“Cut him up and put him in the dump.”
“Sir, what about the soldier?”
“What about him?”
“He could hear all this.”
“Your keen sense of perception always leaves me in awe.”
Ishmael wasn’t sure if he was alone in the basement. He had heard no sound in his proximity since he was awakened by the trapdoor dropping into the tunnel. He twisted his body on the cot, his wrists manacled to the leather belt, then slowly drew up his knees until they touched the wood poles along the edge of the canvas. Could he roll onto the floor and stand erect? Could he find the wall without falling, and rub the tape and cotton pads from his eyes?
“Don’t be having those kinds of thoughts, kid,” Jeff said, not more than two feet from him. “They’ll get you in a whole lot of trouble.”
“Address me as ‘kid’ again, and you’ll have troubles of your own,” Ishmael said. “Ever have your butt kicked by a blindfolded gimp?”
DARL PICKINS STOPPED the Kerr County Sheriff’s Department motorcar in front of Maggie Bassett’s house. The rain was puddling on the lawn, the sky black except for an occasional igneous pool that flared and disappeared like a yellow lake draining into the dark.
Andre was sitting in the front with Darl, Hackberry in back.
“Want us to wait out here?” Darl said.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Hackberry said. “Maggie is not given to predictability or protocol.”
Darl nodded as though he understood, which he obviously did not. “Can you tell me exactly what we’re doing here, Mr. Holland?”
“I didn’t tell you why because I don’t know myself. I was married to the woman for years and never had any idea who I was living with. It was like waking up every day with a stranger in my bed. I won’t get into the conjugal side of things.”
Darl squeezed his eyes shut as though he had a headache. “We’re here for reasons we have no understanding of?”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t make real good sense, sir.”
“Put it this way: Maggie Bassett is the most dishonest and manipulative human being I have ever known. She could sell hot-water radiators to the devil and snow to Eskimos. You said maybe she should be sitting in a jail cell. That’s one place Maggie has never been. I wonder what she’ll have to say if she thinks she’s going there.”
“That’s pretty slick,” Darl said. “So we wait out here while you go in, and she looks out the window at a car from the sheriff’s department and has to study on her prospects?”
“You’ve got your hand on it.”
“Was she really tied up with the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy? They was pretty mangy, wasn’t they?”
“Thanks fo
r that reminder, Darl. I’ll be back out soon.”
“Anything you want us to do in the meantime?”
“Wait in the car. When you see me come out of the house, that will mean it’s time for us to leave and go somewhere else.”
“I got it,” Darl said.
Hackberry knocked on the door. He wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he opened it. She was wearing a white cotton nightdress, unbuttoned at the top, so gauzy it was almost transparent, her face and shoulders and chest crosshatched with scratches and welts, as though she had been clawed by a rosebush.
“Excuse my appearance,” she said. “I just got out of the shower. I’m trying to clean up the house now.”
He removed his hat and looked away from her and then back at her face. Some of the scratches on her chest had bled through the nightdress. “Who did this to you?”
She closed the door behind him and walked into the living room. Through the kitchen door, he could see a mop and a broom and cleaning rags and a bucket of soapy water. The living room rug was printed with mud or clay.