Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?You damn liar, what?d you do with my check? You just left it in the box? Tell me.?

?Don?t call here again,? Junior said, and hung up.

AT TWO A.M. Nick Dolan watched his remaining patrons leave the club. He used to wonder where they went after hours of drinking and viewing half-naked women perform inches away from their grasp. Did their fantasies cause them to rise throbbing and hard in the morning, unsated, vaguely ashamed, perhaps angry at the source of their dependency and desperation, perhaps ready to try an excursion into the dark side?

Was there a connection between what he did and violence against women? A female street person had been raped and beaten by two men six blocks from his club, fifteen minutes after closing time. The culprits were never caught.

But eventually, out of his own ennui with the subject, Nick had stopped thinking about his patrons or worrying about their deeds past or present, in the same way a butcher does not think about the origins and history of the gutted and frozen white shapes hanging from meat hooks in his subzero locker. Nick?s favorite admonition to himself remained intact and unchallenged: Nick Dolan didn?t invent the world.

Nick drank a glass of milk at the bar while his girls and barmaids and bartenders and bouncers and janitors said good night and one by one went outside to their cars and their private lives, which he suspected were little different from anyone else?s, except for the narcotics his girls often relied upon.

He locked the back door, set the alarm, and locked the front door as he went out. He paused in front of the club and surveyed the parking lot, the occasional car passing on the four-lane, the great star-strewn bowl of sky overhead. The wind was balmy blowing through the trees, the clouds moonlit; there was even a promise of rain in the air. The .25 auto he had taken from his desk rested comfortably in his trousers pocket. The only vehicle in the parking lot was his. For some reason the night struck him as more like spring than late summer, a time of new beginnings, a season of tropical showers and farmers? markets and baseball training camps and a carpet of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush just over the rise on the highway.

But for Nick, spring was special for another reason: No matter how jaded he had become, spring still reminded him of his youthful innocence and the innocence his children had shared with him.

He thought of the great green willow tree bending over the Comal River behind his property, and the way his children had loved to swim through its leafy tendrils, hanging on to a branch just at the edge of the current, challenging Nick to dive in with them, their faces full of respect and affection for the father who kept them safe from the world.

If only Nick could undo the fate of the Thai women. What did the voice of Yahweh say? ?I am the alpha and omega. I am the beginning and the end. I am He who maketh all things new.? But Nick doubted that the nine women and girls whose mouths had been packed with dirt would give him absolution so easily.

He walked across the parking lot to his car, watching the tops of the trees bend in the wind, the moon like silver plate behind a cloud, his thoughts a tangled web he couldn?t sort out. Behind him, he heard an engine roar to life and tires ripping through gravel down to a harder surface. Before he could turn around, Hugo?s SUV was abreast of him, Hugo in the passenger seat, a kid in a top hat behind the wheel.

?Get in, Nick. Eat breakfast with us,? Hugo said, rolling down the window.

A man Nick didn?t know sat in the backseat, a pair of crutches propped next to him.

?No, thanks,? Nick replied.

?You need to hop in with us, you really do,? Hugo said, getting out of the vehicle and opening the back door.

The man who sat in back against the far door was watching Nick in tently now. His hair was greased, the part a neat gray line through the scalp, the way an actor from the 1940s might wear his hair. His head was narrow, his nose long, his mouth small and compressed. A newspaper was folded neatly in his lap; his right hand rested just inside the fold. ?I?d appreciate you talking to me,? the man said.

The wind had dropped, and the rustling sounds in the trees had stopped. The air seemed close, humid, like damp wool on the skin. Nick could hear his pulse beating in his ears.

?Mr. Dolan, do not place your hand in your pocket,? the man said.

?You?re the one they call Preacher?? Nick asked.

?Some people do.?

?I don?t owe you any money.?

?Who said you did??

?Hugo.?

?That?s Hugo, not me. What are you carrying in your pocket, Mr. Dolan??

?Nothing.?

?Don?t lie.?

?What??

?Don?t be disingenuous, either.?

?I don?t know what that word means.?

?You?ll either talk to me now, or you?ll see me or Bobby Lee later.?