be out of that office, down the fucking stairs, and running from the room, only that much richer.

  He skidded down off the bar, not wanting to make his leg worse but being so dam
n high on codeine and Vicodin that he couldn’t feel a goddamn thing. Watching the catwalk, he headed toward the steps just as a big fugly dude greeted him with a shotgun. “Drop it, boss.”

  Wilcox shot him three times in the throat, his fat body sliding down the stairs, Wilcox stepping on his bloated stomach, rocketing his way up to the money.

  Drop it, boss. Damn, these guys were dumb.

  • • •

  Twenty minutes later, Quinn and Lillie, over the hood of Lillie’s Jeep, watched the front of Vienna’s Place in flickering blue lights. The Big Green Machine parked right next to the Jeep, where he’d skidded up five minutes before. Lillie saying no one had made a move since the call. All she knew was that there’d been a fuckload of shooting and lots of folks screaming. Kenny and Reggie directed traffic, flares lighting up the darkness, sending folks well away from Vienna’s and the Rebel Truck Stop. A mess of truckers up and out of the dozens of tractor-trailers parked nearby, curious and watching, waiting the same as Lillie and Quinn. Highway Patrol on the way to shut down traffic and deputies from Choctaw and Lee counties coming in to lend a hand.

  Reggie Caruthers walked up as soon as they’d blocked traffic, squatting down behind Lillie’s Jeep, wanting to know if anyone had heard back from the stripper who called in.

  “Nothing.”

  “What she’d say to Mary Alice?” Reggie said.

  “Said two men dressed as Donald Trump were shooting up the joint,” Lillie said. “And several folks had been shot.”

  “Not good.”

  “No, sir,” Lillie said, her Winchester .306 in hand, lifting the scope to her eye, waiting for that front door to open. Two deputies, Cullison and Watts, watching the exits toward the rear.

  “They must’ve fucked up,” Quinn said. “Can’t see them taking this long.”

  “They had plenty of time,” Lillie said. “Took me eight minutes from when I got the call. Kenny got here first. Nothing happened. No one has come out of there.”

  “If we got some kind of Waco situation,” Quinn said, “maybe we should try and call ’em up.”

  “Vienna’s house phone.”

  “Unless one of you has Rick Wilcox on speed dial,” Quinn said.

  “Yep.” Lillie lay the rifle down beside her. She looked hard at Quinn and nodded. “Takes a big girl to admit when she’s wrong.”

  “Appreciate that, Lillie.”

  “I didn’t say I was wrong,” she said. “I just was slow to see the evidence on that shitbird.”

  “Of course.”

  “We just wait?” Reggie said.

  Quinn had out his cell phone, punching in the number he had for Fannie Hathcock and letting it ring. After it rang twice, a woman picked up. “Hello, Sheriff,” she said. “Would y’all please come on in and shoot these motherfuckers?”

  • • •

  Fannie was behind her desk when they came for her a few minutes earlier. She’d heard them shoot Bubba Bear on the stairs, the heavy thud and roll that followed, knowing that all the Losers were down. She told Mingo to drop his g.d. gun and put his hands up.

  “No way.”

  “I look bad in black, kid,” she said. “These boys would like nothing better than to spray your brains all over my glass-top desk.”

  Mingo swallowed and nodded, Fannie putting down the shotgun she always kept right by her desk. She heard a lot of girls screaming and yelling, a few more shots and the thudding steps of someone racing upstairs. Fannie reached to her little cherrywood box and pulled out a cigarillo, lighting up and leaning back into her chair. Wasn’t a damn thing that could stop them now. Might as well see how the whole show shook out.

  The door burst open and one of Cord’s buddies, wearing one of those ridiculous Trump masks, rushed inside, holding an assault rifle high to his shoulder, aiming it around the room and telling them to put their fucking hands in the air.

  “His hands are in the air,” she said. “Damn. You Marines sure can hold a grudge.”

  “Shut up,” the man said. Fannie knew it was the guy they called Wilcox. “And stand up. I don’t want to shoot a woman, but, in your case, I’d do it with pride.”

  “I didn’t kill Cord.”

  “You knew where you were sending him,” Wilcox said. “And that you’d polluted him with your crazy pussy.”

  “It ain’t so crazy,” she said. “But it’s so goddamn good.”

  “On your fucking feet.”

  “Safe is unlocked,” she said, standing. “Help yourself. No heroes here.”

  “Smart.”

  “Not so smart,” she said. “It’s not my money. You boys are really gonna kick yourselves in the nuts when you find out who you’ve really robbed.”

  Wilcox told them both to stand and face the corner, like a couple of grade school dunces, while he loaded up a black bag. It wasn’t a bad haul, two hundred and fifty grand before the night’s take. If the man had any goddamn sense, he’d have hit them later when the girls tipped out and left tens and twenties smelling like cherry perfume and baby powder.

  “On the floor,” Wilcox said. “Hands behind your back.”

  The son of a bitch hog-tied her and Mingo with duct tape. Mingo looking more scared than she’d ever seen him, eyes bulging, as they shut his mouth and wrapped his head tight with silver tape.

  • • •

  Wilcox strapped the ruck to his back, reached for his AR, and headed fast from the office, right on time and right on schedule. He and Opie would leave with a final little warning, about the bar blowing up if anyone moved, and by the time the law figured it all out, they’d be halfway down to Mobile, switching cars at that motel in Starkville. His mouth felt dry and his face sweaty under the rubber mask as he made his way down from the catwalk and toward the floor, Opie sweeping the room with the gun, looking up at Wilcox, and both of them telling everyone to shut up. One of the strippers was on her knees, pressing a bikini top to a bearded biker bleeding out by the stage.

  Wilcox got down nearly to the floor when that girl, Sparrow, walked out from the one room they couldn’t check, the dressing room, and asked, “What the fuck are y’all doing?”

  Wilcox barked for her to lie the hell down. Opie firing off a couple of shots. But both of them struck by the fact that their own personal little lap dancer, Sparrow, would turn on them like that. She had on her purple T-shirt and little white panties, smacking gum and aiming the tiniest pistol he’d ever seen in his life right at him. The girl had some grit, that was for sure, calling them a couple of motherfuckers for shooting Bubba Bear and the boys and said she would damn well rather walk on a lake of fire than to give either one of them a lap dance.

  “Now get down on your face before I blow a couple new holes straight through you.”

  The girl spit some gum right at him but lay down like she’d been told, facedown, hands on the back of her head. Wilcox made it down to the last two steps when he heard the shooting start up again and felt a quick, hot pain in his damn good leg and a chunk being eaten out of his shoulder, making him drop the gun and sending his ass twirling and tumbling down the stairs.

  Whoever shot him was dead. Opie jumped off the stage and set Wilcox upright, yelling for everyone to quit screaming and for someone to bring him some goddamn towels.

  “How you feelin’, Sarge?”

  “Like a hundred dollars,” he said. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  • • •

  Those Marines had done a shitty job of taping up Mingo or maybe he used some Choctaw trick to push his butt and legs through his arms and start gnawing on the tape on his wrists like a beaver. He had his hands loose in less than a minute, unwrapping his ankles and cutting Fannie free with a letter opener from her desk. She pulled the tape from her mouth and around her head, taking a good chunk of red hair with it. Fannie breathed in a long breath, hearing the screaming and yel
ling, the commands going on down on the floor, wanting to run toward it but not excited about being shot.

  “What do we do?”

  “We wait and pray,” Fannie said.

  “You don’t pray.”

  “Oh,” Fannie said, picking up the still smoldering cigarillo and plucking it in her lips, “that’s right.”

  “That son of a bitch took my gun.”

  Down the steps, they’d heard more firing and yelling. Someone was up and started shooting with those boys again. She sure as hell hoped that they’d taken out those bastards. If they did, she’d kiss one of those nasty, stinky, scooter-riding miscreants right on the mouth.

  Mingo had edged to the door, making his way close to the stairs, listening. He looked back to Fannie and nodded, inching back toward her. “They got one,” he said. “Someone is calling for more towels and tape to wrap the man’s leg.”

  “You hear any of our boys?” Fannie said.

  Mingo looked right at her and shook his head.

  “Dead?”

  “No one’s talking or shooting.”

  “’Cause they’re dead,” Fannie said. “Goddamn it.”

  “Maybe they’ll get gone and leave us alone.”

  “They’re not getting out of here with that money after busting up Vienna’s,” she said. “I want to nail their fucking nuts to the wall.”

  “You got a gun?”

  She shook her head, looking back to the chair and seeing the dumb son of a bitch had left her damn Birkin bag. Just as she turned back to her desk and snatch it up, her cell phone started to ring, playing a playful little jingle.

  She accepted the call real quick—on the second ring—before anyone heard it.

  • • •

  “What did she say?” Lillie said.

  “Said she thinks her boys are dead,” Quinn said. “And wants us to take out those motherfuckers as soon as they walk through the door.”

  “I don’t like that woman,” Lillie said. “But it’s a solid idea.”

  “They’re not going anywhere.”

  “Nope,” Lillie said. “They’re going to sit on their ass and hold all those good churchgoing folk hostage until we help get them the hell out of there and on down the road.”