by Ace Atkins
“And what you do is better?” Sam Frye said. “Keep women in cages. Making them eat and urinate on camera?”
“Hold on,” Fannie said. “Hold on one goddamn moment. Let me tell you about the big goddamn picture you’re missing. There are men out there with very specific and very focused needs. We can supply that for them. There’s this one son of a bitch who lives up in New York City somewhere that pays one of my girls to rub her nekkid body all over with Jergens lotion. No other kind of lotion will do. She has to open up a fresh bottle each time and show him the label. Something about that shea butter formula really gets that old boy off. He pays nine hundred dollars for a twenty-minute session. That, my native friend, is absolute growth potential.”
Sam Frye didn’t react. He sat across from Fannie’s desk with those cool, sleepy Indian eyes wanting to know why she wouldn’t toss in a few million for big momma’s redneck shopping and funnel cake extravaganza on the Gulf Coast. That kind of bullshit wasn’t only a big risk, it wasn’t exactly Fannie Hathcock’s style. Fannie hadn’t shopped at a goddamn outlet mall in twenty years.
Fannie fired up her cigarillo and fanned away the smoke. Looking across her great glass-top desk, she studied Sam Frye’s hard, craggy face.
“Chief could’ve called me up about this Takali bullshit,” Fannie said. “He’s been peddling that goddamn time-share show for two years now. What’s really on your mind?”
Sam Frye didn’t flinch. He was a damn mountain of a man, hard and chiseled as if cut from granite. Under the black suit, he wore a nice white shirt with a wide silk collar, his black hair pulled back and tied with a leather strap. She’d find him somewhat handsome if he wasn’t so goddamn old and didn’t have a reputation of making folks disappear.
“Buster White,” he said.
“What about Buster White?”
“I wanted time with him,” Sam Frye said. “You whacked him with that hammer before I could.”
“Oh, shit,” Fannie said, grinning, pursing that cute little red mouth of hers. “Damn, I’m sorry about that. I just had a hell of a lot of pent-up aggression for that fat tub of shit. When I got to hammering his skull, it just gave me so much pleasure I couldn’t stop.”
“He knew what happened to my son.”
“Probably,” Fannie said. “That’s why I gave him an extra few whacks. Like I told you, I loved that boy more than I could ever love a real-life son. That boy did everything for me. He ran the girls, the liquor, the shit coming out the truck stop. I was grooming him to take over some little piece of the business. God only knows what Buster and his people did to him. Damn, I’m sorry. Mingo was a good kid with a big heart and lots of brains.”
“Why him?” he said. “Why Mingo?”
Fannie sucked on the cigarillo and tapped off an ash. She shrugged and pushed back on her leather chair’s rollers. “I’ll give it to you straight,” she said. “Your boy was skimming off Buster’s take. Mingo put some serious miles on his truck between Jericho and Biloxi. Somewhere along the ride, he pocketed a little cash. A little at first, but then he got cocky.”
Sam Frye nodded. “How did Buster White find out?”
“You never short-changed that tub of shit,” Fannie said. “When Buster found out, I tried like hell to protect your boy. And I thought I had until one trip when he never rolled on back to the sweet sanctity of Vienna’s Place. I’m sorry, Sam. I truly am.”
Fannie could play poker with the damn best of them. Her face didn’t flush or color. She didn’t even damn blink.
“Do you know how it was done?”
Fannie shook her head. She ran her tongue over her teeth to clear off a stray bit of tobacco and gave an empathic, yet sad, smile.
“I want his body returned,” Sam Frye said. “This is important to me.”
“Make him one with the spirit world and fly high with the eagles?” Fannie said, nodding.
“Can you find out?” he asked. “Can you talk to the people who worked with Buster White?”
“For you, Sam Frye?” Fannie said. “Sure. Of course. Anything.”
Nat came up from the staircase, holding two bottles of Veuve Clicquot, wanting to know which year Miss Fannie wanted her to chill for the guests coming down from Oxford. She was wearing a man’s white tank top over her dark skin, her wild, tall afro bouncing as she walked on some six-inch heels. She was a roller-skating, funkytown lover’s wet dream.
“Those shitbirds don’t know Veuve Clicquot from mule piss,” Fannie said. “Pour the good stuff for the girls and cut some Barefoot Brut with grain alcohol. Those fuckers will be throwing their wallets up onstage within an hour.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As she turned to go, Sam Frye studied the black girl’s face and curvy body as if he’d seen her before. Their eyes met and she smiled before excusing herself, bouncing along and whistling out the door and down the spiral staircase. Her big booty jostling and dancing in those short shorts.
“Sorry,” Fannie said. “She’s not on the menu, Tonto.”
Sam Frye nodded but something in his face had shifted and changed. He stood up fast and headed straight for the door. Fannie propped her heels up on the edge of her desk and pointed the end of the cigarillo right at the bulge in that big Indian’s pants.
“Tell Chief Robbie sorry about Takali,” Fannie said. “He gets a Bed Bath and Beyond and maybe a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company and we’ll talk. Redneck women eat that shit up with a goddamn spoon.”
“You’ll be hearing from the Chief.”
* * *
• • •
“I’m grateful,” Caddy said.
“There are good people in this world,” Hector Herrera said. “We can’t forget that. We must never forget that.”
Caddy leaned against the tailgate of her old GMC truck, the sun just going down over the flat, cleared land near the uncompleted all-purpose building of The River. Herrera stood across from her, his gold crucifix swinging from around his neck. His head freshly shaved and his black mustache drooping down his lips like an old-time bandit. As they spoke, the sky turned a bright red and gold across the skinny pines and over the meandering dry creek bed.
“This will keep you going?”
Caddy nodded and patted the pocket of her Western shirt where she’d slipped in the folded check. Thousands of dollars had been donated to Herrera’s foundation since the raid and he’d shared some of what he’d been given with Caddy, to keep the kids safe and fed.
“This lawsuit will embarrass some rich people in Jackson,” Herrera said. “They believed they could keep us quiet. And when that didn’t work, they thought they could make threats, intimidations of more roundups. Let them do it. Our voices will only grow louder. We will unite against this injustice.”
Caddy turned her head to see twin boys playing soccer in the dirt, both parents arrested in the raids. They’d been born and raised in Tibbehah County and spoke with thick country accents. That young girl that Jason was so crazy about, Ana Gabriel, sat on a bench made of a stump and barn wood. She seemed far off and sad, staring off at the sunset over the dry creek.
“The rich don’t get punished,” Caddy said. “Not in Mississippi.”
“Why haven’t the companies been fined?” he said. “Why haven’t any of those men who profit from illegal labor been charged? Instead they punish the voiceless. They didn’t make this situation.”
“This crap has been going on forever,” Caddy said. “When black workers refused the low pay and nasty conditions, the plant started trucking in labor from Florida and then Texas. They not only knew these people were undocumented, they cultivated this whole system. The chicken business isn’t much different from cotton picking in the old days. I’m sorry, Hector, but you’ll never touch the owners of these companies. They’ve been around for decades and will cut you off at the knees if you give them trouble.”
Hec
tor smiled. “Do I look scared?” he said, a gold incisor shining. “I have been speaking to a reporter at the Free Press in Jackson. She’s searching through records to find the real owners. We thought the companies were headquartered somewhere up North, but she says it all circles back to Mississippi.”
“Of course it does.”
“But the truth means something,” Herrera said. “Those who profited from using illegal labor and exploited poor people have to be exposed. The owners are very rich and very powerful and have the ear of your governor.”
“Vardaman isn’t my governor,” Caddy said. “I wish I could say he’s an aberration, but that would be a damn lie.”
Herrera pulled out a blue bandanna from his back pocket and mopped his head and face. He looked very tired, eyes dark rimmed and bloodshot. His portly body sagged against Caddy’s tailgate. “I didn’t want to cause trouble,” he said. “But I have heard you were friends with a man named Bentley Vandeven.”
Caddy took a deep breath and swallowed. She looked across at Herrera. “What about him?”
“I don’t know if he’s connected,” he said. “But his father is. His father sat on the board of these shell companies. We’re hoping you might be able to speak with him. Perhaps relieve the pressure on these people?”
“I don’t know.”
“This man, Bentley?” Herrera said. “Vandeven. Vardaman. All these V families make my head spin. Is he a good man? Does he have a heart?”
Caddy didn’t answer. She’d broken it off with that spoiled kid last year when she’d found out how deep his connections ran with the good ole boys in Jackson. Damn, how could she have ever let her guard down and thought a boy six years her junior hadn’t wanted something from her? He’d been sent up to Tibbehah County to make the calls on the local yokels and probably play bagman for his father, a wretched old son of a bitch who normally wouldn’t let a man like Vardaman cut his lawn. But it turned out he was a hell of a greedy realist when it got down to election time.
Caddy looked over at Herrera, who was checking his phone. His face seemed to deflate, drained of color.
“Is everything OK?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I am fine.”
“Do not be overcome with evil,” Caddy said. “But overcome evil with good.”
“These men,” he said. “These people. I feel they walk with the devil.”
Caddy nodded. “Hand in hand.”
Herrera pushed off the truck and started to walk back down the dirt road to his car. He opened the door and smiled back at Caddy. “I see your son and that girl Ana Gabriel,” he said. “They are good friends. They enjoy each other’s company.”
“She’s very beautiful,” Caddy said. “He’s very taken with her.”
“Your boy is a good kid,” Hector said, winking. “He has a big heart. Like his mother. He wants to fight injustice. Help people make a life here.”
She thanked him and then watched his car make a big turn and head out toward the front gate, dust kicking up behind the tires in the last light.
* * *
• • •
Jason was alone inside the little bungalow on Stovall Street, a few blocks away from the Jericho Square. The house used to belong to Aunt Maggie and to her grandmother before the old woman died. It reminded him a lot of the house they’d lived in before that tornado when he was a little boy, leveling damn near half the town. Aunt Maggie said this old place was safe and strong, so solid it would probably just keep in one piece and roll down the street. That night, heat lightning cracking far to the north and his momma at The River working, he went ahead and packed his backpack with everything he thought he might need: laptop, clean T-shirt, toothbrush and toothpaste, and that new Buck knife Uncle Quinn gave him for Christmas. A real pretty knife that his uncle said a lot of Rangers carried with them.
He finished stuffing his backpack and slid it under his bed just in case his mother noticed it had doubled in weight. Jason sat on his bed and looked around his small room. WWE posters covered the walls. The Rock. John Cena, Sasha Banks, and his all-time favorite, the Undertaker. There was a small handmade bookshelf with too many children’s books and a few that Uncle Quinn had brought him. Huck Finn, all five Leatherstocking Tales, Northwest Passage, and Shane. He thought about taking one of them with him, maybe reading it on the way to Louisiana. But his mind was too busy, too worried about what would be waiting when he got back home.
If he left with Ana Gabriel tomorrow, skipping Thursday practice, Jason knew he’d catch hell from his coach as well as his mother and Grandma Jean. But there was no way he was going to allow Ana Gabriel to get in that van with some older kids she didn’t know. He thought about maybe talking to his momma about it but knew what she’d say, even though he was just shy of being a teenager. Sometimes it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Jason walked into the living room and then the kitchen, opening the screen door and walking out into the hot August night. Everything was still so dry that it felt like Mississippi was on another planet.
Once they got good and clear of Tibbehah County, Jason would message his momma that he was safe. He couldn’t tell her where they were headed or she’d be there to meet him and embarrass him in front of Ana Gabriel and those teenagers. Jason wanted Ana Gabriel to know she could trust him and he was there for her. He didn’t need his momma holding his hand. Besides, he’d heard stories about his own mother and Uncle Quinn running away when they were kids. Although that wasn’t the story that most folks knew. Most folks believed that Uncle Quinn had just gotten lost in the Big Woods and survived by just being a tough country boy who knew how to take care of himself. Jason knew better. There was a worse, darker story that he’d never been able to completely piece together. Maybe his momma could find some forgiveness in her heart for him when he’d come back home.
He pulled out his phone from his back pocket and texted Ana Gabriel: You reckon we’ll be home before supper?
Of course, she texted back. Then after a few minutes, I love you, Jason.
Jason pulled the Buck knife from his jeans. He would protect her. He would make sure Ana Gabriel was safe.
* * *
• • •
Nat Wilkins lied and told Miss Fannie that she thought she was coming down with something, her plumbing out of order. Nat said she needed to take off from Vienna’s early, after the bachelor party headed back to Columbus but before those medical sales folks flew in from Birmingham. Fannie didn’t even glance up from her desk, trusting and appreciating Nat, and knowing that she’d never leave her on a busy night unless she’d come down with something real bad. Nat headed back to the locker room to change out of her uniform, a damn ridiculous tank top and hot pants, and back into jeans and a simple black blouse. Out of those four-inch slingbacks and into a pair of Nikes. She swung her purse over her shoulder and waved to DJ Gemini on her way out. He gave her a salute and soon she was back in her Pathfinder, headed out of Jericho and sliding up onto the Natchez Trace.
She’d been working at Vienna’s since the start of the year, doing everything that woman asked of her except working the pole. She tended bar, stocked the frozen chicken wings, and once or twice even cleaned the toilets. She made runs for Fannie’s dry cleaning once a week and took her Lexus in for a tune-up down in Jackson. Each time she left that big metal cave that was Vienna’s she made damn sure she wasn’t being followed. You never got comfortable. You always watched your back, played the part, or else you’d end up dead. One thing she knew: nobody played with Fannie Hathcock.
She never carried her real cell, real ID, or anything that might link her back to the DEA, where she’d been a special agent for seven years now. Nat Wilkins knew what she’d signed up for long ago, lucky to be working in her own backyard, close to Memphis, and not out in Phoenix, where she’d first started her career. Nat had been married once but had no kids. No way a normal pers
on could keep up this kind of life.
Two years ago, she’d been working an operation in north Mississippi with the Tibbehah County sheriff and a friend of his named Boom Kimbrough. They’d brought down a couple of bad dudes named Wes Taggart and J. B. Hood, who’d run an illegal trucking operation out of Tupelo. That mess had only brought her further into the circle, getting closer and closer to Fannie Hathcock, the queen hellcat of north Mississippi. Both Taggart and Hood were dead and there wasn’t anyone close to Hathcock who could possibly ID Nat until tonight. But when she’d walked into Miss Fannie’s office and seen Sam Frye, personal leg breaker to Chief Robbie, she nearly had a goddamn heart attack on the spot.
She’d arrested Frye’s big ass four years ago for running cocaine down to the Rez from a Mexican club in South Memphis. She wasn’t sure he’d made her. But it was enough to give her a damn start.
Nat headed fifteen, twenty miles up on the Trace, with few lights and no buildings, that old original road that stretched from New Orleans to Nashville. A place populated by Indian mounds and the sites of old trading posts. She checked her rearview every few minutes, once pulling into a secluded little cove to see if anyone saw her. Damn if Jon Holliday didn’t love this little stretch of road for meets, but she’d told him no less than fifteen times, they better start changing up their routine. DEA, FBI, some folks from the ATF, and the Marshals Service had been covering Tibbehah County like fire ants since Quinn Colson had been shot. They called it Operation Deliverance, the joint task force headed by Holliday that he’d said in meetings would be bringing ole Dixie down real soon. Not soon enough for Nat. She’d had enough of Fannie Hathcock and the sweaty, stinky, grinding naked bodies at Vienna’s. Enough of the 18-wheeler chop shops, the warehouses filled with stolen electronics and appliances, the variety of drugs rolling in from Mexico via Houston and worse, the endless line of teenage girls being trucked in from God knows where who didn’t speak English and went to work in Fannie’s internet cribs.
