by Ace Atkins
“Shit,” Lillie said. “After what he did to Boom? Just don’t fuck him up too bad or I’ll have to answer for it. But talk to him all you like. He softened up a little on the ride over, resigned to his fate.”
“How’d it go with his girlfriend?”
“Little Miss Twilight?” Lillie said, sitting at the edge of his desk. Everything as smooth and easy as it had been when she’d been his second-in-command. Lillie looked tall and cool in a black linen shirt with her sleeves rolled up and dark jeans, Sig Sauer and Marshal’s badge clipped to her Western belt. “Apparently, he wasn’t much of a lay. I found her working at a shithole on Summer Avenue. Her mother told her I was coming. She didn’t seem to have any issue with it. Sat outside the club as she smoked a joint and told me all about her time on the run with Kmart Butch Cassidy. He promised her champagne wishes and caviar dreams but only delivered Popeyes fried chicken and screw-top whiskey.”
“What’d he say about Boom?”
“Denied it,” she said. “Said it was all J. B. Hood.”
“God rest his soul.”
“Spoken like the man who shot him dead on Highway 45.”
“Didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Guilt-ridden?”
“Terribly,” Quinn said, blowing out a stream of smoke. “I wake up every morning crying to myself. You want some coffee before we do the meet and greet?”
“I sure missed your coffee, Quinn,” Lillie said. “Marshals’ office has one of those old Bunn coffeemakers, pumping out the same weak-ass shit since back in the day. I have to drive on down to South Main by the train station to get a decent cup.”
Quinn started for the door, turning back around with his hand on the brass knob. “Before we do, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Lillie crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “You still fixated on that fuckwad Vardaman?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t think Wes Taggart could find the state capitol with Siri jacked into his ass,” she said. “He’s a low-level turd. Nail his ass for what he did to Boom and flush the goddamn toilet.”
“You know good and well his people are tied in with Vardaman.”
“Of course they are,” Lillie said. “They’ve been tied in with that asshole back when Stagg was running the show. I just think you’re wasting your time with Wes Taggart. Only person around here who might connect the Syndicate with Jimmy Vardaman is Fannie Hathcock. And good luck with that.”
“Won’t hurt to ask.”
“Ask nicely,” Lillie said. “The whole ride up I wanted to crack that fucker’s head like an egg. But I applied the utmost restraint.”
“No kidding.”
“Why the fuck are you surprised, Ranger?” Lillie said. “I’m the one who trained you to use compassion.”
“Is that what you call it?”
FIVE
My family held out hope he’d gotten lost in those Big Woods,” Shaina Taylor said, sitting in lawn chairs in front of her small white house. Her three-year-old daughter racing down a Slip ’N Slide and hooting with laughter. “But after the fifth, sixth, seventh search party didn’t find nothing, they knew something bad had happened. Wasn’t like Brandon was the kind of kid to hitch a ride out of town. And even though I was only nine, I know it wasn’t the kind of house he wanted to escape. Daddy worked at the sawmill for Larry Cobb before he got into trouble with Mr. Stagg and them. Momma ran her daycare next to the Piggly Wiggly. Our sister Charlene was a senior at Tibbehah High. We weren’t the kind of people who invited trouble into our lives. My folks worked hard, took us to church twice a week. Ain’t nobody around here getting beaten or anything like that. Brandon wouldn’t have just got up and left one day. He had a life here. Boy had lots of friends at school. Even had a girlfriend who used to spend her summers up here with her grandmother. Damn, he loved that girl. Traded letters every week.”
“Maggie Powers.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You don’t need to call me ma’am,” Tashi said. “We’re pretty much the same age.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you’re older,” Shaina said. “Just someone I respect.”
“How so?” Tashi said, sitting side by side with the chubby little woman in the flowered dress, both of them wearing sunglasses and drinking bottles of Diet Coke.
“For one thing, you’re the only person who’s ever done one thing for Brandon.”
“That can’t be true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Shaina said, standing up for a moment, telling her daughter to be careful about belly flopping on the hard ground. “I swear to you, that child don’t have a lick of sense. She cut up her foot the other day at the swimming pool, refuses to wear them flip-flops I gave her.”
Tashi looked down at her notebook, the microphone placed on a small wicker chair between them, catching the sound of the passing cars on the highway, the gurgle of the hose, and the laughter of the child. “How’s Charlene doing with all this?”
“Charlene’s never done well with any of it,” Shaina said. “Momma and me ain’t spoke to her in two years. Last time my sister came home, with her second husband, she was carrying on about some big job she was about to get down in Orlando. She swore to us she was about to be one of Cinderella’s stepsisters in that Electric Light Parade they have. Charlene and me had been real big about Disney since they paid for all of us to come down after they found Brandon. There we were, three months after them finding his body and being treated like damn princesses. I was too young to know I couldn’t have fun. Charlene and Momma crying the whole way through the fireworks. Me thinking maybe wishes do come true and Brandon’d be at home when we got back to Jericho. Silly stuff like that.”
“Do you think your mother has changed her mind about talking to me?”
“Momma?” Shaina said, rolling her eyes. “Oh, hell no. She’s still mad for me reaching out to y’all. I don’t think she’s scared or nothing. I just think she can’t handle living all this again. ’Bout killed her. Definitely killed Daddy. Man was never the same after Brandon died. Got meaner than hell. Drank like a fish. Quit praying. Goin’ to church. Believing in any damn thing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Like I told y’all,” Shaina said. “I’m not looking for a killer or any conspiracy theories. I just think Brandon deserves some answers. I can’t find the state’s autopsy. Only the one done here in town at Bundren’s that I passed on to y’all. And I can’t find no police report. I can’t get a damn straight answer from the state people about Brandon’s rifle. Did they test it? Did they give it back? Where’d it go? Why’d everything go and disappear? How could you possibly know Brandon walked into those woods to chase a big buck and then just decided to go and kill himself? Lost? That boy could never get lost. Not where he was headed, following the old crooked creek where him and Daddy used to go fishing.”
“How’d your father die?”
“His heart stopped working,” Shaina said. “Got all kind of medical reasons for Daddy. Doctor’s reports, insurance denials for a preexisting condition, all that mess. But sometimes folks can just get so sad, they hole up in a place in their head and never want to get back out. Daddy blamed himself. Never got over it.”
Her daughter was as slick as a sea lion, hair plastered back to her head, all elbows and knees, with a big, mischievous smile. The hose flooded through their yard and into a cleared lot next door with a single-wide trailer with a FOR RENT sign in the window. Shaina Taylor worked most days at the Dollar General, was off on Sundays.
“You said your parents blamed the sheriff?” Tashi said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Shaina said, not being able to help it. “Daddy used to say Sheriff Beckett was big as an ox and dumb as a brick. Said the man never even questioned what happened to Brandon. As soon as they seen that rifle nearby, laying ten feet away, he decided on it.”<
br />
“Hold on,” Tashi said, holding her hand. She scribbled out some more notes and then checked the recording levels to make sure she was getting all this. “Who said ‘ten feet away’?”
“The sheriff told Daddy that,” she said. “Said some animals had moved his body some. But we don’t know if anyone even checked to see if the bullet inside Brandon’s head came from his hunting rifle. You know how it says on the autopsy that it was a .38, not a .308, and they tried to tell us it was a typo? Well, we don’t have no bullet. No ballistics or whatever. And to this day, I don’t even know how or why he’d even do such a thing. If that ain’t Tibbehah County, I don’t know what is. Believe what you’re told. Keep your mouth shut and don’t ask no questions. And let the folks in power let you know what’s best for your family. I’m just glad Daddy lived long enough to see Sheriff Beckett be the one who really took his own life. After years of backstabbin’, corruption, and dirty payoffs, the man just couldn’t live with himself no more.”
“Did he ever speak to you or your family again about Brandon?”
“Came by once after the fifth anniversary,” Shaina said. “Tried to shake my daddy’s hand and give my momma a hug. Daddy told him never to say Brandon’s name again in his presence or he’d punch him right in the damn mouth.”
* * *
* * *
Vardaman left Ray and Chief Robbie to talk while he got changed. He’d spent the morning in the woods with a CNN news crew, taking them on the deer runs and fire trails and talking about what Mississippi values meant to him. Ray walked over to the bar inside the hunt lodge and fixed himself a tall scotch. Chief Robbie wasn’t one to drink. Ray heard he’d had some real trouble with the drugs and booze back in the day and now he was a workout freak. Tall and black-headed and built like a brick shithouse, he posted videos of himself online pulling weighted sleds and swimming in the Rez lake towing several canoes behind him. Chief Robbie was a real piece of work.
“I don’t like to wait,” Chief Robbie said. “I don’t like to waste my time.”
“Vardaman wanted to make sure we’re comfortable with each other before we get down to the ass-kissing,” Ray said, taking a sip. “That’s what this shit’s about. You know it. How you been, Big Chief?”
“All right,” Chief Robbie said. “My youngest daughter is getting married next month.”
“Congratulations,” Ray said.
“Not for me,” Chief Robbie said. He was dressed in denim on denim, a ceremonial beaded necklace around his throat and the open shirt showing a strong tanned chest. “This boy—a white man—is a loser. He owns a karaoke bar down in New Orleans. I had him checked out. He’s a fraud. Cashing bad checks, selling drugs. I don’t like it one bit.”
“Then why don’t you put your boot down?” Ray said.
Chief Robbie shrugged and crossed his right leg over his knee. He wore a pair of big, pointy alligator-skin boots. The legend was he’d wrestled the gator himself, only killing it when he’d flipped it on its back, field-stripping it right there, somewhere down in Louisiana.
“Mr. White sends his regards.”
Chief Robbie nodded, looking at Ray with his serious black eyes, big silver watch studded with turquoise on his wrist. Ray had always thought of turquoise being more of a Southwest Indian thing than Choctaw, but didn’t figure he’d ask about it. Chief Robbie had his own mysterious ways.
“Mr. White wants you to understand how important you are to all of us.”
“I know that,” Robbie said, flashing a big grin of perfect white teeth. “Tunica is about to fall into the Mississippi River. No one goes there besides the very poor and the very desperate. My place brings in families. Good people who want to have a good time. You should visit us sometime. We have a water park now.”
“I heard.”
“My grandchildren love it,” he said. “We have a lazy river and everything. Sixteen slides across ten acres. It’s all built within the historical context of the Choctaw lifestyle. Someday we’ll have a theme park as big as Six Flags Over Georgia. I have the drawings. Things have really changed.”
Ray took a swig, reaching into his coat pocket for his cigarettes. “Damn, Chief,” he said. “That’s impressive as hell. I’ll have to stop by sometime.”
“But I want you to know one thing,” Chief Robbie said, leaning forward while Ray fanned out the match. “What you people pulled with the Hathcock woman still does not sit well with me. She was supposed to come up and run the skin for us. Nothing more. That woman is the devil, I tell you. She was a spy. A liar. She tried to turn my own people against me. Say things about me that were not true. She stole. She ran drugs. She tried to get a young woman to infiltrate my bed, promising me things that come right out of the barnyard.”
“Oh,” Ray said. “Yeah. Well. Yes, she’s been spoken to. It won’t happen again, Chief. She’s been demoted.”
“Not how I hear it,” Robbie said, pointing his index finger right at Ray. “She’s running north Mississippi now. The drugs. The women. Working direct with Sledge in Memphis. And you handle these fucking power people.”
The Chief pointed around the inside of the hunt lodge, with its tall wood-beam ceiling and mounted animal heads and fish. Expensive gleaming silver and polished walnut shotguns and rifles hung on the wall. The furniture was upholstered with thick leather and the tables and the bar had been handmade from old-growth oak and polished to a high shine.
“Business,” Ray said. “It’s all business. No different when you ran those swamp boat tours down in New Orleans. We all got to grease the wheel, don’t we?”
Chief Robbie nodded with a serious face, craning his neck as Vardaman entered the room, shaved and clean and reeking of mint and intense cologne. The men stood and shook his hand as he joined them at the grouping of a table and chairs, finding a spot dead center in the middle of a big couch, his arms spread wide.
“We got a fine lunch planned for y’all,” Vardaman said. “Elk steaks from Wyoming with field peas and fresh tomatoes from the garden. My cook, a tough old black woman, asked me what kind of animal did I kill this time? Some kind of tiger? And I had to pull up a picture of an elk on my phone. She about jumped out of her skin. Said it was the largest deer she’d ever seen in her life.”
Ray nodded and grinned. Chief Robbie hadn’t changed his position, still sitting there, leaning in to listen, alligator boot crossed over his knee, waiting for them to go on and get to the point of this luncheon. Vardaman’s big toothy grin faded.
“I didn’t want y’all to feel pressure to come,” Vardaman said. His broad face ruddy, head too big for his body, like a bobblehead won at the state fair. “But I don’t like to go through flunkies. And I know you don’t. This is a crucial time for us at this election. If we want to protect and grow Mississippi, we all need to be on the same team. Not any different from when I played high school ball. How about you, Chief? I know you had to have played some football back in the day. Guy your size.”
He shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Just stickball. And the wrestling.”
“I heard that’s where you got those boots,” Vardaman said, his smile huge and welcoming. “Wrasslin’ the big ole gator?”
“Maybe,” Chief Robbie said. “We all pretend to be larger than life. Big-game hunter. Hero. Leader.”
Vardaman’s expression didn’t fade this time, only grew a little larger as he laughed, settling farther back into the seat. The old black woman appeared from the door to the kitchen and he waved her away. “Just a minute, Lucille. Got a little business to discuss.”
Chief Robbie’s eyes were as flat as two-lane blacktop. Unmoving, a big piece of cut stone examining the smaller man.
“A man doesn’t ever want to look back in a race,” Vardaman said. “But you don’t get too comfortable with the lead. Things can happen. I have enemies. Lots of enemies. Folks are still sore as hell over how my people t
ook that primary election and left their guy with egg on his face. Couldn’t have done it without y’all’s help. The establishment never wanted a man like me. Someone who will challenge and uproot this whole broken system. They look at you people as outsiders. Enemies to a way of life that hadn’t changed since the plantation days.”
Robbie looked over to Ray. Ray nodded back.
“Enough bullshit,” Chief Robbie said. “How much?”
“What’s that?”
“We want to thrive,” Chief Robbie said. “You want to win. We don’t want a lottery. And we want to see more casinos inside the state and off the water. We must have your support and approval. And you need our money to beat the people in Jackson. Like I said, how much?”
“Chief,” Vardaman said, nodding. “Chief. Come on, now. Let’s just get to talking a little bit. This fella on the other side could upset the whole damn thing. He’s an outsider. From goddamn California. And he wants to come down to Mississippi and tell us how Mississippians need to do business. I don’t care for outsiders.”
For the first time, Chief Robbie smiled. He nodded. “My people never did,” he said. “Now we just want a seat at the table.”
“You’ll have one.”
“And we want to grow,” he said. “Beyond the Rez. Out of the goddamn Delta. Sorry, Ray.”
Ray shrugged, showing no offense was taken. He set down his scotch and waited for Vardaman to put it all in perspective.
“My people have worked out an extended gift-giving plan that would last us into election day,” Vardaman said. “I would be tickled to death if we might look over the details before our lunch.”
* * *
* * *
“I’ll give you a few days with Wes Taggart before his sorry ass is wanted up in Oxford for his first appearance there,” Lillie Virgil said. “What he did to Boom was plain fucked up and we want him to answer for that more than anything. But Judge Biggers might have a different feeling about those racketeering and drug running charges at Sutpen’s. That man sure can get crotchety about stuff like that.”