No swagger, no cockiness left. But there was no doubt he was staring right at Craig Houston.

•   •   •

“When’s the last time you saw Hank Stillwell?” Quinn said.

“He’s not part of the club.”

“He’s not part of any club,” Quinn said. “Someone shot him twice in the back of the head with a .22.”

“Shame.”

“He rode with you for a long time,” Quinn said. “Figured you’d want to connect to some of your boys when you got out.”

LeDoux blew some smoke out of his nose. He looked hard at Quinn. “Go ahead and try and tie me to that killing. Stillwell was nothing. He is nothing.”

“You must’ve hated him pretty bad.”

LeDoux rubbed his beard, thinking on it. He shrugged. “You ride with a man, you become a brother. If you don’t have that, you ain’t nothing but a fucking animal.”

“I understand,” Quinn said. “I’ve seen The Wild Bunch a hundred times.”

LeDoux rubbed his beard. His face twitched into a sort of smile. “What’d your daddy tell you about me?”

“Nothing,” Quinn said. “He never said your name.”

“Fear will do that to a man.”

“What’s that mean?”

Chains shook his head, kept on rubbing his beard. A Tibbehah County patrol car circled the Square, Art Watts on duty. Art knew where Quinn had headed and was checking to make sure all was right, an AR-15 on his passenger seat.

“Did your daddy tell you I once tried to kill him?” LeDoux asked.

Quinn shook his head. His tried to puff on his cigar but it had gone out. He flicked open the Zippo and lit it again, a cold wind ruffling the flame.

“Thought he was the fucking snitch,” LeDoux said. “I just fucking knew it. The Feds were knowing things coming from inside our own goddamn clubhouse. If it wasn’t for Big Doug, your daddy would have had a hole in his chest as big as a dinner plate.”

Quinn got the cigar going again. “So what?”

“I was wrong,” LeDoux said. “Took me twenty years too long to learn it.”

“Good for you.”

“I want you to tell Jason that I fucked up,” LeDoux said. “I turned on my own brother.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Goddamn snitch was right there,” LeDoux said. “Standing right by me when I had a gun on your daddy ready to blow his ass off this planet.”

Quinn blew smoke into the space that separated them.

“The son of a bitch made your daddy leave Mississippi with his tail between his legs to protect your family. Isn’t that funny as hell?”

“When was that?”

“Strange days, back then,” LeDoux said. “My head fucked-up on eleven different herbs and spices, knowing the Feds had us close and Johnny Stagg was stoking the flame.”

“Then you found out it was Stillwell?”

“I never said that,” LeDoux said, grinning. “I don’t know nothing about that.”‘

“My father’s affairs then are none of my concern or yours.”

“He’d come back from out west wanted to ride again,” LeDoux said. “Hung out at the clubhouse, racing bikes and doing crazy shit.”

“I’ll nail you for Stillwell,” Quinn said. “And that man you lynched.”

LeDoux stood, cupped a new cigarette in hand, and fired it up. “Nice to see the law hadn’t changed much either,” he said. “Your uncle took money from us and now you take it from Stagg.”

Quinn walked up fast and hard on LeDoux. He got within an inch of his face, smelling the body odor and smoke. Quinn stared at LeDoux, breathing slow and easy, waiting for the man to react, make just the slightest of moves. LeDoux stared at him with empty gray eyes, turned, and walked down the brick walkway to his bike, kick-starting the engine and zooming out.

The cigar and cigarette smoke intertwined and blew away from the gazebo.

Back in his truck, Quinn recalled an ancient fight between his mom and dad, the crying, yelling, and the pleading at the kitchen table. Jason Colson had left in the middle of the night, Quinn and Caddy’s faces pressed against the window as his brown GMC truck bounded out of their driveway, knowing he was gone for good.

He’d wanted them to go somewhere; Quinn couldn’t recall where.

And Jean saying she’d never leave Jericho.

Why didn’t you tell me?” Quinn said.

“Tell you what?” Jason Colson said. “That a motorcycle gang wanted to crucify me to a barn door? Pretty heavy stuff for a twelve-year-old.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “But might’ve made things easier on us if we’d known there was a reason.”

“Talk to your mother about that,” Jason said, long gray hair combed straight back, neat and pushed behind his ears. “She had a say in all this. She was married to this shit town more than she was married to me.”

They’d called Jason back to Jericho for more questioning about the lynching. He’d shown up with his attorney, but Quinn had asked his father for some time first, both of them heading into the interview room by the jail. The attorney hadn’t been pleased, but Jason had pulled him aside, whispered in his ear, and sent him off with Lillie. The legal complexities of a son charging his dad with murder weren’t lost on the attorney. The man said he hoped all charges would be dropped immediately.

“What I don’t understand is why you went back,” Quinn said. “You watched those people hang a man and then decimate his body. Then you decide it’s OK to go drink beer, shoot pool, and ride the highways with them?”

“I came back to see Doug,” Jason said. “He was sick. The cancer had him the first time. I had gotten him some drugs down in Mexico. Same ones Steve McQueen had tried.”

“LeDoux said you came back for the Born Losers.”

“LeDoux is fucked in the head,” Jason said. “He’s a diseased individual.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whatever you think of me is fine,” Jason said. “But I wasn’t a part of what happened, or Big Doug, or even Hank Stillwell. There were some of us that stood down when they threw that rope up into that big tree and looped it around that man’s neck.”

“But y’all rode anyway,” Quinn said, “leaving him to die.”

“I can’t talk about this,” Jason said. “I’m just telling you I wasn’t a part of it. You can believe me or not, that’s your own business.”

“Did you see the killing?”

Jason grinned and shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “You’re not getting me into this. I’ve made a new life and I’m living it.”

“You should put that bullshit on a bumper sticker,” Quinn said. “I bet you could sell the hell out of it.”

“Talk to your mother,” Jason said. “I’ve tried to make contact over the years. I tried to find out if she was all right after the storm. You know I rode over to Tibbehah and helped out with the cleanup? Nobody even knew who I was. I saw Caddy handing out ice, almost went to say something. But—”

“Maybe you could have jumped your bike over the wreckage,” Quinn said. “It would have been a triumphant return.”

“I can’t make what I did right.”

“But you can do what’s right with this,” Quinn said. “You don’t shut down LeDoux and the killing is just gonna keep going. He took out Hank Stillwell and put Johnny Stagg in the hospital. Stagg’s so busted-up, he can’t get out of bed. Won’t say a word. He told me and the hospital staff he fell off his tractor.”

“I don’t care about any of it but y’all.”

“We can get LeDoux on murder,” Quinn said. “Probably some federal charges in there, too. Civil rights violations.”

Jason dipped his head into his hands and stared down at the table. He groaned. And ran a hand over his neck to work out the kinks and soreness. “Better bring my lawyer back in here,” Jason said. “This wasn’t what I thought you wanted to discuss.”