James Burke - Rain Gods

“I can ask Junior to get it and send it to us,” she said.

“Junior doesn’t quite look upon me as a member of his fan club.”

Vikki was sitting at the small desk by the television set. She stared emptily at the decrepit state of their room-the water-stained wallpaper, the air-conditioning unit that rattled in the window frame, the bedspread that she feared to touch, the shower stall blooming with mold. “There’s another way,” she said.

“To turn ourselves in?”

“We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I tried it already. That one won’t flush,” he said.

“You tried to turn us in?”

“I called a government eight hundred number. They switched me around to a bunch of different offices and finally to a guy with Immigration and Customs. He said his name was Clawson.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It didn’t go too well. He said he wanted to meet me, like somehow all this was between him and me and we were buds or something. He had a voice like a robot. You know what’s going on when people talk like robots? They don’t want you to know what they’re thinking.”

“What’d you tell him, Pete?”

“That I was by the church when the shooting started. I told him the guy who was paying me three hundred dollars to drive the truck was named Hugo. I told him I feel like a damn coward for running away while all those women were being killed. He said I needed to come in and make a statement and I’d be protected. Then he said, ‘Is Ms. Gaddis with you? We can he’p her, too.’

“I said, ‘She’s not a part of this.’ He says, ‘We know about the characters at the truck stop, Pete. We think they either killed her or she put a hole in one of them. Maybe she’s dead and lying unburied someplace. You need to do the right thing, soldier.’”

Pete sat back down on the bed and began drawing his shirt up one arm, the network of muscles in his back tightening like whipcord.

“What’d you say?”

“I told him to kiss my ass. When people try to make you feel guilty, it’s because they want to install dials on you. It also means they’re gonna sell you down the river the first chance they get.”

“Can the FBI trace a cell phone call?” she asked.

“They can locate the tower it bounces off of. Why?”

“I’m going to call Junior.”

“I think that’s a bad idea. Junior makes a lot of noise, but Junior looks after Junior.”

“You only get thirty percent disability. It’s hardly enough to pay the rent. What are we supposed to do? This all started in a bar where you were drinking with idiots who soak their brains in mescal. For three hundred dollars, you put our lives in the hands of people who are morally insane.”

She saw the injury in his face. She turned away, her eyes closed, tears squeezing onto her eyelashes. Then, in her inability to control even the tear ducts in her face, she began hammering the tops of her thighs with her fists.

THAT AFTERNOON, WHILE Pete slept, Vikki walked down the road and used the pay phone to call Junior collect at the diner. She told him about the disability check and about their financial desperation. She also told him that the man Junior had sold milk to had tried to kidnap and possibly kill her.

“Maybe that’s more information than I need to know,” he said.

“Are you serious? That guy was in your diner. A guy with an orange beard was there, too. I think he was part of it.”

“The check’s at the mailbox in front of that shack y’all were living in?” Junior said.

“You know where we were living. Stop pretending.”

“The sheriff was here. So were some federal people. They thought maybe you were dead.”

“I’m not.”

“Did you shoot that guy who came here to buy milk?”

“Are you going to help us or not?”

“Isn’t this called aiding and abetting or something?”

“You are really pissing me off, Junior.”

“Give me your address.”

She hesitated.

“Think I’m gonna turn you in?” he said.

She gave him the address of the motel, the name of the town, and the zip code. With each word she spoke, she felt like she was taking off a piece of armor.

After she hung up, she went to the bar and asked the bartender for a glass of water. The combination steak house and beer joint was a spacious place, cool and dark, with big electric floor fans humming away, the heads of stuffed animals mounted on the debarked and polished log walls. “I put some ice and a lime slice in it,” the bartender said.

“Thank you,” she replied.

“You look kind of tuckered out. You visiting here’bouts?”

She gulped from the iced drink and blew out her breath. “No, I’m a Hollywood actress on location. You need a waitress?”

PAM TIBBS WALKED from the dispatcher’s cage into Hackberry’s office, tapping with one knuckle on the doorjamb as she entered.

“What is it?” Hackberry said, looking up from some photos in a manila folder.

“There’s a disturbance at Junior’s diner.”

“Send Felix or R.C.”

“The disturbance is with that ICE agent, Clawson.”

Hackberry made a sucking sound with his teeth.

“I’ll take it,” Pam said.

“No, you won’t.”

“Are those the photos of the Thai women?” she said. When he didn’t answer, she said, “Why are you looking at those, Hack? Say a prayer for those poor women and stop sticking pins in yourself.”

“Some of them are wearing dark clothes. Some of them are wearing what were probably the best clothes they owned. They weren’t dressed for hot country. They thought they were going somewhere else. Nothing at that crime scene makes sense.”

Pam Tibbs gazed at the street and at the shadows of clouds moving across the cinder-block and stucco buildings and broken sidewalks. She heard Hackberry getting up from his chair.

“Is Clawson still at the diner?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she replied.

It took them only ten minutes to get to the diner, the flasher bar rippling, the siren off. Isaac Clawson’s motor pool vehicle was parked between the diner and the nightclub next door, both rear doors open. Junior was handcuffed in the backseat, wrists behind him, while Clawson stood outside the vehicle, talking into a cell phone.

“Hack?” she said.

“Would you give it a rest?”

She pulled up behind Clawson’s vehicle and turned off the engine. But she didn’t open the door. “That guy called you a sonofabitch. He’ll never do that in my presence again,” she said.

Hackberry put his hat back on and got out on the gravel and walked toward Isaac Clawson. To the south, he could see heat waves rippling off the hardpan, dust devils spinning in the wind, the distant ridge of mountains etched against an immaculate blue sky. He wore a long-sleeve cotton shirt snap-buttoned at the wrists, which was his custom at the office, regardless of the season, and he felt loops of moisture already forming under his armpits.

“What’s the problem?” he said to the ICE agent.

“There is no problem,” Clawson replied.

“How about it, Junior?” Hackberry said.

Junior wore white trousers and a white T-shirt and still had a kitchen apron on. The sideburns trimmed in a flare on his cheeks were sparkling with sweat. “He thinks I know where Vikki Gaddis is.”

“Do you?” Hackberry asked.

“I run a diner. I don’t monitor the lives of kids who cain’t stay out of trouble.”

“Everybody tells me you had more than an employer’s interest in Vikki,” Clawson said. “She’s broke and on the run and has no family. I think you’re the first person she would come to for help. You want to see her dead? The best way to accomplish that is to keep stonewalling us.”