The Redeemers (11 page)

“Some assurance this here deal is going through,” Stagg said. “I told him this kind of business takes time and he told me so did the cornholin’. I really don’t have much patience for Cobb’s dumb ass. But I threw in with him after the storm because I had to. He was the only one with the equipment ready to go.”

“He say anything about that?”

“Yeah,” Stagg said. “He was acting like we owed him something. Christ, you mind crackin’ a window or something? It must be ninety degrees in here.”

The Trooper reached down again and lowered the heater, Stagg already sweating up a lot under his red sweater and hundred-dollar dress shirt. They soon hit the Lee County line, the Trooper not slowing a bit, actually speeding up, taking the Crown Vic to around one-fifteen. He was a lean, square-jawed man who’d kept a silver crew cut ever since Stagg met him down in Jackson with Senator Vardaman. The Trooper did things like that. Favors for a U.S. senator. He also guarded football coaches for Ole Miss and made sure they were protected and got to where they needed to go. Discretion, the Trooper said, was why he’d been the go-to man for the last couple decades.

“Everything’s fine,” the Trooper said. “You tell that dumb son of a bitch that they can’t announce a fucking project until the start of the new quarter. Doesn’t he know the way that government works?”

“He’s a logger,” Stagg said. “Runs the biggest mill in three counties. His head is as thick as an ole oak. He thinks this is gonna work like the storm money.”

“Wasn’t that federal?”

“Most.”

“Then you need to educate him, Mr. Stagg,” the Trooper said. “Them boys in Jackson don’t write no IOUs.”

Stagg nodded, the Crown Vic flying down the highway, running light on the rails, the motor growling, the interior still feeling like the inside of a goddamn sauna. Only a sick man would keep his car so hot, and the man was dressed in full Highway Patrol gear. He had on sunglasses, no expression, hair looking like a gray box on his head. “When’s that new sheriff taking over?” the Trooper asked.

“Supposed to be on the fifteenth,” Stagg said. “But us supervisors decided it best for all concerned that he go ahead and take over first day of the year. Quinn Colson’s already cleaning out his desk.”

The Trooper reached down in the pocket of his uniform and fingered out a little Skoal. He had a half-full Dixie cup in the cup holder that he reached down to spit into. “Hallelujah.”

“Don’t go and thank Jesus yet,” Stagg said. “We don’t know what we got.”

“Can’t be worse than that son of a bitch Colson,” the Trooper said. “How the fuck you let a man like that be sheriff?”

“I may influence it, but I don’t control the ballot box, sir.”

“Since when?”

Just then, Stagg looked up in time to see a big purple billboard with the image of Jesus Christ looking skyward. The sign read
IS HE IN YOU?
The Trooper didn’t seem to notice as he spit in the cup and set it back in the holder. The billboard had a listing for a website where the true world suckers could donate some money for some phony-ass ministry. Football coaches and preachers had the easiest shuck in the world. People were supposed to shut their mouths and listen and pass the plate for the ministry. Pass the plate, if you wanted your team to win the game. At least with football coaches you could fire their asses if you didn’t get results. As one of Ole Miss’s top fifty donors, Johnny T. Stagg sure made sure they changed out their coaches as regular as lightbulbs. He’d yet to get a National Championship ring on his hand.

“Where does it all end?” the Trooper said, sounding like he was talking to himself.

“Excuse me?”

“All this shit in Tibbehah,” the Trooper said. “You better get your leash tighter, Stagg. You nearly got fucked two ways from Sunday by them bikers out of Tennessee and now you’re letting some turd in Jericho tell you how to do business. When you’d get so soft?”

Stagg didn’t speak until he was ready. He reached into his vest pocket for a peppermint, unwrapped it, and stuck it in his mouth. He sucked on it as he thought, then crunched it up with his back teeth. “How about you head back south,” Stagg said. “Our talk is done.”

“I didn’t mean nothing, Stagg,” the Trooper said. “Shit. Don’t get your panties into a wad.”

“Since when did the messenger think he’s calling the shots?”

“I never do.”

“Me and you got the same friends,” Stagg said. “And I expect you to come through when called. But don’t go to try and give me any advice, sir, or I’ll make sure you go back to writing tickets to cocksuckers in rest stop bathrooms. You understand me?”

•   •   •

T
he problem with Mississippi State,” Chase Clanton said, pointing his fingers at the center of Mickey Walls’s chest, “was that y’all had to go and get yourselves a black quarterback. Studies have proven that you can’t have no black man running the offense. You ain’t never gonna see that type of shit with the Tide.”

“It was a good year,” Mickey said. “That boy got the job done.”

“Maybe,” Chase said, settling into Walls’s nice house, the big kitchen, the big-ass TV, and a nice stockpile of dirty DVDs he found. Some looked to be homemade. “But I don’t like it. It ain’t good for recruiting. You get a boy like goddamn AJ McCarron taking snaps and every blue chip in the country will want to go to Tuscaloosa. You see that woman he got? I seen her half nekkid on the Internet. I’m not lying. You got a computer and I’ll show ’em to you. Uncle Peewee found ’em for me. I’ll tell you what, they’ll warm you on a cold night like tonight. Hey! Hey, y’all got some more beer?”

“No,” Mr. Walls said. “Y’all drank it all.”

“No problem,” Chase said. “How about a Mountain Dew or a Pepsi?”

“Help yourself,” Mr. Walls said, trying to walk away from the kitchen while Chase still had things on his mind.

“Things can happen,” Chase said. “Like last year, the fucking Auburn game. About the worst day in my entire life. I was sitting there, watching the game at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Dothan, and I see that ball sail in the air, knowing it wasn’t gonna put them ahead but appreciating Saban for making the effort. Next thing I know, that black bastard took that ball, cheating like a son of a bitch and running it for a touchdown. Tide players didn’t even know what was going on. You want to tell me how that’s fair?”

“Because it’s legal to run back a missed field goal.”

“Yeah?” Chase said. “Well, maybe. But when the other team don’t know it, I say that’s goddamn cheating. I cried like a baby that night. Felt like someone in my family had died. I seen AJ walking off the field with that smokin’-hot piece of ass. He probably didn’t even try and get himself some pussy after all that shit. She probably just held him and made him feel better. Those goddamn stupid Auburn people. Ain’t nothing but a cow college.”

“You go to college, Chase?” Mr. Walls said, leaning against the counter, nursing on his third Jack and Coke. He was a rich man, an accomplished man, and Chase could tell because of the V-neck sweater and Dockers. Only a rich man wears khaki-colored pants and clean shoes.

“You know, I thought about it,” Chase said. “But I’m learning everything I need to, on account of my Uncle Peewee. He’s teaching me shit that I can’t learn in schools, if you know what I’m saying. Hey, you mind if I look in your refrigerator for that Pepsi?”

“Only got Coke,” Mr. Walls said. “Are y’all headed back tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Chase said. “I guess we’ll ask Peewee when he come out of the shitter. Damn, that pizza tasted good goin’ down, but it sure did tear up my stomach. You think maybe it’s gone bad or something? You can’t keep food frozen forever. We had some deer meat that got rotten last summer and gave my whole damn family the squirts.”

The toilet flushed and Uncle Peewee walked on out, hitching up his big pants and wandering into the kitchen. “Y’all got any more beer?”

“Already asked him,” Chase said. “Mr. Walls said we drank it all.”

“Then you got a store around here?” Peewee said. “I can make a run for us. We got work to do. Hard to think sober.”

“You two can’t stay here,” Mr. Walls said, getting real serious real quick. “Your big-ass van is parked right outside my house. You want to keep it here all tonight and all day tomorrow? That’s not too smart. That’s not what we talked about. This ain’t the plan at all.”

“Shit,” Peewee said. “We can park it around back. Don’t see any reason for us to drive back to Gordo tonight if we’re here right now. That way, we can make a dry run over to that fella’s house and see what’s shaking. Lay it all out. Plan. Be smart. All of us get educated on what needs to be done.”

“What’s shaking,” Mr. Walls said, acting to Chase like some snotty Yankee, “is that they’re not gone. We agreed for you to meet my friend and y’all would take care of it. I’m not gonna be a hundred miles from here. I’m the first one the law will look to. This is y’all’s deal. And you get the cut and then get the fuck out of here.”

Peewee lifted up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and poured some out into a red Solo cup. “OK,” Peewee said. “OK. I know this ain’t what’s planned, but it’s the deal we got now. I can pull my vehicle around back. Unless you got folks coming, ain’t no one can see it. And then me and you need to drive past the place. Ain’t no harm in that. But I need to know where me and my boy are headed tomorrow night. It may be a honey trap, like you said, but I ain’t getting fucked over in Mississippi. I want to get fucked, I’ll go over to Montgomery for that shit. I also need to know the make and model of the safe.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?” Uncle Peewee said. “Christ Almighty. But can you find out?”

“All I know is that it said ‘Bighorn’ on it,” Mr. Walls said, taking a deep breath like worried men do. “Had a drawing of a ram or something on it.”

“Yeah,” Peewee said. “I know it. Made by Rhino. How big?”

Mr. Walls put down his drink and leveled his hand at chest-high.

“Gun safe,” Peewee said. “Holds about twenty-five rifles and shit. Digital lock with a nine-volt battery. Thirteen cubic feet, with a three-spoke handle on it. Looks like an old-time bank safe. Right?”

“Yeah,” Mickey said. “Sounds right to me.”

“Damn thing weighs about five hundred pounds,” he said. “Door is about five inches thick, with external hinges.”

“Can you bust it?”

“I thought you had the combo?”

“
If
the combo doesn’t work,” Mr. Walls said, swallowing some more Jack and Coke. “That’s why I reached out, Mr. Sparks. I don’t think you’ve been listening.”

“Yes, sir,” Peewee said, Chase noticing his glasses had gotten a little smudged, “I have. Ain’t a safe made I can’t bust.”

“I told you,” Chase said, grinning wide. “I fucking told you! My uncle knows safes better than anyone. Now, that’s doing your goddamn thinking like a white man.”

Mr. Walls’s face turned sour, Chase wondering if he hadn’t gotten some of that bad pizza with rotten pepperonis. He turned and walked from the room and then out a side door, leaving it open and the cold air rushing inside like a son of a bitch. He looked to his Uncle Peewee and Uncle Peewee, being the smartest man he’d ever met, just shrugged and finished Mr. Walls’s drink.

10.

Q
uinn had walked outside his mother’s home, the inside getting too heated, too much talk, too many accusations, and Caddy jumping from being ashamed to pissed-off. Boom was outside, too, after saying his part to Caddy, and now leaning against Quinn’s truck, the one he’d rebuilt and refined as an answer to a brand-new monster Stagg had first offered Quinn as a bribe. Now all that seemed long ago. Quinn planned on driving it the final time tomorrow on New Year’s Eve before turning in the vehicle at the County Barn and heading on into whatever was next.

“How’s it coming?” Boom said.

“Terrible.”

“Who’s talking now?”

“Momma,” Quinn said. “Again.”

“That might take a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

Quinn reached into his old ranch coat and pulled out two cigars and offered one to Boom. Boom declined and Quinn trimmed the end of his and cracked open his old lighter. They sat outside, leaning against the Big Green Machine, not once lamenting the loss, worrying about where the old truck was going or where Quinn would go.

“I don’t like what I said,” Boom said. “I could have done better.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I tried to talk to her as one addict to another,” he said. “I tried to compare me being a drunk to her being addicted to whatever shit she’s on.”

“Heroin.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Didn’t sound right. I think she thought I was preaching to her. I’m no fucking preacher.”

“Neither of us are,” Quinn said. “Thank God.”

“But Caddy,” Boom said. “She got that in her. She was headed that way. Leading all those people, doing all those things at The River. She was good at it. Her ass fell hard.”

Quinn nodded. Ithaca Street, the road of middle-class houses off the Jericho Square, was still and cold. All the yards still decked out for Christmas, with lights on the houses, around the windows and doors, inflated reindeer and snowmen in front, light-up plastic Santa displays mixed in with ones of Baby Jesus. Sometimes it looked like Santa himself had been there at the holy birth. An old couple down the road had bright lights that winked on and off to the small sounds of electronic Christmas carols. The night was as cold as it had been so far, and Quinn’s cigar smoke drifted up and away without scattering or falling apart, twisting up over the colored lights across the road.

“How’d you do it?” Quinn said. “How’d you beat things?”

“That’s what I was trying to explain to Caddy,” Boom said. “Tell her she got to quit hating herself. I told her all of this shit comes from wanting to kill yourself. Some people do it fast and some do it real slow. I was on slow.”

“You hadn’t relapsed.”

“I got a purpose,” Boom said. “I got tired of feeling sorry for myself, on account of what happened. I had to buy into what you were saying, and my family was saying, even that woman I talk to up at the VA. You know?”