“I had hoped we might establish some goodwill here,” Riser said.
“I think Pam has a point,” Hackberry said.
“I don’t make the rules. I don’t make our foreign policy, either,” Riser said. “Nobody likes to admit we’ve done business with crab lice. Our friend Krill’s real name is Antonio Vargas. We don’t know that much about him, except he was on the payroll for a while, and now he’s off the leash and seems to have a special hatred toward the United States.”
“Why?” Hackberry asked.
“Maybe the CIA paid him in Enron stock. How would I know?”
“You need to stop lying, Mr. Riser,” Pam said.
“Ma’am, you’re way out of line,” Riser said.
“No, you are,” she said. “We bagged up that guy’s dirty work. You ever pick up human fingers with your hands? Anybody who could do what he did has a furnace inside him instead of a brain. For us, these guys are not an abstraction. We live on the border, in their midst, and you’re denying us information we’re entitled to have.”
Riser picked up his hamburger and bit into it. He chewed a long time before he spoke, his face looking older, more fatigued, perhaps more resigned to serving masters and causes he didn’t respect. “This saloon reminds me of a photograph or a place I saw on vacation once,” he said.
“The Oriental in Tombstone,” Hackberry said. “It was run by the Earp brothers. That was just before the Earps and Doc Holliday blew three of the Clanton gang out of their socks at the O.K. Corral, then hunted down the rest and killed them one by one all the way to Trinidad.”
“You guys must have a different frame of reference, because I’m ne
ver quite sure what you’re talking about,” Riser said.
“The message is we don’t like getting dumped on,” Pam said.
“This has really been an interesting meeting,” Riser said. He got up from the booth and studied the check. He wore a brown suit with a thin western belt and no tie and a cowboy shirt that shone like tin. He didn’t raise his eyes from the check when he spoke. “I love this country. I’ve served it most of my life. I honor other people who have served it, particularly someone who was a recipient of the Navy Cross. I also honor those who work with a man of that caliber. I’m sorry I don’t convey that impression to others. I hope both of you have a fine weekend.”
PAM AND HACKBERRY said little on the way back to the department. Rain and dust were blowing out of the hills against the sunset, a green nimbus rising from the land as though the day were beginning rather than ending. Hackberry took down the flag and folded it in a military tuck and put it in his desk drawer. He started to pick up the book he had left on his desk blotter. He was not aware Pam was standing behind him. “Don’t buy into it,” she said.
“Into what?”
“Riser is putting the slide on us.”
“He isn’t a bad man. He just takes orders. Consider how things would be if the Risers of the world hung it up and let others take their place.” There was silence in the room. “I say something wrong?” he asked.
“Your goodness is your weakness. Others know it, and they use it against you,” she replied.
“You need to stop talking like that to me, Pam.”
She glanced at the title of the book on his desk blotter. “You reading about Air America?” she said.
“I thought it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Is the Asian lady’s name in there?”
“In fact, it is.”
“You like her?”
“I don’t think about her one way or the other.”
Pam gazed out the window. Down the street, a neon beer sign had just lighted in a barroom window. The pink glow of the sunset shone on the old buildings and high sidewalks. Pickup trucks and cars were parked at an angle in front of a Mexican restaurant that had a neon-scrolled green cactus above its front entrance. It was Friday evening, and as always in the American Southwest, it came with a sense of both expectation and completion, perhaps with the smell of open-air meat fires or rain on warm concrete. “Hack?” she said.
Don’t say it. Don’t think about it, he heard a voice say inside him. But he didn’t know if the voice was directed at Pam or him. “What?” he asked.
“It’s pretty here in the evening, isn’t it?”
“Sure.”