“Ike?” Buddy Lee said.
“How’d you find this out? Why should I believe you?” Ike said.
“You said Tangerine had her man saved in her phone under ‘W,’ right? Gerald’s middle name is Winthrop. That’s when it hit me. Why Derek would be so upset about some fella dumping Tangerine. Why it pissed him off so bad. Then I talked to his mama, and she said a couple of weeks before the boys got shot Derek had tried to reach out to her,” Buddy Lee said.
“But he got hold of his stepdaddy instead,” Ike said.
“And he probably threatened Gerald. Ol’ Winthrop is one of them rah-rah all-American types. Women need to be barefoot and pregnant, Black people need to know their place, and anybody that ain’t T-square straight is the devil,” Buddy Lee said.
“He wouldn’t want the world to know he was messing around on his wife. Especially with Tangerine,” Ike said.
“Yeah. He’s the one behind all this, Ike. The Rare Breed might’ve pulled the trigger but he pulled the goddamn strings. He wants me and you to bring him Tangerine in exchange for Arianna. He’s gearing up for a run for governor and he can’t have all this hanging out there,” Buddy Lee said.
“And when did he tell you this?” Ike asked.
“Right after I drove my truck through his house and tried to brain him with a baseball bat full of nails,” Buddy Lee said.
“Let me guess: he ain’t pressing charges,” Ike said.
“No. He wants all three of us. They gonna call you any minute now. Look, I know you’re pissed at me, and I don’t blame you one bit. If I could change everything, I would. But if we don’t work together on this, none of us are gonna make it,” Buddy Lee said.
“Mya just got out of surgery,” Ike said.
Buddy Lee sucked at his teeth. “What the docs say?”
“She could wake up in a couple of hours. Or she could wake in a few days or a few weeks,” Ike said.
“I don’t know what to say, Ike,” Buddy Lee said. Ike caught his reflection in the snack machine. The slouch of his shoulders. The defeated tilt of his head like he was carrying an invisible millstone around his neck. His son gone. His granddaughter taken. His wife halfway between this world and the next. His home reduced to a pile of cinders. All because of one man. A man who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. A man who thought he couldn’t be touched.
“Where are you?” Ike asked.
“I’m standing outside the King William County jail. Actually I’ve walked down the road a piece,” Buddy Lee said.
“I gotta get one of my guys to bring me the smaller work truck. Hang tight. I’ll be there in about an hour,” Ike said.
“Hey, I don’t want you to leave Mya if you don’t want to,” Buddy Lee said.
“She would tell me go and get our granddaughter back, so that’s what I’m gonna do. Give me an hour.”
* * *
Ike pulled up to the sidewalk in front of the jail. Buddy Lee loped over to the car. He climbed in and closed the door. Ike made a U-turn and headed back to Red Hill.
They drove in silence for a few minutes for before Buddy Lee started rambling.
“I meant what I said that day in your shop. I can’t live in a world where Gerald Culpepper gets to breathe and our boys are in the ground. But … I shouldn’t have done what I did. I’m sorry.”
“You doing that might have pushed me toward the edge, but I was the one that made the leap,” Ike said.
They turned onto Route 33, leaving King William behind. The headlights illuminated a green road sign that said Red Hill was twenty miles away.
“They haven’t called you yet?” Buddy Lee asked.
“Not yet. They probably trying to find a good place to bury us all. We know too much about where this Gerald likes to stick his dick,” Ike said.
“Yeah. We gotta figure out a way to flip this around them. Get Arianna back without turning over Tangerine.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. When it looked like I was doing this alone, I came up with an idea,” Ike said. Buddy Lee raised an eyebrow.
“We back on?” Buddy Lee asked.
“This is a mess but you didn’t make it by yourself,” Ike said.
“Okay. What’s the play?” Buddy Lee asked.
“Ya know they got something we want and we got something they want. We need something they want more than Tangerine,” Ike said.
“Like what? We gonna steal one of their bikes?” Buddy Lee asked.