by Ace Atkins
“Cops,” Toby said. “They came from fucking nowhere, Sam.”
“Don’t talk,” he said. “I’ll get help. Just breathe and lay back. I know many back roads to the Rez. Hold tight. We’ll get you fixed up, son. You hear me?”
Toby didn’t answer and Sam looked back in the rearview, seeing the boy curled into a ball with the pain. He turned on his high beams, taking a wide turn down south, trying to get out of Tibbehah County as fast as they’d come. There was a good doctor at the Rez, an old friend, who never asked questions with wounds like this. If they didn’t have any more trouble, he could get Toby there in thirty minutes.
“You with me?” Sam Frye said. “Hold that towel tight. Keep all that blood in.”
“Goddamn, it hurts,” Toby said. “Damn, Sam. Holy fucking shit.”
“Hold on,” Sam Frye said, high beams soon hitting the county line sign. “I’ve been shot many times. It hurts like a bastard. But you grit your teeth, do what you need to do to stop that bleeding. Just breathe. You can breathe, right? Breathe with me, son.”
“Damn, they got me good. I feel like my whole goddamn stomach got shot out. Fucking shit, man.”
“This isn’t the life for you,” Sam Frye said. “We get you home, get you healed, and I don’t want you to mess with this stuff. You say you like to make music? Make your music. Go party. Drink, smoke some weed. Go meet some nice girls. And bad ones, too. But this life? What me and your father got into is no way to live. You were right. Get out before it eats you whole. Once you head down this path, there is nowhere else to go. Nothing else for you to do. You understand? Do you understand me?”
Toby didn’t answer, and somewhere miles and miles from the Rez, on a long, dark country road, Sam Frye pulled off into a clearing. It was still raining as he cut on the overhead light and turned toward the backseat. Toby stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the front of his shirt covered in blood, as his loose fingers held a red-stained towel.
“They didn’t get you,” Sam Frye said. “You were never caught. You did real good. Now it’s time to take you home. We’re going home, son.”
Sam Frye turned off the overhead light and knocked the sedan into drive, slowly heading up onto the back road, driving that steady speed limit, and checking his rearview until he could see the bright casino lights miles away. A billboard ahead promising THE FIRST JACKPOT YOU’LL WIN IS BY WALKING THROUGH OUR DOORS!
TWENTY
It had been five days since E. J. Royce got himself killed when Caddy headed up to Memphis with Tashi Coleman. She wanted to shut down all the bullshit, the questions, and innuendo around her brother. Those girls from New York not having a damn clue on how Tibbehah County worked, listening to anyone who’d run their mouths. If she could find Ansley Cuthbert maybe she could not only help them out, but also stop all the lies about Quinn. They roamed up Highway 45 to Tupelo and then cut up to Memphis on 78, passing the exits to Holly Springs and Red Banks. Caddy had made the trip so many times, she felt she could drive it blind.
“I saw two girls on the Square yesterday with blue hair,” Caddy said. “I think your friend Jessica is making a style contribution to Jericho.”
“She’s made a lot of friends,” Tashi said, driving her small blue rental with Caddy beside her. “That girl is good at getting people to talk, open up. She just has a way of getting sources to trust her.”
“I know you didn’t ask but I’m going to say it anyway,” Caddy said. “Quinn and Lillie didn’t have a damn thing to do with that old man’s death. Royce was one of the biggest crooks in the county, no telling what he found himself trapped in.”
“Did you hear about his dogs?” Tashi said, turning on her headlights, the sky darkening as they got close to the Tennessee line. Not really answering Caddy but not challenging her on it, either.
“Yes, ma’am,” Caddy said. “Everyone heard that detail about the dogs. Betty Jo Mize said it was too awful to print in her family newspaper. I think she worded it that the body had been ravaged by animals.”
“That made it seem like wild animals or vultures, not his own dogs,” Tashi said. “God. How could his own dogs do something like that?”
Caddy told her that if it was all the same, she’d rather not talk about it. The whole thing making her sick to her stomach, saying she always knew there was something the matter with Royce. “When I was a kid, his eyes would just kind of linger on you. He was a deputy and worked for my uncle so I believed he was important. But what kind of man stares like that at a young girl, telling her how she’s filling out and that she has a nice figure?”
Tashi didn’t say anything, listening as she drove, heading past Olive Branch and that big Ford dealership, a supersized Walmart, and a grouping of the regular suspects of Starbucks, Applebee’s, and an O’Charley’s.
“When we were kids, we had to drive up to Memphis to go shopping,” Caddy said. “It always seemed like the center of our Southern universe.”
“Just how long did you live in Memphis?” Tashi asked.
“Too damn long,” Caddy said. “About four years.”
“Why’d you leave home?”
“You’ve been there,” Caddy said. “Does Tibbehah seem like the kind of place a woman in her twenties would want to live?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tashi said, both hands gripping the wheel, intently staring at the rainy highway ahead through those thick black glasses. “I think Jericho is a pretty charming little town. With the Square and all those little restaurants and shops. I get a little tired of Brooklyn’s preciousness. Jericho is real to me. Real South. Real America.”
“Maybe too real at times,” Caddy said. “There wasn’t much on the Square when I left. Nearly every business was boarded up. Most of the buildings had fallen in on themselves. Vines and weeds growing through the busted glass. Looked like the A-bomb had hit the town. It was either be a checkout girl at the Piggly Wiggly or marry some loser and be trapped forever.”
“What about college?”
“Ha,” Caddy said. “Not everyone can go to college. You either get a scholarship or your family has money. My family’s not poor, but they didn’t have the money to send me or Quinn to school. My daddy rarely paid child support. And my momma worked when she could, receptionist-type jobs at the high school or some doctor’s office. It was tough. The way you see Jericho now isn’t the way it was. When the recession hit, we barely even knew it.”
“Was Memphis better?” Tashi asked.
“For a while,” Caddy said. “When I was clean. But you can’t do the kind of work I was doing sober.”
“As a dancer?”
Caddy laughed, sort of snorting through her nose. This girl really was on her best behavior, really wanting to find Ansley Cuthbert by calling Caddy a dancer. There wasn’t a thing about dancing in her whole show, although back then she might have argued it. She used to have a canned answer about song selection, acrobatics, and connecting with her customer. In truth, all she did was show her tits and grind her hips for more than minimum wage.
“Is that not right?” Tashi asked.
“No, ma’am,” Caddy said. “I was anything but a dancer. Do you want to see where I worked?”
“Was that where Ansley worked, too?” Tashi asked, heading over the Tennessee state line. THE VOLUNTEER STATE WELCOMES YOU.
“She got me my first job,” Caddy said. “She was stripping first. I met her out in Memphis at some club, drinking and partying like you do when you’re that age. Right? Ansley always seemed to have money. The best clothes. Hair and nails done, lots of jewelry. And boys. Damn, Ansley Cuthbert was the queen bee. When you met her out, she’d have a minimum of six, eight boys buzzing around her.”
Caddy looked out at the dark, rainy landscape, the trucking companies, garages, liquor stores, pool halls, and cut-rate motels. This was always the crossover, the river of grit, before you got into Memphis proper.
It was still early, but girls were working the big truck stop by Shelby Drive. Across the street was a Best Western that used to rent out rooms by the hour, one of the closest motels to Dixie Belles, a regular for businessmen who didn’t want to take their girls back to the Peabody or the Madison downtown. There was a barbecue restaurant in the lobby and Jacuzzis in every room. Sometimes she’d fly so goddamn high she didn’t realize or give a damn where she was headed, only that the money was right and she got paid up front. Those four years never seemed real to her, nothing but images from a fuzzy dream, anesthetized to pain and feeling nothing but indifference. Shots of Goldschläger, big glasses of Jack Daniel’s, lots of blow on little compact mirrors, Ecstasy, enough weed to choke a goat, and finally stuff you shot into your veins, pushing the plunger to unclog your fucking head and feel even less. There used to be a Western-wear shop on the corner behind the Wendy’s where she’d buy getups for her stage show, belt buckles and big hats, fancy boots and spurs. Now the shop was gone, only a big ceramic red boot out by the highway.
“Tell me where to turn.”
Everything was the same but different. Across the highway from an old farmhouse where she used to shoot up was a sprawling intermodal facility, slapping Conex containers onto 18-wheelers or loading them onto trains. Giant cranes, lit up in the dark, lifted those big containers from a stacked maze of hundreds and put them onto the right track and the hell out of Memphis. In the light and the rain, the whole setup looked like a kid’s toy room, an Erector Set with train tracks.
“Here,” Caddy said.
Tashi turned west on Winchester, past the old Americana Club, which used to be the Eagle’s Nest, where her mother said Elvis had his very first gig. When Caddy worked here it was a Mexican club, full of undocumented workers and Norteño bands playing long into the night. Caddy recalled going there one night after hours and watching a man bleed out in the parking lot from stab wounds. Holding his hand until the paramedics came, long after he died. She had prayed to him in English. He didn’t understand a damn word.
“Dixie Belles?”
“That’s it,” Caddy said. “See that place? It’s one place that hasn’t changed.”
The building looked like a neon wedding cake, four times the size of Vienna’s back in Jericho, with eight stages and two VIP rooms. The sign outside boasted a nationally known porn star who said she had sex with the president of the United States. Tashi slowed in the parking lot. A muscular man with a shaved head stood under the portico by a long black limousine. Just being back here shortened her breath, made her sweat a little, the neon glow shining onto her face. She closed her eyes, her pulse racing. She could do this. She could do this.
“Why’d you quit?”
“Are you kidding?” Caddy said, taking a deep breath. “Come on inside. I’ll show you exactly how it used to be.”
“We don’t have to,” Tashi said. “I can stop recording.”
Caddy reached for her door handle. “Quit trying to be empathic and come on,” she said. “Keep that mic out of sight. Some girls might get a little paranoid.”
* * *
* * *
“You always take your dog to work with you?” Fannie Hathcock asked Quinn.
“Depends,” Quinn said.
“On what?”
“On whether Hondo feels like work,” Quinn said, reaching down to scratch the cattle dog’s head. “Sometimes he just feels like sleeping on the front porch. Older he gets, the lazier he gets.”
Quinn was working late, taking over for Reggie, who had a sick wife at home and two young kids. Fannie had wandered in unannounced, knocking on his half-open door, dressed in a tight-fitting black dress with a plunging neckline and lacy straps. Her silver ruby locket hung down between her large breasts as she leaned against the doorframe. She looked worn out, with tired, reddened eyes.
“You just coming from a party?” Quinn said, pushing back from writing a report on his laptop and looking up at Fannie. The visit was a surprise and a rare occasion.
“A funeral,” Fannie said. “In New Orleans. I just got back and heard about all the action the other night. I know you say you didn’t shoot that Royce fella in the head. But I couldn’t blame you, Sheriff. The man was bad for business. He was the kind of creepy old coot who’d show up with a dozen roses from the Piggly Wiggly to hand out to some teenage girls.”
“You won’t have to worry about that anymore,” Quinn said.
“I heard y’all shot who did it,” Fannie said. “Maybe the same fella who killed Wes Taggart?”
Quinn shrugged but didn’t say anything about the hat they’d found or that they believed there was a second shooter who had escaped Royce’s place, the older man in the video footage from the jail.
“A shame you shot him,” Fannie said. “If you ever find him, tell him he’s got free lap dances all night long. Royce and Wes Taggart. A goddamn two-for-one special.”
Quinn kicked up his boots, watching Fannie stroll toward the open seat in front of his desk, his door still cracked open in case anyone wanted to walk in. You didn’t have closed-door meetings with a woman like Fannie Hathcock if you wanted to keep your job. He wished Hondo could’ve been a witness to whatever she came to discuss. Setting his boots at the edge of his desk, he said, “What’s on your mind, Fannie?”
Fannie sat down, resting her elbow on her knee, her hand cupping her face, looking up at him with those tired eyes. “How’s Bradley Wayne?”
“Fine, last time I checked,” Quinn said. “Calmed down a lot since that first day. I think he’s about to bail out, finally.”
“I appreciate what you did for Dana Ray,” Fannie said. “It’s why I always ask for you special. You seem to have a soft place for the working girls. I don’t think I’ve met a stripper yet who didn’t have bad taste in men. I guess it goes with the job. But, goddamn, when I was working the pole, I was a little more careful where my money went. You have to tip the damn house, the bouncer, the DJ. I’d be damned if some lazy peckerhead would be getting my earnings.”
“You could have called,” Quinn said. “Cleotha would have been happy to give you an inmate report. Jail records are also available online, twenty-four hours, and up-to-date.”
“You don’t like me,” Fannie said. “Do you?”
“I like you fine, Miss Hathcock.”
“Christ,” she said. “Don’t call me that. Some simpleminded folks make more of it than it is. Men seem to resent a bossy woman, seem to think it means I got something tucked between my legs.”
Quinn smiled. “I never thought that, Fannie. Ever.”
“Good.”
Fannie sat up straight, both hands on her knees now, jutting out her sizable chest in the tight velvet dress. In the bright light of the sheriff’s office it looked as if she’d been crying, mascara muddied around the corner of her eyes. He didn’t say a word. The window open in his office, letting in the cool night air.
“When someone close to you dies,” Fannie said, “you kind of take stock in your life, think on things you might want to do better. I hate we haven’t been better friends since I came to town. I blame most of it on Lillie Virgil, who did truly have some kind of hard-on for me. That woman looks at me like I’m dog shit on the bottom of her shoe.”
“Is that it?” Quinn said. “You want to be better friends?”
Fannie lifted her eyes and tilted her head. She was a pretty woman, striking as hell, with all that red hair and wide-set eyes and full red lips. Some might have said she was a little too voluptuous but not Quinn. Fannie Hathcock distributed what she had into all the right places. “I think you and I share a similar problem.”
Quinn didn’t answer, shutting his laptop and reaching for his mug of coffee at the edge of his desk. He let her finish, fill in the long pauses, with whatever she came to discuss.
“Ole Man Skinner chaps my ass,” Fannie said. “He doesn’t lik
e either of us. And he’s done everything he can to run us both out of town.”
“How’s that working for him?” Quinn said.
“Don’t laugh,” Fannie said. “I’m goddamn serious. You and I both know who he’s friends with and what the man is capable of doing. All this horseshit about family values and turning back the clock to sucking your momma’s titty in Mayberry is crap. They don’t want morality, whatever that is. What they want is complete control. And Skinner and Vardaman won’t have it with us around.”
Quinn nodded. “You coming to me with a plan?”
“No,” Fannie said, whispering now and leaning into the desk, her violet eyes big and serious. They were co-conspirators now. She placed a hand on his desk and looked back at the open door. “I came to you with a warning.”
Quinn nodded. He didn’t touch his coffee, listening to what the truck stop madam had to offer.
“You know a punk kid named Bentley Vandeven from Jackson?”
“I do.”
“I heard he’s gotten real close to your sister,” Fannie said, now smoothing out the dress over her full thighs. “You do know who his people are and what they do?”
Quinn nodded.
“And it doesn’t give you pause? A spoiled little shithead like him singing hymns at some busted-ass church in Tibbehah County? Men like that don’t change their ways. They don’t have a fucking calling. You might ask yourself, who the fuck is this son of a bitch sniffing around my sister? And what the hell does he need up in Tibbehah County?”
“I know he’s connected,” Quinn said. “And I know he’s rich. My father used to shoe horses for his family.”
“Goddamn you, Quinn Colson,” Fannie said, standing up. “You don’t know the fucking half of it. Why don’t you check up on Vandeven’s daddy and see whose golden apple he’s been polishing for a while. I wouldn’t want my sister within a thousand goddamn feet of those people.”
* * *