by Ace Atkins
“I work for White,” Fannie said. “Hired help is no concern to me. Whatever trouble I have in north Mississippi is under my watch. You just keep on riding that long white line and humpin’ to please and let me handle my own fucking business.”
“It’s too late, Fannie,” Taggart said, pushing himself off the desk, muscles flexing in his long arms. He walked up close to Fannie and she waited, even prayed, for him to lay one finger on her bare skin. Instead, he just stood there in the smoke and haze and smiled. “Buster White don’t change his mind too often. So how about me and you just learn to play house?”
“Let’s say I do,” she said. “What’s in it for me?”
The man smelled like the horse sweat on her father when he’d come in from weeks on the oil rig. No amount of Aqua Velva could cover it up. He looked down at Fannie and finally touched her right arm, Fannie yanking it away quick but not budging an inch in her Jimmy Choos. If he touched her again, she’d pull that pistol out of her purse and spread his nuts across the wall like a couple of cracked eggs.
“Everything keeps running smooth,” he said. “You handle the women and let us handle the men.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Then who’s gonna help you?” Taggart said. “That damn Choctaw kid from the Rez or that little ole nigger boy who got his lights shot out by the Pritchards? Seems like you’re 0-and-2 in the employee department, Fannie.”
Fannie held her breath, feeling the blood and heat flow to her face and her teeth grinding on one another. That man could toss off all his macho bullshit all he wanted, but mentioning Mingo was something that he’d never get back. She’d held her fucking nose, took care of what needed to be done, and didn’t need some sweaty redneck telling her to understand the way the world turned.
“First thing, let’s shut down that supply,” Taggart said. “OK? The last thing we need is for those Memphis spooks to start going back on our deal.”
She knew she was fucked. If this was what Buster White had decreed, it was either agree to work with these assholes in the meantime or get shut down real quick. White piled on that good ole boy backslappin’ bullshit right up until the point he put a bullet in the back of your head or had you cut up and tossed into Lake Pontchartrain.
Fannie nodded, tossing down the cigarillo onto Wes Taggart’s carpet and grinding it out with the point of her stiletto.
“My business is my own.”
“Only when it ain’t.”
“We’ll see.”
“You’ve been in this business long as me, Fannie,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Nothing is permanent.”
“I just hope you boys don’t piss on the furniture,” she said. “Y’all better be good and goddamn housebroken and don’t shit the fucking bed.”
“Oh yes, ma’am,” Taggart said, swallowing, eyes wandering back down on her tits as he licked his lips. “We’ll do our best.”
* * *
• • •
You’re good luck already,” Nat Wilkins said, sitting behind the wheel of her sweet-ass black sedan, Boom Kimbrough in the shotgun seat. “You see who that is?”
“I sure do,” Boom said, watching as Fannie Hathcock exited the corrugated tin building of Sutpen Trucking, Inc., big white purse thrown over her shoulder, and got into her white Lexus and sped away.
“You a regular customer down there?” Nat said. “At Vienna’s Place? I hear they got the coldest beer and hottest women in the Mid-South. Lap dances and all the chicken fingers a man can eat.”
“Never been one for strip clubs,” Boom said. “Whole lotta cash just for a tease. Besides, I don’t go to bars no more.”
“How come?” Nat asked. “You come to the Cross, Mr. Kimbrough?”
“Me and liquor used to be real tight,” Boom said. “But we don’t get along much anymore. I have a beer now and then. But I can’t mess with that hard likker no more.”
“I like a little cocktail now and then,” she said. “Mojitos. Maybe a dirty martini. My ex didn’t like it when I drank. He said it made me cocky as hell.”
“So what’s all this trucking business mean to y’all?” Boom said. “Don’t see how much more I can help.”
“Patience, Mr. Kimbrough,” she said, grinning, tapping the wheel. “Damn name of the game. Fannie Hathcock in a meet with Wes Taggart? I can’t say I’m surprised, but this is the first time I’ve seen those two together live and in person. Taggart is a two-time loser. Got out last year after fifteen years at Kilby over in Alabama. He’d been running some bingo parlors in Jefferson County and got in a little too good with the local law.”
“I didn’t deal with Taggart,” Boom said. “Worked with a guy named L. Q. Smith. He’s the front guy, a real aw-shucks kind of redneck. When I told him I wasn’t good with running shit off the books, that’s when that Taggart guy stepped in. Him and some nasty old dude with a ponytail.”
“That’d be J. B. Hood.”
“Why all these peckerwoods go by their initials?” Boom said.
“Makes ’em think they sound important,” Nat said. “Or else it’s just easier for their dumb asses to spell.”
“Who’s this J. B. Hood?”
“Cutthroat motherfucker,” Nat said, reaching into her purse for a pack of chewing gum. She offered Boom some and he shook his head as she popped a piece of Doublemint into her mouth. “Killed a man when he was eighteen for talking back to his momma. Ran with some mean-ass brothers up in Memphis back in the day. He got charged with two more murders, but he wasn’t convicted. Pretty sure he was button man for this guy named Bobby Campo who used to run the skin and money wash for the Syndicate before your Johnny Stagg stole the show. That man’s been shooting, robbing, busting heads since Elvis watched women wrestle in their cotton panties.”
“Did Quinn tell you about those missing girls?”
Nat, chewing on her gum, looked down at her cell phone. She tapped her long nails against the screen, hitting a fast reply, and nodded. “Sure did.”
“Mexican girl named Ana Maria and a black girl named Tamika,” Boom said. “Fifteen damn years old.”
“Sheriff told me that you and his sister thought those girls got sold to Fannie Hathcock.”
“That’s right,” Boom said. “I got told that straight by the pimp who turned them out. A nasty, pointy-eared motherfucker named Blue Daniels. Blue had no cause to tell me a lie. I banged his head into a door and bit off a piece of his ear.”
“I like you, Mr. Kimbrough,” she said. “You talk straight. Did y’all ever find those little girls?”
Boom shook his head, sitting there in the comfortable leather seats, feeling strange being in a parked car with a woman he just met. “Had someone on the inside of that Hathcock woman’s titty bar,” Boom said. “He told us that she’d put those girls on a truck. Said they were the same trucks that dropped off girls in Tibbehah County to work the pole or at these private parties that woman set up in the hills for rich men from up in Oxford and political types.”
“Sheriff said that boy disappeared, too,” she said. “Choctaw kid named Mingo.”
Boom nodded. “Ain’t nobody heard a word,” he said. “There was no way Mingo would’ve taken off like that. Without saying shit. I think Fannie Hathcock got wise that he was tipping us off. I think she told him he’d better get far away from Tibbehah County. Or maybe she had him killed.”
“That’s about how it works with these people,” Nat said. “They won’t let anything get in the way of money or their own personal shit. You get in their damn way, fuck up that flow of money, and your ass is gone.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“We call ’em lots of names,” Nat said. “Dixie Mafia. Cornbread Cosa Nostra. The Good Ole Boys. The Syndicate. But they ain’t that fancy. This isn’t some Godfather shit with omerta and honor and all that. This is just some mean-ass rednecks
who work together when the gettin’ is good. It’s more like a club of crooks than anything official. Been around for a long while. The people change. Some go to jail. Others die. After Katrina, they came back strong. Too much money flowing from Jackson down to the Coast. And now they got their eyes on Memphis, trucking all that shit up 55 or off Highway 45.”
“Working with the cartels through Texas.”
“How you know that?” Nat said, cutting her eyes over at Boom.
“Because I saw ’em,” Boom said. “Couple of those cartel boys packed some shit in a car hauler. They wearin’ these fancy-ass shirts and cowboy hats, carrying golden guns. Ain’t no way they were just packing the trucks. They had a look about ’em. Real mean eyes, watching me to make sure I didn’t make any trouble.”
“You making trouble now,” Nat said.
“How’s that?”
“You’re gonna help me shut these mothers down.”
“No thanks,” Boom said. “I’ve done my part. I done told Quinn. Now Quinn told you. Soon as we clear, I’m walking in there and turning in my keys to that big-ass truck. I don’t need this in my life. I got straight. I didn’t ask for this.”
Nat reached into her purse and pulled out some photographs and handed them to Boom. He flipped through a few pictures, mug shots of a Mexican girl wearing a dirty tank top and a whole mess of makeup on her young face. One of her eyes had been beaten on, lid swelled up tight.
“You know her?”
Boom shook his head.
“That’s Ana Maria Mata,” Nat said. “The girl that you and Quinn’s sister were looking to find. Quinn told me about her and I found out she’d been picked up in a sting in Cincinnati a few months ago. Some men up there had set her up with eight other girls. They had them in some broke-ass motel off the interstate running johns all day and all fucking night. Cop I talked to said Ana Maria might’ve run through twenty, thirty men a day.”
Boom felt a cold break through his chest, his breathing tightened. He looked away from Nat and over at the loading docks at Sutpen’s. Eighteen-wheelers coming and going out of the chain-link gates and blowing past where he sat still with a federal agent. He wished he was just back in his truck, doing his own thing, making his own time, seeing that world from behind the windshield. Way things were going, he’d never do that shit again.
“So?” Nat said.
Boom looked at her. She chewed her gum and studied his face for a long while, sitting there, cooling out in her government vehicle.
“Doesn’t that inspire you or some shit?” Nat said. “Seeing a girl being taken from your hometown and run through the fucking wringer by these people? If you’re thinking it’s just some Mexican meth and a lot of stolen laptops, you just lying to yourself, Mr. Kimbrough.”
Boom nodded and turned back to Agent Nathalie Wilkins. Ain’t no denying she was a sharp, hard-ass, good-looking woman, with that silk style and that loose, bouncy hair, worn natural and wild. He studied her high cheekbones, greenish eyes, and ripe mouth. Everything about her was precise and tight as hell. As she worked that gum waiting for him to answer, the whole car smelled of sweet mint.
“OK,” Boom said.
“OK what?”
“How about you just call me Boom?”
* * *
• • •
Quinn and Maggie sat together in the small hospital cafeteria a little after dinnertime, Maggie just getting out of surgery and changed into a fresh pair of blue scrubs. Quinn had brought her a Styrofoam shell full of fried catfish, hush puppies, and fries from Pap’s. She ate while he drank some bad coffee from the vending machine, wishing he’d brought his own. The stuff tasted like it’d been brewing for the last two weeks, as thick and tasty as a quart of used motor oil.
“Slick night,” Maggie said. “Already had two accidents brought in. The last one was pretty horrible, bad leg breaks. Teenage girl slid off Jericho Road and hit a tree. Truth be known, she’s lucky to be alive.”
“I was down there with Kenny,” Quinn said. “I got there after the ambulance left but we had to get the car pulled out. Looks of it, I thought she’d have a hell of a lot worse than a broken leg.”
“The girl was small,” she said. “Must’ve thrown her back into the seat. Where did she take a hit?”
“Whole front end got crunched up to the dash,” Quinn said. “Windshield was busted out. Lot of glass. I bet she got pretty cut up.”
“She’ll have a few scars on her face,” Maggie said. “Not too bad. Lots of glass on her forehead. She was lucky as hell not to get some of it in her eye.”
“What time are you getting off?”
“Midnight,” she said. “Double shift. Don’t worry. I got Brandon set up with Mrs. Tidwell. She said he can stay until I get home. All that woman does is sit around reading The National Enquirer and watching The Golden Girls. Her stupid kids never come see her.”
“I’ll pick him up.”
“You don’t need to do that,” she said. “What if you get called out?”
“He can stay at Momma’s tonight,” Quinn said. “Jason’s over there and they’ve been working on bringing back our old treehouse. Momma got them a bunch of stuff to fix it up like Caddy and I had it.”
“That’s sweet, but—”
“But nothing.”
Maggie worked on the fish, stripping the bone from the meat, pulling off the tail and eating the crisp part like a potato chip. Quinn recalled when they used to fry catfish with the heads on and wondered when that stopped. Maybe folks started to worry about their meal looking at them. Maggie kept eating, looking like she hadn’t had a thing all day.
“Are you getting anywhere on that murder?” she asked.
“A little,” Quinn said. “I’ve learned a few new things that might help.”
“I may be able to help you on something else,” Maggie said, smiling, looking pleased with herself. “Did y’all ever charge anyone with that throwdown at the Walmart?”
Quinn shook his head. “Pretty sure some local turds got into it with some bikers. But we don’t have a victim. And no one has exactly wanted to step up and name names from anyone who runs with that crew.”
“What if you had a name?”
“That’d help.”
“A man came into the ER two days after the trouble,” she said. “Someone had stitched him up but it was a real mess. Looked like he’d done it himself with some fishing line and a sewing needle. He had a bad infection and needed to get flushed out and cleaned up. Doctor tried to get him to stay, but he got some meds and took off.”
“Look like a gunshot wound?”
“He said he got shot in the ass with an arrow while hunting.”
“Who was he?”
“I can get the name, Social, and address for you,” she said. “All I know is, one of the nurses said she’d seen him a few times at the Southern Star. She said his name was Lyle and he rode with the Born Losers. You know him?”
“Yep,” Quinn said. “He’s an old friend. Had some run-ins with him in the past.”
“Well,” Maggie said, her face looking as big and bright as a kid’s. Her big green eyes, freckles, and devilish-looking grin making her seem even younger. “Guess I earned my dinner.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn said. “All the catfish you can eat. Only problem is, those boys disappeared from Tibbehah last year. I have five outstanding warrants on them. I’ve been looking for Lyle for a long time.”
“Where do you think they went?”
“That old clubhouse has fallen in on itself,” Quinn said. “I heard they got a new clubhouse in Memphis down on South Lamar. Hadn’t had a big reason to go and find them. Maybe now I’ll check it out.”
“How about you bring Reggie along?”
“You worried I might get shot before the big day?” Quinn said.
“Damn straight.”
“Might help us get out of this button soup wedding we go going on,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “Every day the pot just gets thicker and thicker. My momma adding folks. Your momma adding folks. Diane Tull wanting to bring in more folks for the band. Catfish, barbecue, and tofu. I get shot and we could get married right in the hospital. When it’s time to say ‘I do,’ you’d just have to push the button on the bed and raise me up.”
“That’s not funny,” Maggie said. “I don’t like you joking about stuff like that.”
“Only way to do it,” Quinn said. “In the Rangers, if you couldn’t laugh about getting shot up, blown up, or killed, you’d damn near drive yourself crazy. I can’t tell you how hard some of us laughed after we’d get in some tight spots. I never knew anyone with a blacker sense of humor than folks trying not to die every day.”
“How ’bout you bring Reggie?”
Quinn nodded and stirred the coffee. He hadn’t touched it. The smell alone had been enough to wake his ass up. “Thought about reaching out to Lillie,” Quinn said, looking up from the slick surface of the cup. “It’s been a while. And I figured the Marshals might have a lead on Lyle and the Losers.”
Maggie’s face brightened. “Even better.”
14
It seemed that Tyler spent most of his life in the garage, on the track, or deep down in the grow barns pruning weed. He’d learned that pruning was maybe the most important step, beyond just the planting and running the irrigation system. You had to take your time when using your shears on new plants. Tyler liked Fiskars, they cut quick and precise, making sure you didn’t shock the plant too damn fast. Today he was mainly looking for dead growth, low-hanging buds in grow trailers. The Pritchards had four grow rooms buried out back of the old barn, having spent four years of their lives putting together a whole new world, a series of bunkers and tunnels underneath their property. As he worked in the ultraviolet glow of the overhead lamps, box fans keeping the air moving deep down in the cool ground, he snipped off a few of the low-lying branches, making sure to give the strong growth and energy to the branches getting the most light and air.
