The Forsaken (9 page)

B
efore Jason had left for L.A. the first time, he’d seen this corny biker movie at the old Jericho Drive-In, promising
Brutal Violence Turned On by Hot Chicks and Burning Rubber
. Maybe that’s all he really needed to know about the Born Losers MC, although there’d been a lot of talk since he rode with them about brotherhood, respect, and being the kind of men who would not and could not conform to society. Chains LeDoux had gotten pretty ripped at Shiloh the night before, standing on the silent battleground and telling them all they were the sons of Confederates, Vikings, and the goddamn Knights of the Round Table, punching clocks and paying taxes were for the weak, the emasculated, the deadbeats. He then smoked down a joint, passed it on to Big Doug, and started into a karate kata that ended with a kick to the moon and a rebel yell.

Now, they’d been riding all day, most of it through foothills of Tennessee, and then down through the streets of Memphis and finally catching up with 78, where all of them were hungover, hungry, and getting a little worn in the saddle. Chains wanted to stop off at a little barbecue joint in Olive Branch run by a fellow Marine—Chains had been in ’Nam. The ex-Marine sometimes rode with the club and always gave out big plates of ribs, beans, and coleslaw when they got to town.

Jason just wanted to get home, check in with that sweet Jean Beckett, already calling her from a pay phone in Adamsville, and spend some more time with his dad and brothers before he’d load his bikes onto his truck trailer and head west. There was a new film shooting in a few months, again with Needham and Reynolds. A picture that promised to make stuntmen the real heroes. Needham wanted to jump a rocket car over a river.

The thirteen bikers plus Jason parked out front and used the toilets, the owner coming out and hugging the boys. Big Doug introduced Jason as a bad-ass potential member, saying he’d never met a crazier son of a bitch in his life. A Born Loser, if there’d ever been one, Jason learning “Loser” really meant an outcast from society.

“Big Doug don’t say that ’bout anybody,” the man said. “You want slaw and beans with them ribs?”

“Sure.”

“Beers in the Coca-Cola cooler in the kitchen,” he said. “Help yourself.”

“Being with the club got perks,” Big Doug said, “don’t it?”

Jason nodded and made his way to a big circular table in the center of the room, a couple waitresses in white-and-red ringer T-shirts already laying down plates and handing out cans of beer and glasses of sweet tea for the boys. One of the other riders, that fella named Hank but called Pig Pen, took a seat across from him, the other bikers becoming friendlier and more open on the ride. He had wispy long red hair and a scraggly beard. Dirt up under his fingernails.

Chains LeDoux still couldn’t even acknowledge Jason’s presence. Chains had found a tree stump to sit on in his chaps and leather vest and smoke a joint, looking out at the cars going back and forth on the highway.

“Your ass hurt as much as mine?” Jason asked.

“Probably more,” Stillwell said. “You get a chopper and the ride is smoother, just lay back, let the bike just take you where it wants to go.”

“We know each other,” Jason said. “Before the other night, when you almost stabbed me with that fork? Don’t we?”

“I think you used to date my youngest sister.”

“Don’t say . . .”

“You remember her?”

“What was her name?”

“Darlene.”

“Darlene what?”

“You dated more than one Darlene?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Jason said, grinning, a plate of ribs sliding in front of him. A cold Coors laid down at his elbow by the pit owner. “I can think of six just in Jericho.”

“Darlene Stillwell.”

“Hell yes, I know Darlene Stillwell,” Jason said. “Sang in the choir. Twirled a baton that was on fire. Nicest girl you’ll ever meet.”

“She got married,” Stillwell said. “Got two boys. She’s a teller at the bank. They say she got management potential.”

The men ate hunched over the plates, manners tossed aside, teeth on bone, wiping sauce on their bare chests and Levi’s. Some of the boys started to throw rib bones at one another’s heads. Nobody seemed to mind until Chains walked in and swept up a waitress in his arms and squeezed her ass, asking if she wanted to go for a nice long ride. The woman slapped his face and Chains just laughed, drinking more beer, some spilling down his beard, as he strutted over to the window of the restaurant. All the laughing and the jackassing and the cussing and eating slipping off when they heard the rumble of more bikes coming from the highway, Chains stood still at the window, not grinning about the waitress anymore but watching the parking lot, pulling a .38 from the back of his leather pants, telling everyone to get off their asses. “God damn, here they come,” he said. “Ain’t that somethin’?”

“Who?” Jason said, standing up. Hank looking like he’d just swallowed a big stone. “Who’s coming?”

“Goddamn Outlaws,” Stillwell said. “They claim this part of Mississippi.
They warned the owner here that if he served us again, they’d burn the place to the fucking ground.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Can you fight?” Stillwell asked.

“Yep.”

“Shoot?”

“You bet.”

“All right, then, come on,” Stillwell said, joining up with all the boys in their leather and denim and man stink and testosterone. A couple had guns tucked in the waistbands of their wide belts; no shirts over their big furry-ape chests, and long beards. Jason the only one of them without a patched jacket. Big Doug stood up front with Chains, holding a two-foot-long section of metal pipe in his right hand and palming it into his left.

There were twenty Outlaws, just as hairy and ugly and big. The only way to tell the difference was by their leather vests and the big red-eyed skull and crossbone pistons. Memphis was an Outlaws town, and the Born Losers weren’t but about fifteen miles from it.

“You jokers want to ride on into here, flying your colors, like it ain’t no thing,” said a big gray-haired bastard. “May not be nothing to you, but it’s a big goddamn thing to me.”

Chains looked to the man standing opposite to him, spit on the ground, and grabbed himself between the legs. “Suck it, motherfucker.”

“Is that it?” the man said. “That’s what you got? ’Cause I’m tired of talking shit with you, LeDoux. Let’s take it back to the goddamn cowboy days.”

Big Doug stepped up between the men and pushed the Outlaw guy square in the chest, knocking him back a few feet, and then every single goddamn Outlaw looked for a Born Loser skull to crack. There just wasn’t any time for Jason to explain he had never really formally joined a damn thing, had just decided to ride along as a gag, on a dare. But a fight is a fight, and there had always been something in Jason Colson that made him love fighting in a real
and authentic way. He grabbed the first son of a bitch he saw and punched him hard in the mouth, feeling good to really connect to some teeth, none of this fake throwing shit anymore, knocking the dude on the ground and looking for more. There were grunts, blows, kicking, and yelling and swearing, and then some blood spilled on the pavement at the barbecue joint. Somewhere, a dog on a chain was going crazy, wanting to get into the mess, and the hot summer wind had changed, blowing woodsmoke down through the brawl, making eyes water and the whole wild scene seem like something out of a crazy dream. It was
Brutal Violence Turned On by Hot Chicks and Burning Rubber
, only there weren’t any hot chicks besides the two big-bottomed waitresses in red short shorts and tight ringer tees, screaming at them to either stop or beat some more ass.

Some Outlaw bastard had a big handful of Jason’s hair and was trying to run his ass straight into a long line of Born Losers’ bikes, but Jason rolled away from him, sweeping his legs out and then getting on top of the ugly man, punching him right in the ugly face, busting the man’s lip and nose and reaching for his long greasy hair to slam his head on the pavement.

Somebody reached for him, Jason realizing it was two more Outlaws, one of them with a long metal chain that he fitted around Jason’s neck and pulled, dragging him away from the bleeding man. Somewhere, someone fired a pistol. Someone yelled.

Jason could not breathe, thinking, God damn, this is how it all ends. You jump out of a helicopter, free-fall from a skyscraper, and plan to jump a car over a river, only to get your ass taken out by some redneck mad you ate his barbecue.

Jason was on his knees, trying for air and not succeeding a bit with the chain on his throat, when he heard a thwack and plunk and the pressure was gone, Jason rolling to his back, choking in long swallows of air. Big Doug appeared over him with the pipe, dripping with blood, and offered him a big meaty paw to get back to his feet and get on with it.

There was another shot, another cracking pistol. The women screamed,
and the barbecue joint owner was in the middle of them all, blasting off his shotgun, but not a damn thing stopped until they all heard those sirens coming off Highway 78, the men backing away, the kicking and punching slowing down, until they were still, Outlaw and Born Loser alike crawling back on their choppers, giving one another the bird and tailing on out of the parking lot. Jason’s heart was jumping so bad in his chest, after not feeling that kind of worry for a good long while, that he nearly missed the fella laid out cold in the parking lot, a halo of blood spreading around the body and head.

One of the big-bottomed waitresses was screaming like hell, holding the Outlaw’s head in her lap, waiting for the law and medical help, and for the chaos to ride on down the road.

It wasn’t a mile away that the fists of the bikers raised in the sky, high off handlebars, bikes crisscrossing and bikers high-fiving, on the back highways to Jericho.

Y
ou notice anything strange about that report in your hand, Sheriff?” Lillie said.

“The paper feels strange,” Quinn said, looking up from the stack of files on the desk. “Onionskin. Pretty damn thin.”

“And the report itself?”

“Real thin.”

Lillie nodded. She sat down with Quinn in the SO conference room, not much to the room but a long row of file cabinets, a couple grease boards, and the coffee machine. There were old plaques on the wall for honors given to his late uncle by the state and a brand-new calendar from the Jericho National Bank. It was one of those big old-fashioned ones of bird dogs hunting through the brush, men in quilted coats raising guns to flying quail. The whole thing old-time wishful thinking, as the quail had died off decades ago, either from an influx of the coyotes or the invention of the bush hog, taking out their natural habitat.

Lillie set down a sack from the Sonic. “Saw you working when I left,” Lillie said. “I got you a cheeseburger and fries. Everything on it.”

“Reason I made you my chief deputy.”

“Not because I had the most law enforcement experience?”

“I figured we needed to boost your self-confidence,” Quinn said, reaching into the sack and getting the burger and fries, “since that’s in such short supply with you.”

Quinn already had a big cup of black coffee going on the desk. He didn’t bother keeping track of how many cups he drank in a day. If Mary Alice wouldn’t complain, he’d have a La Gloria Cubana going, too. Which he did, on occasion, when a window and fan were handy.

“After I came back from Memphis, your uncle wanted to go on and purge these files,” Lillie said. “He always said he wanted to have a bonfire party on your land and clear the decks.”

“He say why?”

“Officially?” Lillie asked. “He said the cases were closed and we needed the space.”

“Unofficially?”

“He was a servant of the people and said there were a great many things in his file cabinet that would embarrass some fine folks and good families.”

“Bless their hearts.”

“Funny how you and Sheriff Beckett were related,” Lillie said, stealing a French fry from the carton. “You could give a rat’s ass about what people think. Or fine families and such.”

“I don’t care what they think,” Quinn said. “But I do like to know how they might vote.”

“Something happen?”

He told her about being at Mr. Jim’s barbershop and Jay Bartlett being such a horse’s ass.

“Jay Bartlett is a horse’s ass,” Lillie said. “A sorry little prick. He hadn’t said two words to me in the last five years. He’s been listening to rumors about me, too. He thinks that maybe I’m helping spread immorality and liberal ideas throughout Tibbehah County.”

“Isn’t that how you get your kicks?” Quinn said.

“Wouldn’t you love to know,” Lillie said. She placed her big combat
boots on the edge of the desk and leaned back a bit. She had on her slick green sheriff’s office jacket, hair in a ponytail and threaded through a ball cap with the insignia of Tibbehah County on it. “Now,” she said, letting the front legs down on the chair and shifting her eyes down her stack of papers, “what’s wrong with what you got?”

“I got nothing,” Quinn said.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there is the incident report with an interview with Diane Tull and a half-dozen people who saw them at the carnival that night,” he said. “There were a couple half-assed and illiterate reports to follow about talking to people who lived out on Jericho Road near the old Fisher property and heard shots but didn’t see a goddamn thing.”

“Right.”

“And an autopsy report.”

“And what else?”

“Nothing.”

“No follow-up reports, nothing filed with the state, no interview with local informants? You know your uncle always had a set of CIs on the payroll?”

“OK,” Quinn said. “So it was half-assed and poorly done. Nobody ever said this sheriff’s department was progressive. My uncle once tried to keep law and order. But he never thought of himself as an investigator.”

“Stuff was taken out,” she said. “That’s not all that happened. Even if it was half-assed, there’d be twice as much here, just as routine.”

Lillie took off her cap and placed it on the table, got up, and set her SO coat on the rack. She sat back down with Quinn and ate another few fries, thinking on things, and then took his last bite of cheeseburger. She thought some more as she ate. “Funny thing is how little people have talked about all this. What exactly did Diane Tull tell you?”

“Pretty much what she told my uncle in 1977.”

“And nothing more?”

“What else could she say?” Quinn said. “How about you spell it out to me, Lillie Virgil?”

“OK, Sheriff.” Lillie nodded, mind made up, and walked over to a long row of dented and scratched file cabinets. Using a key from her pocket, she opened one in the center, two drawers down, and pulled out an old manila folder, shut and bound with an old piece of string. “Call me when you get done reading this.”

She slid the file far across the table to Quinn and he immediately wiped his hands on a napkin and opened it up. Stapled reports, autopsy files, several black-and-white photos that brought to mind many images of the hills of Afghanistan and burned-out homes in Iraq. He could recall the horrid smell of charred bodies. “Jesus.”

“You bet,” Lillie said. “They found this goddamn crispy critter on Jericho Road about three days after Diane Tull was raped and Lori Stillwell was murdered. You think nobody in this office thought about a connection?”

“Who is it?”

“A man,” Lillie said. “A black man. That’s about all anyone knows about him. You can read about all there is in the report, but it looks like Sheriff Beckett didn’t so much as lift the phone to find out who he was, why he was here, or what happened to him. Seems like your uncle pretty much knew this all was a done deal.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Like I said, call me when you’re done,” Lillie said. “I think it’s about time you had a come-to-Jesus with Diane Tull and find out exactly why she’s getting this thing opened far and wide. And if someone tells me this is about God’s will, I’ll punch ’em in the mouth. God may be strange and mysterious, but this didn’t come out of nowhere.”

•   •   •

Stagg met
Craig Houston
out on his two-thousand-acre spread out in the county, a good portion of Tibbehah that he’d controlled for decades,
including what used to be a World War II airfield and some old hangars and barracks. Before and since the storm, Stagg had his crew out paving back over the tarmac, propping up those old Quonset huts and adding a few more, building up some cinder-block bunkers and then laying out miles and miles of chain-link fencing to keep the nosy out of his business. Stagg had told everyone he was working on his own hunt lodge, the airfield just part of his land, bringing in drinking buddies from Memphis and Jackson. “You like it?” Johnny Stagg said.

“All this shit yours?” asked Houston. “The fucking land? This whole damn compound?”

Stagg grinned and nodded. He stood against his maroon Cadillac, chewing on a toothpick, taking in the possibilities of his own little valley. A cold wind whisking down through the valley and across their faces.

“God damn, man. You ain’t no joke. From here, we do what the fuck we want.”

You didn’t have to tell Houston much about how it would all work, the smart kid in the bright blue satin warm-up stood next to his bright white Escalade just smiling. He talked about their partnership, now a friendship, and how an airfield would get those Burrito Eaters off his back. Those Burrito Eaters now calling the shots from below the border in a town some had never even visited.

“Don’t need no trucks coming in from Texas,” Houston said. “Don’t need no shit from New Orleans. We call it. Deal direct.”

“And you can make it happen?” Stagg said. “You lived with those people down there for how long? Learned their practices and their ways?”

“Four years,” Houston said. “They call my black ass Speedy Gonzales. Understand honor, respect, and that you shoot a motherfucker who don’t. Shit, I didn’t graduate fifth grade and now speak Spanish without no accent. Don’t believe me? How ’bout we go down to the Mex place in Jericho and listen to me talk some shit beyond the chimichangas.”

“Good,” Stagg said. “Good.”

“Who else knows about what you got?”

Stagg shook his head. The bright January wind was a damn knife cutting through that valley, rows and rows of old oaks and second-growth pines, and across the tarmac to where he stood with the black kingpin of Memphis. They both had come by themselves, Stagg leaving Ringold back at the Rebel and Houston leaving his people down in Olive Branch, where he ran things from the back of an all-you-can-eat soul food joint and Chinese buffet.

“When we start?” Houston asked.

“No sense in waiting,” Stagg said. “You say the word, Mr. Houston.”

“They ain’t gonna like this,” Houston said. “There’s a lot of business gonna just be left hanging out there. Ain’t like canceling your subscription to fucking
Playboy
. People gonna want answers. And if they get them, they gonna come for me and for you, Mr. Stagg.”

“Let ’em come,” Stagg said. “Like I said, those cartel folks been down here before. They know Tibbehah County ain’t open to free trade.”

“You ain’t like the other Dixie Mafia folks I knew.”

“There ain’t no Dixie Mafia, son,” Stagg said.

“But you part of that crew?” Houston said. “All those motherfuckers from around Corinth and down in Biloxi. That’s your world.”

“Dixie Mafia is something the damn Feds made up to cornhole us,” Stagg said. “All those men I used to know, most of ’em dead or in prison, didn’t do business unless we wanted. We don’t have no blood oaths and hierarchy and all that Hollywood shit.”

“But the old crooks?” Houston said. “They wouldn’t been caught dead with no black kid from Orange Mound. You know that?”

“The South ain’t the same,” Stagg said. “Get that shit straight. I ain’t never thought I’d have to worry about crazy-ass Mexicans coming up from Guadalajara with a chain saw, wanting to tell me how to run my business in Tibbehah.”

“They killed eight of my people last year,” Houston said. “One of ’em was my half brother.”

Stagg nodded.

“Don’t need ’em,” Houston said. “Once you cut off the money, they gone.”

“You bet,” Stagg said, swiveling the toothpick in his mouth. “People come before me never saw a challenge coming. You got to think about the future every day of your goddamn life in this business, son. If you don’t, you gonna wake up with a gun in your mouth or a cock up your ass.”

“Damn, old man,” Houston said. “That’s hard shit.”

“The plain ole gospel truth.”

Houston walked across the weeds to the end of the airstrip, the concrete poured as smooth and straight as a griddle. He looked to the rolling Mississippi hills that protected each side of them, the open doors to the empty buildings, and the red wind sock, blowing straight and hard, at the other end of the runway. The morning sun was bright and wide across the valley.

Houston offered Stagg his hand.

•   •   •

“We need
to talk,”
Diane Tull said.

“OK,” Caddy said.

“Not here,” Diane said. “In private.”

Diane had found Caddy Colson unloading canned goods and fresh vegetables from the back of her old blue Ford pickup. She was stocking the storerooms in a barn that doubled as a church, a place called The River, which served the poor and downtrodden of Greater Jericho and Tibbehah County. Caddy was being helped by Boom Kimbrough, a hell of a strong man even with one arm. He hoisted big boxes and unwieldy gallons of milk up in his one massive arm and supported it all with a prosthetic hook.

Caddy looked to Boom, Boom pretending he hadn’t heard any of the conversation, but he walked away with a flat of canned baked beans. “Come on,” Caddy said. “We can go on inside the sanctuary. All right?”

Diane nodded and followed through the big open barn doors, still strange as hell to her to call an old livestock barn, painted red with a sloping metal roof, a church. The outreach and ministry of the late Jamey Dixon. Diane knew how much Caddy had loved Dixon, worshipped and believed in him, and believed that her turnaround as a human being came through meeting him and forging her belief in a Christ who forgave prostitutes and tax collectors. And who was Diane to judge, Caddy did certainly seem like a changed person.

She was fresh-scrubbed in Levi’s and shit-kicker boots, a long sweatshirt on under a blue barn coat, her boy-short hair ruffling in the wind as she walked Diane into the barn and closed the large doors behind them. The January wind whipped up good around them and whistled through the cracks of the church. Long homemade pews stretched out in three directions from a stage and pulpit, bales of hay and galvanized troughs making the point of no one getting over the humbleness of his surroundings.

“How far can I trust your brother?” Diane said.

“Depends on what it is.”

“I’ve started up something again, Caddy,” Diane said. “I wish to God I’d never done it. I want Quinn to just stop, leave it alone.”