House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

ARNOLD BECKMAN’S OFFICE building and the apartment he kept in it were not far away, on a green plain north of the city, in sight of both the San Antonio River and the ruins of the Spanish mission. The building was white stucco, with blue trim and a gray slate roof and balconies from which orange trumpet vine hung in thick clusters. But there was something wrong with its architectural design and ambiance. The colors were too bright, the windows too small, the flower beds unplanted and humped with manure that hadn’t been worked into the soil. A solitary live oak hung with Spanish moss stood in front, half of the branches withered by lightning or blight. The adjacent lot was stacked with construction debris powdering in the wind. When Ishmael approached the building with Maggie Bassett, its symmetry made him think of a man about to sneeze.

Beckman’s office had the same sense of ambiguity. It was filled with potted plants that had wilted, the drain dishes curlicued with grit. Most of the furniture was made of antlers and curved and debarked and shellacked wood that resembled bones, with rawhide and animal pelts stretched across it. High on the wall, behind the massive desk, was an oil painting of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at an encampment, the men staring in opposite directions, the brushwork flawed in a way that made both appear cross-eyed.

“Drink?” Beckman said.

“No, sir. Thank you,” Ishmael said.

“Have a seat.”

“You’ll have to excuse me. If I sit down, I have trouble getting up.”

“You’re a polite young man, Mr. Holland. I could use a few more like you.”

Beckman’s chair was pushed back from his desk. He wore an open shirt and a silk bandana tied around his neck; his legs were extended in front of him, crossed at the ankles. His face seemed possessed by levels of energy that his skin could hardly constrain. His movements were not movements but jerks, muscular spasms, twitches; his hands kept opening and closing. His eyes were a brilliant blue, constantly roving over Ishmael’s person. He squeezed his scrotum. “You were at the Battle of the Marne?”

“Yes, sir, one of the battles, the last one.”

“What did you think of the French machine gun, the Chauchat? What do they call it? The ‘sho-sho’?”

“My men thought it was junk.”

“What about the Lewis?”

“There’s none better.”

“Why not the Maxim or the Vickers?”

“They’re too heavy and take too many men to operate. The Lewis is light. One man can run thousands of rounds through it without a misfire.”

“I have a firing range in back. I’d like for you to demonstrate a few weapons for me.”

“Why do you need me to demonstrate them?”

“I don’t. I need to see how you’ll demonstrate them to our clients.”

“Who are your clients?”

“Let’s go outside. I’ll explain a few things to you. Maggie, will you fix me a vodka and orange juice with a couple of cherries and a sprig of mint?”

She looked at Beckman blankly. He had not asked her to sit down; he had hardly acknowledged her presence. “Sorry, I was daydreaming. What did you want?” she said.

He repeated his request and said, “Have you ever seen a more beautiful woman? Look at her. Ageless, not a wrinkle in her skin. Tell us how you do it, Maggie.”

She went to the foyer and called to the maid and told her to fix Beckman’s drink and bring it out to the gun range.

“See that?” Beckman said. “She stays young by not letting men boss her around.”

“Refer to me again as though I’m a ventriloquist’s dummy, and you’ll wish you hadn’t,” she said.

Beckman smiled with his eyes and led the way to the range, the dimple in his chin glistening with aftershave lotion. The targets were all the same: the black silhouette of a man printed on paper that was mounted on a board forty yards out. The shooting tables and canvas chairs were arranged uniformly under a striped awning. In the distance, to the left of the range, Ishmael could see the bell towers of the mission. A cloud moved across the sun, dropping the countryside into shadow, lowering the temperature precipitously. He thought he saw men, maybe stonemasons, working on the mission. On the shooting tables were rifles and pistols and field boxes of ammunition.

Beckman gestured at the closest table. “Recognize these?”

“The Lee-Enfield, the ’03 Springfield, the Mauser, the Mannlicher-Carcano, the .30-40 Krag.”

“Let’s see what you can do with them.”

“I don’t fire at that kind of target anymore.”