House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“Are you feeding my boy the way you feed yourself?” Hackberry said. “Steak and spuds and fried maters and buttermilk biscuits and a bowl of sausage gravy on the side? You treat my boy as good as your own self?”

Beckman wiped his mouth with a napkin tied in a bib over his shirt. “As usual, you don’t make very much sense, Mr. Holland. But I’ve got to hand it to you. You bring a nigger into a white man’s chophouse? They must have shit their pants out there.”

“You want to talk here or in back or outside?”

“I don’t want to talk with you anywhere, thank you very much.”

“I’m going to bring you what you want.”

Beckman shook his head as though bewildered. “Gentlemen, I’ll be right back. This man is a former Texas Ranger, and I treat him as such. Perhaps after our talk, he’ll join us for a drink. You will, won’t you, Mr. Holland?”

Hackberry didn’t answer. He looked into the face of each man at the table, one at a time, and in turn each looked away or lowered his eyes. Beckman walked into a hallway in back. “What kind of besotted idea have you come up with now?”

“I’ll give you the cup in a public place, in front of others.”

“I see. That’s brilliant. So I’ll have to return it to the original owners and release your boy at the same time? Do you think I’m simpleminded?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You’re an idiot, Holland. I have complete power over you. If you hurt me—or, even worse for you, if you kill me—your son will starve to death. Consider this image for just a moment: Buried alive in a box, able to hear people who can’t hear him, dependent on others for his next sip of water or morsel of food or breath of air. Think of him listening to the footfalls above his head while his thirst and hunger and fear grow by the minute and his screams remain unheard. You’ve come to bargain? Before I’m done, you’ll beg.”

“I tried.”

“Is your speech encrypted? Am I supposed to extrapolate great meaning from that?”

“There’s a Rubicon I never went across. I guess that’s where I’m at now.”

“Collect your nigger and that boy with him, and go back where you belong: a soup kitchen for bummers, a dollar-a-throw crib, the kind of place you’ll end up one day, regardless of what happens to me.”

“Maggie Bassett ran me off in the same way. I guess it’s not my day. Did you know you got something sticky on your boot? I’d say it was blood.”

Hackberry left Beckman staring at him, and went back outside with Darl and Andre, and got into the backseat of the motorcar. The rain had slackened, and people with umbrellas were walking to their cars or into bars and cafés, laughing, glancing at the sky, as though they had been spared an impending disaster. There was a silvery glow in the clouds; even the thunder seemed to have receded over the edge of the world.

“Where to?” Darl said.

“I thought I saw blood on Beckman’s foot.”

“Whose do you reckon it is?”

“I missed something at Maggie Bassett’s this afternoon. Beckman’s men tracked up her house. They had either green clay or horse manure on their shoes. Ruby said the man she stuck a hat pin in had green stains on his trouser cuffs.”

Andre turned around. “There’s green clay down by the river. I saw it behind the Spanish ruins, down by the river.”

Hackberry gazed at the clouds. “I never saw the moon rise this early. I never saw it rise in a rainstorm, either. I don’t think the world will end by fire. I think the stars will fall out of the heavens, and all the natural laws will go out the window. I think this is how the sky will look on the day the world ends.”

Darl and Andre looked at each other but kept their thoughts to themselves.

BACK AT THE hotel, Hackberry knocked on Ruby’s door. “I need to tell you a few things,” he said. “I don’t have long.”

“Where have you been?” she said.

“At Maggie’s place. I also talked with Beckman.” He went to the window and looked down in the street where Darl had parked the motorcar. He could see the green arbor in the center of the plaza and, through the fog and trees, the shiny glimmer of the wooden carousel horses. He looked back at Ruby. “Maggie owned up. She destroyed the telegrams and messages you sent me from Denver. All these years I thought you didn’t want me back.”

Ruby stared out the window. “I guess I wanted to think better of her.”

“Maggie has her moments. Give the devil her due.”

“You sound like you admire her.”