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“Deal with me. I keep my word. What do you have to lose?”
Beckman set two chrome-plated shot glasses on the desk blotter and squeaked the cork from the neck of a whiskey bottle. “I think you’re unsettled by the fact that Beatrice and I have a long-term relationship,” he said, pouring. “When she was younger, she was quite a piece. She probably told you she made her fortune from the oil discovery at Goose Creek Bay. Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t like the way you’re talking about her.”
“She’s been a prostitute since she was fifteen. How did she suddenly grow into a geologist?”
“I’m here about my boy, not Miz DeMolay.”
“Take your drink. I love bourbon on ice with a sprig of mint and a teaspoon of sugar, but this is all I have on hand. Do you realize you’re perspiring?”
“Where’s Maggie?”
“Doing odds and ends. Do you think she’s going to help you? Mr. Holland, you have to be the most naive man I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll leave the cup in a neutral place. Your people can leave my boy at a hospital.”
“You stole from me, and you’re going to pay for it, on my terms.”
“Do you have a son?”
“I have sons and daughters all over the world.”
“Miz DeMolay said you’re in a medieval painting she saw in Paris. I didn’t believe her.”
“You do now?”
“I wonder if maybe you’re the genuine article.”
“What is the genuine article?”
“The one everybody is afraid of seeing. The one that’s got the body of a goat.”
Beckman laughed. “You probably know I had an encounter with your common-law wife. What’s-her-name? Ruby? That’s what I call a woman. A shame you put her in the mix.”
“Repeat that?”
Beckman drank his sh
ot glass empty and set it on the blotter. He opened the cover on his watch and looked at the time. “If I were you, I’d toggle back to my hotel.”
THE SUN HAD gone behind the clouds unexpectedly. A moment later, just as the telephone rang on Ruby’s nightstand, rain began clicking on the French doors that opened on her balcony, glasslike pieces of hail bouncing on the rail. A thunderous boom shook the room. She picked up the receiver.
“This is the front desk, Miss Dansen. A colored man just delivered a message for you,” the clerk said.
“I can hardly hear you. A message from a colored man?”
“No, the colored man delivered the message. He said it was from your son.”
“Stop him.”
“He’s already gone.”
“Send the message up. No, I’ll come down.”
In the elevator she had to press her hand against her chest in order to breathe correctly, to keep her balance, to stop her head from floating away. When she stepped into the lobby, the floor seemed to tilt, the potted palms and marble columns to break into molecules. Outside, sheets of rain slapped against the front of the hotel and whipped the awning over the entrance. “I’m Miss Dansen. Which direction did the colored man go?” she said.
“I didn’t notice, ma’am,” the desk clerk replied. He took an envelope out of her key box and handed it to her. The message was in pencil, the lettering full of ripples, as though written by an unsteady hand. It read:
