The Shameless

by Ace Atkins

  “This isn’t about Fannie,” Buster said. “You made some kind of deal with Skinner. For what?”

  “She’ll be shut down before the election,” Vardaman said. “I’ll hold a press conference with the highway patrol. I can’t imagine what all she’s running out of that claptrap.”

  “Jimmy,” Buster said. “You won’t wipe your goddamn ass without me telling you the direction. Got me? Now tell me. What is Skinner doing for you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are one tricky-dicky fuck,” Buster said. “Surrounding yourself with these Bible-thumping hicks. Those goddamn Watchmen militia fuckwads. You got their vote. But don’t you forget who backed you when those white-haired cocksuckers in Jackson wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

  “I better get going.”

  “Sure thing,” Buster White said, grinning behind his Wayfarers. “Is that all you came for?”

  One of the waitresses started to stir, reaching up behind to expertly tie her bikini top purely by touch. A fucking magic trick. Buster White was amazed how she pulled it off. Vardaman was sweating like a pig now, makeup melting down his face.

  “Johnny Mathis?” Buster said, beaming, slapping the waitress’s butt with his hand. The woman scowled at him and turned her head the other way.

  “No thank you,” Vardaman said, wiping away the sweat with the back of his hand. “Some other time. I can’t give up now. We’re so damn close.”

  “I know what you want,” Buster White said. “I’ve known it for a long time. But I’m not going to kill the goddamn sheriff of some jerkwater town. That would bring so much fucking heat on me I just might melt. Thank you very much.”

  “But Fannie—”

  Buster White stood, stretching his bad back, patting his big stomach and looking to the big, cool swimming pool. “OK, Senator,” he said. “Whatever makes you happy. I’ll talk to her about new arrangements.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Two days after getting the forensics on the girl, Quinn met Caddy and Tashi Coleman over at the Fillin’ Station diner. It was late for the breakfast crowd. Most of the six a.m. boys were off on their tractors, at their job sites, or on their runs up over to Tupelo or Memphis. Quinn nodded to his sister and Tashi as he walked in the door, taking off his sheriff’s ball cap and setting it on a hook by the door. Mary winked at him from behind the cash register, bringing him a hot cup of coffee before he even reached the booth.

  “Not every day I get a message saying Get your ass over here,” Quinn said.

  “Needed an attention grabber,” Caddy said. “Don’t you ever call people back?”

  “Been a little busy,” Quinn said. “I guess y’all have seen the news.”

  Tashi nodded, lifting her coffee to her lips, staring at him over the rim of the cup. Caddy waved over to Miss Mary that they were ready. All of them giving the woman their orders as Miss Mary refilled Tashi’s cup, not writing any of it down. Miss Mary was a pro at her job.

  “Do you have an ID yet?” Tashi asked.

  “Takes a little longer than that,” Quinn said. “State folks are looking for a match with dental records of some missing persons cases. Like you probably know, the woman was in her late teens or early twenties. And she died at least twenty years ago.”

  “And she’d been shot in the head.”

  “I can’t say how she died,” Quinn said. “But there was some serious trauma to the head.”

  “But not shot?” Tashi asked.

  Quinn looked over at his sister, annoyed as hell she’d roped him into this meeting with all he had going on. He’d just had to do a stand-up with local media about the body that morning and then answer a bunch of questions about whether this was tied to Brandon Taylor’s death and whether the department had officially reopened the investigation. Quinn just answered coyly that he wasn’t sure it had ever been officially closed.

  “You did real good on TV,” Caddy said. “Tashi and I were watching you from over at the motel. You stood up straight, looked right in the camera, and didn’t stutter once.”

  “Glad it worked out for y’all,” Quinn said. “Is this a friendly breakfast meeting or is there something on your mind?”

  “Given I’m meeting you here with Tashi and I called you direct after seeing you on the news, you might deduce we’re here regarding Brandon Taylor.”

  “Guess this is as good a time as any,” Quinn said. “I haven’t eaten breakfast yet and can chew while you ask me things I can’t answer.”

  “What did I tell you?” Caddy said, glancing over at Tashi, shrugging. “He can’t even imagine that we’re not coming to him with questions, we are coming to him with some information. But if he wants to be pigheaded about it, I guess we don’t have to share any of it.”

  “Hold up,” Quinn said, putting up the flat of his hand. “Hold up. Would you please, in God’s name, speak English and explain to me exactly when you became a part of all this? From where I’ve been sitting, you don’t have a damn thing to do with this, Caddy. This is none of your business.”

  Tashi looked uncomfortable. She bit her lip and nodded, waiting for Quinn to finish. “Your sister has been a huge help to us,” she said. “Since she’d been in school with Brandon and she knew a lot of the same people.”

  “Oh, hell, Caddy,” Quinn said. “Are you helping them with damn Ansley Cuthbert? You really don’t need to be dragged back into all that mess. I may not be moving fast enough to your liking, but both of y’all need to step back and let us do the work. We occasionally do close a few cases.”

  Quinn looked up from the table and spotted Luther Varner wandering in the front door and setting his SEMPER FI ball cap next to Quinn’s. The tall, lumbering old man taking a seat at the counter, making some small talk with Mary. He heard laughter as Mary made her way back to their booth and refilled all their coffees. “Won’t be but a minute,” she said.

  “Well?” Quinn said. “Did you find her?”

  “Yes and no,” Caddy said.

  “Hell.”

  “Caddy helped me find her last week,” Tashi said. “And I tried to interview her, but she walked out on us. She said she was scared and didn’t want to talk. I’m pretty sure she’s the one who reached out to us in the first place. She told me I should’ve never sought her out, it wasn’t supposed to work that way. She freaked out.”

  Quinn nodded and leaned back in the booth. The front door to the Fillin’ Station opened again and he spotted Chucky Crenshaw walking in with Kenny, Kenny on his day off and dressed in head-to-toe camo. They nodded toward Quinn and started talking to Miss Mary. A bell rang up by the kitchen window. Quinn hoped it was their food, so he could get something to eat and get on with his day.

  “Now you want me to press her?” Quinn said. “Bring her in as a potential witness?”

  Caddy nodded. “Only one thing,” she said. “We can’t seem to find her. Tashi tracked down the apartment where she lived and some potential phone numbers. But she hasn’t lived in the apartment for more than six months and all those numbers have been disconnected. I checked the bar and record store in Cooper-Young where she worked and they haven’t seen her since we have. She hadn’t shown up for a few days. I think she’s hiding, Quinn.”

  Miss Mary laid down the Southern Man platter for Quinn—two eggs, two strips of bacon, grits, and a biscuit. Caddy got a scrambled egg with sausage and Tashi just got white toast with butter and jelly. Some people were just strange that way.

  “I’ll contact Memphis police.”

  “You may want to do more than that,” Caddy said.

  Quinn didn’t answer. He’d learned long ago not to open his mouth when his sister wanted to explain something to him. Like it or not, she was going to complete the objective. Quinn cut into his eggs and took a bite. Three homicides in the last few weeks and she wanted him to drop everything for Tashi Coleman.

 
; “I think she’s the one,” Caddy said.

  Quinn looked up, chewing, watching the serious look on Caddy’s sunburned face. Her hair had been sun-bleached nearly white over the summer.

  “She’s the one who was sending those letters to Maggie.”

  “How do you know about the letters?”

  “Maggie told me,” Caddy said. “Ansley Cuthbert knows about all this. And she’s scared to death. If that girl y’all dug up had something to do with Brandon Taylor, she’ll know.”

  “I’m worried about Ansley,” Tashi said. “What if she’s in trouble? Or someone is after her? She made it clear to us she didn’t want any part of this.”

  Quinn picked up a piece of bacon, looking at the young woman, waiting for her to get to the point of what had really been bothering her. Tashi’s black hair pulled tight and tied in a ponytail at the back of her head. She didn’t have on any makeup and seemed even younger than when they’d first met, almost like a teenage kid.

  “Some people have been following me and Jessica,” she said. “They were watching me on the Square two days ago. Last night they were parked outside the Traveler’s Rest Motel.”

  “Why didn’t you call the sheriff’s office?”

  “We did,” she said. “A patrol car came right after they left. Didn’t you hear about it?”

  Quinn shook his head, taking a sip of coffee, exchanging a glance with Caddy. He didn’t like Caddy getting involved in sheriff’s office business. He already had to deal with Maggie’s personal ties to the story, but now Caddy, too. Some days it just wasn’t worth getting up in the morning. He drank some more coffee, thinking. “OK,” he said. “Did you see the men following you?”

  Tashi nodded. “They had hats and sunglasses. One of them had a beard. They were driving a dark red truck. I tried to tell the deputy who came out last night about the make. But I’m not really sure.”

  “OK,” Quinn said. “Were they white or black? Young or old? Did you see anything that might make IDing them any easier?”

  “The guy driving had a beard,” she said. “He was white. Younger. All I could really see was some kind of gold symbol on his hat.”

  “What color was the hat?”

  “Black,” she said. “The gold symbol looked almost like a pocket watch.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Fannie thought she might be hallucinating as she watched Skinner stroll on into Vienna’s Place, craning his neck and turning about with delight as he studied the inside of the titty bar. He seemed downright amused by the stages, the brass poles, the bar, and the crow’s nest high in the rafters by her glass office. Skinner kept on his Stetson hat, dressed today in his uniform of short-sleeved plaid shirt, pocket laden with pencils and pens, and old man khakis with farm-and-ranch boots to show he was truly a man of the people. One of his most often repeated turns of phrase at those horrendous supervisor meetings was I’m not no better than no one else. But everyone knew Skinner believed he was better than everyone. Always talking about his close and personal connection with Jesus Christ as if he had the Man from Galilee on speed dial.

  “Skinner,” Fannie said. She’d been checking on the liquor supply behind the bar and in the storeroom, and they were running low on cheap champagne and good whiskey. She’d need Midnight Man to make a run over to Tupelo sometime later tonight.

  “This is quite a place,” Skinner said. “Sometimes I forget what a marvel we have in Tibbehah County. Just what do the women do up there, up there in that crow’s nest?”

  “That’s my office,” Fannie said.

  “What about those platforms?” Skinner said. “Is that where your girls take the customers? Just like hens fluttering their wings, finding a place to roost.”

  “No,” Fannie said, dressed down today in black slacks and a pink velvet top. “It’s where I watch out for my dancers and all the desperate suckers down on the floor.”

  “Now, that’s something,” Skinner said, taking his eyes off the walkway and back down to Fannie behind the bar. “Y’all sure have it planned out. Yes, ma’am. Let me ask something, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” Fannie said. “Ask away, Supervisor.”

  “What does a young woman get for getting nekkid here,” Skinner said. “I mean, is it really worth a young lady’s dignity to expose herself like that?”

  “Depends on how many private dances she gives.”

  “And what’s entailed in a private dance?”

  “You know the answer,” Fannie said. “Or do you just like to hear the details? You want to know how those young ladies crawl up in a man’s lap and grind his pecker until he shoots the moon or just can’t take it anymore?”

  “That’s some direct talk.”

  “I’m a direct woman,” Fannie said. “Now, what in the fuck do you want?”

  “Do you always have to be so profane, Miss Hathcock?”

  Fannie didn’t answer, letting the silence speak for itself, reaching for her cigarillos, that bald-headed dickbrain always making her smoke. She lit one up with her gold Dunhill lighter.

  “I think me and you have always been civil to each other even if we didn’t see eye to eye,” Skinner said. “We had some colorful exchanges of words at the supervisors’ meetings. But that’s how it had to be. No different than that old cartoon with the sheepdog and the wolf, knowing things between them are different when they punch the clock.”

  “You’re a lot older than me,” Fannie said. “I haven’t a goddamn clue what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m going to kind of miss this in a small way,” Skinner said. “It sure has been an education.”

  “Come again?” Fannie asked, feeling a cold prick against the back of her neck. She stared at the tall, potbellied son of a bitch as he continued to take inventory of her bar, smiling at himself in the mirror from beyond her shoulder. Son of a goddamn bitch.

  “I’m going to make the motion to outlaw nekkid dancing, or whatever you call it, to the supervisors next week,” Skinner said. “Oh, don’t you worry. We’ll have to hold some meetings, maybe do a study or two, but you know how it will all shake out. The kind of business you’re offering off Highway 45 ain’t welcome here no more. Ole Johnny Stagg wanted to give those truckers a real show a long time back. But this is the dawning of a new age, back to old family values. This kind of thing wouldn’t have been considered back in my day. They would’ve taken a woman of your ilk out to the town square and burned her at the stake.”

  Fannie blew out some smoke, ashing her cigarillo and thumping it with her thumb and middle finger. She waited until the smoke dissipated before she spoke, carefully thinking, choosing her words as direct and hard as she meant them.

  “That won’t sit well with some people.”

  Skinner laughed, sucking at a tooth, a remnant from his fat-daddy lunch over at the El Dorado Mexican restaurant, where he held court most days. He patted his stomach, busting and prominent.

  “They’ll cut you into a million pieces if you go against them.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Miss Fannie. I think you need to talk to your wrangler and understand the new terms of this here lease. I’m on solid authority your time here is finished, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Have you stepped outside these darkened doors lately and looked out to what we’re building on the hill?”

  “The cross?” she said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Skinner closed his eyes as if someone had squirted lemon into his pale blue eyes. “Why must you say things like that? Like nails on a chalkboard.”

  “So sorry to injure your old virgin ears, Skinner,” Fannie said. “But I honestly don’t give a good goddamn. I don’t know if you ate a bad chimichanga this afternoon and got the shits or if the senility in your ancient brain is showing itself. Either way, I have work to do this afternoon and don’t have time for bullshit or idle threa
ts. If you’d made the effort to read the sign on the door, we don’t open until four o’clock.”

  “Sorry to trouble you,” Skinner said. “But I figured it was best to tell you in person. I’d tell your girls to get what they can in tips, they’re gonna have to get themselves right or head on up to Memphis or down to New Orleans.”

  Fannie wrapped her right hand under her breasts and clasped her left elbow, holding her cigarillo high, nails manicured to a bright red and damn-near perfect. She tilted her head to study Skinner’s repulsive old fucked-up face. He walked close enough that she could hear his raspy, excited breathing.

  “You do know there is an over-the-counter cure for halitosis?”

  “Night-night, Miss Fannie,” Skinner said, placing the hat back on his sun-spotted bald head. “Nice knowing you.”

  “They wouldn’t deal with you,” Fannie said. “They would never deal with someone so very, very small.”

  “I promised to deliver on something you never could,” Skinner said, winking. “Loyalty is one hell of a thing, Miss Hath-cock.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “How bad is it?” Boom asked.

  “It’s been worse,” Caddy said. “In fact, most of the time it’s much worse.”

  “Can you get through the week?” Boom asked.

  “We can get through the end of the month, but the holidays are looking rough,” Caddy said. “And you know that’s the toughest time. Something will come in. It always does.”

  “The power of prayer?”

  Caddy nodded, looking over at the empty skeleton of the new outreach building, the first stage of construction eating up a good bit of The River’s budget, Caddy always robbing Peter to pay Paul but now not finding a new Peter right for the job. They sat on the tailgate of Boom’s old truck, Boom just hauling over a bed of canned goods donated by the Piggly Wiggly. The local manager was always generous on the scratch-and-dent side of the business.