The Ranger Read online

  “We get the state people in and we’re fucked, Johnny,” Campo said, drinking a cup of coffee in a back booth and working on a Denver omelet. “You see that? Right?”

  Campo was a Memphis boy but had gone to Ole Miss with several folks that Johnny knew down in Jackson. That’s how they’d become buddies. When Johnny wanted to get into the skin trade a few years back, Campo was the man who showed him the ropes and got a decent cut of the old Booby Trap, sending dancers down from Memphis and up from New Orleans. And when Stagg needed some support for a development no one had faith in, Campo produced miracles.

  Bobby Campo was old Memphis, came from money, had it his whole life, and had made a lot more of it in the eighties with swingers clubs and later in the nineties with 900 numbers. Campo always dressed like a rich boy, pleated slacks and wild-colored dress shirts without ties. Today, he wore black suede loafers with gold buckles.

  He’d been in and out of federal prison since Stagg had known him, most recently after pleading guilty to having live sex acts onstage at one of his clubs. He called it the price of doing business. But you’d still see him in the company of politicians and CEOs on fall Saturdays down in the Grove at Ole Miss, eating fried chicken off a china plate and drinking bourbon from a silver flask. Campo sent a lot of money to Jackson. He made a lot of important friends. If the development took off, Stagg already had a certificate for a regional hospital. Those things only happen with handshakes and winks with sharp men. Campo had handed him that gold key.

  “So, what the hell?” Campo asked.

  “Gowrie got robbed,” Johnny said. “Five of them labs got busted up.”

  “New sheriff?”

  Stagg shook his head. “Got into some kind of pissing contest with a local boy.”

  “Can you stop it?”

  “Nope,” Johnny Stagg said, pointing to a waitress and asking her for some ice water. “I seen Gowrie this morning, and that local boy done stuck an arrow through him.”

  “An arrow?” Campo asked. “You shitting me?”

  “I think we all need to step back and reevaluate this partnership.”

  “You got a dead sheriff, and a dead whore found by a couple kids,” Campo said, fingering his ear. “Now you got people playing cowboy and Indian up all around your county and you aren’t at all worried about another couple murders? How long until you got troopers and DEA types crawling all over you?”

  “I’m walking away.”

  “You made a deal with us,” Campo said, shaking his head. “You don’t just up and quit.”

  “Since when does Gowrie work for me? I never made a nickel off that circus freak.”

  “He didn’t show up at Dixie Belles last night,” Campo said. “You know how much money that is?”

  “That’s between y’all,” Stagg said, leaning in to whisper.

  “Figured maybe you two wanted to cut us out.”

  “That’s a damn lie,” Stagg said.

  “You gonna eat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Why’d you make me drive all this way? I got a family. Obligations.”

  “Last time Gowrie got out of line, you had the sheriff make some threats.”

  “The sheriff ain’t around no more.”

  Traffic on Union skipped along outside the little diner, its big windows crammed with folks with heavy coats and whiskey breath. A homeless man sat in a chair by the bathroom and asked people who passed for a quarter. He shifted some change in his hands and punched up an old Al Green song on the jukebox.

  “Where’d you find Gowrie anyway?” Johnny asked.

  “Some boys in prison connected me to some folks.”

  “You always do business with the AB?”

  “Gowrie came recommended. He’s got friends.”

  “I don’t care for them folks,” Stagg said. “They’ve been wiping their asses with our county, treating it like a toilet.”

  Campo shrugged, and played with a gold ring with diamonds arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. “Johnny, I know you got ambition, and that means you sometimes have to work with people you don’t like.”

  “Gowrie’s the problem,” Johnny Stagg said. “You said it yourself.”

  “He’s your problem,” Campo said. “You shut him down and find the money he owes me.”

  “Why am I left holding a bag of flaming shit?” Stagg said, still whispering as he stood up from the booth. “What you done for me was in exchange for protection in my county, letting things get done that you needed. I never wanted a piece of all this mess.”

  “Are you gonna eat or what?”

  Johnny Stagg took a breath, feeling like he’d been sucker punched, all the wind gone from his lungs. “Naw,” he said. “I guess I’m not hungry.”

  “Get Gowrie,” Campo said. “Find my goddamn money.”

  Johnny Stagg sat in his Cadillac for a long time, thinking about all that cash he’d seen in Brother Davis’s church, wondering just what Gowrie had planned for it, and why in the hell he’d ever joined up with Bobby Campo and this goddamn invisible confederacy of crooks.

  “You always clean your guns before supper?” Lillie asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Old habits.”

  “Yep.”

  “Your momma was looking for you.”

  “She didn’t call.”

  “Yes, she did,” Lillie said, handing him his cell. “This was in your truck.”

  Quinn had set up his iPod and minispeaker on the old kitchen table, Loretta Lynn singing “Van Lear Rose.” He’d carried that iPod from Fallujah to Kabul, and parts in between, providing company over the drone of that C—130, beaten and scarred but still holding a nice little jukebox. A little piece of home in foreign lands while he cleaned guns and waited. There was always the damn waiting.

  “Any sign of Hondo?” Lillie asked.

  Quinn shook his head. “Mr. Varner came out with a bulldozer and buried the cows. Said he hadn’t seen him, either. If a dog’s been shot, it’d crawl as far as it could get and die.”

  “He’s okay.”

  “He guarded the house.”

  “I think that dog has taken a shine to you,” Lillie said.

  “If he comes back, you want him?”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I can’t exactly bring him back to base with me.”

  Quinn sprayed some oil onto a rag and worked over the stock of the .308, and opened the breech with a hard snick. He reloaded and snapped shut the lever.

  “They’ll make another run at you,” Lillie said. “You can bet on that. Wesley called in some troopers for help.”

  “I don’t hear sirens.”

  “Your uncle made a lot of enemies in Jackson,” she said. “Wasn’t any secret they weren’t welcome here.”

  “Just why is that?”

  “He was stubborn,” Lillie said. “You ever remember troopers hangin’ out in Tibbehah besides on 45?”

  “Something happened this morning,” Quinn said, laying down the gun and reaching for the .45, popping out the slide. “I had a little chat with Gowrie.”

  “I know,” Lillie said. “Wesley about shit a brick.”

  “I bet.”

  “How’d that chat go?”

  “Gowrie was pretty open to the idea,” Quinn said. “Of course he denied killing my uncle.”

  “What’d you expect?”

  Quinn shook his head, the iPod shuffled onto Johnny Cash, playing “Daddy Sang Bass,” low, while he fed bullets into the magazine of his .45 and tucked it into his Western belt. “He did admit to working with Stagg, but he said Hamp did, too.”

  “That’s a nasty lie, coming from a shitbag like that.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Quinn said. “But I’m not leaving till this is sorted out.”

  “You gonna go AWOL.”

  “If I have to.”

  “Is this worth screwing up your whole career?”

  “Yep.”

&n
bsp; Lillie walked in close and slow and grabbed his arm, making him look at her. “I’m not leaving tonight,” she said. “Wesley said that was fine by him. Boom’s outside, standing watch by those trees. He said he’d stay out there all night if you’d bring him some whiskey.”

  Quinn didn’t say anything, George Jones now sliding onto his digital mix, George telling them to step on up and take the Grand Tour of his empty house. He blinked, and Lillie moved in close and hugged him tight, rubbing his back. Quinn finding it awkward to hold her with the .45 and setting it on the table.

  “Judge Blanton and my uncle were in that development project with Stagg,” Quinn said, letting out a long breath. “Stagg wanted to run me out so he’d control a parcel of land he needed to connect it to the highway. Blanton lied to me about it. He’s no different from all of ’em.”

  Quinn could feel Lillie breathing next to him as he wrapped his arm around her small waist. “You know you got friends, right?”

  “Sure wish I knew where that old dog went.”

  They brought the boy back, bloody and busted up, and tossed him into the headlights of Gowrie’s Camaro at the base of the ravine. Daddy Gowrie and two of the boys had fetched Shackelford up somewhere in Tennessee and drove him back to camp, knowing that Gowrie had figured him for the snitch. Lena had heard that it didn’t take but a few phone calls to place him with Quinn Colson and some deputy up in Eupora. She’d even heard it might’ve been his own brother that sold him out for fifty dollars. A fifty-dollar bill looked as big as a bedspread right now to Lena, but she didn’t think she could sell out any of her kin for a paycheck.

  She was feeding her baby girl when she heard the ruckus and didn’t have any choice but to stay in the trailer, with the heat and light, away from the screaming and yelling and all those fists and feet coming down on that poor boy’s body. She had a piece of curtain cocked off the window, nothing but an old towel, but she could watch without fear of Gowrie seeing her, making her witness to that evil he was doing. But maybe he didn’t care. He didn’t seem to have any room for remorse in that shit-stained soul.

  Ditto and Charley Booth completed the ring, but she could tell it was only Charley that found some enjoyment in the beating, all them acting like a bunch of wild dogs on a runt. Charley getting his kicks in and then stepping back like he was afraid he might get bit. But this was all in the game, the way that she’d learned Gowrie would bring a wayward boy back into the group. You beat him and humiliated him and then they’d be drinking beer and listening to their heavy metal by midnight.

  Or that’s what Charley Booth had said over supper.

  She dropped the curtain and turned her head.

  They was gonna kill him. Ditto knew it just as soon as he’d heard they were bringing back Keith Shackelford from somewhere over the state line. The dumbass had headed over to see an old girlfriend—that same girlfriend being an ex of Gowrie’s—and it didn’t take a half day to roust him up and drop him in a heap down by Hell Creek. And that’s when the beating started, Ditto trying to disagree with all that, it being contrary to his nature, but his voice was so brittle and young that no one even turned their head when he spoke, just elbowed his ass out of the way as everyone wanted to get a piece of the man who’d fucked up the whole operation.

  He figured he could get a gun, maybe fire some shots in the air like they do in old movies, but then he could see them guns turning back on him and him lying down in the same ditch as this unfortunate soul. He kept thinking that maybe they’d take it easier on Shackelford if the boy looked halfway human, but he had a face made of poured rubber and no hair and looked something like a creature that would live down in the center of the earth, coming up at night to catch some air and maybe howl at the moon. A man could beat on someone pretty severe who didn’t seem real.

  Ditto ’bout lost his lunch when he heard them bones breaking and caught a splatter of blood in his eye.

  “Let’s go.”

  Lena let out a cry when she saw Ditto standing over her, his face all flecked with blood and flesh.

  “You cain’t stay around here,” he said. “Get the baby and y’all’s things.”

  Lena considered Ditto’s upturned nose and pudgy face, thick waist and short legs. But she saw something else in him, a real conviction of what he was saying, Get on out before Gowrie does the same to you. And, hell, he didn’t need to say it. Lena had felt it since the first time she’d laid eyes on Gowrie.

  “Where will we go?” she asked.

  “Somewheres else.”

  “He’ll find us.”

  “I ain’t as stupid as Keith Shackelford.”

  She shook her head and walked the trailer, the thin floor creaking up under her, not having much faith in Ditto but picking up the baby’s things anyway—not much besides what they gave her in a care pack at the hospital and some ragtag used clothes gathered up for them both by Gowrie’s women. She stopped, holding some plastic grocery bags, and just looked at Ditto. “Where are my shoes?”

  He got down to his knees and started patting around, reaching up under the blanket and covers, just as the baby started to cry. Lena picked up the little girl, soothing her head, the baby smelling clean and warm and good, while asking her to please be quiet, please be quiet. “Did Gowrie see me?”

  Ditto looked confused.

  “In the window? I didn’t see nothin’. I swear on it.”

  He shook his head.

  “Is he dead?”

  “He’s in the car. Messed up to shit. Gowrie took things out on him with a whipping chain and a baseball bat. Everyone thinks he’s dead, they were good and drunk when I told them I’d get rid of what they done.”

  “You ain’t got no car. We can’t leave. Why did you say that? You gonna get us all killed.”

  “Hell yes, I got a car, girl.” He pulled back the towel from the window, revealing the image of the black Camaro surrounded by burning oil drums. Ditto flipped the keys around his fingers. “Figured if he’s gonna be pissed, might as well go all the way.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Didn’t figure on you sayin’ good-bye to Charley. He’s with all them down in Daddy’s trailer.”

  Lena held the baby against her shoulder, the cries becoming softer, breaking into slow breaths, small whimpers, until they soothed her. Ditto carried the grocery bags in one hand and held Lena’s hand with the other.

  He started the car, those dual pipes on that black Camaro purring and throttling. “Ain’t she a wet dream.”

  “Don’t forget to put her in gear.”

  Holding the baby in the passenger seat, Lena turned to find the mass of Shackelford under a blanket, a bloody hand falling loose against the floor, but she saw him take an easy, soft breath and heard a ragged cough. When he turned to her, uncovering his face from the blanket, Lena nearly shit her drawers. “Where’s that damn Ranger?” he asked in a cracked voice. “Goddamn. Y’all better find his ass.”

  29

  Gowrie was there the next morning as promised, meeting Johnny Stagg in the back room of the Rebel Truck Stop with a lazy little smirk, a bad kid done wrong. And Johnny decided not to take him to task, this was going to be a straight business proposition, serving up a solid offer to make sure Gowrie knew it was time to shut down things for a while, roll on out of town, and head back up north to Ohio or Michigan or wherever the boy was raised. But there was blood all over him. Jesus, Johnny didn’t figure on seeing that.

  Gowrie noticed him looking. “I was painting.”

  “Didn’t expect you before sunrise,” Stagg said.

  “I was up.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Just some shit. What do you want?”

  The room was filled with all kinds of busted-up video games. Johnny made a fortune out of them before kids started hookin’ up to their TVs and carrying games around in their back pockets. Most of them were broken, but sometimes he’d pull out a Ms. Pac-Man or an old shoot-’em-up and let the girls over at the Booby Trap h
ave a go when things got slow. You never saw a competition in your life like a contest between women who were on the skids. He’d seen pretty hair pulled and death threats issued.

  “Why don’t you throw all this shit away?” Gowrie asked.

  “Campo’s been trying to find you. He thinks you’re duckin’ him and we’ve cut him out.”

  Gowrie didn’t say anything, sliding out of his leather jacket real gingerly, favoring a bad shoulder, and slunk down into an old Turbo driving game. He played with the shifter, the screen just as black and dead as you please, and thumped at the wheel.

  “You owe him some money.”

  “He’ll get his money,” Gowrie said, spinning the wheel to the right and then hard to the left, downshifting and back up. “This thing work?”

  “We’re gonna have to shut down for a while,” Stagg said. “And you’re gonna have to pay him what’s owed.”

  “That’s what you said,” Gowrie said. “You ever think about my shit?”

  Gowrie got up, favoring his left arm, and passed within an inch of Stagg’s nose, looking at him hard, jail dog kind of stuff, and reached for the cord, searching for a place to plug in the game, juice her up. Gowrie’s scent reminded Stagg of a feral animal. “Ah, hell.”

  “It ain’t forever.”

  “You scared of that little Italian?”

  “Do you know what kind of people Bobby Campo works for? They’re blaming me.”

  “And how come this shit storm is flying ’round my head?” Gowrie asked, smiling. He found an outlet, plugged her up, and the game started to hum and chatter, loading. “That man wears shoes like you’d buy for a woman. Talks about his momma like she was the Mother Mary herself.”

  “I said Campo blames me,” Stagg said. “How come he’s got that idea? He’s thinkin’ I get a cut.”