House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

Dear Mother,

Trust the man of color who brought this. He is as brave and good as the men I commanded on the Marne. I am four blocks away at the end of the alley. I am unable to move or get help. Please come.

Love,

Ishmael

There was a map drawn at the bottom of the notepaper. She went to the lobby window and looked at the rain swirling out of the sky. A hundred questions pounded inside her head. Where was Hackberry? How could Ishmael know where she was staying? Did he overhear his captors talking? Was the colored man the Haitian who had driven Hackberry from Kerrville to San Antonio? If the note was a fraud, how did the hoaxer know of Ishmael’s affection for his troops? Was Maggie Bassett involved? Or was this the miracle she had prayed for?

“Tell the doorman to flag a jitney for me,” she told the clerk.

She went upstairs and put on her coat and her sweater and a long coat and a hat that had a four-inch pin with a purple glass knob shaped like a lily.

Don’t go by yourself, a voice said.

And do what? Wait on Hack? she answered herself. Or call the police officers who kidnapped Ishmael from the clinic?

A tree of lightning burst in the clouds as she ran for the open door of the jitney, a newspaper over her head.

HACKBERRY COULDN’T BELIEVE the change in the weather when he came out of Beckman’s building. The sky was dark, the sidewalks spotting with raindrops, thunder echoing like cannon beyond the hills. He wondered if it signaled a change in his life, the deliverance that had been denied him the day he led a stolen horse up the incline to Beatrice DeMolay’s brothel in Old Mexico.

On the corner, the two black prostitutes had stepped beneath an overhang. He walked toward them and touched the brim of his hat. “I wonder if you ladies could tell me where I can hire a taxi.”

“On the main street, maybe,” one said. “They ain’t none down here.”

“It’s fixing to cut loose,” he said, squinting at the sky.

“The crib is up the alley. If you got the money, we got the time,” said the same woman. “Ain’t no rain in there.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I have someone waiting on me. You know Mr. Beckman very well?”

Both women looked straight ahead, the wind ruffling their hair, their faces impassive, as smooth and dark as chocolate.

“I hear he’s rough on working girls,” Hackberry said.

“You ain’t heard it from us,” said the same woman.

“I heard he hangs them up and beats them with his fists. Mostly Mexican girls. I suspect some black ones, too.”

“Why you telling us that?”

“Maybe you can do a good deed. Stop another girl from getting hurt.”

The spokeswoman for the two looked at the clouds. She was missing a front tooth; a scar like a piece of white string ran horizontally through one eye. “My charge for good deeds is ten dol’ars,” she said.

He took a gold piece from his pocket and opened his palm so she could see it.

“He brung a colored girl to a basement. Not in this part of town. I ain’t said who brung her. I just said ‘he’ brung her. He left her alone and she got out a window. She came back here to get her pimp, and the two of them took off, traveling light.”

“What’s her name? Where did she go?”

The woman took the gold piece from Hackberry’s hand. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“Where’s the basement?”

“Don’t know that, either.”

“Beckman has my son.”