Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“Sorry. I think that boy from Gonzales would be a better bet.”

“You’re everything I expected today,” Verisa said.

“How about the car planted against the fence?”

“You’re lovely just as you are. It couldn’t have been more anticipated,” she said.

“I want to finish this, Hack,” the Senator said. “I plan to talk to the committee this afternoon and give them your assurance about the rest of the campaign.”

“I don’t think you should d

o that, Senator.”

“The assault charge can be taken care of,” he said. “It will probably involve a small appointment in Austin, but it’s a simple matter.”

He had still chosen not to hear me, and I felt the anger rising inside me.

“Don’t you realize what’s being done for you?” Bailey said from behind the bar. “Try to think about it a minute. You committed a felony yesterday that could get you disbarred or even sent to jail.”

“No, I don’t realize a damn thing, because I have an idea that all this investment in me isn’t out of goodwill and old friendships. What do you think, Mr. Williams?”

He sipped from his fresh drink with a sprig of mint leaves in it, rested his arm on the bar, and looked at me from behind his sunglasses. The texture of his skin was the most unnatural I had ever seen on a human being.

“I think it would save time if the case was explained to you a little more candidly,” he said.

The Senator looked at Williams, and momentarily I saw the same uncomfortable flicker in his eyes that I had seen on the trip to Washington when I had realized that predators came in various sizes. He paused a moment, then turned back to me before Williams could speak again, his fingers pressed on the highball glass.

“Possibly your alternatives aren’t as clear or easy as you might believe, Hack,” he said. “I’ve made some commitments in this election that I intend to see honored.”

“It’s a matter of votes on a House bill to rescind the oil-depletion allowance, Mr. Holland. Although Allen doesn’t run again for two years, it’s been necessary to promise several oil companies that the right people will be on a committee to prevent anyone from lowering the twenty-seven-and-a-half-percent allowance that we now have. As you know, it involves a great deal, and so a few people have pressed Allen rather hard on winning support.”

Williams was enjoying the Senator’s discomfort, but I didn’t care about either of them then. I felt light inside, like a high school athlete who had been told he was needed to pick up the towels in the locker room.

“Did you know about this shit, Bailey?” I said.

“No.”

“You sold my ass all over the state and you never guessed what it was about.”

“I didn’t know, Hack.”

“Well, you saw me coming, Senator,” I said.

“Are we going to enjoy a melodrama about it now?” Verisa said.

“No, I think I just finished the ninth inning, and you can have the whole goddamn ballpark.”

“I believe you’re being overly serious about this. The oil-depletion allowance is in the interest of the state,” the Senator said. “Also, every holder of office pays some kind of personal price to represent his constituency.”

“I’d call that boy in Gonzales. Let me have a beer, Bailey.”

“Maybe you should tell Mr. Holland about the rest of his alternative now,” Williams said. He raised his drink slowly to his mouth.

“I thought you’d been saving something special out,” I said. Bailey handed me the beer in a glass, and I took a cigar from the oakwood box on the coffee table. The Senator sat down in the deer-hide chair and crossed his legs with his highball in his hand, but his eyes didn’t look at me.

“I don’t like to do this, but there’s a man named Lester Dixon in Kansas City and he’s made a deposition about the time he spent with you in a North Korean prison camp,” he said. His eyes looked at the end of his shoe, thoughtful, as though he were considering a delicate premise before he spoke again.

Verisa took a cigarette from her pack and put it in her mouth. Her arm lay back against the couch, and her breasts swelled against her sundress when she breathed.