House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

She put the gold piece in her purse and showed no reaction.

“I’m talking about my son,” he said.

The woman seemed to be drifting off to sleep. Hackberry looked back at the entrance to Beckman’s building and at the broken wood crates stacked on the sidewalk for pickup. “You ever see any Chinamen down here?”

“They don’t kill nobody,” the woman said, opening her eyes.

“I don’t follow you.”

“We know who you are. You the one killed Eddy Diamond.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You done it just the same.”

“Maybe it was more complicated than you think.”

“You want some jelly roll, baby? If not, beat feet. Ain’t nothing free.”

He began walking toward the main street of the brothel district, his head bent against the wind, the raindrops cold and hard as bird shot.

THE SIDEWALKS WERE empty, the gutters running fast, when she stepped out of the jitney in front of an alleyway that yawned like a ravenous mouth. Ruby heard the streetcar clang behind her, then the sound of its wheels diminishing on the tracks. The alleyway was brick-paved, channeled with runoff in the center, lined on either side with trash cans and wet paper bags splitting with garbage. At the far end was a green wood door with a rope for a handle. She began walking toward it.

Above, rainwater was sluicing off the roofs and twirling down on her head, running into her eyes. She looked over her shoulder, hoping to see someone on the sidewalk, perhaps a happy group of soldiers on pass from the army base. A vagabond stared back at her, his clothes as soaked as tissue paper. He walked away.

The door was ajar. She cupped her hand around the rope that served as a handle. “Ishmael?” she said.

The only sound she heard was a strip of gutter swinging from an eave high above. She pulled back the door, scraping it across a concrete bib. There was a glow from another door down a hallway. The interior of the room smelled of malt and mold and wood barrels.

“Ishmael?” she repeated.

As her eyes adjusted, she saw the back of a wheelchair and a figure sitting in it, wearing a tall-crowned, wide-brimmed hat, a blanket draped over the shoulders. “Oh, Ishmael,” she said, running toward the wheelchair.

The door slammed shut behind her; a man stepped out of the shadows and locked it with a steel bolt. He wore a goatee and had a triangular face and a weak mouth and hands with long fingers that made her think of an amphibian.

“You’re sure a dumb bitch,” he said.

He hit her in the middle of the face with his fist, knocking her into the wheelchair. A manikin with hinges on the arms and legs toppled from the wheelchair onto the floor. Ruby stared up at the man. He wore steel-toed boots and canvas pants and a wide belt with an antler-handled knife on it. “My name is Jessie. I’m gonna teach you how to yodel.”

She pushed herself on her hands against a barrel, her hat crooked on her head. “Where’s my son?”

“I’ll take you to him. You’re gonna have to do me a favor first. You’re gonna be a good girl. You know what being a good girl means, don’t you?” He stepped closer to her. “Don’t look at the door. There ain’t no cavalry coming. You’re in the hands of the J Boys. I’m the gentle one. You don’t want to meet Jim or Jack or Jeff. They don’t got healthy urges.”

His trouser cuffs and the tops of his boots were bluish green, smeared with a substance that looked like clay.

“Don’t hit me again,” she said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, darlin’.”

“Help me up, please.”

“I think you’re doing fine right there.”

“When will you take me to see Ishmael?”

“Soon as we finish with the favor I mentioned.”

“It was you who wrote the note?”