House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“The question is whether you are willing to do these things, Mr. Holland. I think you are not. And for that reason, I cannot do them for you.”

“I’ll do what it takes to get my son back.”

“You will not be the same later.”

“I fired my revolver into a cattle car loaded with Mexican peasants, including women and children.”

“You did this deliberately?”

“No, I fired inside the smoke and dust. Then I saw what I had done. I wouldn’t deliberately kill a woman or a child.”

“That is the difference between us. That is why my voice is the way it is. On the night I delivered up these men from their evil deeds, I felt a bird fly out of my breast. It was as white as snow, and it glided over the ocean and died inside the darkness, and I was not the same when the sun rose in the morning.”

“Do you want Beckman to end up with the cup?” Hackberry said.

Andre didn’t reply.

“What are you looking at?” Hackberry said.

“We have made an enemy we did not need,” Andre replied.

Hackberry turned around. The desk clerk was on the telephone, his back to them, hunched over, the receiver held tightly against his ear, as though his posture could hide the nature of his conversation.

“Maybe he’s calling his wife,” Hackberry said.

“Evil men are all born of the same seed and carry it with them wherever they go,” Andre said. “That is why many of them resemble gargoyles.”

“You’ll never make a humanist, Andre.”

FROM HIS WINDOW, Hackberry saw Deputy Darl Pickins park a Kerr County Sheriff’s Department motorcar in front of the hotel and run inside, an object wrapped in a slicker held against his chest. In less than two minutes, he was at Hackberry’s door, out of breath.

“You must have put the spurs to it,” Hackberry said.

“Elevator was broke.”

“I meant between here and Kerrville.”

“I went to the cave like Sheriff Posey said and—”

Hackberry reached through the doorway and pulled Darl inside. “We don’t need to be advertising our business.”

“The sheriff give me that sense. Where you want me to put it?”

“On the bed is fine.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“Maybe I better not.”

“Your pistol and your bowie knife are on the bed, Mr. Holland. I also heard some of what the sheriff said to you on the telephone. I’m off duty today.”

“I don’t think you can he’p on this one.”

“I ain’t stupid, sir. Sheriff Posey don’t get upset often. You got to him. Has this got something to do with the church?”

“Indirectly, I guess. Which church you mean?”

“For me, one is just the same as the other. If we’re Christians, ain’t we supposed to he’p out each other?”