House of the Rising Sun

by James Lee Burke

  “When I first came by the cup, I got drunk in a cantina and passed out in a pole shed full of manure. You came to me in a dream. You stroked my forehead and kissed me on the mouth. You told me I was chosen. You called me ‘mi amor.’ You put me in a state of arousal. But I was just flattering myself. You were telling me I’d been given an obligation of appreciable significance, one I probably wasn’t going to like.”

  “That’s more detail than we need to hear, Mr. Holland.”

  “It’s what happened,” he said.

  “There’s a historical fact I think you have a right to know. It’s not meant to upset you or to indicate I necessarily believe it’s anything more than coincidence. In a small museum in Paris, there is a painting of Jacques de Molay’s death by fire in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. Standing in the crowd is a man who looks exactly like Arnold Beckman.”

  “Miz DeMolay, you’re a nice lady, but the wingspan of a moth is the wingspan of a moth. I’m going to bed now. Take care of yourself and Andre. Check with you later.”

  He quietly hung up the receiver and lay down on top of the covers and went to sleep with his clothes on, his fingers folded on his chest, the light burning, hoping Ishmael would speak to him again.

  BUT HE HEARD no voices during the night and saw no images in his dreams. When he woke in the morning, he was not sure where he was. He sat on the side of the bed, the covers slipping off his legs, and tried to reconcile the sun shining on the balcony and the ornate normalcy of the room with the prospects the world offered him on that particular day. He had no legal authority and was powerless against the forces that had taken his son. He felt as though fate had imposed upon him a role he had seen many hapless individuals play when one day they discovered that they were absolutely alone, that no one believed their story or understood the nature of their loss and the depth of their grief. They may have had only one eye in the kingdom of the blind, but they did have one eye. Unfortunately, no one could have cared less.

  He looked at his watch. It was 6:14. He opened his saddlebags and laid out his possessions and went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth and shaved and took a hot bath and put on a clean shirt and socks and underwear. He called down to the desk and ordered a plate of steak and eggs and a pot of coffee, then called Willard Posey in Kerrville. “Miz DeMolay said you were looking for me.”

  “I was wondering if you’d gotten yourself shot or if you’d set fire to a church or a saloon or anything like that,” Willard said.

  “Will you give me back my badge?”

  “I talked with the state attorney’s office.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “No, you’re not getting back your badge. Now will you shut up a minute? He says Beckman has broken no laws. Does the state attorney like him? No. Does he fear him? He wouldn’t say.”

  “You asked him that?”

  “Forget the state attorney. What is it Beckman wants from you? You keep asking for he’p, but you’re not willing to trust me with your secrets. I’m pretty wore out with it.”

  “I have a cup Jesus may have used at the Last Supper.”

  “You picked it up at an attic sale? How you fixed for Gutenberg Bibles?”

  “It’s encased in gold and jewels. It probably goes back at least to the Middle Ages.” Hackberry could hear a sound like someone drumming a pencil on a desk blotter. “Are you still there?”

  “I don’t know what to say. There are rumors you were hit in the head with lightning when you were a child. Some say it was an improvement.”

  “You think I want a problem like this?”

  “If what you say is true, give it to somebody. The Catholic Church or the Dunkers or the Holy Rollers, whoever. I’m embarrassed to have this conversation.”

  “You have three children, Willard.”

  “Don’t drag my kids into this.”

  “That’s the point. You cain’t bear to think of them in the hands of a man like Beckman. Why should it be different with me? Do you have any idea what he may have already done to my son? You want me to tell you where I’ve hidden the cup?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know why not. You quit fretting me like this. You’ve got a talent for dropping an awful burden on a man’s back with no warning.”

  “How’s it feel?” Hackberry said.

  “THERE’S A WAY,” Ruby said later in the morning, when he walked her to a café. His hand was cupped on her elbow as they crossed the streetcar tracks.

  “To catch one of Beckman’s men if they come after you?”

  “I think that’s what we should try.”

  “That’s like starting a fire to put out a fire. Sometimes you end up with two fires.”

  “Desperate situations, desperate measures,” she replied.

  “Here’s another one: A bad idea is a bad idea.”

  “You think women are weak? That we have to be protected?”

  “A group that pours acid in mailboxes isn’t in need of protection.” He felt her eyes on the side of his face. He was afraid to look at her.

  “Don’t tell what I’m going to do and what I’m not,” she said.

  “I’m not about to. I learned my lesson,” he said.

  “Are you patronizing me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why the remark about suffragettes?”

  “I once got kicked in the head by a bull named Original Sin. That’s a fact.”

  “So don’t say anything.”

  They stood on the curb, waiting for the traffic light to change. He forced himself to look her in the face.

  “Got you,” she said.

  They sat at an outdoor café under a colonnade and ordered coffee and pie.

  “We have to do something. We can’t let events control us,” she said.

  He watched a streetcar pass, the wheels clicking on the tracks. “It’s a fine day. Most days are. If a person can keep that in mind, every option is his.”

  His statement struck him as banal, and he thought he had lost her attention. The waiter brought their order.

  “There’s a man watching us,” Ruby said. “Across the street. By the gazebo.”

  “Why do you think he’s looking at us?”

  “He was on the corner by the hotel when we walked out. I know a rounder when I see one.”

  Hackberry picked up his coffee cup and looked out the side of his eye at the park. “I don’t see him.”

  “He’s gone. He was unshaved and had on a floppy hat and was wearing tight pants tucked inside his boots.”

  Hackberry removed his billfold from his breast pocket and took three hundred-dollar bills from it and passed them under the table to Ruby.

  “What’s this for?”

  “You need it. I’m going to walk you back to the hotel now. I’d like for you to stay in your room until I return.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “See Beckman.”

  “What will that accomplish?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.” He blew out his breath, his strength gone. “Ruby?”

  “What?” she said, setting down her fork.

  “I admire you. I always did. I admire everything about you. You and Ishmael are the best human beings I ever knew. You know what remorse is? It’s losing your family and knowing you’re to blame. It’s why I’ve killed people all these years.”

  The people at other tables stopped talking, their silverware suspended over their plates, their mouths frozen in midsentence.

  LIFE CHEATED A man in many ways. The secrets of Creation remained the secrets of Creation. A man’s worst experiences were not healed by time but waited for him like a dark cocoon breaking open when he closed his eyes at night. And the comforting virtues of patience and charity often held no sway over irascibility and fear of death. But the greatest cheat, the one a person never got over, was betrayal by a friend and the subsequent loss of faith in one’s fellow man.

  After Hackberry
took Ruby back to the hotel, he hired a jitney to drive him to Arnold Beckman’s office and told the driver to wait while he went inside. The secretary was a small Asian woman who wore big glasses and made Hackberry think of a smiling goldfish. “He’s not here right now.”

  “Do you know where he is?” Hackberry asked.

  “Are you Mr. Holland?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Mr. Beckman said you might be here this morning. He left this for you.”

  On the piece of notebook paper were an address near the brothel district and the words “See me.” Hackberry folded the paper and put it in his shirt pocket. “How did Mr. Beckman know I was on my way?”

  “He’s a very intelligent man. He always tells me to anticipate the needs of my friends. He says a good businessman is a good listener. He says the client or customer will always tell you what he needs if you will listen.”

  “You like working for Mr. Beckman?”

  “Yes, he is an old friend of my grandfather, Mr. Po. Do you know Mr. Po?”

  Where had he heard the name? Something to do with the West Coast. Maybe the Tongs. “Is your grandfather in the export-import business?”

  “Yes, perfume and exotic fish and teakwood furniture. He is very famous in the Orient.”

  “It was nice meeting you. If Mr. Beckman calls, tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “I will call him right now.”

  “That would be fine,” he replied.

  Hackberry went out the door and replaced his Stetson on his head and got inside the jitney, handing the driver the slip of paper given him by the Asian woman. “Know the neighborhood?”

  “Yeah, but I usually don’t take people down there at this hour of the day. You’re sure that’s where you want to go?”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, he arrived at a paintless two-story building with wood cornices left over from the 1870s, located on a brick street that was cracked and sunken through the center and pooled with rainwater. Dirty children with rickets played on the sidewalks; the garbage cans had been knocked in the gutters. The day was bright and sunny and cool, but the air smelled of excrement and garbage and damp alleyways. Two black women without coats stood against a wall on the corner, overly made up, wearing straw hats with cloth flowers sewn on them, staring out of the shade and cold into the sunlight, their expressions a study in despair.

  A waxed midnight-blue four-door car was parked in front of the building, the driver sleeping with his slug cap pulled over his eyes. Hackberry’s jitney pulled in behind. Hackberry took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet. He tore it in half and handed one half to the driver. “If I don’t come out in fifteen minutes, come in and get me. I’m often forgetful about the time.”

  “The kids fill garbage cans with water and throw them off the roofs. It’s like getting hit with a piano. This street is called ‘Micks and Spicks Avenue.’ You ever hear the expression ‘You can lead an Irishman to water, but you can’t make him take a bath’?”

  “I’m Irish.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You are. How about I pay you now?” Hackberry said, dropping several bills through the window on the seat, taking back the torn half of the ten, no longer even aware of the driver’s presence.

  Thirty feet away, a handsome woman wearing a riding dress with a lace hem and boots spotted with mud had just emerged from the entrance of the building. Hackberry walked toward her. “What are you doing here, Miz DeMolay?”

  “Conducting business. You need to go home, Mr. Holland.”

  “That’s what people in the saloon used to tell me.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “The man inside tried to disfigure your face. I don’t understand why you’re here. Are you trying to he’p me?”

  “Please go, sir. Now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Where is Andre?”

  “That’s not your concern.” She glanced at a silhouette in an upstairs window. “Get out of my way.”

  He stepped aside. When he reached to open the back door of the car for her, she slapped his hand. “Get away from me. I don’t want to see you again. You’re nothing but trouble. You’re ignorant and uneducated and willful. You’re everything you disdain in others.”

  She slammed the car door behind her and turned her face away as the driver started the engine and pulled from the curb, honking at the children in the street.

  THE DOWNSTAIRS OF the building had a long hallway with offices in it that contained nothing but stacked furniture and crates of canned food with Oriental printing. Hackberry walked up the stairs and saw Arnold Beckman behind a desk in a cluttered office, a ledger book spread in front of him, paper cuffs on his forearms to prevent ink spills from getting on his skin or clothes.

  “Nice building you have. What’s the rent, a dollar a week?” Hackberry said.

  Beckman lifted his head, smiling, his silvery-blond hair hooked behind his ears. There was a bandage on his chin and one on his forehead. “My warehouse is one block away. You had a little spat outside with the Great Whore of Babylon?”

  “No need for rough language.”

  “I forgot. Beatrice is one of the vestal virgins.”

  Hackberry gazed around the office. “No painting of Custer at the Last Stand?”

  “You’re an admirer?”

  “I suspect he was a pretentious asswipe.”

  “You’re quite the conundrum.”

  “You got my boy. What do I have to do to get him back?”

  Beckman put down his pen and knitted his fingers together. “You’ve lost me.”

  “I’ll give you the cup and the candlesticks, too. I spent the coins and the currency. That’s everything I took from the hearse.”

  “I’ll speak to Beatrice about this. Maybe she’ll understand what you’re talking about.”

  “Beatrice DeMolay is your friend?”

  “Of course she’s a friend.”

  Hackberry tried to refocus his concentration. “I’m the one with the cup. No one else knows where it’s at.”

  “Would you like a drink?” Beckman said, opening a bottom desk drawer.

  “Deal with me. I keep my word. What do you have to lose?”

  Beckman set two chrome-plated shot glasses on the desk blotter and squeaked the cork from the neck of a whiskey bottle. “I think you’re unsettled by the fact that Beatrice and I have a long-term relationship,” he said, pouring. “When she was younger, she was quite a piece. She probably told you she made her fortune from the oil discovery at Goose Creek Bay. Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t like the way you’re talking about her.”

  “She’s been a prostitute since she was fifteen. How did she suddenly grow into a geologist?”

  “I’m here about my boy, not Miz DeMolay.”

  “Take your drink. I love bourbon on ice with a sprig of mint and a teaspoon of sugar, but this is all I have on hand. Do you realize you’re perspiring?”

  “Where’s Maggie?”

  “Doing odds and ends. Do you think she’s going to help you? Mr. Holland, you have to be the most naive man I’ve ever met.”

  “I’ll leave the cup in a neutral place. Your people can leave my boy at a hospital.”

  “You stole from me, and you’re going to pay for it, on my terms.”

  “Do you have a son?”

  “I have sons and daughters all over the world.”

  “Miz DeMolay said you’re in a medieval painting she saw in Paris. I didn’t believe her.”

  “You do now?”

  “I wonder if maybe you’re the genuine article.”

  “What is the genuine article?”

  “The one everybody is afraid of seeing. The one that’s got the body of a goat.”

  Beckman laughed. “You probably know I had an encounter with your common-law wife. What’s-her-name? Ruby? That’s what I call a woman. A shame you put her in the mix.”

  “Repeat that?”

  Beckman drank his sh
ot glass empty and set it on the blotter. He opened the cover on his watch and looked at the time. “If I were you, I’d toggle back to my hotel.”

  THE SUN HAD gone behind the clouds unexpectedly. A moment later, just as the telephone rang on Ruby’s nightstand, rain began clicking on the French doors that opened on her balcony, glasslike pieces of hail bouncing on the rail. A thunderous boom shook the room. She picked up the receiver.

  “This is the front desk, Miss Dansen. A colored man just delivered a message for you,” the clerk said.

  “I can hardly hear you. A message from a colored man?”

  “No, the colored man delivered the message. He said it was from your son.”

  “Stop him.”

  “He’s already gone.”

  “Send the message up. No, I’ll come down.”

  In the elevator she had to press her hand against her chest in order to breathe correctly, to keep her balance, to stop her head from floating away. When she stepped into the lobby, the floor seemed to tilt, the potted palms and marble columns to break into molecules. Outside, sheets of rain slapped against the front of the hotel and whipped the awning over the entrance. “I’m Miss Dansen. Which direction did the colored man go?” she said.

  “I didn’t notice, ma’am,” the desk clerk replied. He took an envelope out of her key box and handed it to her. The message was in pencil, the lettering full of ripples, as though written by an unsteady hand. It read:

  Dear Mother,

  Trust the man of color who brought this. He is as brave and good as the men I commanded on the Marne. I am four blocks away at the end of the alley. I am unable to move or get help. Please come.

  Love,

  Ishmael

  There was a map drawn at the bottom of the notepaper. She went to the lobby window and looked at the rain swirling out of the sky. A hundred questions pounded inside her head. Where was Hackberry? How could Ishmael know where she was staying? Did he overhear his captors talking? Was the colored man the Haitian who had driven Hackberry from Kerrville to San Antonio? If the note was a fraud, how did the hoaxer know of Ishmael’s affection for his troops? Was Maggie Bassett involved? Or was this the miracle she had prayed for?

  “Tell the doorman to flag a jitney for me,” she told the clerk.