“Yes, sir, that’s us. What might you be doing here?” the man said.
“Not a lot. Just driving around the countryside trying to find a deputy of mine who got himself kidnapped. Do you boys know anything about a kidnapped deputy sheriff by the name of R. C. Bevins?”
The two men looked at each other, then back at Hackberry. “No, sir,”
the first man said.
Hackberry could hear the clatter of pool balls in a side room. “Is that more of your crowd in there?”
“Yes, sir, they’re with us. We’d help you if we could, Sheriff, but I think you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“This is the wrong place, all right, but for reasons you evidently haven’t thought about,” Hackberry said.
“Sir?”
“How old do you reckon that girl is?”
“We don’t make the rules down here. Nobody does,” the second man said.
Both men were wearing skintight jeans and snap-button shirts and belts with big silver-and-gold-plated buckles, and they both had the styled haircuts and carefully maintained unshaved look of male models in a liquor ad or on a calendar aimed at homosexuals rather than at women. The second man had a deeper and more regional voice than the first, and a formless blue tattoo, like a smear, inside the whiskers that grew on his throat.
“Were any of y’all in a cantina earlier?” Hackberry said.
“Not us,” the second man said.
“We’re looking for a guy with a hole in his face. You know anybody like that?”
“No, sir,” the first man said.
“I see,” Hackberry said. “Is Mr. Dowling in back?”
Neither of the men spoke. The second man glanced at Pam Tibbs, then filled a taco chip with guacamole and stuck it in his mouth and chewed it while he took her inventory.
“What’s in back?” Hackberry said.
“The whole menu,” the first man said.
“You two guys go outside,” Hackberry said.
“You’ve got no jurisdiction down here, Sheriff,” the second man said.
“Who cares? I’m bigger than you are. You guys want trouble? I’ll give it to you in spades.”
The two men looked at each other again, then got up from the settee. “We’ll honor your request, Sheriff Holland. We do that out of respect for you and our employer,” the first man said.
“No, you’ll do it because if I catch one of y’all putting your hands on this little girl, I’m going to kick your sorry asses all the way to Mexico City. And if I find out you’re involved with the kidnapping of my deputy, I’m going to blow your fucking heads off.”
Hackberry did not wait for their reaction. He walked into the side room, where two men were shooting pool inside a cone of light created by a tin-shaded bulb that hung from the ceiling. The pool table was covered with red velvet, the pockets hung with netted black leather, the mahogany trim polished to a soft glow. “You!” he said, pointing at the man about to break the rack. “Yeah, you! Put your cue down and look at me.”
“¿Hay algún problema?”
“Yeah, you. Remember me?”
“Yes, sir, you’re the sheriff.”
“You were shooting pool at a cantina tonight.”
“Maybe I was. Maybe not. So what?” There was a deep indentation below the pool shooter’s left eye, as though a piece of the cheekbone had been removed and the skin under the eye had collapsed and formed a hole a person could insert his thumb in. But the injury was an old one. It was the same wound that Hackberry had seen in the face of one of Temple Dowling’s employees when they came to his office.