?You going to stop that killer from hurting those kids or not?? Esther said.
?Don?t be implying what you?re implying, Miss Esther. You try to bring the house down, you?ll find yourself standing in the living room with the roof caving on Nick?s head and maybe yours, too,? Artie said.
?Don?t you talk to her like that,? Nick said.
?Remember that time at the Prytania Theatre when we did a swirlie with your face in the commode?? Artie said.
?How about I mash your hand in your drawer?? Nick said.
?You survived in New Orleans because we allowed you to, Nick. Didoni Giacano once said your mother was probably knocked up by a yeast infection and you were not to be trusted. I told Dee-Dee his perceptions were on target but that you were also gutless and greedy, and for those reasons alone, you?d do whatever he told you, all the way to the graveyard. So in a way, I helped make your career. I think you ought to show a little gratitude.?
?Dee-Dee Gee said that about my family and me??
Artie gestured at the glass wall behind him. ?See that storm building out there?? he said. ?Katrina washed out most of the Ninth Ward. I hope this one changes course and hits New Orleans just like Katrina did and finishes the job. I hope you?re there for it, Nick. I hope you and your people are washed off the earth. That?s how I feel.?
Esther leaned forward in her chair, her hands folded in her lap, a realization growing in her face. ?You deceived Nick, didn?t you?? she said.
?About what??
?The smuggling and the murder of the girls. You were using Nick somehow. That?s how you set up the extortion.?
?I got news for you. Your husband is a pimp. The houses you own, the cars you drive, the country club you belong to, they?re all paid for by money he makes off whores. The ones you think are just college bimbos taking off their clothes at the club do lap dances and jerk off guys in the back rooms. You?re a smart woman, Miss Esther. You married Mighty Mouse. Why pretend otherwise??
She rose from her chair, her hands crimped on her purse. ?My husband is a good man,? she said. ?I?ll never allow you to hurt him. You threaten my family again, and I?ll make your life awful.?
?Right. Sorry you have to run,? Artie said, taking another pain pill from the tin box.
?You hurt the soldier or his girlfriend, we?re calling the FBI,? Nick said. ?I know what you can do to me, Artie. It doesn?t matter. I?m not gonna have the blood of those kids on my conscience.?
?How do you like that, you cheap gangster?? Esther said. ?You were talking about doing swirlies on people? Think about yourself in a prison cell full of sexual degenerates. I hope you?re in there a thousand years.?
After they were gone, Artie opened the door to his conference room. Hugo was smoking a cigarette, gazing at the waves crashing on the beach.
?You get an earful?? Artie asked.
?Enough,? Hugo replied. He mashed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the conference table. ?How do you want to play it??
?I got to tell you??
?I?m lots of things, but omniscient isn?t one of them.?
?Hose everybody who needs to go. That means the soldier and his broad, that means Preacher Jack Collins, that means anybody who can dime us. That means that fat little kike and his wife and, if necessary, his kids. When I say ?hose,? I mean slick down to the tile from one end of the building to the other. I?m getting through loud and clear here??
?No problem, Artie.?
?If you?re working in close??
Hugo waited.
?Put one in Esther?s mouth,? Artie said. ?I want her to know where it came from, too.?
YEARS AGO, IN a Waycross, Georgia, public library, Bobby Lee Motree happened to see a book titled My Grandfather Was the Only Private in the Confederate Army. He was puzzled by the title and, flipping through the pages, tried to figure out what it meant. Then he stopped thinking about the matter altogether, in part because Bobby Lee?s interest in history was confined largely to his claim that he was a descendant of perhaps the greatest military strategist in American history, a claim based on the fact that his first and second names were respectively Robert and Lee, as were those of his father, a petty thief and part-time golf caddie who was killed while sleeping on a train trestle.
Now, during a sunset that seemed somehow to be a statement about his life, he stood by his vehicle, not far from a jagged mountain whose bare slopes were turning darker and darker against the sky. The wind was hot and smelled of creosote and dust and road-patch tar that had dissolved into licorice during the day. In the distance, he saw a trio of buzzards circling high above the hardpan, their outstretched wings stenciled against a yellow sun that reminded him of light trapped behind a dirty window shade. He opened a cell phone and punched in a number.
Then he hesitated and removed his thumb from the send button. Bobby Lee wasn?t feeling well. He could see torn pieces of color floating behind his eyelids, as though his power to think were deteriorating, as though his uncontrolled thoughts had become his greatest enemy.
He reached inside his SUV and drank from a can of warm soda. Was he coming down with something? No such luck. His world was coming apart. He had always admired Preacher for his professionalism and invisibility, and for the way he had become a legend, a one-man Murder, Inc., without ever going inside the system. But Preacher had gone along with Hugo on the mass mow-down of the Asians, and now he?d popped a federal agent. Somebody would have to go down for it. Hugo? That was a laugh. Preacher? Jack would eat a Gatling gun before he?d allow anyone to take him into custody. Who did that leave?