House of the Rising Sun: A Novel (52 page)

“I’m not hungry.”

Jeff picked up Ishmael’s feet and cut the rope that bound his ankles. “Believe me, you’ll develop an appetite. I can rustle up a pan of brains and eggs that’ll break your heart. Come on, boy, rise and shine. Let’s get you out of this damn hole in the ground.”

R
UBY’S HEART LEAPED
when she heard the knock on her hotel door.
Oh, please, please, please let it be Ishmael and Hack,
she prayed. She could almost see through the wood door, both of them grinning, standing side by side, their bodies filling the doorway, the men who had been the center of her life and the only real family she had ever had. She threw open the door.

The woman standing in front of her did not smile. She wore a dark purple velvet dress and a straw hat with a pale blue ribbon and veils wrapped around the crown. She was holding a dome-shaped package wrapped in white butcher paper. Had it possessed an odor, Ruby would have thought it a Thanksgiving turkey.

“I’m Beatrice DeMolay, Miss Dansen,” the woman said. “Perhaps Hackberry has spoken of me.”

“I know who you are, all right,” Ruby replied. “I know how you made your money, too.”

“I have something for Hackberry. I went to his room, but he wasn’t there. I sent my driver to protect him, but Andre hasn’t called. I’m a bit worried.”

“We don’t need you to worry about us.”

“Evidently, you don’t approve of me,” Beatrice DeMolay said.

“I’ve known the young girls who end up in the kinds of places you operate.”

“And where would they be if my places hadn’t been there?”

“Peddle your justifications somewhere else, please.”

“Where is Mr. Holland?”

“None of your business.”

“It
is
my business, Miss Dansen. Mr. Holland was born in another era and thinks the old ways still work. As a consequence, his enemies use his virtues against him. Where is he?”

“He was going to Arnold Beckman’s.”

Beatrice DeMolay’s eyes were recessed, the color of coal; the bones in her face seemed to harden inside her skin. “I knew he would do it. I also knew that no one around him would try to stop him.”

“Why didn’t
you
?” Ruby said.

“Because I entered into a situation that is very complicated and could send me to prison. I’m not going to discuss this with you in the hallway. I’m also a bit tired of dealing with the indignation of people I’m trying to help.”

Ruby hesitated. “I don’t trust you.”

“Then I’m going.”

“No, come in,” Ruby said, stepping aside.

Beatrice DeMolay walked past her to the window and looked down into the street. “You need to be aware of some things, Miss Dansen. The desk clerk downstairs works for Beckman. So do some of the police officials. There is hardly anything in this city that Beckman doesn’t control. He also owns United States senators and congressmen and state attorneys and the wardens of penitentiaries. The only thing that can undo him is to use his own corrupt system against him. What is Mr. Holland planning to do at Beckman’s?”

“Whatever it takes.”

“That is really stupid. He’s undoing everything I’ve done.”

“What is it you’ve done? I don’t see it. All I see is an angry woman who’s been a lifelong tool of capitalists.”

“I convinced Beckman to make a large sale of weaponry to a consortium in Argentina. He signed all the documents. What he doesn’t know is that the weapons are being purchased for Communists in Indochina. This puts him in violation of the Sedition Act. If he doesn’t go to prison, he will spend years in court. In the meantime, most of his assets will be seized or frozen, including his warehouses.”

Ruby felt sick. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“What do you think I’m doing now?”

“What’s that in your hands?”

Beatrice DeMolay set the package on the writing table and tore off the butcher paper. Encased in domed glass was a painting of a pinkish-orange sunrise, with cherubs sitting on each of the sun’s rays. “This is how the House of the Rising Sun in New Orleans came by its name. I thought Mr. Holland might like it.”

“Why would he want something from a bordello?”

“I had it with me in Mexico when he and I first met. I treated him shabbily. I had no idea what a brave and kind man he was. I also learned that he suffered gravely because of his accidental shooting of innocent people in a boxcar.”

Ruby could hear the rain ticking on the balcony, the latched French doors straining against the wind. “Do you have a motorcar?”

T
HE ROAD WAS
washed out in two places, the countryside shrouded in mist. Darl cut the headlights on the car a hundred yards before they reached the poplar trees lining the road in front of Beckman’s building, which was dark. They could see the Spanish ruins down by the river, the crumbling walls and bell tower flickering when the remnants of the storm flared overhead. Darl parked on the road, in the shadow of the trees, but didn’t turn off the engine.

“Where exactly did you see the green clay?” Hackberry said to Andre.

“Behind the mission, where a coulee runs down to the river.”

“Why would they be in the mission?” Hackberry said.

“I only know that this is cursed ground.”

“The mission grounds are cursed?”

“No, the ground we stand on is,” Andre replied. “It was a barracoon.”

“What’s a barracoon?” Darl said.

“A holding place used by slavers,” Andre said.

“I never heard of a barracoon here’bouts,” Hackberry said.

“Maybe because you did not want to hear about it,” Andre said.

“You ever read Cotton Mather, Andre? You should. If ever a colored man inherited Mather’s great talents, it’s you.”

“What do you want to do, Mr. Holland?” Darl asked, twisting around in the seat.

“Turn on to the property and cut the engine.”

“They’ll see us.”

“Never tether your horse where you cain’t get to it.”

“Here we go,” Darl said. He angled the car up the driveway and stopped. There was no movement or show of light inside the house. Darl turned off the engine. “What about the cup?” he said.

“It stays in the car,” Hackberry said.

“This don’t feel right.”

“What doesn’t?” Hackberry said.

“Everything. What if we don’t make it out of here and these guys get the cup? What do you aim to do with that bowie knife?”

“Cut off Beckman’s fingers and make him eat them one at a time.”

Darl’s face went white.

“That’s a joke,” Hackberry said. “Trust me, everything will be all right. Let’s get out of the car and find out where they’ve got my boy.”

“I don’t believe you,” Darl said, opening the door. “Look yonder. There’s a red light shining through that mission. What have we got ourselves into, Mr. Holland?”

“J
UST PUT ONE
foot after another,” Jeff said, leading Ishmael along a stone wall, his eyes still taped. “Now turn left into this little room. There you go, buddy. Sit down in the chair. Let’s take off those eye pads so we can talk while I fix some grub. Well, lookie there.”

“Look at what?” Ishmael said.

Jeff pulled the adhesive tape from Ishmael’s brow and cheeks and the bridge of his nose and lifted the pads from his eyes. “See? It’s kind of like the Northern Lights. Nature doesn’t follow its own rules sometimes. Here, stand up and take a look.”

“Can you take off the manacles?”

“That’s up to Mr. Beckman. Stand up.”

There was one window in the room, ground-level and narrow, like a slit in a machine-gun bunker. Ishmael could see a massive bank of black clouds in the west and, at the bottom of the sky, a red ember burning inside a blue patch behind the Spanish ruins.

“It’ll go away directly,” Jeff said. “Those kinds of sunsets give me the willies. I cain’t tell you exactly why. They put me in mind of my father for some reason. He’d start preaching while he was whaling the tar out of us. I flat hated that son of a bitch. Even after one of my brothers pushed him off a cliff, I’d dream about him and have these funny feelings, like time had run out and the whole earth was fixing to be consumed in a fire. Know what I mean?”

“No, not at all.”

“You probably had a different kind of upbringing. Why you got that look on your face?”

“I didn’t know what you looked like.”

The walls were plastered and painted white. A wood cookstove stood in one corner, a tin pipe leading up through the ceiling. Jeff began stuffing kindling and newspaper into the hob. His beard was rust-colored and as stiff as wire, his eyes many-faceted, undefinable, as impervious as agate.

“When are you going to do it, Jeff?” Ishmael said.

“Do what?” Jeff said, concentrating on his work, a grin at the corner of his mouth.

“Kill me.”

“I wouldn’t do that. I like you.”

“You’re full of it, bub.”

“Wish you wouldn’t talk to me like that.”

“My father will hang your hide on a nail.”

Jeff swung his fist backward across Ishmael’s face, knocking him into the chair, Ishmael’s wrists hooked to the leather restraining belt. Jeff opened and closed his hand and shook it in the air, as though slinging water off his fingers. “Sorry about that. I got triggers in me people shouldn’t mess with. You all right?”

“No.”

“It’s the breaks of the game, kid. None of this is personal. We each got a job. One guy wins, one guys loses. Down the track everybody ends up in the same place, with a shovel-load of dirt raining down in his face.”

“I’ve already done that. On the Marne, buried alive. I told you about calling me ‘kid.’ Jeff, I hate to tell you this, but you piss me off.”

Jeff struck a match and dropped it in the hob. He tried to fan the kindling alight, then gave up and closed the hob and watched a single puff of white smoke rise from one of the stove lids. “Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“Back to your cot and the blindfold. On your feet.”

Ishmael bent forward, his head hanging down, his arms stretched behind him. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“Get up!” Jeff said, grabbing Ishmael under one arm. “Did you hear me? You get your goddamn ass out of that chair.”

Ishmael ran his body into Jeff’s and knocked him on the floor, then kicked him in the face, breaking his lips against his teeth. Then he stomped Jeff’s head with the sole of his shoe, again and again, bouncing it off the bricks, until Jeff’s eyes rolled. Ishmael fell back against the wall, the room spinning, his legs aflame. Outside, thousands of tree frogs were singing. He heard the trapdoor drop heavily from the ceiling in the tunnel and smack against solid stone, shaking the walls in the room.

“Jeff, get up here! Bring the Lewis!” Arnold Beckman shouted.

H
ACKBERRY GOT OUT
of the motorcar first and went through the breezeway to the back of the building and cut the telephone wires with his bowie knife. With the butt of the knife, he broke out a pane in the French doors on Beckman’s office and unlocked the dead bolt and stepped inside, over the broken glass. Darl and Andre followed.

Hackberry pulled his revolver and worked his way through the furniture to a door in the rear wall and turned the handle slowly and let the door swing back on its own. The room was too dark for him to see inside, but he was sure he heard someone go out another door and slam it behind him. He was sweating inside his clothes now. Even though the air outside was almost wintry, the room seemed as hot as a closed barn in July, the air pressurized, the walls damp, the silence like fingernails on a blackboard.

He felt Andre bump against him. They had made a mistake. They had gone in together and bunched up in the process. His father had been with the Fourth Texas at Petersburg and seen the Yankees, many of them black, pour into the breach known as the Crater, piling on top of one another, slipping helplessly down the clay slopes into the mire, while the Confederates regrouped and slaughtered them en masse. Hackberry turned around and motioned Andre and Darl out the door. “Go around back,” he whispered. “Three minutes from now, break a window. With something big. A brick.”

“Why?” Andre said.

“Do it,” Hackberry said, pressing his hand against Andre’s shoulder, feeling the man’s body tense. “We don’t herd up. Three minutes.”

Andre nodded, and he and Darl went back out the door into Beckman’s office. Hackberry felt his way through the room, tripping on a table that had a typewriter on it. He pulled open the door to the next room. There was no glimmer of electricity in the clouds, no moonrise, no red spark at the bottom of the sky, no sound of tree frogs drumming, nothing but darkness and a heady, sweet odor that made him think of San Francisco and Chinamen and alleyways that led to subterranean dens.

You make a dollar where you can, don’t you, Mr. Beckman?
he thought.

But his discussion was a distraction and a luxury he couldn’t afford. He had no way of knowing how many men were in the building or if his son was there or somewhere else. Worse, he didn’t know if Ishmael was even alive. David had cried out,
Absalom, Absalom, my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee.
But Absalom was a traitor unto his father, and Ishmael was nothing of the sort. Ishmael had been cast out, betrayed by Hackberry, left to grow up in poverty while his father lived on a magnificent ranch on the Guadalupe in the arms of a Jezebel. How does a man rid himself of memories like those? Answer: He doesn’t.