Nick was clueless, his mouth hanging open in a half-smile. ?You sing like Johnny Cash??
?No, the Carters were a big influence on other people, like Woody Guthrie. Here, I?ll show you,? she said. She unsnapped her guitar case and removed a sunburst Gibson from it. The case was lined with purplish-pink velvet, and it glowed with a virginal light that only added to Nick?s confused thoughts about both the girl and the web of desire and need he was walking into.
She fitted a pick on her thumb and began singing a song about flowers covered with emerald dew and a lover betrayed and left to pine in a place that was older than time. When she chorded the guitar, the whiteness of her palm curved around the neck, and she depressed a bass string just before striking it, then released it, creating a sliding note that resonated inside the sound hole. Nick was mesmerized by her voice, the way she lifted her chin when she sang, the muscles working in her throat.
?That?s beautiful,? he said. ?You say these Carter guys were an influence on Woody Herman??
?Not exactly,? she replied.
?I already got a band, but maybe come back in a couple of weeks. If it doesn?t work out with them??
?You have an opening for a food server?? she asked, putting away her guitar.
?I got two more than I need. I had to hire the cook?s sisters, or she was gonna walk on me.?
The girl snapped the locks on her case and raised her eyes to his. ?Thanks, you?ve been real nice,? she said.
An image was forming in his mind that turned his loins to water. ?Look, I got a place next door. Slap my face if you want. The money?s good, the girls working for me don?t have to do anything they don?t want to, I throw drunks and profane guys out. I try to keep it a gentlemen?s club even if some bums get in sometimes. I could use a??
?What are you saying??
?That I got an opening or two. That maybe you?re in a tight spot and I can help you out till you find a singing job.?
?I?m not a dancer,? she said.
?Yeah, I knew that,? he said, his face small and tight and burning. ?I was just letting you know my situation. I only got so many resources. I got kids of my own.? He was stuttering, and his hands were shaking under the desk, his words nonsensical even to himself.
She was getting up, reaching for the handle on her guitar case, the back of one gold thigh streaked with a band of light.
?Ms. Gaddis??
?Just call me Vikki.?
?I thought maybe I was doing a good deed. I didn?t mean to offend you.?
?I think you?re a nice man. I enjoyed meeting you,? she said. She smiled at him, and in that moment, in order to be twenty-five again, Nick would have run his fingers one at a time through a Skilsaw.
Now, as he sat amid trellises and latticework that were green and thick with grapevine grown by his grandfather, an honest and decent man who had sold shoestrings from door to door, he tried to convince himself the girl in the photo was not Vikki Gaddis. But it was, and he knew it, and he knew her face would live in his sleep the rest of his life if Hugo killed her. And what about the soldier? Nick had recognized the elongated blue and silver combat infantryman badge on his chest. Nick could feel tears welling into his eyes but couldn?t decide if they were for himself or for the Thai women machine-gunned by somebody named Preacher Collins or for Vikki Gaddis and her boyfriend.
He lay down in the middle of his lawn, his arms and legs spread in the shape of a giant X, a weight as heavy as a blacksmith?s anvil crushing his chest.
WHEN HACKBERRY LOOKED out his office window and saw a silver car with a mirror wax job coming hard up the street, blowing dust and newspaper into the air, the sun bouncing off the windshield like the brassy flash of a heliograph, he knew that either a drunk or an outsider who couldn?t read speed limit signs or government trouble was about to arrive in the middle of his afternoon, free curbside delivery.
The man who got out of the car was as tall as Hackberry, his starched white shirt form-fitting on his athletic frame, his shaved and polished head gleaming under an afternoon sun that looked like a yellow flame. A dark-skinned man with a haircut like a nineteenth-century Apache?s sat hunched over in the backseat, both arms pulled down between his legs, as though he were trying to clutch his ankles. The dark-skinned man?s eyes were slits, his lips purple with either snuff or bruises, the back of his neck pocked with acne scars.
Hackberry put on a straw hat and stepped outside into the shade of the sandstone building that served as his office and the jail. The man with the shaved head held up his ID. The lidless intensity in his eyes and the tautness in his facial muscles made Hackberry think of a banjo string wound tightly on a wood peg, the tension climbing into a tremolo. The man said, ?Isaac Clawson, ICE. I?m glad you?re in your office. I don?t like to chase a local official around in his own county.?
?Why is Danny Boy Lorca on a D-ring??
?You know him?? Clawson said.
?I just used his name to you, sir.?
?What I mean is, do you know anything about him??
?About once a month he walks from the beer joint down to the jail and sleeps it off. He lets himself in and out.?
?He?s the drinking buddy of Pete Flores. He says he doesn?t know where Flores is.?