“Is that going out over the air?”
He rapidly hit a few more buttons and made a face. “Just a little.”
“I don’t know if this is a two-party consent state, but I’m pretty sure we could get sued for what just happened.”
He shrugged. “We’ll just keep it between ourselves.”
“And a couple of thousand listeners?”
He adjusted the volume on another off-air track. “I think you’re overestimating our listenership.”
I glanced at the studio phone as the lights began blinking, not unlike the ones in my office that regularly plagued me. “Uh huh.”
We ignored them and carefully listened to the recording again, but I couldn’t make out anymore than I had before. Nate’s fingers jigged on the computer keyboard, and then he hit a button on the CD player. “I downloaded it to the computer, so now we can manipulate it any way we want.”
The Sudoku woman flung open the studio door. “Nate, did you just put some kind of crazy shit on the air? People are calling and want to hear the John Trudell song about Mighty Mouse again.”
“Um, tell them it was a demo.” He flicked his hand at her, and she disappeared. He hit a few more buttons and turned down the on-air volume, and we were once again listening to the hiring of a hit man.
We got to the portion where I thought I’d heard music; Nate’s fingers tapped on the keyboard and isolated the track, bringing the background noise up and the primary voice down, allowing us to hear the melody of something.
“Do you recognize that song?”
He listened intently to the simple chord progression but shook his head. “No.”
Lolo leaned in and propped an arm on the counter. “Play it again.”
Nate did as he was told, and we listened to the music as he lifted the volume-a strong bass-baritone and a chicka-boom rhythm passed through the speakers. “Jail was often his home They’d let him raise the flag and lower it…”
The rest was lost in the background noise and angry voices.
“Johnny Cash-that’s The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”
Nate looked at me. “Who?”
Lolo Long gently slapped him in the back of the head. “The Pima Indian who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima.” She glanced at me and gestured toward Nate. “This is what we fought for-you know that, right?”
“When was that?”
She looked at him. “Iwo Jima?”
“No, the song. When was it released?”
I thought about it. “Before I went to Vietnam, ’64 I’d guess.”
He made a face. “The sixties? No wonder I don’t know it.” He looked at the CD player as if it held the Dead Sea Scrolls. “Wow, man.”
I glanced at the chief. “Well, we need to go up to the Jimtown Bar anyway. I don’t think anybody’s going to remember anything, but we’ve got to leg it out. I’ve got a couple of hours before Cady and Lena come back from Colstrip.” I gestured toward the computer again. “Can you play the part with the woman’s voice?” He did, but the only word that I could discern was the word dome/dose/dole.
Lolo Long had a strange look on her face. “Play it again.”
Nate did as he was told and then played it again and again.
I leaned a little forward to get her attention as she stared at the blank screen. “Anything?”
She didn’t hear me, or she was concentrating.
“Do you know who it is?”
Even Nate turned to look at her, but she shook her head. “No, I thought for a minute, but…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I studied her. “You’re sure?”
She straightened and stepped back from the counter. “Yeah.”
I sighed and looked at Nate. “You?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I wish I did. Believe me.”
“I do.” I patted him on the shoulder. “We’re going to head up to Jimtown and ask around. Do you think you can keep manipulating the recording so that we can try and get more out of it?” I paused. “Without putting it on the air?”
He smiled and looked at the lights still blinking on the phone. “Hey, man, I may have produced a hit here.”
Chief Long had been silent in the five miles up to the notorious drinking establishment; it had been a quick five miles, but five miles nonetheless.
She slid the Yukon to a stop in front of the steel-red posts sticking up in front of the Jimtown Bar’s front door-likely there to keep the patrons from instituting an impromptu drive-through-and sat staring at the dash, the midday sun drying the irrigation water in the surrounding hay field with wisps of vapor trailing up from the ground.
“Something wrong?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
She looked at me as if I’d just fallen off the official sheriff’s-only turnip truck. “I’m just wondering how complex this case is, you know?”
I nodded. “It usually is complicated when it concerns matters of the heart; things tend to get venal and earthy.”
She pressed her lips together. “So you don’t think it’s a hidden gold mine or about nuclear weapons?”
I smiled. “No, I don’t; I think it’s something small, something personal, and probably something stupid.” I waited a moment. “You got anything you want to tell me, Chief?”
She looked at me for a longer moment and then pulled the handle and threw open her door. “Not really.”
The Jimtown bar itself isn’t an impressive sight, but the beer can pile out back most certainly is. Documented by National Geographic and Guinness World Records as the largest beer can pile in the world, it dwarfed the actual bar, where the twin mottos, which appeared on the back of souvenir ball caps, had always been WHERE THE CAN OF WHUPASS IS ALWAYS OPEN, and FRIDAY NIGHT SPECIAL, SHOT, STABBED, OR RAPED. I got tired the way I always did when approaching such establishments and hoped that Luanne, the proprietor for the last few miraculously quiet years, was about.
I started to follow Long toward the door but paused when I saw an old, faded powder-blue Dodge with a white replacement door that read COLSTRIP CONCRETE and a phone number belying its age with only four numerals.
I stopped.
The moment must have lasted longer than I thought, as Lolo paused with her hand on the front door of the bar and looked at me. “Something wrong?”
I thought about repeating the conversation in reverse but decided her mood wasn’t conducive. “I’ve seen that truck before.”
“There are only a couple of thousand vehicles on the Rez, so I bet you have.” She pushed the door open but instead of going inside turned to look at me. “Where?”
“Birney.”
“Red or White?”
“I’ll tell you later.” I glanced at the truck one more time, then caught the heavy glass door and followed her into the interior gloom, lit only by the red neon spelling BAR in the small window. It was still well before opening time, but a familiar character sat on one of the massive log stools bolted to the concrete floor.
Thom Paine had been the unofficial mayor of Jimtown for as long as I could remember; half Cheyenne and half Crow, he was the perfect peacemaker for the just-off-the-Rez bar. He was a small man, so his best technique for breaking up beer brawls was to get the patrons to laugh with an unending stream of politically incorrect Native humor mostly borrowed from Herbert His Good Horse. He leapt off his stool as soon as he saw us. “ Haho! ”
Lolo held up a hand to stop the coming tirade as I wandered over to the jukebox at the far end of the bar. “Thom, is Luanne around?”
“No, she went to Billings for a hair appointment.” His voice became more excited as he thought of a joke to tell. “I got this one off the morning show the other day-there were these two cowboys out ridin’ and they came onto this Indian lying on his belly with his ear against the earth.”
I thumbed through the machine’s old-style tabs as Long’s voice sounded dubious. “She left you in charge?”
“No, Nattie Tyminski is here, but she’s in the bathroom.” He continued with the joke as if she hadn’t interrupted. “The one cowboy turns to the other and says, ‘See that Indian, he can put his ear to the ground and hear things from miles away.’”