He smeared margarine inside a skillet and took two eggs and a piece of sliced ham from the ice chest he and Vikki used as a refrigerator. He broke the eggs in the skillet and set the ham and a slice of sourdough bread beside them and let the skillet begin to heat on the propane stove. The smell of the breakfast he wanted to cook for Vikki rose into his face, and he rushed out the back door into the yard so he would not retch on his clothes.
He held on to the sides of a horse tank, his stomach empty now, his back shaking, a pressure band tightening across his scalp, his breath an insult to the air and the freshness of the morning. He thought he heard the thropping downdraft of gunships and the great clanking weight of an armored vehicle topping a rise, its treads dripping sand, a CD of Burn, Motherfucker, Burn screaming over the intercom. He stared into the distant wastes, but the only living things he saw were carrion birds floating high on the wind stream, turning in slow circles as the land heated and the smell of mortality rose into the sky.
He went back inside and rinsed his mouth, then scraped Vikkis breakfast onto a plate. The eggs were burned on the edges, the yolks broken and hard and stained with black grease. He sat in a chair and hung his head between his knees, the kitchen spinning around him. Through the partially opened door of the bedroom, through the blue light and the dust stirring in the breeze, he could see her head on the pillow, her eyes closed, her lips parted with her breathing. The poverty of the surroundings into which he had taken her made him ashamed. The cracks in the linoleum were ingrained with dirt, the mismatched furniture bought at Goodwill, the walls a sickly green. Everything he touched except Vikki Gaddis was somehow an extension of his own failure.
Her eyes opened. Pete sat up straight in the chair, trying to smile, his face stiff and unnatural with the effort.
I was fixing you breakfast, but I made a mess of it, he said.
Where you been, hon?
You know, up yonder, he replied, gesturing in the direction of the highway. He waited for her to speak, but she didnt. Why would people throw away their tennis shoes but take the shoestrings with them? he asked.
What are you talking about?
In the places where the wets go through, theres trash and garbage everywhere. They throw away their old tennis shoes, but they take out the strings first. Why do they do that?
She was standing up now, pulling her jeans over her panties, looking down at her fingers as she buttoned her jeans over the flatness of her stomach.
Its cause they dont own much else, isnt it? he said in answer to his own question. Them poor people dont own nothing but the word of the coyote that takes them across. Thats a miserable fate for someone, isnt it?
What have you got into, Pete?
He knitted his fingers together between his thighs and squeezed them so hard he could feel the blood stop in his veins. A guy was gonna give me three hundred bucks to drive a truck to San Antone. He said not to worry about anything in the back. He gave me a hundred up front. He said it was just a few people who needed to get to their relatives houses. I checked the guy out. Hes not a mule. Mules dont use trucks to run dope, anyway.
You checked him out? Who did you check him out with? she said, looking at him, her hands letting go of her clothes.
Guys I know, guys who hang around the bar.
Her face was empty, still creased from the pillow, as she walked to the stove and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was barefoot, her skin white against the dirtiness of the linoleum. He went into the bedroom and picked up her slippers from under the bed and brought them to her. He set them down by her feet and waited for her to put them on.
There were some men here last night, she said.
What? The blood drained from his cheeks, making him seem younger than even his twenty years.
Two of them came to the door. One stayed in the car. He never turned off the motor. The one who talked had funny eyes, like they didnt go together. Who is he?
What did he say?
Pete hadnt answered her question. But her heart was racing, and she answered him anyway. That yall had a misunderstanding. That you ran off in the dark or something. That he owes you some money. He was grinning all the time he talked. I shook his hand. He put out his hand and I shook it.
His head looks like it has plates in it, like theres a glitter in one eye and not the other?
Thats the one. Who is he, Pete?
His name is Hugo. He was in the truck cab with me for a while. He had a Thompson in a canvas bag. The ammo pan was rattling, and he took it out and looked at it and put it back in the bag. He said, This sweetheart of a piece belongs to the most dangerous man in Texas.
He had a what in a bag?
A World War Two submachine gun. We were stopped in the dark. He started talking on a two-way. Some guy said, Shut it down. Wipe the slate clean. I got out to take a leak, then I climbed down in an irrigation ditch and kept going.
He squeezed my hand hard, really hard. Wait, you ran away from what?
Hugo hurt your hand?
What did I just say? Are these people dope traffickers?
No, a lot worse. Ive got into some real shit, Vikki, he replied. I heard gunfire in the dark. I heard people screaming inside it. They were women, maybe some of them girls.
When she didnt answer, when her face went blank as though she were looking at someone she didnt know, he tried to examine her hand. But she went to the kitchen screen, her back to him, her arms folded across her chest, an unrelieved sadness in her eyes as she stared at the harshness of the light spreading across the landscape.
2
NICK DOLANS SKIN joint was halfway between Austin and San Antonio, a three-story refurbished Victorian home with fresh white paint on it, set back in oak trees and pines, the balcony and windows strung with Christmas-tree lights that stayed up year-round. From the highway, it looked like a festive place, the gravel parking lot well lit, the small Mexican restaurant next door joined to the main building by a covered walkway, indicating to passersby that Nick wasnt selling just tits and ass, that this was a gentlemans place, that women were welcome, even families, if they were road-tired and wanted a fine meal at a reasonable price.
Nick had given up his floating casino in New Orleans and had left the city of his birth because he didnt like trouble with the vestiges of the old Mob or paying off every politician in the state who knew how to turn up his palm, including the governor, who was now in a federal prison. Nick didnt argue with the world or the venal nature of men or the iniquity that most of them seemed born in. His contention was with the worlds hypocrisy. He sold people what they wanted, whether it was gambling or booze, ass on the half shell, or the freedom to fulfill all their fantasies inside a safe environment, one where they would never be held accountable for the secret desires they hid from others. But whenever a groundswell of moral outrage began to crest on the horizon, Nick knew who was about to get smacked flat on the beach.
However, he had another problem besides the hypocrisy of others: He had been screwed at birth, given a dumpy fat boys body to live inside, one with flaccid arms and a short neck and duck feet, and bad eyesight on top of it, so that he had to wear thick, round glasses that made him look like a goldfish staring out of a bowl.
He dressed in elevator shoes, sport coats that had padded shoulders, and expensive and tasteful jewelry; he paid a minimum of seventy-five dollars for his shirts and ties. His twin daughters went to private school and took piano, ballet, and riding lessons; his son was about to become a freshman at the University of Texas. His wife played bridge at the country club, worked out every day at a gym, and did not want to hear details about the sources of Nicks income. She also paid her own bills from money she made in the stock and bond market. Most of the romance in their marriage had disappeared long ago, but she didnt nag and was a good mother, and by anyones measure, sh
e would be considered a person of good character, so who was Nick to complain? You played the cards you got dealt, duck feet or not.
Nick didnt argue or contend with the nature of the world. He was boisterous and assumed the role of the diffident fool if he had to. He didnt put moves on his girls and didnt deceive himself about the nature of their loyalties. Born-again Christians were always talking about honesty. Nicks honest view of himself and his relationship to the world was as follows: He was an overweight, short, balding, late-middle-aged man who knew his limits and kept his boundaries. He lived in a Puritan nation that was obsessed with sex and endlessly tittering about it, like kids just discovering their twangers in the YMCA swimming pool. If anyone doubted that fact, he told himself, they should click on their television sets during family hours and check out the crap their children were watching.
According to Nick, the only true sin in this country was financial failure. Respectability you bought with your checkbook. That was cynicism? The Kennedy family earned their fortune during Prohibition selling Bibles? Poor guys ran the United States Senate? A lot of American presidents graduated from city colleges in Blow Me, Idaho?
But right now Nick had a problem that never should have come into his life, that he had done nothing to deserve, that his years of abuse at the hands of schoolyard bullies in the Ninth Ward of Orleans Parish should have preempted as payment for any sins he had ever committed. The problem had just walked into the club and taken a seat at the bar, ordering a glass of carbonated water and ice with cherry juice, eyeballing the girls up on the poles, the skin of his face like a leather mask, his lips thick, always suppressing a grin, the inside of his head constructed of bones that didnt seem to fit right. The problems name was Hugo Cistranos, and he scared the living shit out of Nick Dolan.
If Nick could just walk out of the front of the club into the safety of his office, past the tables full of college boys and divorced working stiffs and upscale suits pretending they were visiting the club for a lark. He could call somebody, cut a deal, apologize, offer some kind of restitution, just get on the phone and do it, whatever it took. That was what businessmen did when confronted with insurmountable problems. They talked on the phone. He wasnt responsible for the deeds of a maniac. In fact, he wasnt even sure what the maniac had done.
That was it. If you didnt know what the sick fuck had actually done, how could you be blamed for it? Nick wasnt a player in this, only a business guy trying to divert the competition after they had threatened to drive under his escort services in Houston and Dallas, where 40 percent of his cash flow originated.
Just walk into the office, he told himself. Ignore the way Hugos eyes bored into the side of his face, his neck, his back, peeling off his clothes and skin, picking the few specks of his dignity off his soul. Ignore the proprietary manner, the smirk that silently indicated Hugo owned Nick and knew his thoughts and his weaknesses and could reach out whenever he wished and expose the frightened little fat boy whod had his lunch money taken from him by the black kids in the schoolyard.
The memory of those days in the Ninth Ward caused a surge of heat to bloom in Nicks chest, a flicker of martial energy that made him close one hand in a fist, surprising him at the potential that might lie inside the fat boys body. He turned and looked Hugo full in the face. Then, with his eyelids stitched to his forehead, Nick approached him, his lighted cigarette held away from his sport coat, his mouth drying up, his heart threading with weevil worms. The girls up on the poles, their bodies sprayed with glitter, their faces pancakelike with foundation, became smoke-wreathed animations whose names he had never known, whose lives had nothing to do with his own, even though every one of them courted his favor and always called him Nick in the same tone they would use when addressing a protective uncle. Nick Dolan was on his own.
He rested his right hand on the bar but did not sit down, the ash from his cigarette falling on his slacks. Hugo grinned, his eyes following the trail of smoke from Nicks cigarette down to the yellow nicotine stain layered between his index and middle finger. You still smoke three decks a day? Hugo said.
Im starting to wear a patch, Nick said, holding his eyes on Hugos, wondering if he had just lied or told the truth and sounded small and foolish and plaint, regardless.
Marlboros will put you in a box. The chemicals alone.
Everybody dies.
The chemicals hide the smell of the nicotine so you wont be thinking about the damage its doing to your organs. Spots on the lungs, spots on the liver, all that. It goes on in your sleep and you dont even know it.
Im about to go home. You want to see me about something?
Yeah, you could call it something. Want to go in your office?
The cleaning woman is vacuuming in there.
Makes sense to me. Nothing like running a vacuum cleaner in a nightclub during peak hours. Tell me the name of the cleaning service so I dont call them up by mistake. Ill walk outside with you. You ought to see the sky. Dry lightning is leaping all over the clouds. Have your smoke out in the fresh air.
My wife is waiting dinner on me.
Thats funny, since youre notorious for always closing the joint yourself and counting every penny in the till.
There a second meaning in that?
Hugo drank from his carbonated water and chewed a cherry on the back of his teeth, his expression thoughtful. No, theres no second meaning there, Nicholas. His tongue was bright red. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and looked at the smear of color on it. I hired some extra personnel that I need your advice about. A kid thats proving to be a pain in the ass. He leaned forward and squeezed Nicks shoulder, his face suffused with warmth and intimacy. I think its gonna rain. Youll like the fresh smell in the air. Itll get all that nicotine out of your clothes.
Outside, the air was as Hugo had described it, scented with the possibility of a thunderstorm and the smell of watermelons in a field on the far side of live oaks at the back of Nicks property. Nick walked in front of Hugo into a space between a Buick and Hugos big black SUV. Hugo propped one arm on the fender of his vehicle, blocking Nicks view of the club. He wore a sport shirt and pleated white slacks and shined Italian shoes. In the electric glow from the overhead lamps, his propped forearm was taut and pale and wrapped with green veins.
Artie Rooney is light nine chippies, Hugo said.
I dont know anything about this, Nick said.
Hugo scratched the back of his neck. His hair was ash-blond, streaked with red, like iodine, gelled and combed straight back so that his high forehead had a polished look resembling the prow of a ship. Wipe the slate clean. What do those words mean to you, Nicholas?
Its Nick.
This question still stands, Nick.
They mean forget it. The words mean pull the plug. They dont mean go apeshit.
Let me see if I got your vision of things straight. We kidnap Rooneys Thai whores, put at least one of his coyotes in a hole, then turn a bunch of hysterical slopes loose on a dirt road so I can either ride the needle or spend the next forty years in a federal facility?
Whats that you said about a coyote?
Nick felt something blink in his mind, a dysfunctional shutter snapping open and closing, a malfunction in his brain or in his subconscious, an impaired mechanism that for a lifetime had not stopped him from speaking or given him the right words to say until it was too late, leaving him vulnerable and alone and at the mercy of his adversaries. Why had he asked a question? Why had he just exposed himself to more knowledge of what Hugo had done on a dark road to a truckload of helpless Asian women, maybe girls as well? Nick felt as though his ectoplasm were draining through the soles of his shoes.
Im at a loss on this, Hugo. I got no idea what were talking about here, he said, his eyes sliding off Hugos face, his words like wet ash in his throat.
Hugo looked away and pulled on an earlobe. His mouth was compressed, his mirth leaking from his nose like air escaping a rubber seal. Youre all the same, he said.
Whos the you?
Monkey see no evil. You hire others to do it for you. You owe me ninety large, Nicholas, ten grand for each unit I had to take off Arties hands and dispose of. You also owe me seven grand for transportation costs. You owe me another five large for employee expenses. The vig is a point and a half a week.
Vig? What vig? Are you out of your mind?