The Redeemers (33 page)

“We just talked,” Quinn said. “She complained about some alcoholic guitar player who did nothing but pluck away at ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ I brought her coffee and a carton of cigarettes.”

“That’s all y’all talked about?”

“That and all that happened when we were kids.”

“‘All that happened’ covers a lot of ground,” Anna Lee said. “I know something bad happened to Caddy. You’ve told me that much. But in all the years we’ve been together, you never really said what. You one time told me she had problems with boys because she’d been molested as a child. But you never said when or who did it.”

“It’s not something I like to talk about,” Quinn said. “Besides, it’s her story to tell.”

“Whoever did it must be dead,” Anna Lee said, giving a nervous laugh. “Because, knowing you, you’d hunt him up and kill him yourself.”

Quinn didn’t speak. He watched his father step Bandit forwards and then walk him backwards. He patted the animal’s neck and led him back over to the fence and little Jason and Shelby. Both of the kids had on jeans and boots, heavy wool coats and hats. Quinn let the lace curtains fall away in his hands and turned back to Anna Lee on the couch.

“That’s it,” Anna Lee said.

“What?”

“You killed the son of a bitch.”

Quinn sat down in an old leather chair by the fire. The chair had come from Judge Blanton’s estate sale, as well as a couple tall barrister bookshelves on the far wall filled with books Quinn loved and books he planned to read. There was Hemingway, a lot of Russians, sport and hunting books, and the good old stuff from the Greeks. A big red kilim rug lay spread out under the furniture, where Hondo had found a place to sleep. Quinn reached down and patted the dog’s head.

“I like being here with you,” Quinn said.

“How old were you?”

“How about we talk about supper. Or horses.”

“How old were you?”

Quinn met her eyes. They were dark brown and sleepy and knew him better than anyone. She had her fingers to her mouth, waiting for him to answer her.

“I was ten,” he said. “I had shot deer out of season and a game warden had come for me. Caddy followed me into the National Forest and we thought we could run away.”

“But he came for you?”

“It was raining and there was this barn,” Quinn said. “He’d tied me up but left his shotgun. He left it in a corncrib so he could get to Caddy.”

•   •   •

J
ohnny Stagg was just about to take off for the evening when Mickey Walls walked into his office and stood in the doorway, not sure if he had the right to enter. Stagg pointed to a chair in front of his desk and Walls sat down. The boy looked wrung-out and nervous as hell. Man didn’t even seem to take notice of all those framed photographs of famous Mississippians on his wall. Just the other day he’d added LeAnn Rimes to the wall after one of his dancers told Stagg she was born in Jackson.

“That linoleum you laid is holding up fine, sir,” Stagg said.

“Glad you like it,” Walls said, face sweaty, eyes bloodshot. “Armstrong Commercial. Tough as it gets. But I need your help with something, Mr. Stagg. I didn’t want to call, have this conversation to be heard by anyone. To be honest, I don’t know if the police got some wiretaps on me.”

“On account of that Cobb business.”

“I didn’t rob Larry Cobb,” Walls said. “Hell, I wasn’t even in the state.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The cops don’t believe me,” Walls said. “That big woman Lillie Virgil and that fat little turd Rusty Wise are over at my property right now, going through my personal things.”

“They got a warrant?”

“Of course they got a warrant,” Walls said. “I’m not going to let the law root through my underwear unless they got some paper.”

“Sit down.”

“I’m good.”

“I said sit down, Mickey,” Stagg said. “You want a Coca-Cola or some barbecue? Midnight Man has been barbecuing all damn day. I think he made too many ribs. We never get a rush on ribs midweek. But, good God, how that meat falls off the bone. Melts in your mouth.”

“I need you to get them off my back,” Walls said. “You need to let them know I’m not a part of this. Talk to Sheriff Wise or Larry Cobb. Or whoever. But they’re making me a damn nervous wreck. Shit, I can’t work. My business is suffering. People are whispering that I had something to do with Kenny getting shot. God damn, I wasn’t even in the state. How the hell could I rob a man from two hundred miles away?”

“They saying you’re an accomplice? The ole finger man?”

“Something like that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Come on, Mr. Stagg,” Mickey Walls said. “You know me. You knew my daddy. You politicked for him when he ran for tax collector. My momma used to wait tables out here. She plays bridge with your wife. You ain’t never used anyone else for your carpeting and flooring needs but Walls.”

“You met my needs, son,” Stagg said. “Sure do appreciate you.”

“They’re out there now,” Walls said. “In my fucking house, taking shit out in boxes. There are state police over at my office, taking over my computer and looking at my hard drive and emails. I don’t want anyone to see those. I have some special memories with Tonya on there. Bedroom photos of me and her, if you know what I’m saying.”

“I think you got more to worry about than some policeman looking at your ex-wife’s cooch,” Stagg said, leaning back into his executive chair and laying his tasseled loafers on the edge of the desk. “Just what did you go and hide?”

“Nothing,” Walls said. “God damn, it’s hot in here. Damn. Listen, I don’t have that money. But you got to hold up your end of the deal in this.”

Stagg tilted his head. He reached into a coffee cup for a fresh peppermint candy. “We ain’t got no deal, son.”

“Didn’t you send that crazy bearded bastard out to see me?” Walls said. “The one with all those wild tattoos down his arm?”

Stagg sucked on the peppermint, getting rid of the sour taste in his mouth. He lifted his chin, listening and waiting for the Walls boy to explain how the hell he thought they had a connection.

“That man threatened to cut off my fingers,” Walls said. “When I wouldn’t admit I’d stole from Cobb, he told me he’d put my goddamn pecker under a table saw and mail home my parts to Tonya. He wasn’t joking about it. The man has crazy eyes.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“So you admit you sent him?”

Stagg didn’t answer. He wondered when Ringold would be back from town, maybe needing him to escort old Mickey Walls out of the Rebel. Walls leaned in, looking over his shoulder at the empty doorway and then back at Stagg. “You got what you wanted,” Walls said. “Just give me some space to breathe.”

Stagg felt a little poke at his heart, face filling with blood. “Slow down, slow down. Speak English. Just what did you hand over to Mr. Ringold?”

“Don’t you know?”

•   •   •

C
hase thought they were home free until they hit signs for Satsuma, Alabama, and noticed that highway patrolman shagging their ass. “You see him?” Chase said.

Peewee turned down the Toby Keith CD they’d been playing since Montgomery, “Drunk Americans” blaring full tilt, and glanced back in the van’s side-view mirror. “Yes, sir,” Peewee said. “I spotted that bastard about five miles back. I can’t tell if he’s following us or we just headed in the same direction.”

“He don’t seem to be in no hurry.”

“We can just keep on riding down into Mobile or we can take the next exit and see if he follows.”

“You ever been to Satsuma?” Chase said. “Don’t look like much.”

“I’ve been to Creola,” Peewee said. “I fished the Mobile River one time and some of those bayous around here. Didn’t catch nothing but the daughter of the fella who sold us gas. Boy, let me tell you something, that barefoot country gal sure knew how to work my pump.”

“Uncle Peewee?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, keeping that needle set down at sixty, easy and steady in the slow lane.

“You ever been somewhere you didn’t get laid?”

“Haw, haw,” Peewee said. “I’m gonna duck on down into ole Satsuma and see if that motherfucker tails us. I can’t stand for him to be riding up on my asshole for the next fifty miles. At Mobile’s where we take the interstate over to New Orleans and head on back to Bourbon Street. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Temptations, here we come.”

Peewee turned on his blinker and slowed down to fifty, sliding on off 65 and onto the road running into the downtown. Satsuma looked like any other town off the highway. There was an Arby’s, a Subway, McDonald’s, Waffle House, and a big sign for some place nearby called
CATFISH JUNCTION
. They hadn’t eaten since back at the Denny’s truck stop, but Chase didn’t mention it, as that patrol car had gotten off the interstate with them, riding slow and easy past the Pintoli’s Italian restaurant, China Chef, and Los Tres Amigos. Not making a move, but not slowing down, neither.

“What’s he doing?” Chase said.

“Bird-dogging us.”

“What’re we gonna do?”

“Shake his ass,” Peewee said. “Soon as I find the right road.”

“You shake him and they’ll know where we at.”

“Hell, I know,” he said. “I know. But we got to do something before we hit a goddamn roadblock. I’ll pick us up another vehicle.”

“How’s that?”

“Son,” Peewee said. “Before I was a safe man, I used to lift cars. I stole cars and semis all over Alabama and north Mississippi. We had a chop shop up in Corinth where you got cash on the barrelhead. Fine times.”

“He’s on us.”

“I got fucking eyes,” Peewee said. “Watching him in the mirror. But I ain’t gonna jackrabbit off this road until he gives us cause.”

Chase felt like he might get sick, reaching up under his hoodie and finding the gun he’d used to shoot the deputy. He’d told Peewee he’d tossed it in a pond back in Gordo, but he couldn’t let it go. He felt the slick trigger, rough handle, knowing it was stacked and reloaded, ready to rip. Chase swallowed a bit, watching that patrol car nosing up toward their bumper, Peewee stopping at a light.

“Shit, he’s got us,” Chase said.

“Sure looks that way,” Peewee said. “Cornholed in Satsuma.”

“We gonna run?”

“Ain’t nothin’ left to do.”

Peewee looked to be sweating a little, glancing to the highway before him and the patrol car behind him. He gripped the party van’s wheel, and Chase believed the old man was about to put the pedal to the metal and speed on away from this son of a bitch and back into the nooks and crannies of Satsuma, Alabama, where they could steal some boring-ass Chevy. Damn, he hated to see the van go.

The light turned green and Peewee rolled out steady and low, following that highway for a half mile, before that dang patrolman turned his ass into a fucking Taco Bell and headed to the drive-thru for a fucking Doritos Cheesy Gordita.

“Praise Jesus,” Chase said.

“We got to dump the van.”

“Come on, now,” Chase said. “Let’s not rush it.”

“Boy, we got half the state of Alabama out looking for the faces of Bear Bryant, Nick Saban, and AJ McCarron painted along the side of an Econoline. You want to take a bet on how long it takes to find us?”

30.

T
wo days after interviewing the fat man Peewee Sparks over in Gordo, Alabama, Lillie brought Mickey Walls back into the sheriff’s office for a sit-down. No one had seen Sparks, his nephew Chase, or Kyle Hazlewood since warrants had been issued. They had a little leverage on Walls, some new evidence, but Hazlewood had been her ace in the hole. Kyle was halfway human. Mickey Walls didn’t seem to give a good goddamn for anyone but Mickey Walls.

Today he’d brought his lawyer with him, a slick, bald-headed man from Memphis who rapped in his firm’s commercials for local TV. They hadn’t been in the room but five minutes and the lawyer had referred to Mickey as “Mr. Walls” no less than twenty times. Lillie recalled the rap going something like
Your business partner left and took all your money. / Your wife just split and got another honey. / You need a lawyer. / Yeah! Yes, you do. / You need a lawyer.

“Always wanted to ask,” Lillie said. “Do you write your own material? Or you hire someone for those commercials?”

“You can make fun all you want,” the bald lawyer said. “But you remember it. Can’t forget me.”

“I have a mind for faces,” Lillie said. “I just hate cluttering it up, is all.”

Sheriff Wise walked through the open door and shut it behind him. In the corner, Lillie had set a little video camera on a tripod to take in everyone at the table, a condenser mic set in the center. Mickey Walls looked like shit. He was wearing pajama bottoms with a
MISSISSIPPI STATE
sweatshirt and work boots.

“Some new information has come to light,” Rusty said, hands folded in front of him, earnest grin on his face. “We wanted to give Mickey—I mean, Mr. Walls—a second chance at helping us with the investigation. I’ve got an important member of our community wanting answers, a shot-up deputy who may always walk with a gimpy leg, and now we have three men connected to this crime running loose as fugitives. We just are looking for a little direction, Mickey.”

“How many times does Mr. Walls have to tell you he’s not involved?” the bald lawyer said.

“So you don’t know Peewee Sparks or Chase Clanton?” Rusty said.

Mickey looked to the lawyer and the lawyer nodded.

“No, sir.”

“You at least know Kyle Hazlewood, right?” Lillie said.

“You know I do.”

“You heard from him?” Rusty said.

“Not in a long while,” Mickey said. “I told you I’d help out if I did. I don’t know what he’s mixed up in, but I want to help him and y’all out.”

“Appreciate that, Mickey,” Lillie said. “You’re real stand-up.”

“Like I said, Mr. Walls doesn’t need to be here,” the lawyer said. “The only reason he agreed is that he wants to help law enforcement get some kind of justice. But I need to warn you, his business has suffered as well as his reputation. If you want to arrest him, I recommend you do it now. Because this cloud of suspicion over his head is taking money away from my client and food from his kids.”