The Ranger - Ace Atkins [84]
“An arrow?” Campo asked. “You shitting me?”
“I think we all need to step back and reevaluate this partnership.”
“You got a dead sheriff, and a dead whore found by a couple kids,” Campo said, fingering his ear. “Now you got people playing cowboy and Indian up all around your county and you aren’t at all worried about another couple murders? How long until you got troopers and DEA types crawling all over you?”
“I’m walking away.”
“You made a deal with us,” Campo said, shaking his head. “You don’t just up and quit.”
“Since when does Gowrie work for me? I never made a nickel off that circus freak.”
“He didn’t show up at Dixie Belles last night,” Campo said. “You know how much money that is?”
“That’s between y’all,” Stagg said, leaning in to whisper.
“Figured maybe you two wanted to cut us out.”
“That’s a damn lie,” Stagg said.
“You gonna eat?”
“I don’t know.”
“Coffee?”
“Why’d you make me drive all this way? I got a family. Obligations.”
“Last time Gowrie got out of line, you had the sheriff make some threats.”
“The sheriff ain’t around no more.”
Traffic on Union skipped along outside the little diner, its big windows crammed with folks with heavy coats and whiskey breath. A homeless man sat in a chair by the bathroom and asked people who passed for a quarter. He shifted some change in his hands and punched up an old Al Green song on the jukebox.
“Where’d you find Gowrie anyway?” Johnny asked.
“Some boys in prison connected me to some folks.”
“You always do business with the AB?”
“Gowrie came recommended. He’s got friends.”
“I don’t care for them folks,” Stagg said. “They’ve been wiping their asses with our county, treating it like a toilet.”
Campo shrugged, and played with a gold ring with diamonds arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. “Johnny, I know you got ambition, and that means you sometimes have to work with people you don’t like.”
“Gowrie’s the problem,” Johnny Stagg said. “You said it yourself.”
“He’s your problem,” Campo said. “You shut him down and find the money he owes me.”
“Why am I left holding a bag of flaming shit?” Stagg said, still whispering as he stood up from the booth. “What you done for me was in exchange for protection in my county, letting things get done that you needed. I never wanted a piece of all this mess.”
“Are you gonna eat or what?”
Johnny Stagg took a breath, feeling like he’d been sucker punched, all the wind gone from his lungs. “Naw,” he said. “I guess I’m not hungry.”
“Get Gowrie,” Campo said. “Find my goddamn money.”
Johnny Stagg sat in his Cadillac for a long time, thinking about all that cash he’d seen in Brother Davis’s church, wondering just what Gowrie had planned for it, and why in the hell he’d ever joined up with Bobby Campo and this goddamn invisible confederacy of crooks.
“You always clean your guns before supper?” Lillie asked.
“Sure.”
“Old habits.”
“Yep.”
“Your momma was looking for you.”
“She didn’t call.”
“Yes, she did,” Lillie said, handing him his cell. “This was in your truck.”
Quinn had set up his iPod and minispeaker on the old kitchen table, Loretta Lynn singing “Van Lear Rose.” He’d carried that iPod from Fallujah to Kabul, and parts in between, providing company over the drone of that C—130, beaten and scarred but still holding a nice little jukebox. A little piece of home in foreign lands while he cleaned guns and waited. There was always the damn waiting.
“Any sign of Hondo?” Lillie asked.
Quinn shook his head. “Mr. Varner came out with a bulldozer and buried the cows. Said he hadn’t seen him, either. If a dog’s been shot, it’d crawl as far as it could get and die.”
“He’s okay.”
“He guarded the house.”
“I think that dog has taken a shine to you,” Lillie said.
“If he comes back, you want him?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I can’t exactly bring him back to base with me.”
Quinn sprayed some oil onto a rag and worked over the stock of the .308, and opened the breech with a hard snick. He reloaded and snapped shut the lever.
“They