“That’s what we have to find out.”
“Then what?”
“You get to enjoy yourself.”
“Like you don’t want to have a crack at her?”
“I hear she’s a looker, all right.”
“Why’s our hero taking so long?” Jessie said.
Ishmael pulled the chain on the water box, sending a torrent through the pipe into the toilet bowl.
HACKBERRY RENTED SEPARATE rooms on the top floor of a ten-story hotel on Alamo Plaza. While the bellhop put Ruby’s suitcase on the luggage stand, Hackberry opened the French doors to the balcony and gazed down on the gazebo and wooded park in the center of the plaza and at the streetcars and colonnades over the sidewalks and the headlights of the motorcars wending their way into neighborhoods that were covered with trees. “Come look, Ruby,” he said. “Isn’t it grand? Look at the carousel.”
She stood next to him, motionless, staring down at the p
laza, her shoulder barely touching his. “We took Ishmael there on his first birthday,” she said.
“I sat on the wood horse with him. He pointed at you every time we went around. Then he kept looking backward at you.”
“I want to sleep now, Hack. In the morning we’ll start out fresh.”
He couldn’t take his mind off the memories the carousel brought back, and he said nothing in reply.
“No one in Kerrville would help you?” she said.
“The law isn’t there for individuals. It’s there for people as a whole, or at least for chosen groups. Most of the time it serves the general good, but often at the expense of individuals. It’s the secret nobody talks about.”
“I don’t care about any of that. I want to kill Arnold Beckman. Or hire someone to do it.”
“That’s not like you.”
“That’s what you think.”
“Better go to sleep, Ruby,” he said, his reverie broken. “Thinking at night isn’t good for anybody. I’m three doors down.”
IN HIS ROOM, he sat on the side of the bed and called Beatrice DeMolay. “I didn’t know if you’d be home,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I just returned from the jail with Andre,” she said. “He wouldn’t go to the hospital. I got a call from your friend Sheriff Posey. He seems worried about you.”
“Willard called?”
“He thinks you’re angry at him.”
“I knew Willard would come around. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. Where are you?”
He told her the name of his hotel and his room number.
“I’m going to see Arnold Beckman in the morning,” she said.
“This is the man who tried to blind you, Miss Beatrice. Stay away from him. Ruby already tore him up with an iron skillet. I suspect he’s not in a good mood.”
“She attacked Beckman? You’d better get her out of town.”
“When we get our son back.”