Actually, “courtship” wasn’t the appropriate word. Hackberry’s experience with charcoal-filtered whiskey had been a love affair as intense as any sexual relationship he’d ever had. He’d dreamed about it, awakened with a thirst for it in the morning, and turned the first drink of the day into a religious ritual, bruising a sprig of mint inside the glass, staining the shaved ice with three fingers of Jack, adding a half teaspoon of sugar, then setting the glass in the freezer for twenty minutes while he pretended that whiskey had no control over his life. The first sip made him close his eyes with a sense of both release and visceral serenity that he could associate only with the rush and sense of peace that a morphine drip had purchased for him in a naval hospital.

“Not much luck, huh, kemosabe?” Pam said as they entered a saloon that was defined by an old checkerboard dance floor and a long railed bar with a big yellowed mahogany-framed mirror behind it.

“What’d you call me?” Hackberry asked.

“It’s just a joke. Remember the Lone Ranger and his sidekick, Tonto? Tonto was always calling the Lone Ranger ‘kemosabe.’”

“That’s what Rie, my second wife, used to call me.”

“Oh,” Pam replied, clearly not knowing what else to say.

Hackberry opened his badge holder and placed the photo of Liam Eriksson on the bar for the bartender to look at. “Ever see this guy in here?” he said.

The bartender wore a short-sleeve tropical print shirt. His big forearms were wrapped with a soft pad of hair, and just above his wrist was a green and red tattoo of the Marine Corps globe and anchor. “No, cain’t say I’ve ever seen him.”

“Know a gal by the name of Mona, maybe a working girl?”

“What’s she look like?”

“Middle-aged, reddish hair, five feet three or four.”

The bartender propped his arms on the bar and stared at the painted-over front window. He shook his head. “Cain’t say as I remember anyone specific like that.”

“I noticed your tattoo,” Hackberry said.

“You were in the Corps?”

“I was a navy corpsman attached to the First Marine Division.”

“In Korea?”

“Yes, sir, I was.”

“You made the Chosin or the Punch Bowl?”

“I was at the Chosin Reservoir the third week of November, 1950.”

The bartender raised his eyebrows, then looked at the painted-over window again. “What’s the beef on this gal Mona?”

“No beef at all. We just need some information.”

“There’s a woman who lives at the Brazos Hotel about five blocks toward downtown. She’s a hooker, but more of a juicer than a hooker. Her dance card is pretty used up. Maybe she’s your gal. Y’all want a drink? It’s on me.”

“How about carbonated water on ice?” Pam said.

“Make that two,” Hackberry said.

Neither Hackberry nor Pam noticed a solitary man sitting at a back table, deep in the gloom behind the pool table. The man was holding up a newspaper, appearing to study it in the poor light that filtered through an alleyway window. His crutches were propped on a chair, out of sight. He did not lower his newspaper until Hackberry and Pam had left the saloon.

THE BRAZOS HOTEL was made of red sandstone, built in the 1880s, and seemed to rise like a forgotten reminder of lost Victorian elegance in the midst of twenty-first-century urban decay. The lobby contained potted palms, a threadbare carpet, furniture from a secondhand store, a telephone switchboard with disconnected terminals jacked into the holes, and an ancient registration desk backdropped by pigeonholes with room keys and mail in them.

A short-necked, heavyset Mexican woman was behind the desk, a big smile on her face when she talked. Hackberry showed her the photo of Liam Eriksson.

“Yeah, I seen him. Not for a few days, but I seen him here a couple of times, sitting in the lobby or going up the stairs. The elevator don’t always work, so he’d take the stairs.”

“Did he rent a room here?” Hackberry asked.

“No, he was here to see his girlfriend.”

“Mona?” Hackberry said.

“That’s right, Mona Drexel. You know her?”

“I’ve been looking for her. Is she in now?”

“You a sheriff, huh? How come you don’t have a gun?”

“I don’t want to scare people. Which room is Ms. Drexel in?”

“Her room is one-twenty-nine. But I haven’t seen her in a couple of days. See, the key is in her box. She always leaves her key when she goes out, ’cause sometimes maybe she drinks a little too much and loses it.”

“Could I have the key, please?”

“Are you supposed to do that, go in somebody’s room when they ain’t there?”

“If you give us permission, it’s okay,” Hackberry said.

“You sure?”

“She could be sick in there and need help.”

“I’ll open it for you,” the Mexican woman said.

The three of them took the elevator upstairs. When the Mexican woman inserted the key in the door and started to turn it, Hackberry put his hand on hers. “We’ll take it from here,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

Before the woman could respond, Pam fitted her hands on the woman’s shoulders and moved her away from the door. “It’s okay,” she said, slipping a revolver from under her shirt. “We appreciate what you’ve done. Just stay back.”

Hackberry turned the key and pushed the door open, staying slightly behind the jamb.

The room had been vacated, the closet cleaned out, the drawers in the dresser hanging open and empty. Pam stood in the middle of the room and bit on a thumbnail. She put her revolver back inside the clip-on holster on her belt and pulled her shirt over the handles. “What a waste of time,” she said.

Hackberry went into the bathroom and came back out. In the shadows between a small writing table and the bed, he saw a wastebasket crammed full of newspaper and fast-food wrappers and soiled paper towels. He picked up the can and dumped it on the bedspread. Used Q-tips and balls of hair and dust and wads of Kleenex fell out on the bedspread with the other trash. After Hackberry sorted it all out, he washed his hands in the bathroom. When he came out, Pam was standing over the writing desk, studying the cover of a Time magazine she had positioned under the desk lamp.

“This was stuck under the pillow. Take a look,” she said.

The magazine was two months old, and on the mailing label was the name and address of a beauty parlor. At least a half-dozen phone numbers were inked on the cover. Pam tapped her finger on a notation at the bottom of the cover, one that someone had circled twice for emphasis. “‘PJC, Traveler’s Rest two-oh-nine,’” she read aloud.

“Preacher Jack Collins,” Hackberry said.

“The one and only. Maybe we’ve got the sonofabitch,” she said.

She dialed information and asked for both the phone number and the street address of a Traveler’s Rest motel. She wrote both down in her notebook and hung up. “It’s not more than two miles away,” she said.

“Good work, Pam. Let’s go,” he said.

“What about Clawson?”

“What about him?”

“We’re supposed to coordinate, right?”

Hackberry didn’t reply.

“Right, Hack?” she said.

“I’m not totally confident about Clawson.”

“After you get all over my case about this guy, you suddenly have reservations?”

“One of his colleagues told me Clawson works alone. I took that to mean he operates under a black flag. We don’t do business that way.”

“The guy could have ruined my career and sent me to jail on top of it. If you’re going to stiff him now, I won’t be party to it.”

Hackberry opened his cell phone and punched in Clawson’s number. “It’s Sheriff Holland,” he said. “We think we’ve got Jack Collins located. We just got lucky. A bartender knew the woman Eriksson was with at the car-title place. We’re at her hotel now. It looks like she’s blown town.” Hackberry gave Clawson the room number and the address of the motel where he thought Preacher Jack Collins might be staying.