“How’d you-” Tim began.

“I get around,” Preacher said.

The spent casings shuddering from the bolt of his weapon clattered off the doorjamb, rained on the concrete, and bounced and rolled into the grass. The staccato explosions from the muzzle were like the zigzags of an electric arc.

Preacher limped toward the waiting car, the downturned silhouette of his weapon leaking smoke. Not one room door opened, nor did one face appear at a window. The motel and the neon-pink tubing wrapped around its eaves and the palm tree etched against the sky by the entrance had taken on the emptiness of a movie set. As Preacher drove away, he stared through the big glass window of the front office. The clerk was gone, and so were any guests who might have been waiting to register. From the highway, he glanced back at the motel again. Its insularity, its seeming abandonment by all its inhabitants, the total absence of any detectable humanity within its confines, made him think of a snowy wind blowing outside a boxcar on a desolate siding, a pot of vegetables starting to burn on an untended fire, although he had no way to account for the association.

18

VIKKI GADDIS GOT off work at the steak house at ten P.M. and walked to the Fiesta motel with a San Antonio newspaper folded under her arm. When she entered the room, Pete was watching television in his skivvies. His T-shirt looked like cheesecloth against the red scar tissue on his back. She popped open the newspaper and dropped it in his lap. “Those guys were at the restaurant three nights ago,” she said. “They were bikers. They looked road-fried.”

Pete stared down at the booking-room photographs of three men. They were in their twenties and possessed the rugged good looks of men in their prime. Unlike the subjects of most booking-room photography, none of the men appeared fatigued or under the influence or nonplussed or artificially amused. Two of them had served time in San Quentin, one in Folsom. All three had been arrested for possession with intent to distribute. All three had been suspects in unsolved homicides.

“You talked to them?” Pete asked.

“No, they talked to me. I thought they were just hitting on me. I sang four numbers with the band, and they tried to get me to sit down with them. I told them I had to work, I was a waitress and just sang occasion ally with the band. They thought it was funny that I sang ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I thought they were jerks and not worth talking about.”

Pete began reading the newspaper story again. “They were machine-gunned,” he said. He bit a hangnail. “What’d they say to you?”

“They wanted to know my name. They wanted to know where I was from.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“That I had to get back to work. Later, they were asking the bartender about me.”

“What in particular?”

“Like how long I’d been working there. Like had I ever been a professional folksinger. Like didn’t I used to live around Langtry or Pumpville? Except these guys had California tags, and why should they know anything about little towns on the border?”

Pete turned off the television but continued to stare at the screen.

“They’re contract killers, aren’t they?” she said.

“They didn’t follow you after you got off work. They didn’t come around the motel, either. Maybe you were right-they were just jerks trying to pick you up.”

“There’s something else.”

He looked at her and waited.

“I talked with the bartender before I got off tonight. I showed him the newspaper. He said, ‘One of those bikers was talking about calling up some guy named Hugo.’”

“You’re just telling me all this now?” Pete said.

“No, you’re not listening. The bartender-” She gave up and sat down on the bed beside him, not touching him. “I can’t think straight.” She pushed at her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Maybe they did follow me home and I didn’t see them. What if they found out where we’re living and they called up this guy Hugo and told him?”

“I don’t get it, though. Who killed them?” Pete said. “The story doesn’t say what kind of machine gun the shooter used. There’s a lot of illegal stuff available now-AKs, Uzis, semiautos with hell-triggers.”

“What difference does that make?”

“The story says there were shell casings all over the crime scene. If the guy had a Thompson with a drum on it-”

“Pete, will you just spit it out? What are you saying? You talk in hieroglyphics.”

“The guy who killed all the women behind the church used a Thompson. They’re hard to come by. They shoot forty-five-caliber ammunition. The ammo drum will hold fifty rounds. Maybe the guy who killed the women behind the church is the same guy who machine-gunned the bikers.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Why would they be killing each other?”

“Maybe they’re not working together.” Pete read more, running his thumb down to the last paragraph. He set the paper aside and rubbed his palms on his knees.

“Say it,” she said.

“The shooter had a limp. Maybe he uses a walking cane. A trucker saw him from the highway.”

Vikki got up from the bed. Her face was pale, the skin tight against the bone, as though she were staring into a cold wind. “He’s the man I shot, isn’t he?”

Pete began putting on his trousers.

“Where you going?”

“Out.”

“To do what?”

“Not to drink, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Her eyes remained accusatory, locked on his.

“I brought all this on us, Vikki. You don’t have to say it.”

“Don’t leave.”

“More of the same isn’t gonna cut it.”

“I’m not mad at you. I’m just tired.”

“I’ll be back.”

“When?”

“When you see me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Boost a car. I wasn’t just a crewman in a tank. I was a mechanic. See, there’s an upside to getting french-fried in Baghdad.”

“Damn you, Pete.”

HUGO CISTRANOS WAS sitting on a canvas chair on the beach in his Speedos, the waves capping and sliding in a yellow froth up on the sand. The air smelled like brass and iodine. It smelled of the crusted seaweed around his feet and the ruptured air sacs of the jellyfish that lay in a jagged line at the water’s edge. It smelled of the fear that fouled his heart and pooled in his glands that no amount of suntan lotion could hide.

He tried Preacher’s cell phone again. He had already left six messages, then had listened to a recording tell him Preacher’s mailbox was full. But this time the cell phone not only rang, Preacher picked up. “What do you want?” he said.

“Hey, Jack, where you been?” Hugo said. “I was worried sick, man.”

“About what?”

“About whatever has been going on over there. Where are you?”

“Looking for a new house.”

“Looking for-”

“I had a fire, a propane explosion.”

“You’re kidding?”

“During the fire, somebody shot out my car tires, too. Maybe one of the firemen.”

“I read about that motel gig in the Houston Chronicle. That’s what brought it on? Those punks torched your place?”

“What motel?”

“Jack, I’m your friend. Those guys worked for the Russian out on the coast. I don’t know why they were after you, but I’m glad they got clipped. I suspect they were sent out here to do a payback on Artie and everybody who works for him, including me.”

“I think you got it figured, Hugo.”

“Look, I called about a couple of other issues, even though I was worrying about you, not hearing from you and all.” A red Frisbee sailed out of nowhere and hit Hugo on the side of the head. He picked it up and flung it savagely in a little boy’s direction. “Artie wants to settle with you. He wants me to take care of the money transfer.”