“Where’d you get all this stuff?” he said, smiling, wiping at his hair with the towel.
“From a guy who used to smoke dope with us in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland.”
“You’re cute,” he said.
“You don’t take me seriously sometimes, Troyce.”
“Always,” he said, placing a towel on the bedspread, then sitting down nude next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve got the prettiest-shaped face of any woman I ever knowed. I love your tattoos, too. Not many women look good tattooed, but you do.”
She placed her hand on his thigh. She could smell the clean odor of his hair and feel the heat his skin gave off. “We could just go away. Pack it up and start all over,” she said.
“Where?”
“Washington or Oregon. We could open a café in the Cascades for tourists and loggers. I’m a good cook, Troyce. I know everything there is about food service. The key to a café’s success is having a good cook and making sure your suppliers aren’t cheating you. You’d be good at managing a café. You ever been to the Cascades?”
“I don’t see that happening right now.”
She thought a long time before she spoke again. “Troyce?”
“What is it, you little honey bunny?”
“You’re in over your head.”
“Not to my mind, I ain’t.”
“Messing with rich people like the Wellstones? Think you’re gonna come up here and write the rules with people like that?”
“You ain’t got to tell me about the likes of the Wellstones. I knowed their kind all my life.”
“Your wounds are healing up now. Isn’t that a sign?”
“Of what?”
“Those choices I was talking about. The fate that’s waiting for us if we’ll just reach out and take it.”
“The choice right now is what kind of steak we’re gonna order at that club up yonder.”
He patted her on the back, then slipped on his boxer shorts and began combing his hair in front of the mirror.
“You want me to put on fresh bandages for you?” she asked, her face blank now, all of her arguments used up.
“Don’t worry about them rich people. They ain’t interested in folks like us. We ain’t got nothing they want,” Troyce said.
“We went to their house. We told them we know their business. You told them you beat up one of their employees. They won’t forget it,” she said.
He stopped combing his hair and looked at her reflection in the mirror.
Ten minutes later, when they were about to leave, someone with a heavy fist knocked hard on the door. Candace peeked through the window curtain. A man with sandy blond hair and a scar that ran through one eyebrow waited in front of the door. He wore a porkpie hat and a Hawaiian shirt that was almost bursting at the shoulders. A semi passed on the road, and the man turned and watched it disappear around a bend. The back of his neck was oily and pockmarked. His whole body seemed to be supercharged by energies that it could barely contain.
“Who is it?” Troyce said to Candace.
“A guy who looks like a cop or a bill collector,” she replied.
“Let him in. It’s been a dull day,” Troyce said.
CLETE PURCEL OPENED his badge holder when he entered the room and introduced himself. The room smelled of aftershave and hair tonic. “Albert Hollister gave me the name of your motel,” he said. “He says you’re interested in finding a guy by the name of Jimmy Dale Greenwood. An Indian, I think.”
“More like a breed,” Troyce said. “Know where he’s at?”
“Can’t say I do. You know who Ridley and Leslie Wellstone are?”
Clete saw the young woman’s eyes shift onto Nix’s face.
“I know they’re probably the richest people in the state of Texas,” Nix replied.
Clete studied Nix’s expression. It was relaxed and confident, even good-natured. Clete said, “Somebody tried to light me up, Mr. Nix. Problem is, I got no idea who. But one way or another—”
“Light you up?” the woman said.
“A man in a mask sapped me with a blackjack and tied me to a tree and poured gasoline on me and tried to burn me alive. I don’t know who this dude is, but one way or another, I think he’s involved with the Wellstones. You have any opinion on that, Mr. Nix?”
“Not really. Jimmy Dale Greenwood is a fugitive from the law. He escaped while in the custody of a contract prison which I’m a founding officer of. He was also the boyfriend of Jamie Sue Wellstone, formerly Jamie Sue Stapleton. Does that clear things up for you, Mr. Purcel?”
“There’re people who think you kicked the shit out of a guy by the name of Quince Whitley. Why would you do a thing like that, Mr. Nix?”
“Troyce hasn’t done anything wrong,” the woman said. “I think you need to spend more time at Weight Watchers and quit bothering people who haven’t bothered you.”
Clete saw Nix suppress a laugh. The woman was three feet from Clete, her thumbs hooked in her back pockets, her chin and her boobs pointed at him. She wore a Mexican blouse and black jeans and had a small Irish mouth and bangs like a little girl’s.
“I had a friend run Quince Whitley’s sheet,” Clete said to Nix. “Guess what. He doesn’t have one. Does it seem reasonable to you that a dude like that wouldn’t have a sheet?”
“I’m not interested in this fellow you’re talking about,” Nix replied.
“You should be. I made a couple of calls to the county in Mississippi where he grew up. Quince put out a girl’s eye with a BB gun when he was ten. A retired sheriff told me he thought Quince and two of his friends dropped a log from a railroad overpass through the windshield of an automobile. They almost killed the driver, a black man from Memphis. But the log and any prints on it disappeared the same night. Quince’s uncle was in charge of the investigation. The uncle was also an officer in the Ku Klux Klan. That’s why Quince doesn’t have a sheet. Are you going to bother my friend Mr. Hollister again?”
“I couldn’t care less about your friend, Mr. Purcel. Second of all, I don’t think that’s why you’re here. You’ve got a bug up your ass about either the Wellstone family or Jimmy Dale Greenwood. Which is it, or is it both?”
“Two college kids were abducted from the hillside behind the university and murdered. One of them wore a wood cross. It was of a kind that kids in the Wellstone ministry program are given. Then a California couple who had been drinking in a saloon on Swan Lake with Jamie Sue Wellstone were murdered in a rest stop on the interstate west of Missoula. The woman was set on fire in the toilet stall. I think the guy who committed these murders is the same guy who tried to turn me into a candle. If I find out you’re holding back on me, Mr. Nix, you and I will be shooting the breeze again.”
“Listen, lard ass, nobody invited you here,” the woman said. “Go to a blubber farm or get your stomach stapled. Just go somewhere else. Think about changing your brand of deodorant while you’re at it.”
Clete gave Nix and his girlfriend a long look. Nix was laughing under his breath while the girlfriend stared up into Clete’s face with what seemed to be barely restrained outrage. Except Clete was convinced her emotions were manufactured.
“Thanks for your time. Welcome to Montana. It’s a real tolerant place,” Clete said.
He went outside into the twilight and got into his Caddy. He let out his breath and started the engine, revving it up senselessly. What had he accomplished? he asked himself. Nothing, except perhaps to indicate to Troyce Nix that Nix had gotten close to finding Jimmy Dale Greenwood, also known as J. D. Gribble. Clete shifted the transmission into reverse. The convertible top was down and the air was cool, the hills along the winding two-lane road already purple with shadow. Just as he began to back onto the asphalt, he heard footsteps on the gravel.
Troyce Nix’s girlfriend cupped both of her hands on top of the passenger door. Her eyes were glistening. “Were you saying this guy Quince Whitley might be the one who killed all those people
?” she asked.
“Ask your bozo boyfriend,” Clete said, and gunned the Caddy onto the highway.
As he sped away, the young woman grew smaller in his rearview mirror, his dust drifting back into her face. Way to go, Purcel, he thought. Next time out, beat up on a cerebral palsy victim.
THE SUNSET HAD died on the far side of the mountain when Candace Sweeney and Troyce Nix pulled into the club up the road from their motel. The bottom of the valley was dark with shadow, but the sky overhead was still blue, tinged with the pink afterglow of the sun, the moon as thin as a wafer over the mountains that jutted straight up from the south banks of the Clark Fork River. The day was cooling rapidly, the eastern sky starting to grow dark, like the color of a bruise. Candace could smell smoke blowing from a fire up in the Swans. The smell seemed to hang in the air, to wrap itself around her skin and seep into her lungs. She wondered if it was an omen.
“It’s too early in the season for fires,” she said. “June is always wet. There’re no serious fires here till August.”
“Well, they’re not burning here,” Troyce said, walking beside her toward the club’s entrance.
“You ever been to Portland or Vancouver?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“You’d like it out there, the fishing and outdoors and all. It’s green all year round, like down south. Like Miami, except with rain and cool weather.”
He was still wearing his shades, even though the sun had set. He pulled them off and slipped them in a leather case. He pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked. “We can check it out,” he said. “In the meantime, ain’t nobody running us off. That ain’t our way.”
She didn’t pursue it.
The inside of the club was crowded, the country band located on the far side of the dance floor, the tables filled with people who were drinking pitcher beer and eating fried chicken and pork-chop sandwiches and steaks ordered from the truck-stop café that adjoined the main building. Candace and Troyce had to take a table by the entrance, one that gave them a poor view of the bandstand and dance floor. Troyce kept trying to get the waiter’s eye.
“This is gonna take all night. I’ll get a pitcher from the bar and order direct from next door,” he said, getting up from his chair. “Don’t run off with no movie stars.”
“What movie stars?” she said, looking up at him.
“Look yonder at the end of the bar.”
A man with rugged good looks was buying a round for a half-dozen people who were gathered around him, much like candle moths hovering around a flame inside a glass chimney.
“He’s in that new western,” Candace said.
“And he was looking at you, darlin’. Tell him you’re taken.”
“That’s silly,” she said.
But after Troyce left, she realized the actor was looking at her with a faint smile while he pretended to listen to the conversation going on around him. He set his glass down and approached her table. She studied the tops of her hands. When she looked up again the actor was standing two feet from her, his fingers resting on the back of Troyce’s empty chair.
“I wondered if you and your friend would like to join us,” he said.
“We just ordered dinner,” she replied.
“After you eat, come over to the bar for a drink.”
He was of medium height but extremely handsome in the way that some men can be handsome without trying, his dark hair freshly barbered, his skin clear, his dress shirt and gray slacks loose on his athletic frame.
“Thank you, but we just came here to eat.” She glanced toward the doorway that led into the truck stop. “We’re probably not staying long.”
“You ought to. They got a great band. There’s a guy sitting in with them who’s really good.”
“Thanks for the invitation. We’re just going to eat.”
“You ever do any film work?”
“No. I don’t know anything about it.”
“I’d like to talk to you about it. Your friend, too. He’s got an unusual face. Was he in an accident of some kind?”
“I’m a cook. Listen, I love your movies, but you’re talking to the wrong person.” She tried to smile. She looked toward the entrance to the truck stop again. “I think my friend is coming back with our food.”
“It’s nice meeting you,” the actor said. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Candace. Excuse me, I got to go to the restroom.”
“Where do you live?”
“In a motel up the road. No, I’m kidding. Troyce and me own half of Beverly Hills. We eat in dumps like this for kicks.”
“If you change your mind, Candace, we’ll be at the bar. I’m not hitting on you. I meant what I said.”
When Candace returned from the restroom, her heart was still pounding. Troyce was sitting at the table, a foaming pitcher and two glasses in front of him.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” he said.
“About what?”
“That guy had his eye on you.”
“He wanted to invite us for a drink. He said maybe both of us could work in films. I think he was just being a nice guy, that’s all.”
“Yeah?” he said, grinning. “What’d you tell him?”
“That we were having dinner. You’re not gonna do anything, are you?”
“You know better than that,” he said playfully. “I ordered your steak medium well done, with a baked potato and double melted butter and a salad with buttermilk dressing. That’s what you wanted, right?”
But she realized she didn’t know better than that. In his dreams, Troyce traveled to places she could never enter, and he saw things and heard sounds inside closed rooms that she refused to let herself think about. When she watched the news about a distant war where American soldiers trudged through biscuit-colored villages blown with flies and garbage, she tried to imagine Troyce as one of them, brave, uncomplaining, his uniform stiff with salt, his skin gray with dust, like a Roman legionnaire coming out of a sandstorm. But all she could think of was Troyce in a closed room while a man with a towel wrapped around his face was being drowned.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the actor take a mixed drink from the bartender and place it in the hand of a windburned, dark-featured man who wore jeans and a denim jacket and whose unshaved face was the same as that of the man in the jailhouse photo that Troyce carried in his billfold. Her beer glass trembled in her hand.
“That fellow eyeballing you again?” Troyce said.
“No,” she said, taking his wrist, keeping his eyes on hers. “Troyce, let’s go over to the Cascades. We can stop for the night in Coeur d’Alene and go on in the morning. I’ll show you the place where we can start up our café. We can have a good life there.”
“I declare if you’re not a puzzle,” he replied.
WITHOUT TROYCE NIX’S ever noticing, a diesel-powered fire-engine-red pickup truck with oversize tires and headlights that sparkled had followed him from the motel to the club. Now the driver of the pickup sat in the cab in the parking lot, gazing through the windshield at the front of the club, wondering about his next move. The driver was wearing neatly pressed navy blue work pants and a wide belt with a big chrome buckle and a magenta shirt that changed colors in the light. He also wore a black vest, with a silk back, like a nineteenth-century gunfighter or a riverboat gambler might wear. He had shaved and gotten a haircut that afternoon and had showered and washed his hair. He had put on a Resistol hat and a new pair of Acme pointy-toed boots. Looking at himself in the mirror before he left his garage apartment on the Wellstone estate, he hardly recognized his reflection. He had drawn all his money out of the bank and had put eight one-hundred-dollar bills in his wallet, clipped by a chain onto his belt. He had also dropped a clasp knife with a hooked blade for cutting thick twine into his trouser pocket.
Somehow, in surrendering himself to the deeds he was about to commit, Quince Whitley had discovered he possessed a persona he had never thought would be his, namely that of a Missi
ssippi farm boy who had become the debonair scourge of God. That thought caused a surge in his blood that was like his first time with a black girl, way back when it was exciting, back before he stopped keeping count.
“Getting your ashes hauled tonight?” Lyle Hobbs had asked him.
Quince had just finished combing his hair. He blew the dandruff out of the comb’s leather case and slipped the comb inside. “That’s one way to put it. Except the lady doesn’t necessarily know what’s on her dance card yet,” Quince had said.
In the silence, Lyle had seemed to look at Quince in a different light.
Now Quince sat tapping his hands on the steering wheel, staring whimsically at the split-log facade of the club and the strings of tiny white lights that framed the windows and the dark shadow of the mountain that lifted into the sky just beyond the rear of the building. He could hear the music of a country band, a clatter of dishware, and a balloon of voices when a door opened and closed. He could play the situation several ways, but he knew Quince Whitley’s time had come around at last, and all the people who had hurt him, including that burned freak and his wife up at Swan Lake, were going to get their buckwheats. You just don’t dump on a Whitley, bubba, whether it’s in Mississippi or Montana or Blow Me, North Dakota.
He removed a twenty-five-caliber automatic from under the dashboard and Velcro-strapped it to his right ankle. From under the seat he removed a small brown plastic-capped bottle of sulfuric acid, wrapped it carefully in a handkerchief, and slipped it into his pants pocket. Then he walked around behind the club and entered through the back door so he could sit in a dark area where the bar curved into the wall and watch the band and the dancers on the floor and the people eating at the tables in the front of the building.
TROYCE WAS ENJOYING his T-bone, forking meat and french fries into his mouth with his left hand. He drank from his beer and winked at Candace. “Don’t be worrying, little darlin’. People like us is forever,” he said.
“You’re willful and hardheaded, Troyce.”
“If you don’t find your enemies, your enemies will find you.”