“In the vehicle,” Hackberry said.

“I always thought you guys had to have your gun on you. You want some limeade? Try those crawfish. I had them brought live from Louisiana. I boiled and veined them myself. I made the sauce, too. I mash up my own peppers. Go ahead, stick a toothpick in one and slop it in the sauce and tell me what you think. Here, you like chocolate-and-peanut-butter brownies? Those are my wife’s specialty.”

Pam and Hackberry looked at Nick silently, their eyes fastened on his. “You’re making me uncomfortable here. I got high blood pressure. I don’t need this,” Nick said.

“I think you’re the anonymous caller who warned me about Jack Collins, Mr. Dolan. I wish I’d taken your warning more to heart. He put a couple of dents in my head and almost killed Deputy Tibbs.”

“I’m lost.”

“I also think you’re the person who called the FBI and told them Vikki Gaddis and Pete Flores were in danger.”

Before Hackberry had finished his last sentence, Nick Dolan began shaking his head. “No, no, no, you got the wrong guy. We’re talking about mistaken identity here or something.”

“You told me Arthur Rooney wants to murder both you and your family.”

Nick Dolan’s small round hands were closing and opening on the glass tabletop. His stomach was rising and sinking, his cheeks blading with color. “I got in some trouble,” he said. “I wanted to get even with Artie for some things he did to me. I got mixed up with bad people, the kind who got no parameters.”

“Is one of them named Hugo Cistranos?”

“Hugo worked for Artie when Artie ran a security service in New Orleans. We all got flooded out by Katrina and ended up in Texas at the same time. I don’t got anything else to say about this.”

“I’m going to find Jack Collins, Mr. Dolan. I’d like to do it with your help. It’ll mean a lot for you down the line.”

“You mean I’ll be a friend of the court, something like that?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Stick your ‘friend of the court’ stuff up your nose. This crazy fuck Collins, excuse my language, is the only guy keeping us alive.”

“I’m not sympathetic with your situation.”

“You don’t have a family?”

“I looked into Collins’s face. I watched him machine-gun my deputy’s cruiser.”

“My wife beat the shit out of him with a cooking pot. He could have killed both of us, but he didn’t.”

“Your wife beat up Jack Collins?”

“There’s something wrong with the words I use that you can’t understand? I got an echo in my yard?”

“I’d like to speak with her, please.”

“I’m not sure she’s home.”

“You know what obstruction of justice is?” Pam Tibbs said.

“Yeah, stuff they talk about on TV detective shows.”

“Explain this,” Pam said. She picked up a brownie from the plate and set it back down. “It’s still hot. Tell your wife to come out here.”

Nick Dolan stared into space, squeezing his jaw with one hand, his eyes out of sync. “I caused all this.”

“Caused what?” Pam said.

“Everything.”

“Where’s your wife, Mr. Dolan?” Pam asked.

“Drove away. Fed up. With the kids in the car.”

“They’re not coming back?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Vikki Gaddis came to my restaurant and applied for a job as a singer. I wish I’d hired her. I could have made a difference in those young people’s lives. I told all this to Esther. Now she thinks maybe I’m unfaithful.”

“Maybe you can still make a difference,” Hackberry said.

“I’m through talking with y’all. I wish I’d never left New Orleans. I wish I had helped the people rebuild in the Ninth Ward. I wish I’d done something good with my life.”

Pam looked at Hackberry, blowing her breath up into her face.

THAT NIGHT A storm that was more wind and dust and dry lightning than rain moved across Southwest Texas, and Hackberry decided not to fly back home until morning. He and Pam ate in a Mexican restaurant on the Riverwalk, a short distance from the Alamo. Their outdoor table was situated on flagstones and lit by gas lamps. A gondola loaded with mariachi musicians floated past them on the water, all of the musicians stooping as they went under one of the arched pedestrian bridges. The river was lined with banks of flowers and white stucco buildings that had Spanish grillwork on the balconies, and trees that had been planted in terraced fashion, creating the look of a wooded hillside in the middle of a city.

Pam had spoken little during the plane ride to San Antonio and even less since they had left Nick Dolan’s yard.

“You a little tired?” Hackberry said.

“No.”

“So what are you?”

“Hungry. Wanting to get drunk, maybe. Or catch up with Jack Collins and do things to him that’ll make him afraid to sleep.”

“Guys like Collins don’t have nightmares.”

“I think you’ve got him figured wrong.”

“He’s a psychopath, Pam. What’s to figure?”

“Why didn’t Collins shoot you when your revolver snapped empty?”

“Who knows?”

“Because he’s setting you up.”

“For what?”

“To be his executioner.”

Hackberry had just raised his fork to his mouth. He paused under a second, his eyes going flat. He put the forkful in his mouth. He watched a gondola emerge from under a stone bridge, the musicians grinning woodenly, a tree trailing its flowers across their sombreros and brocaded suits. “I wouldn’t invest a lot of time thinking about this guy’s complexities,” he said.

“They all want the same thing. They want to die, and they want their executioner to be worthy of them. They also want to leave behind as much guilt and fear and depression in others as they can. He aims to mess you up, Hack. That’s why he tried to take me out first. He wanted you to watch it. Then he wanted you to pop him.”

“I’ll try to honor his wishes. You don’t want a glass of wine or a beer?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“I didn’t say it did. I just don’t want any.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked away irritably, then back at him again, her gaze wandering over the stitches in his scalp and the bandage across the bridge of his nose and the half-moons of blue and yellow bruising under his eyes.

“Would you stop that?” he said.

“I’m going to fix that bastard.”

“Don’t give his kind power, Pam.”

“Is there anything else I’m doing wrong?”

“I’ll think about it.”

She set down her knife and fork and kept staring at him until she forced him to look directly at her. “Lose the cavalier attitude, boss. Collins is going to be with us for the long haul.”

“I hope he is.”

“You still don’t get it. The feds are using Nick Dolan as bait. That means they’re probably using us, too. In the meantime, they’re treating us like beggars at the table.”

“That’s the way it is. Sometimes the feds are-”

“Assholes?”

“Nobody is perfect.”

“You ought to get yourself some Optimist Club literature and start passing it out.”

“Could be.”

She pulled at an earlobe. “I think I’ll have a beer.”

He fought against a yawn.

“In fact, a beer and a shot of tequila with a salted lime on the side.”

“Good,” he said, filling his mouth with a tortilla, his attention fixed on the mariachi band blaring out Pancho Villa’s marching song, “La Cucaracha.”

“You think I should go back to school, maybe get a graduate degree and go to work for the U.S. Marshals’ office?”

“I’d hate to lose you.”

“Go on.”

“You have to do what’s right for yourself.”

She balled her hands on her knees and stared at her plate. Then she exhaled and started eating again, her eyes veiled with a special kind of sadness.

“Pam?” he said.

“I’d better eat up and hit the hay. Tomorrow is another day and another dollar, right?”

HACKBERRY WOKE AT one A.M. in his third-story motel room and sat in the dark, his mind cobwebbed with dreams whose details he couldn’t remember, his skin frigid and dead to the touch. Through a crack in the curtains, he could see headlights streaming across an overpass and a two-engine plane approaching the airport, its windows brightly lit. Somehow the plane and cars were a reassuring sight, testifying to the world’s normality, the superimposition of light upon darkness, and humanity’s ability to overcome even the gravitational pull of the earth.