House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

He stared at

his hand as though it were stricken or had been severed from the rest of his body. He had lost all concentration and dropped the revolver to the floor. Hackberry picked up his Peacemaker and pointed it at him, then realized he had no need for his firearm.

“It burned me,” Beckman said. “It was heated by the stove. That’s why you put it there.”

Hackberry let his hand hover over a stove lid, then placed his hand on it. “There’s no heat.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie? Here, I’ll press your face down on it,” Hackberry said.

Beckman’s mouth twitched.

“I’m kidding,” Hackberry said. He reached down and helped his son to his feet. “Let’s get those manacles off you. Somebody might think you’re a convict, old pal of mine.”

“I saw you in a dream, Big Bud.”

Beckman had backed against the wall, holding his right wrist. “I’m so glad we’re all reunited here,” he said. “But here’s the reality, Mr. Holland. You’ve invaded my home. You’ve either wounded or killed people here. We were keeping your son to cure him of his addictions. You’re a drunkard and have no credibility.”

“Andre, I think I would really like to go ahead and kill this man,” Hackberry said. “What do you think about it?”

“That is not necessary,” Andre replied. “It will get him.”

“Somebody else said that to me,” Hackberry replied. “A man in the desert, down in Mexico. What is ‘it’?”

“‘It’ is it. You’ll see. Look at Mr. Beckman. Have you ever seen greater fear in a man’s eyes?”

But Hackberry Holland was no longer interested in linguistic nuances or metaphysical mysteries. As he and Andre walked out into the night, each of them holding one of Ishmael’s arms over his shoulder, they heard a screeching sound like a corrugated roof being ripped in half.

They rounded the front of the building and saw Willard Posey getting out of his motorcar, the one whose entire roof had been hacksawed off the car body.

“Glad you dropped by,” Hackberry said.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Willard said. “I think you ought to be locked up in an asylum.”

A second motorcar pulled off the road. Ruby Dansen and Beatrice DeMolay got out, the headlamps flooding the yard, burning away the shadows, creating a white radiance on the faces of Darl Pickins and Hackberry and Andre and Willard and Ishmael and Beatrice and Ruby, as though indeed they were children of light and not merely a human extension of an ancient metaphor.

SIX MONTHS LATER, on a fine spring day in Pacific Palisades, California, a woman wearing a lavender and silver dress and red velvet boots and a wide, stiff-brimmed black hat with a veil stepped off a passenger train onto the station platform and waited for the baggage handlers or porters or jitney drivers to approach her, as though their collective attention were her obvious due.

Her elegance, her posture, and her regal bearing made onlookers assume that she was another member of the motion picture studio and burgeoning actors’ community not far away.

Later, police investigators would discover that nobody in the film community knew who she was or where she came from. The driver of the cab she hired thought it strange that her first destination was a hardware and building-supply store. Her second destination, as everyone learned, was the home of the millionaire Arnold Beckman. It was only natural that a man like Mr. Beckman, an international soldier of fortune who had been at Flanders fields and Gallipoli, would have a guest like the mysterious lady swathed in a veil.

His home was created in the style of a Roman villa, on a hilltop overlooking the ocean, with fluted pillars and airy terraces and colonnades above the walkways and reflecting pools dotted with floating flowers and bougainvillea and orange trumpet vine dangling from the latticework. The cabdriver was particularly struck by the woman’s gentility. When he told her in his embarrassment that he didn’t have enough change to break the fifty-dollar bill she gave him, she closed his hand on the bill and told him to keep it all. He also said she winked at him before she walked away.

ARNOLD BECKMAN WAS obviously overjoyed when he opened the door. “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” he said, spreading his arms wide, ushering her in, speaking so rapidly that his bottom lip was flecked with spittle. He was witty and gracious, humble and without bitterness, even about his legal troubles in Texas. “If I had it to do over, I suppose I would handle a few things differently,” he said as he gave her a tour of the grounds. “On balance, things have worked out exceptionally well. Americans love public contrition. No matter how many times a real bastard sticks it to them, they welcome the sod back home. Attorneys are also a marvelous invention. I send a check, fix a drink, and watch the sun set on the Pacific Ocean.”

He was standing on a precipice at the edge of his property, sand and black rocks and pounding surf far below. He lifted a hand as though indicating all the potential of the future, perhaps an empire that lay beyond the horizon. “What do you think of my digs?”

“Can you find a place for me out here?” she asked.

“I’ll make you a partner. You’ll be popping the whip over the whole studio. I’m so happy you’ve put our little tiffs behind us. You have, haven’t you?” Before she could reply, he caught the attention of his manservant. “Fix brunch for us, Walter. Also sweep the leaves off the patio and lower the sunscreens for Miss Bassett. We’ll be eating on the glass table.”

“How many places shall I set, sir?”

“How many people do you see here, Walter?” Beckman said. He turned his attention back to her. “Remember what I said about Venus rising? I’d love to see you in the surf at eveningtide, with the sun behind you like an enormous, succulent orange.”

“I’m a bit tired, Arnold. Do you mind if I take a hot bath and a little nap afterward?”