House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

But an exorcism of Ruby’s attack would require more than the price of a train ticket. And Ruby was not the only source of Maggie’s anger. Arnold was becoming more and more of a problem. His insinuations about her had become more common in their daily dealings, his disrespect for her and women in general more pronounced when a male audience was available.

Plus the question she kept trying to shove to the edge of her mind: What had he done with Ishmael? Over the years she had piece by piece gotten rid of her conscience, the way a person got rid of a worrisome appendage. She believed the conscience was little more than a set of ideas installed by others; she felt it had little to do with right and wrong and instead served the interests of the installers.

It was wrong to gas a soldier in the trenches but all right to burn him to death with a flamethrower? The railroads should be given every other section of land along the railroad track and regular people should get nothing? All men were brothers and equal in the sight of God unless they were dumb peons you could pay ten cents an hour? Every patriotic man should vote, but the woman who demanded the same right was branded a lesbian? Fornication was beyond the pale unless you did it in a city-sanctioned cathouse? Sometimes she wondered why she didn’t join forces with Ruby Dansen.

Nonetheless, even in her anger, she could not stop thinking about Ishmael. Maybe that was why she kept her mind on Ruby in the first place. She had injected Ishmael, seduced him, and brought him to San Antonio so Arnold could satisfy his obsession over a religious artifact and get even with Hackberry Holland. But something had happened on the train ride down the southern Colorado plateau and through Ratón Pass. Lying next to Ishmael in the bed inside their private room, she had felt like both a mother and a lover, as though entering into an innocent form of incest and perhaps thereby restoring her youth. These were moments that others would not understand. Why should they? They hadn’t been abandoned by their fathers and forced to work in a bordello, or live on the bread crumbs paid to schoolteachers. She thought about the slow rocking of the train descending the Pass and Ishmael’s body molded to hers as they watched the pinyon trees and the great outcroppings of gray and yellow rock slide by the window, and for a second she thought she smelled the trace of shaving soap on Ishmael’s neck, and felt the heat of his skin on her lips.

Maybe she was corrupt. But what she thought and what she did and what she felt were not necessarily part of one another. No one chose to be a prostitute. And once you became one, you either kept company with gunfighters and outlaws who protected you, or you ended up on the street at the mercy of pimps and Murphy artists and jackrollers and eventually went blind or insane with venereal disease of the brain.

Arnold ridiculed the life she had led. He always began with a compliment but ended by degrading her. If she told him about her feelings for Ishmael, he would only show amusement, his eyes lighting mischievously, the tip of his tongue sliding along his bottom lip, his face smug with what he considered his secret insight into her soul. Because that was always the message. Maggie deceived herself, but her mentor and protector, Arnold Beckman, saw through it all and liked and admired her just the same.

He had trained her how to think about herself, using flattery one moment and the threat of rejection the next. He was a master at it. The only thing he had not done to her was try to seduce her, and she was never sure why. Many men who visited bordellos feared intimacy; maybe he was one of them. Women were brought to his apartment by a pimp late at night, and he had a mistress in Galveston and perhaps one in Mexico City, but otherwise he rarely touched people, even to shake hands. She had never thought about that. He was cruel and allowed his men to do unthinkable acts to his enemies, but she could not remember the instance when he laid his hand on another man.

What she did know was his talent for making people resent themselves, cajoling them into their own self-destruction. In spite of knowing these things about him, she had allowed herself to be his ongoing victim. She felt sick to her stomach.

SHE DROVE HER motorcar to Arnold’s building. She not only drove it to the building, she parked partly on the walkway and partly in the flower bed. When she saw no one through the office window, she climbed the stairs in the breezeway and banged on the apartment door. When he didn’t answer, she shook the knob. “I know you’re in there, Arnold,” she said.

“What the hell do you want?” he called out.

“I want you to open the door.”

“Come back another time, love.”

“Want me to break a window? This flower pot should do nicely.”

She heard his feet padding on the straw mat on the other side of the door. He slipped the bolt and opened the door partway, wearing a white bathrobe, his hair dripping. “Lost your mind, have you?”

“I need to talk.”

“About what?”

“Ishmael.”

“We did that this morning. What happened to your face?”

“An accident.”

“You should do something about it. You look like someone sawed a perpendicular line down your face.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about myself.”

“Of course not. You’re the soul of goodness. Was it an old boyfriend? Tell me who he is and I’ll take care of it. You can watch if you want.”

The bathroom door was half open. She could see steam rising from a giant gold-plated tub submerged in the oak floor. “Bathing with a lady friend?”

“Not unless you care to join me.”

“There are times when I hate you, Arnold.”

“I give up. Come in. I must have clap in my brain.” He walked toward the bathroom, jiggling his fingers over his shoulder for her to follow. He dropped his robe and descended the steps into the tub, easing into the water, resting his neck on a soggy velvet support between the faucets. He closed his eyes and sighed, his phallus rising to the water’s surface.

“Do you have any embarrassment or shame at all?” she said.

“We’re friends. The water is fine, in case you want to relax a bit,” he replied, his eyes still closed. “Do my scars bother you? I bet you didn’t know I had so many.”

“I have an appendix scar. Does that count?”

“You’d be surprised how many women like to touch them,” he said. “I’ve never understood that. I think women are more drawn to pain and violence than they realize.”