James Burke - Rain Gods

“You still with me, Sheriff?” Riser said.

“Yeah, copy that. Listen, isn’t Hugo Cistranos the key? Don’t tell me y’all don’t have dials on this guy. Why aren’t you squeezing him instead of chasing Flores and Vikki Gaddis around?”

“I don’t get to call all the shots, Sheriff.”

Hackberry could sense the change in Riser’s mood. Through his office door, he could see Pam Tibbs escorting Flores and Gaddis to a small room that was used for interviews. “I can appreciate your situation,” he said.

“Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. I had to go back to Washington, and I’ll probably have to take off again tomorrow. What’s all this about? If I were you, I’d ease up. You’re a combat veteran. Sometimes you have to lose a few for the greater good. That might sound Darwinian, but those who believe different belong in monasteries.”

“This is all about nailing Josef Sholokoff, isn’t it?”

“Neither of us makes the rules.”

“Have a good trip to Washington.”

“Let me be up-front again. I’ll try to keep you in the loop. But the word is ‘try.’”

“You couldn’t be more clear, Mr. Riser.” Hackberry replaced the receiver in the cradle. Pam Tibbs stood in the doorway. He looked woodenly at her.

“I hope Bonnie and Clyde appreciate this,” she said.

“Bring a cruiser around to the back door. Bonnie and Clyde were never here. Indicate that to Maydeen on your way out.”

“You got it, boss man.”

“Don’t call me that.”

THE THERMOMETER HAD just peaked at 119 degrees when Nick Dolan carried his bag out of the Phoenix airport and hailed a cab, one with more dents than it should have had. The driver was from the Mid-east and had festooned the inside of the cab with beadwork and pictures of mosques and words from the Koran and was burning incense on the dashboard and playing Arabian music on a tape deck. “Where to, sir?” he said.

“I’m not sure. Where can you get a blow job in Mecca?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“The Embassy Suites.”

“In Phoenix?”

“What’s your name?”

“Mohammed.”

“I’m shocked. No, I want to go to the Embassy Suites in Istanbul. Do you hand out earplugs with that music?”

“Earplugs? What earplugs, sir?”

“The Embassy Suites off Camelback.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hang on, sir.” The driver floored the cab, swinging out into traffic, throwing Nick across the seat with his luggage.

“Hey, we’re not on a hijack mission here,” Nick said. He knew his histrionic display at the driver’s expense was a mask for the fear that once again had taken up residence in his breast and was feeding at his heart. He had gotten the phone number of Josef Sholokoff from his old partner in the escort business and had made an appointment to meet Sholokoff at his house at nine P.M. that evening. The fact that Sholokoff had given Nick easy access to his home only increased Nick’s sense of insecurity.

“Hey, Mohammed, you ever hear of a guy named Josef Sholokoff?” Nick said. He gazed out the window, waiting for the driver’s reply. He watched the palm trees and stucco homes on the boulevard zoom by, the gardens bursting with flowers.

“Hey, you up there in the clouds of incense, you know a guy by the name of-”

The driver’s eyes locked on Nick’s inside the rearview mirror. “Yes, sir, Embassy Suites,” he said. He turned up the volume, filling the cab with the sounds of flutes and sitars.

Nick checked in to the hotel and undressed down to his boxer shorts and strap undershirt. His suite was on the fifth floor and overlooked the outdoor swimming pool; he could hear children shouting and splashing in the water. He started to go into the bathroom and take a shower but felt so weak he thought he was going to collapse. He fixed a glass of ice and bourbon from the hospitality bar and sat down in a chair and picked up the telephone. He could see his reflection in the mirror on the bathroom door. It was that of a small, puffy, round man in striped underwear, his childlike hand clenching a thick water glass, his pale legs knotted with clumps of varicose veins, his face a white balloon with eyes and a mouth painted on it. He punched his wife’s cell phone number into the phone.

“Hello?” she said.

“It’s me, Esther.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“In Phoenix.”

“Arizona?”

“Yeah, what are you doing?”

“What am I doing? I’m pulling weeds in the flower bed. Which is what you should be doing. You’re actually in Arizona? Not just down the street having a nervous breakdown?”

“I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be upset. I got a return flight booked at six-forty-five in the morning. So it’s not like I’m really gone.”

“You’re over a thousand miles away, but that’s not gone?”

“I’m gonna see this guy Josef Sholokoff. I called him up at his house.”

“This guy is worse than Jack Collins.”

“Nothing is gonna happen. I’ll be at his house. He’s not gonna hurt me in his own house.”

“I think I’m going to faint. Hold on, I got to get in the shade.”

“Did you know Esther was the name of Bugsy Siegel’s wife?”

“Who cares? Is my husband totally nuts?”

“I’m saying I’m no Benny Siegel, Esther.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

“You there?” he said. “Esther? What’s wrong?”

Then he realized she was crying. “Don’t be sad,” he said. “You’re brave. I married the bravest, prettiest woman in New Orleans. We’re gonna start over again. We got the restaurant. We got each other and the kids. The rest of it doesn’t matter. Hello?”

“Come home, Nick,” she said.

Nick showered and, for the next half hour, lay nude on top of his king-size bed, the points of his feet and hands spread in a giant X, like Ixion fastened to his burning wheel. Then he put cold water on his face and neck, and dressed in slacks and loafers and a fresh shirt, and called for a cab. He walked out of the hotel and stood under the porte cochere, his head as light as helium. The city was beautiful in the summer twilight, the palm trees tall and rustling, the mountaintops sharply etched against a magenta sky, the outdoor cafés filled with families and young people for whom death was an abstraction that happened only to others.

The dented cab that pulled up for him looked altogether too familiar. Nick opened the back door, and a sweet-sick cloud of incense that made him think of perfumed camel flop covered his skin and clothes. “Mohammed,” Nick said.

“Tell me where you want to go, sir,” the driver said.

“To the home of Josef Sholokoff,” Nick replied, getting in the back. He wondered if he was actually trying to get Mohammed to talk him out of his mission. “I got the address on this piece of paper. It’s up there in the hills somewhere.”

“Not good, sir.”

“When we get there, I want you to wait for me.”

“Not good at all, sir. No, not good. Very bad, sir.”

“You’re my man. You gotta have my back.”

The driver was turned all the way around in the seat, looking aghast at his fare. “I think you have been given very poor advice about your visit, sir. This is not a nice man. Would you like to go to the baseball game? Or I can drive you by the zoo. A very nice zoo here.”

“You people blow yourselves up with bombs. You afraid of some Russian schmuck who probably can’t get it up without watching one of his own porn films?”

Mohammed pushed down the flag on his meter. “Hang on, sir,” he said.

The cab snaked its way up a mountain that was just north of a golf resort. From the window Nick could see the great golden bowl of the city, the flow of headlights through its streets, the linear patterns of palm trees along the boulevards, the concrete canals brimming with water, the chains of sun-bladed swimming pools that extended for miles through the neighborhoods of the rich. The west side of town, where the hardscrabble whites and poor Hispanics lived, was another story.