The Sinners

by Ace Atkins

  “C’mon now, Sheriff,” Wrong Way said. “How about we all just let it go?”

  Lillie reached for her phone. She looked over at the exit and Quinn headed that way, the bikers looking uneasy and nervous. He watched their hands, keeping the whole room in focus. If any of them started to shoot, he could snatch up his Beretta and clear the room quick.

  “I’m not scared of him,” Wrong Way said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. I just don’t want to go to court. Have to wear a fucking tie. Make you get up early in the morning. That shit lasts forever. Goddamn murder trial.”

  Lillie’s eyes widened, lifting her chin at Quinn. Quinn moved across the room, still keeping all the bikers in focus, watching Wrong Way, but making sure no one else moved, either. The light was dim, small hanging lamps weakly flickering over a scuffed and dirty linoleum floor of black and white squares.

  “Who’d they kill?” Lillie said.

  “Fucking Ordeen Davis,” Wrong Way said. “Don’t come into my bar, break my jukebox, and try and fuck with my mind, too. I ain’t stupid. I know why y’all are here. But I’m not a good witness. All I know is what Fannie Hathcock told me. She wanted me to squeeze those country squirrels to find out what happened to her boy. Hell, I didn’t know he was dead till after I got shot in the damn ass.”

  “Why’d they kill him?” Quinn said.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Y’all will have to ask Fannie that.”

  “We’re asking you, fucknuts,” Lillie said. “I can still make a call to Memphis PD. Make this a very unpleasant day for your scooter boys and these two fine young ladies.”

  “I don’t fucking know,” Wrong Way said. “Fuck me, man. She sent Ordeen down to the Pritchard place and he never came back. I wondered why she didn’t just call the law. But seeing you both in operation again, I’m starting to remember what it’s like to have a hard-on pressed into your ear.”

  “And when you asked about Ordeen,” Quinn said. “One of them shot you.”

  “The old and crazy one,” Wrong Way said. “Heath Pritchard. Used to be some big swinging dick back in the eighties, raising a hundred acres of weed. Or at least that’s what I heard. Sure would like y’all to nail that son of a bitch.”

  Quinn nodded to Lillie, Lillie stepping back from Wrong Way. The space was dark and quiet, a slow buzzing from the neon signs over the bar. A gentle hum of fuzz coming from the jukebox with its cracked glass. The man Lillie had tripped looked up from the bar, holding a rag to his bloody head.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Quinn said, walking out with Lillie.

  “Watch your ass, Sheriff,” Wrong Way said. “I hadn’t been able to shit straight since I ran into that sawed-off little fucker.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Ma’am,” Heath Pritchard said. “Can I offer you a little breakfast? I was just about to fry me up a steak with some runny eggs. Cody, did you clean the skillet after Buckshot licked it clean last night?”

  Fannie stood against the porch railing, watching the two brothers and the misshapen man talking. “No thank you,” she said. “I haven’t had all my shots.”

  “Wouldn’t be no trouble,” Heath said. “Fine-looking woman like yourself. Doing what you do. You better keep your strength up.”

  “And what exactly do I do?” Fannie asked.

  The Pritchard boys looking down at their beaten porch, unable to stop the shit coming from their uncle’s mouth.

  “From what I hear, you’re the damn cock of the walk at that titty bar,” he said. “You rule that fucking roost.”

  The old man had her there. She nodded, tipped the ash of her cigarillo, and leaned slightly against the railing. The tall one with the beard scratched at his bare stomach as they sat there, the other one looking up with quick, mean eyes as the uncle looked her over like she just might be some good eating herself. As she took her hand away from the railing, she gathered some flaking paint in her fingers and had to brush them onto her skirt.

  “I don’t want to buy you out,” she said. “I want to work with you boys. I want to sell what y’all grow.”

  “And why would you want to do that?” Cody asked. “Out of the goodness of your black heart?”

  “Would you shut the fuck up and let her talk,” Tyler said.

  “Yeah, shut up, Cody,” Uncle Heath said, grinning like an idiot and still looking her over. “Where’d you get that dress, pretty lady? Sure is tight in just the right spots.”

  Fannie crossed her left ankle over her right, pushing down the edge of her skirt. She figured if she didn’t cover up a bit, the old man just might start salivating. Somewhere out in the barn, a rooster started to crow and the old man giggled, a nice little private joke between them.

  “What kind of deal did y’all work out with Sledge in Memphis?” she asked.

  “We ain’t got no deal,” Tyler said.

  “Come on, now,” Fannie said. “That’s not what I’m hearing.”

  “Way we figured it,” Uncle Heath said, “we can talk to them niggers just same as you. That man’s tired of y’all selling him seeds and stems from south of the border. He got a taste of some of that Pritchard product and there was no looking back.”

  “Our weed?” Cody said, shaking his head, spitting over the railing. “Shit. What are you talking about, old man? We might got a deal if some of us could hold up our fucking end.”

  “Don’t worry about my end,” the uncle said. “Y’all just keep on growing and stacking and we won’t need nobody else. I got my people. Prison contacts. We don’t need this woman coming on our land trying to tell us how to run our business.”

  Fannie smiled, enjoying hearing the squabbling between them. The short brother was really pissed off at the uncle. He looked so damn mad, she half expected him to blow out his damn spine with the shotgun set on the porch swing. The old man muttering something to himself about how ole Doc had been a mistake but he got other people who’d come through for them all.

  “You got the weed,” Fannie said. “But the fucking pharmacy is closed. I know. I know what Sledge needs and what he expects and I know you boys only got half the fucking grocery list. Is that right? Or am I wasting my time coming down to Green Acres and talking business?”

  “Loved that show,” Heath said. “That pig was smart as a whip.”

  Tyler started to nod, seeming to be the only Pritchard with a bit of sense. She only wished he’d change into some normal clothes and maybe take a fucking shower. The smell of those boys coupled with the fucking chickens was going to send her straight back to the Golden Cherry Motel for a nice long bath.

  “Why you doin’ this?” Tyler said. “You don’t need us. We killed one of your boys. And shot another. Why would you want to share your stash with us? I know our weed is good, but it ain’t that damn good.”

  “Maybe I don’t like my arrangement,” Fannie said. “I think every person on this porch is about tired of getting cornholed when we turn our backs. I could use some new partners. And I can get right for what you promised Sledge.”

  “Woman,” Heath said. “You try and cut out those good ole boys on the Coast and they’ll come for you and for us. I don’t want no part of that shit. I know who Buster White is. And I know you’re just the person sucking his ding-dong and tickling his nuts.”

  Fannie watched the cigarillo burn in her long fingers, admiring the little manicure she’d gotten up in Southaven after her meet with Ray. She clicked her nails against the rail, looking at the dirty faces of her sorry-as-hell options. “Not if they don’t know what hit ’em,” she said.

  “That’s crazy talk,” Uncle Heath said. “You know that?”

  “We make Marquis Sledge happy for a few weeks,” she said. “Deliver what you boys bragged on what you could get. And then we open up some new lifelines out west. Fannie Hathcock and the Pritchards.”

  “Aren
’t you pissed about what happened to that Davis boy?” Cody said. “I mean, damn. He was one of your Employees of the Month.”

  “Y’all did what need to be done,” Fannie said. “I was wrong. I should have never had him on your land. A man’s land is his kingdom.”

  “That’s goddamn right,” Uncle Heath said. “See? See I told you boys. That nigger had no business stepping foot on our goddamn property. I was in my damn rights as an American.”

  “I know I’m just some dumb fucking redneck,” Tyler said. “But that sounds way too generous, ma’am.”

  “I’m gonna make you earn your keep,” Fannie said, lifting the cigarillo to her lips. “Y’all are gonna have to go and get it.”

  “How’s that?” Cody said.

  “Come again?” Uncle Heath said.

  Tyler, again being the smartest, kept his hick mouth shut and reached into his pajama bottoms to scratch his nuts while he thought on the offer.

  “Y’all race cars?” Fannie asked.

  “Damn straight,” Tyler said.

  “Any good?”

  Cody started to laugh and shook his head. “Ain’t nothing we can’t race and win,” he said. “We would’ve won the fucking Hooker Hood Classic up in West Memphis on Saturday if our engine hadn’t blowed up.”

  “And you can drive anything?” Fannie asked.

  “Hell yes,” Tyler said. “Just what are you thinking?”

  “What if I said I happen to know where and when, down to the fucking minute, the next truckload of Mexico’s finest pharmaceuticals will roll through this godforsaken county?”

  “I’d want to know what’s that mean to us,” Cody said.

  Uncle Heath got it, standing up, laughing, rubbing the back of his neck, grinning like a damn fool. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Oh, shit. I sure always did love me a redhead.”

  16

  “How bad was it?” Nat Wilkins asked.

  She sat across the sidewalk from Boom at a rest stop just over the Alabama-Mississippi line. Boom had been driving back a load of car batteries from Birmingham when she called, coming out to him rather than waiting for them to meet in Tupelo. She looked serious and professional, tight as hell in a cream silk top, flared black pants, and that natural hair all styled and bouncy. Wilkins had brought two more agents with her, two young dudes in T-shirts and jeans, who checked the trailer while they spoke. All of ’em trying to assure Boom that no one had followed and that no one was watching.

  “Bad,” Boom said. “Hood didn’t tell me much. Just gave me directions to that warehouse I told you about. The place smelled like dead shrimp, rotten as hell, half the roof falling in. They had twenty girls waiting there. Told me to stay in the cab while he and four other guys pushed them up into the trailer. Told them to take a piss now or hold it for the next five hours.”

  “Did you know the men?” Nat asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Did you find out there they were taking the women?” Nat said.

  “Nope,” Boom said. “I drove them as far as another warehouse outside Ripley. They pushed them out of the truck and Hood told me to go on and head back to Sutpen’s. They had another driver down there. I got the feeling they were headed north.”

  “Why?”

  “There was talk about getting the girls out somewhere in Kentucky,” Boom said.

  “Were the girls black, white?”

  “Asian,” Boom said. “Three or four of them were Hispanic. All of them didn’t speak a lick of English. Hood didn’t say a word about it, but they looked young as hell to me. Little bitty girls, carrying sad-ass little purses and backpacks. They didn’t look like they had any idea where they were headed or what was going on.”

  “Chinese?” she said. “Vietnamese? Mexican? Guatemalan?”

  “Miss Wilkins,” Boom said. “Only two places I ever spent much time is Mississippi and Iraq. All I can tell you is that these girls weren’t from around here. They were real young, couple of ’em maybe not even teens. And scared. Some of them crying. Saw one of those boys down in Biloxi slap the shit out of one kid. Took everything in me not to grab that motherfucker by the throat with my prosthetic and toss his ass against the wall.”

  “Glad you didn’t,” Nat said, smiling at him. Trying to make him feel a little better about what he’d seen and done. “Or else they might’ve killed you and we’d never known what was going on.”

  “Still makes me feel dirty,” Boom said. “All of this is nasty as hell. Drugs is one thing. Running young girls up from the Coast . . . Where they taking them? What will they end up doing?”

  “You really want to know?” Wilkins said.

  Boom didn’t answer. He had his own ideas, hearing things that Mingo had told him about girls who came to work at Vienna’s or were sent on down the line to Memphis. They didn’t care any more about those girls than rabbits locked up in a hutch. That’s the way they’d do it, set ’em up in some apartment building, old motel, and then start selling their time online, the way they had with Ana Maria and probably Tamika Odum, too. He wasn’t surprised folks were pimping out kids, but it got him thinking about all the men out there wanting this kind of shit. How many sick motherfuckers were out there keeping this kind of action going?

  “You OK?” Nat said.

  “Yeah,” Boom said. “I’m fine.”

  She looked up and the two young agents walked down the pathway toward the rest stop. They shook their heads, saying the truck was all clean, heading back to the black SUV they’d parked behind his rig.

  “Told you,” Boom said. “Interstate batteries. Nothing more.”

  “And what did you drive over?” Nat said.

  “Goddamn frozen pies,” Boom said. “Refrigerated truck full of sweet potato pies they say were better than your momma used to make.”

  “My momma never made sweet potato pie,” she said. “If my momma cooked sweet potatoes, we had yams with some collard greens and chicken.”

  “You know it,” Boom said. “My momma could cook like that, too. Before she got sick, she did all that stuff at the church. Worked with Ordeen Davis’s momma there, too. Lot of good, strong women at the church. My daddy is a deacon, but it was the women who ran the place.”

  “You trying to tell me how much you value and appreciate a strong black woman?”

  Boom scratched under his chin, trying not to smile but not helping himself. He liked Nat Wilkins’s company, even though sitting here in the dark with two federal agents going through his damn load was maybe gonna get his ass killed. That woman had a style, a confidence about her that sure made him smile. “Oh yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “You still go to church?” she said. “I like a man who’s got his priorities straight.”

  “I left my old church,” Boom said. “Stopped believing after I got home from Iraq. I hit the bottle and some other shit real hard. Lots of folks praying for me, trying to cast those fucking demons out. But it didn’t do no good. I also was told I couldn’t eat catfish and pork. I spent my whole life having to sneak that shit over at Quinn Colson’s house. Now I find myself a grown-ass man and I want to eat some barbecue when I want it.”

  “And you’re back with the Lord?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Boom said. “We got straight. I got services at this place called The River. Lots of folks who got themselves clean. White folks who love that old-timey white gospel and country music. But it’s black, too. Lots of Mexicans. Ain’t nothing to it but folks who want to show a little respect and gratitude for being alive. I ain’t trying to preach to you. But it’s all right. You should come with me sometime.”

  “I’d like that,” Nat Wilkins said.

  “Sorry there wasn’t any cocaine or anything in my truck.”

  Nat stood up, lifted her chin at him, and narrowed her eyes. “They giving you a little break. Maybe seeing what you’ll do. If they feel like yo
u made that run to Biloxi and didn’t do shit, they’ll loosen up. Those boys will trust you with something bigger.”

  “And then what?”

  “You do it,” she said. “And you do it again. And then when we got it all set up and right, we take those peckerwoods down.”

  “Again and again?” Boom said. “That ain’t for me. I’m tired of this mess.”

  “This is the most we’ve ever found out about Sutpen,” she said. “Do I really need to sit here and insult your fine intelligence with a pep talk?”

  “Might help.”

  “What if I promised to go to church with you one Sunday?” Nat said. “All nice and proper, when all this shit is over. Nice little gloves, a big ole hat. Maybe show some leg if your church allows that kind of thing.”

  “That sounds like entrapment, Miss Wilkins.”

  “Just a little longer,” Nat said, reaching out and touching his shoulder. “I promise.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Quinn found Heath Pritchard that night on the Square, drinking beer in public and checking out the high school girls walking under the old oaks. The trees and the gazebo by the veterans’ monument had been strung with little white lights. One of his deputies had followed Pritchard from his property out to the farm supply and then Reggie tailed him over to Varner’s Quick Mart, where he’d bought a case of Natural Light. For the last thirty minutes, Reggie said, Pritchard had just been sitting on a park bench trying to talk up teenage girls, offering them a beer or a sip of whiskey from a brown paper sack. It was hot, Quinn sweating through his stiff uniform shirt, the young girls on the Square wearing next to nothing.

  “There’s a law about drinking in public,” Quinn said.

  “Oh yeah?” Heath Pritchard said. “Yeah, I think I heard something about it. I ain’t drinking. Just carrying home some groceries.”