The Ranger (27 page)

“I was at Sam Bishop’s office,” Quinn said. “You want to tell me more about my uncle’s other property?”

“I don’t know what Johnny’s gonna file on the lien,” Blanton said, scraping up a mouthful of beans. “I’ll let you know when I hear something.”

“How ’bout you? You gonna sell your piece?”

“I’ve got a lot of land, Quinn.”

“But only one parcel next to Highway 45,” Quinn said. “Without those pieces, Stagg would be landlocked.”

“Doesn’t mean anything now,” Blanton said. “Stagg’s project is dead. Those leases would’ve only happened if they started construction.”

“Would’ve guaranteed y’all a seat at the table. Full partners with Stagg.”

“He needed our parcels. We would have been fools not to want in.”

“I can’t believe you’d throw in with that piece of shit.”

Blanton pushed away his plate and leaned back in his chair. He took a deep breath as if to calm himself and nodded before he spoke. “You think because we invested in this project that makes me and your uncle corrupt? I don’t know anyone in this county who wouldn’t have wanted in. We saw an opportunity to make some money and for this whole county to come alive. That doesn’t mean I’m in his pocket, or anyone’s pocket.”

“You should’ve said something.”

“Stagg wanted it all,” Blanton said. “The house. The farm. I was looking after your best interest.”

“You should’ve told me about my uncle and Stagg doing business.”

“I never lied to you.”

“What would you call it?”

“Stagg would’ve been in his legal right to take it all,” Blanton said. “Hamp owed Stagg a lot of money for a hell of a long time. Your uncle had his vices.”

“Stagg lied about him owing on all that equipment,” Quinn said. “Why didn’t he just tell me he funded all those trips to Tunica?”

“Sit down, Quinn, and quiet down,” Blanton said, looking over his shoulder to Varner, standing at the register. Varner was listening and closed the cash drawer with a hard snick, meeting Quinn’s eye and staring at Judge Blanton.

“Johnny didn’t want to make your uncle look bad. If folks knew he’d had a gambling problem, owed money, half his cases would be called into doubt. That’s a hell of an epitaph.”

“You and Stagg should’ve worked out a plan before I came back,” Quinn said. “You’re tryin’ to good-ole-boy me while Stagg’s trying to cornhole me. How ’bout a handshake first?”

“No one’s trying to screw you,” Blanton said. “Take the money. Your mother and that little colored boy she’s raising sure could use it.”

“You can go to hell,” Quinn said.

“Excuse me, boy?”

“You’re fired,” Quinn said. “I think my family can find some better representation.”

28

Johnny Stagg didn’t like those telephone calls when
people asked you why the shit was flying when you were damn well trying to dodge it yourself. But the Memphis folks had called three times now, and on the last call asked him to drive nearly two damn hours up to the city and tell them about just what was going on with Gowrie. Johnny tried to pleasantly remind them that Gowrie was his own damn man, and if they had some kind of trouble with Gowrie, they needed to ask him. But that just wouldn’t do, and so Johnny had to skip a fish fry with the Rotarians and an early Bible study led by Brother Davis to meet Bobby Campo up at CK’s Coffee Shop off Union at eight a.m.

“We get the state people in and we’re fucked, Johnny,” Campo said, drinking a cup of coffee in a back booth and working on a Denver omelet. “You see that? Right?”

Campo was a Memphis boy but had gone to Ole Miss with several folks that Johnny knew down in Jackson. That’s how they’d become buddies. When Johnny wanted to get into the skin trade a few years back, Campo was the man who showed him the ropes and got a decent cut of the old Booby Trap, sending dancers down from Memphis and up from New Orleans. And when Stagg needed some support for a development no one had faith in, Campo produced miracles.

Bobby Campo was old Memphis, came from money, had it his whole life, and had made a lot more of it in the eighties with swingers clubs and later in the nineties with 900 numbers. Campo always dressed like a rich boy, pleated slacks and wild-colored dress shirts without ties. Today, he wore black suede loafers with gold buckles.

He’d been in and out of federal prison since Stagg had known him, most recently after pleading guilty to having live sex acts onstage at one of his clubs. He called it the price of doing business. But you’d still see him in the company of politicians and CEOs on fall Saturdays down in the Grove at Ole Miss, eating fried chicken off a china plate and drinking bourbon from a silver flask. Campo sent a lot of money to Jackson. He made a lot of important friends. If the development took off, Stagg already had a certificate for a regional hospital. Those things only happen with handshakes and winks with sharp men. Campo had handed him that gold key.

“So, what the hell?” Campo asked.

“Gowrie got robbed,” Johnny said. “Five of them labs got busted up.”

“New sheriff?”

Stagg shook his head. “Got into some kind of pissing contest with a local boy.”

“Can you stop it?”

“Nope,” Johnny Stagg said, pointing to a waitress and asking her for some ice water. “I seen Gowrie this morning, and that local boy done stuck an arrow through him.”

“An arrow?” Campo asked. “You shitting me?”

“I think we all need to step back and reevaluate this partnership.”

“You got a dead sheriff, and a dead whore found by a couple kids,” Campo said, fingering his ear. “Now you got people playing cowboy and Indian up all around your county and you aren’t at all worried about another couple murders? How long until you got troopers and DEA types crawling all over you?”

“I’m walking away.”

“You made a deal with us,” Campo said, shaking his head. “You don’t just up and quit.”

“Since when does Gowrie work for me? I never made a nickel off that circus freak.”

“He didn’t show up at Dixie Belles last night,” Campo said. “You know how much money that is?”

“That’s between y’all,” Stagg said, leaning in to whisper.

“Figured maybe you two wanted to cut us out.”

“That’s a damn lie,” Stagg said.

“You gonna eat?”

“I don’t know.”

“Coffee?”

“Why’d you make me drive all this way? I got a family. Obligations.”

“Last time Gowrie got out of line, you had the sheriff make some threats.”

“The sheriff ain’t around no more.”

Traffic on Union skipped along outside the little diner, its big windows crammed with folks with heavy coats and whiskey breath. A homeless man sat in a chair by the bathroom and asked people who passed for a quarter. He shifted some change in his hands and punched up an old Al Green song on the jukebox.

“Where’d you find Gowrie anyway?” Johnny asked.

“Some boys in prison connected me to some folks.”

“You always do business with the AB?”

“Gowrie came recommended. He’s got friends.”

“I don’t care for them folks,” Stagg said. “They’ve been wiping their asses with our county, treating it like a toilet.”

Campo shrugged, and played with a gold ring with diamonds arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. “Johnny, I know you got ambition, and that means you sometimes have to work with people you don’t like.”

“Gowrie’s the problem,” Johnny Stagg said. “You said it yourself.”

“He’s your problem,” Campo said. “You shut him down and find the money he owes me.”

“Why am I left holding a bag of flaming shit?” Stagg said, still whispering as he stood up from the booth. “What you done for me was in exchange for protection in my county, letting things get done that you needed. I never wanted a piece of all this mess.”

“Are you gonna eat or what?”

Johnny Stagg took a breath, feeling like he’d been sucker punched, all the wind gone from his lungs. “Naw,” he said. “I guess I’m not hungry.”

“Get Gowrie,” Campo said. “Find my goddamn money.”

Johnny Stagg sat in his Cadillac for a long time, thinking about all that cash he’d seen in Brother Davis’s church, wondering just what Gowrie had planned for it, and why in the hell he’d ever joined up with Bobby Campo and this goddamn invisible confederacy of crooks.

“You always clean
your guns before supper?” Lillie asked.

“Sure.”

“Old habits.”

“Yep.”

“Your momma was looking for you.”

“She didn’t call.”

“Yes, she did,” Lillie said, handing him his cell. “This was in your truck.”

Quinn had set up his iPod and minispeaker on the old kitchen table, Loretta Lynn singing “Van Lear Rose.” He’d carried that iPod from Fallujah to Kabul, and parts in between, providing company over the drone of that C—130, beaten and scarred but still holding a nice little jukebox. A little piece of home in foreign lands while he cleaned guns and waited. There was always the damn waiting.

“Any sign of Hondo?” Lillie asked.

Quinn shook his head. “Mr. Varner came out with a bulldozer and buried the cows. Said he hadn’t seen him, either. If a dog’s been shot, it’d crawl as far as it could get and die.”

“He’s okay.”

“He guarded the house.”

“I think that dog has taken a shine to you,” Lillie said.

“If he comes back, you want him?”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I can’t exactly bring him back to base with me.”

Quinn sprayed some oil onto a rag and worked over the stock of the .308, and opened the breech with a hard snick. He reloaded and snapped shut the lever.

“They’ll make another run at you,” Lillie said. “You can bet on that. Wesley called in some troopers for help.”

“I don’t hear sirens.”

“Your uncle made a lot of enemies in Jackson,” she said. “Wasn’t any secret they weren’t welcome here.”

“Just why is that?”

“He was stubborn,” Lillie said. “You ever remember troopers hangin’ out in Tibbehah besides on 45?”

“Something happened this morning,” Quinn said, laying down the gun and reaching for the .45, popping out the slide. “I had a little chat with Gowrie.”

“I know,” Lillie said. “Wesley about shit a brick.”

“I bet.”

“How’d that chat go?”

“Gowrie was pretty open to the idea,” Quinn said. “Of course he denied killing my uncle.”

“What’d you expect?”

Quinn shook his head, the iPod shuffled onto Johnny Cash, playing “Daddy Sang Bass,” low, while he fed bullets into the magazine of his .45 and tucked it into his Western belt. “He did admit to working with Stagg, but he said Hamp did, too.”

“That’s a nasty lie, coming from a shitbag like that.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Quinn said. “But I’m not leaving till this is sorted out.”

“You gonna go AWOL.”

“If I have to.”

“Is this worth screwing up your whole career?”

“Yep.”

Lillie walked in close and slow and grabbed his arm, making him look at her. “I’m not leaving tonight,” she said. “Wesley said that was fine by him. Boom’s outside, standing watch by those trees. He said he’d stay out there all night if you’d bring him some whiskey.”

Quinn didn’t say anything, George Jones now sliding onto his digital mix, George telling them to step on up and take the Grand Tour of his empty house. He blinked, and Lillie moved in close and hugged him tight, rubbing his back. Quinn finding it awkward to hold her with the .45 and setting it on the table.

“Judge Blanton and my uncle were in that development project with Stagg,” Quinn said, letting out a long breath. “Stagg wanted to run me out so he’d control a parcel of land he needed to connect it to the highway. Blanton lied to me about it. He’s no different from all of ’em.”

Quinn could feel Lillie breathing next to him as he wrapped his arm around her small waist. “You know you got friends, right?”

“Sure wish I knew where that old dog went.”

They brought
the boy back, bloody and busted up, and tossed him into the headlights of Gowrie’s Camaro at the base of the ravine. Daddy Gowrie and two of the boys had fetched Shackelford up somewhere in Tennessee and drove him back to camp, knowing that Gowrie had figured him for the snitch. Lena had heard that it didn’t take but a few phone calls to place him with Quinn Colson and some deputy up in Eupora. She’d even heard it might’ve been his own brother that sold him out for fifty dollars. A fifty-dollar bill looked as big as a bedspread right now to Lena, but she didn’t think she could sell out any of her kin for a paycheck.

She was feeding her baby girl when she heard the ruckus and didn’t have any choice but to stay in the trailer, with the heat and light, away from the screaming and yelling and all those fists and feet coming down on that poor boy’s body. She had a piece of curtain cocked off the window, nothing but an old towel, but she could watch without fear of Gowrie seeing her, making her witness to that evil he was doing. But maybe he didn’t care. He didn’t seem to have any room for remorse in that shit-stained soul.

Ditto and Charley Booth completed the ring, but she could tell it was only Charley that found some enjoyment in the beating, all them acting like a bunch of wild dogs on a runt. Charley getting his kicks in and then stepping back like he was afraid he might get bit. But this was all in the game, the way that she’d learned Gowrie would bring a wayward boy back into the group. You beat him and humiliated him and then they’d be drinking beer and listening to their heavy metal by midnight.