thought they’d sell me to Al Qaeda. Then they decided that was too much trouble and they’d sell me to some Mexican gangsters. That was when another fellow and I broke loose.”
“You thought you were going to bring down Al Qaeda by yourself?”
“I was aiming to get some of them, that’s for sure. But I was done helping kill third-world people. I got to say something here. I don’t know everything that goes on in Jack’s head, but somewhere inside him, there’s a better man than the one you see.”
“Keep telling yourself that crap,” Pam said.
“Chief Deputy Tibbs isn’t very objective about Jack, Noie. That’s because he tried to machine-gun her,” Hackberry said.
Noie Barnum looked at her blankly.
“What do you know about Josef Sholokoff?” Hackberry asked.
“I don’t recall anybody by that name.”
“He’s a Russian criminal who wants to sell you to the highest bidder,” Hackberry said. “We think he may have crucified a minister by the name of Cody Daniels. You ever hear of him?”
“No, I haven’t,” Noie said. “A fellow was crucified?”
“You seem blissfully ignorant of all the wreckage swirling around you. Does that bother you at all?” Hackberry said.
“You’re damn right it does. You stop talking to me like that.”
“There’s a ranch about six miles below the four-lane. The south end of the property bleeds into Mexico. I think that’s where y’all were hiding out. Jack is probably long gone, and he’s not driving that Trans Am anymore, either. But I need to know. Is that where y’all were holed up?”
“Ask Jack when you catch him.”
“We don’t abuse prisoners here,” Pam said, stepping closer to Barnum, one finger barely touching his sternum.
“Ma’am?” he said.
“I just wanted you to take note of that fact,” she said. “It’s why I’m not pounding you into marmalade. But you open your mouth like that one more time, and I promise you, all bets are off.”
Downstairs, five minutes later, Pam came into Hackberry’s office and closed the door behind her. “I’m backing your play, Hack, whatever it is. But I think you’re taking an awful risk here,” she said.
“We don’t owe the feds diddly-squat,” he replied. “We apprehended Barnum. They didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, they’re on a need-to-know basis. Right now I don’t figure they need to know anything.”
“This is a national security issue. They’re going to eat you alive. If they don’t, your enemies around here will.”
“That’s the breaks.”
“God, you’re stubborn.”
“I got a call from Temple Dowling. He says Josef Sholokoff believes Dowling put a hit on him.”
“Why’s he think that?”
“Because somebody killed a couple of Sholokoff’s men at his game farm.”
“Why didn’t we hear anything about it?”
“Sholokoff didn’t report it.”
“What did you tell Dowling?”
“To get out of town. That he was on his own,” Hackberry said.
“What’s the problem?”
“I was pretty hard-nosed with him. Maybe I took satisfaction in his discomfort.”
“Dowling is a pedophile and deserves anything that happens to him.”
“He said Sholokoff takes people apart.”
“In what way?”
“Physically, piece by piece,” Hackberry said.
He realized her attention was focused outside the window. A man in rumpled slacks, wearing canvas boat shoes without socks and his shirttail hanging out, was crossing the street hurriedly, a brown paper bag folded under his arm. “What’s wrong?” Hackberry asked.
“That guy out there. He was just released.”
“What about him?”
“He’s a check writer. Loving and Jeff Davis counties have bench warrants on him, but they didn’t want to pay the costs for getting him back.”
“I’m still not following you.”
“He was waiting to be taken downstairs when R.C. brought Barnum in. I remember he was watching us move everybody down to the tank. He was at the window, too, looking down in the alley.”
“He probably wouldn’t know who Barnum is.”
“No, I saw his jacket. He was in Huntsville. He got clemency on a five-bit for sending his cell partner to the injection table. He’s a professional snitch.”
Hackberry thought about it. “Leave him alone. If he has any suspicions, we don’t want to confirm them.”
“Sorry, I had my hands full up there.”
“Forget it,” he said.
She looked at him for a long time before she spoke. “You want them to come after Barnum, don’t you?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I’m not that smart,” he said. “You think I made a target out of Temple Dowling?”
“You’re in the wrong business, kemo sabe, but I love you just the same,” she replied.
What a difference a day and a change of topography could make, Temple Dowling told himself as he gazed through the lounge window of the Santa Fe hotel he and three of his men had checked in to. The evening sky was turquoise and ribbed with pink clouds, a rainbow arching across a canyon in the west, the sun an orange ball behind the mountains. The bartender brought him another vodka Collins packed with shaved ice and cherries and lemon and lime slices, and when Temple lifted it to his lips, the coldness slid down his throat like balm to his soul. Somehow his feelings of failure and humiliation at the hands of that clown Holland had evaporated during the flight to New Mexico. In fact, Temple was confident enough to smile at his foibles, as though someone else had temporarily occupied his skin and admitted his fear of Josef Sholokoff. It was nothing more than a silly lapse, Temple told himself. He had been tired, worn out by worry, beset on all sides by an army of incompetent employees and government bureaucrats and hayseed cops, Holland in particular. Why had Temple’s father ever thought that idiot could be a congressman, a man who probably couldn’t find his dork unless he tied a string on it? Temple sipped from his Collins and dipped a taco chip in a bowl of guacamole and chewed on it. Then an image he didn’t want to remember floated before his eyes-being discovered by Holland and his chief deputy in the Mexican brothel with two underage girls.
He quickly transformed his emotion into one of righteous outrage. Temple Dowling didn’t turn them into prostitutes. Poverty and hunger did. Was that his fault? Should they starve? Would that make the world a better place? What gave Holland the right to look down on him? Wasn’t he intelligent enough to understand that most men who are attracted to children seek innocence in their lives?
He stopped, his mind seizing up as though he had experienced a brain freeze. He shouldn’t have used the word “children.” He was never attracted to children. He was not a pedophile. He just wanted to be with teenage girls while they were blooming into women. What finer creation was there than a young girl? What greater tragedy was there than seeing them left to the mercies of America’s street culture? Or seeing them turned over to degenerates like Sholokoff, who made addicts of them and used them in porn films? Why was Temple Dowling the scapegoat? He had never treated a woman or girl badly in his life.
He drank his glass empty. The sky had darkened over the mountains, as though a lavender rain were starting to fall where the sun had just set. Where were his men?
“Would you like another, sir?” the bartender asked. He wore a white jacket and a red bow tie and black pants. His face had no color, not even the shadow of a beard, but his hair was as black and liquid in appearance as melted plastic.
“Yeah, hit me again,” Temple replied. “What’s all that noise next door?”
“It’s a young people’s organization of some kind.” The bartender’s cheeks were sunken, his mouth like a
