The Shameless

by Ace Atkins

  Wes Taggart finished his cheeseburger with extra cheese and pickles in less than two minutes in the conference room. He wiped his mouth with a handful of napkins and leaned back into the rolling office chair. Quinn and Reggie sat at the head of the table, Reggie not being sure this was the best idea, letting a prisoner like Taggart out of his cell and out of his handcuffs. But Quinn had told him he wasn’t too worried about the situation. If Taggart made a break for the door, how far do you think he’d get?

  “I’ll tell you what,” Taggart said. “Them folks at Sonic sure know how to make a cheeseburger. You boys want some fries? I don’t think I can eat this whole bag. Lord have mercy.”

  He reached for his shake and started to slurp through the straw. Reggie looking over at Quinn and shaking his head. Quinn and Reggie were ex-Army and they both had a low tolerance for sloppy behavior. They’d both grown up—and later enforced—looking people in the eye, sitting up straight, and eating with proper manners at the table. It wasn’t easy watching Taggart inhale a cheeseburger and mash a fistful of fries.

  The rain had started a half hour ago, a mean storm with lightning and possible tornadoes rolling in from Arkansas. They were under a watch until midnight. Reggie stood and walked over to the door, arms crossed over his chest, almost daring Taggart to even try.

  “The thing about it, Sheriff, is that I know I’m fucked five ways from Sunday,” Taggart said. “Y’all are holding all the damn cards. I know you boys both saw me shoot some folks on Pritchard land. I know the Feds got some files and computers showing the gravy train we was running out of Tupelo. And even though I damn well know it’s a lie, that friend of yours is gonna say it was me and J. B. Hood who done bashed his head in. I don’t need some Memphis lawyer drawing me a diagram in the dirt. Even if I tell you a thousand damn times it was all J.B.’s doing. He was a hard, mean man, God rest his soul.”

  Quinn cocked his head, staring hard at Taggart. He watched the man’s Adam’s apple bob up and down while he swallowed his vanilla milk shake, taking a short break to reach into the cup with his index finger and fish out the cherry. He sucked on it with a big grin on his thin gray lips.

  “You were talking about Vardaman,” Quinn said.

  “Was I, now?” Taggart asked. “Ain’t that something.”

  Quinn took another long breath, having to slow down every bit of training he’d ever had. He spent a decade of his life taking on hostiles with as much speed and violence as necessary. Now he was having to sit across the table from this Grade A turd and try like hell to be civil. No doubt he and Hood had beaten Boom. No doubt they had meant to kill him. But the dumb son of a bitch also held a lot of answers that went well beyond Tibbehah County, understanding connections in play well before Quinn ever got out of the service. Quinn leaned his elbows flat across the table but kept staring at Taggart. Neither he nor Reggie Caruthers said a thing.

  Reggie’s radio squawked for a moment and he reached down to turn down the volume. The only sound now coming from the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead.

  “Well now,” Taggart said. “I might have seen a few things down in Biloxi.”

  Quinn kept quiet.

  “Y’all know who Buster White is?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Goddamn peckerwood godfather of the Gulf Coast,” Taggart said. “Don’t you believe them stories people say about him feeding folks to the gators. He’s a good Christian man. Got grandbabies and them grandbabies got their own. Did you know he does an Easter egg roll down at the beach attended by a few hundred folks? He even hired me once to be the damn Easter bunny and dance around with the kiddos in the sunshine. Never sweated so much in my damn life.”

  Quinn held up his hand. “Skip the bullshit,” he said. “Either you tell us about White and Vardaman or I’m gone. I should’ve been home two hours ago.”

  “Congratulations, by the way,” Taggart said, leaning back into his office chair, licking the salt off his fingers. “I heard all about your wife from some of the other fellas here. I heard she was one fine little number. Small tits but birthing hips. Got her own little kid, too. How you liking be a daddy all of a sudden?”

  Quinn didn’t answer, taking a sip of cold coffee. Maggie had told him she’d be holding supper just in case he could get home. She had some kind of vegetarian tofu stir-fry she’d found online. Maggie hadn’t been a big fan of the meals Quinn had been eating at the farm. Eggs and bacon. Venison with onions and peppers. Some fried catfish with whiskey on the side.

  “It’ll cost you,” Taggart said.

  “Figured it would, Wes,” Quinn said.

  Wes Taggart smiled. It wasn’t pretty, as most of his teeth were yellowed and crooked. “Ain’t you gonna ask what I want?”

  Reggie walked up from the door and walked around the table, looking out the windows at the dispatch station. “Another goddamn cheeseburger?”

  “’Fraid not, Sambo,” Taggart said.

  Reggie moved so fast, Quinn barely had time to make it over the desk and pull him off Taggart. Taggart flat on his back, smiling and laughing, the laughter turning into slow giggles as he curled up into a tight ball. Reggie backed away, knocking down a white grease board hanging on the wall. Cleotha’s inspiration of the day written in red ink. DON’T LET NO MAN STEAL YOUR JOY.

  “Sorry about that, Sheriff,” Reggie said.

  “About what?” Quinn said.

  Quinn stepped back and Taggart lifted his head and stared dead-eyed at Quinn. “I bet you and your buddies up in Oxford sure would like to know how a man like J. K. Vardaman done beat the money folks in Jackson. Goddamn establishment machine sure didn’t want a wild card like that old nut running this state. Went against his own people and not only triumphed but lived to see another goddamn day. It’s a hell of a story. Inspirational as all get-out. Maybe better than some of them Bible tales or one of them Left Behind novels I read on the toilet.”

  “Vardaman and your people,” Quinn said. “Sounds like a hell of a tall tale, Taggart.”

  Taggart grinned again. “Your fine little piece of tail got some supper on the stove for you?”

  “Yep,” he said. “And it’s late. Raining like hell outside. And that high-dollar lawyer of yours ain’t coming tonight. Or tomorrow.”

  “Funny how it works,” Taggart said. “Everybody’s all pals while the money’s flowing. But you make one little mistake and everyone’s running for the hills with their hands covering their peckers.”

  In the conference room, they could hear the sound of rain hammering the roof. In the few seconds of Taggart not running his mouth, a long, grumbling thunder shook the windows.

  “I want a sit-down with you and the Feds,” Taggart said. “I think those boys will go pretty damn far if I draw them a little diagram between Jackson, Biloxi, and Memphis. What I call a triangle of sin. Everybody done turned their backs on Vardaman, thought he was the goddamn oddball long shot in this election. All that talk about states’ rights and a return to more decent times. He was a damn punch line on Jay Leno.”

  “Jay Leno retired,” Reggie said.

  “Y’all know what I’m talking about,” Taggart said. “You heard all about the Watchmen Society and their plans for the state? Twirling those red bandannas every time Vardaman farts. Those people sure do love his style. You can scowl all you want at me, Deputy, but your black ass is gonna be back in the field picking cotton if these folks get their way. And you, Sheriff? Shit. They had plans for you since the start of the year. This crazy asshole wins the election and them state folks are going to be wiping their asses with the law book. Turn back time. You heard that shit? Tick-motherfucking-tock.”

  “I’ve been dealing with y’all since I became sheriff,” Quinn said. “And my uncle before that. Johnny Stagg. Bobby Campo. Buster White and Fannie Hathcock. Never really thought of any of them having some kind of political agenda. This all sounds like a tall t
ale to save your narrow ass.”

  Wes Taggart howled with laughter, rolling back in the office chair. Quinn looked up at Reggie, who was still close enough to reach out and choke the ever-living shit out of that wiry shitbird. A tattoo of a little cartoon devil decorated Taggart’s left arm and read MADE IN HELL. Taggart noticed Quinn staring. “Hot Stuff,” he said. “You recall that little son of a bitch? Or are you too damn young?”

  “You got to give me something,” Quinn said.

  “Hell of a storm brewing outside,” Taggart said, looking up at the ceiling. “I heard a tornado si-rene before y’all got me out of the cell. What we used to call a dang belly washer down in McComb.”

  “Come on, Reggie,” Quinn said. “Supper’s getting cold.”

  “I’m your only damn hope, Ranger,” Taggart said. “I wouldn’t say jack shit to the nasty woman who trucked my ass up here. Miss Virgil. But I’ll tell you what. I don’t just know where the bodies are buried. I sure as shit know who put them there.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “What the hell’s that?” Bentley asked.

  “Tornado alert,” Caddy said, reaching for her iPhone on the bedside table, light shining hard into her eyes. She and Bentley had fallen asleep an hour or so ago, after watching a movie and heading on back to the bedroom. His hand fallen over her bare stomach as she dozed off. “Looks like one touched down in Lee County.”

  She got out of bed buck-ass naked and walked back to her bathroom to fill a cup of water. Jason was over at a friend’s house and it gave her and Bentley a little more free time to be alone. Her son still didn’t know they were dating, Caddy introducing him as a good friend from Jackson who knows his grandfather. There was little friendly about what they’d started doing when they got bored with the movie. Their clothes were twisted and fallen on the hardwood floor, rain tapping against the windowpanes.

  “Don’t get up,” Bentley said. “An alert’s not a big deal. We used to have them in Pocahontas all the time.”

  “We have them all the time here, too,” Caddy said. “Did I ever tell you what happened to my last house?”

  Bentley didn’t answer, sliding his feet to the floor and starting to reach for his underwear and jeans. He was tall and lanky, a good solid body under those loose-fitting clothes he wore. A swimmer, a runner, who kept on trying to get Caddy to train with him for a marathon.

  “Have you seen my boxers?” he asked. She could see his naked ass shining in the light from the living room.

  “Where’d you take ’em off?” Caddy asked. She stood there, naked, sunburned across her chest and arms and down on her legs. Pale and white across her belly and over her breasts as she tipped the cup to her lips and drained it.

  She liked the new place, moving in after Maggie and Quinn had gotten married. The old bungalow had been Maggie’s grandmother’s, only a few blocks from the Jericho Square, with a nice sitting porch and a big old oak to offer shade during the summer. Maggie had been in the middle of renovations when she’d moved out, the woman loving to take on projects herself, and half the kitchen was still torn up.

  Bentley zipped up his jeans and walked over to Caddy, pulling her in and giving her a kiss on her mouth. “Damn,” he said.

  “You had enough?” Caddy asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How about you cut the ‘yes, ma’am’ stuff,” she said. “Makes me feel older than I am.”

  Bentley laughed and Caddy slipped into a black kimono Maggie had left in the closet. Just like her sister-in-law to have a kimono decorated with dragons and Chinese symbols. The lights flickered on and off in the living room. The idea of a tornado rolling through town still scared the hell out of her. She’d lost everything in the last one, a good quarter of Jericho destroyed in a busted-ass path that ran from south of downtown to damn near up to Tupelo. The town still hadn’t recovered.

  The lights flickered again, more thunder booming outside, and then they stood there in complete darkness. She felt her way around the couch, seeing a bit thanks to a little light coming through the kitchen window. Caddy lit a couple of candles and set them on the table, brightening the small room just a little. Jason’s football jersey had been left to dry over a kitchen chair, paperwork from The River piled up on another.

  “Thanks,” Bentley said.

  “For what?”

  “Inviting me over.”

  “I was bored,” Caddy said. “Not much else to do in Jericho but get drunk. And I don’t drink anymore.”

  “Sorry we didn’t finish the movie.”

  “I’ll show you the rest later,” Caddy said. “You kept on falling asleep.”

  Bentley laughed again, leaning onto the kitchen counter, touching her face and grinning in a sleepy way. “Lots of hippie-dippie stuff,” he said. “I guess all that was a long time ago.”

  “You should meet my Uncle Van,” Caddy said. “Nobody’s told him the seventies are over. Still wears bell-bottom jeans and smokes weed. He lives in his trailer in this little time capsule.”

  “Wasn’t just the clothes,” Bentley said. “Those people had kind of a crazy way of believing how things worked. Whoever made the movie seemed to have a real problem with authority, making it seem like every elected official was a crook.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  Bentley laughed again in the darkness. “Not all of ’em,” Bentley said. “Some of us squares are trying to make a difference.”

  “The movie was one of my daddy’s favorites,” she said. “He trained with the same guy who taught hapkido to the main character. When Daddy was out in Hollywood, he and the actor who played the hero got to be good pals. Daddy was in some Western he made. They stayed friends pretty much his whole life.”

  “You don’t think like that,” Bentley said. “Do you? You don’t think everyone with money is evil and wants to take advantage of the poor. Made it seem like the whole system was busted.”

  “Isn’t it?” Caddy said.

  “Come on, now.”

  “No,” she said, the candlelight casting his handsome face in shadow. “You think we’re all doing fine and dandy down in Mississippi? You think we don’t have folks like Posner looking down their noses at Hispanics, blacks, Indians? I watch that movie and I think nothing has changed.”

  “When we first met, I told you we shouldn’t talk politics.”

  “Or religion.”

  “I didn’t say religion,” Bentley said. “You know I’m a Christian. I believe in what you’re doing here. I just don’t like folks who go off on the fringe of things. That doesn’t do anything but make the problems worse. It obscures all the good being done.”

  Caddy started to say something else but then thought better of it. Bentley was a good man who’d been brought up in a gilded world in Jackson. It would take some time, but she knew he had heart and ideals and would come around to the way things worked. Maybe it’d been too much to show him Billy Jack so soon. The Colson family watched the movie nearly every Thanksgiving after the parades, football games, and big supper. Those old action movies a big part of their family history.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so mean in my life,” Bentley said. “Tossing a sack of flour in a kid’s face. Come on.”

  “He was trying to make him white.”

  “I did like that one girl,” he said. “The one in those big boots and crazy glasses who told the asshole kid her name was Up. ‘Up Yours.’ She was beautiful. Had a nice little attitude.”

  “And you like a little attitude?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Can I get a drink of water?” Bentley said, grinning. “Or you gonna just toss me back out in this weather?”

  “I didn’t plan on you staying.”

  “I know.”

  “But it is a long way home.”

>   “Three hours.”

  “Don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  She refilled her cup from the tap and passed it on to Bentley. Her phone started to ring, skittering across the kitchen table. Caddy picked up.

  “Caddy?” a deep voice said. “It’s Boom. I’m drunk as hell and sure could use a little help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Southern Star.”

  “OK,” Caddy said. “Give me five minutes.”

  She ended the call.

  Bentley turned to her. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Be right back.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The girls had arrived at nine as promised and were on their way by ten. Sam Frye bought a Coke for Toby outside at the machine, the weather still for a moment, just kind of hanging in there in pink and black swirls above the truck stop and the highway. It was real nice, gloomy and pleasant at the same time.

  “Why’d you tell the girl you were my uncle?” Toby asked. Sam Frye handed him the Coke, standing back and amazed at the wonderful show nature was providing that night. The swimming pool was a light emerald green, ruffled by the wind.

  “Made sense,” Sam Frye said. “Two nice men. Old man and his nephew. The old man getting his nephew the first good ride of his life.”

  “Something that girl will never believe,” Toby said. “No way she would think it was my first time any more than I would’ve believed it was her first. Did you see the body on her? She was little, compact and short. But strong, Sam. Boy, she really knew what she was doing.”

  “Don’t fall in love with a whore,” Sam Frye said. “If anyone asks, those girls will know us. They know we were here, passing through. Accounting for our time.”

  “When do we get the goddamn call?”

  “It happens when it happens,” Sam Frye said. “Jesus Christ, kid. Have you loaded your guns?”

  “Sure,” Toby said. “And the fucking car has plenty of gas.”

  “We won’t be using that car,” he said. “It stays here. Our car is waiting across the street at the truck stop.”