Rain Gods

18

VIKKI GADDIS GOT off work at the steak house at ten P.M. and walked to the Fiesta motel with a San Antonio newspaper folded under her arm. When she entered the room, Pete was watching television in his skivvies. His T-shirt looked like cheesecloth against the red scar tissue on his back. She popped open the newspaper and dropped it in his lap. “Those guys were at the restaurant three nights ago,” she said. “They were bikers. They looked road-fried.”

Pete stared down at the booking-room photographs of three men. They were in their twenties and possessed the rugged good looks of men in their prime. Unlike the subjects of most booking-room photography, none of the men appeared fatigued or under the influence or nonplussed or artificially amused. Two of them had served time in San Quentin, one in Folsom. All three had been arrested for possession with intent to distribute. All three had been suspects in unsolved homicides.

“You talked to them?” Pete asked.

“No, they talked to me. I thought they were just hitting on me. I sang four numbers with the band, and they tried to get me to sit down with them. I told them I had to work, I was a waitress and just sang occasion ally with the band. They thought it was funny that I sang ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I thought they were jerks and not worth talking about.”

Pete began reading the newspaper story again. “They were machine-gunned,” he said. He bit a hangnail. “What’d they say to you?”

“They wanted to know my name. They wanted to know where I was from.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“That I had to get back to work. Later, they were asking the bartender about me.”

“What in particular?”

“Like how long I’d been working there. Like had I ever been a professional folksinger. Like didn’t I used to live around Langtry or Pumpville? Except these guys had California tags, and why should they know anything about little towns on the border?”

Pete turned off the television but continued to stare at the screen.

“They’re contract killers, aren’t they?” she said.

“They didn’t follow you after you got off work. They didn’t come around the motel, either. Maybe you were right-they were just jerks trying to pick you up.”

“There’s something else.”

He looked at her and waited.

“I talked with the bartender before I got off tonight. I showed him the newspaper. He said, ‘One of those bikers was talking about calling up some guy named Hugo.’”

“You’re just telling me all this now?” Pete said.

“No, you’re not listening. The bartender-” She gave up and sat down on the bed beside him, not touching him. “I can’t think straight.” She pushed at her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Maybe they did follow me home and I didn’t see them. What if they found out where we’re living and they called up this guy Hugo and told him?”

“I don’t get it, though. Who killed them?” Pete said. “The story doesn’t say what kind of machine gun the shooter used. There’s a lot of illegal stuff available now-AKs, Uzis, semiautos with hell-triggers.”

“What difference does that make?”

“The story says there were shell casings all over the crime scene. If the guy had a Thompson with a drum on it-”

“Pete, will you just spit it out? What are you saying? You talk in hieroglyphics.”

“The guy who killed all the women behind the church used a Thompson. They’re hard to come by. They shoot forty-five-caliber ammunition. The ammo drum will hold fifty rounds. Maybe the guy who killed the women behind the church is the same guy who machine-gunned the bikers.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Why would they be killing each other?”

“Maybe they’re not working together.” Pete read more, running his thumb down to the last paragraph. He set the paper aside and rubbed his palms on his knees.

“Say it,” she said.

“The shooter had a limp. Maybe he uses a walking cane. A trucker saw him from the highway.”

Vikki got up from the bed. Her face was pale, the skin tight against the bone, as though she were staring into a cold wind. “He’s the man I shot, isn’t he?”

Pete began putting on his trousers.

“Where you going?”

“Out.”

“To do what?”

“Not to drink, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Her eyes remained accusatory, locked on his.

“I brought all this on us, Vikki. You don’t have to say it.”

“Don’t leave.”

“More of the same isn’t gonna cut it.”

“I’m not mad at you. I’m just tired.”

“I’ll be back.”

“When?”

“When you see me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Boost a car. I wasn’t just a crewman in a tank. I was a mechanic. See, there’s an upside to getting french-fried in Baghdad.”

“Damn you, Pete.”

HUGO CISTRANOS WAS sitting on a canvas chair on the beach in his Speedos, the waves capping and sliding in a yellow froth up on the sand. The air smelled like brass and iodine. It smelled of the crusted seaweed around his feet and the ruptured air sacs of the jellyfish that lay in a jagged line at the water’s edge. It smelled of the fear that fouled his heart and pooled in his glands that no amount of suntan lotion could hide.

He tried Preacher’s cell phone again. He had already left six messages, then had listened to a recording tell him Preacher’s mailbox was full. But this time the cell phone not only rang, Preacher picked up. “What do you want?” he said.

“Hey, Jack, where you been?” Hugo said. “I was worried sick, man.”

“About what?”

“About whatever has been going on over there. Where are you?”

“Looking for a new house.”

“Looking for-”

“I had a fire, a propane explosion.”

“You’re kidding?”

“During the fire, somebody shot out my car tires, too. Maybe one of the firemen.”

“I read about that motel gig in the Houston Chronicle. That’s what brought it on? Those punks torched your place?”

“What motel?”

“Jack, I’m your friend. Those guys worked for the Russian out on the coast. I don’t know why they were after you, but I’m glad they got clipped. I suspect they were sent out here to do a payback on Artie and everybody who works for him, including me.”

“I think you got it figured, Hugo.”

“Look, I called about a couple of other issues, even though I was worrying about you, not hearing from you and all.” A red Frisbee sailed out of nowhere and hit Hugo on the side of the head. He picked it up and flung it savagely in a little boy’s direction. “Artie wants to settle with you. He wants me to take care of the money transfer.”

“Settle? This isn’t a suit.”

“He’s offering you two hundred thou. That’s all the cash he’s got. Why not call it slick and put it behind you?”

“You said ‘issues,’ in the plural.”

“We think we know where the broad is.”

“Try to use proper nouns. That’s the specific name of a person, place, or thing.”

“Vikki Gaddis. I don’t know if the soldier is still with her or not. You want to handle it, or you want Bobby Lee and a couple of new guys to tune her up and maybe deliver her anywhere you want?”

“You don’t put a hand on her.”

“Whatever you say.”

“How’d you find her?”

“Long story. What do you want me to tell Artie?”

“I’ll get back to you with wire instructions for an offshore account.”

“That creates an electronic trail, Jack. We need to meet.”

“I’ll drop by.”

“No, we need to get everybody together at one time and talk things out.”

“Where’s the Gaddis girl?”

Hugo’s mind was racing. Why had he believed he could outthink a sociopath? His plated chest was heaving as though he had run up a hill. His skin felt encrusted with sand; sweat and sand seeped from his armpits. His mouth was dry, and the sun was burning through the top of his head. “Jack, we’ve been in the game a long time together.”

“I’m waiting.”

“You got it. I’m on your team. You got to believe me on that.”

He gave Preacher the name of the town and the name of the steak house where Vikki Gaddis had been seen, not revealing his source. Then he wiped his mouth. “You got to tell me something. How’d you get to those bikers? How’d you set that up, man?”

“Whores sell information. They also sell out their johns if the price is right. Some of them take a high degree of pleasure in it,” Preacher said.

As Hugo’s heart slowed, he realized an opportunity had just presented itself, one he had not thought about earlier. “I’m your friend, Jack. I’ve always looked up to you. Be careful when you’re down there on the border. That sheriff and his deputy, the ones who nailed Liam? They were here.”

“This fellow Holland?”

“Yeah, he was talking to Artie. About you, man. Artie told him he never heard of you, but this guy has you made for the deal behind the church. I think he’s got political ambitions or something. He was asking ugly questions about your family, about your mother in particular. What the fuck does that guy care about your mother?”

Hugo could hear the wind between his ear and the cell phone, then the connection went dead.

Got you, you crazy sonofabitch, he said to himself.

He slipped on his shades and watched the little boy’s red Frisbee sail gently aloft, out over the waves, seagulls cawing emptily around it.

PETE WALKED DOWN the road in the dark, under the pink stucco arch painted with roses, past the closed-down drive-in theater and the circular building with service windows constructed to resemble a bulging cheeseburger and the three Cadillacs that appeared to be buried nose-first in the hardpan. The wind was up, and the combination of dust and humidity it created felt like the filings from damp sandpaper in his hair and on his skin. At the edge of town, he followed a train spur northeast, walking along the edge of the embankment onto a wide flat plain where the main track pointed miles into the distance, the night sky gleaming on the rails.

A half hour later, as he walked into a basin, he heard a double-header coming at low speed down the track, the flat-wheelers and empty grain cars rocking on the grade. He moved out into the scrub brush until the first locomotive passed, then began to run beside the open door of an empty flat-wheeler. Just before the car wobbled past a signal light mounted on a stanchion, he leaped inside the car, pushing his weight up on his hands, rolling onto a wood floor that smelled of chaff and the warm, musky odor of animal hides.

He lay on his back and watched the hills and stars slip by the open door. He did not remember when he had slept an entire night without dreaming or waking suddenly, the room filling with flashes that had nothing to do with car lights on a highway or electricity in the clouds. The dreams were inhabited by disparate elements and people and events, most of them seemingly disconnected but held together in one fashion or another by color and the nauseating images the color suggested-the wet rainbow inside a bandage that had been peeled off an infected wound, a viscous red spray erupting from the hajjis who had been crawling on a disabled tank, trying to pry open the hatches, when Pete let off on them with Ma Deuce, a.50-caliber that could shred human beings into dog food. The victims in the dreams were many but not necessarily people he had known or seen-soldiers, children, sunken-faced old women and men whose teeth were an atrocity to look at. Paradoxically, for Pete, sleeplessness was not the problem; it was the solution.

Except he couldn’t hold a job. He daydreamed and dropped wrenches in machinery, couldn’t concentrate on what others were saying, and sometimes could not count the change in the palm of his hand. In the meantime, Vikki Gaddis was not only financially supporting him but had become the target of a collection of killers because of his irresponsibility and bad judgment.

He found a piece of burlap on the boxcar floor and stuffed it under his head and fell asleep. For some reason he didn’t understand, he felt himself rocking off to sleep, almost like an embryonic creature being carried safely inside its mother’s womb.

When he woke, he could see the lights on the outskirts of Marathon. He rubbed the sleep out of his face and dropped from the flat-wheeler onto the ground. He waited for the train to pass him, then crossed the tracks and found the two-lane road that led into town and eventually to his cousin’s used-car lot.

It was located appropriately in a tattered neighborhood that seemed leached of its color. A high fence surrounded the lot and the sales office, topped by rolls of razor wire. Pete walked down a side street, away from the streetlights on the two-lane county road, glancing over his shoulder at an eighteen-wheeler shifting down at the intersection. The lot was filled with oversize pickup trucks and SUVs whose commercial value had plummeted during the price rise of gasoline to four dollars a gallon. Pete looked up and down the line of unsold and marked-down vehicles, wondering which would be easiest to hotwire. Between an Expedition and a Ford Excursion, he saw the gas-guzzling junker his cousin had sold him and whose crankshaft had fallen out on the highway. The cousin had wrecker-hauled it back onto the lot and placed a for-sale sign inside the windshield. What did that say about the quality of the other vehicles his cousin was offering for sale?

Pete found a break in the spirals of razor wire at the back of the property and laced his fingers in the fence, preparing to climb over. Down the aisle between two rows of vehicles, he saw the chain-locked gates he would have to exit with whatever truck or SUV or compact shitbox he managed to boost. He had a collapsible Schrade utility tool in his pocket, one that contained pliers and wire cutters and screwdrivers and small wrenches of every kind, but nothing approaching the strength and size needed to cut a chain or padlock.

Through the front fence, he saw a sheriff’s cruiser pass on the county road and turn in to a diner at the intersection. How many blunders could one guy make in one night?

He sat down on a greasy hump of dirt out of which a cluster of pines grew and put his face in his hands. He watched the sheriff’s cruiser drive away from the diner, then his attention focused on a lighted phone booth between the diner and the corner of the intersection.

It was time to call for the cavalry, although he was afraid of what the cavalry was about to tell him. He walked to the telephone booth and made a collect call to the residence of William Robert Holland in Lolo, Montana.

But Pete’s intuitions had been correct. Billy Bob told him his only recourse was to surrender himself to his cousin Hackberry Holland; he even gave Pete Hackberry’s number. He also told Pete the FBI probably had a tap on his phone and that the clock was likely ticking on Pete.

Pete could hear the sorrow and pity in his friend’s voice, and it made his heart sink. In his mind’s eye, he saw the two of them years ago, cane-fishing under a tree on a green river, their cold drinks and bread-and-butter sandwiches lying on a blanket in the shade.

After Pete hung up, sweat was creaking in his ears, and the bodies of insects were thudding against the Plexiglas sides of the booth. He folded back the accordion door hard against the jamb and began walking down the two-lane toward the railroad tracks. Up ahead, he saw a lone compact car stopped at the traffic light, the driver waiting listlessly behind the steering wheel, his features lit by the glow from an AutoZone sign. The traffic light seemed to be stuck on red, but the driver waited patiently for it to change, although there were no other vehicles on the street.

The driver had a long nose and high cheekbones, the hair combed straight back, streaked with gel or grease. His facial structure could have been called skeletal except for the fact that the flesh was lumpy, as though it were covered with bee stings, suggesting carnality and decadence rather than deprivation. His gaze was focused on the traffic signal, like a modern parody of a Byzantine saint experiencing the dark night of the soul.

Pete started across the intersection, in front of the compact’s high beams, just as the traffic signal changed. The driver of the compact had to slam on his brakes. But Pete did not move. He continued to stare into the brilliance of the headlights, red and yellowish-green circles burning into his eye sockets. He spread his arms against the air. “Sorry for being on the planet,” he said.

The driver pulled slowly around him, his window down. “You have a problem of some kind?”

“Yes, sir, I do. See, the light was red when I started across the street. Because it turns from red to green doesn’t mean the driver of a car can run over whatever is in front of him.”

“That’s interesting to know. Now, how about taking your hand off the roof of my car? I don’t particularly enjoy looking into somebody’s armpit.”

“I like your ‘Support the Troops’ ribbons. You must have bought a shitpile of them. What d’you think about bringing back the draft so the rest of y’all can kick some rag-head ass over in the Sandbox?”

“Move away, kid.”

“Yes, sir, I’m very glad to,” Pete said. He began picking up rocks from the asphalt. “Let me he’p you on your way. Is there a late-night pinochle game down at the AMVETS tonight?”

The driver’s eyes roamed over Pete’s face. His expression was one of curiosity rather than fear or apprehension. “Get yourself some help. In the meantime, don’t ever fuck with me again.”

“I thank you for straightening me out, sir. Happy motoring. God bless and Godspeed.”

As the driver pulled away, Pete flung one rock after another at the compact, whanging them off the doors and roof and trunk. Then he picked up a half-brick and chased after the compact and threw the brick as hard as he could, pocking a hole in the rear window. But the driver never accelerated or touched the brake pedal. He simply drove steadily down the road toward the main highway that led out of town, leaving Pete in the middle of the street, wrapped in self-loathing and a level of impotent rage that sat on his brow like a crown of thorns.

AFTER PREACHER GOT back on the four-lane and resumed his journey, he looked in the rearview mirror at his broken window. Lunatic or drunken or drug-induced behavior had never been a source of worry or concern to him. Unhinged people like that kid back there flinging rocks at a stranger’s car were just a reminder that Preacher didn’t have to validate himself, that moral imbeciles had taken over the institution a long time ago. Check out the French General Assembly under Robespierre, he thought. Check out the crowd at a televangelical rally. If they had their way, there would be an electric chair on every street corner in Texas, and half the population would be bars of soap.

He pushed his speed up to sixty-five, staying under the seventy-mile-an-hour limit. The backseat was stacked with the boxed possessions he had salvaged from his destroyed house. His Thompson, for which he had paid eighteen thousand dollars, was concealed between the backseat and the trunk. He would miss his stucco house at the base of the mountain, but eventually, he knew he would return to it. He was sure the cave in the mountainside and the sounds the wind made blowing inside its walls held portent not only for him but for the unwinding scroll of which his story was a part. Was it too big a leap of faith to conclude the whistling of the wind was nothing less than the breathing of Yahweh inside the earth?

Weren’t all our destinies already written on scrolls that we unwound and discovered in incremental fashion? Perhaps the past and the pres ent and the future were already written on the wind, not in transient fashion but whispered to us with unerring accuracy if we would only bother to listen. The three bikers had thought they would kill him in his own house, little knowing of the power that inhabited the environment they had invaded. He wondered what they’d thought when he’d let off on them in the motel room. There had been regret in their eyes, certainly, and desperation and fear, but most of all just regret. If they could have spoken, he was sure they would have renounced everything in their lives in order to live five more seconds so they could make their case and convince either Preacher or whoever governed the universe that they would devote the remainder of their lives to piety and acts of charity if they could just have one more season to run.

Preacher steered around an eighteen-wheeler, the tractor rig’s high beams turning his pocked rear window into a fractured light prism. Had the rock thrower been drunk? The man hadn’t smelled of booze. Obviously, he had been in Iraq or Afghanistan. Maybe the VA was dumping its nutcases on the street. But there was a detail about the kid Preacher couldn’t forget. In his obsession to find Vikki Gaddis, he had thought little about her boyfriend, the kid Hugo and Bobby Lee always referred to as “the soldier boy.” What had Bobby Lee said about him? That the kid had a scar on his face that was as long as an earthworm?

No, it was just coincidence. Yahweh didn’t play jokes.

Or did He?