Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“There’s no maybe in this,” Hackberry said. “You were in the Cantina del Cazador. You were shooting pool there. My deputy saw you in there and described you to me. In very few words, you need to tell me what happened to my deputy.”

The pool shooter’s shirt was open on his chest, exposing his chest hair and nipples and a gold chain he wore around his neck. “¿Quién sabe, hombre?”

“You sabes, bud. Or you’d better.”

“I was in the cantina. I didn’t see anybody who looked like a deputy sheriff. What else can I say?”

“Why’d your friends out front say you weren’t there?”

“Maybe I didn’t tell them.”

“I can see you’re a man who likes to keep it simple. So how about this?” Hackberry said. He pulled his white-handled blue-black .45 revolver from his holster and swung it backhanded across the pool shooter’s mouth. The blow made a clacking sound when the heavy cylinder and frame and the barrel broke the man’s lips against his teeth. The pool shooter dropped his cue and cupped both of his hands to his mouth, his face trembling with shock behind his fingers. He removed his hands and looked at the blood on them, then spat a tooth into his palm.

“Chingado, what the fuck, man!” he said.

“You sabes now?”

“What’s going on here?” said a voice behind Hackberry.

Temple Dowling had come out of a bedroom down the hall. He wore slippers and a towel robe cinched around his waist. Lipstick was smeared on his robe, and his exposed chest looked pink and blubbery and his breasts effeminate. Two young girls were leaning out of the doorway behind him, trying to see what was happening at the front of the house. Hackberry could see a large man in a long-sleeve white cotton shirt and bradded jeans coming out of an office in back, a wood baton gripped in one hand.

Hackberry put his revolver in the holster and raised his left hand, palm out, at the man with the baton. “My business is with Mr. Dowling and his associates. Mix in it and you’ll take their weight,” he said.

“¿Qué dice?” the man with the baton asked one of the girls who had stepped out of the bedroom.

“No sé,” she replied.

“Está bien. It’s all right, Hector,” Dowling said to the Mexican with the baton.

“One of my deputies was kidnapped out of a cantina where your hired piece of shit with the bloody mouth was shooting pool,” Hackberry said. “He denies seeing my deputy, even though my deputy described your man to me over his cell phone.”

“Why would one of my employees have any interest in your deputy, Sheriff Holland?” Dowling said. “Are you down here about Jack Collins?”

“No.”

“You’re not?” Dowling said, looking confused.

“Why would I be looking for Collins on a street full of Mexican cathouses?”

“He’s everywhere,” Dowling replied.

“You’ve become a believer?”

“I haven’t done anything to this man. I didn’t say anything about him.”

The register in Dowling’s voice had changed, the vowels and consonants not quite holding together. The skin twitched under one eye as though a fly had settled on his skin. Hackberry wondered how many young girls had paid the price for the fear that Dowling had probably spent a lifetime trying to hide from others.

“Have you had an encounter with Collins?” Hackberry asked.

“I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“I put a reward on him. He killed two of my men. That’s why I put the reward on him.”

“You put a reward on Jack Collins?”

“For arrest and conviction. That’s all the statement says. I didn’t tell people to go out and kill him. It’s what any employer or family member would do if their employees or family members were murdered.”