House of the Rising Sun

by James Lee Burke

  “I have groceries to deliver to Mr. Holland. I cannot go with you. Miss DeMolay has given me orders to stay with Mr. Holland and to do what he says and make sure he remains safe. I do not have a choice. He has sent me for food, and that is what I have done. Maybe you can follow me to the ruins of the mission. He will tell you these things are true.”

  “I think you’d make a great contribution to the workforce at Huntsville Pen,” the officer said. He began jabbing the club into Andre’s sternum.

  Andre fitted his hand on the officer’s throat and lifted him into the air as he would a piñata. The officer’s eyes bulged, his mouth gurgled, his face turned from pink to purple while his feet churned in the air and his hands tore at Andre’s wrist.

  “I will release you now,” Andre said. “I hope you will not bear me ill will.”

  Then a flash and a sound like a firecracker exploded inside his head, and the sidewalk slammed against his face as though he had fallen from a ten-story building.

  HACKBERRY HAD USED a pay phone in a drugstore on a corner where the streetcar stopped to load and discharge passengers, the connector rod sparking on the cables overhead. The car was open on the sides, and he could see women and men in formal dress stepping off the car and walking toward a lighted café. He had forgotten it was Sunday, a day for families and people in love and those on meager budgets who went from their church meeting to a warm café that was considered a treat. How long had it been since he had done these simple things?

  Beatrice DeMolay picked up the phone on the second ring.

  “Has Andre contacted you?” he asked.

  “He’s not with you?” she said.

  Hackberry closed the door to the phone booth. “We were watching Beckman’s building from the Spanish ruins. I asked Andre to take your motorcar and find us some food. He didn’t come back. I walked to town.”

  “Did you have mechanical trouble?”

  “Not exactly. The car is going to need a little external repair. The fenders and grille and bumpers and such. Maybe some touching up inside.”

  “What happened?”

  “I took over the wheel for a little while. The pedal got stuck. The one that controls the gas.”

  “You wrecked my car?”

  “We ran through some wash lines and a cornfield and maybe a fence and bumped into a haystack. I cain’t quite remember the sequence.”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this. You let Andre drive off by himself with the car in that condition?”

  “It probably sounds worse than it is.”

  There was a long silence on the line. “I’ll call the police department. In the meantime, I want you to come to my apartment. You and I need to have a serious talk.”

  “I want to confront Beckman.”

  “All you think about is confronting people, Mr. Holland. What has it gotten you?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Look at your situation. Why don’t you try thinking about something before you do it?”

  He felt a catch in his throat. “I’ll try to find him, Miss Beatrice.”

  “No, you won’t. I’ll handle it. Do you have any idea how the San Antonio police will treat Andre?”

  “I have no doubt at all,” he said. “I’m sorry I tore up your car. I’ll have it fixed.”

  She was talking when he replaced the receiver on the hook. He stared at the phone, his ears ringing, his brow cold, his hands stiff when he tried to close them. He wondered if he was coming down with influenza. He went to the soda counter and asked the clerk for five dollars in change.

  Outside, fog was rolling in from the river, clean and white and damp-looking, gathering as thick as cotton in the streets. The sky was sprinkled with stars and streaked by meteorites that turned into flecks of ice, the thunderheads in the west pulsing with tiny forks of electricity. Why didn’t witnessing the antithetical nature of creation and the radiance of the universe bring him peace? Why couldn’t he be in alignment with himself the way the planets and stars were, all of them hung like snowy ornaments on a tree by Druid priests? He sat back down in the phone booth and called the sheriff in Kerr County at his home. “Is that you, Willard?” he said.

  “Who’d you think it was?”

  “I need your assistance.”

  “What did you get yourself into now?”

  “You name it.”

  “Where are you?”

  “San Antonio. In a drugstore downtown.”

  “I don’t hold any sway there.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking for.”

  “You’re asking me to give your badge back. The answer is no.”

  “I need somebody to cover my back. I cain’t go up against all these sons of bitches by myself.”

  “You want me to call the sheriff or the chief of police?”

  “These are the ones I’m having trouble with. My son is kidnapped. I may never see him again. I need your damn he’p, Willard.”

  “No, what you want is the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday to walk down to the O.K. Corral with you. The old days are gone, Hack.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Your old friends work in sideshows. Frank James sold shoes in Fort Worth. What does that tell you?”

  “It tells me you cut bait on a friend. Give me your deputy’s phone number. That young fellow, Darl Pickins.”

  “What for?”

  “The boy has sand, unlike some others I know.”

  “Come around him and I’ll lock you up,” Willard said, and hung up.

  Hackberry watched the streetcar going through the intersection, the cables dripping sparks overhead, the passengers sitting on the open benches in muffs and scarfs and fur-trimmed coats, snug among one another, the fog puffing around them as if they were travelers on an ancient ship.

  HACKBERRY FELT LIKE a beggar at her door. As the taxi drove away and he mounted the steps to her apartment, he tried to repress his resentment for her condemnation of him. Before he could tap on the door, it opened. She was wearing a dark green dress with a white collar, almost like a Victorian affectation, her hair in a bun, her face pale, free of makeup. “Andre is in jail,” she said. “My attorney is there now. He was struck in the head by a policeman.”

  “What for?”

  “The police say he tried to strangle an officer.”

  “Did he?”

  “Probably.”

  “They’ll put him away.”

  “No, they will not. Do you want to come in?”

  “Thank you. How will you stop them?”

  She didn’t reply, her eyes lingering on his.

  “You have something on them?” he said.

  “What do you think?”

  “Sorry way to run a railroad,” he said.

  “I see, you subscribe to a higher morality?”

  “No, I don’t have any moral authority in anything,” he replied.

  He looked at the rows of books on her living room shelves, the ornate furniture, the thick drapes, a big brass clock on the mantel, a log burning in the fireplace. Her home was a study in stability, the kind that was personal and seemed to have no antecedent and was not cultural or inherited. He rubbed his hand on his mouth. He would have cut off his fingers with tin snips for a drink. “I hung up on you because you hurt my feelings. The truth is, I’m short on friends, and I fear that my ineptitude is going to get my boy killed.”

  “What do you plan to do, Mr. Holland?”

  “Take it to them. Under a black flag.”

  “Try to listen to me. Arnold Beckman wants the cup. He won’t rest until he gets his hands on it. You have to use your wits. Odysseus used his intelligence to defeat his enemies. You have to do the same.”

  “I should put a Trojan horse in Beckman’s backyard?”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “What if I told him I’d give him the cup? What if I told him he could have me with it?”

  “He would take the cup and then kill you. I suspect he would not do it all at once, either.”


  “You’re preaching to the choir.”

  “And you’d put yourself in his power anyway?”

  “If it would get my boy back. Ishmael could be released to you. You’re a good diplomat. You could work it out.”

  “You know better, Mr. Holland.”

  “That cup was supposedly used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. If that’s the case, why aren’t I getting any he’p from Upstairs? What am I supposed to do?”

  “I’m going to meet my attorney at the jail, then take Andre to a hospital. Do you want to come?”

  “No, I have to find Ishmael’s mother.”

  “Let me ask you a personal question. When this is over, do you plan to be around?”

  “Around where?”

  “San Antonio. Kerrville. Wherever.”

  “I’m not keen on travel.” He waited for her to reply, but she didn’t. “What kind of question is that?” he said.

  “I was just curious. You’re an unusual man, Mr. Holland.”

  “Can you call me Hack?”

  “Formality has its purpose,” she said.

  He tried to see into her eyes, but she tied on her hat and didn’t look directly into his face again.

  HE TOOK A cab to Ruby’s hotel. At first he did not recognize the woman retrieving her room key at the desk. From the back, she looked like a countrywoman whose hat was on crooked and whose hair had come loose and fallen in long wisps on one cheek, as though she were too tired to push it back in place. Then she turned around and looked straight at him, even though there were other people in the lobby. “Hack?” she said.

  “How you doin’, Ruby?”

  “I just got your message.”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “At Beckman’s. Out at the army base, too. I talked to a colonel. I thought they might help us.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “They have their own problems. Can we sit down?”

  “You went to Beckman’s on your own?”

  “I’ll tell you about it. I really need to sit down first.”

  He was disconcerted by her eyes. He had forgotten how beautiful and mysterious they were, deep-set like a Viking’s, the color of violets.

  “Did someone drive you? Did you take a taxi?” he said.

  “No, I walked. It’s all right, Hack.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  He looked for a place to sit. The lobby had retained a gloomy form of elegance with its floor-standing ashtrays and potted palms and musty sofas and newspapers scattered on an oak table lit by a lamp that had a big rose-colored glass bubble for a shade. He put his hand on her elbow and walked her to a tasseled sofa by the window. She seemed to take no notice of his touch.

  “You were at Beckman’s apartment?”

  “I hit him with an iron skillet. Several times. I wanted to kill him. If Maggie Bassett hadn’t intervened, I probably would have.”

  “Then you just walked away?”

  “Beckman wasn’t in any condition to stop me. I forgot to mention something. Earlier I hit Maggie in the face with my fist.”

  “We need to move you away from this hotel.”

  “Why?”

  “Beckman sent a man to throw acid in Beatrice DeMolay’s eyes. What do you think he’d do to you?”

  “It’s Ishmael I’m worried about. Maggie warned me. I acted stupidly.”

  “Maggie did? After you hit her?”

  “She’s a jack-in-the-box.”

  “You were always heck on wheels. Remember when you threw the cherry pie in the congressman’s face?”

  “I did that?”

  “In the hotel restaurant in Galveston. That’s how we met.”

  “I’m really tired, Hack. I think I’m going to pass out.”

  “I need to tell you something. Ishmael came to me in a dream just this evening. It was a strange moonrise. The moon looked like a broken wafer. The moonlight was in the dream, like it was part of what was happening to Ishmael. He was a little boy again, dressed in his Easter suit, with a rabbit in a basket. He was trying to tell me where he was. I think I’ll see him again and he’ll tell me where he is. Maybe in a dream tonight.”

  She gazed at him woodenly, her lips moving as though she’d misunderstood his words.

  AFTER THE SECOND bucket of water had been poured incrementally on the towel, Ishmael felt his lungs turn to fire and his heart swell to the size of a cantaloupe; he saw a great pink balloon inflate inside his head and suddenly pop as though it had been touched with a hot cigarette.

  When he woke, someone was blotting his face with a towel. “Who are you?” Ishmael said.

  “My name is Jeff. You’re a tough guy.”

  “What happened to Jessie?”

  “I sent him to make a snack. He was a little rough on you?”

  “I have to use the bathroom.”

  “I’m going to unhook one of your hands and walk you to the water closet across the room. You don’t want to take the pads off your eyes. You know why, too. We’re in agreement on that?”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll be up the stairs. All the doors are locked. You cain’t go nowhere. Don’t get ideas.”

  Ishmael nodded to show he understood.

  “This doesn’t have to end in a bad way, buddy,” Jeff said. “Just don’t give the wrong guy trouble. Come on, get up. Easy does it. There you go.”

  Jeff fitted his hand under Ishmael’s left arm and walked him across a floor that felt paved with bricks, then left him inside a wood cubicle that had a door with a latch on it. “The chain is on the left-hand side of the box. Pull it when you’re through,” he said. “There’s a roll of paper on the floor. Sorry about all this.”

  Then why are you doing it to me?

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” Ishmael said. “Thank you for your consideration.”

  He sat on the toilet and felt in front of him to ensure that the door was shut. He peeled one eye pad partially back with his thumb and realized he was sitting in darkness. Through a crack in the wall, he could see water seeping through the stones below a ground-level window, and he guessed his basement prison was located close to a river or a lake. A solitary palm tree was silhouetted against the moon, its fronds straightening in the wind. Low in the sky, perhaps on the western horizon, a lake of electricity seemed to be flaring inside a storm bank. From somewhere above, he could hear the voice of the man who had almost drowned him: “The guy doesn’t know anything. If he did, I would have gotten it out of him.”

  “Who told you to question him?” Jeff’s voice said.

  “Mr. Beckman wants something from the guy’s father. I was helping out.”

  “Listen, Jessie, we’re paid to do what Mr. Beckman tells us. Right now that means we find the soldier’s mother.”

  “What for?”

  “She beat the living shit out of Mr. Beckman. With a frying pan.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Tell him that.”

  “Where is she now?” Jessie asked.

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  “Then what?”

  “You get to enjoy yourself.”

  “Like you don’t want to have a crack at her?”

  “I hear she’s a looker, all right.”

  “Why’s our hero taking so long?” Jessie said.

  Ishmael pulled the chain on the water box, sending a torrent through the pipe into the toilet bowl.

  HACKBERRY RENTED SEPARATE rooms on the top floor of a ten-story hotel on Alamo Plaza. While the bellhop put Ruby’s suitcase on the luggage stand, Hackberry opened the French doors to the balcony and gazed down on the gazebo and wooded park in the center of the plaza and at the streetcars and colonnades over the sidewalks and the headlights of the motorcars wending their way into neighborhoods that were covered with trees. “Come look, Ruby,” he said. “Isn’t it grand? Look at the carousel.”

  She stood next to him, motionless, staring down at the p
laza, her shoulder barely touching his. “We took Ishmael there on his first birthday,” she said.

  “I sat on the wood horse with him. He pointed at you every time we went around. Then he kept looking backward at you.”

  “I want to sleep now, Hack. In the morning we’ll start out fresh.”

  He couldn’t take his mind off the memories the carousel brought back, and he said nothing in reply.

  “No one in Kerrville would help you?” she said.

  “The law isn’t there for individuals. It’s there for people as a whole, or at least for chosen groups. Most of the time it serves the general good, but often at the expense of individuals. It’s the secret nobody talks about.”

  “I don’t care about any of that. I want to kill Arnold Beckman. Or hire someone to do it.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Better go to sleep, Ruby,” he said, his reverie broken. “Thinking at night isn’t good for anybody. I’m three doors down.”

  IN HIS ROOM, he sat on the side of the bed and called Beatrice DeMolay. “I didn’t know if you’d be home,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I just returned from the jail with Andre,” she said. “He wouldn’t go to the hospital. I got a call from your friend Sheriff Posey. He seems worried about you.”

  “Willard called?”

  “He thinks you’re angry at him.”

  “I knew Willard would come around. What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. Where are you?”

  He told her the name of his hotel and his room number.

  “I’m going to see Arnold Beckman in the morning,” she said.

  “This is the man who tried to blind you, Miss Beatrice. Stay away from him. Ruby already tore him up with an iron skillet. I suspect he’s not in a good mood.”

  “She attacked Beckman? You’d better get her out of town.”

  “When we get our son back.”

  “You have to trust me, Mr. Holland.”

  “Tell Andre I’m glad he’s doing okay.”

  “He’s not okay. They treated him worse than they would an animal.”

  “Miss Beatrice, you cain’t negotiate with Beckman. His kind only understand force.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “His kind understand money. That’s their weakness.”