by Ace Atkins
“That,” Phillips said, “and also because Brandon and I were genuine friends. He could talk to me like he couldn’t speak to his father. Have you met his dad, Tim?”
“He died a few years ago.”
“That man was a piece of work,” Phillips said, as they passed a Sunglass Hut and a Bath & Body Works, the smell of the cinnamon pretzels now replaced with Sweater Weather and Pumpkin Waffles candles. “A mean SOB. I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. But he did try to kill me once. He stuck a gun not only into my mouth but down my throat. If it hadn’t been for the school resource officer and the football coach, I think that man would’ve pulled the trigger.”
“Did you file charges against him?”
“I wanted to,” he said. “But the principal and the Taylors’ pastor talked me out of it. Said Tim Taylor had been through enough already. Damn, Brandon hated that man.”
“He and Brandon didn’t get along?”
“Not at all,” Phillips said. “Brandon tried to embrace all those things his dad loved. Tim Taylor was typical Tibbehah County. Liked to hunt and fish, drink beer, and watch football. He did some kind of manual labor at the Cobb family sawmill. Typical roughneck who couldn’t understand his son had broader interests. You do know Brandon was an excellent photographer? That’s probably what he was up to in the woods. The hunting story was probably Tim’s own interpretation. Or maybe Brandon said it so they’d leave him alone.”
“How did you get pulled into all this?” Tashi said. They sat down in a little grouping of leather massage chairs offering shiatsu for a buck. Neither one of them leaned back or relaxed.
“Sheriff Beckett,” Phillips said. The skin on his face as pale and thin as parchment paper. “Tim told him Brandon and I had an unnatural relationship. He said Brandon and I spent more time together than the boy did with his own family. That was very true. But Brandon was curious, working in the darkroom as a member of the yearbook staff, talking about music and art. He loved playing the guitar. To a man like Tim that just meant you were a queer.”
“Did Beckett seriously consider you?”
“He kept me at the sheriff’s office for two days straight,” he said. “I didn’t have an attorney or ask for one. I answered all his questions. I took a lie detector test. I accounted for my whereabouts. I mean, I had nothing to hide. And I wanted to do my best to help find Brandon. I told Hamp Beckett if he wanted to look at someone who had the motive, it was Tim Taylor. Brandon used to come to school with bruises on his arms. He came one time with a black eye. That man was pure walking evil.”
“What charges did he hold you on?”
Hubie Phillips shook his head. “I don’t even know,” he said. “After two days, the sheriff let me go. I thought that was the end of it. I took part in nearly every search party they put together. But I heard the rumors, saw the looks when I’d go out to eat. I hate to break it to you, but a confirmed old bachelor like me is something of an anomaly in Jericho. People called me witty and eccentric to my face and just a crazy old queer behind my back.”
“And when they found Brandon?”
“It only got worse.”
“That’s why you left?”
Phillips started to cry and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He took a few moments to compose himself, let go of the shakiness in his voice. He cleared his voice a few times and nodded. “Not much else you can do when the sheriff drives you way out in the county to have a heart-to-heart and gives you twenty-four hours to get out of town.”
“What did you do?”
“I drove straight up to Memphis and stayed with a friend,” he said. “I sold my place in Jericho through a realtor and had my friends collect all my belongings. I left town with nothing but my car and the clothes on my back. Hamp Beckett wasn’t any different from all that crew. Tim Taylor, Johnny Stagg . . . Do you know about Stagg?”
“Oh, yes,” Tashi said. “His shadow looms large.”
“That town,” he said. “That whole county tries to act like it’s all Mayberry. Main Street USA. But there is a streak of mean that’s been there since the town was settled. Did you know they lynched a black man in 1977 and no one said a damn thing? It’s not a civilized place. And I doubt anything has changed.”
Tashi swallowed, feeling for the man, wondering what else he’d been up to. Wanting to know about his life now, where he worked, how he escaped the rumors. But there were more pressing questions and she always centered back to the focus. “Do you believe Brandon killed himself?”
“Not at all,” he said. “At first, I believed it could’ve been his father who drove him away. Or even killed Brandon himself. But when Tim came for me that day with the gun, it changed my mind. The look in his eyes as he stuck the barrel down my throat, he wasn’t playacting. He believed I’d done it.”
“Why do you think he believed that?”
“Besides me being gay?”
Tashi nodded.
“Nothing,” he said. “They just needed someone to blame for that boy never coming back and I was one hell of a target.”
* * *
* * *
Quinn had met Reggie at the sheriff’s office, heading back toward the locked gate and through the gauntlet where the jailers worked, watching video feeds and running dispatch. Two more metal gates led into the cells themselves, Wes Taggart set off by himself next to Pookie Williams, who’d already made himself at home, watching television with two guys there on public drunk charges and unable to make bail. All of them entranced by Family Feud, Steve Harvey asking, Name something that comes strapped to you. The boys snickering at the question.
“Understand you wanted to see me?” Quinn said.
“Yes, sir,” Taggart said, rising up off his bunk, looking at Quinn between the bars, rubbing the stubble on his head. “Sure do. How about you get me out of this shithole and let me sit down face-to-face like a white man.”
Quinn shook his head, exchanging a glance with Reggie. “I understand that high-dollar lawyer from Memphis still hasn’t come to see you,” he said.
Taggart’s cocky grin faded, nodding as he pondered the situation. “I could use something decent to eat,” he said. “Shit on a shingle and an old cup of coffee ain’t cutting it. You think you might wrangle up one of those Sonic burgers again?”
“Sure,” Quinn said. “Reggie, radio up Kenny and tell him to stop by Sonic.”
Reggie nodded and walked back toward the jailers and dispatch, leaving Quinn standing alone in front of Taggart, looking uglier than ever with his bald, skeletal head.
“Except for the part when you about ripped my head off, I’ll be kind of sad to leave Tibbehah County,” Taggart said, his teeth big slabs discolored by coffee and cigarettes. “I can’t imagine the folks in Oxford being so downright hospitable.”
“You got something to discuss, Wes?” Quinn said. “Or you just looking to bullshit for a free meal?”
“I don’t know,” Taggart said, kind of laughing to himself. “What you got on the menu, Sheriff? How about you spell it out for me.”
“Your people left your ass hanging in the wind,” Quinn said. “You’re looking at attempted murder and murder charges here and then racketeering, drug running, and human trafficking up with the Feds. Altogether, I don’t see you getting out for a good long while. You might just want to lose the attitude and look at your situation. You really that good of friends with Fannie Hathcock and her people down on the Coast?”
Taggart didn’t say anything, just turned his head and spit on the floor. Reggie walked back up, nodding to Quinn, Quinn punching the key in the lock and opening up the cell. Taggart seemed surprised by it, taking a few steps back. His bed was unmade and his lunch sat picked apart and nasty by the seatless toilet. Someone had brought him some free religious comic books and they lay splayed open on his bunk. The tale of Bathsheba and King David. Taggart noticed Quinn staring and sai
d, “Boy, that woman sure got David’s pecker out of joint. Damn near destroyed his kingdom after seeing her nekkid. Men will do things like that. Toss away everything for a piece of tail.”
“Are you saying you’re like David?” Quinn said, grinning.
“Maybe,” he said. “I had lots of things going for me. Nice strip club, truck stop, and a trucking company, before little Miss Twilight gave me a little private show. You know the dumbest damn part of it?”
“Not really,” Quinn said.
“I thought that little girl loved me.”
Quinn looked to Reggie and Reggie just shook his head, having little patience for Wes Taggart. Reggie wanted the man gone as quickly as they could arrange transport.
“Your people aren’t going to help,” Quinn said. “They didn’t send a lawyer. They won’t show you a bit of support. If you got something, now is the time to talk.”
“Maybe I’d rather talk to the Feds than some two-bit Andy Griffith in some hick town,” he said. “Just what in the fuck can you do for me?”
“Besides getting you a double cheeseburger with extra pickles?” Quinn said. “I might be able to talk to the prosecutors about the charges against you. I don’t think you and Hood went after Boom on your own. I think your people down on the Coast cheered you on. How about we talk a little about them? And their relationship with Jimmy Vardaman. They’ve been a pain in my ass since I came home.”
“People on the Coast?” Taggart said, sitting down on his bunk and tossing the biblical comic book to the floor, the pages fluttering like a wounded bird. “Shit. You really don’t understand who they are and what they do. They’d just as soon kill you, Sheriff, as look at you. Why the fuck do you think they sent me and J.B. up to Shithole USA anyway? It sure as shit wasn’t just to watch truckers titty-fuck some truck stop women. Oh, hell no. We got sent to take care of you, Sheriff.”
“And whose idea was that?” Quinn asked.
“When’s that burger getting here?”
“Soon.”
“You get me tater tots and shake, too?”
Quinn looked at Reggie and Reggie nodded. “The works, Wes,” Quinn said. “You know nothing’s too good for an important guest like you. You’re absolute shitbird royalty around here.”
“How about you let me ask you a question, then,” Taggart said. “How the hell did you piss off so many folks in Jackson? It ain’t the goddamn honest crooks who are after your ass, it’s the fucking Moral Majority. My friends are just hired hands for some fat cats in the capitol.”
“Vardaman,” Quinn said.
“Some old swinging dicks across this state sure would’ve liked to seen that fucker lose,” Taggart said. “But he’s got a lot of friends. They even have a name for themselves, the fucking Watchmen Society. Have you heard about those morons?”
“I just met a few down at the Neshoba County Fair.”
“As long as business is booming, as long as we’re able to run drugs and gash around the Mid-South, everything is copacetic, Sheriff. But you don’t need to start pointing your fingers at some honest crooks. You know where we stand. It’s the goddamn suit and tie crowd, thumping the Bible and looking to turn everything back into the plantation, who’re going take your ass out one day.”
“You got some names?” Quinn said.
“You already know some,” Taggart said. “One big name with his eyes on the big prize. But hell, man. It sure is hard for me to talk on an empty stomach.”
NINE
Sam Frye and Toby hit the Tibbehah County line just as the rain and thunder started to roll across north Mississippi. They’d been listening to the news out of Tupelo on the ride, Toby being Toby and wanting to ignore the weather or the news, and instead planned to play a shuffle from his iPhone he’d made with his buddies on the Rez. His straight job was a party DJ and the boy had some kind of plan to be the first big Choctaw rapper out of the South, claiming he had more than five thousand followers on YouTube who’d listened to a song he’d made called “Tribal Woman.”
“This shit is lit.”
“But will it make you rich?”
“It’ll get me laid,” Toby said. “A damn Indian who can rap. Think about it, old man.”
“Why’d you quit at the water park?”
“Too damn hot,” Toby said. “Cleaning out filters, checking pH levels, being told not to stare at the white girls in their bikinis. I mean, shit. What’s the damn point? This thing I’m about to play for you, this music I made over the last few weeks, it’s gonna put me and the whole damn tribe back on the map. We’ll be able to sell out shows all over the Mid-South.”
Sam Frye didn’t believe half the shit the kid had told him. But Toby, born Tobias Williams sixteen years earlier, was the son of Sam’s best and oldest friend, and when the boy’s father had been eaten up with cancer, Sam promised he’d look out for Toby. “Show him the old ways,” Big Monte had said. The old man meaning take the boy out to the burial mounds, introduce him to the elders who still spoke the language, and maybe teach him some dirty stickball tricks.
But Sam Frye had never been much of a stickball player. And most of the elders he knew had passed on, besides some of the women who sold baskets at the big Choctaw Carnival every year and talked about the days when the Choctaw Nation covered half of the state. The white men arriving with treaties and a little money, forcing most of the tribe west to Oklahoma. A few of the tribe hiding in the woods, staying away from the white man, while their people were forced onto the Trail of Tears, and waiting more than a hundred years before they could claim their land again, put up casinos and water slides and dance for the entertainment of tourists. Frye figured he would do what Big Monte really wanted and teach the boy an honest trade.
“OK, Sam,” Toby said. “Who’s the guy they want dead?”
“Didn’t ask,” Sam Frye said, hitting the windshield wipers. “Don’t know. Like I said. We go and await a phone call.”
“You promised there will be women,” Toby said.
“And there will be.”
“And weed.”
“You don’t need any more weed,” Sam Frye said. “You were baked out of your mind when I picked you up. You need a clear head tonight. This storm will make whatever we have to do even harder. You just follow me. Do as I say and you’ll be fine. I need you to keep your eyes open, keep awake, and keep the car running. That’s it. You can handle it. Right?”
“I have a wedding this weekend,” Toby said. “At the big casino. They want me to play all kinds of old-school music. Back from the eighties when you and Big Monte were young bucks. You and Big Monte like that stuff? N.W.A.? LL Cool J?”
“Naw,” Sam Frye said. “We liked Metallica. Your dad ever play Ride the Lightning or Kill ’Em All for you? That’s music. It was music with brains and substance.”
“That stuff sucks, man,” Toby said. “All the screeching and screaming. No heart and no soul . . . You and Big Monte. Y’all must’ve been something back in the day.”
“Why do you call your father Big Monte?” Sam Frye said. “That shows disrespect.”
“He was mean,” Toby said, running his hand over his razor-short hair. “A drug addict.”
“He once was a good man,” Sam Frye said. “He provided for you and your mother. You think he liked wearing that uniform at the Rez and pouring drinks to gamblers? Telling jokes about teepees and wigwams and all that shit? He worked so you and your mother could have a life.”
“He left my mother,” Toby said. “For a white woman with big fake tits. She treated him like he was some kind of wild animal. A pet. And when he got sick, that woman left and went all the way back to California.”
Sam Frye had nothing to say as they rolled farther into the county, passing the big billboards placed along Highway 45. DON’T MISS THE REBEL TRUCK STOP and THE HOLY BIBLE. INSPIRED/ABSOLUTE/FINAL. And one with Kermit the Frog
. EATS FLIES. DATES A PIG. HOLLYWOOD STAR. The rain coming down harder now, and he saw a flash beyond the lights gathering around the truck stop, blooms of white and red neon. The outline of a woman, her curves outlined in neon, kicking her legs up and down.
“You promised we could go to the titty bar.”
“That titty bar will come to us,” Sam Frye said. “While we wait for the call.”
“Amazing,” the kid said. “You’re kidding.”
“Make the most of your time,” Sam Frye said. “Be respectful of the girl they send. We could get the call at any moment. Finish up quick.”
“I’m sixteen, Sam,” Toby said, laughing. “I do everything fast.”
“And no real names,” Sam Frye said. “And no tall tales about the music business.”
“What tall tales?”
“Big T,” he said. “Famous Choctaw rapper.”
“You’ll have a girl, too?”
“I’m old,” Sam Frye said. “Not dead. We both get rooms. When I come for you, leave the girl and follow me out. Say nothing. I’ll tell you what you need to know on the way.”
Sam Frye pulled off on the next exit, passing the red and blue glow from Vienna’s Place and the sprawling pumps at the Rebel Truck Stop. His long black hair was chopped off straight at the shoulders and hanging loose across his ears and neck. Across the road he turned into the Golden Cherry Motel, a roadside wet dream from the 1950s. Sam Frye not surprised to see the cursive neon reading Vacancy. The swimming pool glowed in the darkness with a weird green shimmer.
“Same as Memphis?” Toby said.
“Same idea,” Sam Frye said. “Different plan.”
“I did what you said,” the kid said, almost speaking to himself.
“And?”
“I liked it,” he said. “Felt as natural as fucking.”
“I know,” Sam Frye said. “Your father would be very proud.”
* * *
* * *
