The Lost Ones (9 page)

“Since college.”

“You married?”

Her face colored. Her eyes roamed over Quinn’s smiling face. She looked up at the brick wall of a framed photo of his squad at the Haditha Dam. A photo of him and Uncle Hamp with a prize buck. A small school picture of Jason on his desk. There was always that beat of surprise when people saw Jason, because they saw the resemblance but also noted his color. Sometimes it was racism, often just surprise, not sure of how to ask if they were kin.

“Are you?” she asked, widening her eyes.

“Nope.”

“Ever?”

“Never.”

“Who’s the child, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“My nephew.”

She tilted her head to the side and nodded.

“I came to see Mara Black,” Brand said. “Can you set that up?”

“I can.”

“Will you.”

Quinn nodded and stood.

Brand stood and smoothed down her skirt. She reached for her purse as Quinn walked to the door and opened it wide. They shook hands. She smelled very nice close up, just a little perfume to draw you in and then cut your ass to pieces.

“You think you might stick around Jericho after you’re done?” he said.

“I suppose you’ll have questions.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn said. “Lots. Maybe I could buy you lunch.”

“I’d like that.”

“SO YOU BUY HER LUNCH?”
Boom asked.

“Bought her a hot dog at the Sonic.”

“Bullshit,” Boom said. “You took her to the Sonic?”

“Fillin’ Station.”

“That place just as bad.”

“They do a mean blue plate,” Quinn said. “Special was meat loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans for five bucks. Sweet tea and corn bread.”

“You been in the Army too long,” Boom said. “Eatin’ MREs and shit on a shingle. Anything tastes good to you. She say she like it, she just bein’ nice.”

“Maybe so.”

“She really look that good?”

“She did.”

“Red hair and freckles. Nice body?”

“Yep.”

“You think she really a redhead?” Boom said, grinning a little.

“Didn’t get that far,” Quinn said. “We were talking about Mexican drug gangs.”

“You gonna try?”

“Kept her card.”

Quinn had picked up Boom at his shotgun shack out toward Drivers Flat. The house wasn’t much, just a ramshackle tin-roofed job built by his great-grandfather, one of the original black landowners in the county, but it was surrounded by five hundred acres of cotton. The cotton would be ready for the gin in a few weeks, and Boom would work the tractor till every plant was harvested, splitting his cut with his father and eight brothers and sisters. By the time it was all divided, he barely had enough to live.

“Come out to my church Sunday and I’ll get you fed,” Boom said.

“Or you could come to my mom’s house and get some, too. Without the three-hour service.”

“White churches got an eye on the clock the whole time,” Boom said. “Your mom can cook, though.”

“How about tonight?”

“What’s for dinner?”

“Does it matter?”

Boom shook his head. “Where you taking me now?”

“Got a proposition for you.”

“I ain’t into that kinda shit, Quinn.”

“Business proposition.”

“OK.”

They cut up off Highway 9 through more acres of cotton in the little bit of flat land that there was in Tibbehah County and up over the Black River bridge, afternoon light gold and thick on the sandbars and dying leaves. The sluggish water moved under extended limbs of fat oaks and on past a rusting collection of junked cars piled ten high in Mr. Hill’s pull-a-part junkyard. Quinn drove a mile or so east past the VFW Hall and turned south into some land that the county still owned. A sign reading county barn, with arrows hand-painted on scrap wood, showed the way a good half mile down a twisting dirt path. The truck bucked up and down off the potholes, Quinn straddling over a dead raccoon surrounded by vultures. The carrion eaters kicked up onto a cedar tree until they passed.

“You ain’t takin’ me to no goddamn intervention,” Boom said, “are you? Bring my family out and my preacher and my tenth-grade teacher cryin’ and all that. I like to get fucked up. OK? I ain’t no crackhead. Me and you just got a little lit last week, you don’t see me callin’ up Miss Jean and your uncles to come out and lay hands on you and all that mess.”

Quinn didn’t answer him, just slowed on the dirt path and turned up toward a big sheet-metal barn with two old gas pumps out front. A school bus with flat tires and three old sheriff’s cruisers up on blocks sat in a weedy parking lot. A light fall wind brushed over the tops of the weeds, the whole space still and quiet. Someone had built a fire pit in front of the school bus, the ground littered with liquor bottles and cigarette butts.

“How much you payin’ to clean this shit up?” Boom said.

“I’ll get some folks to help,” Quinn said. “But I need someone to run this place.”

“Run what? This place is fucked up.”

“Used to be the maintenance shed for all the county vehicles,” Quinn said. “I’m going to the Board of Supervisors next week to get them to open it back up. We’d save a ton of money buying our own fuel and servicing our own vehicles. I got three years of receipts to prove it.”

“What’s this got to do with me?”

Quinn kept walking into the open bay door of the old barn. Inside, the barn was deep-shadowed and colder. The wind kicked up the grit and dirt at the mouth’s edge, and you had to adjust your eyes to see in the deep corners. Chains hung from engine hoists, and large old metal barrels stood filled to the rim with filthy oil. Over an old workbench, someone had left a
Playboy
calendar from 1987, and the pages fluttered over sun-faded images of naked women. Boom walked to the bench and picked up a few tools with his good hand.

“Need me a mechanic.”

Boom laughed.

“I’m serious,” Quinn said. “I met a guy at Camp Phoenix who had a prosthetic hand with fitted spaces for ratchets and screwdrivers. He said once he got used to it, he could work the same as before. You know, the VA has to pay for that.”

“I don’t want no goddamn Edward Scissorhands. This won’t work.”

“So you just want to keep pissin’ away your Guard check on shit whiskey and busting heads at the juke?”

“Maybe I like bustin’ heads.”

“What’s that pay?”

“Jack shit.”

“You want to keep bullshittin’ or do you want to get to work?”

“I don’t need no fucking charity.”

“Ain’t charity, Boom,” Quinn said. “It’s good ole-fashioned cronyism.”

Boom nodded. He picked up a wrench in his good hand. The wind jangled the loose chains hanging from the ceiling. The oil stains splattered on the concrete floor were thick with fine gray dirt and leaves. Boom stayed in thought, standing there, chains turning.

“You scared it just might work out?” Quinn said.

Boom stayed silent for a moment, and then said, “Your truck does need work. You shoulda kept that Dodge Big Ram Stagg tried to give you.”

“I keep hearin’ that,” Quinn said. “Can you do anything with that old Ford?”

“Nope. But I know where you can get a better one cheap. F-250. Put on a roll bar and a winch. Paint it myself. How’s Army green sound?”

Quinn walked up to his friend and offered his left hand.

Boom took it.

12

JOHNNY STAGG DROVE NORTH TO OXFORD SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND
then west into the Delta, not talking much, only playing his easy-listening music, humming along to Pat Boone and Don Ho, as they crossed into the flat land of the Delta to a hunt club where they’d meet his people. Stagg never said names, not that Donnie had asked. He just talked about these people with a lot of respect and admiration. Stagg was like that, thinking that men who were whoremongers, gun dealers, and drug pushers could be admirable because it brought them nice clothes and big houses and hunt clubs in the Delta. Stagg didn’t have a conscience, believing a man’s wallet is all that separated him from others. A preacher might disagree, Stagg said, but in the end, money is what gets respect.

“What’s in this for you, Johnny?” Donnie asked.

“All I want is a finder’s fee,” Stagg said. “How’s forty percent sound?”

“Twenty sounds better.”

“Let’s say thirty, ’cause if not, it’s just chickenshit and not worth the time.”

“Thirty,” Donnie said. “But Johnny, just give me your word that you won’t cornhole me. You do, and I swear I’ll come for you in the middle of the night.”

Stagg smiled and kept on steering his big Cadillac as if he was steering a ship, cutting north on Highway 316 through Jonestown. The ragged old place looked like something out of a western movie except it was all black; the whole town made of clapboard and brick, broken windows, and ragged trailers. Rangy old black men in dirty T-shirts wandered out onto the stoop of a pool hall as they passed, holding cues and cheap whiskey bottles, eyeing Johnny Stagg’s El Dorado sailing through to Highway 61. Don Ho sang “My Little Grass Shack,” Johnny reaching down every few moments to grab a plastic cup full of ice and bourbon. His brand-new car reeked of cigarettes and cheap perfume.

“This land looks like somethin’ outta the Old Testament,” Stagg said, more to himself than anyone.

Cotton fields stretched in endless acres on each side of the highway. The sun was half gone over the river, coloring the billboards sending them on to the casinos on Tunica where big rewards take big risks. Fat women and old blacks held big checks and grinned stupidly.

Stagg went up off the highway on Dog Bog Road like they were headed up toward the Mississippi River and Friars Point but slowed when they hit a big stretch of fenced land. He turned at an open cattle gate, driving maybe a mile up through the property, through acres flooded for duck hunting and a big forest perfect for getting all likkered up and shooting some deer and turkey.

“Don’t get smart,” Stagg said.

“Why start now? Got me this far, hadn’t it?”

“Answer the man’s questions,” Stagg said. “But don’t put on no show. He just wants to make sure you ain’t a Fed. They’ll probably pat you down and ask you about your service. I think it’s the service part that spooks ’em. You gettin’ one check from Uncle Sam already.”

“Maybe I need to ask them some questions, too,” Donnie said. “I ain’t handin’ over a hunnard thousand dollars in good faith. Unless you’re gonna tell me we’re meeting Jesus Christ himself.”

Stagg ignored him, slamming the car door and slipping into a pressed suit coat he’d kept on a wire hanger. He popped a piece of Juicy Fruit in his mouth and ran a pocket comb through that dyed black hair. They walked together, strolling down the pebble footpath to the biggest log cabin Donnie had ever seen, with thick stone chimneys and a shiny green metal roof. Smoke pouring from one of the chimneys smelled pleasantly of red oak.

“Let me talk,” Scagg said.

“What if they ask me the damn questions?”

“You can answer,” Stagg said. “But do it with respect.”

Stagg knocked on the front door, and when nobody came to it, he opened her up anyway and stepped into a wide flagstone hall decorated with all kinds of dead animals who’d never set foot in the Delta. There was a zebra and a yak, a polar bear, and even a goddamn elephant. The thick planked walls looked to Donnie like the inside of a barn, with everything set up in the wide open. There was a kitchen, and a space in the back with a pool table and a bar and a couple leather couches facing a flat-screen television turned to some kind of nature show with crazy-ass people in cages poking sticks at sharks.

A man was asleep on one of the couches but stirred when they came up on him. He wore khaki pants and a red golf shirt. He’d kicked his tasseled loafers off, and he had old-man half-glasses on a string around his neck. When he saw Johnny, he got to his feet and nodded, pulling out an old-school Zippo and firing one up. He was an average-sized guy, not fat but not in shape either, with small brown eyes and a large forehead from a receding hairline. He was real tan, like rich men always were, and wore a thick gold bracelet on his hairy wrist that jangled in the light when he lit the smoke. Donnie figured he was somewhere in his fifties. His golf shirt said ole miss alumni association, but, damn if he didn’t need to shave his face and neck.

Stagg shook his hand and smiled and smiled.

Donnie stepped beside him and said, “You’re Bobby Campo.”

“This him?”

Stagg nodded.

His small eyes roamed all over Donnie’s face.

“You want a drink?”

“I’ll take a little toddy,” Stagg said.

“Cold beer,” Donnie said.

“I like that suit, Johnny,” Campo said. “You get a deal at the funeral home?”

“My wife bought this for me last Christmas,” Stagg said. “It’s made in America.”

“I’m just having a good time, Johnny,” Campo said. “Don’t get your dick in a twist.”

Stagg swallowed and looked out a large bay window while Campo walked back behind the bar and set a glass of ice and a bottle of Jack on the counter. He cracked open some kind of fancy beer brewed in small batches and handed it to Donnie. Donnie took it and lit a cigarette, figuring if Campo smoked, there wasn’t any harm. He drank some beer and studied all the animals looking down at him with those glass eyes. “You kill all these?”

“What’s that?”

“You kill all these animals?”

“Shit no.”

“Ain’t this a hunt club?” Donnie asked.

“It’s a fucking clubhouse,” Campo said. “I shoot some deer and ducks and all that. I bought all that other shit.”

“That seems kinda fuckin’ stupid,” Donnie said. “That’s like me putting up some all-state trophies in my gun shop that I never won.”

Campo looked to Stagg. Stagg’s face was coloring a good bit. Donnie smiled as he watched the older man suck down a good half of the bourbon. Campo started to laugh and clasped his hand on Stagg’s shoulder. He laughed until his eyes got a little teary. “If this kid is a federal agent, I’ll cut off my own dick.”