Rain Gods by James Lee Burke

guilt and complicity about things he hadn’t done, indicating he and Hugo had a relationship of some kind, one based on shared experience.
     
    “Didn’t want to embarrass you at the club. Didn’t want to ring the bell and disturb your family. What’s a guy to do, Nicholas? We’ve got mucho shit-o to work through here.”
     
    “I don’t owe you any money.”
     
    “Okay, you owe it to my subcontractors. Put it any way you want. The vig is running as we speak. My chief subcontractor is Preacher Jack Collins. He’s a religious fanatic who did the hands-on work behind the church. Nobody knows what goes on inside his head, and nobody asks. I just delivered him his Honda and paid his medical expenses. Those services are all on your tab, too, Nicholas.”
     
    “I don’t use that name.”
     
    “No problemo, Nick-o. Know why I had to pay Preacher’s medical expenses? Because this broad here put two holes in him.”
     
    Hugo placed a four-by-five color photograph on the glass tabletop. Nick stared down at the face of a girl with recessed eyes, her chestnut hair curled at the tips. “Ever see this cutie?” Hugo asked.
     
    Nick’s scalp constricted again. “No,” he replied.
     
    “How about this kid?” Hugo said, placing another photo next to the girl’s. A soldier in a United States Army dress uniform, an American flag on a staff as a backdrop, stared up at Nick.
     
    “I never saw this person, either,” Nick said, studiously not letting his eyes drift back to the girl’s photograph.
     
    “You said that pretty quick. Take another look.”
     
    “I don’t know who they are. Why are you showing these pictures to me?”
     
    “Those are two kids who can bring a lot of people down. They have to go off the board, Nick. People got to get paid, too, Nick. That means I’m about to be your new business partner, Nick. I’ve got the papers right here. Twenty-five percent of the club and the Mexican restaurant and no claim on anything else. It’s a bargain, little buddy.”
     
    “Screw you, Hugo,” Nick said, his face dilating with the recklessness of his own rhetoric.
     
    Hugo opened a manila folder and sorted through a half-inch of documents, as though giving them final approval, then closed the folder and set it on the table. “Relax, finish your drink and have a smoke, talk it over with your wife. There’s no rush.” He looked at his wristwatch. “I’ll send a driver for the papers, say, tomorrow afternoon, around three. Okay, little buddy?”
     
     
    NICK HAD HOPED he would never see the girl named Vikki Gaddis again. His nonnegotiable rules for himself as the operator of a skin joint and as the geographically removed owner of escort services in Dallas and Houston had always remained the same: You paid your taxes, and you protected your girls and never personally exploited them.
     
    Nick’s rules had preempted conflicts with the IRS and purchased for him an appreciable degree of respect from his employees. About eighteen months back, he had run a want ad in the San Antonio newspapers for musicians to play in the Mexican restaurant he had just built next to his strip club. Five days later, when he was out in the parking lot on a scalding afternoon, Vikki Gaddis had driven off the highway in a shitbox leaking smoke from every rusted crack in the car body. At first he thought she was looking for a job up on the pole, then he realized she hadn’t seen the ad but had been told he needed a folksinger.
     
    “You’re confused,” Nick said. “I’m opening a Mexican restaurant. I need some entertainment for people while they’re eating dinner. Mexican stuff.”
     
    He saw the disappointment in her eyes, a vague hint of desperation around her mouth. Her face was damp and shiny in the heat. Heavy trucks, their engines hammering, were passing on the highway, their air brakes hissing. Nick touched at his nose with the back of his wrist. “Why don’t you come on in the restaurant and let’s talk a minute?” he said.
     
    Nick had already hired a