The Broken Places (37 page)

The door to the trailer was open, Jamey’s woman standing on the concrete steps, hand over her mouth. Dixon ran fast for the barn, coming within ten feet of Esau without noticing him walking toward the trailer. The woman ducked back inside, the light on in the trailer, everything dark as hell. The grass and ground still wet and soggy from the storm, mud caking on Esau’s new boots.

Esau turned back for a moment to see that fire spreading up into the loft, crackling and feeding on the wood, folks running from the back of the barn and around the side. Women and children screamed, some poor bastard with a garden hose trying to peter it out.

Esau was feeling no pain as he got to the stoop and peeked into the trailer, seeing the girl and the kid lying on the sofa. The woman held the child’s head in her lap, stroking his hair, taking a moment to look up and register just who was that big red son of a bitch dressed like a Mex pimp at her door. She just sat there, smoothing the child’s hair and face without a damn word to Esau. To the boy, she was saying everything was fine, Jamey was taking care of it. Everything was just fine. Just some smoke.

“Knock, knock.”

“What do you want?” the woman said.

Esau smiled, pulling the .357 from his belt and motioning them outside. “Leverage,” he said.

•   •   •

“How’d you know
it was Davis that took them?” Quinn asked.

“Your Uncle Van saw him forcing them into an old truck,” Jamey said. “He yelled and tried to stop them, but Esau sped off. I followed, couldn’t find them. We called y’all but couldn’t get through. Put that fire out ourselves, even though it took off the back of the church. I know you don’t care much for me, Quinn, but I need help.”

“Feds from Oxford are driving over this morning to keep hunting for Davis,” Quinn said, grabbing the phone. “Even though they thought he’d left the state.”

“He won’t leave,” Jamey said. “He thinks I owe him something.”

“You want to explain your meaning?” Quinn was on his feet, coming around the desk.

“It was a misunderstanding and doesn’t matter now,” he said. “You missing the part about your sister and nephew being taken?”

Quinn tried to slow himself, his blood starting to heat and an all-too-familiar feeling rising up from his gut. “You missing the part where this shit happened because they were in your company? I’d whip you some more if you didn’t look like you’d already been through the ringer twice. You walk in here with your gimpy leg and wanting me to take care of this mess without you explaining? Let me ask you again.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is Esau Davis on your ass? What did you do to him? I know this is about a hell of a lot more than him watching your ass at Parchman.”

Dixon shook his head, dirty and unshaven, shoulders slumped, unable to face Quinn and look him in the eye. Quinn walked toward him and punched him hard in the thigh where he’d been shot, Dixon falling onto the floor and rolling there in pain, wide-eyed and openmouthed.

“How about we start this conversation again?” Quinn said. “Why did Esau Davis take my sister and Jason? And how am I gonna get them back?”

Dixon gritted his teeth, rolling on his back like a turtle but smiling, truly smiling with joy up at Quinn, and nodding. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I want. That’s what I came for. We are going to get them back. He’ll call. He’ll call me and tell me how to square it with him. Please. Help me. Just follow me and we can get them back. OK?”

Quinn moved back to the edge of his desk and sat down. He picked up his coffee and took a puff of the last bit of a cigar. Jamey’s eyes had watered from the pain, his face flushed with blood, and he was grinding his teeth.

“Please,” Dixon said. “We tell the Feds and Esau will kill them.”

Quinn stood and reached down to yank Dixon to his feet, the man’s bad leg nearly giving out, Dixon holding on to a file cabinet to steady himself. He grabbed Dixon by the neck and force-marched him out of the office and through the reception area, Mary Alice and the other dispatchers staring with open mouths, and out to the Big Green Machine, tossing him in the passenger side and slamming the door.

“Start talking,” Quinn said as he cranked the engine and turned out onto the road.

“I told you.”

“Start talking or I swear to Jesus I’ll drag you behind this truck till you do.”

•   •   •

“Let me explain
how this situation is gonna go,” said the convict Esau Davis, driving the truck at the proper speed limit, waving nicely to the cops parked about every quarter mile. “I don’t want to hurt you or the kid. This don’t have nothing to do with you or with the boy. This is between me and Dixon, and I do sincerely apologize for involving you. I don’t usually fuck with kids or women.”

Caddy didn’t speak. The smell of the man’s body and breath was overwhelming in the truck cab. Jason sat in her lap, her arms tight around his body. He was still and quiet, not sure exactly what was going on. Davis wore sunglasses and spoke in a calm but slurred voice, a pistol resting between his knees.

“Just don’t give me no trouble. Don’t try to grab the wheel or yell to someone or make a scene. You know I can snatch your ass up pretty quick. Besides, folks here got a lot worse shit on their minds and won’t be out looking for you.”

“Jamey doesn’t have your money.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, sweet baby,” Esau said. “He’s the kind of man holding out on us all. You think that boy just love you and Jesus Christ? Lord.”

“You just want to kill him,” she said, hating to say it in front of Jason but saying it just the same.

“That’s not true,” Esau said. “I’m not in the wrong here. I ain’t the one who took something that didn’t belong to me, trying to profit from another man’s work.”

“Y’all killed two men and robbed a bank truck?” Caddy said. “Something’s wrong with your brain. I know what happens to some men in prison. They drink Drano and lie with other men.”

“How about you just shut your mouth for a while,” Esau said. “I ain’t never hit a woman, but you don’t want this little half-breed seeing my first.”

“Anyone ever tell you that your breath smells like you’ve been licking a cat’s ass all day?”

“Damn, you’re a hellcat,” he said. “Dixon must love that.”

Caddy didn’t speak for a couple miles, trying to figure out just where the convict was going. After he hit the county line and doubled back, she realized he was lost, trying to stall a bit, waiting for something to happen.

“Just what are you waiting for?”

“A phone call.”

“From who?” Caddy said.

“Don’t concern yourself with that, Hellcat,” Davis said, reaching down to the floorboard and picking up a bottle of Wild Turkey. “All you got to do is sit tight and keep yours and the boy’s mouths shut. Let me think on things.”

He took a swig of the whiskey and looked down at a cell phone. Caddy kissed the top of Jason’s head as he stared up and studied the odd man in the sunglasses driving the old truck. “Mister?” Jason said.

Caddy held him tighter and told him to hush. Davis glanced over at the boy. The convict kept driving, snorting as he turned down a county road that cut back over the Trace. “Huh?”

“Don’t be mad at my Uncle Quinn,” Jason said.

“What the hell’s that boy talking about?” Davis said.

“’Cause he gonna shoot you real bad and make you die.”

Davis took a long swallow of whiskey, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, and watched the blacktop unfold in his headlights. Caddy smiled.

Quinn and Dixon drove, Dixon holding his cell phone tight, telling Quinn that Esau would call and work out the terms. But whatever happened, Dixon had to do this alone; Esau specified it.

“How’d he specify if you didn’t even see him?” Quinn said, hitting the Square and going around it twice. The place torn all to hell, electric trucks setting up new poles, workers clearing off debris, Salvation Army serving food from a trailer where a check-cashing business used to be.

“He left a note,” Dixon said, reaching into his jeans and handing it to Quinn. Quinn read it. It wasn’t exactly eloquent.
Don’t Bring Nobody Nor the Law or I Start Shooting.

“You believe him?” Quinn said. “Would he kill them?”

“He’s pretty pissed off right now.”

Quinn finally broke off the Square and headed east on Cotton Road, a line from the front door of the Piggly Wiggly out to the street. More trailers for Emergency Management and the Red Cross and a mobile command center RV from Jackson. “Why’d they come here, Dixon?”

Jamey swallowed and nodded. Quinn switched his view from the roadside and the damage to Jamey Dixon’s messed-up face with bruises and scratches, one leg of his Levi’s cut off so he could wear pants over a thick bandage. Dixon was red-eyed and unshaven, long hair worn loose over his shoulders. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a while. Quinn hadn’t, either.

“Esau thinks I got some money that’s his.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“A lie only adds to this shit sandwich you made.”

Quinn got close to the highway while Dixon studied his cell like he was willing the son of a bitch to ring. Quinn doubled back on the highway, drumming the wheel. His blood was racing, mind working over every possibility of how this could work out, but he tried to stay even and cool. You bring emotions into it, and your enemy has you beat. He needed to figure what could work on the mind of Esau Davis right now.

“I don’t have his money.”

“From the truck robbery.”

“Yes, sir,” Dixon said, lapsing into prison mode, looking at Quinn not as a potential brother-in-law or parishioner but the guard. Quinn did not correct him.

“Who got the money?”

“Johnny Stagg.”

Quinn slowed down, turning on his windshield wiper to cast off some dew. He grabbed the stub of a nice Fuente from his ashtray and punched the lighter.

“You’re being pretty cool about this,” Jamey said. “I kind of expected you to punch me in the throat.”

“Still could happen,” Quinn said. “But right now I need you to answer that phone and tell me where Esau wants you to meet him.”

“I need you to take me to the bank,” Dixon said. “I need to bring him something.”

“You think a few hundred will appease him?”

“I got more than that,” Dixon said. “It may be enough. We got a lot of donations and such, and I don’t care what happens, as long as we get Caddy and Jason back.”

“And you really don’t believe he won’t just drop your ass right there and then do something to Caddy and Jason? You thinking this through?”

Dixon was quiet. Quinn drove.

“I need to borrow a vehicle,” Jamey said. “He’s only expecting me.”

“I’m driving us both in.”

“You can’t do that,” Dixon said. “Didn’t you read that note?”

“Looks like it was written by a third-grader,” Quinn said, cracking the window, letting out the smoke. He had everything he needed in the truck, the Beretta 9, the Remington 12-gauge in his rack. He could wear the 9 in an abdomen holster; everybody expected you to conceal at your back.

“I love them,” Jamey said. “I couldn’t have known Bones and Esau would break free and come here. I would do anything in the world for Caddy. I want to marry her. We will get married. She will be all right. She and Jason.”

“But you can’t get clean of this,” Quinn said. “I don’t know and may never know what happened between you and Adelaide Bundren. But you opened wide the gates of hell when you shook Johnny Stagg’s hand. If you do walk away from this, all of this, you better keep walking out of Jericho and Tibbehah. Understood?”

“I love them, Quinn,” Jamey said. “They’re my family.”

Quinn shook his head, cigar burning down to a nub, body flushing from the nicotine and coffee and lack of sleep. “You’re Caddy’s boyfriend. I’m their family.”

He looked over at that cell phone in Dixon’s hand, waiting and willing it to ring.

It finally did.

•   •   •

For all his apologies,
the convict Esau Davis was just a low-level toilet scrubber without the sense that God gave a goat. If she could get to a pistol or a shotgun or a hammer or a screwdriver, Caddy Colson would go all redneck on his ass and tear him a new asshole. That’s the way she was feeling, sitting there in the front seat of his shitty old truck, muffler rattling loose and wild, while he took Kleenex to his bleeding eye and talked about old times with Jamey Dixon like he thought they could still be friends after all this shit went down.

“There was a time I felt love from him,” Esau said.

Caddy stayed silent, letting him talk. How do you respond to a crazy red-haired bastard with a .357 on his knee talking about his friendship with Jesus Christ?

“But he turned on me,” Esau said. “I never heard from him again.”

Caddy couldn’t stand it anymore, pulling Jason closer into her chest, arms wrapping his little body. “You talking about Jamey or you talking about Jesus?”

“Both of ’em,” Esau said. He was high as hell and drunk to boot, and Caddy figured if they sat there long enough at the edge of the old landing strip, not jack shit around, he’d just pass out and she and Jason could walk back to the highway.

Caddy scratched the top of her boy-short hair, to wake her up, keep her focused.