He sat down on the floor of the booth, pulling the phone and its metal-encased cord with him, the six-pack splaying open on the concrete pad. He felt as though he had descended to the bottom of a well, beyond the sunlight, beyond hope, beyond ever feeling wind on his face again or smelling flowers in the morning or being a part of the great human drama most of the world took for granted, a man with red alligator hide for skin and a bagful of sins that would never be forgiven. He pulled his knees up to his face, his head bent forward, and began to weep silently.
?You still with me, bud??
?Tell Miss Maydeen I?m sorry for sassing her. I also apologize to you and your deputy for getting y?all hurt. I also owe an apology to some guy I attacked at a traffic light last night. I think I?m plumb losing my mind.?
?You assaulted somebody??
?I threw rocks at his car. I busted a hole in his rear window with a brick.?
?Where was this??
Pete told him.
?What kind of car??
?A tan Honda.?
?You busted a big hole in the window??
?Just under the size of a softball. It was elongated. It looked like the eye of a Chinaman staring out the window.?
?You don?t remember the license number, do you??
Pete was still holding the sixteen-ouncer. He set it on the ground outside the booth. He pushed it over with the sole of his boot. ?One letter and maybe two numbers. Y?all already got a report on it??
?You could say we may have had contact with the driver.?
A few moments later, Pete picked up the cans he had dropped and took them back inside the store and set them on the counter. ?Can I get a refund?? he said.
?If you hold your mouth right,? the cashier said.
?What??
?That?s a joke.? She opened the register drawer and counted out his cash. ?There?s some showers in back. Hang around if you feel like it, cowboy.?
?I got someone waiting on me.?
She nodded.
?You?re a nice lady,? he said.
?I hear that lots of times,? she said. She stuck another filter-tip in her mouth and lit it with a BIC, blowing the smoke at an upward angle, gazing through the window at the way the two-lane warped in the heat and dissolved into a black lake on the horizon.
?I didn?t mean anything, ma?am.?
?I look like a ?ma?am?? It?s ?miss,?? she said.
TWO DAYS AFTER the invasion of his home by Jack Collins, Hackberry Holland and Pam Tibbs flew in the department?s single engine plane to San Antonio, borrowed an unmarked car from the Bexar County Sheriff?s Office, and drove into Nick Dolan?s neighborhood. The enclave atmosphere and the size of the homes, the Spanish daggers and hibiscus and palm and umbrella trees and crepe myrtle and bougainvillea in the yards, and the number of grounds workers made Hackberry think of a foreign country, in the tropics, perhaps, or out on the Pacific Rim.
Except he was not visiting a neighborhood as much as a paradox. The dark-skinned employees?maids retrieving the trash cans from the curb, yardmen with ear protectors clamped on their heads operating mowers and leaf blowers, hod carriers and framers constructing an extension on a house?were all foreigners, not the repressed and indigenous people Somerset Maugham and George Orwell and Graham Greene had described in their accounts of life inside dying European and British empires. Those who owned and lived in the big houses in Nick Dolan?s neighborhood were probably all native-born but had managed to become colonials in their own country.
When Hackberry had called Nick Dolan?s restaurant and asked to interview him, Dolan had sounded wired to the eyes, clearing his throat, claiming to be tied up with business affairs and trips out of state. ?I got no idea what this is about. I?m dumbfounded here,? he said.
?Arthur Rooney.?
?Artie Rooney is an Irish putz. I wouldn?t piss in his mouth if he was dying of thirst. Let me rephrase that: I wouldn?t cross the street to see a pit bull rip out his throat.?
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