House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“I want to confront Beckman.”

“All you think about is confronting people, Mr. Holland. What has it gotten you?”

“Ma’am?”

“Look at your situation. Why don’t you try thinking about something before you do it?”

He felt a catch in his throat. “I’ll try to find him, Miss Beatrice.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll handle it. Do you have any idea how the San Antonio police will treat Andre?”

“I have no doubt at all,” he said. “I’m sorry I tore up your car. I’ll have it fixed.”

She was talking when he replaced the receiver on the hook. He stared at the phone, his ears ringing, his brow cold, his hands stiff when he tried to close them. He wondered if he was coming down with influenza. He went to the soda counter and asked the clerk for five dollars in change.

Outside, fog was rolling in from the river, clean and white and damp-looking, gathering as thick as cotton in the streets. The sky was sprinkled with stars and streaked by meteorites that turned into flecks of ice, the thunderheads in the west pulsing with tiny forks of electricity. Why didn’t witnessing the antithetical nature of creation and the radiance of the universe bring him peace? Why couldn’t he be in alignment with himself the way the planets and stars were, all of them hung like snowy ornaments on a tree by Druid priests? He sat back down in the phone booth and called the sheriff in Kerr County at his home. “Is that you, Willard?” he said.

“Who’d you think it was?”

“I need your assistance.”

“What did you get yourself into now?”

“You name it.”

“Where are you?”

“San Antonio. In a drugstore downtown.”

“I don’t hold any sway there.”

“That’s not what I’m asking for.”

“You’re asking me to give your badge back. The answer is no.”

“I need somebody to cover my back. I cain’t go up against all these sons of bitches by myself.”

“You want me to call the sheriff or the chief of police?”

“These are the ones I’m having trouble with. My son is kidnapped. I may never see him again. I need your damn he’p, Willard.”

“No, what you want is the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday to walk down to the O.K. Corral with you. The old days are gone, Hack.”

“Not for me.”

“Your old friends work in sideshows. Frank James sold shoes in Fort Worth. What does that tell you?”

“It tells me you cut bait on a friend. Give me your deputy’s phone number. That young fellow, Darl Pickins.”

“What for?”

“The boy has sand, unlike some others I know.”

“Come around him and I’ll lock you up,” Willard said, and hung up.

Hackberry watched the streetcar going through the intersection, the cables dripping sparks overhead, the passengers sitting on the open benches in muffs and scarfs and fur-trimmed coats, snug among one another, the fog puffing around them as if they were travelers on an ancient ship.

HACKBERRY FELT LIKE a beggar at her door. As the taxi drove away and he mounted the steps to her apartment, he tried to repress his resentment for her condemnation of him. Before he could tap on the door, it opened. She was wearing a dark green dress with a white collar, almost like a Victorian affectation, her hair in a bun, her face pale, free of makeup. “Andre is in jail,” she said. “My attorney is there now. He was struck in the head by a policeman.”