He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, his jeans obscenely tight in the crotch, the scent of him something to behold in the tiny space.

“I like your singing,” he said again. “But keep the rest of that old bullshit to yourself.”

He unbolted the door and walked from the ladies’ room. Diane had watched the whole thing from the mirror over the sink. She breathed and breathed and then dabbed her face again, tucked her silver hair behind her ear, and marched back out for another drink and to start the second set.

When she walked back into the Star, all the bikers had left. She ordered a shot. Until she felt that warm Jack hit the back of her throat, she’d started to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing.

But they’d been there. She could still smell them.

Quinn and Lillie drove the back roads around Yellow Leaf nearly an hour before they spotted the tracks. They were fresh, worn hard and distinct in the mud, and obviously made by some kind of cycle, not a car or truck. Quinn got out of his truck, Lillie riding with him now, leaving her Jeep at Stillwell’s place, and they counted three bikes riding along the dirt and into the tree line. They were big wheels, heavy set into the mud, too big and weighty to be dirt bikes.

“You want to see where they go?” Lillie said.

“Why the hell not?” Quinn said.

They followed the tracks only about twenty feet until they saw where the tracks became muddled and had sunk deeper in the mud. The tracks then circled back the way they came and out onto the road. From the turnaround point, they made out distinct boot prints heading into the woods.

“These aren’t hunters,” Lillie said.

“A kind of hunter,” Quinn said. “Trying to spook Stillwell.”

“I don’t think he spooks much,” Lillie said. “He’s too worn-out to study on things like that. He seems like he’s been waiting on them a long time.”

“You heard anything about what he was saying?” Quinn said. “About this gang coming back out to Choctaw Lake?”

“I know that place,” Lillie said. “Some shithole shack off a back road. I used to fish by a little river that ran into the lake there. Best place for crappie. But I hadn’t seen anyone go in that shack for years.”

“When’s the last time you been out there?”

“When’s the last time I’ve been fishing?”

“Come on,” Quinn said. “Let’s check it out.”

It was dark when they turned off Cotton Road and headed down south on past Dogtown. There were wooden posted signs from Wildlife and Game about the seasons for hunting and the need to obtain a license. By the edge of the lake, there was a park, with a playground, a couple piers, and a set of public restrooms. Quinn and Lillie drove through the empty parking lot down by the boat ramp and circled off the landing down an overgrown dirt road that seemed to lead nowhere.

“You sure this is it?”

“Look in your headlights, Ranger,” Lillie said.

In the narrow beam of headlights were many rutted tracks from motorcycles and cars. The lights shone ten feet ahead into absolute darkness, no moon above, and the road had been so untraveled that limbs and tree branches scraped at the doors and hood of the Big Green Machine.

“Boom won’t like this,” Lillie said.

“He does love this truck.”

“He made that truck,” Lillie said. “He got tired of you riding around in that old piece of shit.”

There was light ahead.

Multiple headlights and a bonfire lit up a gathering at the edge of Choctaw Lake. Quinn slowed into the elbow of the narrow dirt road, stopped, and cracked the driver’s window. In the distance, they could hear what sounded like Mexican corridas, Quinn familiar with the sound of the music through a few run-ins with his old pal Donnie Varner.

“A Tex-Mex biker gang?” Lillie said. “OK. This should be interesting.”

“You want to walk it?”

“Hell no,” Lillie said. “Let’s see what these motherfuckers are up to.”

Quinn shrugged. He hit the light bar on top of the F-250 and rode bigger than shit down that gravel road in front of the busted old clubhouse Hank Stillwell had spoken about. There must have been twenty jacked-up trucks parked all around the shack and maybe thirty motorcycles. Out by the lakeside, several oil barrels billowed flame and smoke up into the dark sky. Men and women were walking around, the Mexican music seeming to come from one of the trucks, tall and high, with the back window painted with the face of the Virgin Mary. Quinn slowed the truck at the edge of the party. Everyone with a cup, bottle, or cigarette in hand. The men and women were Anglo and Mexican. They warmed themselves by the fire, tilting up bottles, and then looked at the flashing blues coming from the truck.

“OK,” Lillie said. “Now what?”

“We wait.”

“Wait for what?” Lillie said. “For them to start shooting?”

“Someone will ask what the fuck we want,” Quinn said. “Someone’s got to be in charge. They’ll want to show us they’re in charge.”

Quinn kept his window down, the air brittle and sharp rushing into the warm car. Quinn reached into the ashtray and relit the rest of the La Gloria Cubana he’d started that morning. He and Lillie sitting there listening to the sad song sung in Spanish with a steady backbeat and high notes of the accordion.

Not a minute later, a large man in a black leather jacket with a denim vest over it ambled on over to Quinn’s truck. He had a shaved head and a lot of ink on his face. At first, Quinn thought he had a small beard, but the closer he got to the truck, Quinn saw it was a Satanic goatee etched permanently onto his chin.

“You dating anyone lately, Lil?” Quinn said.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Here comes Mr. Right.”

The man walked up close to Quinn’s window and then leaned inside the truck, drunk-smiling to Quinn and Lillie and checking out the squawking police radio and the shotgun Quinn had mounted on the back glass.

“Evening, Officer,” the man said.

“Not an officer,” Quinn said. “I’m the sheriff.”

“Howdy, Sheriff,” the man said, laughing. His voice was guttural and rough. His body odor and breath swarmed over even Quinn’s cigar. The biker sniffed at the smoke and smiled. “We got some kind of problem?”

“We got a problem, Deputy Virgil?” Quinn said.

“You got a license to operate a beer joint?”

“Ain’t no beer joint,” the man said. “Just having some fucking fun with my brothers.”

“And who are your brothers?” Lillie said.

The man grinned and turned his back to them, thrusting his thumbs at a patch on his back that read BORN LOSERS.

“Y’all have some ethnic diversity here.”

“Just some folks down from Memphis,” the man said. “They brought the tequila. We breaking some kind of law?”

“You have a permit for that weapon?” Lillie said.

Quinn hadn’t noticed the bulge under the coat, but as the man turned to stare, the checkered grip was plain to see. The man grinned some more, reached into his wallet, and presented a folded-up piece of paper that gave him the right to carry a concealed weapon. His name was Chester Anthony DiFranco.

“You want to pat me down?” he said to Lillie.

“You want to shower first?”

The man laughed. “Come on,” he said. “Fuck. We done here?”

“Is this your place?” Quinn said.

“Bought and paid for,” Chester said. “You need to see that paperwork, too?”

Quinn nodded. “We’ll be back,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure you know we’re around, Chester.”