by Ace Atkins
Chastity could hear TJ yelling at Graham’s friends in the next room, telling them to get out, leave them the hell alone and not come back. This girl who’d never been in a real house, born and raised in a tin roof trailer, acting like she had a little piece of real estate on Audubon Park. What a goddamn joke. Next thing she’d know, TJ would be taking off her hot pants for Graham, whispering in his ear about all the things she and Ladarius McCade used to do down in Tibbehah County, real country-ass barnyard tricks.
And now the phone. It may not have been TJ’s fault she dropped it. But the cops would think she was the one who shot that one-eyed trucker. She wanted some fun and thrills on the road, not to end up in jail.
Chastity had enough and stumbled to her feet, finding her way to Graham’s chest of drawers under one of his daddy’s old posters for Jazz Fest ’89. His goddamn dad who lived in Atlanta but kept a house in New Orleans for his old folks’ parties and for his son to kick back and have some personal time to himself. Daddies could be so fucking stupid.
She found Graham’s phone where he’d left it. Stashing it away from his so-called friends while he slept. She looked back to see him snoring in the twisted sheets, his scabbed-over arm dangling loose and free off the mattress.
She dialed the number, listening to it ring and ring until she heard the right voice.
“Daddy?” Chastity said. “I’m scared. Will you help me?”
* * *
* * *
Johnny Stagg was helping with the midnight countdown at the Rebel when his phone rang with a Fayetteville area code. He nodded to Miss Nadine and Midnight Man to give him a little privacy and picked up the handset, leaning back into his office chair. “Johnny Stagg speaking.”
“Mr. Stagg, this is Vince Bloodgood over in Arkansas,” he said. “I sure I hope I didn’t wake you or your family at this ungodly hour.”
“No, sir,” Stagg said. “I was just about to drink a warm glass of milk and hit the hay. You caught me just in time.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes, sir.”
“About what you and me talked about,” Bloodgood said. “Does that offer still stand?”
“My word is gold, Mr. Bloodgood,” Stagg said. “Ask anybody.”
“I just want Chastity back,” he said. “These Federal folks keep on dicking ’round. Now they’re saying Chastity might’ve been involved in a killing down in Shreveport. My little baby? Some marshal woman called me up earlier and I swear to you she talked as direct and dirty as a goddamn man. How you like that?”
“If it’s the same marshal I’m thinking on, she’s a real nasty woman.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well,” Stagg said, leaning back into his highbacked chair, holding the handset, the spiral cord stretched across his old metal desk. “What can I do you for?”
“My baby,” Bloodgood said. “My sweet little Chastity is being held by that country trash and some junkies down in New Orleans. Can you please help me?”
“You don’t want to work with them Federal folks?”
“I only want justice done,” Bloodgood said.
Stagg didn’t say a word, the office windowless and quiet, a hum of warm air coming in from the ceiling. He let Bloodgood’s words just hang in there for a moment, giving them meaning and weight.
“You understand, Mr. Stagg?”
“Yes, sir,” Stagg said. “I most surely do. I’ll get my best men right on it. Sharpest two fellas I’ve ever met. Now what’s that address down in the Big Easy?”
TWENTY-FOUR
Reggie Caruthers walked into Quinn’s office and shut the door behind him. It was past six now, dark and cold outside, and Reggie still had on his slick green sheriff’s coat with the Sherpa collar. Quinn had been waiting for him, Reggie coming on to take over the night shift even though he’d been working through the day. Time didn’t much matter now anyway, and Quinn had already warned Maggie not to expect him for supper.
“How’d it go?” Quinn asked.
“You were right.”
“Tell me all about it.”
Reggie took a seat in an old wooden chair before Quinn’s desk and pulled out his notebook. He was as direct and driven as they came, and Quinn was damn lucky to have him as his chief deputy. His uniform immaculate, boots shined, with mustache and short afro cut to precision. Reggie was a man of details.
“Looks like Chester Pratt had some roof work done at his home and during the renovation of the liquor store building,” Reggie said. “I spoke to his neighbors and stopped by Bluebird this afternoon. His manager didn’t seem to like the folks on the job but admitted they did good work. Nix & Nix Roofing and Remodeling.”
“Brothers?” Quinn asked.
“Father and son,” Reggie said, reading over a few more details he hadn’t shared yet. “I need to ask. How’d you get your eye on these two?”
Quinn opened up the right-hand drawer of his desk and pulled out two Ziploc baggies. One contained the broken blade he found in Gina Byrd’s car and the other was the blade tip Raven Yancy had gotten from the nurse.
“Shingle cutter,” Quinn said. “Made by Rigid. I never did think of Chester as a do-it-yourself-er.”
Quinn shook the pieces out onto the table, prints already taken off both, and showed how the tip fit right on with the blade. Reggie didn’t move, staring down at the exact match and then looking back up at Quinn. “These boys are no joke,” Reggie said. “Flem Nix, the daddy, did time in Parchman for manslaughter and arson. The boy, Dusty, has more than a dozen assault charges. He was the main suspect in a killing over in Calhoun County a few years ago. Only one problem.”
“They couldn’t find the body.”
“Yep.”
Reggie tossed the two printouts of Nix and Nix on Quinn’s desk. Quinn checked out their descriptions, noticing both didn’t stand much more than five feet tall. He tapped at the height and weight. “This right?”
“Apparently so,” Reggie said. “Either makes them easier to find or harder to spot.”
“I need you to take these photos to a nurse that works at a clinic up in Yellow Leaf,” Quinn said. “They’d be closed now and you’ll have to find her at home.”
Reggie stood up and picked up the photos. Just as he was about to leave, Cleotha came barreling in the door with a stack of pink message slips. “Didn’t want to bother you when you were with that girl, Sheriff,” she said. “You got a mess of calls on the tip line. Five of them from that Chester Pratt man. I don’t want to say nothing bad about nobody, but that man sounded drunk as hell.”
Quinn looked to Reggie, and Reggie raised his eyebrows before moving past Cleotha and back into the hallway.
“Man said he knows TJ Byrd is about to get killed,” she said. “He was messed up and babbling on. But sure did sound like he was blaming himself.”
Quinn grabbed his cap and his jacket and headed for the door.
* * *
* * *
Dusty and Daddy got to New Orleans that night, worn the hell out from the road and hungry as a goddamn horse, trying to get over to the address Mr. Stagg had given them. But the roads were closed with some kind of street parade and they had to double back to the main drag downtown. There wasn’t a fucking parking spot anywhere, folks trying to charge them twenty dollars just to pull in a dang lot. They ended up leaving their truck over on Rampart Street by an old cemetery and walked back to the center of town. They didn’t get two blocks before some raggedy man offered to show them his peter for a buck right before they saw a whole group of men walking down the sidewalk dressed up like goddamn Barbie dolls. Big blonde wigs and bikini tops. Dusty recalled his preacher telling them that New Orleans was a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and now he was sure the pastor was right. This was the kind of place folks went after strange flesh, needing a little housecleaning by way of fire and brimstone. Everyth
ing stunk like a sewer ditch, the air heavy with cigarettes and liquor breath. His head spun with all the neon and glitter, people drunk and their necks heavy with all kinds of baubles and beads. Some man walked up to Daddy and placed a giant cup of beer in his hands before walking over to the street corner to throw up.
Daddy didn’t do nothing but take a big ole sip and kept walking. The old man’s eyes were as big as silver dollars.
“Don’t tell Momma nothin’,” Daddy said.
Dusty nodded. They watched as a crew of women walked down the street, flapping their shirts up and down in the cool breeze, giving everyone a chance to check out their titties. The cold air feeling good on his face as they’d been stuck in that truck for eight hours driving south. Stagg had given them five hundred dollars each with orders of calling him on a burner phone if they needed any more.
All they had to do was get that pretty little girl and treat her nice. If anyone made trouble for them, Mr. Stagg didn’t have any problem with him or Daddy gutting them like they did Gina Byrd. Only thing Stagg said was not to mess with that Bloodgood girl. Dusty got it but had to explain that to Daddy, who damn near creamed his shorts when he got on that girl’s Instagrams. Pictures of her in her swimsuit or walking a dog in her tight exercise pants and little bra.
Daddy finished the beer right quick and they headed on into a big Popeye’s on Canal Street. They ordered a couple chicken boxes with extra biscuits and found a hard table by the window to eat and watch out for the crazy people walking past them. Daddy’s eyes lit up at one point, a chicken leg stuck in his teeth, while he saw some woman going to town on some boy with his pants ’round his ankles. Right there on the fucking street. Folks passed them by, not giving them a glance, like that woman was playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on some kind of magical flute.
“Ain’t never seen nothing like it,” Dusty said.
Daddy chewed his food, unable to talk, taking in all the neon, sex, and the smell of chicken grease. All of the sin being just too much for one man to take.
“Woman at the counter said it’s the Mardi Gras,” Dusty said.
Daddy didn’t answer, setting to work on his little Styrofoam cup of red beans and rice.
“This thing’s going on all weekend long,” Dusty said. “They say streets should clear out later on.”
Daddy scraped into the tub and forked up the beans and rice, chewing with his mouth open. His black eyes flicking outside the window, better than anything that old man ever seen on TV. More jiggling boobies and flesh than he saw in a lifetime of watching The Dukes of Hazzard. Daddy was right, that Daisy Duke was something else, but never, not one time in those old tapes, did she lift up her shirt and flash those titties. His old man hadn’t been in New Orleans but twenty minutes and already seen more titties than he had in his whole life. The old man going into some kind of wide-eyed state, not unlike when the spirit came over him down at the Assembly of God and he started speaking in tongues.
“Daddy?” Dusty said. “You okay?”
“Can’t figure if what I’m seeing is a woman,” he said. “Or a man.”
“Judging from that big bulge in those slick gold pants,” Dusty said. “I’d say that’s a buck.”
“Huh,” Daddy said. “But that fella done—”
“Where you want to stick that Bloodgood girl?” Dusty said. “When we get her?”
“Truck bed,” Daddy said. “I fit a big fat doe in that toolbox last week. Gag her up and she’ll ride high and nice.”
“You gonna eat that biscuit?” Dusty asked.
“Get any closer, son,” Daddy said, grinning, rice and beans all in his white beard. “And you’re gonna lose a finger right quick. Put you in your place faster than we did that Chester Pratt.”
* * *
* * *
Quinn parked the Big Green Machine in front of a tall metal building next to Chester Pratt’s new log cabin. Hondo was with him and he told the dog to stay, getting out of the big truck to find another dog, an aging chocolate lab coming up to sniff at his leg.
He patted the dog and headed up onto the big wraparound porch. All the lights were off, his breath clouding before him, as he knocked on the front door.
Quinn had tried Chester on his phone several times and over at Bluebird Liquors without luck. It gave him a fair amount of concern that all the lights were off in the house and it didn’t appear that Chester was around. Maybe his Mercedes was parked inside that big metal building.
He knocked on the door again, knowing he had every right to enter the house based on those crazy messages. A wellness check was most certainly in order for a man in that mindset. Fortunately, the side kitchen door was open, and Quinn walked on inside, turning on the kitchen and porch lights and allowing the lab to follow and get warm.
Nothing looked out of place. The kitchen was clean. The big open living room with a rock fireplace was empty. There had been a fire recently and the smell of woodsmoke was strong.
Quinn called out to Chester and walked deeper into the house. He heard a shower running and the bathroom door slightly open. He knocked at the door and again called out to Chester. Nothing.
He headed on in the small bathroom and pulled back the curtain. The tub was empty and the water ran cold.
He turned off the water and moved back into the hall where the dog had waited for him. Quinn patted the old dog on the head. “Where’s Chester, old boy?” he asked. “Chester. Where’s Chester?”
The dog wagged its tail, not showing much interest, but trotted down a long hall to the last door at the end and nosed open the door. Quinn followed the dog into a big bedroom, barely lit by a table light by the bed. Underneath a large woven blanket, he spotted the top of a man’s face.
Quinn moved closer. He was snoring. The breath reeked of bourbon and cigarettes.
“Chester?” Quinn said, shaking the hump in the bed. “You hear me?”
The hump moved and Quinn pulled back the sheet to see Chester Pratt curled up in a ball wearing only his tighty whiteys.
“Oh, Lord,” Chester said. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
Quinn stepped back and opened up the curtains, the porch lights shining through the windows onto the heart pine floors and the walls decorated with framed prints of men in duck blinds with labs running loose. He turned on the nightstand light, nearly knocking over a bottle of pills and a half-drained bottle of tequila.
“I thought you were dead,” Quinn said.
“Why would you think that?”
“Can you stand up?”
Chester blinked at the harsh light and pushed himself up to a seated position.
“You ran out of hot water,” Quinn said. “I’ll put some coffee on.”
Quinn walked to the kitchen, let the lab back outside, and filled up the coffee machine. A good twenty minutes later, Chester came out in a black silk robe, showing off way too much of his stick-thin white legs. He had on one sock and his normally perfect hair looked a lot thinner, with a large bald patch in the back. Funny. Quinn had never spotted the toupee before.
“Why are you here?”
“Worried about you, Chester.”
“No, you weren’t,” Chester said. “Nobody worries about me. I think I better call up Sonny Stevens. He said I was not to say another word unless he’s present. Now I find the sheriff standing over me while I was getting a little shut-eye.”
“Have you heard from TJ Byrd?” Quinn said. “She’s saying some pretty rough stuff online about you. Accusing you of stealing her money. She says what happened to her momma was your doing.”
“Yeah,” Chester said, still standing. “I saw it. A bunch of goddamn lies. Folks been harassing me wherever I go. Had to shut down the liquor store Facebooks. People saying I’m a liar and a killer. How’s that look for my business?”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Then why’d you call me
?”
“Call you?” Chester said. “I didn’t call you.”
Quinn reached for the phone and played back the message he’d found on the SO’s voicemail. Chester slurring plenty but pronounced when he said, “Call me back, Sheriff. Those kids are in some real trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Quinn said.
“Hell, I don’t know,” he said. “I was just talking is all. You know they’re out there alone and in trouble. After what TJ did to her mother . . .”
“Let me stop you there,” Quinn said. “I think you know that TJ didn’t kill her mother. Neither did Ladarius McCade. You’re the one who put that whole show in motion.”
Chester looked as if he might throw up. He closed his eyes and then opened them, wobbling a bit on his feet, squinting as if the light might turn him to dust. He swallowed and stared back at Quinn, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t speak.
“Got you a nice new roof on this place,” Quinn said. “I didn’t notice it until I drove out today. Some real heavy-duty tin up there. Kind of job that will last a lifetime.”
The coffee maker started to beep, signaling it was ready. Quinn poured Chester a hot cup, the same as he’d poured for Holly Harkins earlier that morning. This stuff smelled a hell of a lot stronger as Quinn had doubled the dose.
Chester took the coffee mug. “I think I’m gonna be sick, Sheriff.”
“I heard you used the Nix family on the job?” Quinn said. “Nix & Nix Roofing and Remodeling. My deputy Reggie Caruthers said you also used them to build out the liquor store. Is that right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What’s that got to do with nothin’?”