“How about you let me ask you a question, then,” Taggart said. “How the hell did you piss off so many folks in Jackson? It ain’t the goddamn honest crooks who are after your ass, it’s the fucking Moral Majority. My friends are just hired hands for some fat cats in the capitol.”

“Vardaman,” Quinn said.

“Some old swinging dicks across this state sure would’ve liked to seen that fucker lose,” Taggart said. “But he’s got a lot of friends. They even have a name for themselves, the fucking Watchmen Society. Have you heard about those morons?”

“I just met a few down at the Neshoba County Fair.”

“As long as business is booming, as long as we’re able to run drugs and gash around the Mid-South, everything is copacetic, Sheriff. But you don’t need to start pointing your fingers at some honest crooks. You know where we stand. It’s the goddamn suit and tie crowd, thumping the Bible and looking to turn everything back into the plantation, who’re going take your ass out one day.”

“You got some names?” Quinn said.

“You already know some,” Taggart said. “One big name with his eyes on the big prize. But hell, man. It sure is hard for me to talk on an empty stomach.”

NINE

Sam Frye and Toby hit the Tibbehah County line just as the rain and thunder started to roll across north Mississippi. They’d been listening to the news out of Tupelo on the ride, Toby being Toby and wanting to ignore the weather or the news, and instead planned to play a shuffle from his iPhone he’d made with his buddies on the Rez. His straight job was a party DJ and the boy had some kind of plan to be the first big Choctaw rapper out of the South, claiming he had more than five thousand followers on YouTube who’d listened to a song he’d made called “Tribal Woman.”

“This shit is lit.”

“But will it make you rich?”

“It’ll get me laid,” Toby said. “A damn Indian who can rap. Think about it, old man.”

“Why’d you quit at the water park?”

“Too damn hot,” Toby said. “Cleaning out filters, checking pH levels, being told not to stare at the white girls in their bikinis. I mean, shit. What’s the damn point? This thing I’m about to play for you, this music I made over the last few weeks, it’s gonna put me and the whole damn tribe back on the map. We’ll be able to sell out shows all over the Mid-South.”