Rain Gods

by James Lee Burke

“You don’t dream about it anymore?”

  He looked through the windshield at the dust and smoke from wildfires, and the way the hills went out of focus inside the heat waves bouncing off them, and for just a second he thought he heard bugles echoing out of a valley that had no name.

  “No, I don’t dream very much anymore,” he said.

  She looked out the side window and watched the countryside go by.

  THE LOAN OFFICE was located on a corner where three streets that had once been cow trails intersected and formed a kind of financial center for people who possessed little of value to others, except perhaps their desperation.

  Next to the loan office was a bail bonds office. Next to the bail bonds office was a pawnshop. Down the street was a saloon with a railed and mirrored bar, a kitchen that served food, and a clientele to whom the pawnshop, the bondsman, and the car-title loan office were as indispensable as the air they breathed. Few of them cared, or for that matter even knew, that John Wesley Hardin and Wild Bill Longley had been regulars at the saloon.

  Hackberry parked in the alley behind the loan office and entered through the side door, removing his hat, waiting until the clerk was free before he went to the counter. Hispanic and Anglo working people were sitting at school desks filling out forms; a woman in glasses oversaw them as she might retarded people. Hackberry opened his badge holder on the counter and placed the photo of Liam Eriksson beside it. “Know this fellow?” he said to the clerk.

  “Yes, sir, the FBI was in here about him. I’m the one called up the cops on him,” the clerk said. “He brought in a stolen check.”

  “There was a woman with him?”

  “Yes, sir, but I wasn’t paying her that much mind. He’s the one had the check.”

  “You don’t know who the woman was?”

  “No, sir,” the clerk replied. He had neat black hair and a mustache and a deep tan and wore gray slacks and a blue dress shirt and a striped tie.

  “You work here long?”

  “Yes, sir, almost five years.”

  “Get a lot of United States Treasury checks in here?”

  “Some.”

  “But not many,” Hackberry said.

  “No, sir, not a lot.”

  “Never saw the woman before?”

  “Not that I recall. I mean, I’m pretty certain on that.”

  “Pretty certain you don’t know her or pretty certain you don’t recall?”

  “A mess of folks come in.”

  “This fellow Eriksson and the lady were drunk?”

  The clerk looked blankly at Hackberry.

  “Eriksson is the real name of the man who was impersonating Pete Flores. He and the woman were drunk?”

  “Pretty marinated,” the clerk said, starting to smile for the first time.

  “For ID, Eriksson had a library card?”

  “Yes, sir, that was the extent of it.”

  “Why’d you take the check in back?”

  “To run it by my manager.”

  “After five years here, you had to consult with your manager? You didn’t know the check was stolen, one brought in by a drunk with a library card? You had to ask your manager? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “It’s like I said.”

  “There’s no reason Eriksson would have a history with a business like yours. That means the woman probably brought him here. I also think she’s probably a hooker and a shill and brings her customers here with regularity. I think you’re lying through your teeth, bub.”

  “Maybe I’ve seen her once or twice,” the clerk said, his eyes shifting off Hackberry’s face.

  “What’s her name?”

  “She goes by ‘Mona,’ I think.”

  Hackberry pulled at his earlobe. “Where does Mona live?”

  “Probably any place a guy has a bottle and two glasses and a few bucks. I don’t know where she lives. She’s not a bad person. Why don’t you give her a break?”

  “Tell that to the guy Liam Eriksson tortured to death,” Hackberry said.

  The clerk threw up his hands. “Am I in the shitter?”

  “Could be,” Hackberry said. “I’ll be giving it some thought.”

  HACKBERRY AND PAM began their search for the woman named Mona in a backward pattern, starting up the street through a series of low-bottom bars where no one seemed to possess any memory for either faces or names. Then they reversed direction and went block by block through a district of secondhand stores, and missions that sheltered the homeless, and bars with darkened interiors, where, like prisons, time was not measured in terms of the external world and the patrons did not have to make comparisons.

  Hackberry didn’t know if the cause was the smell of the alcohol or the dissolute and wan expression on the faces of the twenty-four-hour drinkers at the bar when he opened the front door of a saloon, but he soon found himself revisiting his long courtship with Jack Daniel’s, like a compulsive man picking up pieces of glass with his fingertips.

  Actually, “courtship” wasn’t the appropriate word. Hackberry’s experience with charcoal-filtered whiskey had been a love affair as intense as any sexual relationship he’d ever had. He’d dreamed about it, awakened with a thirst for it in the morning, and turned the first drink of the day into a religious ritual, bruising a sprig of mint inside the glass, staining the shaved ice with three fingers of Jack, adding a half teaspoon of sugar, then setting the glass in the freezer for twenty minutes while he pretended that whiskey had no control over his life. The first sip made him close his eyes with a sense of both release and visceral serenity that he could associate only with the rush and sense of peace that a morphine drip had purchased for him in a naval hospital.

  “Not much luck, huh, kemosabe?” Pam said as they entered a saloon that was defined by an old checkerboard dance floor and a long railed bar with a big yellowed mahogany-framed mirror behind it.

  “What’d you call me?” Hackberry asked.

  “It’s just a joke. Remember the Lone Ranger and his sidekick, Tonto? Tonto was always calling the Lone Ranger ‘kemosabe.’”

  “That’s what Rie, my second wife, used to call me.”

  “Oh,” Pam replied, clearly not knowing what else to say.

  Hackberry opened his badge holder and placed the photo of Liam Eriksson on the bar for the bartender to look at. “Ever see this guy in here?” he said.

  The bartender wore a short-sleeve tropical print shirt. His big forearms were wrapped with a soft pad of hair, and just above his wrist was a green and red tattoo of the Marine Corps globe and anchor. “No, cain’t say I’ve ever seen him.”

  “Know a gal by the name of Mona, maybe a working girl?”

  “What’s she look like?”

  “Middle-aged, reddish hair, five feet three or four.”

  The bartender propped his arms on the bar and stared at the painted-over front window. He shook his head. “Cain’t say as I remember anyone specific like that.”

  “I noticed your tattoo,” Hackberry said.

  “You were in the Corps?”

  “I was a navy corpsman attached to the First Marine Division.”

  “In Korea?”

  “Yes, sir, I was.”

  “You made the Chosin or the Punch Bowl?”

  “I was at the Chosin Reservoir the third week of November, 1950.”

  The bartender raised his eyebrows, then looked at the painted-over window again. “What’s the beef on this gal Mona?”

  “No beef at all. We just need some information.”

  “There’s a woman who lives at the Brazos Hotel about five blocks toward downtown. She’s a hooker, but more of a juicer than a hooker. Her dance card is pretty used up. Maybe she’s your gal. Y’all want a drink? It’s on me.”

  “How about carbonated water on ice?” Pam said.

  “Make that two,” Hackberry said.

  Neither Hackberry nor Pam noticed a solitary man sitting at a back table, deep in the gloom behind the pool table. The man was holding up a newspaper, appearing to study it in the poor light that filtered through an alleyway window. His crutches were propped on a chair, out of sight. He did not lower his
newspaper until Hackberry and Pam had left the saloon.

  THE BRAZOS HOTEL was made of red sandstone, built in the 1880s, and seemed to rise like a forgotten reminder of lost Victorian elegance in the midst of twenty-first-century urban decay. The lobby contained potted palms, a threadbare carpet, furniture from a secondhand store, a telephone switchboard with disconnected terminals jacked into the holes, and an ancient registration desk backdropped by pigeonholes with room keys and mail in them.

  A short-necked, heavyset Mexican woman was behind the desk, a big smile on her face when she talked. Hackberry showed her the photo of Liam Eriksson.

  “Yeah, I seen him. Not for a few days, but I seen him here a couple of times, sitting in the lobby or going up the stairs. The elevator don’t always work, so he’d take the stairs.”

  “Did he rent a room here?” Hackberry asked.

  “No, he was here to see his girlfriend.”

  “Mona?” Hackberry said.

  “That’s right, Mona Drexel. You know her?”

  “I’ve been looking for her. Is she in now?”

  “You a sheriff, huh? How come you don’t have a gun?”

  “I don’t want to scare people. Which room is Ms. Drexel in?”

  “Her room is one-twenty-nine. But I haven’t seen her in a couple of days. See, the key is in her box. She always leaves her key when she goes out, ’cause sometimes maybe she drinks a little too much and loses it.”

  “Could I have the key, please?”

  “Are you supposed to do that, go in somebody’s room when they ain’t there?”

  “If you give us permission, it’s okay,” Hackberry said.

  “You sure?”

  “She could be sick in there and need help.”

  “I’ll open it for you,” the Mexican woman said.

  The three of them took the elevator upstairs. When the Mexican woman inserted the key in the door and started to turn it, Hackberry put his hand on hers. “We’ll take it from here,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

  Before the woman could respond, Pam fitted her hands on the woman’s shoulders and moved her away from the door. “It’s okay,” she said, slipping a revolver from under her shirt. “We appreciate what you’ve done. Just stay back.”

  Hackberry turned the key and pushed the door open, staying slightly behind the jamb.

  The room had been vacated, the closet cleaned out, the drawers in the dresser hanging open and empty. Pam stood in the middle of the room and bit on a thumbnail. She put her revolver back inside the clip-on holster on her belt and pulled her shirt over the handles. “What a waste of time,” she said.

  Hackberry went into the bathroom and came back out. In the shadows between a small writing table and the bed, he saw a wastebasket crammed full of newspaper and fast-food wrappers and soiled paper towels. He picked up the can and dumped it on the bedspread. Used Q-tips and balls of hair and dust and wads of Kleenex fell out on the bedspread with the other trash. After Hackberry sorted it all out, he washed his hands in the bathroom. When he came out, Pam was standing over the writing desk, studying the cover of a Time magazine she had positioned under the desk lamp.

  “This was stuck under the pillow. Take a look,” she said.

  The magazine was two months old, and on the mailing label was the name and address of a beauty parlor. At least a half-dozen phone numbers were inked on the cover. Pam tapped her finger on a notation at the bottom of the cover, one that someone had circled twice for emphasis. “‘PJC, Traveler’s Rest two-oh-nine,’” she read aloud.

  “Preacher Jack Collins,” Hackberry said.

  “The one and only. Maybe we’ve got the sonofabitch,” she said.

  She dialed information and asked for both the phone number and the street address of a Traveler’s Rest motel. She wrote both down in her notebook and hung up. “It’s not more than two miles away,” she said.

  “Good work, Pam. Let’s go,” he said.

  “What about Clawson?”

  “What about him?”

  “We’re supposed to coordinate, right?”

  Hackberry didn’t reply.

  “Right, Hack?” she said.

  “I’m not totally confident about Clawson.”

  “After you get all over my case about this guy, you suddenly have reservations?”

  “One of his colleagues told me Clawson works alone. I took that to mean he operates under a black flag. We don’t do business that way.”

  “The guy could have ruined my career and sent me to jail on top of it. If you’re going to stiff him now, I won’t be party to it.”

  Hackberry opened his cell phone and punched in Clawson’s number. “It’s Sheriff Holland,” he said. “We think we’ve got Jack Collins located. We just got lucky. A bartender knew the woman Eriksson was with at the car-title place. We’re at her hotel now. It looks like she’s blown town.” Hackberry gave Clawson the room number and the address of the motel where he thought Preacher Jack Collins might be staying.

  “You’re fairly certain he’s there?” Clawson said.

  “No, not at all. We found a notation on a magazine cover. There’s no telling how long ago it was written there.”

  “I’m on the River Walk,” Clawson said. “I thought I had a lead on Eriksson, but it didn’t work out. I’ll need to arrange backup. Don’t do anything till I get back to you.”

  Hackberry closed the cell phone and looked at Pam.

  “What?” she said.

  “We’re not supposed to do anything until he calls us back.” He stared at her, his eyes not quite focused.

  “Finish your thought,” she said.

  “Remind me not to take your advice anymore.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Screw Clawson. We bust Jack Collins,” he said.

  ISAAC CLAWSON PARKED his car a half block from the Traveler’s Rest motel, put on a rain hat and coat, covering the butt of his holstered semiautomatic, and walked the rest of the way. It was almost dusk, and the wind was blowing in the streets, scouring dust into the sky. He heard the rumble of thunder just as a solitary raindrop struck his face. The decrease in barometric pressure and the sudden cooling of the day and the raindrop that he wiped on his hand and looked at seemed so unusual and unexpected after a week of triple-digit heat that he wondered if somehow the change in weather signaled a change in his life.

  But that was a foolish way to think, he told himself. The great change in his life had come irrevocably in the night when two sheriff’s deputies had appeared at the door of his suburban home, removing their hats, and tried to tell him in euphemistic language that a young woman thought to be his daughter had been left locked with her fiancé inside the trunk of a burning automobile. From that moment on, Isaac knew the events of his future life might be modifiers of his mood or his worldview or the degree of anger he woke with in the false dawn, but nothing would ever give him back the happiness he had once taken for granted.

  In fact, if there was any release from that night back in Tulsa, it came to him only when he canceled the ticket of someone he could associate in his mind with the two degenerates who had murdered his daughter.

  He looked at his watch. It was 7:19, and the street lamps had come on in the motel parking lot. A rain shower was sweeping across the city, the clouds pierced with columns of sunlight, the air smelling of wet flowers and trees and the odor that rain makes when it touches warm concrete in summer.

  He glanced up at the lavender hue of the heavens and opened his mouth and felt a raindrop hit his tongue. What a foolish thing to do, like a kid discovering spring, he thought, taking himself to task again.

  The motel clerk was a rail of a man, dressed like a cowboy, in a black shirt with roses sewn on it and gray trousers with stripes, the cuffs tucked inside Mexican stovepipes stenciled with red and green flower petals. He wore a flesh-colored Band-Aid at the corner of one eye.

  Clawson started to reach for his ID and instead rested his hand on the counter. “Got a nonsmoking room for two?” he asked.

  “Need a king or a pair of queens?”

  “My wife and I would like two
-oh-nine if it’s available. We stayed there the night our son graduated from college.”

  The adhesive on the clerk’s Band-Aid was loose, and he pressed it back tight against the skin with the back of his wrist. He looked at his computer screen. “That one is occupied. I could put you in two-oh-six.”

  “Let me ask my wife. We’re kind of sentimental about our boy’s graduation.”