Chapters (43)
- BY ACE ATKINS
- Dedication
- CONTENTS
- Epigraph
- Episode 1: Brandon
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- Episode 2: The Big Woods
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- Episode 3: The Search Party
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Episode 4: The Teacher
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- Episode 5: The Sheriff
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- Episode 6: Quinn Colson
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- Episode 7: Maggie
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Episode 8: The Witness
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“Yeah?” Curtis said. “Well, I don’t do that no more. Go on ahead and look around. Not many high-dollar items here. I’m just a simple man, doing a simple job.”
“Just the way God and Mr. Whiskers intended.”
Curtis dropped the smile and stood up, not impressive at maybe five-six, one-twenty, with a sunken chest and hard round belly. “I’d appreciate you not joking about something so personal. You’re just being flat-out mean, Miss Virgil.”
“You still keep in touch with Buster White and his people?” Quinn asked.
“Y’all were always trying to tie me into some big criminal conspiracy,” Curtis said, ashing his cigarette. “How many times I got to tell you? I don’t know no one named Buster White and there ain’t no such thing as the fucking Syndicate or Dixie Mafia or whatever the fuck y’all want to call it this week. I may have bent the law a time or two, but I did my goddamn time. And you coming over to me won’t be nothing more than a fucking field day when I talk to my people at Morgan and Morgan.”
“What a shame,” Lillie said. “If you did know something, I might forget I ran into you down here in Coffeeville. Let nature take its course in y’all’s confederacy of thieves.”
Curtis swallowed and tilted his chin up to Lillie. “Goddamn, I can’t talk about that shit. I’d just as soon not end up dead like that motherfucker Wes Taggart.”
“So you do know these people?” Quinn asked.
“I got a TV,” he said. “I seen the news outta Memphis and Tupelo. Everybody knows some bad folks busted in your jail and took ole Wes’s ass out.”
Lillie nodded. She walked through the smoke up close to Curtis, tapping his sternum with her finger, making him take two steps back, his butt knocking into a metal shelf loaded with machine parts. “I figured you might be smarter than that,” Lillie said. “Maybe interested in some kind of trade?”
“Just what are you talking about?” Curtis said.
Lillie turned her head to Quinn. Quinn stood close by, hands on his hips, nodding back at Lillie.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lillie said. “How does a head start sound to you?”
* * *