The Redeemers (7 page)

“There’s an opening with Memphis PD,” Lillie said. “Sex crimes. But you know I fucking hate Memphis. I don’t want to raise my daughter in that shithole. Just being up there last night brought on some bad memories. About the only thing good about Memphis is the Grizzlies and barbecue.”

“You’re not selling me out for staying on,” Quinn said. “You were here before I came home and you’ll be here long after I’ve gone.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Things have grown complicated since I moved back to Jericho.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Personal things.”

“No shit,” she said, looking down at the pink callback slips. “You think I don’t know?”

“Might be best if I leave town for a while,” Quinn said.

“That’s bullshit,” Lillie said. “I’m sorry about your sister, and I’m sorry about this political shitstorm that kicked you out of office. But, other than that, it seems like things are going fine. You have a good family. You got a great dog, a decent truck. You’re getting laid regular.”

“Lillie . . .”

“Am I lying?”

Quinn didn’t say anything.

“Nobody figured you came home for this fucking job.”

6.

M
ickey hadn’t picked up a dirty pair of drawers since Tonya Cobb left him. He just kept on buying packs of new Hanes boxer shorts at Walmart and leaving the spent ones on the floor. He hoped one day she’d come back to their big ranch house and get the message that she just didn’t matter. He didn’t pick up much else, either. There were the same old cans of Bud Light and Hunt Bros. pizza boxes racked up on the coffee table right by the television set. And the television set was new, too. He just went for it, getting that eighty-inch plasma to watch State games and episodes of
Swamp Pawn
and
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team
. A man hasn’t lived until he’s seen those tatas bouncing around on an eighty-inch. Mickey was finally living like he’d meant to live. Nobody telling him his business.

He was headed to work late, Lee Salter calling at eight, saying he couldn’t get the goddamn luan to seal right, and Mickey saying it didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to lay flat for the linoleum. Lee said the problem wasn’t the luan but the damn sealant. Mickey knew Lee just wasn’t getting what he’d been taught and told him to go get some biscuits and he’d meet him at the house.

“Mickey?” Lee had asked.

“Yeah?”

“What the hell is luan anyway?”

“It’s Filipino for cheap-ass wood.”

The thing about being the boss, the owner of Walls Flooring, was that he didn’t have to get on his knees as much as he used to. His monkeys did that for him. But he had a reputation, Walls being the business where
WE MAKE THINGS RIGHT.
OR YOUR MONEY BACK.
Mickey figured that was about the whole point of living.
Making things right.
Maybe that’s why he just couldn’t get out of his mind what goddamn Larry Cobb had done. Mickey would sit up in the middle of the night and see Cobb’s craggy face and want to punch the fucking air.
God damn it.

Mickey changed into his clothes, the nice ones, the ones that showed he was successful. The clean Carhartt pants, the Pete Millar plain shirt, and the wooly vest made by True Grit. He might wear cheap drawers, but, on the outside, people knew Mickey Walls was somebody. The eighty-inch was on, playing the CBS morning show out of Tupelo, as he buttoned up the shirt and zipped up the vest. He reached for his cowboy killers and lit up the first one of the day. He should have told Lee to get him a sausage biscuit, too. And he was just about to call him back when he heard a knock on the garage door.

Kyle Hazlewood was standing out at the garage by Mickey’s red Hummer, wearing that same confused hangdog expression as yesterday, and the same old leather racing jacket, now worn as hell around the collar.

“I went by the office,” Kyle said. “You weren’t there.”

“No shit,” Mickey said. “’Cause I’m here.”

“What’s eating your ass?”

“Come on,” Mickey said. “Come on in. I’m just pissed-off ’cause I hadn’t eaten and forgot to tell Lee to get me a sausage biscuit. And I got a hangover to boot.”

“I can run you up to the Sonic,” Mickey said. “They got those burritos with eggs and tater tots in ’em. They ain’t too bad. Hey, man, can I get a cigarette off you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mickey said, holding the door open. “Smokes on the table. You been thinking on things?”

Kyle nodded, dropped his head, and walked up into Mickey’s kitchen. He didn’t have any coffee on account of forgetting to buy some, the refrigerator was bare as hell, nothing in there but a few cartons of the yogurt that made you need to shit. It had been cold last night and Mickey had kept the water running so the pipes didn’t freeze. They were still running.
Tap . . . Tap . . . Tap . . .

“I hear what you’re saying,” Kyle said, lighting up.

“Good.”

“About Larry.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a real cocksucker.”

“Sure thing, man.”

“I mean, Larry Cobb is one prismatic son of a bitch.”

“Yeah?” Mickey said. “What exactly does that mean?”

“You know, like a prism, a crystal,” Kyle said. “You twist him around and he’s a son of a bitch from every angle. What they call multifaceted.”

“Just what I said,” Mickey said. “Am I now making some sense?”

“I figure,” Kyle said. “But I don’t know if there’s enough time. You’re talking about tomorrow night? What if we get in there and you can’t open the safe? You said it’s been a few months. Larry’s probably gone and changed the lock after you and Tonya broke up. You ain’t exactly his special son-in-law no more.”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, “I know. I know. But the reason I wanted you to come along is that I can’t be in no way associated with this. Someone busts into goddamn Larry Cobb’s safe and the first thing Quinn Colson is gonna to do is knock on my front door.”

“He ain’t the sheriff.”

“I think he’s sheriff for another week or two,” Mickey said. “I seen him cruising around last night in that big-ass green truck. I can’t have him or that Lillie Virgil interfering with my business and my world and wanting to know when and where I was at while someone was giving it high and hard to that son of a bitch Larry Cobb.”

Kyle rubbed his thin, graying beard and shook his head. “God damn,” Kyle said. “If you’re wanting me to go at this thing alone . . . I ain’t crazy. You got to have two people to watch the road, see who’s coming. Also just to carry all that money. No telling what’s in that safe—”

“Already thought about that,” Mickey said, holding up his hand. “I’m not leaving you alone. I’m just saying I can’t be around it. You know goddamn well that Larry looks to me if someone has farted in the lumberyard. He blames me for the Bulldogs losing, for his dinner getting burnt, and that fucking global warming.”

“He doesn’t believe in that shit,” Kyle said. “He told me that himself. He said it was just lies from liberal Yankees and part of the homosexual agenda.”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, firing up another cowboy killer. “That sounds about like the wisdom of Larry Cobb.”

“So,” Kyle said, “if you can’t be around this and I’m needing some help, how the hell we gonna bust out a million bucks from that safe and not get our asses a ticket to Parchman? I’m too damn old and tired to get cornholed by some black degenerate.”

“We need help with opening the safe and transferring the money he’s got,” Mickey said. “I mean, you ain’t gonna just go drop it off at Jericho First National in a bunch of Piggly Wiggly sacks. We need to connect with folks who’ve done this before.”

“I don’t know any real criminals,” Kyle said. “Not any good ones anyway. My daddy once knocked over a fillin’ station in Meridian back in ’73. He got three years on The Farm on account of getting thirty-two fifty and a Zagnut bar.”

“I didn’t, neither,” Mickey said, pointing the lit end of the Marlboro at Kyle. “But I know someone who does. They put me in touch with a real professional.”

“Someone on your crew?”

“No, sir,” Mickey said. “My goddamn ex-wife.”

“Misty?”

“Afraid so.”

“She ain’t mentally stable, Mickey,” Kyle said. “What the hell, man? You told me that yourself.”

“Maybe,” Mickey said. “But she’s loyal. She’d come and tend to me right this moment.”

“Who the hell does she know?”

“I ever tell you she’s a Sparks?”

“Like them crazy-ass Alabama boys?” Kyle said. “Those motherfuckers are a bunch of killers. Come on, man, I ain’t working with any goddamn Sparks. They’ll plug one in the back of my ear before I hear ’em coming. I said I’d help you, not work with any of the goddamn Sparks.”

“Her uncle ain’t like that,” Mickey said. “He’s not one of the Killin’ Sparks. His name is Peewee. He’s strictly a safe man. He’s got skills. He says he can work a safe like a monkey cracking open a peanut.”

“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “Shit. I’m not so sure.”

“Peewee says he knows a half-dozen boys like to be in on a job like this. He called it a real honeypot.”

“You already called him?” Kyle said. “You called him after me and you talked? I thought this was only about making things right. About me and you getting back at Larry Cobb.”

“It is.”

“But a Sparks?” Kyle said. “Man, come on.”

“Will you just meet him?” Mickey said. “Just meet him. He’s all right. I drank some beer with him at a family reunion for Misty’s people. We sat behind a Baptist church and rolled us a fat one, talking about Jimmy Buffett and shit.”

“Misty know what’s up?”

“God, no.”

“Why’d she think you needed to talk to her uncle?”

“Work,” Mickey said. “I said I needed a hand over the Alabama border laying some heart pine and to put me in touch with her people.”

“Shit,” Kyle said. “Robbing? It ain’t our style, man.”

“Come on, bud,” Mickey said. “Don’t get no better than this.”

•   •   •

Y
ou told him,” Quinn said. “Didn’t you?”

Anna Lee Amsden—still hard to think of her as Anna Lee Stevens, Luke’s wife—didn’t say anything. They stood in front of the half-moon gravel drive outside Quinn’s old farmhouse, with its white siding, leaded-glass windows, and silver tin roof. She’d been waiting for him as soon as he’d come off night patrol. Quinn had on a heavy winter coat and a ball cap, at first asking her if she wanted to come inside. When she said she didn’t, he just went ahead and asked about how Luke found out about them. “It’s twenty degrees,” Quinn said. “Let me make a fire and some coffee.”

“I have to get home.”

“That’s the way it goes?” Quinn said. “You clean your conscience and leave it to all work out?”

“I haven’t liked myself much lately.”

“I wish you’d told me first,” Quinn said. “I might have been ready to duck.”

“Luke wouldn’t hit you.”

“He might have.”

“And how much damage would that have done?” Anna Lee said. “Luke might’ve broken a finger on your head.”

“Come on inside,” Quinn said. “I’ve been on for the last fourteen hours. We can sit and talk. And then you can go. OK by you? It takes two hours to heat that old house.”

“I think we better keep what needs to be said outside,” Anna Lee said. “Besides, I don’t want to disturb Caddy. Is she still sleeping?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Dad’s watching her.”

“This is a bad time,” Anna Lee said. “We need to slow down, make some sense of things. I don’t want anyone else hurt by us.”

Quinn nodded and told her that was bullshit. Anna Lee put her fingers up to her mouth and shook her head, looking good as always in faded Levi’s, cowboy boots, and an old trucker’s jacket over a scoop-necked black sweater. The sweater down low enough to show off her perfect, delicate collarbone and the thin gold chain with the gold cross around her neck. Quinn reached out a hand and she shook her blonde head.

“I sleep fine,” Quinn said.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“It’s the way I feel.”

“I feel awful,” Anna Lee said. “It’s wrong.”

“Never felt wrong to me,” Quinn said. “I came back here for you.”

“You came back to bury your Uncle Hamp,” she said. “And then got this old house, and all your family troubles, and, before anyone knew it, you’d blown away a half-dozen evil folks at Hell Creek.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “But I came back to see you. Lillie Virgil told me that today. She’s known a long time.”

“Of course she has,” Anna Lee said, smiling just a bit. Quinn walked up on her, closing the space, putting his hand around her narrow waist and sliding a hand into her back pocket just like he’d done back in high school. She could change what she wanted and lie to herself, her family, and Jesus, but there had never been a damn thing that could come between them. Everything that Quinn had done since stepping back in Tibbehah County had been a big game. She was why he was here, and she had to feel it the same as he did.

“Come inside.”

“God damn you.”

He pulled her in close, inside his coat, and she stayed there for several moments, shivering, before speaking. “Is Caddy OK?” she said.

“No.”

“Is she going to get help?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “I’m trying to talk her into it. It’s the best for her. And best for Jason. She’s ripping that kid’s guts out.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna Lee said, moving in closer under the jacket. “I’m real sorry.”

“You know what?” Quinn said. “I’m glad it’s out. Who the hell do I need to impress around here? I’m glad you told him.”

“Luke’s leaving town.”

“When?”

“He’s gone,” she said. “He told me about what happened with Caddy and then with you. He’s packed and gone to Memphis. He said he’s not coming back and we’ll work out visitation. It’s no bluff.”

“Good.”

Anna Lee pulled away, away from Quinn, and stepped back to stare him down with those hard brown eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now what?”

“Reminds me of a fella back home who fell out of a ten-story building.”

“We don’t have ten-story buildings in Jericho.”