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Hackberry wasn’t listening. “It was you wrapped it with twine?”
“I didn’t want it to fall loose.”
“You didn’t look inside?”
“I wouldn’t do that. Not without asking.”
Hackberry opened his pocketknife and cut the twine. He lifted the cup from the bed and placed it on the nightstand, under a lamp.
“What is it?” Darl said.
“Probably depends on who you talk to. The gold and the jewels are most likely from medieval times. The two onyx goblets fused together might go back a bit farther.”
“What are we talking about here, Mr. Holland?”
“A lady who used to run a brothel and a Haitian who was a pagan priest say it was used by Jesus at the Last Supper. I found it in a hearse that was carrying a load of ordnance down in Mexico. That was right before I burned the hearse. The ordnance belonged to Arnold Beckman.”
Darl was staring at the two goblets, fused end to end, one acting as the base. “So the gold cup set in the top was drank out of by Jesus?”
“I don’t think a carpenter would be using gold dishware. The onyx cup is another matter.”
“This makes me feel a little uneasy, Mr. Holland.”
“Why?”
“It’s not exactly your ordinary day-to-day experience,” Darl replied.
“Beckman has got his hands on my son.”
“That’s why you’ve got your revolver and bowie knife and ammunition laid out on the bed?”
“I wish it was that simple.”
“How’d Mr. Beckman get holt of your son?”
“My ex-wife betrayed me.”
“The one people say was hooked up with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang?”
“That’s the lady.”
“Sounds to me like her butt ought to be sitting in a jail cell.”
A strand of Darl’s red hair was hanging in his face; his thin frame and wide shoulders had the angularity and stiffness of coat hangers. The blue kerchief tied around his neck was embroidered with tiny white stars.
“I changed my mind,” Hackberry said.
“Sir?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like for you to hang around.”
MAGGIE PACED THE floor in her living room, her nails biting into her palms, a habit she couldn’t rid herself of any more than she could get the cold out of her bones. Dr. Romulus Atwood, who had actually been to veterinary school, had told her that a thyroid disorder was responsible for her subnormal body temperature, and it could most likely be cured by the mineral baths at Hot Springs, Arkansas, a resort for criminals of every stripe. Once they arrived there, he set about fleecing anyone he could at the card tables, using her as his shill.
And that was what she had been, a shill for everyone: pimps, madams, opium den operators, cardsharps, and the worst of the lot, the mercenary contractors who sent passenger-car loads of gunmen to kill and terrorize the sodbusters during the Johnson County War. And now an international arms dealer. Top that.
She put another log in the fireplace. When it didn’t catch right away, she jabbed it with the poker and stacked another one on top of the first and poked at the green bark on both of them, not raising the temperature one degree.
When would it stop raining? She could not remember seeing a darker day. The sky was black upon black, relieved only by the fog rising from the river or a silvery quivering in the clouds that briefly illuminated the countryside, like the flickering scenes of a newsreel filmed in the trenches.
