17
BUT IN THE morning, the man who lived upon occasion in the stucco house was not to be found. The bikers had approached the house on foot from three directions, the sun still buried beneath the earth’s rim, the light so weak their bodies cast no shadows on the ground. A compact car was parked twenty yards away from the house, the doors unlocked, the keys hanging in the ignition. The bikers kicked open the front and back doors of the house, turned over the bed, raked the clothes out of the closets, and tore the plywood out of the ceiling to see if Preacher was hiding in an attic or crawl space.
“The mine shaft,” one of them said.
“Where?” another said.
“Up on the mountain. There’s no other place he could be. Josef said he’s on crutches.”
“How’d he know we were coming?”
“The Mexicans say he walks through walls.”
“That’s why their country would make a great golf course, as long as it was run by white people.”
The bikers spread out and approached the opening on the mountainside, their weapons hanging loosely at their sides. They wore needle-nosed cowboy boots that were metal-plated around the heels and toes, jeans that were stiff with grit and road grime, and shirts whose sleeves were razored off at the armpits. Their hair was sunburned at the tips and grew in locks on the backs of their necks. Their bodies had the tendons and lean hardness of men who lifted weights daily and for whom narcissism was a virtue and not a character defect.
Their leader was named Tim. He stood two inches taller than his companions and wore a gold earring in one earlobe and a beard that ran along his jawline like a cluster of black ants. A Glock semiautomatic hung from his right hand. He paused in front of the cave and slipped the gun into the back of his belt, as though enacting a private ritual unrelated to what anyone thought of him. He took a breath and entered the cave. He produced a penlight from his jeans, clicked it on, and shone it into the darkness.
“It’s a mine?” one of his companions said.
“I can feel a breeze blowing through it. It’s got to have a second opening.”
“You see the guy?”
“No, that’s why I said it’s got a second opening. Maybe he went through it and out the other side.”
“Where’s it go?”
Tim continued to walk deeper into the cave, the beam of his penlight watery and diffuse on the walls. “Come have a look at this.”
“At what?”
“Did you see Snakes on a Plane?”
The two bikers who had remained outside the cave stepped into the darkness. Tim aimed the penlight in front of him, pointing it down a passageway that twisted into the mountain.
“Jesus!” one of them said.
“They go where there’s food or water. Maybe a cougar dragged its kill in here,” Tim said. “You ever see that many in one place?”
“Maybe Collins is a ghoul. Maybe he dumps his victims in here.”
“Go down and check it out. They rattle before they strike. They’re not rattling. You’ll be okay.”
“How about that one on the ledge behind you?”
The other two bikers waited, smiles on their faces, expecting Tim to jump. Instead, he turned around and shone the light into a diamondback’s eyes. He picked up a piece of splintered timber that had fallen from the roof. He poked at the snake’s head with it, then bedeviled it in the stomach, and finally, lifted it up in a coil and flipped it into the darkness.
“You’re not afraid of snakes?”
“I’m afraid of bad information. I think this Texas bunch is jerking Josef around. This guy Collins is a hitter, not a pimp. Hitters don’t boost somebody else’s whores.”
“Where do you think he went?”
“One thing is for sure. He didn’t go out the other side.”
“Then where is he?”
“Probably watching us.”
“No way. From where?”
“I don’t know. The guy has been killing people for twenty years and never went inside.”
“This blows, Tim.”
They were outside the cave now, the stucco house still in shadow, the morning cool, the wind ruffling the mesquite. The three men stared at the surrounding hills, looking for the glint of binoculars or the lens on a telescopic rifle sight.
“Who are we supposed to check in with?”
“The guy who ratted out Collins. His name is Hugo Cistranos.”
“What are we gonna do?”
Tim slipped the Glock from behind his belt and strolled down the gravel path from the cave to Preacher’s compact car. He circled the car, taking careful aim, and shot out each tire. He went inside the house and closed all the windows, like a man securing his home from an impending storm. He found a candle in a kitchen drawer, lit it, and melted the wax in a pool so he could affix it to the drainboard. Then he shut the front door and turned on the propane stove and shut the kitchen door behind him as he exited the house.
“Let’s fang down some frijoles,” he said.
SHERIFF HACKBERRY HOLLAND had just picked up Danny Boy Lorca for public intoxication and locked him in a cell upstairs when Maydeen told him Ethan Riser was on the phone.
“How you doing, Mr. Riser?” Hackberry said, picking up the receiver on his desk.
“Can’t you call me Ethan?”
“It’s a southern inhibition.”
“You were right about the origins of your mystery caller. We think his name is Nick Dolan. He was a floating casino operator in New Orleans before Katrina.”
“How’d you ID him?”
“His name was in Isaac Clawson’s notes. Clawson figured the Thai murder victims for prostitutes somebody was smuggling into the country, so he started running down anybody with major ties to escort services. It appears Clawson was giving Arthur Rooney a hard look and decided to check out Nick Dolan at the same time. Evidently, he interviewed Dolan at his vacation home in New Braunfels.”
“Why are y’all just finding this out?”
“Like I told you, Clawson liked to work alone. He didn’t put everything he did in the official file.”
“But so far you’re not absolutely sure Dolan is the same guy who called me?”
“Dolan knows Rooney. Dolan has been mixed up with prostitution for the last two years. Clawson had him in his bombsights. Also, Dolan just dissolved his partnership in his escort services and fired all the strippers at his nightclub. Either Clawson scared the shit out of him, or Dolan has developed problems of conscience.”
“You haven’t interviewed him yet?”
“No.”
“You’re putting a tap on him instead?”
“Did I say that?”
“I think you’re calling me because you don’t want me to find Dolan on my own.”
“Some people have a way of putting themselves in the middle of electric storms, Sheriff.”
“I don’t think the problem is mine. Your colleagues want Collins as a conduit to this Russian out on the West Coast. I think they might want to use Dolan as bait. In the meantime, I’m a hangnail.”
This time Ethan Riser was silent.
“You’re telling me I’m bait, too?” Hackberry said.
“I can’t speak for the actions of others. But I sleep nights. I do so because I treat people as honestly as I can. Watch your ass, Sheriff. Guys like us are old school. But there’s not many of us left.”
A FEW MINUTES later, Hackberry filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee, dropped three sugar cubes in it, and removed a folded-up checkerboard and a box of wood checkers from his bottom desk drawer. He walked up the old steel stairs to the second floor and pulled up a chair to Danny Boy Lorca’s cell. He sat down and placed the coffee and the checkerboard inside the bars and unfolded the checkerboard on the concrete floor. “Set ’em up,” he said.
“I fell off the wagon again,” Danny Boy said, sitting up on the edge of his bunk, rubbing his face. His skin was as dark as smoked leather, his eyes dead, like coals that have been co
nsumed by their own fire.
“One day you’ll quit. Between now and then, don’t fret yourself about it,” Hackberry said.
“I dreamed it rained. I saw a dried-out field of corn stand up straight in the rain. I had the same dream for three nights.”
Hackberry’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
“You don’t pay no attention to dreams, huh?” Danny Boy said.
“You bet I do. Your move,” Hackberry said.
THE THREE BIKERS checked in to a motel next to a truck stop and nightclub, partially because the portable sign in front of the nightclub said LADIES FREE TONIGHT—TWO-FERS 5 TO 8. They showered and changed into fresh clothes and drank Mexican beer at the bar and picked up a woman who said she worked at the dollar store in town. They also picked up her friend, who was sullen and suspicious and claimed she had a ten-year-old boy waiting alone at home.
But when Tim showed the friend his tin Altoids box packed to the brim with a lovely white granular cake of nose candy, she changed her mind and joined him and her girlfriend and the other two bikers for a couple of lines, some high-octane weed, and an order-in pizza back at the motel.
Tim had rented a room at the end of the building, and while his companions and their new friends went at it full-throttle on two beds, he drank a soda outside and crushed the can in one hand and threw it in the trash. He sat on a bench under a tree throbbing with cicadas and opened his cell phone. He could hear the bedstead banging against the motel wall and the cacophonous laughter of the two dimwits his friends had picked up, as if their laughter were outside them and not part of anything that was funny. He put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and tried to clear his head. What would the smart money do in a situation like this? You didn’t blow a hit for Josef Sholokoff. You also didn’t mess up when you took on a guy like Jack Collins, at least if he was as good as people said he was.
The eaves of the motel were lit with pink neon tubing. The light was fading from the sky, and the air was purple and dense and moist, with a smell of dust in it that suggested a drop in the barometer, perhaps even a taste of rain. The fronds on a palm tree by the entrance to the motel straightened and rattled in the wind. He thought about going back inside and trying out one of the dimwits. No, first things first. He dialed a number on his cell phone. While he listened to the ring, he wondered what was keeping the pizza man with their order.
“Hugo?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Tim.”
“Tim who?”
“Tim who works for Josef. Lose the charade. You want an update or not?”
“You got Preacher?”
“We’re working on it.”
“Explain that.”
“We had him boxed, but he disappeared. I don’t know how he did it.”
“Preacher is onto you but he got away? Do you have any idea what you’re telling me?”
“It sounds like you overloaded on your Ex-Lax.”
“You listen, asshole—”
“No, you listen. The guy has got no wheels and no house to go back to. We’ll find him. In the meantime—”
“What do you mean, he has no house to—”
“There was a propane accident in his kitchen. Some vandals blew the tires off his car at about the same time. Everything is under control. Here’s the good news. You said you were looking for a broad.”
“No, I said Preacher was looking for a broad. He’s got an obsession about her. You said you shot out his tires? What the fuck do you think this is? Halloween?”
“Man, you just don’t listen, do you?”
“About what?”
“The broad and the soldier you’re looking for. She has chestnut hair and green eyes, looks like a fine piece of ass, sings Gomer Pyle spirituals to beer-drinking retards who don’t have a clue? If that sounds right, I know where you can find her.”
“You found Vikki Gaddis?”
“No, Michelle Obama. You got a pencil?”
“There’s one here somewhere. Hang on.”
“One day you guys have to explain to me how you got into the life.”
Inside the motel room, the women got up and dressed in the bathroom. The woman from the dollar store came out first, blotting her face with a towel, smoothing her hair out of her face. She was overweight and round-shouldered, her arms big like a farm girl’s; without makeup, her face was as stark as a pie plate. “Where’s the pizza?” she asked.
“The guy must have got lost,” one biker said.
The other biker wanted to use the bathroom, but the second woman had locked the door. “What are you doing in there?” he said, shaking the knob.
“Calling my son. Hold your water,” she said through the door.
“I love family values,” he said.
The second woman came out of the bathroom. Unlike her friend, her bone structure looked like it had been created from an Erector Set. Her face was triangular in shape, her skin bad, her eyes filled with a glint that seemed to teeter without cause on malevolence.
“Your kid okay?” one of the bikers said.
“You think I’d be here if he wasn’t?” she replied.
“Not everybody is such a good mother.”
The two women went out the door. A beaded sky-blue sequined purse hung on a string from the overweight woman’s shoulder. She looked back once, smiling as though to say good night.
Tim came back into the room and sat down in a chair by the window. He pulled off his metal-sheathed boots and cupped his hands on his thighs, staring at the floor. “We’ve got to clean this up.”
“You talk to Josef?”
“To this lamebrain Hugo. He says we spit in the tiger’s mouth.”
“A guy on crutches with no car or house? I think this guy is some kind of urban legend.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m hungry. You want me to call the pizza place again or go out?”
“What I want you to do is let me think a minute.”
“You should have got laid, Tim.”
Tim stared at the nicked furniture, the yellowed curtains on the windows, the bedclothes piled on the floor. On the chair by the television set was a gray vinyl handbag, the brass zipper pulled tight. “There’s something wrong,” he said.
“Yeah, we’re wandering around in a giant skillet. Is this whole state like this?”
“Who ordered the pizza?”
“The skinny broad.”
“What’d she say?”
“‘I want two sausage-and-mushroom pizzas.’”
“Pick up the receiver and hit redial.”
“I think you’re losing it, man.”
“Just do it.”
“This phone doesn’t have a redial.”
“Then get the number off the pizza menu on the desk and call it.”
“Okay, Tim. How about a little serenity here?”
Someone knocked on the door. The biker who had picked up the phone replaced the receiver in the cradle. He started toward the door.
“No!” Tim said, holding up his hand. He got up from his chair in his sock feet and clicked off the light. He pulled back the window curtain just far enough to see the walkway.
“Who is it?” the other biker asked him.
“I can’t tell,” Tim said. He removed the Glock from his overnight bag. “What do you want?” he said through the door.
“Pizza delivery,” a voice said.
“What took you so long?”
“There was an accident on the highway.”
“Set it on the walkway.”
“It’s in the warmer.”
“If you set it down, it won’t be in the warmer any longer, will it?”
“It’s thirty-two dollars.”
Tim put on the night chain and took out his wallet. He eased the door open, the chain links tightening against the brass slot. The delivery man was older than he expected, blade-faced, his nose sunburned, an orange-and-black cloth cap pulled low on his brow.
“How much did you
say?”
“Thirty-two dollars even.”
“I’ve only got a hundred.”
“I have to go back to the car for change.”
Tim held on to the hundred and closed the door and waited. A moment later, the delivery man returned and knocked again. Tim cracked the door and handed the hundred-dollar bill to him. “Count the change out on the top of the box. Keep five for yourself.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Doug.”
“Who’s with you in your car, Doug?”
“My wife. When I get off, we’re going to visit her mother at the hospital.”
“You take your wife on deliveries so you can go to the hospital together?”
The delivery man began blinking uncertainly.
“I was just asking,” Tim said. He shut the door and waited. Then he went to the curtain and peeled it from the corner of the window and watched the pizza man turn his car around and drive back onto the highway. He opened the door and squatted down and lifted the two heavily laden cartons of pizza from the concrete. They were warm in his hand and smelled deliciously of sausage and onions and mushrooms and melted cheese. He watched the taillights of the delivery car disappear down the road, then closed the door and replaced the chain. “What are you guys looking at?” he said to his companions.
“Hey, you’re just being careful. Come on, let’s scarf.”
They ordered beer brought over from the nightclub, and for the next hour, they ate and drank and watched television and rolled joints out of Tim’s stash. Tim even became silently amused at his concern over the pizza man. He yawned and lay back on the bed, a pillow behind his head. Then he noticed again the vinyl handbag one of the women had left behind. It had fallen from the chair and was lodged behind the television stand. “Which one of the broads was carrying a gray purse?” he said.
“The bony one.”
“Check it out.”
But before the other biker could pick up the handbag, there was another knock on the door. “We need a turnstile here,” Tim said.
He got up from the bed and went to the window. This time he pulled the curtain all the way back so he could have a clear view of the walkway and door area. He went to the door and opened it on the chain. “You forgot your purse?” he said.