House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“You want to know why I talked to you so angrily outside Arnold Beckman’s office.”

“It crossed my mind.”

“I’m entering into a business arrangement with him. You need to stay out of it,” she said.

“I think you let me down.”

“Do you, now?”

“Call it what you like, Miss B. I had a world of respect for you. What the hell are you doing?”

“What gives you the right to ask me that?”

“You’ve got a point. So I won’t. That’s not why I called, anyway. I need your man Andre.”

“Boy, if you don’t have nerve.”

“I have nerve? You were Ishmael’s friend. I thought you were mine, too. Maybe you have a reason for being with Beckman. But seeing you there was hard to swallow.”

“What do you want Andre for?”

“He offered to he’p me. He’s the only one.”

“Help you in what way?”

“Ask him. Or don’t. You can hang up the telephone if you like. Ishmael’s mother was attacked by one of Beckman’s men. He wanted to violate her as well, except she shoved a hat pin halfway down his throat.”

He waited and watched the rain sliding down the windows, the electricity flickering through the heavens. He wondered if the latter indicated a sign and decided it did not.

“I’ll send him over,” she said. “He’s driving my new motorcar. As you are aware, my REO is undergoing massive repairs.”

“I hope they do a good job on that,” he replied. “I hear there are some right good mechanics here’bouts.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Holland. You never fail to distinguish yourself. I thought I had met every kind of man. I didn’t realize how vain I was.”

Before he could reply, she hung up.

He called Willard Posey in Kerrville. “It’s Hack. I need Deputy Pickins to bring a certain item to my hotel room in San Antonio.”

“The Kerr County Sheriff’s Department is running a delivery service to San Antonio?”

“Don’t be light about this.”

“How could I be light about it? Are you talking about the item I think you’re talking about? I cain’t take any more of this craziness, Hack.”

“I think that cup is the real thing.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“What do you care?”

“One of two things is going on here,” Willard said. “Either you’ve lost your mind, or you have in your possession an object a baptized person is going to have to think very seriously about.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do. But if I don’t do something pretty soon, I’m going to lose my boy. What would you do in my stead? He’s in the hands of people who are worse than the convicts in Huntsville.”

“You never ease up, Hack. You could squeeze blood from a rock.”

“Get off the pot.”