Mickey figured he could just get his cut of the money and leave town. He’d heard Costa Rica was nice, with the tropical drinks, monkeys, and such. A gringo could get lost down there in the jungle. Or he could stick it out, see what the law would do, while he talked more sense to Kyle. Kyle was having a case of the nerves, but he’d never give up Mickey. Kyle was the kind of man who’d run the line of Jäger shots, get buck-ass naked with some waitress in his truck, and then wake up the next morning praying to Jesus. That boy had quit drinking and quit raising hell so many times that when Kyle would start to witness to him, Mickey would just start laughing.
If he got back those papers or whatever shit the Alabama boys stole from Cobb, Kyle would mellow out and start thinking straight. Mickey needed Johnny Stagg off his ass to become a reasonable human being again.
Mickey was driving now, steering the truck with one hand and holding an open can of Bud Light with the other. It was gray and dark on the back roads of Tibbehah, winding high up in the hills beyond Fate and Providence and into the National Forest. He’d now called Tonya for the thirtieth time with no answer and was on to message number fifteen for Peewee Sparks.
If Sparks didn’t call him back by nightfall, Mickey figured he’d have to hightail it over to Gordo and do some reasoning in person. If him and his retard nephew tried to get tough, Mickey was prepared to go full-out redneck on their asses.
Mickey reached into the cardboard box for another beer, the gravel road crunching under his truck’s tires. His radio was tuned to American Family Radio, the host talking about how the current president had plans to start looting folks’ personal retirement. Sometimes Mickey figured his granddaddy had it right, take what you saved and hide it in coffee cans out in your yard.
The old logging road dovetailed into Highway 9, tires finding some solid purchase on the asphalt and zooming on down to Jericho. If he got what he needed, he could meet up with Kyle and then keep on heading south on 45 down to Mobile and then Gulf Shores. Tonya was still at the hotel, he’d bet every cent on it. If he could just see her in person, buy her a couple shots, then all would be forgiven.
He’d just lay low until this whole mess blew over. Maybe even find a way to hide some of that money down on the coast. He reached for his cell and thumbed down the number for Tonya. The phone rang and rang. He dialed up Peewee Sparks, knowing the number now by heart.
“Huh?” the man said.
“Shit, I’ve been trying to call you,” Mickey said, running off the road and then righting the truck. “God damn, where you been?”
“Asleep,” he said. “Who the hell is this?”
“You know who this is.”
“No, I don’t,” Peewee said. “I ain’t no fucking mind reader.”
“Y’all took some shit that didn’t belong to y’all.”
Click.
Son of a bitch.
Mickey hit redial and after ten rings Peewee picked up but didn’t say nothing. “Shit, it’s Mickey, man. It ain’t the law. I’m just trying to get some shit y’all weren’t supposed to take.”
Peewee didn’t say anything, but Mickey could hear the fat man breathing into the phone.
“I don’t want the jewelry or the fucking watch,” Mickey said. “Just the papers. Y’all picked up some papers that are going to cause some other folks problems.”
Silence.
“Son of a bitch, are you listening, you peckerwood motherfucker?”
A few seconds of silence. And then, “What kind of problems?”
“Bad problems,” Mickey said. “For me and Kyle, too. Nobody was supposed to see that shit.”
“Hmm.”
“I can run over to Gordo or y’all can meet me in Birmingham or Tuscaloosa,” he said. “Don’t matter to me. But we got to have it back. Understand?”
“Sure,” Peewee said, launching into a little coughing fit. “But let me ask you something. These folks who don’t like trouble. Do they got a lot of money?”
“I don’t have time for this shit.”
“Me, neither,” Peewee said, hanging up the phone.
Mickey ran off the road again, right by a big rolling pasture filled with a ton of cattle, throwing up grass and rock as he skidded to a stop. He hammered the ever-living shit out of his steering wheel and said, “Motherfucker. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
None of these bastards had a bit of honor between them. They were going to hang his ass before he’d get a chance to spend a nickel of Larry’s money.
• • •
You don’t believe someone’s out to get Cobb,” Boom Kimbrough said.
“Nope,” Quinn said.
“What did his wife say?”
“Debbi said he was tied in with some bad dudes from Jackson and the coast,” Quinn said, ashing his cigar in the tray of Boom’s old pickup. “She believes the Dixie Mafia came to kill Larry for what he knows.”
“And what does Larry know?”
“Running a lumber mill and stealing from the county till.”
“And who’d be pissed about that?”
“She believes Stagg’s tied in with it,” Quinn said. “But they chow down at the same trough.”
Boom had parked down the road from Mickey Walls’s ranch house. He’d found an old abandoned house with kudzu grown up and over the roof and a half-dozen vehicles parked nearby, the kudzu creeping over them, too. In winter, the kudzu withered and died and you could almost make out the house under all that mess. Someone had jacked up one of the old cars, left it on blocks, and stolen the wheels.
“You’re doing this for Anna Lee,” Boom said. “Make sure no one hurts the Cobbs.”
Quinn didn’t say anything. He puffed on the cigar and reached for a cup of coffee that’d he’d gotten when they met up at Dixie Gas. Boom had on his tan county coveralls, BOOM K. embroidered on the pocket. His right sleeve pinned to his shoulder.
“Then why?”
“Something I need was in that safe,” Quinn said. “I think Mickey Walls has it. And I want it back.”
“OK.”
“You’re not going to ask what it is?”
“Don’t care,” Boom said. “But I’ll help you fuck with Mickey.”
“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.”
• • •
Lillie,” 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.”