He met me at his back door, shirtless, barefoot, a blue-and-white-freckled coffeepot in his hand. He stared at me blankly, his face marked from a lack of sleep. I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. “You wear a hat in your house?” I said.
“If it suits me,” he replied.
“Can I come in?”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said, turning his back, flipping over the steak in his skillet.
“I told Karsten Mabus you had the goods from the Global job. I wasn’t going to let my family take your fall, Wyatt,” I said, standing no more than two feet behind him. I felt my mouth go dry, my hands open and close at my sides.
He forked the steak onto a plate and began browning three pieces of white bread in the skillet grease, his face bloodless, without expression, like a severed head upon a platter.
“Wyatt?”
“I heard you.” He sat down at the table and started eating, cutting his meat with his right hand, forking it upside down into his mouth with his left.
“We can go after Mabus on environmental issues. Maybe he’s violated federal laws in dealing with Saddam Hussein.”
“I done give up on your thinking skills, counselor.”
“I see.”
“All them government people belong to the same club. Play golf together, let each other in on stock market deals, diddle the same women. Think you’re gonna change that with some pissant civil suit?”
“I’m sorry about the reverend.”
“You didn’t have nothing to do with it. My farrier seen Mabus’s people up on that ridge where I found the lockbox. They seen them unshoed hoofprints and put it together just like you and that FBI agent, what’s-his-name, Broussard, done.”
“Where’s the lockbox?”
“Everything in it went FedEx last night for Dallas. It’s going to some people got a newspaper down there, one I can trust.”
“Which newspaper?”
He told me the name. I had to think a moment, then I remembered the publication. To call it right-wing was simplistic. At various times it had been an outlet for Birchers, members of the Paul Revere Society, and people who had used armed force to take over a county courthouse on the Mexican border. But that was not why I remembered the newspaper’s name. To my knowledge, it had been the first news outlet in the country to publish the fact that a United States senator from Texas was involved in a huge swindle of the USDA and perhaps even the murder of a state agricultural official. This same senator would become President of the United States. But even though there might have been substance to the story, it was ignored by mainstream media because of the fanatical reputation of the publisher.
“I think you just gave away the ranch,” I said.
He drank from his coffee cup and gazed out the window. “You was the shooter at Mabus’s place, wasn’t you?” he said.
“You never know.”
“I talked with some folks on the res. They seen two guys looked just like the ones shanked me headed up the road to Reverend Sneed’s house. I know where them yardbirds is at, Brother Holland. They’re fixing to have a bad day.”
“If I have knowledge you’re about to commit a crime, I’m required to report it,” I said.
He laughed to himself. “This from the man who capped them two security people on Mabus’s ranch?”
“See you around, Wyatt.”
“Hey?”
“What?” I said, looking back from the doorway.
“The trout start rising soon as the sun gets over the ridge. Sit down and have a cup,” he said.
AT 8:15 A.M. THAT SAME Thursday morning, Darrel pulled into a convenience store down in the Bitterroots, left Greta Lundstrum in the car, and called the office of Brendan Merwood on his cell phone. At first Merwood pretended not to recognize Darrel’s name, but Darrel knew that to be Merwood’s way of dealing with people whom he considered unimportant.
“I’m the sheriff’s detective with the big ears and buzz cut you called a liar on the stand a couple of times,” Darrel said. “I’m also the detective the department sacked as a drunk and general screwup.”
“How good of you to call. What can I-”
“I found out where Johnny American Horse is holed up. I can put him out of commission myself or-”
“Stop right there, my friend. You’ve contacted the wrong party.”
“American Horse used a thirty-thirty without a scope. Next time out, he’ll have a better weapon and blow hair on your client’s walls. You get on the phone and tell Karsten Mabus what I said. My number is on your caller ID. You have fifteen minutes.”
Darrel clicked off his cell phone and got back in his Honda. Greta looked seasick, her makeup on too thick, a dirt ring around her throat.
“You going to stand up, Greta. Get all other options out of your head,” he said.
“One day I’m going to fix you for this, Darrel.”
“You already did.”
“What do you mean?”
You betrayed me, he thought. But he let it go. “How’s the recorder riding?” he asked.
“Like a tumor, if that answers your question,” she said.
Five minutes later, his cell rang. “Where are you? We’ll send a car to pick you up,” Merwood said.
“Are you kidding?” Darrel said.
“You call it, then.”
“Your office. Tell Mabus to bring his checkbook, too.”
There was a pause. “When?”
“Twenty-five minutes,” Darrel replied. He clicked off his cell phone and dropped it on the floor of the Honda. “Piece of cake.”
“You really think Karsten Mabus is going to come downtown and write you a check?” she said.
“If he wants to stay alive. Wait here just a minute.” He went inside the convenience store and returned with a large container of black coffee. “Nothing like it to get the day started,” he said.
They drove into Missoula, passing the old military fort that resembled Scofield Barracks in Hawaii, where Darrel had once been stationed. They crossed the new bridge over the Clark Fork, one that was lined with carriage lamps mounted on stanchions. Down below, Darrel could see the smooth rush of green water through the pilings, rafters bouncing through the current, and off to the left a sandlot baseball diamond couched between the bridge and the riverbank. This might be a hard place to let go of, he thought. He rolled down the window and let the coolness and smell of the morning blow into his face.
“You look mighty pleased with yourself,” Greta said.
“When you add it all up and it comes out to zero, you got to take your kicks where you can,” he said. “That make sense to you, Greta?”
“I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” she replied.
He waited until they were at the red light before he stared directly into her face. “Say that again?”
“We had fun for a while, didn’t we? It wasn’t all bad,” she said. She let her eyes rove over his face. “Maybe there’s still time.”
The light changed. “You almost had me going,” he said.
He pulled into the alley behind Brendan Merwood’s law firm and parked between two nineteenth-century brick buildings. Then, with his large Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, he and Greta entered the back door.
Merwood had two law partners, but both of their offices were empty and the receptionist and secretary who usually worked behind a curved counter in front were gone as well. “Hello?” Darrel said.
Merwood stepped out of his office, porcine, solid, wearing a striped shirt with French cuffs, his brown skin shining as though it had been rubbed with tanning lotion. “Sit down. Please,” he said. When he smiled his mouth had the dislocated stiffness of a patient in a dentist’s chair.
The Venetian blinds were closed, the soft tones of the walls, carpet, and furniture even softer in the muted light, the interior of the office humming with the sound of the air-conditioning vents.