Pappy had known Fairchild for about fifteen years but hadn’t seen him in more than a decade. They’d been introduced by a mutual friend who knew Pappy was moving large amounts of powder cocaine up and down the eastern part of the United States, that Fairchild had plenty of connections in and around Charleston, West Virginia, and that he was looking to get into the business, albeit on a far smaller scale than Pappy. Pappy would supply Fairchild with five ounces a month, either through the mail, a courier, or in person, and Fairchild would triple the volume by cutting it with vitamin B12 or baby laxative. He’d then sell grams and eight balls—or occasionally a half ounce—mostly in the bars around Charleston, and he made a good deal of money. When the feds finally lowered the boom, Pappy refused to acknowledge that he even knew Fairchild, and Fairchild did the same. The feds couldn’t prove they’d done business together, because their snitches had never actually seen Pappy, or heard Pappy and Fairchild do business. They were mentioned in the same indictment, but ultimately Fairchild pleaded to a distribution charge and agreed to a seven-year sentence. Pappy went to trial in Georgia on charges of selling crack, was found guilty, and wound up with thirty-five years, but Darren Street had gotten his case overturned on appeal while they were both at the same maximum security federal pen in California.
Pappy rolled to a stop a couple of hundred yards from the gas pumps out back of the truck stop, and Fairchild climbed in. Pappy put the truck in neutral and pulled the emergency brake. He left the engine running and the heater on. The man sitting in the passenger seat looked far different from the man he’d known earlier.
“What the hell, Rex?” Pappy said as Fairchild reached out to shake his hand. “You sick?”
“No, man. I’m not sick. I’m just scared.”
“You sounded pretty upset on the phone,” Pappy said.
“A West Virginia state trooper, an investigator named Grimes, came to see me,” Fairchild said. He spoke in a quick, choppy manner, and Pappy noticed immediately that the pupils of Fairchild’s eyes were dilated and his nose was running.
“You high?” Pappy said.
“What? Me? No, man.”
“Bullshit,” Pappy said. “I know a geeker when I see one. Your teeth are rotten. When did you start using?”
Fairchild looked down at the floor and then out the window.
“After I got out, man. I don’t know why. I never used before I went in, but after I got out I was drinking too much, and then I started trying it out some, and before I knew it I was using all the time.”
“You better get off that shit in a hurry. Every cokehead I’ve ever known has died a miserable death or wound up in prison for a long time. Now pull your shit together and tell me about this cop.”
“He knew all about me getting my man to ask about those crackers in Cowen. I don’t know how he knew, but he did. He also knew about you. He said I was gathering information for you and passing it on to you, and he said you passed it on to Street and that Street did the killing. I’m not sure what he can really prove, but he said he had a witness who can identify Street. He was also talking about charging me with conspiracy to commit murder, and if he charges me, he’ll charge you. I’m not sure what we need to do, if anything, but I gotta admit I’m scared shitless right now.”
“Staying high won’t help anything,” Pappy said. “It has to be the bartender.”
“Bartender?”
“The guy who owns that little bar where Darren shot those boys, Sammy whatever his name is. He let Darren do it. He walked into the bathroom and stayed in there while Darren blew them away. I told Darren he should have killed the dude. You don’t leave a witness like that hanging after you’ve just committed a double murder.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’m afraid Darren might be hanging by a pretty thin thread right now,” Pappy said. “I talked to him on my way here, and he said his girlfriend kicked him out yesterday. He said she thinks he did the killings up here plus another one down there.”
“Shit,” Fairchild said. “Woman scorned. That’s a bad deal. Is she going to rat him out to the cops?”
“He doesn’t think so.”
“Maybe he needs to off her, too.”
Pappy shook his massive head. “Not gonna happen. Who did you talk to up there that might have gone to the police?”
“Nobody. I only talked to one guy, and he’s rock solid. He asked around for me, or at least he said he did. Maybe he got somebody else to do it, I just don’t know. I’ll get in touch with him and see if he has any idea who’s talking to the cops about us.”
“Do it today,” Pappy said. “If I go up there and take care of this bartender, which I think I’ll probably wind up doing, then I want to take care of the rat at the same time. Find out who he is, and I’ll shut his mouth permanently. And stay away from that nose candy. I can’t trust you if you’re doing that shit.”
“You’re not planning to kill me, too, are you?” Fairchild said.
“We’re good for now,” Pappy said. “But I’m serious about you getting off the coke. People run their mouths when they’re doing that stuff. Now get on out of here and find out about the rat in Cowen. I need to get back on the road.”
CHAPTER 42
Rocky Skidmore popped the top off a can of Keystone Light beer and rolled his wheelchair into the living room of the trailer he’d been living in for ten years just outside Cowen, West Virginia. The place was a wreck: holes in the interior walls, one toilet that didn’t work, and no hot water, but Skidmore didn’t care. He had a roof over his head, and he wasn’t paying the rent.
At one time, Skidmore had been a bad dude. He’d been the president of the Grave Diggers, an outlaw motorcycle gang that drew its membership from all over northern and central West Virginia and that dealt primarily in drugs and guns. The club’s headquarters was a bar called Snake Eyes on the outskirts of Charleston. It was in that bar that Skidmore had first met Rex Fairchild and had nearly killed him.
Fairchild had been early in his cocaine-selling days and had wandered into the Grave Diggers’ headquarters, not knowing what he was getting himself into. Skidmore remembered it well. Fairchild had sat at the bar for a little while, and then had walked around, past the jukebox and over to the pinball machines and pool tables. Before long, he started passing the word that he had some coke to sell if anybody was interested. At first Skidmore thought Fairchild must be crazy, then he thought he might just be ballsy. Either way, an outsider coming into a Grave Digger bar and trying to move coke was a huge insult. Within ten minutes of learning what Fairchild was trying to do, he had him on his knees in the walk-in cooler off the kitchen with a gun to his head. Fairchild pissed himself and begged for his life, but what saved him was that he blurted out that he had a source who could get Skidmore all the coke he could move. High-quality coke. Large quantities.
Skidmore bit, and within a week, he was introduced to a huge trucker they called Big Pappy Donovan. For the next several years, until Fairchild and Big Pappy were both busted, Skidmore and his gang had moved hundreds of kilos of coke through West Virginia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania that he had obtained from Big Pappy.