The Lost Ones

by Ace Atkins

  Luz nodded, passed the smoke back to Donnie.

  “OK,” she said. “When can we leave?”

  Donnie looked at the old Airstream and ratty trailer where Tiny was sleeping one off. He shrugged. “Just waiting on the phone call.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “Baby, I’m hell bound and down.”

  DINAH DROVE QUINN OUT to the Indian mounds on the Natchez Trace and parked right by the historic marker telling them about the race of hunter-gatherers and basket weavers who’d lived there. Dinah got out of the car and stretched, walking out to an empty welcome center with a few tables and chairs under a tin roof. There were four mounds out in a wide field, subtle bumps that hadn’t made a lot of sense to the white settlers until they cut into them to plant crops. Inside, they found bones and arrows and hatchets and broken pottery. Some at least had the sense to understand these were holy places and leave them the hell alone, not like most of Tibbehah that had been stripped to the bone time and again by soulless men who grew fat from timber and on the backs of unskilled workers.

  “Until this is over, let’s calm this down a bit,” Dinah said.

  “You already told me that.”

  “In case you were trying to get me to stay with you tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  “I know you,” Dinah said. “You would ask me over for coffee or a drink or to say hello to your dog.”

  “Hondo has taken a shine to you.”

  “But it won’t work.”

  “Till this is over.”

  “I just hope we can end this thing as friends.”

  Quinn had his hands deep in the pockets of his rancher coat, sheriff’s office ball cap low over his eyes. He studied her face and smiled, thinking she was being coy and funny but not seeing any of that, only a stern face looking down the Trace for whoever in the hell was going to tell them about Donnie Varner’s gun deal.

  “I thought this was a temporary cooling off,” Quinn said. “What are you saying now?”

  “You got to understand I don’t make the decisions here,” Dinah said. “I came here to look for Ramón Torres, work with the locals on what comes next.”

  “Sure.”

  “But I don’t have anything to do with a lot of this.”

  “OK.”

  “But you’ll blame me,” Dinah said. “Hate me. I don’t have any doubt about that. I know a lot about you, Quinn Colson. You are a man to hold a grudge.”

  Quinn reached out for her hand and pulled her in close. He brushed back strands of hair from her cheek and leaned in to kiss her on the forehead, make sure that she knew that he wasn’t ready for any of this to end.

  “Don’t get crazy,” was all Quinn said, before seeing a maroon Cadillac slow on the Trace and flick on its blinker, taking a lot of time to round into the lot and slow to a stop.

  He let go of Dinah’s hand. Dinah walked back a few paces and dropped her head.

  Johnny Stagg crawled out from the driver’s seat and waved to the federal agent like an old friend.

  43

  DONNIE GOT THE CALL AT ONE A.M., LUZ ASLEEP IN HIS ARMS, TELEVISION playing some infomercial about the history of classic country music, pictures of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline flashing across the screen. A grizzled old Mickey Gilley, wearing an open shirt and showing off a hunk of gold jewelry on his hairy chest, telling everyone they’d be a fool not to buy this collection of the best music that was ever made. Donnie pushed himself upright, not recognizing the caller’s number, and just said, “Start talking.”

  The whole conversation was one-sided and took about three seconds.

  “Go time,” Donnie said, shaking Luz awake. She was wearing one of Donnie’s old Tibbehah High baseball T-shirts, the one with the Wildcat head, and a pair of cotton panties speckled with blue flowers.

  They were dressed and back in Donnie’s truck in fifteen minutes, down to the Rebel Truck Stop in thirty. They sat there in the cold, heater cranked, waiting until they’d get a second call about a truck rolling in and where to leave the money.

  “Riding around with all this cash makes me feel like I got a target on my forehead.”

  “Don’t you trust these people?” Luz asked. “The man who you met in Memphis?”

  “I trust him about as far as I can sling a piano.”

  “But you trust me?” Luz asked.

  “You know it.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess you got to trust somebody.”

  She nodded. That was good enough for her, the time coming up on one-thirty. The radio station out of Tupelo had called for a freeze that morning, the first of the season. All the truckers heading into the Rebel wore thick jackets and ball caps, coming out with hot coffee and biscuits. A sign outside the diner advertised a steak dinner special with pumpkin pie.

  “You trust the boys with you?”

  “Didn’t they save your life?” Luz said. “You should trust them, too.”

  “I guess so.”

  “They can catch up with us in Texas before we cross.”

  “I’m not driving their rig south,” Donnie said. “I’m not that goddamn stupid. You hear about that trucker in Houston that got ambushed by those cartel boys? You don’t know who the hell is watching us.”

  Luz had pulled on jeans and boots, keeping on the Tibbehah High tee under her jeans jacket. Her hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail, big brown eyes watching the thick lot of parked trucks glowing red and green in the night. Donnie’s .38 dug into his back as he turned in his seat.

  His phone rang just about the time a purple Peterbilt, hauling a trailer for Little Debbie snack cakes, turned off the highway and drove up under the portico. A big man in a leather jacket and baseball cap hopped outside, hooked up the pump, spit, and walked into the truck stop.

  “If I don’t come out,” Donnie said, “you go ahead and buy that collection of country music that Mickey Gilley was talking about. Play it at my funeral.”

  “What song?” Luz said, sliding behind the wheel of Donnie’s pickup as Donnie climbed out.

  “How about ‘King of the Road’?” Donnie said.

  “And if you do come back?” Luz said, smiling.

  “Follow me back to the range,” he said. “We’ll switch the guns out there. Tiny can bring this one back tomorrow. We reload tonight, get out of here before dawn.”

  “Let’s just go,” Luz said. “Let’s leave.”

  “If Stagg wanted out of this deal,” Donnie said, “how come I got a handoff at his place? Nobody gets out of Jericho without paying tribute to that son of a bitch. This here deal isn’t free. I want my own ride, free and clear, and headed out clean. OK?”

  Luz nodded and handed him the thick Army duffel bag. He threw it over his shoulder, like a trucker out to change into some fresh clothes and get ready for the next leg.

  He slammed the door behind him, breath clouding in front of his face, and marched right for the front doors of the Rebel Truck Stop.

  “THERE HE GOES,” Dinah said, sitting in the driver’s seat, Quinn next to her. “Your pal is pretty stubborn. He gets into something and he sees it through.”

  “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

  Quinn had gone into the Rebel and gotten some coffee for them an hour back, the coffee cold and bitter and terrible. But he sipped it anyway. The worst cup of coffee he’d ever had in Afghanistan or the Cole Range at Fort Benning was still better than nothing at all.

  “You recognize the rig’s driver?” Dinah asked.

  “Nope,” Quinn said. “You?”

  “Hard to get a good look with that hat,” Dinah said. “One of Campo’s flunkies. He’ll have someone picking him up or have a car stashed. We’ll follow him home.”

  “And we follow Donnie?” Quinn said.

  “You mind being in the car with me that long?”

  “Nope.”

  “You haven’t said a lot since we met with Stagg.”

  “You met with Stagg,” Quinn
said. “I just listened.”

  “He did tip us,” Dinah said. “And it wasn’t me who got him involved. I knew you’d blame me. The more you stick around law enforcement, you’ll do plenty of business with folks a lot worse than Stagg.”

  “I just don’t like to be ambushed,” Quinn said.

  “I know you blame him for what happened to your uncle, and I know his reputation in this county,” Dinah said. “To be honest, I didn’t quite know how to tell you. And if I told you, I knew you wouldn’t come with me to meet him. I wanted you there with me, let him know that you were in on this thing, too.”

  “In case he tried to screw the Feds.”

  “In case he thought he could work around you.”

  Quinn shrugged. He drank some of the Rebel’s cold coffee.

  “You got someone inside,” Quinn said, “watching this exchange with Donnie?”

  She nodded in the shadow of the parked car.

  “I keep on waiting to see how Stagg is going to flip on us,” Quinn said. “I don’t know where or when, but it will happen. I just hope Donnie will make it out alive.”

  “We got six agents on this,” Dinah said. “We’re in control.”

  Quinn shook his head. “How do you figure that?”

  THE BIG MAN HAD HUNG his leather coat over the wall of the shitter. Donnie saw his boots under the door along the row of stalls, a skinny old country man washing his hands with pink soap next to him. Donnie washed his hands, too, just for something to do, money at his feet, the old skinny man saying something about how it was colder outside than a Minnesota well digger’s ass. Donnie didn’t answer him, waiting for the old man to go ahead and get so he could get the hell out of here.

  With one hand in his jacket, feeling the butt of the .38, he laid the duffel to the tile floor and kicked it under the stall. He heard the big faceless man spit, flush the commode, and unzip the bag. Thirty seconds later, a set of keys slid out on the floor, the man coughing, Donnie thinking that maybe he really was in there making a deposit with six hundred grand between his legs.

  He didn’t waste any time finding out, snatching up the keys and heading back into a long hallway of showers and phone banks, and a television room where two old truckers sat watching Lord of the Rings with open mouths and half-closed eyes.

  One of those old boys had a cigarette hanging loose in his wrinkled fingers. Donnie came around the corner and took off through a side door, a long distance between him and that Peterbilt. The pavement seemed to grow and expand like it did in movies when people felt shaky, a whole long walk, lots of trucks all around him, a few hard fellas pumping gas. Donnie watched their hands and looked to open windows, wondering who in the hell might be in the back of that cab. He sure didn’t want to knock that big engine into gear and head out onto the highway just as he felt a long thin wire cut into his neck.

  Motherfucker. He sure needed to rethink his career.

  “DID YOU KNOW tomorrow night is Halloween?” Dinah asked.

  “Hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “You don’t like Halloween.”

  “No, I like it,” Quinn said. “When Caddy and I were kids, my mom outlawed it for a while. She started going to some crazy church, not the one where we go now, with a pastor that said it was the night of the devil. My mom has mellowed out a lot since then. That preacher was involved in some kind of pyramid scheme that bankrupted the church.”

  “Will you take your nephew out?”

  “Probably,” Quinn said. “Caddy called me and asked if she could borrow my Army helmet. I guess I know what he’s going to be.”

  “Where’s his father?” Dinah asked.

  “Never asked.”

  “You met him?”

  “I don’t know if Caddy knows who he is.”

  “That bad?” Dinah asked.

  “Worse.”

  “Has Jason asked about his father yet?”

  “We try and avoid that subject,” Quinn said. “I think my mother told him that his daddy was out west with my daddy.”

  “That’s where your father went when he left?”

  “Last I heard.”

  “We don’t need to talk about it.”

  “Better than talking about Stagg,” Quinn said. “Jesus. I still can’t believe a federal agent trusts someone like that bastard.”

  Dinah cranked the car, spotting Donnie walking cocky and cool out of the front of the Rebel, flipping keys in his hand. They watched as he opened the passenger door of the rig and leaned inside, both legs still on the steps. He closed the door, hung up the pump, and then walked around the cab, got behind the wheel, and snapped on the headlights.

  “Sorry, bud,” Quinn said.

  “See?” Dinah said. “We got this.”

  DONNIE CALLED TINY AND SHANE and told them to go ahead and drive that cargo van onto his land. He said he was headed that way and they could start transferring the cargo in twenty minutes. Tiny said OK, but he still didn’t know what the hell was going on.

  “Don’t ask me no questions, and I won’t tell you no lies,” Donnie said, clicking off and rolling up and down the hills into the Jericho city limits. He didn’t have much he wanted to take with him. He already had packed a bag of T-shirts and jeans and shit. He snagged a dozen or so CDs for the trip, some Jason Isbell, Heartless Bastards, Chris Knight, and Lucero. The old Victorian and wide-porched single-story houses passed by his windows, some of them lit up in black and orange, witches and skeletons hung on the doors, cobwebs strung across windows. Somehow Halloween seemed to suit Jericho, Donnie thought, time running up toward three a.m.

  Donnie slowed to a stop near the Sonic and Dollar Store. He thought about his daddy, knowing he’d be about to open up the Quick Mart, putting biscuits in the oven with Miss Peaches. He could call him, tell him to hang tough, and send him a postcard soon.

  Or, he could let Shane and Tiny earn some money while he did the right thing. He figured it would be right to look the old man in the eye and say good-bye.

  “I DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING,” Dinah said, watching Donnie hang a right into the gun range road by the sign reading we reserve the right for you to kiss our ass. She slowed and U-turned on the county road, the car pointed back to Jericho. She made some calls to the other agents strewn around the county.

  “Headed back to the roost,” Quinn said. “Guess the deal’s not ready yet. Donnie usually does business on his own time.”

  “That’s not what Stagg said.”

  “You’re a sharp woman,” Quinn said. “I know you know a hell of a lot more than me about the way gun deals work. But you need to trust me as the expert on Johnny Stagg. Did you all pay him as an informant?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you contact him or did he call you?”

  “I’m not supposed to say.”

  Dinah turned off her lights, pickup trucks and the occasional car blowing by the empty county road. They sat there in the dark, waiting for Donnie to head back out, neither one of them saying anything for a long while, a cold wind buffeting the car.

  “The Varners’ land backs up to the Byrd property,” Quinn said. “Take me to my truck, and we can ride the fire road on in. Should give a pretty good vantage point to keep tabs on Donnie.”

  Dinah didn’t say anything.

  “There’s a family cemetery up on a ridge,” Quinn said. “When they start moving those guns, we can radio down to the road and stop them. Or we can work on getting a warrant, go ahead and stop them before they leave.”

  Dinah didn’t speak, her pale face shadowed. She was listening to Quinn, staring at the long county road winding up into the hills, head resting on her right hand.

  “I can spare a few deputies,” Quinn said. “But Donnie won’t give you trouble. He’ll know he’s beat. That makes things easier on us all.”

  “Quinn?”

  He nodded. Dinah’s voice sounded thin and a bit shaky.

  “What if I asked you just to walk away from this?”

  “F
rom us?”

  “From Donnie and the guns.”

  Quinn smiled a bit. He rested a hand on her knee.

  “Let ’em go,” she said. “Those guns have to walk from Mississippi. We bust Donnie and we screw up the bigger picture.”

  “What if he gets away?”

  “I’m asking you to step back,” Dinah said. “OK? It has to be this way.”

  “Are you prepared to live with a hundred assault rifles turned loose?”

  “I am.”

  “For the greater good?”

  “We never had any intention of stopping things here,” Dinah said, turning to look at Quinn. “I’ve made some promises to make sure that happens.”

  “Helps to have a hick sheriff in the sack, doesn’t it?”

  Dinah kept staring straight ahead, silent, before she turned the key and headed back into Jericho. Quinn stepped out into the jail parking lot near three a.m. without either of them speaking a word. Dinah wheeled out of the lot, twin taillights disappearing along Main and toward the Town Square.

  Quinn waited a minute, settling his thoughts before he pulled out his cell and called Lillie at home.

  “You up?” Quinn said. “We need to talk. And please don’t say a word about being right.”

  44

  THE BACK LIGHT WAS ON IN VARNER’S QUICK MART, AND LUTHER’S BEATEN GMC was parked around by the tanks, busted milk crates, and Dumpsters. Donnie walked around back and knocked a couple times, Miss Peaches letting him into the kitchen, her hands covered in flour, a big pile of biscuit dough waiting for her on a stainless steel table. Donnie winked at her, the old woman paying him no mind as he headed through a long hall filled with racks of white bread and overstocked candy bars, finding Luther stocking cigarettes behind the register in the thin light shining from the bank of refrigerators. He had fired one off already, the whole place smelling of thick smoke and grease.

  “Daddy, you got a second?”

  Luther turned around, face craggy and wind-chapped, and said, “Sure. Let me put on a pot.”