Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [139]
Hackberry spread two fingers on the ball, notching the stitches, hiding the pitch in his glove, then let fly at the basket, whipping the pitch overhand, throwing his shoulder and butt into it. The ball smacked into the wood, just wide of the apple basket, and the two horses whirled and plunged out of the light and into the darkness, making a wide circle and returning, their tails flagging.
“Okay, you got that out of your system?” Hackberry said to the horses. “Now watch. This next one is a changeup, to be followed by a slider and then my favorite.”
For the changeup, he held the ball in the back of his palm and floated it into the basket and then buzzed the slider wide and knocked a slat out of the basket.
“All right, forget the slider,” he said. “The ball is getting thrown around the infield. The last guy to touch it before it comes back to me is the shortstop. This guy has no ethics at all. He’s cut a hole in the pocket of his glove, and between his palm and the pocket is a wet sponge. When the ball comes back to me, it feels like it’s been through a car wash.”
Hackberry put two fingers in his mouth, then fired an in-shoot into the basket that sounded like silk ripping.
“What do you think of that, fellows?” he said.
He realized he had lost the attention of his foxtrotters and that they were looking at something out in the darkness, something just on the edge of the floodlight’s glare.
“I didn’t mean to give you a start,” a voice said.
“Who are you?” Hackberry asked.
“Dennis Rector is my name. You’re Sheriff Holland, right?”
“I was when I woke up this morning. What are you doing on my property?”
“I got a couple of hypotheticals to ask you.”
“Where’s your vehicle?”
“Out yonder, on the road, just about out of gas.”
Dennis Rector walked farther into the floodlight. He was a small man whose head was shaved and whose skin was white and whose body looked molded from plastic. His jeans were too large for him and were rolled in big cuffs above his work boots. His shirt was torn and the side of his face scraped.
“You carrying a weapon, Mr. Rector?”
“No, sir. I’m not a violent man. But I know men who are. Men you’re looking for.”
“You’re looking right into a flood lamp, Mr. Rector. But the pupils of your eyes are as big as inkwells. Can you tell me why that is?”
“I’m a truck driver, sir. I’ve pulled Monarch and Wolf Creek Pass when it was ten below, and I’ve gone sliding sideways on ice at forty miles an hour through Pagosa Springs. I’ve driven from Manhattan to Los Angeles in one haul, and I mean not ever shutting it down, either. I used to do whites on the half-shell, then I got into black beauties and have never quite got rid of their appeal. Those babies will flat cook your mush, I’m here to testify. Know a man name of Josef Sholokoff?”
“What about him?” Hackberry said.
“What about him, he asks,” Dennis Rector said, as though a third party were there. “What this is about is I ain’t no Judas Iscariot. I don’t like getting treated as one, either. I don’t like getting run through brambles and chased across the countryside like a fugitive from a chain gang is what I’m talking about. I shaved my head to disguise myself. I do not like this way of life.”
“That’s interesting. I think you might like our detox unit, Mr. Rector. You can get some medication and therapy and maybe enter a program. Let’s take a walk up to the house, and I’ll arrange some transportation, and in the meantime you can tell me about Josef Sholokoff.”
“You can keep your detox and three hots and a cot, Sheriff, ’cause that ain’t why we’re having this meeting of the minds. I did what I was asked and got involved in something that just ain’t my way. I know how things work. A bunch decides to do something really awful, and I mean awful, as bad as it gets, something that’s worse than any nightmare, and one man gets blamed for it and becomes the stink on horse pucky.”
“You have a point,” Hackberry said. “There’s a chair by the tack room. Take