“What’s the deal?” I asked.
“I interviewed this prison guard Troyce Nix and his girlfriend at their motel, then decided to follow them later, just to see what might develop. So I ended up at this juke joint where—”
“Why are you following Nix?”
“Because both he and his girlfriend are hinky.”
“In what way?”
“The guy who tried to fry me had a mask on. I don’t think it was because he’s seen too many chain-saw movies. I think his face is deformed, like Nix’s or the sheriff’s or Leslie Wellstone’s.”
“We’ve talked about this before.”
“Quince Whitley is here, too.”
“Where?”
“At the juke joint. Are you listening to anything I say?”
“Anything else going on?”
“Yeah, J. D. Gribble is up on the bandstand. How’s that for a perfecta? Jesus—”
“What?”
“I’m outside. Gribble just came out the back door with this actor and some other people. What’s that actor’s name, the guy in that new western? They’re smoking dope.”
QUINCE WHITLEY WAS getting sick of watching this collection of Hollywood characters down the bar from him. Who were they, anyway? They all thought their shit was chocolate ice cream, but probably not one of them had ever heard of Tammy Wynette or Marty Stuart or knew they came from Mississippi, or knew that Marty Stuart was from Neshoba County, where those civil rights workers got killed back in the 1960s, because that racial crap was all they cared about, not the fact that a celebrity like Elvis grew up in Tupelo. One guy had even been hitting on Troyce Nix’s punch, keeping his eyes level with hers, like he wasn’t aware of her tattooed bongos sticking out of the top of her blouse. For just a second Quince entertained a fantasy in which he was a movie director, orchestrating the deaths of Nix, the girl, and the actor, turning the three of them into a bloody swatch across a camera lens. Now, that would be a movie worth seeing, he thought.
From his bar stool in the shadows, he had a wide view of the building’s interior, with enough people between him and Nix and the girl so they wouldn’t take particular notice of him. Also, he realized that his new persona — clean-shaved, immaculately dressed, his sideburns trimmed, the Resistol low on his brow — was not cosmetic. Quince had become somebody else, on his own, no longer taking orders from the Wellstones. He was the captain of his soul, with the power to arbitrarily decide whom he would leave his mark on.
“See that couple eating at the table by the door?” he said to the bartender.
“What about them?” the barte
nder said, looking at Quince, not the doorway.
“Send them some Champale or a beer and a shot or whatever they’re drinking. Just don’t tell them who sent it over.”
“Somebody’s birthday?” the bartender asked.
“Something like that.”
“I’m a mixologist. Talk to the table waiter.”
“I should have known that. I can see this is an uptown joint,” Quince said.
The band had taken a break, and the actor who had been scoping out Nix’s girl was going in and out of the back door with one of the guitar players, a guy who looked familiar for some reason. The guitar player had put his Dobro in a case and carried it outside with him; he was evidently through playing for the evening. He looked like a Mexican or an Indian. Where had Quince seen him? Was he the guy the Wellstones were looking for, the one who had been putting the wood to Jamie Sue down in Texas? No, it couldn’t be. Not unless the guy had a death wish or wanted to go back to prison.
Whenever the back door opened and closed, Quince could smell an odor like leaves and damp moss burning on a winter day. Those Hollywood douche bags were smoking dope in full view in a state that still officially employed a hangman. What a bunch of idiots, he thought. Then he glanced toward the front of the building. Troyce Nix was boxing up his girlfriend’s food, preparing to leave.
Quince swallowed the rest of his beer and went out the back door, ignoring the dope smokers and the breed with the guitar case. How was Quince going to play it with Nix and the girl? Answer: any way he felt like it. The “new” Quince was in control, dealing the play, doing what he wanted to his victims, every moment of their fate in his hands. His victims didn’t have any kick coming, either. The girl had dissed him at the gas pump up in the Swan, and Nix had attacked him without provocation in the can, smashing his head into the rubber machine, breaking his mouth and bridge apart on the rim of the bowl. Maybe he should take down Nix and the girl in an isolated place where he could make each of them watch the fate of the other. The thought made his colon constrict and his genitalia hum like a nest of bees. This was a payback he was going to savor.
The question was one of method and how to make it hurt as long as possible. He stood at the corner of the building and watched Nix and the girl emerge from the front door and walk toward their SUV. The mountainsides were black with shadow, the trees hardly distinguishable, the sky purple, Venus twinkling in the west. Quince watched Nix open the passenger door for his girl, then hand her the boxed remnants of her supper.
Take both Nix and the girl down at once? Or pop Nix with the twenty-five and get the girl into the truck?
Bad idea. Gunfire would draw witnesses. Quince’s concept of revenge did not include doing time in Deer Lodge. The challenge was to get Nix out of the way so he could mess up the girl proper. He wondered how Nix would like her without a nose or with eyes that had been burned out of their sockets.