“Gina?” she said. “Gina didn’t get jack shit. That bitch wasn’t family. Only that runt girl of hers got a cut. And nothing like the family got, neither.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Quinn said. “How much was it?”

“Don’t see how that’s any business of yours.”

“Might help me figure out some things.”

“Like how far them goddamn kids are gonna get on my ole momma’s money?”

“Sure,” Quinn said. “Something like that.”

“Not too far at all,” Big Momma said. “That smart attorney up there in Corinth seen to it that little cunt couldn’t touch that money till she turned eighteen.”

“Who was in charge of it?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Big Momma said. The ash on her cigarette drooping long before the wind blew and scattered the ashes across her jacket. “I figured Gina. Guess she ain’t gonna be spending none of it now, either. Ha. Ha. That’s why I don’t live for tomorrow. That’s why me and my gal pals run and gun and party like hell till this big ole shitshow stops spinning.”

“Didn’t mean to interrupt your weekend, Miss Threadgill,” Quinn said. He tapped at the bill on his cap. “Appreciate your time.”

“You ain’t gonna call the warden on us?” she said, squinting up from the four-wheeler. “Right?”

Quinn looked over at the big woman to her left. That woman shrugged, turned to the ground and spit.

“You wouldn’t happen to have the name of that lawyer up in Corinth, would you?”

“Shit.” Big Momma nodded, flicking away her second cigarette into the dead weeds. “Is that all you need? Let me go inside and get his card. My poontang’s about frozen to this here seat.”

*   *   *

“So let me get this straight,” the girl said, joint held high in her left hand. “Some man your mother never saw before in her life attacked her outside some bar called the White Star Lounge. With a damn boxcutter?”

TJ and Ladarius sat with the crazy girl at a black metal table and chairs outside on the deck. The girl said she didn’t want her father or stepmother to smell any weed in their vacation home or else there would be hell to pay. She also insisted that the for sale signs out by the road were just a big misunderstanding with the bank. And how her daddy, some hot-shit car dealer up in Fayetteville, already had the whole mess sorted out. The girl had the hood of the cheetah coat up on her head, her face shadowed as she burned down the joint to an orange pinprick.

“It’s called the Southern Star,” TJ said. “And there were two men. But yeah. That’s pretty much it. Momma had had a lot to drink, which ain’t too different from most nights, but she managed to get the knife and cut one man before navigating her way home.”

“While smashed?”