James Burke: Rain Gods

“No. Collins is out there. I know it.”

“Out where?”

“Someplace we don’t suspect. It won’t be part of a pattern. It won’t be in a place we look for the bad guys. He won’t be surrounded by whores or dope or stolen goods or even weapons. He’ll be in a place that’s as ordinary as rocks and dirt.”

“What are you saying, Hack?”

He shrugged and smiled. “Where’s your beer?”

“I drank it.”

“Open another one. It doesn’t bother me.”

“I only bought one.”

He stood up, towering over her. Her shadow seemed to dissolve against his body. She lowered her head and folded her arms across her breasts. He could hear her breathing in the dark.

“I’m really old,” he said.

“You’ve said that.”

“My history is suspect, my judgment poor.”

“Not to me.”

He cupped his hands on her shoulders. She hooked her thumbs in her back pockets. He could see the gray part in the shine on her hair. He bent over her, his arms circling her back, his hands touching her ribs and sliding up between her shoulder blades into the stiffness of her hair on the nape of her neck. Then he drifted his fingers across her cheek and the corner of her eye, brushing a lock of hair back from her forehead.

He felt her step on top of his feet, and before he knew it, she had raised her mouth inches from his, the yeasty smell of beer touching his lips.

WHEN PREACHER UNZIPPED the flap on Bobby Lee’s polyethylene tent, the storm had passed and the heavens were ink-black again, bursting with stars that stretched from horizon to horizon, the mesas in the east pink and barely visible against the few distant thunderheads that still flickered with lightning.

Bobby Lee pushed his head out of his sleeping bag, his hair matted, his eyes bleary with sleep. “Is the plane here?”

“Not yet. But I made coffee. Get up. I want to take care of some business,” Preacher said.

“It’s cold.”

“Put your coat and hat on. Take my gloves.”

“I’ve never seen it this cold this time of year.”

“I’ll get your coffee. Where are your boots?”

“What’s going on, Jack?”

Preacher lowered his voice. “I want to give you your money now. Don’t wake up Molo and Angel. Nor the woman.”

“You’re really taking her with us?”

“What did you think I was going to do?”

“Shoot your wad and get it out of your system?”

Preacher was squatting, balancing on his haunches. He looked at the fire curling and then flattening under the tin coffeepot he had set on the refrigerator grille propped across a ring of blackened rocks. His eyes were as empty as glass in the firelight, his shoulders poking through his suit coat. “Coarseness toward women doesn’t behoove a man, son.”

“You slept in the tent with her?” Bobby Lee said, pulling on his boots.

“No, I wouldn’t do that, not unless I was invited.”

“She invited us to kidnap her? You’re one for the books, Jack.” Bobby Lee climbed out of the tent, pulling on a black sheep-lined leather coat that was spiderwebbed with cracks. “Where’s the spendolies-”

Preacher placed a finger to his lips and began walking up the compacted footpath to the cave opening in the side of the mountain, his body bent slightly forward into the incline, his right hand hooked through the bail of a battery-powered lantern. He glanced back at the large tent where the two Mexican killers slept, then smiled enigmatically at Bobby Lee. “The freshness of the predawn hour has no equivalent,” he said. When he stepped inside the cave, the darkness enveloped him like a cloak.

“Jack?” Bobby Lee said.

“In here,” Preacher said, turning on the lantern, which gave off a glow that was gray and dim and created wispy shadows on the cave walls.

Bobby Lee sat down on a rock and watched Preacher pull a suitcase from behind a wood pallet that he sometimes dried his clothes on.

“I promised you ten percent. That’s twenty thousand dollars,” Preacher said, squatting to unlatch the suitcase. “Looks nice bundled in rubber bands, doesn’t it? What are you going to do with all that money, Bobby Lee?”

“I’m thinking about leasing a building in Key West and starting up an interior decorating business there. The place is full of rich fudge-packers building condos.”

“I’ve got a question to ask you,” Preacher said. “Remember when you told me you and Liam had been talking about my health, about what I ate and didn’t eat, that sort of thing? I just cain’t quite get that image out of my head. Why would you two be so concerned about my food intake? It seems a peculiar subject for young fellows to have any investment in. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“I don’t even remember what we were talking about.” Bobby Lee yawned, his eyes going out of focus with fatigue. He turned his face to the cold air puffing through the cave entrance. “The stars are beautiful over those bluffs.”

“I don’t talk about what you eat and drink, Bobby Lee. It’s of no consequence to me. So why would you and Liam be having these discussions about my diet?”

Bobby Lee shook his head. “It’s too early in the morning for this stuff.”

“You’ve always been loyal to me, Bobby Lee. You have, haven’t you? No temptations, so to speak?”

“I’ve modeled my life on you.”

“Can you see the little crack of light in the east? It’s behind those thunderheads. A little rip in all that blackness. Our pilot is going to fly us right through that hole into the sunlight. Then we’ll make a wide turn to the south and cross into Mexico and fly all the way to the ocean. This afternoon we’ll be eating pineapple and mangoes on a beach and watch people race horses in the surf. But first you have to tell me the truth, or our relationship will remain permanently damaged. We cain’t allow that to happen, boy.”

“Truth about what? How’d I damage our relationship?”

“You were plotting with Liam to hurt me, Bobby Lee. People are frail. They get scared and betray their friends. I forgive you for it. You thought you’d go where the smart bet was. But you’ve got to own up to it. Otherwise I can only conclude you think I’m a stupid man. You think I’ll abide someone letting on like I’m a stupid man?”

“You’re not stupid, Jack.”

“Then what am I?”

“Pardon?”

“If I’m not stupid or ignorant, then what am I? Somebody you can deceive and not pay any price for it? Somebody with no honor or self-respect who lets other people wipe their feet on him? Which is it?”

Bobby Lee propped his hands on his thighs. He stared at his feet and at the cave opening and at the landscape starting to gray with the coming of dawn. “Everybody thought you were losing it. I did, too, at least for a while. You’re right, though, I was selfish and thinking of myself. Then I realized you were the only guy I admired, that Liam and Artie and Hugo and the others weren’t real soldiers, but you were.”

“You and Liam were going to pop me?”

“It didn’t get that far.”

Preacher was smiling. “Come on, Bobby Lee. You’ve given honest witness about your failure. Don’t water the drink now. You’ll undo the courage and the principle you’ve shown me.”

“Yeah, we talked about popping you.”

“You and Liam?”

“I told Liam that was the order from Artie Rooney and Hugo. But I decided all of them were a bunch of dirtbags, and I called you up on my cell phone and told you how much I respected you.”

“That was just before you decided to let Liam eat a bullet point-blank in the women’s restroom? I’ll hand it to you. You can slide around and reshape yourself faster than quicksilver.”

Bobby Lee started to speak, then realized Preacher had already disengaged from the conversation and was standing in the cave’s entrance, his hands on his hips, watching the wind ripple the tents down below, watching the mysterious transformation of the desert from darkness to a pewterlike stillness that resembled a photograph defining itself inside developing fluid. Then Preacher said something Bobby Lee couldn’t quite hear.