Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

They walked through a foyer into an attached cottage that served as Nick?s office. Down on the river, Nick could see a chain of floaters on inflated inner tubes headed toward a rapids. Nick sat in a deep leather swivel chair behind his desk, gazing abstractedly at the sets of mail-order books he had bought in order to fill the wall shelves. Clawson sat down in front of him, his elongated torso as straight as a broomstick. Nick could feel the tension in his chest rising into his throat.

?You know Arthur Rooney?? Clawson asked.

?Everybody in New Orleans knew Artie Rooney. He used to run a detective agency. People in the graveyard knew Artie Rooney. That?s ?cause he put them there.?

?Does Rooney use Thai whores??

?How would I know??

?Because you?re in the same business.?

?I own a nightclub. I?m a partner in some escort services. If the government doesn?t like that, change the law.?

?I got a short wick with people like you, Mr. Dolan,? Clawson said, unzipping the portfolio. ?Take a look at these. They really don?t do justice to the subject, though. You can?t put the smell of decomposition in a photograph.?

?I don?t want to look at them.?

?Yeah, you do,? Clawson said, rising from his chair, placing eight eight-by-ten black-and-white blowups in two rows across Nick?s desktop. ?The shooter or shooters used forty-five-caliber ammunition. This girl here looks like she?s about fifteen. Check out the girl who caught one in the mouth. How old are your daughters??

?This doesn?t have anything to do with me.?

?Maybe. Or maybe it does. But you?re a pimp, Mr. Dolan, just like Arthur Rooney. You sell disease, and you promote drug addiction and pornography. You?re a parasite that should be scrubbed off the planet with steel wool.?

?You can?t talk to me like that.?

?The hell I can?t.?

Nick wiped the photos off his desk onto the floor. ?Get out. Take your pictures with you.?

?They?re yours. We have plenty more. The FBI is interviewing your strippers. I?d better not hear a story that doesn?t coincide with what you?ve told me.?

?They?re doing what? You?re ICE. What are you doing here? I don?t smuggle people into the country. I?m not a terrorist. What?s with you??

Clawson zipped up his empty portfolio and looked around him. ?You got you a nice place here. It reminds me of a Mexican restaurant in Santa Fe where I used to eat.?

After Clawson was gone, Nick sat numbly in his swivel chair, his ears booming like kettledrums. Then he went into his wife?s bathroom and ate one of her nitroglycerin pills, sure that his heart was about to fail.

WHEN HIS WIFE called him to lunch, he scooped up the photos the ICE agent had left, stuffed them into a manila envelope, and buried them in a desk drawer. At the table in the sunroom, he picked at his food and tried not to let his worry and fear and gloom show in his face.

His wife?s grandparents had been Russian Jews from the southern Siberian plain, and she and their son and the fifteen-year-old twins still had the beautiful black hair and dark skin and hint of Asian features that had defined the grandmother even in her seventies. Nick kept looking at his daughters, seeing not their faces but the faces of the exhumed women and girls in the photos, smeared lipstick on one girl?s mouth, grains of dirt still in her hair.

?You don?t like the tuna?? Esther, his wife, said.

?The what?? he replied stupidly.

?The food you?re chewing like it?s wet cardboard,? she said.

?It?s good. I got a toothache is all.?

?Who was that guy?? Jesse, his son, asked. He was a skinny, pale boy, his arms flaccid, his ribs as visible as corset stays. His IQ was 160. In the high school yearbook, the only entries under his picture were ?Planning Committee, Senior Prom? and ?President of the Chess Club.? There had been three other members of the chess club.

?Which guy?? Nick said.

?The one who looks like an upended penis,? Jesse said.

?You?re not too old for a smack,? Esther said.

?He?s a gentleman from Immigration. He wanted to know about some of my Hispanic employees at the restaurant,? Nick said.