Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [90]
“No.”
“You’re not?” Dowling said, looking confused.
“Why would I be looking for Collins on a street full of Mexican cathouses?”
“He’s everywhere,” Dowling replied.
“You’ve become a believer?”
“I haven’t done anything to this man. I didn’t say anything about him.”
The register in Dowling’s voice had changed, the vowels and consonants not quite holding together. The skin twitched under one eye as though a fly had settled on his skin. Hackberry wondered how many young girls had paid the price for the fear that Dowling had probably spent a lifetime trying to hide from others.
“Have you had an encounter with Collins?” Hackberry asked.
“I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I put a reward on him. He killed two of my men. That’s why I put the reward on him.”
“You put a reward on Jack Collins?”
“For arrest and conviction. That’s all the statement says. I didn’t tell people to go out and kill him. It’s what any employer or family member would do if their employees or family members were murdered.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Last night there was a man outside my motel. My men tried to catch him, but he disappeared. He was wearing a dirty hat of some kind. He was in the shadows on the other side of the parking lot, under a sodium lamp. What do you call that kind of hat? A panama? It’s made of straw and has a brim that dips down over the eyes.”
Dowling seemed to wait, hoping that Hackberry would dispel his fears and tell him that the shadowy figure, for whatever reason, could not have been Collins.
“That sounds like Jack, all right,” Hackberry said. “Congratulations, you’ve brought down perhaps the most dangerous man in America on your head. Jack’s a real cutup. I’ve been trying to punch his ticket for over a year. Maybe you’ll be more successful. You guys have any armored vests in your vehicles?”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I guess it beats hanging in an upscale cathouse that provides services for pedophiles.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that.”
“I was a whoremonger, Mr. Dowling. When I see a man like you, I want to shoot myself. I don’t know if some of the girls I slept with were under the legal age or not. Most of the times I went across the river, I was too drunk to know what universe I was in.”
Dowling was not listening. “Did you see anyone down here who looked like him?”
“Like Jack?”
“Who do you think I’m talking about, you idiot?” Dowling said.
“He paid a visit to my ranch just yesterday. He put a laser sight on me, but he didn’t pull the trigger. That tells me he has something else planned for me. In your case, I doubt you’ll see that red dot crawl across your skin. You’ll see his Thompson for a few seconds, then you won’t see anything at all.”
A hulking Mexican woman appeared out of the back office and placed a highball in Temple Dowling’s hand. Dowling looked at the drink as though he couldn’t understand how it had gotten there. The two girls he had been in bed with were whispering under their breath, one translating to the other the conversation of the gringos, both of them trying not to giggle. “Señor, este es muy malo para los negocios,” the Mexican woman said.
Her words of concern about her business realities had no effect on Temple Dowling. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on Hackberry’s, a lump of fear sliding down his throat so audibly that his lips parted and his mouth involuntarily made a clicking sound.
“I don’t have any authority down here, Mr. Dowling,” Hackberry said. “But when I get back to Texas, I’ll make sure the appropriate agencies hear about your sexual inclinations.”
“You’re a bastard, Holland.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Hackberry replied.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ENCLOSURE OF ANY kind had always been R. C. Bevins’s worst fear, the kind that is so great you never willingly confront it or discuss it with anyone else. Inside the darkness of the car trunk, while the gas-guzzler continued down a dirt or rock road of some kind, he tried to work his way forward and push his knees against the