The Redeemers (27 page)

“You don’t like him.”

“Shit,” Boom said. “Hell, nah. He’s a fat, cocky little racist. You?”

“I have no feelings about Mickey Walls,” Quinn said, rolling the window down more. “But I’m not leaving Jericho until I make things right.”

“For you?” Boom said. “Or is this about Stagg?”

“This shit’s gone on too damn long.”

Boom nodded. A few years ago, he’d walked with Quinn into a nest of white supremacists who’d camped up by Hell Creek. He’d never asked any questions then, either. Boom had just taken up a big .44 and waded right into the thick of the fighting. They’d been Stagg’s people, but Stagg had walked right on out of the cannon fire without a mark.

“Whose house was this?” Quinn said.

“Benny Malone’s.”

“The bootlegger?”

“Yeah,” Boom said.

“What happened to him?”

“He fucking died, man,” Boom said. “Time didn’t stop when you left.”

“I keep on hearing that.”

“But you gonna make up for it,” Boom said. “Make things right.”

“Before I leave.”

“But you’ll come back?”

“That’s the plan,” Quinn said. “Got to make some money. Wherever that might take me. Anna Lee’s mother accused me today of being unemployed.”

The roof of Benny Malone’s house had fallen in, the windows busted out and the front door completely gone, leaving a black hole in the vegetation that resembled an open mouth. Quinn ashed his cigar again, studying its band. A small white car zipped past on the road, followed by a blue Chevy truck. Neither one of them Mickey Walls. Walls’s big red Hummer wasn’t too hard to spot.

“She never liked you,” Boom said.

“She didn’t think much of what I offered her daughter.”

“Her momma just don’t get it.”

“Nope.”

“You gonna make that right, too?”

“Anna Lee?”

“Yeah,” Boom said. “Her and her kid.”

“I’m gonna try.”

•   •   •

L
illie,” Kyle Hazlewood said. “I swear to God, I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t move those Jaws of Life last night?” Lillie said. “Maybe just to help someone out on something? We just need a little help, Kyle.”

“I talked to Eddie Fudge,” Kyle said. “I know you’re trying to pull me into that thing that happened to Larry Cobb. Shit, Lillie, how long you and me knowed each other?”

“As long as I can recall,” Lillie said. “You used to run with my brother, raise hell down in Columbus.”

“Have I ever been arrested except for a couple DUIs and some drug shit when I was a kid?”

“No, sir,” Lillie said, looking over her shoulder to Rusty Wise and then back to Kyle. “Not that I know about.” They all sat together in the barren sheriff’s office, as they’d sat earlier with Mickey Walls. Lillie had found Kyle sitting on his front porch, wrapped in a big horse blanket and smoking a cigarette. He looked cold, but was agreeable about coming in and talking. He almost seemed resigned to it, like he had been waiting on Lillie as she drove up in her county vehicle.

“You know me,” he said. “Shit. Didn’t those folks shoot Kenny? I worked fifteen years with Ken Senior. I was a pallbearer at his service. I cried as much as Kenny. What that family went through in that shitstorm. God help them. His mother was picked up like a rag doll and tossed a half mile away. Didn’t she get impaled by a goddamn two-by-four?”

“Just because you let somebody borrow a tool doesn’t mean you used it,” Rusty Wise said. Lillie had instructed Wise to be the calm, patient one. Not exactly the good cop, but the understanding one. The guy who tried to talk sense and be rational. Lillie would do her best to work Kyle over. It wasn’t hard for her. Busting their balls just came naturally.

“I didn’t touch them things,” Kyle said. “I did not borrow them. I had no cause to be at the firehouse. We didn’t have a single call since Christmas.”

“What happened on Christmas?” Lillie asked.

“Demetrius Clark set fire to his old lady’s Kia,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lillie said. “Wasn’t Demetrius’s finest hour. She was his ride to work.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“She was fucking ole Shane Gardner,” Lillie said.

“Bull?”

“Yep.”

“That’s one big ugly son of a bitch,” Kyle said. “Demetrius better watch his ass.”

“Folks can do stupid shit when they get mad,” Rusty said, thumping the top of his Copenhagen can. “If they’d just take a minute to think things over, their life might have gone a different way.”

“Rusty,” Kyle said. “Y’all ain’t listening to me. I didn’t bust into Larry Cobb’s house. Y’all can check my house and look for all that goddamn cash. I look like I’m swimming in it?”

Lillie had been looking at the linoleum as he spoke, but her head jerked up at that last part. “Who said anything about cash, Kyle?”

“Y’all did.”

“No, sir,” Rusty said. “We never said word one of why we brought you in. We were just asking about property that belonged to the Tibbehah County Volunteer Fire.”

“Come on, now,” Kyle said. “Shit. Everyone in town knows Larry got about a million bucks taken from him. You think that’s secret? What else would a man keep in his safe?”

“Guns, jewelry,” Lillie said. “Nekkid pictures of his wife.”

“I don’t have none of that,” Kyle said. “Hadn’t seen none of that. Besides me working for the fire department, donating my time and sweat to help folks out, why do you think I’m a part of this mess? You want to give me one reason?”

Lillie lifted her eyes to Rusty. Rusty picked up a Styrofoam cup and spit in it, giving himself a dramatic little pause, looking Kyle over. Kyle did look rough as hell this morning. His thin beard was as gray as an old dog, but his longish hair—too long for a man his age—still had some brown in it. The whiskers not matching what was on top. The same way the puka shells on his neck, and the slick, worn motorcycle jacket, just didn’t seem right with his bony, worn-out frame.

“You and Larry Cobb have a falling-out last month?” Rusty said. “Something about some dozerwork out on his land?”

“Yes, sir,” Kyle said. “That’s correct.”

“And Larry wouldn’t pay you?” Lillie said.

“He never was gonna pay me,” Kyle said. “That’s Cobb’s way. He found something to criticize and make a point of so he wouldn’t have to write a check. He’s the cheapest son of a bitch I ever met in my life.”

“Did it piss you off?” Lillie said.

“Hell, yes, it pissed me off.”

“And you threatened to get back at him?” Rusty said.

Kyle’s face flushed a high red. He nodded, flexing his jaw muscles. “That’s right,” Kyle said. “I told him that I was gonna whip his ass. This all being on the telephone. But I hadn’t seen him since. I told him to keep out of my goddamn way. But you know what? If I’d seen him, I would have whipped his ass. I’d of done it, straight-up and man-to-man. I ain’t into none of this sneaking around, breaking and entering. I got a problem with you and we work out that shit together.”

Lillie swallowed. Rusty spit again, that seeming to be his best interrogation talent. Lillie got up and came around the desk, looking down at Kyle Hazlewood. The man looked dirty, worn-out. Black dirt under his fingernails and smelling like a damn ashtray. He didn’t look like a man who got a good rest last night. Kyle looked bone-tired.

“Anyone see you last night?”

“My dogs.”

“Besides your dogs.”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m a working man. You think I’m out drinking whiskey and shooting guns on New Year’s?”

“You got a girlfriend?”

“I did,” Kyle said. “But there ain’t no reason to bring her into this mess. She’s already pissed-off at me as it is. I think she’s dating the goddamn meat manager at the Piggly Wiggly. Said I never took her nowhere.”

“Mickey Walls knows how to treat a lady,” Lillie said. “He took Tonya Cobb down to the Flora-Bama last night. Drove all the way home this morning just to tend to some business. That is something.”

“That’s ole Mick.”

“He tell you about it?” Lillie said.

“Mickey?”

Lillie nodded. Kyle shook his head and looked at the floor.

“Y’all haven’t talked in a while, huh?”

Kyle shook his head, pulling out his pack of cigarettes from his red racing jacket, signaling it was time for him to be getting on. “Nah,” Kyle said. “Me and him been really busy. Didn’t know he and Tonya were back together. Good for them.”

Lillie looked to Rusty and Rusty grinned a little before spitting in the cup again. He wiped his chin.

“You’re right, Kyle, we have known each other a long while,” Lillie said. “So I guess I should take you at your word you weren’t at the firehouse last night. And that you and Mickey weren’t hanging out at the Huddle House or the Sonic last week, either.”

Kyle didn’t say a word. Lillie shrugged and looked to Rusty Wise.

“Some of this just isn’t adding up for me,” Rusty said. “Can we come at it again? Start off real slow.”

24.

H
e’s going to break,” Mickey Walls said to Peewee Sparks. Both of them having a serious man-to-man conversation in the back of Peewee’s
ROLL TIDE
conversion van, parked at a McDonald’s on U.S. Highway 82, right outside Columbus, Mississippi. “Doesn’t even want to lawyer up first.”

“They don’t know nothing.”

“Kyle thinks the sheriff knows that me and him been planning something,” Mickey said. “They know he took that contraption from the firehouse yesterday to break into the safe. He’s been sitting in the sheriff’s office for the last two hours.”

“So what if you and him been talking,” Peewee said. “How the hell they gonna know what was said unless the dumb son of a bitch told them?”

“I don’t know what he said.”

“Even if they know y’all talked, what’s it matter?” Peewee said. “Aren’t y’all buddies and shit? I mean, god damn. That ain’t nothing. What I want to know is, where is the fucking money?”

“Put up and buried deep.”

“Good,” Peewee said. “Good.”

“What I need to know is, where are those books?” Mickey said. “If I don’t have enough troubles with Kyle and my goddamn crazy-ass ex-wife, I got some bad dudes wanting to skin my ass alive. I don’t have time for that shit.”

“No kidding,” Peewee said, talking to Mickey from the captain’s chair, swiveling to and fro as they spoke. The man up in the high seat, in charge, and kind of bemused by the situation Mickey found himself in. Thank the Lord he didn’t involve his dumb-ass nephew into this. But he sure as hell brought him along. He told the kid to go on in the McDonald’s and get himself a double cheeseburger and fries and that they’d be done in a minute. “What’s wrong with your ex?”

“I kind of left her down at the beach without any money and without a vehicle,” Mickey said. “She was drunk and thought we were about to get into some romantic sex and all. And then I left after y’all couldn’t get the safe out of the house. She finally answered my call after I’d called her about fifteen thousand times. She told me I might as well go fuck myself because that was the only action I’d be getting for a long while.”

“She good-looking?” Peewee said, grinning. Licking his lips. He wore an old navy hoodie sweatshirt, a T-shirt with Bear Bryant’s face popping out from the center, the hatted head prominent on Peewee’s big expanding belly.

“Where are the fucking books, man?” Mickey said. “I don’t need any shit. I was straight with y’all and want y’all to be straight with me.”

“Is she good-looking?”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“Just trying to get a visual,” Peewee said. “Get her in my mind while you tell the story. What’s wrong with that?”

Mickey swallowed, trying to slow down the blood pounding in his head right now. He was getting a fucking migraine right behind his left eye. He ground the heel of his hand into the socket and said, “She’s blonde.”

“Big tits?”

“Yep.”

“Double D’s?”

“C cup,” Mickey said. “How many women you know with double D’s?”

“What else?”

“She’s tan.”

“Tan all over?”

“Yes,” Mickey said. “Even her ass crack is tan. Brown as a nut. Now, where the hell are those fucking books so we can separate? I ain’t gonna lie to you. Things are not looking good. I want both of y’all to lay low and get off the grid.
Comprende?
Me and you ain’t never talked.”

“Me and the boy’s headed down to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl,” Peewee said, zipping up the hoodie, covering a good bit of the Bear’s face but leaving the famous hat exposed. “So don’t you worry a bit about us. We long gone, bud.”

The interior of the van was the same houndstooth pattern as the Bear’s hat, the exterior painted a Crimson Tide red, with the faces of Alabama football greats airbrushed on the side. These boys were card-carrying morons. But they were Mickey’s morons and he hoped to hell they had more sand than Kyle Hazlewood. Kyle had turned into a true, authentic disappointment.

“All right,” Peewee said. “We’re here. Let’s talk about what this shit is worth to you.”

“What’s it worth?” Mickey said, raising his voice a good bit. “Your boy stole it from us.”

“How’s that?” Peewee said. “Who took what? What belongs to which one of us? Ain’t none of this real clear in my head, Mr. Walls.”

“How much?”

“Well,” Peewee said. “I guess it boils down to that fact. You know, I was doing some thinking.”

“Of course you were,” Mickey said.

Just then, the sliding door to the van ripped open, giving Mickey’s heart a start. But it was only Chase Clanton hopping up into the van with a big bottle wrapped in brown paper. “To hell with a cheeseburger,” he said. “There’s a liquor store next door. Didn’t check my ID or nothin’. Come on, boys. Time to celebrate. I got us some Rebel Yell.”

•   •   •

Y
’all hungry?” Luther Varner said, working behind the register at his convenience store. “I made extra sausage biscuits for today. Peaches fried some chicken. I can get her to make some up fresh, too. Where you been? Hunting?”

“Just riding,” Quinn said. “Killing time before supper tonight.”

Quinn and Boom had just walked in from the cold, in their heavy jackets and boots, after waiting until dark for Mickey Walls to show at his house and then driving over to the carpet-and-flooring shop when he didn’t. After he’d gotten the call from Varner, they’d left the shop and headed up north on 9. The glass case at the Quick Mart was filled with tamales, chicken, greens, green beans, hush puppies, and fries. Tonight, his mom was making those collards, black-eyed peas, and cornbread. He couldn’t disappoint her.