The Ranger - Ace Atkins [98]
The fat man kicked at him. Both boys raised their guns and smiled.
33
The fat man’s head exploded into a fine mist, and he fell on top of Quinn, the cracking explosion of a big revolver sounding only after. The other man raised his weapon, his shirtfront opening up with a huge hole, blood spreading across his chest as he fell dead, another crack before he hit the ground. Quinn kicked and pushed, and the pain and effort of getting that fat son of a bitch off him was something else, but he gritted his teeth and crawled, his damn right leg not working worth shit, the tourniquet coming loose. He retied it as he heard the gunning motor of the Camaro and saw the spray of gravel, the muscle car bounding southward on the hill, nearly losing traction in that curve but righting itself and disappearing.
Quinn tried to stand but couldn’t.
He finally got to one knee, looked up the rutted path from the county junkyard, and waited to see who’d saved his ass. At first he heard padding feet, the sun looking high and pale over the ridge and path. He thought he saw a man in a worn rancher’s coat, a cigarette hanging loose from his weathered face, the hill tunneled with bright green leaves with the smell of tobacco in the wind. Sheriff Beckett motioned for Quinn to get a move on, follow him on out.
Quinn’s vision kind of kicked in and out, but it was clear as hell when he saw that cattle dog with a gray-and-black quilt coat trotting the path for him, smelling his blood and then barking.
He heard a big baritone voice coming from somewhere up the hill. A large shadow holding a silver Colt .44 in his left hand.
“Hey, Quinn,” Boom said. “I been waiting for you. Found Hondo.”
“You stay here,” Ditto said, behind the wheel of a red GMC Jimmy he’d stolen from a motel in Yalobusha County that morning. Lena nodded while cradling her baby in one arm. Her other hand held that little .22 peashooter she’d brought from Alabama, her saying she should have used it on Charley Booth when she’d had the chance.
Ditto walked to a side door of the movie-house church, recalling a similar place in his hometown of Calhoun City where a crazy preacher thought he possessed a true healing gift. A rich man with the cancer had joined up with them, and for weeks the preacher had laid on hands, asking them all to join in the touch to drive the devils from his soul to cleanse him. Even when the man died, the preacher didn’t give up, refusing to let folks take the body from the church, letting the man lay there for nearly a week, telling everyone that he could raise that son of a bitch from the dead.
The preacher finally let them plant the man, still saying he could have done it if the body hadn’t been embalmed.
Brother Davis was of the same mold but had always been good to Ditto. Davis knew that Gowrie was crazy as a shithouse rat and would take some pity on their situation.
All he wanted was five hundred dollars, only half of what was come due to him.
Ditto’s damn heart jackhammered in his chest as he walked down the vacant aisle, his heart way up in his throat. If one of Gowrie’s boys spotted him here, they’d hang his ass high.
He found Brother Davis asleep in the first row, feet kicked up on the stage, snoring. A book by Pat Robertson about saving your family during the End Times was splayed across his lap.
He awoke with his eyes wide, probably expecting the Beast.
“Brother,” Ditto said, whispering. “I’m in a mess and need some money. Gowrie wants me dead, and I don’t want no trouble.”
“Who are you?”
“It’s me,” Ditto said. “You know me.”
Brother Davis nodded, screwing up his face and studying Ditto’s profile. “Gowrie’s gone.”
“What about the money?”
“Don’t belong to him,” the old man said. “People from Memphis comin’ for it.”
“I just need five hundred.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Them boys in Memphis gonna take what’s theirs and shut us down.”
“What will you do?”
“Continue with my ministry.”
“You really a minister?”
“Yes, sir. Hell yes, I am.”
Ditto shook his head. “I got eight dollars left and a girlfriend with a baby.