“Ma’am?”
“What?”
“You have a reason for acting so damn weird?”
“Weird in like what way?”
“For openers, staring at me like I just climbed out of a spaceship.”
She dropped her cigarette into a bucket of water under the counter. “I don’t have a reason for staring at you.”
“So—”
“He might.”
Her gaze drifted out the front window of the store, past the two gas pumps under the porte cochere. A town constable’s patrol car was parked beside the telephone booth. A man wearing a khaki uniform and shades was sitting behind the wheel, the engine off, the doors open to let in the breeze while he wrote on a clipboard.
“That’s Howard. He asked who was just using the phone,” the woman said.
“I reckon that could have been me.”
“I saw you at the A.A. meeting at the church.”
“That could have been me, too.”
“You still want the beer?”
“What I want is a whole lot of gone between me and your store.”
“I cain’t he’p you do that.”
“Ma’am, I’m in a mess of trouble. But I haven’t harmed anybody, not intentionally, anyway.”
“I expect you haven’t.”
Her eyes were full of pity, the same kind of pity and sorrow he had heard in the voice of his friend Billy Bob. Pete folded his arms across his chest again and watched the town constable get out of his patrol car and walk under the porte cochere and pull open the front door of the store. In those few seconds, a line of stitches seemed to form and burst apart across Pete’s heart.
“Were you using that booth out there?” the constable asked. His skin was sun-browned, his shirt peppered with sweat, his eyes hidden by his shades.
“Yes, sir, just a few minutes ago.”
“You owe the operator ninety-five cents. Would you take care of it? She’s ringing it off the hook.”
“Yes, sir, right away. I didn’t know I went overtime.”
“You want the beer?” the clerk said.
“I surely do.”
Pete hefted the six-pack under his arm, got his change and an extra three dollars in coins, and walked back out to the booth. The sun was hammering down on the hardpan and the two-lane asphalt state highway, glazing the hills, alkali flats, and the distant railroad track where the freight train had stopped and was baking in the heat.
He ripped open the tab on a sixteen-ouncer and set it on the shelf below the phone and punched in Sheriff Holland’s cell phone number. As the phone rang, he gripped the sweaty coldness of the can in his left palm.
“Sheriff Holland,” a voice said.
“Your cousin Billy Bob—”
“He’s already called me. You going to come see us, Pete?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I want to do.”
“What’s holding you up?”
“I don’t want to go to Huntsville. I don’t want to see this guy Preacher and his friends come after Vikki.”
“What do you think they’re doing now, son?”
I ain’t your son, a voice inside him said. “You know what I mean.”
“How have people been treating you?”
“Sir?”
“Since you came back from Iraq, how do people treat you? Just general run-of-the-mill people? They been treating you all right?”
“I haven’t complained.”
“Answer the question.”
“They’ve treated me good.”
“But you don’t trust them, do you? You think they might be fixing to slicker you.”
“Maybe unlike others, I don’t have the luxury of making mistakes.”
“I have an idea where you might be, Pete. But I’m not going to call the sheriff there. I want you and Ms. Gaddis to come in on your own. I want y’all to help me put away the guys who killed those poor Asian women. You fought for your country, partner. And now you have to fight for it again.”
“I don’t like folks using the flag to get me to do what they want.”
“You drinking?”
“Sir?”
“You were drinking when you called in the original nine-one-one by the church house. If I were you, I’d lay off the hooch till I got this stuff behind me.”
“You would, would you?”
“I had my share of trouble with it. Billy Bob says you’re a good man. I believe him.”
“What do we do, just walk into your office?” Pete said. He looked at the cloud of vapor on top of the aluminum beer can. He looked at the brassy bead of the beer through the tab. His windpipe turned to rust when he tried to swallow.
“If you want, I’ll send a cruiser.”
Pete picked up the beer can and pressed its coldness against his cheek. He could see the train starting to move on the track, the black gondolas clanging against their couplings as though they were fighting against their own momentum.
He sat down on the floor of the booth, pulling the phone and its metal-encased cord with him, the six-pack splaying open on the concrete pad. He felt as though he had descended to the bottom of a well, beyond the sunlight, beyond hope, beyond ever feeling wind on his face again or smelling flowers in the morning or being a part of the great human drama most of the world took for granted, a man with red alligator hide for skin and a bagful of sins that would never be forgiven. He pulled his knees up to his face, his head bent forward, and began to weep silently.
“You still with me, bud?”
“Tell Miss Maydeen I’m sorry for sassing her. I also apologize to you and your deputy for getting y’all hurt. I also owe an apology to some guy I attacked at a traffic light last night. I think I’m plumb losing my mind.”
“You assaulted somebody?”
“I threw rocks at his car. I busted a hole in his rear window with a brick.”
“Where was this?”
Pete told him.
“What kind of car?”
“A tan Honda.”
“You busted a big hole in the window?”
“Just under the size of a softball. It was elongated. It looked like the eye of a Chinaman staring out the window.”
“You don’t remember the license number, do you?”
Pete was still holding the sixteen-ouncer. He set it on the ground outside the booth. He pushed it over with the sole of his boot. “One letter and maybe two numbers. Y’all already got a report on it?”
“You could say we may have had contact with the driver.”
A few moments later, Pete picked up the cans he had dropped and took them back inside the store and set them on the counter. “Can I get a refund?” he said.
“If you hold your mouth right,” the cashier said.
“What?”
“That’s a joke.” She opened the register drawer and counted out his cash. “There’s some showers in back. Hang around if you feel like it, cowboy.”
“I got someone waiting on me.”
She nodded.
“You’re a nice lady,” he said.
“I hear that lots of times,” she said. She stuck another filter-tip in her mouth and lit it with a BIC, blowing the smoke at an upward angle, gazing through the window at the way the two-lane warped in the heat and dissolved into a black lake on the horizon.
“I didn’t mean anything, ma’am.”
“I look like a ‘ma’am’? It’s ‘miss,’” she said.
TWO DAYS AFTER the invasion of his home by Jack Collins, Hackberry Holland and Pam Tibbs flew in the department’s single engine plane to San Antonio, borrowed an unmarked car from the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, and drove into Nick Dolan’s neighborhood. The enclave atmosphere and the size of the homes, the Spanish daggers and hibiscus and palm and umbrella trees and crepe myrtle and bougainvillea in the yards, and the number of grounds workers made Hackberry think of a foreign country, in the tropics, perhaps, or out on the Pacific Rim.
Except he was not visiting a neighborho
od as much as a paradox. The dark-skinned employees—maids retrieving the trash cans from the curb, yardmen with ear protectors clamped on their heads operating mowers and leaf blowers, hod carriers and framers constructing an extension on a house—were all foreigners, not the repressed and indigenous people Somerset Maugham and George Orwell and Graham Greene had described in their accounts of life inside dying European and British empires. Those who owned and lived in the big houses in Nick Dolan’s neighborhood were probably all native-born but had managed to become colonials in their own country.
When Hackberry had called Nick Dolan’s restaurant and asked to interview him, Dolan had sounded wired to the eyes, clearing his throat, claiming to be tied up with business affairs and trips out of state. “I got no idea what this is about. I’m dumbfounded here,” he said.
“Arthur Rooney.”
“Artie Rooney is an Irish putz. I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if he was dying of thirst. Let me rephrase that: I wouldn’t cross the street to see a pit bull rip out his throat.”
“Has the FBI talked with you, Mr. Dolan?”
“No, what’s the FBI got to do with anything?”
“But you talked to Isaac Clawson the ICE agent, didn’t you?”
“Maybe that name is familiar.”
“I appreciate your help. We’ll be out to see you this evening.”
“Hold on there.”
It was late when Hackberry and Pam arrived at Nick’s house, and shadows were spreading across the lawn, fireflies lighting in smoky patterns inside the trees. Nick Dolan ushered them right through the house into his backyard and sat them down on rattan chairs by a glass-topped table already set with a pitcher of limeade and crushed ice and a plate of peeled crawfish and a second plate stacked with pastry. But there was no question in Hackberry’s mind that Nick Dolan was a nervous wreck.
Nick began talking about the grapevine that laced the trellises and the latticework over their heads. “Those vines came from my grandfather’s place in New Orleans,” he said. “My grandfather lived uptown, off St. Charles. He was a friend of Tennessee Williams. He was a great man. Know what a great man is? A guy who takes things that are hard and makes them look easy and doesn’t complain. Where’s your gun?”
“In the vehicle,” Hackberry said.
“I always thought you guys had to have your gun on you. You want some limeade? Try those crawfish. I had them brought live from Louisiana. I boiled and veined them myself. I made the sauce, too. I mash up my own peppers. Go ahead, stick a toothpick in one and slop it in the sauce and tell me what you think. Here, you like chocolate-and-peanut-butter brownies? Those are my wife’s specialty.”
Pam and Hackberry looked at Nick silently, their eyes fastened on his. “You’re making me uncomfortable here. I got high blood pressure. I don’t need this,” Nick said.
“I think you’re the anonymous caller who warned me about Jack Collins, Mr. Dolan. I wish I’d taken your warning more to heart. He put a couple of dents in my head and almost killed Deputy Tibbs.”
“I’m lost.”
“I also think you’re the person who called the FBI and told them Vikki Gaddis and Pete Flores were in danger.”
Before Hackberry had finished his last sentence, Nick Dolan began shaking his head. “No, no, no, you got the wrong guy. We’re talking about mistaken identity here or something.”
“You told me Arthur Rooney wants to murder both you and your family.”
Nick Dolan’s small round hands were closing and opening on the glass tabletop. His stomach was rising and sinking, his cheeks blading with color. “I got in some trouble,” he said. “I wanted to get even with Artie for some things he did to me. I got mixed up with bad people, the kind who got no parameters.”
“Is one of them named Hugo Cistranos?”
“Hugo worked for Artie when Artie ran a security service in New Orleans. We all got flooded out by Katrina and ended up in Texas at the same time. I don’t got anything else to say about this.”
“I’m going to find Jack Collins, Mr. Dolan. I’d like to do it with your help. It’ll mean a lot for you down the line.”
“You mean I’ll be a friend of the court, something like that?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Stick your ‘friend of the court’ stuff up your nose. This crazy fuck Collins, excuse my language, is the only guy keeping us alive.”
“I’m not sympathetic with your situation.”
“You don’t have a family?”
“I looked into Collins’s face. I watched him machine-gun my deputy’s cruiser.”
“My wife beat the shit out of him with a cooking pot. He could have killed both of us, but he didn’t.”
“Your wife beat up Jack Collins?”
“There’s something wrong with the words I use that you can’t understand? I got an echo in my yard?”
“I’d like to speak with her, please.”
“I’m not sure she’s home.”
“You know what obstruction of justice is?” Pam Tibbs said.
“Yeah, stuff they talk about on TV detective shows.”
“Explain this,” Pam said. She picked up a brownie from the plate and set it back down. “It’s still hot. Tell your wife to come out here.”
Nick Dolan stared into space, squeezing his jaw with one hand, his eyes out of sync. “I caused all this.”
“Caused what?” Pam said.
“Everything.”
“Where’s your wife, Mr. Dolan?” Pam asked.
“Drove away. Fed up. With the kids in the car.”
“They’re not coming back?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Vikki Gaddis came to my restaurant and applied for a job as a singer. I wish I’d hired her. I could have made a difference in those young people’s lives. I told all this to Esther. Now she thinks maybe I’m unfaithful.”
“Maybe you can still make a difference,” Hackberry said.
“I’m through talking with y’all. I wish I’d never left New Orleans. I wish I had helped the people rebuild in the Ninth Ward. I wish I’d done something good with my life.”
Pam looked at Hackberry, blowing her breath up into her face.
THAT NIGHT A storm that was more wind and dust and dry lightning than rain moved across Southwest Texas, and Hackberry decided not to fly back home until morning. He and Pam ate in a Mexican restaurant on the Riverwalk, a short distance from the Alamo. Their outdoor table was situated on flagstones and lit by gas lamps. A gondola loaded with mariachi musicians floated past them on the water, all of the musicians stooping as they went under one of the arched pedestrian bridges. The river was lined with banks of flowers and white stucco buildings that had Spanish grillwork on the balconies, and trees that had been planted in terraced fashion, creating the look of a wooded hillside in the middle of a city.
Pam had spoken little during the plane ride to San Antonio and even less since they had left Nick Dolan’s yard.
“You a little tired?” Hackberry said.
“No.”
“So what are you?”
“Hungry. Wanting to get drunk, maybe. Or catch up with Jack Collins and do things to him that’ll make him afraid to sleep.”
“Guys like Collins don’t have nightmares.”
“I think you’ve got him figured wrong.”
“He’s a psychopath, Pam. What’s to figure?”
“Why didn’t Collins shoot you when your revolver snapped empty?”
“Who knows?”
“Because he’s setting you up.”
“For what?”
“To be his executioner.”
Hackberry had just raised his fork to his mouth. He paused under a second, his eyes going flat. He put the forkful in his mouth. He watched a gondola emerge from under a stone bridge, the musicians grinning woodenly, a tree trailing its flowers across their sombreros and brocaded suits. “I wouldn’t invest a lot of time thinking about this guy’s complexities,” he said.
“T
hey all want the same thing. They want to die, and they want their executioner to be worthy of them. They also want to leave behind as much guilt and fear and depression in others as they can. He aims to mess you up, Hack. That’s why he tried to take me out first. He wanted you to watch it. Then he wanted you to pop him.”
“I’ll try to honor his wishes. You don’t want a glass of wine or a beer?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“I didn’t say it did. I just don’t want any.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked away irritably, then back at him again, her gaze wandering over the stitches in his scalp and the bandage across the bridge of his nose and the half-moons of blue and yellow bruising under his eyes.
“Would you stop that?” he said.
“I’m going to fix that bastard.”
“Don’t give his kind power, Pam.”
“Is there anything else I’m doing wrong?”
“I’ll think about it.”
She set down her knife and fork and kept staring at him until she forced him to look directly at her. “Lose the cavalier attitude, boss. Collins is going to be with us for the long haul.”
“I hope he is.”
“You still don’t get it. The feds are using Nick Dolan as bait. That means they’re probably using us, too. In the meantime, they’re treating us like beggars at the table.”
“That’s the way it is. Sometimes the feds are—”
“Assholes?”
“Nobody is perfect.”
“You ought to get yourself some Optimist Club literature and start passing it out.”
“Could be.”
She pulled at an earlobe. “I think I’ll have a beer.”
He fought against a yawn.
“In fact, a beer and a shot of tequila with a salted lime on the side.”
“Good,” he said, filling his mouth with a tortilla, his attention fixed on the mariachi band blaring out Pancho Villa’s marching song, “La Cucaracha.”
“You think I should go back to school, maybe get a graduate degree and go to work for the U.S. Marshals’ office?”
“I’d hate to lose you.”
“Go on.”
“You have to do what’s right for yourself.”