The Redeemers (23 page)

“I’ll come if Caddy wants it,” he said. “I think she only cares if I bring her a carton of cigarettes.”

“That’s not true.”

Quinn shrugged and got up to refill his coffee mug. He hadn’t gone back to the farm since leaving the hospital to check on Kenny. He didn’t feel like going home, sitting down with Hondo to watch a movie, or listening to his father try to make sense of the night before or talk about the year to come. He just wanted to go to his old home, the place where he grew up, and sit down for a cup of coffee and realize everything was out of his hands.

“Did you see Larry Cobb?”

“No,” Quinn said. “But Anna Lee went over there to check on him and Debbi. Sometimes I can’t believe she’s related to those people.”

“That’s her dad’s brother?”

“Debbi is her mother’s sister,” he said.

“That’s right,” she said, unbundling some collard greens and washing them in the sink.

“You even like black-eyed peas and collards?” Quinn said.

“Never really thought about it,” Jean said, drying them in a paper towel, and started to cut off the leaves and toss them into a big pot of water. “It’s just what you do. It’s what we’ve always done.”

“Anna Lee wants me to help.”

“How would you help?”

“She says Larry is convinced it was Mickey Walls that ripped him off,” Quinn said. “He didn’t even hesitate when he heard his house had been broken into.”

“Did more than that,” Jean said. “Didn’t they drive a tractor through his living room?”

“It was a backhoe,” Quinn said. “They broke through the bedroom wall to get a safe. Pulled it out and left in a black van.”

“And that’s when they shot poor Kenny?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn said.

“What did Anna Lee say?” Jean asked. “Doesn’t she know you’re not the sheriff anymore?”

“She does,” Quinn said. “But she believes I could help them out more than Rusty Wise. She doesn’t care for Rusty and neither does Larry. She said Larry called Rusty a two-bit insurance man who doesn’t have any goddamn sense.”

“I guess Larry voted on you.”

“I believe so.”

“I wish she wouldn’t try and get you involved,” Jean said, turning up the burner on the stove. “I wish she’d just let you relax and finally enjoy your time being home.”

“That’d be nice.”

“I’ll make some country-fried steak tonight,” Jean said. “Will you tell Boom?”

“Of course,” Quinn said. “He was disappointed we didn’t get to eat at Caddy’s intervention. He thought there would at least be some cakes or pie.”

“Too worried to cook.”

Quinn drank some coffee. He smiled at his mother. The kitchen wasn’t the one he’d known as a kid. Everything had been ripped away during the tornado, replaced with bright pine cabinets and shiny stainless steel appliances. But the kitchen was still very much Jean, with her Elvis knickknacks, biblical sayings taped to the refrigerator, and pictures of Quinn, Caddy, and Little Jason hanging on the walls. Jean stirred the collards into the simmering water. She added some salt.

The house seemed empty with young Jason gone. Jean had sent him over to a friend’s house this morning, wanting him to have some fun and not be around all this sadness.

“Caddy’s going to be OK,” he said. “Don’t worry. She heals up quick.”

Jean kept on stirring, not looking back, wiping her eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

“I think she’s too far gone,” Jean said. “She’s come back time and again. But I don’t think she cares anymore. She told me herself. She’s tired. She’s ready to go on.”

“Where?” Quinn said.

Jean didn’t answer. They sat in the kitchen for a long while, not saying a word.

20.

S
orry to hear about your troubles,” Johnny Stagg told Larry Cobb, the man sitting still and quiet in a brown La-Z-Boy recliner. His bedroom was missing a wall and shit was strewn all over the place, sodden shirts, jeans and drawers, and paperback books, all frozen to the carpet. Cobb didn’t seem to notice, just nodding and holding a bottle of Wild Turkey in his arms as if it were a newborn. The wind tossed around his thinning white hair.

“Appreciate that, Johnny,” Cobb said, rubbing his goatee. His red cheeks blazing from the cold and the booze. “It’s out of our hands now. Me and Debbi can’t believe someone would do this. We’re good people. Solid fucking citizens.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Stagg said. “It’s a head-scratcher.”

Stagg figured Cobb was in shock, not moving a bit when he and Ringold parked outside the busted wall and walked on into the bedroom. Ringold milled about, using a stick to pick up stuff in his path: Larry’s big white underpants, a broken picture of Tonya Cobb in a softball outfit, pink pajama bottoms. Reaching down for a book called
Become a Better You
by that bucktoothed preacher, Joel Osteen. He handed it to Stagg with a grin.

“Police said we could start cleaning up now,” Cobb said. “It’s not a crime scene no more. But Debbi is real upset. She went over to see her sister and niece, probably gonna stay there tonight. I got to secure this fucking wall with some Visqueen. Supposed to get some rain and sleet again tonight. Look at this shit. Look at this mess. Someone ran a fucking backhoe into the place where I sleep. How’d they know they weren’t going to kill me?”

“Grace of God,” Stagg said, tossing the book back on the ground.

“Well, they sure as hell knew what they were coming for,” Cobb said, uncorking the Turkey and taking another swig. He pointed the bottle at Stagg. “Picked up my damn safe with the backhoe and skedaddled on out down the road. But I told that woman Lillie Virgil I’m pretty sure I know who did it.”

“Who?”

“You know Mickey Walls?”

“Of course,” Stagg said.

“He’s the one,” Cobb said, wiping some whiskey off his white chin. “He’s out to get me. Told me so. Man’s got hate in his heart. It wasn’t enough that he ruined my daughter, but now he’s going to go on and try and ruin me and Debbi. But he’s out of luck. You know why?”

Ringold leaned against a closed door that opened into the house. Stagg caught his eye and said, “’Cause you and Debbi prayed on it.”

“That’s right,” Cobb said. “Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you and me.”

“You sure that’s where you want to toss all your chips?” Stagg said.

“Yes, sir,” Cobb said. “What am I gonna do, grab a gun and run out and shoot the boy dead? Me being the one to end up in jail? I got to find some peace in this, Johnny. If I don’t, I think I’m going to lose my mind. I already had two heart attacks.”

“How much?” Stagg said.

“What’s that?” Cobb said, lost in thought, walking along with Jesus on the seashore in flowing robes, filled with his new, high-minded purpose.

“What’d they steal?”

“More than nine hundred grand, my guns, some jewels, and my daddy’s pocket watch.”

Stagg nodded, feeling odd standing in the middle of someone’s bedroom but still out in the elements. There was an overturned bed, and a dresser right side up, carpet on the floor and the sky overhead. Stagg placed a hand in his trouser pocket. Cobb was right. It looked like it might start sleeting again.

“I’ll get it back,” Cobb said. “Every damn cent. It’s God’s will. Me and Debbi decided. A wicked man ‘spends his days in prosperity but suddenly goes down to Sheol.’ You know what
Sheol
is, Mr. Stagg?”

“I guess it’s not a town near Pontotoc.”

“It’s the Hebrew word for the underworld,” Cobb said. “It’s fucking hell. Mickey Walls will live for all eternity in flames. The man screwed my daughter, tried to run my business into the ground, and now he’s straight-up stolen from me. He took a vow in a church that we were family. He said things to me when we were drunk about me being better than his own daddy. Which ain’t saying much. And now he does this? He destroys the place where me and Debbi sleep? Make love and watch television? If that ain’t a fast track to hell, I don’t know what is.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Stagg said, standing near Cobb’s La-Z-Boy. Ringold was listening but checking out the integrity of the walls, pushing at what was left of the roof with a stick. He had on his military pants and boots, and a padded blue jacket with a leather patch on the shoulder. Stagg couldn’t see the gun rig he wore but knew it was close at hand.

“I commend you on your faith in both the Bible and that Wild Turkey,” Stagg said. “But I don’t give a goddamn how you think everything’s meant to happen, Larry. What I care about is shit you’ve squirreled away in your damn safe, names and numbers that might incriminate me and some fine folks in Jackson.”

Cobb looked up. He stared at Stagg with those little narrow pig eyes.

“What?”

“I know you and Jesus got this all figured out,” Stagg said. “But maybe you need some help.”

“I don’t follow,” Cobb said, putting down the Wild Turkey and hitting the lever on the La-Z-Boy to bring his head up and his boots back to the ground.

“You need some fucking help holding Mickey Walls’s nuts to the flame,” Stagg said. “Because I know you. I know how you do business, and things you’ve let slip in our conversation. I know you keep records, documents of transactions. Foolish shit that I’ve warned you about. While you are one smart fucking squirrel, you ain’t clever. And if your records and your account books talk about things that should never be mentioned, me and you and lots of other folks might be headed into some federal courthouse.”

Cobb snorted. “You think a fucking thief cares about some stupid ledgers?” he said. “Mickey wanted my money. You know I won my court case against him. We settled out for a hundred grand. He come back to get the money from my safe. Whatever else is in there, he’ll burn.”

Stagg looked to Ringold, who’d sidled up by his shoulder. Cobb stood, using a lot of help with the armrests to get to his feet. “You willing to trust Jesus on that one?”

Cobb moved his hand over his white whiskers, stumbled on over to the edge of the room where the floor dropped off, and stood there, staring off into the trees and the lookout over his lumber mill, smoke billowing from one of his outbuildings. A lot of bright heat on a cold morning.

“Who’s he talking about?” Ringold said. “Who is Walls?”

“Shit,” Stagg said. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you everything you’ll need to know.”

•   •   •

W
hat you got there?” Uncle Peewee said, hunkered over a laptop on the kitchen table since they got back to Gordo. He’d been switching from looking at titties to a swingers’ dating site, where he went by the handle JUSBANGINU. Man had been using a damn picture of George Clooney for his profile pic.

“Nothin’.” Chase was watching ESPN, drinking a Coors Light, and thumbing through some of those fancy books he’d found in the safe, along with the gold watch and earrings he’d took. He didn’t have to ask nobody about it. He’d just done it. They’d worked the same as Kyle and deserved the same kind of reward.

They were in Peewee’s trailer. He had four of them on a quarter acre in Gordo. Chase and his momma lived in one and Peewee rented the other two. The good thing about family was that every time the power company came to turn off the juice, Peewee would run a cord out back of his bathroom. That’s what family was all about. Chase stopped reading and looked at the big gold watch on his wrist, shaking it. Wouldn’t keep time worth a shit.

Chase looked up, hearing Peewee’s hard breathing behind him. “That ain’t yours.”

“Ain’t yours, neither.”

“Where you’d get that?”

“It don’t matter,” Chase said, trying to ignore him. That peckerhead radio host from Birmingham was on TV, talking about how the Tide was going to put a whooping on Ohio State at the Sugar Bowl. That was a bad sign. Every time that peckerhead started to run his mouth about knowing things, it went the other way.
God damn it.

“That was in the safe,” Peewee said. “I seen it.”

“Shit.”

“What else you get?”

“Nothing.”

Peewee slapped the Coors Light out of his hand and came around the couch to look down at him. Peewee trying to look tough in a pair of pajama bottoms and his Duck Dynasty T-shirt. He gave Chase a mean look while scratching his balls, blocking the TV set, the peckerhead on it running down a list of why Saban had a superior mind to Urban Meyer. Chase loved the Tide, but the TV man was giving Saban a good old-fashioned reach-around.

“Give it me.”

“No, sir,” Chase said. “It’s mine.”

“You better give me every fucking thing you took out of that safe except the money,” Peewee said. “You hear me?”

He raised the back of his hand up just like his momma used to do, back when she gave a shit. Chase’s Coors Light had bled out on the floor, leaving a big stain.

Chase looked up at him, knowing this was the time when lines had to be drawn. Peewee’d got to figure Chase was his own man. He’d done the job same as him. Peewee was no high-dollar safecracker. He was just a cheap thief.

“Hand it over.”

“I said hell no.”

For a second, he thought Peewee was damn pissing on him but then could smell the odor from the lighter fluid. The son of a bitch had squirted that shit all over him and was now standing above him flicking on his Zippo and looking down at Chase, wild-eyed.

“Yes, sir,” Chase said, and snatched the fancy watch off his wrist.

“What else?”

“I got some big earrings,” he said. “I stuck them in the back part of my commode.”

“Go get them.”

Chase stood up, smelling all that lighter fluid soaking into his clothes and skin. Peewee snatched the book out of his hands, flipping through the pages and seeing all the amounts, dates, names. A hell of a lot of them under the heading
Vardaman
.

“And this?” Peewee said. “You take this out to the trash barrel and burn it. You hear me? Why the hell you’d take it?”

Chase shrugged, seeing some of the lighter fluid soaking into the yellowed pages. “’Cause it was there.”

“I can turn that money,” Peewee said. “And I’ll run the risk to do it. But I ain’t getting burned for no watch or earrings. Don’t ever take no souvenirs from a job. You understand? Unless you got a fence you can trust. This ain’t no goddamn time to be testing relationships.”