Rain Gods

by James Lee Burke

  Isaac’s eyes were open wide when he struck the floor. Preacher Jack Collins looked at him briefly, fitted his hands on the cleaning cart, and worked his way down the walkway to the stairs at the far end of the building.

  11

  NO MATTER HOW many pain pills Artie Rooney ate, the throbbing in his hand wouldn’t quit. Nor could he rid himself of the well of fear that was eating its way through the bottom of his stomach. Nor could he get the name of Jack Collins out of his head. It hovered behind his eyes; he woke with it in the morning; it was in his food; it was in his coupling with his whores.

  And now it was in his conversation with Hugo Cistranos, here, inside his elegant beachfront office, his helplessness as palpable as the smell of fear that rose from his armpits. He couldn’t believe that only weeks ago, Jack Collins had been a name without a face, the mention of which would have caused him to yawn.

  “Jack wants a half million from you?” Hugo said, slumped comfortably in a white leather chair, dressed in golf slacks and a print shirt and Roman sandals, his red-streaked hair glistening with gel.

  “He blames me for the loss of his soul,” Artie said.

  “Jack doesn’t have one. How can he blame you for losing it?”

  “Because he’s crazy?”

  Hugo studied the backs of his hands. “You just sat there and let Jack cut off your finger? That’s hard to believe, Artie.”

  “He was going to cut my throat. He held the razor right by my eye.”

  Hugo’s expression became philosophical. “Yeah, I guess Jack’s capable of that. Must have been terrible. How’d you explain it at the hospital?”

  Artie got up from his desk, cradling his injured hand. A hurricane was building in intensity by the hour, three hundred miles southeast of Galveston. Through the enormous glass wall that fronted the beach, he could see a band of greenish cobalt along the southern horizon, and the slick leathery backs of stingrays in the swells and waves threading into yellow froth inside the wind. He wanted to put a bullet in Hugo Cistranos.

  “You didn’t tell anybody what happened, huh?” Hugo said. “That was probably the right choice. Must be hard accepting all this—I mean, a religious creep like that walking into your office and turning your desk into a chopping block. Gives me the willies thinking about it.”

  “Collins is onto us,” Artie said.

  “Who’s this ‘us’ you’re talking about?”

  “You set up the scam, Hugo. It was your idea to kidnap the Russian’s whores. You got Nick Dolan to think he was boosting the girls from me, and you got him to believe the mow-down was on him, too. From the beginning, this whole nightmare has had your name all over it.”

  But Hugo was already waving a finger back and forth. “Oh, no, you don’t. You knew those girls’ stomachs were loaded with China white, and you thought you’d rip off the Russian for both his cooze and his skag at the same time. You got greedy, Artie. I’m not taking your weight on this, my friend.”

  “I didn’t tell you to kill them.”

  “When did you ever tell me not to kill somebody? Remember that sex freak who creeped your house in Metairie? Why is it you never asked about him, Artie? The Times-Picayune did a big spread on the body parts that floated up into a picnic ground. You never made the connection?”

  Artie Rooney’s face had an expression on it like that of a blowfish with a hook in its mouth. Hugo took a stick of peppermint from the big clear plastic jar on Artie’s desk. He gazed reflectively at the beach and the waves exploding on the tip of a jetty. “It’s too bad about the whores. But they could have stayed in Thailand if they wanted. There’s a gold mine in sex tours for Japanese businessmen. I’m sorry about what happened out there. But there wasn’t any choice in the matter. The balloons were busting in their stomachs, and they were screaming about going to a hospital. ‘Hey, guys, pump out my nine whores loaded with fifteen balloons each of uncut white heroin. While you’re at it, let them tell you about the coyote we capped and buried on federal land.’”

  “Oh, funny man.”

  “Artie, we’re all sacks of fertilizer. You, me, Preacher Jack, your secretary, the families out there on the beach. You think if it was us buried by that dozer, the Asian girls would be burning incense in a Buddhist temple? They’d be shopping for makeup at Walmart.”

  Artie stared wanly at the Gulf and at the hurricane warning flags snapping straight out from their lanyards. Then it struck him: Hugo was talking too much, too cleverly, filling the air with words at Artie’s expense in order to control the conversation. “You’re scared of him,” he said.

  “I’ve worked with Preacher before. I respect his boundaries, I respect his talents.”

  “His boundaries? You been watching Dr. Phil or something? You just called Collins a religious creep. I think you’re starting to rattle. I think you’ve had some kind of confrontation with him.”

  Hugo crossed his legs and untwisted the cellophane from the stick of peppermint, sucking in his cheeks thoughtfully. “Good try, no cigar. You ought to spend some time at the library, Artie, bone up on some history. Foot soldiers don’t go to the wall. Officers do. Foot soldiers are always given the chance to adjust. Your bandage is leaking.”

  “What?”

  “You’re spotting your shirt. You ought to go to the hospital. What’d you do with the finger? If you put it on ice, maybe they can sew it back on.”

  Artie’s desk phone buzzed. He picked up the receiver with his good hand. “I told you not to disturb me,” he said.

  “A Mr. Nick Dolan and his wife are here to see you.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  The secretary didn’t answer.

  “Get rid of them. Tell them I’m out of town,” Artie said.

  “I don’t think they’re going away, Mr. Rooney,” the secretary whispered.

  Artie paused, his eyes locked on Hugo’s. “Tell them to wait a minute,” he said. He replaced the receiver in the cradle. “Go in my conference room and stay there.”

  “What for?” Hugo said.

  “You ever meet Esther Dolan?”

  “What about her?”

  “You’ve energized Batgirl, you idiot.”

  WHEN NICK AND Esther entered the room, Artie Rooney was sitting behind his desk in a powder-blue suit and a blue-and-gold striped tie and a silk shirt that was as bright as tin, his swivel chair tilted back, his hands hanging loosely over the arms of the chair, a man in charge and at peace with the world.

  “Long time, Miss Esther,” Artie said, addressing her in the traditional manner that a gentleman who was a family friend would address a woman in New Orleans.

  Esther didn’t reply, her gaze boring into his face.

  “We need to straighten out some things,” Nick said.

  “I’m always happy to see old friends,” Artie said.

  “What happened to your hand?” Nick said.

  “An accident with my electric hedge clipper.”

  Even while he addressed Nick, Artie’s attention was fixed on Esther, who wore a tight purple dress with green flowers printed on it. “Y’all sit down. I got some shrimp and a pitcher of vodka martinis in the refrigerator. You been doin’ okay, Miss Esther?”

  “We’ve tried to contact Hugo Cistranos,” Esther said. “He’s going to hurt a young woman and her boyfriend, an ex-soldier.”

  “Hugo? News to me.”

  “Cut the crap, Artie,” Nick said.

  “You came to Galveston to insult me?” Artie said.

  “Nick has told me everything,” Esther said. “About those gangsters working for you and how they almost killed Nick by a farmhouse. He told me about the Oriental girls, too.”

  “You sure about what you’re saying here? This has got me all confused.”

  “They were killed because you were smuggling them into the United States. They were peasant girls machine-gunned by one of your hired animals,” Esther said.

  “I’m part owner of some dating services. Maybe I’m not altogether proud of that. But I have to put food on the table like everybody else. Your husband is not innocent in this, Miss Esther. And don’t be saying I murdered anyb
ody.”

  “Nick just signed over all his interests in what you call ‘dating services.’”

  Artie looked at Nick. “I’m hearing this right? You sold out in Houston and Dallas?”

  “No, I didn’t sell out, I got out,” Nick said.

  Artie straightened in his chair and rested his arms on his desk pad. He took a pill from a tiny tin container and put it in his mouth, then swallowed it with a half-glass of water. A look of tension, of pain held carefully in place, seemed to recede back into his face. “I don’t have contact with Hugo anymore. I think maybe he’s in New Orleans. Maybe I’ll be hanging it up here and moving back there myself.”

  “You going to stop that killer from hurting those kids or not?” Esther said.

  “Don’t be implying what you’re implying, Miss Esther. You try to bring the house down, you’ll find yourself standing in the living room with the roof caving on Nick’s head and maybe yours, too,” Artie said.

  “Don’t you talk to her like that,” Nick said.

  “Remember that time at the Prytania Theatre when we did a swirlie with your face in the commode?” Artie said.

  “How about I mash your hand in your drawer?” Nick said.

  “You survived in New Orleans because we allowed you to, Nick. Didoni Giacano once said your mother was probably knocked up by a yeast infection and you were not to be trusted. I told Dee-Dee his perceptions were on target but that you were also gutless and greedy, and for those reasons alone, you’d do whatever he told you, all the way to the graveyard. So in a way, I helped make your career. I think you ought to show a little gratitude.”

  “Dee-Dee Gee said that about my family and me?”

  Artie gestured at the glass wall behind him. “See that storm building out there?” he said. “Katrina washed out most of the Ninth Ward. I hope this one changes course and hits New Orleans just like Katrina did and finishes the job. I hope you’re there for it, Nick. I hope you and your people are washed off the earth. That’s how I feel.”

  Esther leaned forward in her chair, her hands folded in her lap, a realization growing in her face. “You deceived Nick, didn’t you?” she said.

  “About what?”

  “The smuggling and the murder of the girls. You were using Nick somehow. That’s how you set up the extortion.”

  “I got news for you. Your husband is a pimp. The houses you own, the cars you drive, the country club you belong to, they’re all paid for by money he makes off whores. The ones you think are just college bimbos taking off their clothes at the club do lap dances and jerk off guys in the back rooms. You’re a smart woman, Miss Esther. You married Mighty Mouse. Why pretend otherwise?”

  She rose from her chair, her hands crimped on her purse. “My husband is a good man,” she said. “I’ll never allow you to hurt him. You threaten my family again, and I’ll make your life awful.”

  “Right. Sorry you have to run,” Artie said, taking another pain pill from the tin box.

  “You hurt the soldier or his girlfriend, we’re calling the FBI,” Nick said. “I know what you can do to me, Artie. It doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna have the blood of those kids on my conscience.”

  “How do you like that, you cheap gangster?” Esther said. “You were talking about doing swirlies on people? Think about yourself in a prison cell full of sexual degenerates. I hope you’re in there a thousand years.”

  After they were gone, Artie opened the door to his conference room. Hugo was smoking a cigarette, gazing at the waves crashing on the beach.

  “You get an earful?” Artie asked.

  “Enough,” Hugo replied. He mashed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the conference table. “How do you want to play it?”

  “I got to tell you?”

  “I’m lots of things, but omniscient isn’t one of them.”

  “Hose everybody who needs to go. That means the soldier and his broad, that means Preacher Jack Collins, that means anybody who can dime us. That means that fat little kike and his wife and, if necessary, his kids. When I say ‘hose,’ I mean slick down to the tile from one end of the building to the other. I’m getting through loud and clear here?”

  “No problem, Artie.”

  “If you’re working in close?”

  Hugo waited.

  “Put one in Esther’s mouth,” Artie said. “I want her to know where it came from, too.”

  YEARS AGO, IN a Waycross, Georgia, public library, Bobby Lee Motree happened to see a book titled My Grandfather Was the Only Private in the Confederate Army. He was puzzled by the title and, flipping through the pages, tried to figure out what it meant. Then he stopped thinking about the matter altogether, in part because Bobby Lee’s interest in history was confined largely to his claim that he was a descendant of perhaps the greatest military strategist in American history, a claim based on the fact that his first and second names were respectively Robert and Lee, as were those of his father, a petty thief and part-time golf caddie who was killed while sleeping on a train trestle.

  Now, during a sunset that seemed somehow to be a statement about his life, he stood by his vehicle, not far from a jagged mountain whose bare slopes were turning darker and darker against the sky. The wind was hot and smelled of creosote and dust and road-patch tar that had dissolved into licorice during the day. In the distance, he saw a trio of buzzards circling high above the hardpan, their outstretched wings stenciled against a yellow sun that reminded him of light trapped behind a dirty window shade. He opened a cell phone and punched in a number.

  Then he hesitated and removed his thumb from the send button. Bobby Lee wasn’t feeling well. He could see torn pieces of color floating behind his eyelids, as though his power to think were deteriorating, as though his uncontrolled thoughts had become his greatest enemy.

  He reached inside his SUV and drank from a can of warm soda. Was he coming down with something? No such luck. His world was coming apart. He had always admired Preacher for his professionalism and invisibility, and for the way he had become a legend, a one-man Murder, Inc., without ever going inside the system. But Preacher had gone along with Hugo on the mass mow-down of the Asians, and now he’d popped a federal agent. Somebody would have to go down for it. Hugo? That was a laugh. Preacher? Jack would eat a Gatling gun before he’d allow anyone to take him into custody. Who did that leave?

  The answer wasn’t one Bobby Lee liked to think about. The rest of the team consisted of him and Liam Eriksson, and Liam was already on Jack’s S-list for stealing the disability check and trying to cash it while he and his hooker girlfriend were drunk. Liam and Bobby Lee were basically working stiffs, making a score here and there, putting away a few bucks for a better life, waiting for the proper time to hang it up. They weren’t religious crazoids like Jack, or guys like Hugo who got off on capping people. For Liam and Bobby Lee, it was just a job. But working stiffs were disposable and replaceable. If anyone disagreed with that, he just needed to check out the audience at an ultimate-fighter match.

  Bobby Lee remembered when he did his first hit, at age twenty, out on Alligator Alley between Fort Lauderdale and Naples, a five-thou whack on a Cuban who’d raped the daughter of a Mobbed-up guy from the Jersey Shore. At first Bobby Lee thought it might bother him to pop a guy he had nothing against, but it didn’t. He bought the hit a couple of drinks in Lauderdale, told him he had a fishing camp in the Glades, then showed him this big grassy bay in the moonlight and parked two .22 hollow-points, pow, pow, that fast, behind the guy’s ear, and suddenly the guy was facedown in the water, his arms outstretched, his suit coat puffed with air like he was studying the bottom of the bay, the night air throbbing with bullfrogs.

  But what should Bobby Lee do now? Deep-six the brothers-in-arms stuff and blow Dodge on Preacher? That thought didn’t sit well, either. If Bobby Lee was to remain a pro back in Florida, where he planned to re-enroll at Miami-Dade, doing an occasional contract job when he needed money, he had to keep his reputation intact. Also, bailing out on Preacher was a good way to ensure a lifetime of looking over his shoulder.

  Bobby Lee opened his cel
l phone again and hit the redial button.

  “Where you been?” Preacher’s voice said.

  “All over most of two counties.”

  “Think about what you just said. It’s a contradiction in terms.”

  “What?”

  “What did you find?”