Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

AS THE MORNING passed, a seemingly insignificant detail from his conversation with Jack Collins had burrowed itself into his memory and wouldn?t leave him alone. It was the sound of Collins breathing. No, that wasn?t it. It was the way Collins breathed and the image the sound conjured up from the Hollywood of years gone by. Collins seemed to draw his air across his teeth. His mouth became a slit, his speech laconic and clipped, his face without expression, like a man speaking not to other people but to a persona that lived inside him. Perhaps speaking like a man who had a nervous twitch, who was wrapped too tight for his own good, who was at war with the Fates.

A man with dry lips and a voice that rasped as if his larynx had been fried by cigarettes and whiskey or clotted with rust. A man who wore his hair mowed on the sides and combed straight back on top, a man who wore a hat and clothes from another era, his narrow belt hitched tightly into his ribs and his unpressed slacks tucked into western boots, perhaps like a prospector of years past, his whole demeanor that of tarnished frontier gentility.

Hackberry re-sorted the fax sheets and found the third page in the transmission. He stared at one listing as though seeing it for the first time. How dumb does one lawman get, particularly one who considered himself a student of his own era? ?Come in here, Pam,? he said.

She stood in the doorway. ?What?s up??

?Take a look at the names on this page.?

?What about them??

?Which one of them sticks in your mind??

?None.?

?Look again.?

?I?m a blank.?

He put his thumb on the edge of one name. She stood behind him, leaning down, one arm propped on his desk, her arm touching his shoulder.

?F. C. Dobbs. What?s remarkable about that?? she said.

?You remember the name Fred C. Dobbs??

?No.?

?Did you see The Treasure of the Sierra Madre??

?A long time ago.?

?Humphrey Bogart played the role of a totally worthless panhandler and all-around loser whose clothes are in tatters and his lips are so chapped they?re about to crack. When he thinks he?s about to be slickered, he grimaces at the camera and says, ?Nobody is putting anything over on Fred C. Dobbs.??

?Collins thinks he?s a character in a film??

?No, Collins is a chameleon and a clown. He?s a self-educated guy who believes a library card makes him more intelligent than an MIT graduate. He likes to laugh at the rest of us.?

?Maybe F. C. Dobbs is a real person. Maybe it?s just coincidence.?

?There are no coincidences with a guy like Jack Collins. He?s the thing that?s wrong with all the rest of us. He just has more of it and nowhere to leave it.?

?There?s no physical address for Dobbs, just a post office box in Presidio County?? she said.

?So far.?

?Give Maydeen and me a few minutes,? she said.

But it was almost quitting time before Pam and Maydeen got off the phones. In the meantime, Hackberry had his hands full with Nick Dolan, who had called three times, each time more angry and irrational.

?Mr. Dolan, you have my word. As soon as I learn anything about your wife, I?ll call you first,? Hackberry said.

?That?s what the FBI says. I look like a douche bag? I sound like a douche bag? I am a douche bag? I?m stupid here? Tell me which it is,? Nick said.

?We?ll find her.?

?They were following me around. They were bugging my phones. But they couldn?t protect my wife.?

?You need to take that up with the FBI, sir.?