House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

She soaked a washcloth in hot water and squeezed it dry, then placed it over his eyes. Through the window curtains, she saw a delivery vehicle pull to a stop behind the house. The surface of the bathwater was covered with foam and iridescent bubbles. “There’s a telephone repair vehicle outside. I’ll be right back. Take a nap. Just don’t slip under the water.”

“Hurry up. I’m developing a male problem that could use some attention.”

“Make a wish list while I’m gone,” she replied.

She retrieved the delivery from the back steps and went into the kitchen and began pouring the devil’s brew into two large buckets. She picked up each bucket by the bail and carried them into the bathroom, setting them down heavily, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. “Close your eyes tight. I’m going to rinse you off.”

She poured the buckets over him, his silvery-blond hair pasting to his skin.

“You’re always full of mystery,” he said. “Did you read mysteries as a child, Sherlock Holmes and that kind of thing?”

“I read Shakespeare. My favorite character was Lady Macbeth.”

“As a role model?”

“If you only knew, darling Arnold. How do you feel?”

“Not too well. My eyes are burning.”

“Move your hands.”

He stared at the froth on the surface of the water. She saw both fear and a terrible sense of realization climb into his face.

“Try your legs,” she said.

“What’s happening to me? What did you do?”

“It’s a concoction used by the Indians in South America. Guess the name of the Wyoming hayseed who originally told me about it.”

“What did you pour on me?”

“If you had a sense of smell, you would detect the odor of naphtha, coal oil, paint thinner, and a pound of wax crystals.”

“Wax?”

“For adhesive purposes.”

She couldn’t tell if the collapse of his facial muscles was caused by his stupefaction or the toxic mix of depressants she had been feeding him since the previous night.

“You win,” he said. “Call a physician. I’ll give you half of everything I have.”

“That’s not necessary. During the night I took your ledger books from your desk, your bank account numbers in Switzerland, your jewelry, and a stack of bearer bonds. Did you know you left your safe open? I haven’t had time to count the cash, but I think it’s quite a bit.”

She picked up one of the buckets and began pouring a trail out the door. He had slipped lower in the bathwater and was cursing her incoherently, his head bobbing like a coconut on a frothy sea.

She looked up and silently mouthed, “Ta-ta,” then continued backward with the bucket into the kitchen. She lit a solitary candle on the breakfast table, blew out the match, opened the oven door, and turned on the gas.

With a big carpet bag hitched over her shoulder, she shut the front door behind her and walked down the hill toward the ocean.

Fifteen minutes later, an explosion blew glass and flame out of the windows, but a secondary explosion, far more powerful, leveled the building and caused the reflecting pools to boil. Some said Beckman had stored ordnance for his motion pictures in the basement. Others said a gas line had exploded under the house. The fact that his body parts rained down all over the neighborhood was a subject of jokes for perhaps a week. Otherwise, his passing seemed to be noted only by the seagulls perched on the debris in the lawn, and looters who carried off souvenirs. His memorial service, arranged by a business agent, was unattended, even by the business agent.

IN THE SAME month, a related event took place deep down in rural Mexico, although it commanded no newspaper space or study by historians. An ornate open touring car with two people in it and an engine that sounded like a dollar watch ticking out of control wended its way through round-topped hills that resembled ant mounds and outcroppings of volcanic slag and dry washes surrounded by the carcasses of dead animals. When the touring car reached a riverbed that had shrunk from its banks into a thin red stream that glistened as brightly as blood in the sunrise, Hackberry and Mrs. Ruby Holland got out and crossed a wooden bridge lashed together with rope and leather thongs.

They walked up a sandy trail bordered by cactus that bloomed with yellow and red flowers, and entered a grove of cottonwoods swelling with wind, and continued on to a village that had no name and whose indigenous people knew nothing of the outside world or the one from which they had probably descended.

The dirt streets had not changed, nor the lay of the mud buildings or the jail or the cantina or the outbuildings constructed of discarded slat board. The only differences Hackberry could see in the village since his visit in 1916 were the increase in bullet holes and the expansion of the cemetery, whose sticklike crosses stretched up a hillside.

Hackberry was wearing a powder-blue coat and a new Stetson and shined boots and dark trousers and a snap-button shirt that crinkled with light. He was not carrying a firearm, only a drawstring bag he had thrown over his shoulder. An old man in sandals and baggy pants tied with rope was sweeping off the line of flat stones that served as a walkway into the mud-walled church where Hackberry had awakened and been fed and cared for and armed with a hatchet three years ago.