Rain Gods

by James Lee Burke

  The answer lay in the Book of Esther. The story had been written twenty-three hundred years before he was born, and it had waited all these centuries for him to step inside it and take on the role that should have been his, that was now being offered to him by an invisible hand. He drew the freshness of the morning into his lungs and felt a pang in his chest as sharp as a piece of broken glass.

  AT FIVE A.M. Nick Dolan woke to the sound of raindrops striking the banana fronds below his bedroom window. Briefly, he thought he was at his grandfather’s house off Napoleon Avenue in New Orleans. His grandfather had lived in a shotgun house with a peaked tin roof and ceiling-high windows flanged by ventilated shutters that could be latched during the hurricane season. There was a pecan tree in the backyard with a rope swing, and the ground under its branches was soft and moldy and green with flattened pecan husks. Even in the hottest part of the day, the yard was breezy and stayed in deep shade and the neighborhood children gathered there each summer afternoon at three o’clock to await the arrival of the Sno-Ball truck.

  The grandfather’s house was a safe place, far different from Nick’s neighborhood in the Ninth Ward, where Artie Rooney and his brothers and their friends had made life a daily torment for Nick.

  Nick sat on the side of the bed and cupped his hand lightly on Esther’s hip. She was turned toward the wall, her dark hair and paleness touched with the shadows the moonlight created through the window. He slipped her nightgown up her thigh and hooked his finger over the elastic of her panties and pulled them down far enough so he could kiss her lightly on the rump, something he always did before congress with her. He could feel the nocturnal intensity of her body heat through her gown and hear the steady, undisturbed sound of her breathing against the wall. The touch of his hand or his lips seemed to neither awaken nor arouse her, and he wondered if her deep slumber was feigned or if indeed she had dreamed herself back into a time when Nick had not exchanged off their happiness for success in the skin trade.

  He put on his slippers and robe and ate a bowl of Grape-Nuts and drank a glass of cold milk in the kitchen and, at six A.M., disarmed the burglar alarm and retrieved the newspaper from the front yard. The morning was cool and damp and smelled of water sprinklers and Nick’s closely cropped St. Augustine grass that his Mexican gardeners had mowed late yesterday and the night-blooming flowers Esther constantly fertilized with coffee grounds and bat guano and fish blood and black dirt bagged from a swamp outside Lake Charles, all of which created a fecund odor Nick associated with a Louisiana graveyard that lay so deep in shadow it was never penetrated by sunlight.

  Enough with thoughts about graveyards, he told himself, and went back in the house, the rolled newspaper fat in his hand. Nor did he wish to dwell on thoughts about schoolyard bullies and personal failure and the slippage of his fortune onto the shoals of financial ruin. He wanted to be with Esther, inside her warm embrace, inside the glow of her thighs with the smell of her hair in his face and the rhythm of her breath on his cheek. It didn’t seem a lot to ask. Why had the Fates ganged up against him? He pulled the plastic rain sheath off the newspaper and unrolled the paper on the breakfast table. The lead story dealt with the murder of a young mother and her two children. The primary suspect was an estranged boyfriend. The woman’s face looked familiar. Had she worked in his club? Yeah, it was possible. But what if she had? What was worse, the daily drudgery and humiliation and penury of a welfare recipient or knocking down some quasi-serious bucks by cavorting a few hours on a pole for the titty-baby brigade?

  Nick knew the secret source of his discontent. His money had been his validation and his protection from the world, his payback for every time he had been shoved down on line at school or at the movie theater or chased crying into his yard by the army of street rats who claimed they were avenging the death of Jesus. Now a large part of Nick’s income was gone, and some bad ventures in commodities and mortgage companies were about to wipe out the rest of it.

  Nick had nail wounds in his wrists and hands for other reasons. Although Esther pretended differently, she would probably never forgive him for his involvement in the deaths of the Asian women, regardless of the fact that he was almost as much a victim as they were. At least that was the way he saw it.

  A shadow moved across the breakfast table. Nick turned in his chair, startled, knocking over his glass of milk.

  “You want oatmeal?” Esther said.

  “I already ate,” he replied.

  “Why are you up so early?”

  “Restless, I guess.”

  “Go on back to bed.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Want to what?”

  “Sleep some more?”

  “I’m going to fix some tea.”

  “Maybe neither one of us got enough sleep,” Nick said, stifling a yawn. “It’s only six-twenty. We could take a little nap. Later, we can go out for breakfast. Want to do that?”

  “My aerobics class is at seven-thirty.”

  “Better not miss the aerobics. That’s important. They let men in there? I could use that. Jumping up and down and sweatin’ to the golden oldies or whatever.” He stiffened his fingers and jabbed them against the softness of his stomach. Then he did it again, harder.

  She gave him a curious look and filled a pan with water and placed it on the gas burner. “Sure you don’t want some oatmeal?”

  “I’m starting a diet. I need to reform myself physically, maybe get plastic surgery while I’m at it.”

  Nick went upstairs and shaved and brushed his teeth and got fully dressed, putting on a tie and a white shirt, more as a statement of independence from his sexual and emotional need than as preparation to go to work at his restaurant, which didn’t open until eleven. He went back downstairs, deliberately walking through the kitchen, pulling a carton of orange juice out of the refrigerator, sucking his teeth, whistling a tune, ignoring Esther’s presence.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “Downstairs and pay some bills. While there’s still money in the bank for me to pay the bills. Tell the kids I’ll drive them to the pool later.”

  “What’s with the attitude?” she asked.

  “The flower beds smell like litter boxes with fish buried in them. We need to load the weed sprayer with Lysol and douche all the beds.”

  “Listen to you. You see the paper? A whole family is killed, and you’re talking about how the garden smells. Count your blessings. Why the dirty mouth in your own kitchen? Show a little respect.”

  Nick squeezed the heels of his hands against his temples and went down the half-flight of stairs into the glacial coldness of his office. He sat behind his desk in the darkness and planted his forehead on the desk blotter, the gold tie hanging from his throat like an ear of boiled corn, his flaccid arms like rolls of bread dough at his sides. He banged his head up and down on the blotter.

  “I couldn’t help but hear y’all talking. Maybe you could take a page from the papists. Celibacy probably has its moments,” a voice said from the darkness.

  “Jesus Christ!” Nick said, his head jerking up.

  “Thought we should go over a few things.”

  “I had the alarm on. How’d you get in?” Nick said, focusing on the man who sat in the stuffed leather chair, a pair of walking canes propped across his shoe tops.

  “Through the side door yonder. I came in before y’all went to bed. Fact is, I browsed two or three of your books and took a little nap here in the chair and used your bathroom. You need to tidy up in there. I had to dig clean hand towels out of the closet.”

  Nick picked up the phone receiver, the dial tone filling the room.

  “I came here to save your life and the lives of your wife and children,” Preacher said. “If I were here for another reason Well, we don’t even need to talk about that. Put the phone down and stop making an ass of yourself.”

  Nick replaced the receiver in the cradle. The back of his hand looked strangely white and soft, cupped around the blackness of the receiver. “Is it money?”

  “I say something on
ce, and I don’t repeat it. You’re not deaf, and you’re not lacking in intelligence. If you pretend to be either one, I’m going to leave. Then your family’s fate is on you, not me.”

  Nick’s fingers were trembling on top of the desk blotter. “It’s about Artie Rooney and the Asian girls, isn’t it? Were you the shooter? Hugo said the shooter was a religious nutcase. That’s you, right?”

  Preacher’s face remained impassive, his greased hair combed back neatly, his forehead shiny in the gloom. “Rooney is going to have you and Mrs. Dolan killed, and maybe your children, too. If the shooter can get in close, he wants your wife shot in the mouth. He also plans to have me killed. That gives us a lot of commonalities. But you say the word, and I’ll be gone.”

  Nick felt his mouth drying up, his eyes watering, his rectum constricting with fear and angst.

  “Are you going to get emotional on me?” Preacher asked.

  “Why should you care about us?”

  “I’ve been sent. I am the one who has been sent.” Preacher tilted his face up. He seemed to smile in a self-deprecating manner, in a way that was almost likable.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Nick wiped at his nose with the back of his wrist, not expecting an answer, not wanting to listen any more to a lunatic.

  “You watch television shows about witness protection and that kind of thing?”

  “Everybody does. That’s all that’s on TV.”

  “Want to live in a box in Phoenix in summertime with sand and rocks for a yard and bikers with swastika tats for neighbors? Because outside of cooperating with me, that’s the only shot you’ve got. Artie Rooney has an on-again, off-again business relationship with a Russian by the name of Josef Sholokoff. His people come out of the worst prisons in Russia. Want me to tell you what they did to a Mexican family in Juárez, to the children in particular?”

  “No, I don’t want to hear this.”

  “Cain’t blame you. You know a man name of Hackberry Holland?”

  “No Who? Holland? No, I don’t know anybody by that name.”

  “You recognize the name, though. You’ve seen it in the newspaper. He’s a sheriff. You read about the death of the ICE agent in San Antonio. Holland was there.”

  “I told you, I don’t know this Holland guy. I’m a restaurateur. I got into the escort business, but I don’t do that anymore. I’m going broke. I’m not a criminal. Criminals don’t go broke. Criminals don’t file bankruptcy. They don’t see their families put on the street.”

  “Were you interviewed by the ICE agent? Has Holland been to see you?”

  “Me? No. I mean, maybe the man from Immigration and Customs came to my home. I don’t know anybody named Holland. You say something only once to other people, but other people got to say it ten times to you?”

  “I think Sheriff Holland wants to do me injury. If he takes me off the board, you go off the board, too, because I’m the only person standing between you and Artie Rooney and his Russian business partners.”

  “I made mistakes, but I’m not a thief. You stop dragging me into your life.”

  “You’re telling me I’m a thief?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You have a pistol in your drawer, a Beretta nine-millimeter. Why don’t you take it out of the drawer and hold it in your hand and point it at me and call me dishonorable again?”

  “If you found my gun, you took the bullets out.”

  “Could be. Or maybe not. Open the drawer and pick it up. The weight should tell you something.”

  “I apologize if I said something I shouldn’t.”

  Preacher leaned forward in the chair. He was wearing a brown suit with light stripes in it, and the cast was gone from his leg. “You take Mrs. Dolan and your children out of town for a while. You pay cash everywhere you go. A credit card is an electronic footprint. You don’t call your restaurant or your lawyer or your friends. Artie Rooney may tap your phone lines. I’ll give you a cell phone number where you can contact me. But I’ll be the only person you’ll be talking to.”

  “Are you crazy? Nobody is this arrogant.” Nick opened the side drawer to his desk and looked at the gun lying inside it.

  “A crazy person is psychotic and has a distorted vision of the world. Which of us is the realist? The one who has survived among the predators or the one who pretends to be a family man while he lives off the earnings of whores and puts his family at mortal risk?”

  Nick tried to hold his gaze on Preacher’s.

  “You want to say something?” Preacher asked. “Pick up the gun.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Did you ever fire it?”

  “No.”

  “Pick it up and point it at me. Hold it with both hands. That way your fingers will stop trembling.”

  “You don’t think I’ll pick it up?”

  “Show me.”

  Nick rested his hand in the drawer. The steel frame and checkered grips of the nine-millimeter felt solid and hard and reassuring as he curved his fingers around them. He lifted the gun out of the drawer. “It’s light. You took the clip out.”

  “It’s called a magazine. It feels light because you’re scared and your adrenaline gives you strength you normally don’t have. The firing mechanism has a butterfly safety. The red dot means you’re on rock and roll. Pull back the hammer.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Do it, little fat man. Do it, little Jewish fat man.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “It’s not what I call you. It’s what Hugo calls you. He also calls you the Pillsbury Doughboy. Fit your thumb over the hammer and pull it back, then aim the front sight at my face.”

  Nick set down the gun on the desk blotter and removed his hand from the grips. He was breathing audibly through his nostrils, his palms clammy, a taste like soured milk climbing into his mouth.

  “Why cain’t you do it?” Preacher asked.

  “Because it’s empty. Because I’m not here to entertain you.”

  “That’s not why at all. Push the button by the trigger guard.”

  Nick picked up the gun and squeezed the release on the magazine. The magazine fell from the frame and clunked on the desktop, the loading spring stacked tight with brass-jacketed shells.

  “Pull back the slide. You’ll see a round in the chamber. The reason you didn’t point the gun at me is because you’re not a killer. But other men are, and they don’t think two seconds about the deeds they do. Those are the men I’m trying to protect your family from. Some of us are made different in the womb and are not to be underestimated. I’m one of them, but I think I’m different from the others. Is everything I say lost on you? Are you ignorant as well as corrupt?”

  “No, you make me want to blow your fucking head off.”

  The door to the upstairs opened, and light flooded down the staircase. “Who’s down there?” Esther said. Before anyone could answer her question, she descended the stairs, gripping an empty pot by the handle. She stared down at Preacher. “Who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  “How’d you get in my house?”

  “The side door was open. I’ve explained this. Why don’t you sit down?”

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

  “One of who?”

  “The gangsters who have been plaguing our lives.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “He’s about to leave, Esther,” Nick said.

  “You’re one of those who abducted my husband,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “You shouldn’t use that term to me, madam.”

  She stepped closer to him. “The Asian women, the prostitutes, the illegals or whatever they were, you’re here about them. You’re the one who did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Killed them. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Why do you say that?” Preacher’s mouth twitched slightly, his words catching in his throat.

  “Your eyes are dead. Only one kind of man has eyes like that. Someone who murders the light behind his own eyes. Someone who has tried to scrub God’s fingerprint off h
is soul.”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that, woman.”

  “You call me ‘woman’? A dog turd off the sidewalk calls me ‘woman’ in my own house?”

  “I came here to—”