House of the Rising Sun

by James Lee Burke

  THE REO BROKE down twice on the way to San Antonio, and it was evening before Hackberry and Andre arrived at the city limits.

  “Where do you want me to drive Miss Beatrice’s destroyed motorcar now?” Andre asked.

  Hackberry gave Andre the directions to Ruby’s hotel. Hackberry went inside and was told that Miss Dansen was not in her room and had not left a message. He got back in the motorcar and tried to think clearly. “Do you know where Beckman lives?”

  “Out by one of the old missions,” Andre replied. “I don’t think it is advisable to go there.”

  “Why shouldn’t we?”

  “Because you do not go into your enemy’s lair. You catch him when he is outside it. Then you isolate him and do what you wish.”

  Hackberry studied Andre’s profile against the sunset. “Sometimes you can give a fellow a chill.”

  “Members of the army came to our village and told me to close my church and the school I helped build. I told them I would not. So they stole my children. These men were whoremongers and did not have families and cared nothing about innocent children who did not understand the nature of evil and thought all men were good.”

  Hackberry looked through the windshield at the men in unironed clothes on the sidewalk and a fire burning in a trash barrel and the lights coming on in the cafés and bars along the street. A Salvation Army band was playing on the corner. “Go on,” he said.

  “They would not give my children back. One night I caught three of the kidnappers. I trussed them with rope and gagged them and hid them in a cart, under the feces of my pigs and cattle, and took them into the jungle. By sunrise, they had given up their former way of life. There was no good deed they would not grant me, no information they would not gladly share. I was no longer a priest then, except for the love and sorrow I carried in my heart for my children. No one can understand the nature of loss until he has lost a child. But the loss is far worse when others have stolen your children and done things that even they will never tell anyone.”

  “What did you do to them?”

  “I showed them that it was possible for them to become children again. They reached a point where nothing of the adult remained. The adult had died during the night. They looked shrunken, even in size. They made mewing sounds rather than words.”

  “What happened to your children?”

  “I don’t know. The three kidnappers had given them to others. The villagers said they were eaten by the Tonton Macoute. This is not true. I am certain they are in heaven, and sometimes I think they speak to me. But I do not know the manner in which they died, and I am filled with a great sadness when I imagine what may have been their fate.”

  It took Hackberry a moment to speak. “Go by Beckman’s place.”

  “I think this is a bad choice,” Andre said.

  “It’s not up for a vote.”

  THEY DROVE UP a dirt road lined with poplars, then saw a building that was dark except for one light in an upstairs window. Andre pulled the REO into the deep shade of the poplars and cut the engine. “Once or twice a week he has visitors about this time of the evening.”

  “What kind of visitors?”

  “A procurer delivers Mexican girls. The procurer is also a trafficker in opium. He works for a Cantonese man associated with the Tongs in San Francisco.”

  “Beckman has only Mexican girls brought to him?”

  “They are the ones who are most available. The supplier of girls may be more than a procurer and vendor of opium.”

  “Would you please just spit it out?”

  “He hangs up the girls on a hook in a doorway and puts on a pair of tight yellow gloves that he keeps in a special drawer. The bodies of Mexican girls have been found in the garbage dump, badly beaten.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Mexican families across the river. They know nothing about Mr. Beckman. They don’t even know his name. They simply say there is a man with hair like a woman who lives by one of the old missions and that he will pay large amounts of money for a pretty girl who is a burden to her family.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “They do not go to the police because they are afraid they will be sent back to Mexico. Will you answer a puzzle for me? We all know that starving people will eat members of their own family. Knowing this, why should we be surprised at anything they do?”

  “You’re a grim fellow, Andre.”

  “You avoid the problem. Tell me now, do you want to knock on Mr. Beckman’s door? Maybe we will save a young girl’s life. Or maybe not. Maybe after we leave, he will pick up his telephone and have your son killed. Do you want me to park in front? I’m waiting.”

  A red spark still burned in the hills beneath a patch of blue sky. Hackberry picked up his saddlebags from the backseat and set them on his lap. “Head down to those Spanish ruins,” he said, removing a spyglass from one of the bags. “We’ll see what Mr. Beckman is up to. Maybe he’ll take us to my son.”

  “He is not a stupid man.”

  “Like me?”

  “Why would you say such a thing about yourself?”

  “Because I made a mess of my life and hurt many people in the process. The one I hurt the most was my son, and I cain’t forgive myself for it.”

  Andre looked straight ahead and said nothing until they arrived at the ruins, then it was only to ask if Hackberry wanted him to go to town for food.

  “That’s a good idea,” Hackberry replied. “Maybe get something for the night air, too.”

  “You mean brandy?”

  Hackberry thought about it, his hands dry and rough as he rubbed one on top of the other. “I could sure use one of those Cherry Mash candy bars. They’re a treat, aren’t they?”

  AS ANDRE DROVE away, Hackberry spread his slicker on the ground by a crumbling stone wall and used his saddlebags as a cushion for his back, then draped his blanket over his shoulders and pulled the segments of his spyglass into a long tube. He could see shadows moving on the shades of the lighted second-story windows, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. He gazed through the spyglass until his eye became tired and watery, and the sky filled with bats and swallows.

  He could not get Andre’s story of the kidnapped children out of his mind, and he wondered how Andre had not gone mad. He also wondered if he was soon to join the ranks of those who carried images in their heads that were the equivalent of hot coals.

  The moon resembled a wafer broken crookedly in half from top to bottom. Beneath it, the sun had refused to die, creating a bowl of light between the hills that dimmed and grew in intensity and then dimmed again, like the refraction of candles on the inside of a gold cup.

  Not far away was the site where 188 men and boys were killed on the thirteenth day of a siege that had left Mexican soldiers piled to the top of the walls surrounding the mission known as the Alamo. On the last night of their lives, did the moon rise in the same fashion, signaling that an ancient event of enormous significance was about to repeat itself? The buglers behind the Mexican ramparts were blowing “El Degüello,” black flags flapping on the regimental staffs, signaling no quarter. Did the men and boys defending the mission’s walls hold hands and tremble as they assembled for a final prayer? Did their fear suck the moisture from their throats and mouths and leave them with a thirst that could never be slaked? Surely the dust blowing from the plains in clouds that looked like swarms of insects wouldn’t conspire to clog their nostrils and mix with their sweat and turn their faces into death masks before their time? This could not happen to them, could it?

  An even more troubling thought confronted him. Was the cruciform shape of the ruins where he sat a coincidence or a suggestion of the fate about to be imposed on his son?

  Hackberry untied one of his saddle bags and removed his Peacemaker and the bowie knife that was honed with an edge like a barber’s razor and sheathed in a double-layer deerskin scabbard. At what point could a man justifiably go to the dark side and take on the
characteristics and deeds of his enemies? He knew stories from old Rangers about the raids on Indian encampments, and the denial of mercy to even the smallest or the oldest in the tribe. The rationalization was always the same: The Indians, particularly the Comanche, had committed atrocities against innocent farm families and missionaries or sometimes a lone trader whose wagon was loaded with pots and pans and machine-made clothes and whiskey. But Hackberry always had the sense that the thundering charges upon the wickiups and the storm of bullets and the burning of the Indians’ food and blankets and buffalo robes were intended to be repeated until there was not one Indian left alive south of the Red River.

  He felt very weary, in the way he had felt weary when he had committed himself to a dissolute life, and no sooner had he closed his eyes than his head nodded on his chest. He felt his pistol slip from his grip and his bowie knife slide off his thigh. In his dream he saw Ishmael as a little boy in a suit and tie and short pants and shoes with buckles, an Easter basket on his forearm, a pet rabbit inside it. Ishmael looked up into his face. Why did you leave us, Big Bud?

  I didn’t aim to.

  That’s what you did.

  It just happened. I didn’t have a lot of smarts back then. I walked off without knowing the awful mistake I’d made.

  You could have come back.

  I tried. I wrote and telegrammed your mother. I never got a reply, no matter where I sent my messages.

  We were poor and needed your help. Why wouldn’t she answer?

  It was obvious. She wanted shut of me.

  Help me, Big Bud.

  He’p you how? What’s wrong?

  It’s dark here. It smells like leaves and wet stone. The voices around me belong to bad men.

  Son, this is driving me crazy. Tell me where you are.

  Hackberry reached out to touch him, but Ishmael’s image withered away like a sand effigy caught inside a windstorm.

  THE MAN ASSIGNED to watch and take care of him was named Jessie. That much Ishmael knew. The rest was a puzzle, other than the fact that Jessie didn’t like his assignment. Ishmael’s eyes were sealed with cotton pads and adhesive tape, shutting out any glimmer of light from the match he heard Jessie strike on a stone surface to light his cigarette. He could hear water ticking from a pump into a bucket, and he could smell the coldness in the stone or bricks or concrete that surrounded him, and he could smell an odor like wet leaves in winter, but he guessed the bucket was made of wood, perhaps oak, and the odor of a cold woods on a January day was a self-manufactured deception because he did not know what his four captors, all of whom seemed to have names that began with the letter “J,” were about to do to him.

  “You really a war hero?” Jessie said.

  “No,” Ishmael said, turning his padded eyes in the direction of Jessie’s voice. He could hear Jessie draw in on his cigarette, the paper crisping.

  “My friends say you’re a war hero. You calling them liars?”

  “Most of the heroes I knew are still on the Marne.”

  “They say you commanded nigra infantry.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Teddy Roosevelt said he had to force them up San Juan Hill at gunpoint.”

  “Double-check your information. Colored troops saved the Rough Riders’ bacon.”

  Ishmael heard the cigarette paper crisp again, then felt Jessie blow the smoke across his face.

  “Not a good time to be a smart aleck,” Jessie said.

  “What do you get out of this?”

  “How much do I get paid?”

  “Yes.”

  “My reg’lar pay for doing my job. It’s called company security. Not that much different from being a watchdog for Uncle Sam.”

  “You work for Arnold Beckman, don’t you?”

  “Me? I wish. We call ourselves private contractors.”

  “What is it that Beckman wants so bad?”

  “You don’t listen, do you, boy?”

  Ishmael felt the heat from the cigarette close to his cheek. Then the heat went away. He heard Jessie sucking his teeth.

  “My father will catch up with you,” Ishmael said. “He has a way of leaving his mark.”

  Jessie was sitting close to him now, breathing through his nose, his breath crawling across Ishmael’s face. “From what I hear, he’s not the fathering kind. You’re lucky he didn’t strangle you with the umbilical cord.”

  Ishmael felt encased in a sarcophagus. He was strapped to a bunk bed, his ankles bound with rope, his wrists cuffed to a wide leather belt buckled around his waist. He kept his head still, his eyes pointed at the ceiling, as though he could see through the cotton pads. He said nothing.

  “Did I call it right?” Jessie asked.

  “How do you know anything about my father?”

  “My uncle by marriage was Harvey Logan. In case you don’t know who that is, he rode with the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy. He said your father was a derelict he gave a dollar to so he could go to the bathhouse.”

  “I know who Harvey Logan was.”

  “He was a card. He had your father’s number, all right. I remember him drinking a mug of beer on the porch with his feet on the railing, laughing about it.”

  “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “Did you hear what I said? My uncle was a member of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.”

  “I need to use the bathroom pretty bad.”

  “Then you’re shit out of luck.”

  “You taped my eyes. That means I might have another reason to run. If that happens, where does that leave you?”

  “I don’t think you got that picture right. You got needle scabs on your arms for all the world to see. If you get turned loose, your brains will be mush. Nobody is going to care what you say. You’ll be on a street corner, drooling in your lap.”

  “Walk me into the bathroom. I can’t see. I can’t go anywhere. My hands are manacled.”

  “That’s right, they are. So I’m supposed to unbutton your britches?”

  Ishmael squeezed his eyes shut behind the pads, his bladder about to burst. “If I develop uremic poisoning, I may die. How will you explain that to Beckman?”

  “I didn’t tell you I worked for Mr. Beckman. You got that? You’re starting to piss me off, boy. I’m not somebody you want to piss off.”

  “Let me explain something to you, Jessie.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Your friends used it in front of me. My father is coming. After you chloroformed me, I saw him in a dream. He’s going to do something terrible to you and your friends. I don’t want that to happen, mostly for his sake. Maybe you didn’t choose the life you lead. Maybe there’s a better way of life waiting for you.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “How about this instead?”

  Jessie wrapped Ishmael’s head as tightly as a mummy’s with a towel, then slowly funneled a full bucket of water in his mouth and nostrils, pausing only to ensure that none of it was wasted.

  HACKBERRY LIFTED HIS watch from his vest pocket and clicked open the case and looked at it. It was gold and as big as a biscuit. Where was Andre? The moon was higher, bluer, the clouds drifting across its broken edges. In the west, the sky was flickering with electricity, the hills green and undulating and as smooth as velvet, like topography beneath a darkening sea. He thought he could smell rain. He put on his slicker and slung his saddlebags over his shoulder and began walking back toward the city. He glanced once at the windows of Arnold Beckman’s apartment, but all of them were dark, and he could see no signs of movement.

  What had happened to Andre? Where was Beckman? No car had left the building. Did he go to bed this early? Hackberry walked the four miles to town and used a pay phone to call Beatrice DeMolay.

  ANDRE WAS PUTTING his bag of groceries on the passenger seat of the REO when the police pulled in behind him on the side street and cut its lights. A bell was attached to the outside of the driver’s door.
The two policemen who got out wore dark blue uniforms with high collars and brass buttons. They both had mustaches, and each carried a revolver in a holster and a short, thick wooden club hung on his belt from a rubber ring. One officer looked at the broken headlight on the driver’s side, and at the cornstalks matted in the bumper and the grille, and ran his hand along the scratches and dents on the finish. “Who’s the owner?” he asked.

  “Miss Beatrice DeMolay,” Andre said.

  “You work for her?”

  “I’m her driver.”

  “Where’d you get the accent?”

  “I’m originally from Haiti.”

  The officer stuck his head inside the driver’s window, then withdrew it. “What were you doing inside that old mission?”

  “I drove someone there for Miss DeMolay.”

  “And vandalized the car while you were at it?”

  “The car was in a mishap. A friend of Miss DeMolay was learning how to drive.”

  “We got a complaint about a darky looking in people’s windows. One driving an expensive car that might be stolen. Did you take a peek through somebody’s window tonight?”

  “I will not speak on this level with you. I am also requesting that your friend take his hand off my arm.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Do not place your hand on my person. I will do whatever you ask. But you will not treat me as you normally treat people of color.”

  “Maybe you should rethink that statement.”

  “The issue is not me. Nor is it you. There is a struggle going on around us you do not understand. Your lack of education prevents you from seeing these things. If you are in the service of Arnold Beckman, he will take you to hell with him. Mr. Beckman may be in league with the Evil One.”

  “That about rips it for me,” the officer said. He pulled his club from its rubber ring and pushed it into Andre’s breastbone. “Get into the backseat of our car.”

  “You mustn’t do this.”

  “I know the reputation of the DeMolay woman. She was a white slaver. I don’t know what that makes you. But we’re going to find out. Now you get your black ass in the car.”