The Broken Places (21 page)

The titty bar wasn’t nothing special, like a hundred places Esau had been in over the years, from Shreveport to Gulfport. Spinning colored lights and loud music and broke-ass girls working the pole. Most of the girls here looked young and underfed. Most of them had little tits and no asses and wore too much makeup and perfume. The whole place smelled of smoke and cherries and coconut oil. A bunch of old truckers wandered in and out of a back room, the place where they could get their pistons greased.

Dixon nodded toward another door and another room beside the bar. They wandered on over, Dixon looking like walking roadkill, face bloody and bruised, and asked a pretty girl pouring drinks if she might inform Mr. Stagg they had arrived.

“Don’t get nervous,” Bones said. “You won’t be the last preacher seen inside a whorehouse.”

“And then y’all let me go?” Jamey said.

“Ain’t for you to decide,” Bones said.

“He ain’t gonna give up nothing,” Jamey said.

The bartender had disappeared into the back room. Esau kept the gun on Jamey, holding it real close as a skinny thing in a pink bra and panties did the splits and then turned around and smacked her ass to a Skynyrd song. She didn’t even have enough meat to make it shake. Bones shook his head in shame.

The door opened and a fat guy in a cop uniform emerged. Esau started to pull the gun fast, but the guy just motioned for them to come on in. He wore a buzz cut and had one wandering eye. His badge said he was the chief of police of Jericho and his name was Leonard.

They moved down a long hall and into a curve and then the fat cop stopped them cold. “Give me that gun.”

Esau shook his head.

The fat cop, Leonard, reached for his hand like he had some kind of power, and Esau whipped him hard across the mouth, knocking his fat ass against the wall. Bones was on him, pulling a gun from the man’s waist and checking down his body and legs for more. He found a little .22 on his ankle, pocketed it, and walked on into the office.

Inside, a weathered old hillbilly in a bright red sweater had his feet kicked up on a desk. He was talking on a phone, not a cell but a real-deal old push-button phone held to his ear. When the three of them walked on in, his hooded eyes wandered over them and he said into the mouthpiece, “Let me call you back.”

Esau gripped Jamey Dixon by the neck and threw him onto the man’s carpet. The fat cop stumbled on in after them, shaking his head like there was something stuck in his ear.

No one spoke for a while.

Dixon tried to get up. Esau knocked him back down.

“You Johnny Stagg?” Esau said.

The old hillbilly nodded. His room filled with all kind of photos and certificates and six flat-screen monitors, about the size of what he used to keep at his bunk at Parchman, tuned to different spots in the truck stop and the girls dancing on poles.

“You got something that belongs to us,” Bones said.

“I got men coming in here in about thirty seconds,” Stagg said. “Y’all better talk fast or shoot faster.”

Stagg had yet to drop his feet off the desk, wearing oxblood loafers buffed to a high shine and fancy socks that didn’t suit a hillbilly at all. His eyes flicked over the television monitors and then back to Esau and Bones and Jamey Dixon bleeding on his carpet.

“Leonard, get Reverend Dixon a towel,” Stagg said. “He’s making a real mess in here.”

Stagg had a slight facial tic, not speaking, waiting all cool, feet still, hands still. The man didn’t look a bit concerned that he was holding court with a couple armed escaped convicts.

“This man made a trade to you with something wasn’t his,” Esau said. “Just when did you pull up that armored truck?”

Stagg smiled in a curious way.

“You mind me asking you first how you did it?” Stagg said. “Y’all managed to sink that son of a bitch before anyone in this county saw a thing. That old road is pretty highly traveled. I have to commend you on your incredible stealth.”

“My buddy T-boned the son of a bitch with a diesel fitted with a steel grille guard,” Esau said. “Didn’t mean to knock it into the  pond. It just kind of worked out that way.”

Stagg smiled and nodded, just sort of amused to be in their company.

“So why don’t you just open up your safe and hand over what you got,” Esau said. “It needs to be close, but we won’t count you to the penny.”

“Appreciate that, boys,” Stagg said.

His eyes roamed over the monitor, smile growing bigger, looking just like a Halloween jack-o’-lantern. Bones glanced over to the monitor and back to Stagg. “Those your boys with the shotguns?”

Esau saw the bright images from a security camera of two men in dark rain jackets holding pump shotguns heading toward the front door.

“No, sir,” Stagg said, grinning a set of teeth as big and flat as a row of tombstones. “I guess y’all geniuses didn’t notice you were being followed by a couple U.S. Marshals. See what it spells on their jackets right there? Did I mention these TVs are high-def? You can count the freckles inside a woman’s thigh.”

Esau looked to Bones. The men were coming through the door now. Another monitor showed them inside the club, yelling something. That pounding bass you could hear through the walls suddenly stopped. Now there was only the rain on the windows. Johnny Stagg recrossed his feet at the ankles and grinned at them.

He lifted up his hands in surrender and said, “Y’all boys got me now. What was it you came for again?”

Lillie Virgil lived in a little white house by the old train depot just north of Jericho. Caddy had always loved Lillie’s little house, the white clapboards covered with pink climbing roses and yellow jessamine and blood-red canna lilies that grew to huge heights in the hot summers. She had a nice wide screened porch on the side of the house and a potting shed she’d pulled together from barn wood and scrap tin. There was a composter and a big stack of antique bricks she figured Lillie was using to expand a little backyard gazebo, and white Christmas lights strewn overhead, clicking in the strong wind and rain. Caddy knocked on Lillie’s side door, her hand firmly holding Jason’s, and waited. Her car was still running. It had been two hours since she’d seen Quinn, and she still couldn’t find Jamey.

Lillie came to the back door, drying her hands. Inside the kitchen, Caddy spotted Lillie’s adopted daughter Rose sitting in a high chair, face covered in baby food. Lillie was still wearing her sheriff’s office uniform.

“Sorry, Lillie,” Caddy said. “But I could really use a favor right about now.”

“Come on,” Lillie said. “Feeding Rose some supper. Y’all want something to eat? I was heating up some peas and making some cornbread.”

“I need you to watch Jason,” Caddy said, almost in a blurt.

“Y’all come on in.”

“I can’t.”

She had pulled Jason up under her jacket, but his face and hair had gotten very wet. Lillie nodded for him to come on in, her small kitchen with a propane stove smelling warm and inviting. She had one of those antique Hoosier cabinets and a big wooden sideboard, old-fashioned advertisements hung on the wall. “I’ll be back in an hour or two,” Caddy said.

“Where’s Jean?”

“I’d rather we keep this between us.”

“You mean don’t tell Quinn,” Lillie said.

“Please.”

Lillie asked her again to please come inside, and Caddy again refused. She did not want Jason to be with her when she found Jamey. And she did not want Jason with her if she had to run into Quinn. She wanted to handle this thing on her own, and the faster she found Jamey, the sooner this could all be over. She did not want Jamey to feel like he was alone in this. She didn’t want Quinn to know any more than was necessary.

“Is Jamey coming by the office to talk to Quinn?” Lillie said.

Caddy shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t find him.”

“You know what we found today out by the Hardins’ pond?”

Caddy nodded. “I just need a little time, Lillie,” she said. “A couple hours.”

Lillie did not like the situation at all, rag held loose in her hand and baby starting to cry, but she nodded anyway. “If I don’t hear from you, you know I’ll have to call Quinn.”

“I promise, I’ll be back,” Caddy said. “You have such a beautiful home.”

“Please come on out of the rain,” Lillie said. “Let’s talk.”

Jason had already sat down at Lillie’s kitchen table. He took off his yellow raincoat and hung it neatly on the back of the chair, where he watched little Rose with a lot of interest. Rose watched him back.

“Thank you,” Caddy said. “I owe you, Lillie.”

“Please don’t get me in trouble.”

Caddy nodded. “I won’t.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

Caddy smiled for the first time since the morning service. “Believe it or not, I actually think I do.”

•   •   •

“Where’s your back door?”
Esau said.

“Figured you’d be asking about it,” Stagg said.

“Get your fucking feet off the desk and get your ass up,” Esau said. “You’re coming with us.”

Johnny Stagg shook his head like a man who’d never followed orders in his life. He just folded his hands in his lap and pointed to video screens. “Only one way in and out of the Booby Trap,” he said. “We made it that way to keep boys from jumpin’ out on their tabs.”

Bones wandered up beside Esau and pointed to Stagg’s picture frames. “You really get your picture made with Charley Pride? You see that, man? Charley Pride. Where’d you get that taken?”

“Choctaw Casino in next county down,” Stagg said, grinning wide. He stood, Esau leveling the .357 at his belly but Stagg seeming to care less. He turned and pointed to the photo like he was giving a grand tour. “He did a beautiful version of ‘The Day the World Stood Still.’”

“Charley Fucking Pride,” Bones said.

There was more yelling from the big room, and somewhere a girl screamed. Esau reached across the big desk and grabbed Johnny Stagg’s bony arm and pulled him clean on over. “Now, march, motherfucker. We’re all getting out of here alive and together. And then you’re going to be getting us our money.”

“Ain’t but one way,” Stagg said.

They headed back out in the hall. Bones had the shotgun he’d taken off Dixon’s woman trained on Dixon and on the fat police chief. They let the three men lead the way out of the back rooms, twisting the corners and coming to the big metal door that was set aside of the bar. On the other side, they could hear a hell of a commotion.

“You really a cop or just a real ugly stripper?” Bones said.

“Mister, you’ve just gone and kidnapped the chief of police of Jericho, Mississippi,” said Leonard the cop.

“Damn shame,” Bones said. “Now open the fucking door, Chief. You going out first. And watch out for their shotguns, cut through a man real quick. Don’t go fast, and don’t try to be a dumbass hero.”

The fat man was sweating as he pulled the door inward, Bones and Esau standing back of the three men. The house lights had gone up in the club, and girls were sitting buck-ass nekkid on the edge of the stage. The colored lights still twirled, and the disco ball scattered light on the ceiling. The two U.S. Marshals were waiting on them, standing between them and the door, both of them brandishing pump shotguns. One of them old and white-haired, the other a little quicker, with a drooping mustache and hard eyes. Esau and the law just never could get along. He’d never met a cop that was worth two shits, all of them nothing but grown-up titty babies.

Up above the stage, a teenage white boy with tattoos down his arms raised his hands up, scared shitless.

“How about some music?” Bones said. Esau prodded Johnny Stagg. Bones kicked Jamey Dixon square in the ass to keep him going. The fat cop had his hands up, wandering forward, not needing anyone to tell him how to dance. “I said play some fucking music,” Bones said.

Esau aimed his .357 up at the DJ and nodded.

The boy wore a sleeveless black T-shirt showing thin and bony arms. Esau wanted to just shoot him where he stood, but that would bring on those pumps and it would be a hell of a mess. They used the three men as cover and they’d walk from the Booby Trap just as pretty as you please.

“What do you want?” The white DJ’s voice sounded high like a woman’s. He was nervous as hell. The girls, black and white and Mexican, had started to huddle together and were slipping back into their bras and nighties. The air still smelling of stale smoke and cherries and cheap-ass perfume.

“Play ‘All I Have to Offer You Is Me,’” Bones said.

“What’s that?”

“Charley Pride, you dumb motherfucker,” Bones said.

“Who’s Charley Pride?” said the DJ.

“Jesus H.,” said Bones.

The Marshals had not moved an inch. Shit, Esau wasn’t sure they had even blinked. They just stood there, immobile, breathing, keeping their eyes on Esau and Bones, 12-gauges keeping them from the front door, the cool air outside, and heading on down the road with Mr. Johnny Stagg.

“I should shoot you right now,” Bones said. “‘Who is Charley Pride?’”

“You got it, Brian,” Stagg said, grinning like he was still the host of some fish fry. “Look under the country music. We play it up for the Ruritans.”

Brian. Fucking Brian went to looking and came up with the CD, smiling like he’d really accomplished something for old Johnny Stagg. “Got it,” he said. “Got it. What’s that song again?”