“Were you using that booth out there?” the constable asked. His skin was sun-browned, his shirt peppered with sweat, his eyes hidden by his shades.

“Yes, sir, just a few minutes ago.”

“You owe the operator ninety-five cents. Would you take care of it? She’s ringing it off the hook.”

“Yes, sir, right away. I didn’t know I went overtime.”

“You want the beer?” the clerk said.

“I surely do.”

Pete hefted the six-pack under his arm, got his change and an extra three dollars in coins, and walked back out to the booth. The sun was hammering down on the hardpan and the two-lane asphalt state highway, glazing the hills, alkali flats, and the distant railroad track where the freight train had stopped and was baking in the heat.

He ripped open the tab on a sixteen-ouncer and set it on the shelf below the phone and punched in Sheriff Holland’s cell phone number. As the phone rang, he gripped the sweaty coldness of the can in his left palm.

“Sheriff Holland,” a voice said.

“Your cousin Billy Bob-”

“He’s already called me. You going to come see us, Pete?”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I want to do.”

“What’s holding you up?”

“I don’t want to go to Huntsville. I don’t want to see this guy Preacher and his friends come after Vikki.”

“What do you think they’re doing now, son?”

I ain’t your son, a voice inside him said. “You know what I mean.”

“How have people been treating you?”

“Sir?”

“Since you came back from Iraq, how do people treat you? Just general run-of-the-mill people? They been treating you all right?”

“I haven’t complained.”

“Answer the question.”

“They’ve treated me good.”

“But you don’t trust them, do you? You think they might be fixing to slicker you.”

“Maybe unlike others, I don’t have the luxury of making mistakes.”

“I have an idea where you might be, Pete. But I’m not going to call the sheriff there. I want you and Ms. Gaddis to come in on your own. I want y’all to help me put away the guys who killed those poor Asian women. You fought for your country, partner. And now you have to fight for it again.”

“I don’t like folks using the flag to get me to do what they want.”

“You drinking?”

“Sir?”

“You were drinking when you called in the original nine-one-one by the church house. If I were you, I’d lay off the hooch till I got this stuff behind me.”

“You would, would you?”

“I had my share of trouble with it. Billy Bob says you’re a good man. I believe him.”

“What do we do, just walk into your office?” Pete said. He looked at the cloud of vapor on top of the aluminum beer can. He looked at the brassy bead of the beer through the tab. His windpipe turned to rust when he tried to swallow.

“If you want, I’ll send a cruiser.”

Pete picked up the beer can and pressed its coldness against his cheek. He could see the train starting to move on the track, the black gondolas clanging against their couplings as though they were fighting against their own momentum.

He sat down on the floor of the booth, pulling the phone and its metal-encased cord with him, the six-pack splaying open on the concrete pad. He felt as though he had descended to the bottom of a well, beyond the sunlight, beyond hope, beyond ever feeling wind on his face again or smelling flowers in the morning or being a part of the great human drama most of the world took for granted, a man with red alligator hide for skin and a bagful of sins that would never be forgiven. He pulled his knees up to his face, his head bent forward, and began to weep silently.

“You still with me, bud?”

“Tell Miss Maydeen I’m sorry for sassing her. I also apologize to you and your deputy for getting y’all hurt. I also owe an apology to some guy I attacked at a traffic light last night. I think I’m plumb losing my mind.”

“You assaulted somebody?”

“I threw rocks at his car. I busted a hole in his rear window with a brick.”

“Where was this?”

Pete told him.

“What kind of car?”

“A tan Honda.”

“You busted a big hole in the window?”

“Just under the size of a softball. It was elongated. It looked like the eye of a Chinaman staring out the window.”

“You don’t remember the license number, do you?”

Pete was still holding the sixteen-ouncer. He set it on the ground outside the booth. He pushed it over with the sole of his boot. “One letter and maybe two numbers. Y’all already got a report on it?”

“You could say we may have had contact with the driver.”

A few moments later, Pete picked up the cans he had dropped and took them back inside the store and set them on the counter. “Can I get a refund?” he said.

“If you hold your mouth right,” the cashier said.

“What?”

“That’s a joke.” She opened the register drawer and counted out his cash. “There’s some showers in back. Hang around if you feel like it, cowboy.”

“I got someone waiting on me.”

She nodded.

“You’re a nice lady,” he said.

“I hear that lots of times,” she said. She stuck another filter-tip in her mouth and lit it with a BIC, blowing the smoke at an upward angle, gazing through the window at the way the two-lane warped in the heat and dissolved into a black lake on the horizon.

“I didn’t mean anything, ma’am.”

“I look like a ‘ma’am’? It’s ‘miss,’” she said.

TWO DAYS AFTER the invasion of his home by Jack Collins, Hackberry Holland and Pam Tibbs flew in the department’s single engine plane to San Antonio, borrowed an unmarked car from the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, and drove into Nick Dolan’s neighborhood. The enclave atmosphere and the size of the homes, the Spanish daggers and hibiscus and palm and umbrella trees and crepe myrtle and bougainvillea in the yards, and the number of grounds workers made Hackberry think of a foreign country, in the tropics, perhaps, or out on the Pacific Rim.

Except he was not visiting a neighborhood as much as a paradox. The dark-skinned employees-maids retrieving the trash cans from the curb, yardmen with ear protectors clamped on their heads operating mowers and leaf blowers, hod carriers and framers constructing an extension on a house-were all foreigners, not the repressed and indigenous people Somerset Maugham and George Orwell and Graham Greene had described in their accounts of life inside dying European and British empires. Those who owned and lived in the big houses in Nick Dolan’s neighborhood were probably all native-born but had managed to become colonials in their own country.

When Hackberry had called Nick Dolan’s restaurant and asked to interview him, Dolan had sounded wired to the eyes, clearing his throat, claiming to be tied up with business affairs and trips out of state. “I got no idea what this is about. I’m dumbfounded here,” he said.

“Arthur Rooney.”

“Artie Rooney is an Irish putz. I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if he was dying of thirst. Let me rephrase that: I wouldn’t cross the street to see a pit bull rip out his throat.”

“Has the FBI talked with you, Mr. Dolan?”

“No, what’s the FBI got to do with anything?”

“But you talked to Isaac Clawson the ICE agent, didn’t you?”

“Maybe that name is familiar.”

“I appreciate your help. We’ll be out to see you this evening.”

“Hold on there.”

It was late when Hackberry and Pam arrived at Nick’s house, and shadows were spreading across the lawn, fireflies lighting in smoky patterns inside the trees. Nick Dolan ushered them right through the house into his backyard and sat them down on rattan chairs by a glass-topped table already set with a pitcher of limeade and crushed ice and a plate of peeled crawfish and a second plate stacked with pastry. But there was no question in Hackberry’s mind that Nick Dolan was a nervous wreck.

Nick began talking about the grapevine that laced the trellises and the latticework over their heads. “Those vines came from my grandfather’s place in New Orleans,” he said. “My grandfather lived uptown, off St. Charles. He was a friend of Tennessee Williams. He was a great man. Know what a great man is? A guy who takes things that are hard and makes them look easy and doesn’t complain. Where’s your gun?”