The Forsaken (20 page)

T
he first real thing Chains LeDoux ever said to Jason Colson was outside a Tupelo beer joint, both men pissing against a brick wall. Chains was so drunk that he needed one hand to brace himself as he turned to Jason and said, “Who the fuck are you, man?”

Jason finished up, zipped up his fly, and said, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

LeDoux was a mean drunk, always looking to fight after a few shots of Jack, and tonight he’d had a whole bottle. He stumbled over to Jason, jabbing him with a dirty finger and saying, “Snitches are a dying breed.”

“I’m not a snitch.”

“You expect me to believe all your bullshit?” Chains said. “You just show up in Jericho and get in with Big Doug, talking about how you make movies out in Hollywood? Bullshit, man. I bet you ain’t even been to Hollywood. You’re a damn humper for J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Hoover’s been dead since ’72.”

“Well,” LeDoux said, “whatever Fed got you wanting to break us. That’s what all you want, right? You hate us? Hate our kind because we don’t work for the man. We don’t stand in lines and punch the clock and dance like
puppets. We ride, we screw our old ladies, we get high and loaded. Why you want to shut that down?”

“I’m not trying to shut anybody down,” Jason said. Feeling a little uneasy, as Chains had that .38 tucked in his belt, leather vest wide open, eyes burning hot with Jack and little red pills. “I’m just passing through, visiting some family. Come on, let’s drink.”

“You’re a fucking snitch, Colson,” LeDoux said. “Right?”

“Just a stuntman.”

“What movies have you done?”

“I’ve done a lot,” Jason said. “I work for an outfit called Stuntmen Unlimited. You don’t want me to ride with y’all and that’s your thing, man. Either we drink and hang out or I’m gone.”

“You’re gone when I say, motherfucker,” Chains said, “or I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”

A few of the boys had wandered outside the beer joint, shouldering past one another, trying to get a good view of what was about to happen, lots of shit-eating grins on their faces. Big Doug wasn’t among them. Big Doug was inside chatting up a big-titted cocktail waitress named Connie who told him he reminded her of Grizzly Adams.

“I worked on
The Longest Yard
, a TV show called
Kodiak
.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s about an Alaska state patrolman.”

“I knew you were a fucking pig.”

“It’s a TV show,” Jason said. “I did the stunts.”

Chains wavered on his feet, a few of the boys rallied around him, standing behind and around him. Stillwell high as a goddamn kite, wearing big yellow circular glasses and giggling like an idiot, a can of Coors in one hand and cigarette in the other.

“Come on,” Stillwell said. “Give him a break, Chains. He don’t mean nothing.”

“What fucking shows?” Chains said. “I want to know.”

“
W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings
, a western called
Take a Hard Ride
with Jim Brown.”

“That sounds like bullshit,” Chains said, scratching his dirty beard. “How you gonna be a stunt double for some big-ass nigger?”

“You know what? I don’t have to tell you who I am. Either you believe me or you don’t. I don’t give a god damn.”

Chains snickered. The door kept on opening and closing to the little beer joint. A couple lazy-eyed women came out and sat on the bikes, passing a joint to each other. His enforcer Gangrene shifting his weight. A lot of smoke. It was July, Mississippi heat coming up through the dirt and gravel.

“If you’re as tough as you say, how about I see you take a punch?”

Jason kept that eye contact with Chains.
Here we go. Here we fucking go.

“You want to hit me?” Jason said. “OK. Maybe it will make you shut your mouth.”

Chains laughed, scratched his bare belly, and spit on the gravel. Music came from inside the joint. Led Zeppelin. “Candy Store Rock.” He stepped up two paces, Jason seeing it from five miles away, a big unwieldy roundhouse punch right for his head. Jason did not move, did not duck, did not flinch, took the blow to the jaw and staggered back a bit, rubbing his jaw, feeling the lights go off and on and his teeth rattling a bit. He spit out a little blood and nodded to Chains.

“Now you,” Chains said. “See what you got, man. Let’s see what you got, fucking stuntman.”

“I’m good.”

“I said fucking do it.”

“I’m good, man,” Jason said. “You wanted to take a shot. I let you take a shot. It’s what I do. I don’t feel things like regular folks.”

“I say a Fed would never mix it up with folks like us,” Chains said. “Might look bad in court.”

Jason felt his jaw swelling and shook his head. He spit some more blood.

“Unless you’re scared?” Chains said. “Scared it might hurt feelings and I might shoot your ass.”

Jason felt that familiar tension in his neck and shoulders. He nodded and took in a breath, catching the eyes of about everybody in the whole Born Losers standing out in the parking lot, an arrow on a cheap mobile sign offering
2 for 1
tonight. Zeppelin kept on jamming inside the Tupelo beer hall. Jason put his hands on his waist and looked direct to Chains, behind him all those gleaming Harleys, chrome and leather, lined up in just a perfect way.

“Boy is scared?”

Blood rushed into Jason’s face, heart pumping like a piston, and he walked up to that nasty, stinky, bearded son of a bitch with wolf eyes and threw a hard right into his soft, sweaty belly and then followed with a left hook that toppled Chains LeDoux over like an lumbering old sack. He was flat to the gravel, eyes closed, sucking in air, as his woman came over and started to comfort him. Big Doug walked up to Chains and spilled some Coors down on his face. Hank Stillwell kicked at him with his toe. And another rider they called Slow Joe helped Chains to his feet, still half conscious, as Big Doug tossed some more Coors in his face, a beer joint baptism.

Chains lolled his head to the side, his whole weight being supported by Big Doug, head and open gray eyes coming around to Jason. He was missing a couple teeth.

He elbowed himself away from Big Doug and staggered toward Jason, pulling out that .38, Zeppelin playing “Tea for One.” Jason knew all the songs, as he had the album back at his apartment in Venice that he’d probably never see again. Chains aimed the .38 right between Jason Colson’s eyes and said, “Scared now?”

Jason didn’t answer.

“God forgives,” he said. “Born Losers never fucking forget.”

Chains turned his head and spit out a mess of blood, “You know what I do when people look at me like I’m some kind of animal?”

Jason again didn’t answer.

“I fucking feed on it, man,” LeDoux said. “I love it.”

He stretched the gun out farther in his hand, thumbed back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger.
Click.
He squeezed it again.
Click.
And four more times, the hammer falling on an empty chamber.

“Fuck,” he said. “I guess I forgot to load the motherfucker.”

The Born Losers all started laughing, a big fat woman who rode with one of the boys with the shrillest of giggles. Even Gangrene smiled a row of rotten teeth. Chains tossed the pistol over his shoulder and embraced Jason in a big bear hug. “Welcome, brother.”

Over his shoulder, Big Doug held up a shiny new leather vest with a back patch reading
BORN
LOSERS
and a front patch reading
1 PERCENTER
.

“No need for probation for a crazy son of a bitch like you,” Chains said. “Put on your colors and let’s ride till dawn.”

There were hoots and rebel yells, and the boys showered him with Coors and Budweiser while the vest was slid on him by Chains LeDoux himself, the man’s mouth a ragged, bloody mess. Despite every lick of sense he had, Jason smiled.

The engines to the Harleys cranked and gunned louder than ever, Jason feeling the laughter and the brotherhood and thinking to himself,
This may be the dumbest goddamn stunt I’ve ever pulled.

The boys pulled out on the long ribbon of blacktop.

And Jason followed.

H
ow’s your ass feeling?” Boom said. “Heard about the supervisors’ meeting and all that shit.”

“Just like you said.”

“Some men don’t have a lick of honor,” Boom said. “Some don’t have no sense. Seems like those on the board blessed to have neither.”

“Bobby Pickens stood tall,” Quinn said. “I’ll remember that.”

“That’s because he ain’t on the tit,” Boom said. “Hadn’t been in the crew long enough to make it work for him. Give him time.”

“That’s hard,” Quinn said.

“But the truth.”

The paved roads and patches on the bridges had started to ice over across the county by midnight. Quinn and Boom kept to the dirt roads, roving up toward Carthage where the shootings had gone down in April. Quinn had been out officially a few times after the storm, walking the ground with investigators and looking for evidence of the unknown shooter. But since the summer, Johnny Stagg had locked up the front gate, surrounding the acreage with six-foot chain-link and wrapping the entire property with a lot of
No Trespassing
signs.

Quinn parked the Big Green Machine up into a fire road that wound
through the woods over the eastern ridge of the valley. The road was grown up in brush and small trees and provided some decent concealment if Stagg had any of his people on patrol. But in all the times Quinn had walked that fire road, watching the airstrip, he’d not crossed paths with a single guard. Stagg too cocky to think anyone would scale the fence and see his operation.

A few months ago, Quinn had cut back a portion of the fencing and closed it back up with metal clamps. He opened it for Boom and himself, and left it open if they needed to haul ass.

The temperature had dropped down to ten degrees, and Quinn wore a black Smith & Wesson shooting jacket, Under Armour thermals, and a black wool sweater with black paratrooper pants and his Merrell boots. He carried his Beretta, a combat knife, a Leatherman tool, and a Remington pump shotgun. Boom wore his old camo Guard jacket and carried a Colt .44 Anaconda, although lately he’d taught himself how to balance and shoot a shotgun using a special harness.

They followed the path nearly two klicks before turning off the road and finding the vantage point Quinn always used to watch the planes land and take off, keeping a log of their tail numbers, with times and dates. He never got any closer than maybe five hundred meters up the hill but had logged in a lot of activity since early November, when the landing strip had been resurfaced and the Quonset huts rebuilt.

Quinn got down on one knee and aimed a pair of Bushnell night vision binoculars. The airstrip was lit up, with tiny blue lights along the runway, and there was a bright white light coming from one of the huts. Three pickup trucks and an SUV were parked along the main road coming from Stagg’s front gate. Ice had gathered on the old oaks and scraggly pines. The wind was cold as hell, shooting through that narrow valley and rattling the brittle branches. Quinn passed the binoculars to Boom and took out a small notepad from his jacket, writing down the tag numbers on the trucks and the SUV.

“Tennessee plates,” Boom said. “Johnny been spending a lot of time in Memphis?”

“Johnny goes to the money,” Quinn said. “He seems to have lost interest in the Booby Trap and the Rebel. He’s there maybe two, three days a week. Most of the time, he’s out of Tibbehah County.”

“Who’s he working with?”

“Don’t know.”

“You gonna lay all this on the Feds?” Boom said.

“When I can find someone to trust,” Quinn said. “The last Feds who came to Tibbehah and I didn’t get along. They blamed me for the cartel action around here and bought Stagg’s bullshit.”

“That was your own damn fault,” Boom whispered, handing back the binoculars. “You screwing one of their goddamn agents. Woman was mad as hell when you kept stuff back from her.”

“I’ve made a few mistakes in my life.”

“Shit, Quinn,” Boom said, “a few? You get a case going against Stagg, how about you keep your dick in your pants?”

“Lesson learned.”

“What else you need?” Boom said. “Ain’t no reason for that motherfucker to have this set up without moving drugs or guns or pussy, right?”

“Not sure what he’s moving,” Quinn said. “Lots of times, I just see a lot of fat cats from Jackson flying in for a quick-and-dirty at the Rebel. They get their pecker pulled and they’re on the next flight out. Sometimes Stagg brings some girls out to the huts here.”

“Men got to fly to get their peckers pulled?” Boom said. “That’s some hard-up shit.”

There was some motion by one of the Quonset huts and Quinn peered down along the roadway where the cars had been parked. Three black males in big jackets, two of them with hoods up, walked out to the SUV, a black Escalade, and stood by the hatch, smoking cigarettes. Quinn again shared the binoculars, then handed them back, the men crawling into the
Cadillac. They cranked the ignition, turned on the headlights, but just sat in the road. Exhaust poured from the rear of the vehicle.

“Never knew Johnny Stagg to work with black folks,” Boom said, “unless they was mopping the floor at the Rebel or cooking that chicken-fried steak.”

“He’s got black girls working the pole at the Booby Trap.”

“Good man,” Boom said. “Progressive as hell.”

“Those boys don’t look like politicians,” Quinn said.

“Nope.”

“I’ll run their tag,” Quinn said. “I bet that SUV is stolen. A throwaway for whatever they’re taking over state lines.”

“Never knew you racist,” Boom said. “Driving while black.”

“Guilt by association.”

“You want to get down closer?” Boom said. “I don’t give a fuck. Let Stagg’s boys come on out and say hello.”

The SUV finally knocked into gear and made a U-turn away from the huts and back down the road to the exit of Stagg’s compound. Quinn nodded to Boom and they followed a little zigzagging trail down the hillside, worn smooth by deer, to the road, where they walked in the shadows to the main hut. The hillside was steep, Quinn and Boom walking sideways to keep their footing.

The hut was windowless, the front door shut against the cold. The big metal building vibrating to the sound of rap music playing inside. Quinn smiled and Boom just shook his head. “Johnny Stagg got him a little juke out in the country,” Boom said. “Shaking that ass?”

“His property,” Quinn said. “He can do what he likes.”

“Got his black friends coming down from Memphis,” Boom said. “How you like to see Johnny Stagg shaking that bony white butt?”

Quinn was silent. He held up a hand as the front door to the Quonset hut opened and a girl stepped outside. She was young and black, wearing
a rabbit fur jacket and tall white leather boots. She lit up a cigarette and leaned against the metal building. She looked exhausted.

“Ten degrees,” Boom said. “Must be hot up in there.”

Quinn used the binoculars again where he and Boom crouched in a little ravine and could see the girl’s hair, face, and neck were damp with sweat. She finished the cigarette and walked back into the hut, the door slamming behind her, and not twenty seconds later Stagg’s boy Ringold walked out and stood in the wide swath of light coming from a security light.

He had on dark utility pants and boots, an Army-green fleece jacket, and a green watch cap over his bald head. He looked to the airfield and checked his watch and moved out of the light and into the darkness by the airfield. He had a weapon in his right hand. As Quinn scanned Ringold with the Bushnells, he recognized a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. The weapon could shoot eight hundred rounds a minute, often holding a thirty-bullet clip.

Quinn put his hand to Boom’s shoulder. Boom and Quinn stayed stock-still.

Ringold walked out onto the airfield, looked to the north, the small blue lights stretching out far into the distance. He was a shadow, machine gun in his right hand, as he moved back to the Quonset hut, still pumping with rap music, and shut the door.

“Feds probably don’t give a shit about Stagg running pussy.”

“Those boys didn’t come all the way from Tennessee for tail,” Quinn said. “There’s plenty of that in Memphis.”

“Wonder who’s doing the buying and who’s doing the selling?” Boom said.