Burton chewed his lip. “Are you shitting me? Robert Pritchard is dead?”
“Shot and dumped in the creek.”
“And Munny, too?”
“He had his eyes shot out. So you better start talking or I’m going to decide that the tequila I’m smelling all over you constitutes a parole violation.”
He released his grip and stepped back to show Burton he was being reasonable. Burton made a big show of rubbing his shoulders and looking indignant.
“Look, Harper,” he said, “I’d heard that Munny and Pritchard got ripped off. That’s all. I don’t know nothing about them getting shot.”
He shoved Burton back against the wall, grabbing him by the throat. “Nothing, huh? What else do you know nothing about?”
Burton was back to wriggling like a snake caught by its head. He put both hands up in surrender. “Shit, man, that’s all I know. Pritchard ran oxy for McNairy. They did most of their business out of Winnie’s.
“Winnie’s? That old broken-down shit bar in town? East side?”
“That’s the one.”
He caught Burton’s roving, wild eyes and locked onto them with his own. “What else?”
“Ain’t nothing else. That’s all I know. Rest is people talking shit, you know?”
“Yeah?” He let go of Burton’s throat.
“Thank you,” Burton said with as much sarcasm as he dared. “That shit hurts, you know.”
“It’s supposed to, dumbass.”
Burton pushed his stringy hair out of his face.
He nodded. “Ahite, get the fuck out of here. And if you hear something, don’t make me come after you again.”
Burton took a step to the side, toward the front of the building. “OK, OK,” he said.
He left Burton standing next to the wall, shaking, climbed into the Crown Vic, and roared onto the highway without a glance back.
DELMER
He couldn’t decide who was dumber, the drug users or the drug dealers.
Both were pretty fucking stupid. The crankheads were stupid for paying what they did to get high. The dealers, on the other hand, didn’t seem to know shit about low profile. Easiest way to find a drug dealer in east Mississippi was to look for the redneck with the most tricked-out pickup or muscle car. You could damn near bet on it being a dealer.
He sat in his Mazda, tucked up against the side of a nail salon in what passed for downtown Caledonia, and peered through the windshield at the Dodge parked across the street. He was confident he couldn’t be seen. The Mazda was small and a good six feet outside the yellow areola of the streetlight on the curb. To his right, a massive oak darkened the gravel alleyway.
He’d been watching the brand-new Charger for twenty minutes, since it pulled up and came to a stop in the darkened empty lot next to a drive-through pharmacy that sat catty-corner from his vantage point, at a downtown intersection. Nobody had gotten out of the car, or turned on a dome light, and nobody had approached the car. That meant the deal was still on. Would be until the Dodge left. All he had to do was wait. And when the crankhead showed, he’d close the forty feet separating his car from the dealer before anyone could react, rob them both, and be on his way. He had the .44 and the zombie mask sitting on the passenger seat beside him. Too hot to pull that mask on until he absolutely had to. So he waited.
Looking back at the Munny job now, that one had been a rookie move, like the first one. Home invasions were stupid, even if most dealers got robbed that way. Only one way in and out. And you don’t know the lay of the land, so to speak. So he refined his approach. Tonight he had maneuver room. And what the military manuals he’d read as a kid called “avenues of approach.”
He caught a glint of light in his peripheral vision, off to the left. He scooted lower behind the wheel and watched a Honda creep down the street, then pull up alongside the Dodge.
Game on.
He popped the door handle and waited. The Honda went silent, lights out, and the driver emerged. White guy, jeans, baseball jersey of some kind, ball cap. The dude swiveled his head left and right, then scurried around the hood to the Charger.
He peered at the Honda’s passenger seat. Looked empty. He eased his door open, stepped out, and clicked it shut. He put his back against the wall of the store, pulled the mask over his head, and stuck the pistol in the back of his jeans. He peeked around the corner of the building for traffic, saw none in either direction, and quick-stepped across the street, avoiding the streetlight as he went.
He came up on the right rear quarter panel of the Dodge in what he hoped was the driver’s blind spot. He heard the buyer say, “Yeah, two-fifty” as he stepped between the two cars and drew his pistol.
“OK, asshole, right there,” he said.
The buyer jumped straight up and back. “What the fuck, man? Who the fuck are you?”
Delmer adjusted his aim slightly. “In the car. Hands out the window. Both of them.” He couldn’t see the driver or inside the car. He thumbcocked the revolver, more for effect than anything. It worked. The loud metallic click-click caused two hands to emerge from the window. White hands belonging to a man. So far, so good.
“You,” he said, returning his attention to the crankhead standing by the car. “Hit your knees. Hands behind your head.”
He stepped to the driver’s window, leaned over to eyeball the driver, a twenty-something guy with a nasty beard who looked as terrified as the buyer. He put the gun against the driver’s temple.
“You,” he said, “are going to hand over whatever cash you got in there. And if you even think about reaching for a piece, I’m going to trade you and your cash for one of my bullets. Understand?”
The driver nodded. “Yeah, man, I understand. You’re crazy as hell, but I understand. I got to pull my hands back in the car, though.”
“Where’s the money?”
“Glove compartment.”
“Do it.”
The driver reached over, popped the compartment open, and reached inside. Delmer reminded him of the gun against his head by nudging him with the muzzle. The driver pulled out a stack of bills, held together with rubber bands on each end, and leaned back behind the wheel. He held it up. “Here it is.”
Delmer took the money and stuffed in his back pocket. “See how easy that was? Cell phones.”
“What?” the driver said.
“Cell phones. Both of you. Right now.”
The driver sighed, picked up the phone off the seat, and handed it over. Delmer took it, hurled it over the top of the car, and heard it smack against something hard.
“That didn’t sound good,” he said.
“Asshole.”
He turned to the buyer. “One hand.”
The buyer’s head bobbed up and down. He reached into a pocket and produced his phone. Delmer flung it over his head into the darkness behind the pharmacy building. It smacked the concrete with a crunch.
“Now, you’re both going to sit right where you are for the next ten minutes and not say a word. And if you do, I’ll know, and I’ll be back, hear?”
The buyer nodded. The driver exhaled loudly. “Yeah,” he said. “I hear you. You are one dumb sumbitch.”
“Yeah?” Delmer said. “Well, I’m the one with the gun and the money.”
He backed away from the cars, the gun still trained on the buyer. When he reached the street, he turned and trotted back to his car tucked away in the darkness. He jumped in, cranked up, and backed away from the scene and around the back of the nail salon. Certain he couldn’t be seen by his victims, he pulled out onto a darkened street and headed out of town. He’d count the money once he made the highway.
COLT
He dropped the phone back into the cradle on his desk and yelled for John.
“What’s up, Colt?” John said when he poked his head through the door.
“Saddle up,” he said. “I need you to go with me.”
John nodded. “Let’s roll, then.”
They didn’t sp
eak on the short walk to the car. John never asked questions because he didn’t need to, especially in a situation like this. They’d rolled into situations plenty of times out at Camp Pendleton when they’d been temporarily assigned to the MP battalion.
“I just got off the phone with Burton,” he said as he wheeled out of the lot. “Said there was another dope deal ripoff couple of nights ago, right in the middle of downtown Caledonia.”
John shook his head. “Again? We got some kind of crime spree going on, looks like.”
“Looks like,” he said. “Burton said one of the guys got ripped off hangs out at Winnie’s, same place Pritchard ran oxy out of for those idiots up in McNairy County.”
“And you trust Burton on this?” John asked.
He cut his eyes at John. “Look, Burton’s dumber’n a hammer, but he’s smart enough to not bullshit me when he knows I’m about to run his ass on a parole violation.”
John laughed. “Fair enough. So I take it we’re headed to this Winnie’s joint?”
“Yeah.” He stopped a red light. “I’m going to need you as backup only on this. Outside. Just cover all the doors. Ain’t but two.”
Now John turned to look at him. “Outside? Why outside?”
He kept his face neutral and stared ahead through the windshield. “This place ain’t exactly what you’d call a diverse environment. It’s going to be bad enough me walking in there. Don’t need to make it worse.”
John shook his head. “Fuck that.” He sighed. “Sometimes, man…”
“I know. But this is the kind of place where you drink beer out of a bottle so you always got a weapon in your hand—know what I mean? And a man of your…height might not be very welcome there.”
John nodded. He could tell John was pissed, but pissed was better than being shot. Again. Last thing he needed was Rhonda on his ass for getting John hurt.
“Here we are.” He threw the car up in park and checked the lot. Not a single light, with cars and more than a few pickup trucks parked haphazardly over a patch of asphalt that looked like it had been bombed, repaved, and bombed again.
Winnie’s was the same on the outside as it was since he first walked into the joint as a teenager on a dare. A low metal building, unmarked and unremarkable except for a small white sign by the door that read, “Winnie’s. 21 and up.”
“Take the shotgun,” he said to John and pointed to a side door. “And watch these doors.”
John was out the door and racking a shell into the shotgun’s chamber before he could round the back of the car.
He stepped into the sweltering, dim hole of a bar and noticed the thick smoke had a whiff of weed to it. A pool table with stained felt and a stack of quarters on one rail dominated the concrete floor, and a bar built out of old wooden crates took up the entire back wall. The whole place reeked of sweat, beer, puke, and smoke. Some things never change, he thought as he eyed two pool players staring back at him. Behind them, a group of four men shifted their feet as they recognized that The Law had just stepped in to ruin their Saturday night.
He walked to the table and picked up the cue ball, tossed it from one hand to the other. One of the players, tall guy with a beard and hard eyes, sighed and leaned his stick against the wall.
“Evening, fellas,” he said. “Hate to interrupt the game and all, but business is business.”
One of the back group moved his way to the front. “We ain’t doin’ nothin’, Harper,” he said.
He put the cue ball in his pocket. “Well, Pete Harris, how the hell are you?” he said, grinning. “Haven’t seen you around in a while. How’s those anger management courses going? Court-ordered, right?”
Harris rolled his eyes. Took a pull on his beer. “Yeah, right,” he said.
“Excuse me, Pete, I’d love to discuss those classes and what you’ve learned and how it’s going to help your marriage, but we’re going to have to catch up later,” he said. “Now, I just got a couple of questions for y’all, and if y’all cooperate and act right, I’ll be out of your hair in no time. If y’all want to act up, we might be here all night after I shut this place down.”
The tall pool player crossed his arms. “This is bullshit, Sheriff. We ain’t doing nothing but shooting pool, and you ain’t got no warrant.”
He stared at the man. “Warrant? You kidding me? I don’t need a warrant to stop off on my way home for a beer and game of pool.”
“Like I said, we ain’t doing nothing.”
“You know what me and a dead owl got in common? Neither one of us give a hoot. What I do give a hoot about is the dope dealers getting ripped off in this county all of a sudden. To be a little bit more specific, the person ripping off these dealers and then killing them. Word is, Robert Pritchard ran his oxy out of here up until he got killed. And so did a dealer who got ripped off a couple of nights ago over in Caledonia. Not to mention poor ol’ Rick Munny, who got his eyes shot out over in Bishop’s Bottom.”
The bartender, a bald man in a black T-shirt with several bad tattoos, started to make his way around the bar.
He put his hand on his holster. “You just stay right there.”
The bartender, who looked about as rough as his customers, stopped and glared at him. “You can’t just come in here and accuse me of that kind of shit, Sheriff.”
He looked around the room. “Boy, y’all seem to know a lot about the law. Anyway, somebody else got ripped off the other night, by a man wearing some kind of Halloween mask, a zombie or some shit. Same guy, I’m guessing, who killed Pritchard and Munny. Made off with a few thousand dollars like it was nothing. And the dealer who got ripped off was last seen here, drinking and playing pool. Now, y’all are a bunch of pool players, drinkers, and otherwise general degenerates, and the question is, any of you know anything about this?”
Shoes shuffled on the dirty concrete and a couple of men coughed. He stared at each in turn. One, a short, young guy with blond hair and rat eyes, avoided his gaze, then yanked open the side door and bolted into the blackness outside. The others jumped at the sound of the door slamming shut behind him.
He looked at the group, shook his head. “Really, guys? Nothing? Ahite, then.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Great things these smart phones. I can get y’all’s pictures and just run them when I get back to the office.” He stared clicking mug shots as the men put on hostile faces and tried to ignore him.
The side door burst open with a rusty-hinge scream and the rat-eyed boy tumbled back in, bent over at the waist with John’s big hand on the scruff of his neck, shotgun in his other hand.
“Well, that didn’t take long, John,” he said, noticing the group was suddenly interested in everything he had to say.
“Everything OK in here?” John said. The muscles in his forearm flexed as he forced the kid upright.
He nodded and pocketed his phone. “Just fine, John. Just fine. Me and the boys here were just finishing up our photo session.”
John grinned. “I should probably introduce you to this one.”
“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
“Roger.” John snatched the kid around and shoved him out the side door.
“Fellas, y’all got lucky tonight,” he said. “But I do appreciate the photos. I’m sure there’s a couple of parole officers who are going to be interested in them. So any of y’all hear anything, know anything, you think about that, y’hear?”
He turned and walked outside, where John had the kid bent over the trunk of the Crown Vic, handcuffed and terrified, but otherwise in good shape.
John cocked his head toward the kid. “Russell Quinn. Twenty. He’s got about ten dollars in cash on him, driver’s license. And this.” He held up a tiny plastic bag.
He shook his head. “Russell, this ain’t your lucky day, is it?”
“That shit ain’t mine,” Quinn said, his cheek still against the car.”
“Right,” he said. “Eight ball just fell into your pocket.” He leaned against th
e car and looked at Quinn’s squinting eyes. “Now, look, Russell, here’s what I think. I’m going to bet you got a bunch of priors—possession, theft, B and E, that kind of thing. You on probation?”
Quinn nodded. “Yeah.”
“Yeah. But you didn’t bolt as soon as I walked into the place, which would have been the smart thing to do. I mean, the law shows up, you haul ass. That’s Rule Number One in Dopehead World. But you didn’t. You took off when I mentioned the rip-off last night. So I think you know something. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’d just as soon not go to jail, nice blond white boy like yourself. Am I right?”
He squinted and nodded. “Yes, damn it. But I didn’t have anything to do with that shit that went down last night.”
“Naw, I don’t figure you did,” he said. “But you know something. So start talking.”
Quinn sighed. “I was here late last night. I’d already scored that eight-ball, and I was here drinking and hanging out. About ten or eleven, I saw a guy come in, looking like he was looking for somebody. He ordered a beer and hung at the bar for about twenty minutes. Then it didn’t look like he found who he was looking for, so he left.”
He looked at John, who nodded at him. “You got a name?” he said to Quinn.
“I don’t know the guy at all, but his name’s Blackburn. Delmer Blackburn. I seen him in there a few times.”
He pulled Quinn upright and turned him around so that he was facing him. “A few times? Same as this time?”
Quinn nodded. “Pretty much. He shows up, does some drinking, then takes off.”
“Always alone?”
“Yeah, except one time, I thought he was talking to that dealer name of Pritchard, but he was just drinking beside him.”
“You sure of that? That it was Pritchard?”
“Hell yeah,” Quinn said. “I was trying to buy something off Pritchard that night.”
“All right, Russell,” he said. Then to John, “Take the cuffs off.”
John stepped over and grabbed Quinn by his cuffs. “What about the dope?”
Outside the Law Page 8
