The Revelators Read online

  “Do you know a young man named Ramos?” Hector asked.

  “I know many men named Ramos.”

  “This man drives a white van,” Hector said.

  “No, no.” Rosa shrugged and shook her head.

  “He has a tattoo on the back of his neck for MS-13,” Caddy said, stepping up beside Hector and sharing the information that Quinn had passed along from the old man. Quinn telling her that he’d do all he could to track him down.

  Rosa Jurado stopped smiling. She looked to Caddy and then back to Hector Herrera. She just shook her head.

  “Rosa,” Hector said. “Por favor.”

  “My son,” Caddy said. “He and a boy named Angel took my son.”

  “Took your son where?” she asked. “In that van?”

  “They took him,” Caddy said. “Stole him.”

  “I no longer allow that man or his people to come inside,” Rosa said. “He like to scare people. He lets people borrow money from him and then he doubles what they owe. If they don’t pay, they get hurt. No. If I am here, he looks at me and runs out the door. He knows not to do his business at the Fiesta Mercado. I wish I seen him. But I have not seen that boy for a long while.”

  “Do you have children?” Caddy asked.

  Rosa didn’t answer, pulling on a pair of reading glasses, and shuffling through a handful of envelopes. Her chin had dissolved into her thick neck as she read, eyes away from Caddy and Hector. She checked through a half-dozen envelopes and then set them on the counter, eyes peering over the half-glasses.

  “They also took at least six others,” Caddy said. “Young girls. Latinas. The oldest was maybe fifteen. They were told they were going to visit their mothers who’d been arrested by ICE. But I don’t think that happened. I think they stole these kids. It’s happened before. Two years ago, two girls disappeared and were never found.”

  “I will ask,” Rosa Jurado said. “OK? But I want no trouble with that man. Or his people up in Memphis. They know who is illegal. They know these people have nowhere to turn or no one to trust. They will take your money. They will take your children. These are men without heart or honor. They are at his mercy.”

  “I’m scared as hell, Rosa,” Caddy said, reaching across the counter and touching the woman’s forearm. “I threw up three times this morning. Please help me.”

  “I pray for you, Caddy Colson,” she said. “For you, your son, and those girls. I pray they are found.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Quinn and Boom pulled up in front of Vienna’s Place not long before noon, four hours or so before she’d be opening for happy hour and two-for-one lap dances, according to the sign outside. But Fannie Hathcock’s Lexus was parked nearby, along with a few other cars, and Quinn figured she’d be inside, up in her roost, high lights on as her minions detoxed and swabbed down the vinyl furniture and brass poles. The big metal door wasn’t even locked as they headed on into the club, not seeing Fannie but instead spotting Nat Wilkins behind the bar, looking up at them both as she unloaded a box of whiskey bottles. “We’re closed,” she said. “Didn’t y’all see the sign?”

  “We saw the sign,” Boom said. “Came for some personal business with Fannie.”

  “Personal business,” Nat said, acting like she’d never seen either of them in her whole life. Or that she and Boom had grown friendly and intimate two years back when he found out he was trucking drugs for the Syndicate and tried to help Nat bring them down. “What do you want?”

  “That’s between us and Fannie,” Boom said. “Reason it’s called personal.”

  Nat gave the slightest of grins, wearing a small and tight pink Vienna’s Place T-shirt with a retro pinup girl in a bikini. Quinn couldn’t imagine how a federal agent felt pulling that shirt on every day and having to head on down to Tibbehah County to pour drinks and make small talk with lonely truckers and skeevy businessmen passing through. Nat had her afro full out today, big and wild, looking like a kick-ass black woman from a 1970s B-movie, Nat Wilkins in Undercover Mama. Quinn didn’t look at her again, passing by the bar and heading up the spiral staircase in the faint red glow of the overhead lights.

  “Hold up,” Nat said, calling out. “Fannie ain’t in yet.”

  Quinn bounded up the steps anyway and quickly found Fannie seated behind the kidney-shaped glass desk, speaking with two young women in short shorts and tank tops. One of them had on a pair of baby blue flip-flops clasped with a plastic daisy. They looked like they were in a hard, come-to-Jesus meeting with the youth pastor.

  “Didn’t you hear?” Fannie said. “I’m not in yet.”

  “I heard.”

  “But you bust in anyway?” Fannie asked. “Ladies. Give me a second. I think the sheriff here has some personal business with Miss Fannie. Go on and get your pay out from Nat. But if either one of you don’t show up tonight, don’t you ever darken my fucking door again. I may be charitable but I’m not damn stupid.”

  “Yes, Miss Fannie,” both of the girls said in unison.

  Quinn wandered in as they brushed past, both short and blonde, spray-tanned, and smelling like strawberry perfume. One of the girls grinned up at Quinn as if he might sometime soon be a potential customer.

  “Aren’t you gonna remove your cap?” Fannie said. “I heard that about you. Quinn Colson sure is a Southern gentleman, won’t ever catch him indoors with a hat on his head. Whether it’s down at the Fillin’ Station diner or at Sunday service.”

  “I need a favor, Fannie.”

  Fannie’s face split in a big wide smile, eyes lighting up, shoulders rounded and squeezing her large breasts together, a ruby pendant rocking between them. She leaned into the desk and bit the corner of her lip. “Goody goody,” she said. “I’ve wondered how long that might take.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “You from around here?” Nat Wilkins asked Boom.

  Boom leaned his back against the bar, elbows on the cool marble, looking in the opposite direction toward the empty DJ stand. Two Hispanic women were cleaning chairs and sofas near the main stage, one running a vacuum, the other wiping down the seats with disinfectant spray. Boom figured Vienna’s must smell like a damn zoo by the end of the night.

  “All my life.”

  “What do you do?” she asked.

  “Drive trucks when I can,” Boom said, afraid to turn back to Nat. Afraid like hell someone would see the familiarity that would pass between them. “Fix shit.”

  “What kind of shit do you fix?” Nat asked.

  “All kind of shit,” he said. “Mainly engines on trucks. County vehicles and the like. I like to tinker. Play around with things.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Nat said. “Is that right?”

  Boom couldn’t see her, but more felt her working behind him. He’d missed Nat like hell. They’d gone through so much together, working to bring down Wes Taggart and J. B. Hood, both of them now dead and long gone.

  “Dr Pepper?” Nat asked.

  Boom turned around and leaned his left hand on the bar, his prosthetic draped against his leg. He nodded and Nat poured from a spray nozzle, eyes locked and intense. Boom tried to read what she was telling him, looking more bored than scared, setting down a napkin and the drink. “That’ll be ten dollars,” she said.

  “You got to be kidding.”

  “We don’t offer discounts to veterans,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “How’d you know I was a veteran?”

  “Lucky guess,” she said. “Unless you lost that arm jerking your monkey.”

  Boom couldn’t stop himself from grinning, reaching into his pants and setting down a twenty on the bar. He picked up the cold Dr Pepper and took a sip, eyes wandering up to the catwalk and the office of Fannie Hathcock. He could see two shadows behind the plate glass and he wondered how far Quinn was getting.

  He�
��d told Quinn coming here was a big mistake. A terrible idea. And now standing here, not two feet from Nat Wilkins, he was scared their presence would bring some heat and attention she didn’t need.

  There weren’t a lot of women like Nat Wilkins. Sometimes he missed her so bad it hurt.

  She set down his change and turned her back to him.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Come on, now,” Donnie said, hands raised in the center of the parking lot. Heat radiating up off the busted asphalt in South Memphis. “Nothing’s going on here. Just hanging out. Ain’t no law about hanging with your pals and eating some pizzas. Did you know they have a whole damn roller coaster there? A roller coaster. Inside.”

  The cop was black, a little younger than Donnie, and a few inches shorter. He was clean-shaven and wearing mirrored sunglasses, muscled and compact, with a small round belly. Man didn’t look like he saw any humor at all in the situation.

  “Y’all got something good in that trunk?” the cop asked.

  “No, sir,” Donnie said. “Not really. Just some leftovers from my little girl’s birthday party. She ate so much of that chocolate pizza it about made her puke.”

  “Where she at?” the cop said.

  “Oh,” Donnie said. “She’s inside with her momma. Me and her are divorced, but we try and make a good thing from a bad situation. Long, sad story. Enough for a half-dozen country songs. Appreciate you stopping by. We sure do feel safer with you boys in blue patrolling the streets.”

  “You mind if I take a look?” the cop asked.

  Donnie exchanged glances with Akeem and Rerun. The cocky smiles both dropped as the cop headed toward them, his patrol car still running in the heat of the day. Donnie having half a mind to jump inside the vehicle and head on back to Tibbehah County. He sure as hell didn’t need to be caught right here with his pants down and pecker out in front of the Amazing Pizza Factory.

  “You boys work with UPS?” the cop said, pulling out the uniform, giving it a once-over and then tossing it back inside the trunk. “Because if you don’t, I may need to check up on things. You know you can’t have someone roll on up to that facility and fill their damn truck with whatever shit’s in the warehouse. Happened last year. Hold on, now. Let me call this in.”

  The cop stepped away. Donnie looked to Akeem, who had his hands in his pockets. The son of a bitch shrugged. Shrugged! Like it wasn’t any big deal some Memphis cop was riding their ass and might fuck the whole damn show.

  “Come on now, Officer,” Donnie said. He raised his hands. “Maybe we can all come to some kind of agreement. I bet my friend here can get you vouchers for your whole damn family. You have kids? Hell, bring your whole family. Aunties, grandmommas, all them. They can eat pizzas till they damn well bust.”

  “Like your little girl?” that smart-ass cop said. “The one inside with your baby momma?”

  “Just like her,” Donnie said. “Her name is Tammy. Little Tammy Jo. She’s only six, but holy hell, how that little girl can put that pizza away.”

  “Hands on the vehicle.”

  “Shit.”

  “I said, hands on the vehicle.”

  Donnie closed his eyes and shook his head. All of this. From FCI Beaumont back to Tibbehah County and now arrested in a pizza palace parking lot. “Son of a damn bitch.”

  As he let out all his breath and finally laid his hands flat on Akeem Triplett’s electric green ride, all of them started laughing. At first it was Rerun’s fat ass, then Akeem, and then the fucking cop. The fucking cop laughing harder than anyone, doubling over and cackling, having to run back to his car, bent over and doing a little circle, until coming back and slapping hands with the other two men.

  Donnie Varner now felt like the kid at the back of the short bus, taking his hands off that hot car and turning to the three of them.

  “Tyrell?” Donnie asked.

  The cop winked at him and offered his hand. “I can get y’all in,” he said. “But getting out’s gonna be y’all’s own damn business.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Ramos?” Fannie said. “Never heard of him.”

  “He drives for you sometimes,” Quinn said. “He trucks over the talent from Houston. You may not know his name. Drives an older white van, sometimes hauls girls from Skid Bucket up to Memphis.”

  “Skid Bucket?” Fannie said, laughing, tapping her long red nails on her cell phone screen. “Is that somewhere near Dogpatch? Place where Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae knock boots?”

  “Ramos and his partner, a kid named Angel, picked up a bunch of kids from behind Tibbehah High yesterday,” Quinn said. “One of the kids was my nephew Jason. I’m asking you to tell me how to find him. I don’t want any trouble or need to know how you’re connected. I just need you to tell me how I can get to him.”

  “Ramos?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “I don’t know anyone named Ramos,” she said. “I don’t hire too much Taco Talent at Vienna’s Place besides the ladies who clean my toilets. I prefer good old American USDA prime cuts. White or black or brown doesn’t much matter to me. Titties are titties. Big, saggy, or itty-bitty. Do you have any idea how many girls around here can’t wait to turn eighteen and hop on my brass pole? I don’t have to recruit my goddamn talent from Texas or down in Mexico or anywhere else. No, sir. Miss Fannie does it on the level and legal and if you know anyone says different, bring them straight to me.”

  “How’s Dana Ray doing?” Quinn asked. His mouth felt dry, his right hand opening and closing at his side.

  “I fired that little piece of country trash,” Fannie said. “Wasn’t nothing but trouble to me. She and that short little peckerhead Bradley Wayne. Did you know he went back to Parchman this summer? Got caught over in Grenada robbing a gas station Subway. How goddamn stupid was that? You really think a Subway keeps a few hundred in the till?”

  Quinn didn’t answer. Both he and Fannie knew why he’d asked about the woman who called Quinn out to an ambush. Fannie only tilted her head, turning back and forth in her swivel chair, closing one eye. Flirting and fucking with him at the same damn time. He didn’t have the patience for either.

  “Just need some direction,” Quinn said. “This is family.”

  “Kinda funny you coming to me for help,” she said. “After all I heard you been saying about me in town. Tramp, criminal, and even an attempted killer. You told plenty of folks I was the one who set you up out on Perfect Circle Road.”

  Quinn didn’t answer. He crossed his arms over his chest. He took a deep breath and waited. For Jason, he could take about anything from that woman. Quinn nodded, controlling his breathing, trying to stay still and direct.

  “Don’t blame me for all your problems, Quinn Colson,” Fannie said. “Between us, I’d start checking the want ads in the Tibbehah Monitor. You might could find a little part-time work to pay for that growing family of yours.”

  “Ramos,” Quinn said. “White van.”

  Fannie ran her tongue over her teeth, nostrils flaring. “Never heard of him, doll,” she said. “Sorry you had to sully your reputation by walking through my fucking doors.”

  Quinn turned to leave. “Don’t say I never gave you a chance.”

  “For what?” Fannie said, laughing. “Fucking myself? No thanks. Good luck finding that kid. Wish I could help.”

  Quinn walked out from Fannie’s glass office and down the spiral staircase to the main floor. Boom pushed himself off the bar and headed toward him, Nat Wilkins nowhere to be seen. They walked out of Vienna’s together from the dark haze of reddish light into the blinding sun of the parking lot.

  Quinn got in the truck. Boom saddled up in the passenger seat.

  “She didn’t say shit,” Boom said.

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t figure she would.”

  “I had t
o try.”

  Boom nodded and Quinn started the truck, heading on back toward Jericho. Quinn tried Caddy but didn’t get an answer. He waited a few minutes and tried again. Nothing.

  He and Boom hit the Square, circling the gazebo and veterans’ memorial shaded by the old oaks. They passed the old movie theater, Western wear shop, and fluff and fold laundry. Quinn took another turn around the Square, contemplating heading back to the house until they got some news.

  The cell buzzed and Quinn picked it up.

  “He called,” Caddy said, out of breath. “Jason called. He’s free and safe. God, Quinn. These people wanted to sell those girls and tried to kill my son.”

  16

  It was twilight when Donnie drove up to Miss Jean’s house, sliding out of his daddy’s gold GTO and marching up the driveway. Boom stopped him right there and then, the Colson family not needing Donnie Varner’s particular brand of crazy tonight. They’d been through too much all night and most of the day until Caddy got that call from Jason. The kid had broken free of those boys he was with and found a ride down to Byhalia, where he called his momma to come and get him.

  “Byhalia?” Donnie said. “What the hell’s Jason doing up in Byhalia?”

  “Obviously you ain’t been tuning in, man,” Boom said. “Jason ran off with some Mexican kids yesterday after school. He was looking out for his little girlfriend and thought they were all headed to Louisiana where her momma was being held.”

  “Damn,” Donnie said. “I sure wish Caddy had called me.”

  “She did,” Boom said. “ ’Bout fifteen times.”

  “That girl’s momma one of those chicken gutters?”

  “Yep,” Boom said, smoothing down his long black beard while eyeing Donnie to gauge the man’s sincerity. “Jason’s got too much of his momma in him. Trying to help folks out even when he know it’s gonna come back on his young ass.”

  “Where’s Caddy?”

  “Where you think?” Boom said. “Rode up to Byhalia with Quinn. I’m sitting here with Miss Jean until they get back. You know what Miss Jean does to Caddy when she gets nervous. Figured it best that she waited here.”