House of the Rising Sun: A Novel (27 page)

“You were here, Mr. Holland. And maybe I got to pay for it.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“It ain’t the way I feel. It’s the troot’.” Mealy looked seasick.

Hackberry took a jitney across town to Beatrice DeMolay’s apartment building. This time she was home.

H
ER APARTMENT COULD
be entered only through a brick-paved courtyard. The beds were weedless and sprinkled with wood chips and planted with hibiscus and hydrangeas and banana stalks that grew in thick clumps, and windmill palms and caladiums and orange trumpet vine and blood-red bougainvillea that reached to the Spanish grillwork on the balcony. Her face showed no surprise when she opened the door. Inside the confines of the courtyard, the air felt suddenly cold and dank. A light rain had started to fall, and raindrops were ticking on the elephant ears and philodendron, the sun buried like a mean red eye inside a bank of dark clouds. “Heard you had some trouble,” Hackberry said.

“Really?” she replied.

“Thought I’d drop by.”

She smiled. “I thought you might be around.”

“Pardon?”

“Come in.”

God save me from lightning, earthquakes, flash floods, and women who can make you feel like a snail on a hot sidewalk,
he thought, trying to keep his face empty, removing his hat as he stepped inside. “Why did you think I’d be around?”

“Because you’re a thoughtful man, even though you pretend you’re not.”

The windows of her apartment were ceiling-high, the rugs probably woven in Persia, the hand-carved antique furniture wiped and polished, darkly reflective.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

“There was no moon. Someone knocked. I turned on the outside light and opened the door. The lightbulb had been unscrewed. I saw a jar in his hand. I slammed the door just as he threw it.”

“You saw his face?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he was wearing a mask.”

“What kind?”

“One that people might wear on Halloween or during Mardi Gras. Sit down, Mr. Holland. It’s good of you to look in on me. But you shouldn’t be disturbed by this.”

“I’m not disturbed. The man who did it is going to be disturbed.”

“Sooner or later, Andre and I will find him.”

“Andre is the zombie?”

“You shouldn’t talk about him like that.”

“What’s his formal title? Voodoo priest who kills people?”

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

“No, have supper with me.”

When he told Mealy he had already eaten, he had told the truth. He had not gone to the woman’s apartment intending to ask her out. The words came out of his mouth before he could think. How could he discuss in a public place what they needed to discuss? What was actually on his mind? He didn’t want to answer the question.

“Did the mask look made of rubber? Rubber with a reddish tint?”

“Come to think of it.”

“I don’t believe you were looking at a mask, Miss Beatrice. Do you recognize the name Jimmy Belloc?”

“No.”

“How about Jimmy No Lines?”

Her eyes were moving back and forth. The rain had turned to sleet and was hitting as hard as rock salt, sliding in serpentine lines down the fronds outside the windows. “Jimmy No Lines lived in the French Quarter. I think he did errands for Mealy Lonetree.” She paused. “Did I say something wrong?”

“I was just wondering if there was such a thing as an honest man in the city of New Orleans.”

“Many people ask that.”

“Arnold Beckman is behind this, isn’t he?”

“Of course.”

She clicked on a lamp. The shade was hung with gold tassels and painted with multicolored flowers that glowed like moths. She sat down on the divan and pulled the crystal stopper from a decanter of sherry. She filled one glass, then started to fill another.

“No, thank you, ma’am, I’m not good at taking one drink.” He sat on the other end of the divan, his hat on his knee, his legs too long to put in a comfortable place. “I don’t want to take up a lot of your time, Miss Beatrice. I’d like to be done with my own troubles, but I don’t know as I ever will. This stuff about a cup Jesus might have drank from is a little more than I can handle. The cup doesn’t have anything to do with my life, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let the likes of Beckman get his hands on it.”

“He believes the only artifact that has more power is the Spear of Longinus. According to the legend, it was the one used by the Roman soldier to lance the side of Jesus.”

“That sounds like a story out of the Middle Ages. I don’t know as it’ll quite get through the wash.”

“I had the impression you were a believer.”

“The question is, a believer in what?”

“Give the cup to a church. Beckman will leave you alone.”

“A Mexican padre in sandals and sackcloth is going to protect it?”

“Send it to Rome.”

“I didn’t see the Vatican’s name on it.”

“You’re living in the wrong century, Mr. Holland. When you thought General Lupa was going to put you to death, you told him you had locked John Wesley Hardin in jail. You said you wanted that information on your grave marker. You showed a level of acceptance that probably unnerved him. The American West is gone. Beckman won’t meet you in the street with pistols.”

“He doesn’t have anything I want. If he kills me, he still won’t get the cup. I should have been embalmed a long time ago, anyway. About dinner, Miss B.—I didn’t mean to impose myself.”

“I have two parasols. There’s a Mexican café on the corner.”

T
HE WIND WAS
cold, the rain blowing in ropes off the rooftops when they reached the café. It was smoky and warm inside, most of the food prepared on an open stone pit, the walls hung with banderillas and goatskin wine bags and sombreros and piñatas wrapped with crepe paper. Rather than wine, she ordered a cup of coffee with her dinner. “Did you find your son?” she said.

“He’s in an army hospital outside of Denver.”

“Is he all right?”

“He probably hasn’t had a chance to answer my letters.”

She waited for him to continue.

“I called the hospital. An administrator said Ishmael was inching along.” His eyes went away from hers.

“How bad was he wounded?”

“He was at the Second Battle of the Marne. It was the last chance for the Germans. I hear they fought like it. I wish I’d been there.”

“What would you have done?”

“Got him back home. Nursed him. Made up for not being there when he was little.”

“You mustn’t talk about yourself like that.”

“I cain’t figure you.”

“Because of the type of businesses I’ve run?”

“That’s not an inconsequential consideration.”

“I’ve never been interested in people’s condemnation of me. Do you care what people think about you?”

“In my case, most of what they think is true.”

“I respect the women who work for me. Few people realize how much courage it takes to be a prostitute.”

He found himself glancing sideways at the other tables.

“Do you know what a girl in the life has to endure?” she said. “The outrage men commit on their bodies. The punches in the face. Do you know how many of them are murdered each year?”

“I think I’m going to have an ice-cold Coca-Cola. You want one?”

“No, thank you.”

“Miss Beatrice, I went to a sporting house years ago, down on the border. I’ve always been ashamed about it. Not because I slept with a woman for hire. I was ashamed because I took advantage of her poverty and her race. I’m going to have a beer now.”

“Sure you want to do that?”

“No, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I never have. Here’s our food. Boy howdy, doesn’t that look good?” He kept his eyes lowered until the cold, sweating bottle of Mexican beer was in his hand and its brassy taste in his mouth, like an old friend moving back into the house, ready to set up shop.

“What are you planning to do, Mr. Holland?”

“Eat this food and walk you home.”

“Then what?”

“Take care of business,” he replied.

A half hour later, he stood with her at the entrance to her apartment house. The moon was up, and the banana plants and elephant ears and philodendron were beaded with water, like big drops of mercury.

“Would you like to come in?” she said.

“I’d like to, but I cain’t.”

“Are you going to drink?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“Please come inside.”

“That would make me awful happy. I want to get my boy back. But I want to get his mother back, too. Her name is Ruby Dansen. She was a good girl and deserved a lot better than me.”

“That’s a pretty name. Good night, Mr. Holland.”

“Goodnight, Miss B.”

He watched her go inside the apartment, then began walking toward his hotel, trying not to think too hard on the deception Mealy Lonetree had perpetrated on him, at least not until he could do something about it. He stopped at a package store and bought a pint of whiskey and drank it as he walked, a thick layer of white fog swirling around his knees, the whiskey flooding his throat with a golden airiness that could not be measured.

I
SHMAEL FELT THE
train tilt and begin its abrupt descent down Ratón Pass, its wheels locked, screeching down the grade with such intensity that the inside of the Pullman room trembled and the closet doors swung open and shook on their hinges. He lay on his side in the bed, in his underwear, watching the pinyon trees and ponderosa and outcroppings of rock and the steep slope of the mountain slide past the window, the woman’s body molded against his, her breath on his neck, her hand resting on his hip.

It was funny how he sometimes thought of her as “the woman” rather than as Maggie Bassett. Maybe that was what she intended. She made herself into all things woman. She was lover, caretaker, mother, and confidante. “Provider” might be another word. The injection she had given him before they left the hospital was more than a temporary flight from pain and worry that the Greek god Morpheus usually offered. The hit had traveled up his arm and spread through his body like the Red Sea, turning his eyelids to lead, filling him with a sense of pleasure and warmth that bordered on orgasm, taking him to a sunlit place where the earth jutted into infinity and the stars plummeted past him into a heavenly abyss.

“Are you awake, sleepyhead?” she said.

“I was watching the rocks and the trees. The grade is dropping so fast, I dreamed we’d fallen in a hole.”

“We’ll be in New Mexico in a few minutes. In another hour we’ll be in Texas.”

He tried to turn his head to see her face, but she was pressed too close. “I don’t remember getting on the train. How did I get to the station?”

“You were sedated.”

He closed his eyes and opened them again, the canyon dropping into shadow on a curve, the couplings jarring. “My mother was coming to see me. She didn’t show up?”

“It’s the medicine. You have things turned around. I left a message and a phone number. If you like, we can call her when we reach San Antonio.”

“How do you know where she is?”

“The people we work for can find anyone, Ishmael. Did you know you might be in motion pictures?”

“What are you talking about?”

“With your looks and physique? The man I work for, the man you’ll be working for, owns part of a film company in Pacific Palisades.”

“I don’t know where that is. I feel strange. Like bees are buzzing under my skin.”

“We’ll go out to the Palisades. I’ve been there. It’s right on the ocean. They say it’s the place where no one ever dies. The man I work for says that’s why people love motion pictures. They believe the actors in the film become immortal. If they can associate themselves with the actors, they become immortal, too.”

“Maybe they should visit the Marne. It might cure them of their thoughts on immortality.”

She spread her fingers on his stomach, then moved them down into his shorts and touched him. “We can pull the shade. The door is locked, and the porter won’t bother us. I told him not to come by unless we call him.”

“I don’t feel too well right now.”

“Would you like something to eat?”

“Just some water. Or something with sugar in it. Anything sweet. I don’t know why I have this feeling inside me, this humming in my blood. What did the doctor say when I checked out?”

“He said good-bye. Stop talking about the hospital. That’s all behind us now.”

He turned on his back, forcing her to look into his face. “Maggie,” he said, not as a question.

“Yes?” she replied.

“You’re Maggie. That’s all. My head wasn’t working right for a while.”

“It’s good to be silly sometimes,” she said. “When I was a little girl, I was punished for being silly. My father didn’t like little girls being little girls. His daughter was supposed to be serious and dutiful. If not, he’d find ways to hurt her without ever laying his hands on her.”

“What kind of work was your father in?”

“I don’t talk about him much. Or even think about him. Bad ole me. He’s been feeding the worms a long time now. I think he found the right role in life.”

He raised himself on his elbow and looked into her eyes. He had no idea what thoughts she was thinking or if she had any idea how her words could frighten. “A French colonel warned me in a field hospital.”