The Lost Ones (11 page)

“You ever think that Momma might have done it with Elvis?” Caddy asked.

“Nope.”

“You know she was a groupie, driving up to Graceland with her girlfriends in her short shorts and waiting for him by the gate. Daddy knew him. He knew Elvis through karate and all that. I don’t know. I just think there’s something strange about pining for a dead man.”

“Maybe she likes his music.”

“And the movies?” Caddy said, whispering. “Who likes the movies?”

Quinn shrugged. He’d yet to sit down. Anna Lee, Jean, and Jason were making their way down the hill, Jason between them, the women with one of his hands each, swinging him up high into the air.

“I just don’t want him hurt,” Quinn said. “He’s doing good. He’s in school. He’s doing good.”

“I’m his mother.”

“And you remind us of that all the time,” Quinn said. “He needs something stable.”

“I am stable,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. I’m here this time. It’s over.”

Jason, Jean, and Anna Lee were on the back deck and making their way to the glass door. Quinn looked to Caddy and massaged the back of his neck, knowing how the next few weeks would play out and knowing how it would affect his nephew.

“We got to talk, Quinn,” Caddy said.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

DONNIE HAD RETIRED
for the night at his trailer at the gun range. Stagg dropped him off after they got back to Jericho, Stagg not saying a word on the ride back, still pissed about Donnie and Mr. Campo getting along so good. Stagg just turned up that Don Ho hula shit, cracked the window, and smiled at all the scenery passing. When Donnie would ask him a question, he’d just nod deep in thought and answer him with a nod or shake of his head. Guess the comment about the suit had really chapped old Johnny’s ass.

Donnie lay on a pullout sofa mattress, smoking cigarettes and watching
The Magnificent Seven
with a bottle of tequila and a bag of chips for dinner. He’d promised his daddy that he’d be back at the Quick Mart at five a.m. to start cooking up sausage and biscuits for the farmers and truck drivers before church. Donnie was so goddamn tired of the smell of that place. Even good shampoo and Lava soap couldn’t wash it out. He kicked back more of the tequila, Yul Brynner telling that dumb kid to clap his hands, “Fast. Fast as you can.” And the kid not having the speed or the smarts to see how Yul was playing with him. So what does the kid do? He just gets piss-drunk and tries to shoot Yul. But it all works out in the end; he meets a nice señorita and lives it up in high tail. Donnie smiled with the thought and punched up a phone number he’d written on the back of a napkin.

“Yes?” Luz asked.

“You sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“We need to talk.”

Luz was silent.

“In person,” Donnie said. His tongue feeling a little fuzzy, but, damn, if he didn’t sound straight in his head. “Can you come on?”

“Is there a problem?”

“We got to talk, and phones make me a mite nervous.”

“Where?”

Donnie told her to come on back to the gun range and clicked off the phone with a big shit-eating smile on his face. He walked on outside the old Airstream and plugged in a string of Christmas lights that he’d hung up through the pines and oaks surrounding a little fire pit he’d made from old bricks and river stones. He tossed some brush and logs into the fire and soaked it good with some diesel, lighting the son of a bitch up.

He’d found some fallen logs and arranged them around the fire pit. A hell of a good place to sit and drink and look at the stars. But, god damn, he was getting tired of Shane’s jokes and Tiny’s farts. That’s about all those boys offered in way of company, corn and gas. But the boys had been with him every day after he’d gone up and nearly turned into a crispy critter. It was Shane who’d had the sense to reach for the morphine needle in his pack and stab Donnie with it after the explosion, when Donnie couldn’t see worth shit with blood in his eyes and his damn hearing was nothing but a high-pitched electric sound.

After an hour, or maybe two, he saw a big truck roll down the dirt road and park down at the range. Luz was just a shadow in the moonlight, but he could tell it was her and her alone, no crazy-ass Alejandro or the kid shooter or those three crazy
muchachos
. She sure had a confident strut about her. Donnie wondered just where the carnival had ended up tonight.

He warmed his hands over the fire, facing the trail that she’d followed after seeing the Christmas lights and fire up on the hill by the old Airstream.

Donnie sure had to grin when he saw her. She wore a fitted red snap-button shirt and tight dark jeans with a straw Stetson set over her long black Indian hair. She looked clean and fresh-scrubbed, and he noticed the big turquoise bracelet on her wrist before he noted the Colt slid into her belt loop.

“Where were y’all tonight?” he asked.

“Place called Water Valley.”

“Ain’t shit in Water Valley.”

“Tonight, we brought the carnival.”

“So how does that work?” he asked. “Y’all do that full time and the guns on the side? Or is it some kind of cover for y’all while you buy guns?”

“We work for the carnival, and we have other business.”

“I like your hat.”

She nodded at him.

“You ride?”

She nodded again. “I grew up in Saragosa, Texas.”

“No shit,” he said. “That makes you a citizen.”

“What do you want, Donnie?”

“I got the deal,” Donnie said. He smiled. “It’s all set up. And we got those extra fifty M4s just like y’all wanted. Be here next week.”

“We will bring the money,” she said. “Good night.”

“Can’t you stay for a bit?” Donnie said, grinning. “Please.”

“You live here?”

“It ain’t a mansion, but—” Donnie said, laughing. “But it ain’t a mansion. Pull up a stump and have a cold beer or some tequila, and you can go on. All right?”

She looked at him like he was crazy but joined him by the fire pit and accepted a drink from his open bottle of tequila. God damn, he loved a girl who could take a swig off an open bottle.

“Down in Saragosa, that where you meet up with your boyfriend, the bad motherfucker?”

“Let’s not talk.”

“You kind of hold a lot of interest for me, Luz,” Donnie said. “I mean, we’re kind of in this together now, long down the road, me and you. I figure we could at least get to know a bit about each other. Ain’t no harm in that.”

She nodded and took another hit from the bottle.

“Where’d you get those scars?” she asked. “The ones I saw on your back.”

“Some little shithole outside Baghdad that don’t have no name.”

“Were you in battle?”

“I was patrolling a goddamn bazaar.”

“Is that why you came home?”

“No,” Donnie said. “I went back, next time to Afghanistan, after I healed up. I guess my head is hard that way.”

“Did you love it? The war?”

“I loved that paycheck.”

They watched the fire, the crackling of the dry brush and logs, sparks flicking up into the Christmas lights and treetops. Donnie thought it didn’t look too bad at his place, kinda like a Kenny Chesney video if they were at the beach and not in Tibbehah.

“You got to go back to Mexico when you get the guns?”

“I don’t know.”

“Up to your boyfriend?”

“Why do you ask so much?” Luz asked.

“I just don’t understand why you’re with those people,” Donnie said. “Your buddy Alejandro looks like he should be living in a cage. No offense.”

She nodded. She drank some more.

“You will do what you say?”

“I promised,” Donnie said. “Say, how do you like the ole trailer? Belonged to my granddad. He bought the fucking thing in the fifties so he could go to the Grand Canyon. Son of a bitch had a heart attack right before he pulled out onto the highway. Whole time I was growing up, it sat under a tarp in our garage.”

“That’s very sad.”

“But kinda funny.”

“How?”

“The way God can bite you right in the ass.”

“Sometimes you bite back,” Luz said. She stared very hard into the fire. The night had grown cold, and Donnie just noticed their shoulders were touching as they leaned into the warmth. He turned and smiled at her, catching her eye. She didn’t smile, looking downright sad to him, but not breaking away, either. Son of a bitch if he didn’t have to do it, but he reached around her with his arm and pulled her close. The front of that western snap-button shirt looked like it was about to go and bust, and he caught a peek of a little lace on a black bra.

“Just how bad of a motherfucker is your boyfriend?”

Luz turned to him and kissed him long and hard on the mouth. When Donnie kissed her back, there wasn’t nothing but air, and he opened his eyes with her standing above him. “Don’t show affection in front of Alejandro,” she said.

He held up his hand in a solemn promise.

“And you won’t talk of me to your friends.”

“You Catholic girls are damn superstitious.”

He reached for her hand. She looked at him with a lot burning in those eyes, but he pulled her in close and hooked his fingers into her leather belt, pressing her hard against him and knocking her hat up so he could give her a decent kiss.

He felt her Colt digging into his forearm as he hugged her, but it didn’t bother him a damn bit.

14

FOUR DAYS PASSED, AND QUINN FOUND HIMSELF AT THE FILLIN’ STATION
diner, drinking black coffee and working on a plate of fried eggs and grits. The rains had blown in from Texas the day before, and with dark skies came a chill. It wouldn’t be long until the heaters would cut on, and he’d smell burning dust and propane that reminded Quinn of long, bare winters. Mary, a tired old waitress who used to shack up with his Uncle Hamp, refilled his cup. Quinn wondered if his wearing Hamp’s old rancher coat bothered her. She’d been with Hamp until the last, spending his last years taking trips to Tunica and down to the coast. When they buried him, the honor guard folded the flag and handed it to her.

A few folks wandered in the front door of the old gas station and nodded to Quinn, rain dripping from their coats. Some shook his hand or passed on a few problems.

One man had lost a good dog. An old woman wanted to know about any progress in the break-in at the Baptist church. Someone had stolen six peach pies from the deep freeze. Quinn was patient and listened to it all. After all, coming to the Fillin’ Station for breakfast in downtown Jericho was better than keeping office hours. He learned more there in ten minutes than he’d probably learn all day behind his desk.

Quinn was about ready to leave when Lillie sat across from him and snatched a half-eaten biscuit—already buttered—from his hand. She wore a baseball cap with a ponytail threaded through the back and a satiny sheriff’s office jacket that read chief deputy.

“Go ahead and help yourself,” Quinn said.

“Didn’t think you’d mind.”

“How’d it go overnight?”

“Helped Joe Burney’s dumbass daughter out of a ditch. Kenny issued some traffic tickets and looked for a stolen vehicle.”

“What got stolen?”

“Nothin’,” Lillie said. “Some kid didn’t know his buddies took it and hid it out behind the car wash.”

“Busy night.”

“What’s going on?” Lillie asked. Mary wandered over and rested her hand on Lillie’s shoulder while sliding coffee in front of her. Lillie patted the old woman’s liver-spotted hand. Mary smiled back as if in a daydream.

“Thought I’d try and talk to Mara Torres again,” Quinn said.

“She prefers Mara Black.”

“Well, I’ll talk to Mara Black again.”

“There’s somethin’ off about that girl,” Lillie said.

“No kidding.”

“No,
really
off,” Lillie said. “She ain’t right. I’d say she’s operating on a different radio signal than most.”

“Been through a lot.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Lillie said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her. She talks about people on
Days of Our Lives
like they’re real people. She about shit her pants when she found out Sami might be pregnant, like Sami was a real person and it was a real baby. She talked for two days about whether it would be a boy or a girl. I let her come in my office every day at noon to watch her stories so she’ll shut her mouth and cooperate.”

“She made any calls?”

“She’s got a public defender.”

“Any friends?”

“Some women from her church came to see her,” Lillie said. “They brought her some lemon cake and some bologna sandwiches. I got the feeling they didn’t know Mara real well.”

“I still can’t believe what they were doing was legal,” Quinn said. “They were bringing in babies with all the right papers.”

“When the children come from developing countries, the only type of qualifications you need is some cash,” Lillie said. “When you adopt that child, it’s legally your baby. That has nothing to do with American laws. You think any of those Mexican officials gave two shits about where those kids ended up?”