The Lost Ones (29 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Didn’t you say you had some of your own you were going to sell?” Campo asked. “Colts, just like the others?”

“They got those, too.”

“So you’re tapped out,” Campo said, tapping his index finger on the table. “And want to see if I’ll help out again.”

“I can guarantee the same price.”

“That was a fine price.”

“You let me know where to find the rig, and I’ll drive it over the state line.”

“Yourself?”

“Yes, sir,” Donnie said. “I can drive any damn thing with wheels.”

“You know it’s crazy to do business with me right now,” Campo said. “I’m a fucking leper. Even a creep like Johnny Stagg doesn’t want to be seen with me. That’s why he’s out. When someone like Stagg walks around you, that’s when you know you got problems.”

“Who knows how Stagg thinks.”

“Just how much do you know about ole Johnny?”

“My daddy says he’s trouble.”

“Your daddy is a smart man,” Campo said. He drank some more ice water. A neon sign down the street on Poplar clicked on, rotating clicks of light around a tire logo. “Stagg has owned that shithole county for nearly thirty years.”

“He tell you about the new sheriff?”

“Had trouble with the old one,” Campo said. “That didn’t last long.”

“Old man killed himself.”

Campo raised his eyebrows and threw back the empty glass, finding some ice cubes and crunching them with his back teeth. He stared at Donnie for a moment. “Is that what you think?”

Donnie didn’t say anything.

“Don’t call me again at the shake joints,” Campo said. “If I make this work, someone will call you. But you’re in luck. I could use the fucking money.”

“I knew we were gonna be buds, Mr. Campo.”

“You like Ole Miss football?”

“Always been a State man myself,” Donnie said.

“I invited Johnny Stagg to join me at my tent before the LSU game last year,” Campo said. “My guests thought he owned a funeral home or was a roadside preacher. He wouldn’t have been a bigger hit if he were a capuchin monkey. One woman handed him her empty plate with chicken bones and asked him to take care of it. Here the bastard drives all the way over from Tibbehah County, wearing his best sweater and loafers, and people still think he’s the hired help.”

“Johnny Stagg.”

“I don’t want you talking to him, either,” Campo said. “This is between us. If it worked for Stagg, he’d be just like my fucking wife and sell me out to the Feds. You see, they were in on this raid, too. Christ Almighty, I must be fucking nuts.”

Donnie put out his hand to shake.

Campo shook his head and reached for his wallet. “Never give the bastards anything like that to take a photo of. They’ll blow it up bigger than shit and present it at trial like it was painted by Da Vinci.”

“Yes, sir.”

Campo set down his wet glass, dropped a twenty, and walked to the door. Donnie took his time with the biscuits and gravy. The neon light spun around and around that old tire sign as cars flew by on Poplar. Donnie drank his black coffee and thought of Luz. Damn if he couldn’t wait to tell her what he’d found out. Only a man in love could be such a dumbass.

“THAT’S ONE GOOD-LOOKING TRUCK,”
Dinah Brand said. “When did you get it?”

“Last night.”

“The old one was kind of growing on me,” she said. “Dents and all. It had a lot of charm.”

“And two hundred fifty thousand miles with a bad transmission.”

They stood in the middle of the sheriff’s office parking lot. Quinn opened the passenger door of the rebuilt Ford for Hondo, and he jumped inside. The dog moved over behind the wheel and looked out the window, panting.

“He acts like he owns it,” Dinah said.

“Hondo’s not a very good driver.”

“Got some news,” Dinah said.

“I thought maybe you just wanted lunch.”

“Where have you been?” Dinah asked. “I’ve been waiting for an hour, talking to Lillie.”

“She being any nicer?” Quinn asked.

“She is,” Dinah said. “Kind of strange. I don’t know what to think.”

“I believe you now have her respect.”

“And she mine,” Dinah said, smiling. “You want to go inside? It’s cold as hell.”

“What’s up?” Quinn asked. “Might get more privacy out here.”

“Got IDs on all the folks from yesterday,” Dinah said. “You should’ve been faxed those this morning.”

“Got ’em.”

“And some more stuff I didn’t want to send.” Dinah looked down at the pavement and raised her eyes back to Quinn. “Most of those guns got traced back to a big shop outside Oklahoma City. We’re working on that.”

“And the others?”

“Property of the U.S. Army.”

“Come again?”

“That’s all we know right now,” Dinah said. “Showed up stolen from a base in Afghanistan.”

“Which base?”

“I’m just learning all this,” she said. “We’ll know more today.”

“I was afraid of something like this.”

“How’s that?” Dinah asked.

“This is how the personal gets messed up with the professional.” Quinn leaned against his truck. He could hear Hondo jumping to the other side and panting against the glass. Quinn shook his head and looked to the ground.

“Go ahead,” Dinah said. “OK?”

“I’ve been working on some things here,” Quinn said. “I didn’t want to say anything because I still don’t know anything for sure. I just have some suspicions.”

Dinah Brand was pretty good at setting her jaw. She stuck her hands inside a black raincoat and waited for Quinn to explain. She wore big tall galoshes with jeans tucked inside.

“There’s a fella I know here in Jericho,” Quinn said. “He runs a gun shop.”

“He have access to military weapons?”

“Just got home from the Guard.”

“OK,” she said. “But we’re talking about forty-six M4s.”

“It could be done.”

Hondo’s breath had fogged up the glass in the car. Kenny walked out to say hello, big smile on his face, but saw the toe-to-toe talk and took a quick turn to his patrol car. He waved with two fingers as he drove off.

“OK,” she said. “That’s something. But I don’t see the big deal. You got gun dealers all over the place in Mississippi. What’s so bad about this guy?”

“He’s not bad,” Quinn said. “In fact, he’s a friend.”

“And.”

“I just didn’t want to screw him if this was nothing,” Quinn said. “But after yesterday and all that happened, I had to tell you. Things have changed.”

“What’s his name?”

“Donnie Varner,” Quinn said. “He was in the National Guard. Just got back from Afghanistan. He was in the 223rd, which is basically a lot of construction work and truck driving. But there are a lot of guns floating around those bases. A company up in Hernando got caught stealing some a few years ago. It happens.”

“OK.”

Quinn took a breath. “Can we go have some lunch?”

“You act like you want to tell me more.”

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “I was trying to find out more on my own. I should have been more honest.”

Dinah waited. She was still setting her jaw and switching the weight from one foot to another. She didn’t look very pleased and let the silences really play out.

“I recognized a woman’s picture you showed me the other day,” Quinn said. “Her name was Laura something or another. I’ve seen her. She’s been here.”

“With your pal?”

“That’s not why I kept it from you,” Quinn said. “I wanted to find out more.”

“That’s a big omission, Sheriff.”

“I didn’t know you that well.”

“And now you got into my pants, you feel better about cooperating?”

“This is where the personal muddies things,” Quinn said. “Hell, that doesn’t have a damn bit to do with it.”

“You had ample time to whisper into my ear while we were in bed,” Dinah said. “Who’s stupid now?”

Dinah looked around the empty lot. She leaned in closer to Quinn, jaw clenched and speaking in a lowered tone. “You’re goddamn right you should have told me. Don’t you realize who these people are? We all could have been killed yesterday, and you knew that you had a local here working with them, supplying the guns.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Want to bet?” Dinah asked. “Damn it, Quinn. If she’s the one I’m thinking about, she’s in the company of one mean bastard, MS-13 gangbanger out of Texas named Alejandro Umana.”

“And who’s he?”

“The son of a bitch I’ve spent the last two years trying to catch,” Dinah said. “He operated a cell out of Galveston a few years ago and left a group of rivals headless in a ditch behind a Popeyes Chicken. Jesus Christ, you don’t know how bad these people are. Do you?”

“I’m starting to get the idea.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?’

“I wasn’t sure,” Quinn said. “And I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

“Well, you’re in it now,” Dinah said. “I think I know where to find this woman.”

“OK.”

“Want to come along?”

“How about Hondo?”

“Not unless he speaks Spanish, too.”

38

THE CARNIVAL HAD SET DOWN IN SOUTHAVEN, MISSISSIPPI, JUST OVER
the Tennessee border and right outside a big Harley-Davidson dealership and civic center that mostly hosted monster truck and livestock shows. The tractor trailers had unloaded the rides and games, and workers in bright yellow ponchos scrambled to put the massive parts together, fixing lights and unrolling canopies, shimmying up big metal arms and crawling up and down ladders. The parking lot was filled end to end with RVs and trailers, a small army setting up to bring the mid-south fair to north Mississippi
Wednesday Night Through Saturday Only
.

Quinn sat beside Dinah in her car. The rain had stopped, and the carnies seemed to be busting their asses to make sure they opened up as planned. He noted a lot of tough wiry old rednecks working as carnies, but a lot of Hispanics, too. One trailer featured the talents of the fearless flores family, a set of motocross bikes parked in front. “What’d you say her real name was?” Quinn asked.

“Laura Zuniga,” Dinah said. “If you saw her, you wouldn’t forget it. She was some kind of Miss Rodeo beauty queen in Texas before getting mixed up in this mess.”

“And how will I know Alejandro?”

“Hard to miss a guy who has tattooed numbers and symbols all over his head.”

“I’ll try and be alert.”

Quinn stretched his legs and checked the time on his watch. Dinah stared straight ahead as the midway took shape.

“Just how stupid is your pal Donnie?” Dinah said. “Why would anyone want to get involved with an outfit like this?”

“Donnie kind of has a knack for bad choices,” he said. “I used to get myself in just as much shit, but was caught less frequently.”

“Would you ever sell U.S. Army weapons to a Mexican drug cartel?”

“Maybe he’s doing it for the girl,” Quinn said. “Donnie one time broke into a rich man’s hunting lodge and said it was his, all to impress some girl from Memphis.”

“He should know, then, that this girl’s boyfriend and Alejandro’s boss goes by the name of Tony the Tiger. This guy operates one of the biggest cells down on the Gulf Coast.”

“Donnie won’t care.”

“When the Tiger was down in Mexico, bands wrote
corridas
about him. You know, like folk songs about old bandits? One group wrote this song about his sexual prowess and how his enemies would die in a rain of bullets or something.”

“Love to hear that.”

“It sounds much better in Spanish.”

“Donnie’s mother died when he was young, and his daddy let Donnie do whatever in the hell he wanted. He couldn’t cross Luther or anything, but it was like he was told to be a man from the time he was born. I think that kind of rearing can work or make a kid reckless.”

“How about you?”

“Same.”

“Reckless how?”

“Just stupid shit,” Quinn said. “Adding liquor to the punch at a church picnic, stealing a couple goats and leaving them in a teacher’s car. One time, Donnie and I stole a change machine from the coin Laundromat. Chickenshit stuff.”

“And you didn’t get caught?”

“Hell yes, I got caught. But Donnie got it tough from his daddy. Luther never had much of a sense of humor.”

“I think I like this Quinn Colson,” Dinah said, a big grin on her freckled face. “I thought you always had your boots spit-and-polished and jeans ironed with a crease.”

“If my uncle hadn’t led me into the Army and the Rangers, I might be running things right along with Donnie.”

The door opened to the trailer of the Fearless Flores Family, and a young woman walked out dressed in a leather jacket and pants. She checked over one of the motocross bikes, straddled it, and gunned the motor, peeling out through the maze of trailers. A beaten old man wandered through the cars and trailers, carrying big clear plastic bags stuffed with pink-and-blue cotton candy. A younger man pushed a rolling cart filled with balloon toys of Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob.

“How’d you know Laura would be here?”

“We know her through Alejandro,” Dinah said. “That’s his trailer right there.”

She pointed at a small camper hooked up to the back of a red dually Chevy. Even though it had quit raining, the windshield was flecked with water drops. They’d been watching the carnival for the last hour.

Quinn leaned up toward the windshield. The door to Alejandro’s trailer opened, and a very beautiful black-haired woman walked out. She walked up to a large Mexican man and spoke to him for a long while and then moved away and answered a cell phone, looking out into the parking lot and passing right by the window where Dinah and Quinn sat.

“She know you?” Quinn asked.

Dinah shook her head.

“Well, that’s her,” Quinn said. “That’s the woman Donnie called Luz.”

“What exactly did he say when you asked him about her?”

“He said he’d just picked her up, tried to get into her pants, and she left.”

“You country boys are such charmers.”

Dinah got out from the driver’s side and walked out into the sideshow. “Stick tight. I want to get a look up close.”