The Innocents by Ace Atkins Read Free Book Online Page B

painted on.
    “Just whatever you do, don’t forget to tip out,” the black girl said. “You cheat the house and that eye in the sky will know.”
    “She have cameras?”
    The older woman looked at her, fluffing up her hair in a mirror, then looked over her shoulder. “Fannie doesn’t need cameras,” she said. “Sees it all.”
    “You pick a stage name yet?” Damika said.
    “No.”
    “Don’t ever tell anyone your real name,” the woman said. “Don’t ever let anyone know the real you.”
    “Mmm-hmm,” Damika said.
    “How about a song?”
    “‘Wrecking Ball,’” Milly Jones said. “Miley Cyrus.”
    •   •   •
    I t was nearly seven, but Quinn found Boom Kimbrough still at the County Barn, working on one of the patrol cars, the one that had been Ike McCaslin’s before his long-awaited retirement. He had the hood up, bent at the waist, reaching deep into the guts of the old Crown Vic, turning something with a ratchet attached on his prosthetic arm. The arm having been a casualty of his time in Iraq with the Guard.
    Lillie Virgil sat on a discarded car backseat now used as a sofa. She was drinking some of Boom’s burnt coffee in a paper cup. She smiled and gave Quinn a silent salute with two fingers.
    “You payin’ overtime, Lil?” Quinn asked.
    Boom didn’t budge, grunting, working on tightening something up. “It’s my pleasure to stay late,” Boom said. “Sheriff lets me work on some real classics.”
    “Classic pieces of shit,” Lillie said.
    “Supervisors won’t get y’all new vehicles yet?” Quinn said.
    “What do you think?” Lillie said. “They blow what they don’t skim on kickbacks on conferences in Biloxi or Tunica. If we didn’t have Boom, we’d be riding around Tibbehah on bicycles.”
    Boom pulled himself from under the hood. He reached for a rag, wiping the grease from the ratchet and turning it free of the artificialarm. A tall and substantial black man, he grinned at Quinn and shook his head. “Damn good to see you, Quinn.”
    Quinn wrapped his right arm around Boom’s hulking body and patted his back. He handed him a box of Cubans he bought in duty-free on the way back home. Boom said he couldn’t tell a Cuban from a Puerto Rican, but he sure loved the way those sticks smelled. Quinn reached into his back pocket and pulled out a handmade silk scarf that he offered to Lillie.
    “Ha,” Lillie said. “You can take a hint.”
    “Bought it in a bazaar in Herat,” Quinn said. “It’s your favorite color?”
    “Nope,” Lillie said, taking the scarf from his hand and wrapping it around her neck. “But it’ll do.”
    “’Bout time you stopped by,” Boom said.
    “Had to deal with a few things.”
    Lillie grinned but didn’t comment, left leg crossed over the right, kicking her foot up and down, as she sat on the old backseat. She was examining the end of the scarf, probably making sure Quinn didn’t buy it at the local Walmart.
    “You get those things straight?” Boom asked.
    “Nope.”
    Boom nodded. He used a pocketknife to slit open the cedar box, smelling the twenty-four neatly aligned cigars. He grinned and widened his eyes. “Go ahead,” Quinn said.
    “I can wait.”
    “Wait for what?”
    “Special occasion.”
    “Seems like one right now.” Quinn cut a cigar for Boom and offeredanother to Lillie. Lillie declined but said she just might take a puff off Quinn’s.
    “Since you made good and actually remembered me,” she said.
    “I always think of you, Lil.”
    “Bull-fucking-shit,” Lillie said.
    The inside of the County Barn was pin neat, with its clean concrete floors, aligned tools on pegboards, and four large Husky toolboxes on wheels. Quinn noted Boom had gotten a new
Playboy
lingerie calendar since the last time he’d stopped by. A woman looked coyly over her shoulder, a blue sweater slipping down over her shapely back. Just the kind of woman who’d be hanging out in a Jericho, Mississippi, garage.
    Quinn clicked open the