House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

He wiped his hands on a towel, propped the ax handle neatly against a chair, and walked back down the midway to rejoin Darl Pickins at the café, the carousel coming to life for no reason, the wooden horses whirling without riders.

MAGGIE BASSETT FOUND herself biting her lip in her living room, unable to gather her thoughts and rebuild her mental fortifications, staring out the window at the ruins of the Spanish mission to distract herself. How do you deliver bad news to a man who does not tolerate bad news but demands to hear it as soon as it happens? Better said, how do you report bad news to a man who requires full candor but is enraged by it?

She had one of the new candlestick telephones, made of brass, with a dial on it. It always gave her pleasure to use it. Now it felt like a lump of ice as she dialed Arnold Beckman’s number.

As always, he didn’t speak when he answered the phone, deliberately making his caller feel off guard, invasive, vaguely guilty.

“Arnold?” she said.

“It’s you, Maggie,” he said brightly. “What can I do for my favorite lass?”

“I don’t know where Ishmael is.”

“He ran off from your charms?”

“I’m serious.”

She waited in the silence, a creaking sound in her ears, as though she were slipping to the bottom of a lake, its weight about to crush her skull. “Arnold?”

“How. Can. A. Crippled. Man. Disappear?”

“We had an argument.”

“You know I do not like to repeat myself.”

“Maybe he took a jitney. He was walking with his canes. He couldn’t have gone far.”

“Then why are you not out looking for the people who drive jitneys in your neighborhood? Or searching the ditches? Why are we having this conversation?”

“I’ve done everything you’ve asked. Everything doesn’t always work out like we plan.”

“When it doesn’t work out, you fix it. But instead of fixing it, you’ve called me. Our little girl wants her daddy to clean up her mess. Not a good attitude. What are we going to do about that, little Maggie?”

She felt a flush in her cheeks, a fish bone in her throat, words forming that she dared not speak. “I felt my first obligation was to apprise you of the situation. I plan to drive around town to places where he might have gone. He was drinking when he left. He’s probably drinking now.”

Before she had finished speaking, she felt weak, sycophantic, submissive to a man she secretly abhorred. She was breathing into the receiver, hoping he did not sense her fear and self-loathing. His words injured her in the same way her father’s had, like paper cuts that she hid and nursed and carried until he unleashed more damage on her. When would it end? Only when she was able to vanquish her father’s memory by either undoing Arnold Beckman or proving herself his equal. And the fact that she gave Arnold Beckman that kind of power only made her hate herself more. How sick could a person be?

“Are you there?” she asked.

“Indeed, my love.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just continue being the lovely piece you are. You are a lovely piece, you know. And I’ve had it on every continent, with every race and every age. You’re every man’s wet dream, Maggie.”

She felt her breath coming harder in her chest, her left hand opening and closing spasmodically, the nails pressing into her palm. She tried to speak firmly, to pretend she had not heard what he’d just said. “I’ll take care of it. I shouldn’t have let this happen. It’s my fault.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll send some men out. Did he hurt you or get out of hand, that sort of thing?”

“No, he’s not like that.”

“You still have the motherly touch. That’s good. That’s why I like you, Maggie. Having you in my stable is like having half a dozen women in one. I never know who I’m talking to. You’re an absolute delight. I’m glad you’re not a man. I might be afraid of you.”

She heard a whirring sound in her ears, the same sound she had heard when she pressed her head against her mother’s breast as a child. Why did she have memories of this kind? Why couldn’t she catalog and compartmentalize her thoughts and deal with them one by one so they didn’t control her life? Why couldn’t she understand the tangled web that comprised her mind?

“I never know what to say to you,” she said.

“Look on the light side of it. Maybe you spent too much time on your back. A touch of the wrong lad, and it shows up in the brain years later. Let’s face it, you knew some scruffy characters. Hello?”