?Who knows what crazy people think?? Nick said.
?There?s something you?re leaving out. Something you?re not talking about.?
?No, that?s it. That?s everything that happened.?
?Stop lying. What did these men do in your name??
?They didn?t do it in my name. I never told them to do what they did.?
?You make me want to hit you, to beat my fists bloody on you.?
?They killed nine women from Thailand. They were prostitutes. They were being smuggled across the border by Artie Rooney. They machine-gunned them and buried them with a bulldozer.?
?My God, Nick,? she said, her voice breaking in her throat.
?I didn?t have anything to do with this, Esther.?
?Yes, you did.? Then she said it again. ?Yes, you did.?
?Hugo was supposed to deliver the women to Houston. That?s all it was.?
?All it was? Listen to yourself. What were you doing with people who smuggle prostitutes into the country??
?We?ve got a half-interest in a couple of escort agencies. It?s legal. They?re hostesses. Maybe some other stuff goes on, but it?s between adults, it?s a free country. It?s just business.?
?You?ve been running escort services?? When he didn?t reply, she said, ?Nick, what have you done to us?? She was weeping quietly in the leather chair now, her long hair hanging in her face. Her discomposure and fear and disbelief, and the black skein of her hair separating her from the rest of the world, made him think of the women lined up in front of Preacher?s machine gun, and his lips began to tremble.
?You want me to fix you a drink?? he said.
?Don?t say anything to me. Don?t touch me. Don?t come near me.?
He was standing over her, his fingers extended inches from the crown of her head. ?I didn?t want anybody hurt, Esther. I thought maybe I?d get even with Artie for a lot of the things he did to me when I was a kid. It was dumb.?
But she wasn?t hearing him. Her head was bent forward, her face completely obscured, her back shaking inside her blouse. He took a box of Kleenex from his desk and set it on her lap, but it fell from her knees without her ever noticing it was there. He stood in the darkened coldness of his office, the jet of frigid air from the wall duct touching his bald pate, his stomach sagging over his belt, the smell of nicotine rife on his fingers when he rubbed his hand across his mouth. If he had ever felt smaller in his life, he could not remember the instance.
?I?m sorry,? he said, and started to walk away.
?What do these gangsters plan to do now??
?There was a witness, a soldier who was in Iraq. Him and his girlfriend could be witnesses against Hugo and the kid in the top hat and this guy Preacher.?
?They?re going to kill them??
?Yeah, if they find them, that?s what they?ll do.?
?That can?t happen, Nick,? she said, raising her head.
?I called the FBI when I was drunk. It didn?t do any good. You want me to go to prison? You think that will stop it? These guys will kill those kids anyway.?
She stared into space, her eyes cavernous. Through the floor, she and Nick could hear the children turning somersaults on the living room carpet, sending a thud down through the walls into the foundation of the house. ?We can?t have this on our souls,? she said.
THE MOTEL WAS a leftover from the 1950s, a utilitarian structure checkerboarded with huge red and beige plastic squares, the metal-railed upstairs walkways not unlike those in penitentiaries, all of it located in a neighborhood of warehouses and bankrupt businesses and joyless bars that could afford no more than a single neon sign over the door.
The swimming pool stayed covered with a plastic tarp year-round, and the apron of grass around the building was yellow and stiff, the fronds of the palm trees rattling drily in the wind. On the upside of things, hookers did not operate on its premises, nor did drug dealers cook meth in the rooms. The sodium halide lamps in the parking lot protected the cars of the guests from roving bands of thieves. The rates were cheap. Arguably, there were worse rental lodgings in San Antonio. But there was one undeniable characteristic about the motel and the surrounding neighborhood that would not go away: The rectangularity of line and the absence of people gave one the sense that he was stand ing inside a stage set, one that had been created for the professional sojourner.
Preacher sat in a stuffed chair in the dark, staring at the television set. The screen was filled with static, the volume turned up full blast on white noise. But the images on the screen inside Preacher?s head had nothing to do with the television set in his room. Inside Preacher?s head, the year was 1954. A little boy sat in the corner of a boxcar parked permanently on a siding in the middle of the Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle. It was winter, and the wind was gray with grit and dust, and it chapped the cheeks and lips and dried out the hands and caused the skin to split around the thumbnails. A blanket draped over a rope divided the boxcar in half. On the other side of the blanket, Edna Collins was going at it with a dark-skinned gandy dancer while two more waited outside, their hands stuffed in their canvas coat pockets, their slouch hats pulled low over their ears as protection against the wind.
Preacher?s motel windows were hung with red curtains, and the lamps in the parking lot seemed to etch them with fire. He heard footsteps on the steel stairway, then a shadow crossed his window and someone tapped tentatively on the jalousie.