Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?When we get there, I want you to wait for me.?

?Not good at all, sir. No, not good. Very bad, sir.?

?You?re my man. You gotta have my back.?

The driver was turned all the way around in the seat, looking aghast at his fare. ?I think you have been given very poor advice about your visit, sir. This is not a nice man. Would you like to go to the baseball game? Or I can drive you by the zoo. A very nice zoo here.?

?You people blow yourselves up with bombs. You afraid of some Russian schmuck who probably can?t get it up without watching one of his own porn films??

Mohammed pushed down the flag on his meter. ?Hang on, sir,? he said.

The cab snaked its way up a mountain that was just north of a golf resort. From the window Nick could see the great golden bowl of the city, the flow of headlights through its streets, the linear patterns of palm trees along the boulevards, the concrete canals brimming with water, the chains of sun-bladed swimming pools that extended for miles through the neighborhoods of the rich. The west side of town, where the hardscrabble whites and poor Hispanics lived, was another story.

?You watch trash TV, Mohammed?? Nick asked. ?Jerry Springer, that kind of crap??

?No, sir.? Mohammed looked in the rearview mirror. ?Maybe sometimes.?

?Those people, the guests, they don?t get paid for that.?

?They don?t??

?No.?

?Then why do they do it to themselves??

?They think they?ll be immortal. They get inside a movie or a television show, and they think they got the same magic as celebrities. Look down there. That?s what it?s about. The big score.?

?You are a very smart man. That?s why I do not understand you.?

>

?What don?t you understand??

?Why you are going to the home of a man like Josef Sholokoff.?

Mohammed pulled the cab up to the locked gates of a compound that was sculpted back into the mountain. Inside the walls, the lawn was a deep, cool green in the shadows, the sod soggy from soak hoses, the citrus trees heavy with fruit, the balconies on the upper stories of the house scrolled with Spanish-style ironwork. The gates swung inward electronically, but no security personnel or even gardeners were in sight. Mohammed drove to the carriage house and stopped.

?You?re gonna wait, right?? Nick said.

?I think so, sir.?

?Think??

?I have a wife and children to consider, sir.?

?The guy sells dirty movies. He?s not Saddam Hussein.?

?They say he kills people.?

Yeah, that, too, Nick said to himself.

By the side of the house were a flagstone patio and a swimming pool that glittered like diamonds from the underwater lighting. A half-dozen women lay on beach chairs or on float cushions in the pool. Four men were playing cards on a glass-topped table. They wore print shirts with flower or parrot designs and golf slacks and sandals or loafers. Their demeanor was that of men who felt neither threatened nor ill at ease with their role in the world nor aggrieved by tales of carnage or privation or suffering on the evening news. Nick knew many like them when he ran the cardroom for Didoni Giacano in New Orleans. They turned their lethality on and off as easily as one did a light switch, and they did not consider themselves either violent or aberrant. Ultimately, it was their personal detachment from their deeds that made them so frightening.

The overseer of their game sat in a high chair, the kind used by an umpire on a tennis court. He was a small, fine-boned man with a long jaw and narrow cranium. His grin exposed his teeth, which were long and crooked and looked tea-stained and brittle, as though they would break if their possessor bit into a hard surface. His nose was scarred by acne, his nostrils were full of gray hair, the shape of his eyes more Asian than Occidental. ?There he is, right on time,? he said.

?I?m Nick, if you?re talking about me. You?re Mr. Sholokoff??

?This is him, boys,? the man in the chair said to the men playing cards.