The Ranger - Ace Atkins [53]
“Where are we?”
“That truck ahead just came out.”
“You see who it was?”
“Nope.”
“What is it?”
“Red El Camino.”
“Shit, that’s Daddy Gowrie, unless someone took his truck. You see how many people are with him?”
“Another man in the passenger seat.”
Shackelford scrunched down and reached into his thin leather jacket for a pack of cigarettes, cracking the window and lighting up. “Man, I’d sure love to have a beer right about now. There’s nothing like getting a warm six on a cold day. You know?”
“I do.”
“How far do we follow them?”
“Far as they go.”
Shackelford smoked down the cigarette, tossing the butt into the night. The shadows would fall across his scarred face sometimes, and Quinn could kind of piece together what he must’ve looked like, but when they got close to the truck stop, streets lit up and shining through the window, he transformed back again, wrecked and old. His face looking like melted wax.
“There you go,” Shackelford said, pointing to the El Camino parked at the front entrance to the truck stop.
Quinn idled at the low row of pumps, watching an old man in a worn blue jeans jacket and ski hat walk inside and come back out, thumping a pack of cigarettes and carrying a Coke bottle. The El Camino’s brake lights clicked on, and it backed up, exposing the man in the passenger seat while they circled out and headed back for the road south.
Quinn shook his head when he saw the face, and he slipped the old Buick into gear and followed, slowing for the Highway 45 ramp.
“He’s headed to Memphis,” Shackelford said.
“You got somewhere else to be?”
“You recognize the other fella with him?”
“Yep,” Quinn said.
“Brother Davis,” Shackelford said. “Got that church in the old movie house.”
“Met him with Stagg.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Why’s he buddies with Daddy Gowrie?” Quinn asked. “He get a cut?”
“A church sure is an easy place to drop off some cash, ’specially durin’ a real good sermon.”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
“I wouldn’t shit no Ranger,” Shackelford said.
“Like a bank?”
“That’s where they count up the money.”
“You said you only dealt with Gowrie and Daddy.”
“That was me. Other folks made donations. Not a bad way to do business, all truth be told.”
The cherry red El Camino cut over on Highway 78 and hit Union County, and got off at the New Albany exit, heading the opposite way from town, down one narrow country road and then another, finally disappearing onto a private dirt road.
“They see us?”
Quinn had turned off onto the shoulder of the road, car still idling. “We’ll find out.”
The El Camino spurted out from the dirt road twenty minutes later and drove back toward the highway, taking the turn north for Memphis, Quinn keeping a good hundred yards behind it.
“Wish we had one of them tracking devices like you see on those CSI shows,” Shackelford said. “We could stop off at a beer joint and find ’em later.”
“You sure want a beer.”
“Shit, you cut right into my drinking session, calling me up and saying you were a preacher and then coming to get me with that woman deputy. I hadn’t run like that in a while.”
Shackelford laughed. Quinn smiled.
“I’ll get you a six if we stop.”
“You said something about money, too.”
“How much would you need to blow town?”
“You mean out of Mississippi?”
“Yep.”
“Few hundred.”
“Okay.”
“Just like that?”
“What did I say?” Quinn said, keeping Daddy Gowrie’s taillights in view, watching them disappear between eighteen-wheelers and cars, till they hit the Tennessee line and the outskirts of Memphis.
18
That little boy Ditto looked out for Lena. She couldn’t walk two feet outside the trailer