The Ranger (32 page)

“Where’s the money?”

“It ain’t ours.”

“You give it to Stagg?”

Brother Davis shook his head sadly. “Belongs to them boys in Memphis.”

“And you’re gonna let ’em have it?”

“Don’t have no choice.”

“Bullshit.”

Gowrie shot him in the shoulder and leg, the old man falling to the ground. Gowrie hopped up on the stage like a damn cat and started to kick the old man, asking him again where he’d put the goddamn money. He walked to the edge of the stage and unhitched the cross from the chains, it falling down near the preacher’s head.

“Them folks will kill me.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“It’s done.”

“You lyin’ shithole preacher, where’d you put the money? You lyin’ shithole preacher.”

The old man pointed with a bloody hand behind the curtain and said something about the cash being in a box of hymnals by the door. Gowrie squatted down and checked the box, counting handfuls of cash in his thick little hands.

“This all you got?”

“We never had no more.”

“You damn liar.”

Gowrie stood over the old man, kicking him in the head again and dragging his bloody ass to the cross.

Gowrie wrapped the old man in the chains and hoisted him into the rafters of the old movie house. Ditto breathed his first breath, thinking maybe the son of a bitch had forgotten about his presence.

“Come on, you little fat shit, and help me get what’s mine,” Gowrie said, tying the chain to the wall, leaving the gold-toothed preacher hanging and dropping blood to the wood stage and searching for just the right prayer to set himself loose.

Ditto scrambled to his feet and ran to follow, wiping his sweating hands on his pant leg, mouth trembling, and pissing a bit on himself.

“Where we headed?”

“Where Johnny Stagg got my goddamn money.”

Lena saw Gowrie
park behind the movie house and come right through the front door. She slid down in the seat of the car, closing her eyes and shushing her baby, who’d taken that very moment to start wailing, now calling the baby Joy, something that Ditto had come up with, maybe the first sensible name she’d come across in some time.

Ditto inside with the preacher, Gowrie coming in the rear.

Not an ideal situation.

But the boy had left the motor running, and she could just slide on over and get as far gone from Jericho as a half tank could get her. Instead, she just waited there, closing her eyes and praying a bit, hoping the Lord would find her thoughts a lot stronger than Brother Davis’s. She waited to hear gunshots and prayed that Ditto would make it through. That little fat boy had more guts than any man she’d met in her life.

A good ten minutes passed. She heard gunshots.

She crawled behind the wheel, holding the baby in the passenger seat with her right hand, using a pillow from the motel to corral her on the seat. She knocked the car into gear and moved up in front of the movie house, seeing the door was wide open.

Her hands shook. Even Gowrie wouldn’t shoot a girl with a baby.

She’d point that ole peashooter at him and give him a talkin’-to. She would leave with her little fat boy, money or not.

She didn’t want their goddamn money and would tell him so.

She reached for the crying baby and got out of the car, holding Joy and that .22 so tight. She felt like she was walking all sluggish in water, her blood running so fast, her mind a hot tangle of thoughts. She heard a man crying but saw no one until she looked up from the pulpit.

There she saw golden-mouthed Brother Davis hanging from the cross, the cross swinging like a pendulum from a mess of chains.

“Help,” he said. He was bleeding bad, gray-faced and dying.

“Where’s Ditto?”

“Please,” Brother Davis said, screaming. “He took all I got but said it wasn’t enough.”

“Where are they?”

“Help me.”

“Speak, you old wretched man.”

“They gone to the bank.”

34

Quinn stood up from the hospital bed wearing one
of those paper nightgowns that left his naked ass hanging out as he made his way to a water pitcher. He was weak and light-headed, not feeling much in his body at all, his right leg stinging like it was asleep and fingers fat and clumsy in a sling. He’d watched Luke Stevens dig the buckshot out of his leg and ass and then work on that bullet in his shoulder, saying the blade had been cracked and Quinn would need to see a surgeon in Memphis or over in Columbus. Luke wanted to knock him out for the whole thing, but Quinn wanted only something local for the pain, to have that shit dug out of his body and be sewn up. Of course Luke tried to explain to him that the process was a little bit more complicated. Quinn’s muscles had been torn, bones cracked, and he’d lost a damn good bit of blood.

Quinn drained the water glass and eased his way to the bed.

That was about the time Johnny Stagg walked into the room.

“Son of a bitch,” Quinn said, closing the back side of the gown. “You got to be kidding me.”

“Judge called Benning,” Stagg said. “He wanted me to relay that.”

“What’d he tell them?”

“Said you’d been ambushed by some poachers.”

Stagg wore a checked button-down shirt with a V—necked tennis sweater tucked into a pair of pressed gray pants. He looked like the gardener who’d stolen the millionaire’s clothes.

“Y’all make for a nice pair.” Quinn laughed. “You know what happened to my damn pants?”

“I imagine they cut ’em off you,” Johnny Stagg said, nodding down to the wound on the back of Quinn’s leg. “That don’t look so good.”

“Yeah, it stings a little when you get shot in the back,” Quinn said. “You gonna leave or you want to be tossed out of the window?”

“I wasn’t a part of this,” Stagg said, looking down to his tasseled loafers or maybe the worn linoleum floor. “I wanted to look you in the eye and tell you.”

Quinn held up his hand and shook his head. “What do you want, Johnny?”

“Gowrie and me weren’t partners,” Stagg said. “All I wanted to do was jump-start the economy of this old town. There was gonna be a regional hospital taking over for this old rotting place. A Walmart, too. You got my word.”

“True gold.”

“If we’d known what was going on . . . I wouldn’t have made a deal for nothin’ in the world.”

“One of my best friends was just gunned down in front of my face,” Quinn said. “Gowrie shot him in the head and heart right after he’d turned on me. I guess you wouldn’t know a thing about that.”

“What Wesley done makes me sick to my core, but he doesn’t stand alone,” Stagg said, looking solemn behind that craggy mask. He reached into his pocket and unfolded a letter, placing it in Quinn’s hands. “This belongs to you and your momma.”

Quinn knew it instantly as his uncle’s handwriting.

“I was gonna burn it,” Stagg said.

Quinn read the short note written to his mother, flecked with blood:

I walk a lonely road, Jean. It’s never been a straight path and you loved me despite it. I killed a young woman named Jill Bullard. She was a witness to a fire in a drug house. She kept coming back for money after. I, and I alone, shushed it up. Don’t look for answers because that’s all there is to it. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ”—Matthew 11:28. Your loving brother, Hamp

“You see now?” Stagg said. “You can read the truth right there. Your uncle killed to cover up for Gowrie. He let all this shit grow wild. He couldn’t live with it and did the honorable thing.”

“Why don’t you bring that note to Jill Bullard’s family in Bruce?” Quinn asked. “You explain it, Johnny.”

“You can make it right.”

“How do you figure?”

“Kill the man who tarnished your uncle,” Stagg said, looking him hard in the eye. “Gowrie just killed Brother Davis and looted his church. He’s high as a kite and wants to burn Jericho down.”

“You tarnished my uncle. You just want me to save your ass and get that money back. How much are you on the hook for, Johnny?”

“Gowrie got more than a hunnard thousand dollars in donations. Crucified Brother Davis on some cedar logs.”

“Who are these people in Memphis?”

“I need that money,” Stagg said. “I’ll give you a cut. You can keep all your land. I’ll buy that slice of 45 for whatever you think is fair.”

“Let me think on it.”

“Gowrie’s tearin’ shit up. We got five deputies left. What can they do?”

“Wait for the help that’s coming.”

“What do you want, Quinn? I got to get that money or they’ll kill me.”

“I thought about it.”

“And?”

Quinn offered his hand with a smile. “Good luck, Johnny Stagg.”

Ditto never signed up
for this bullshit. But when a fella like Gowrie puts a gun to your head, you tend to listen up.

“Grab that bag,” Gowrie said, stopping the Camaro with a skid on the town Square.

“The one with the Little Mermaid on it?”

“You see another?”

“The big suitcase is filled with the preacher’s money.”

Ditto reached into the backseat of the car and grabbed the child’s duffel bag. The bag wouldn’t hold a full-grown man’s shoe. “I can’t get nothin’ in this.”

“Go get a trash bag.”

“Where?”

“Come on,” Gowrie said, the big motor idling. He walked straight on into the Citizens Bank Building, bigger than shit. He strolled right up to the windows to the only teller working and grabbed her by the back of the neck. “Give it up.”

He wheeled the gun around to a couple men and a big woman sitting at desks with computers and said, “Y’all come on over and join us. Anyone does something that doesn’t sit well and I’ll blow this woman’s goddamn head off. Hands behind your heads. Hell, you got it. You got it.”

The office people walked over slow and easy, Gowrie pointing to the floor, where they got down on their knees and laced their hands over their heads. The office looked like it hadn’t changed a thing in about thirty years, with old-timey wood paneling and green vinyl furniture. A picture of a smiling black woman promised FREE CHECKING!

Ditto just stood there—waiting any second for someone to bust in the door and start shooting—and glanced up to a corner and saw a security camera. He looked the other way and saw another. He looked right ahead of himself and saw another taking his damn picture.

Son of a bitch.

Maybe he could give some kind of sign, something that the police could see to know that he wasn’t an active participant in the matter. But as long as Gowrie walked right by that GMC Jimmy they stole and left Lena and her baby alone, he was fine with whatever came of this.

“Don’t give me a dye pack, neither,” Gowrie said, shoving a gun into the teller’s face. “Something explodes on me and I’ll come back to this town again and take a shit in y’all’s commode.”

The girl, young and doughy, wearing a good bit of makeup and gold jewelry, nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

Yes, sir, to Gowrie.

“Give me that bag, dipshit.”

Ditto handed him the Little Mermaid bag, and the teller looked right past Gowrie to Ditto and gave him a confused look. Gowrie saw the exchange and said, “Fill her up.”

“How much?” she asked.

“Everything,” he said.

“It won’t fit.”

“Then get yourself another bag.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Stagg on the board here?” Gowrie asked while she worked. The girl didn’t know what to say and just shook her head.

The big woman in the flowered dress, the woman who seemed to be in charge, didn’t bother to look up, her hands still laced over her head, but kind of mumbled, “Mr. Johnny Stagg serves on this board.”

“Tell him I got what’s mine,” he said. “The rest he can shove up his ass.”

The door bust open and five of Gowrie’s boys came in with some pillow sacks and smiles on their faces. They looked like this was all in good play, like those Army maneuvers in the woods, and if they got shot it wouldn’t be bullets but paint.

None of ’em had turned twenty yet, including that son of a bitch Charley Booth. All of ’em, dirty and bald-headed, in heavy coats and gloves. None of ’em had shaved in days, and they stunk. How in the hell had Ditto ended up here?

Prison would be a hell of a vacation. He’d shack up with the biggest nigger in the place to get free of this shit.

Gowrie reached over the ledge of the teller’s booth, making the little girl with all that makeup jump. She put her hands up in the air, leaving hundred-dollar bills scattering to the floor. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Gowrie just laughed, fishing a Blow Pop from a candy jar and tearing off the wrapper. “Throw in all these, too. You don’t need to paint yourself up like a whore . . . And smile sometime. Son of a bitch, this old town is sad.”

Quinn had to lay
facedown on the bed to relieve the pressure on his backside. He had a pillow up under his face so he could watch the door, converse with the nice black nurse who’d come in to check on him every fifteen minutes. She wanted him to take some more pills, put him on a pain drip, but he said no thanks and asked again about his clothes.

She said they’d been thrown away.

“Even my boots?”

“Even the boots.”

He tried to close his eyes. He heard a knock on the door.

Anna Lee Stevens walked in and stood over him, then sat at the edge of the bed and looked down at the bandages on his legs and back. She touched his arm and smiled. She’d been crying.

“Luke got called,” she said. “We thought you’d died.”

“Wouldn’t have hurt as bad.”

“What happened?”

“Boom brought Hondo back.”

“Who’s Hondo?”

“My uncle’s dog,” Quinn said, smiling.

“You’re laughing?”

“Why the hell not? Beats crying.”

“And Wesley? He’s dead?”

Quinn was silent.

She moved her fingers back and forth across his forearm and just stared at him, grabbing his watch and starting to cry a bit. Quinn watched those sleepy eyes and her soft red mouth as she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.