YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT Gianni and Catfoot.” said Bart, looking at the card in his hand. It was the card the woman reporter had given Du Pré in the little Inuit village on Hudson Bay after he and Bart and the Quebec Indians had come down the Rivière de la Baleine.
“I think you find out that Lucky isn’t Chippewa and that he came and went from the village,” said Du Pré. “They will cover for him, but they are not very good at it. I don’t drink that they talk to the Mounties, though.”
Two percent of Canadians are Indian, one-quarter of prison inmates are, too. So the Indians don’t like the Mounties much.
“How’s Maria doing?” said Bart. He looked a little shamefaced. He had been so besotted by Michelle Leuci that he had been thinking of little else.
And I don’t blame him one bit, Du Pré thought. He has had very little love in his life and is trying to do right by it. He remembered Bart’s bloated, sick face, and Bart three-quarters dead from booze. But Bart was struggling and he had faith in the possibility of love in the world. Which took a great deal of courage, come to think of it.
“She is fine,” said Du Pré. “Little Métis girl from Montana, where the schools are not much good, trying to go to a tough eastern university. But she will just work till she gets it. She is tougher than either you or me, I think.”
“That would not take very much,” said Bart, “as we are nothing but a couple of middle-aged marshmallows.”
Du Pré nodded. Fair enough.
“But you are really going to go and hunt Lucky,” said Bart. “You know Michelle will bust you if you kill him. She’ll bust you if you threaten him.”
“It will be out of her jurisdiction,” said Du Pré, “but I have to find him first.”
“You won’t tell me where you are going to look?”
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré.
Bart let it drop. Du Pré was lying, sort of. He didn’t know where he was going yet, but he’d decide soon enough—as soon as Bart was off to find that woman reporter and go back to the village and hound Eloise and Françoise and Hervé and Guillaume. Bart would not be good at it, but that woman, Sulin Bickhoff, would be very good at it. Strange name. So, for that matter, was Gabriel. Du Pré wondered if Bart’s family owned her newspaper. Probably. They seemed to own just about everything.
If Bart and this Sulin Bickhoff found out what Du Pré thought they would, then Michelle would have something better to work with than she had now.
Du Pré’s forehead itched. He would not be blending into any crowds for a while. Probably have a narrow white scar across his browned forehead.
I can’t even kill the fucker, Du Pré thought angrily. I got to goose him till he screws up, and he is plenty smart for sure.
Du Pré called Maria. She was in her room at the boardinghouse near the school, working hard.
“You be ready in the fall,” said Du Pré. “You worry too much.”
“I know,” said Maria. “I know I worry too much and that I will be ready in the fall. But…this is some different place, Papa.”
“I got to ask you a favor,” said Du Pré.
“Okay,” said Maria. She would hear him out at least.
“I need for you to go someplace safe where no one knows you are except Madelaine until I call her to call you. This guy, killing these Indians down here in D.C.? I have found him and he ran. I don’t know he even knows about you, but you do me this favor, huh? Just go hide till Madelaine calls you?”
Maria didn’t say anything for a while.
“Okay,” she said. “I will tell you what, I will take some books that I have to read and my computer, I will go someplace—I am not even going to tell you where— and then I will wait. But you got to call Madelaine to call me so I know that you are all right.”
“Sure,” said Du Pré, not knowing where he was going or if there were telephones there. Or if Lucky would get him, too.
“Where are you going, Papa?” said Maria. “You got to tell me so I can worry about some place.”
Shit, Du Pré thought, now she will come after me. Maria, she don’t have any fear bones.
“Maria,” said Du Pré, “I know how this song ends. Now you going to go and come with me, I guess.”
“Papa,” said Maria, “you are so smart, I am more proud of you every day.”
Why, Du Pré wondered for the ten thousandth time, don’t I keep my big fucking mouth shut and not think for my daughter, who will not have it? She would not have it when she was two and she will not have it now.
“I will drive up and get you,” said Du Pré.
“I will be ready,” said Maria. “Do I need a gun?”
“Christ, no!” said Du Pré. “They are illegal everywhere here, you know.”
“What,” said Maria, “has that got to do with anything?”
“Where you get a gun, anyway?” asked Du Pré.
“I brought two with me. There are these drug people and burglars and rapists here, you know. I don’t like that shit.”
Du Pré was speechless. I send my little girl off to get ready for college, she is ready to kill. Where did she learn this? Me. Montana. Your Honor, that asshole needed killing. Case dismissed.
“What kind of fucking guns do you have, anyway?” asked Du Pré.
“I got a nine-millimeter Sig-Sauer and a Colt Python,” said Maria.
“You ever shoot them?”
“Sure,” said Maria. “I can do a four-inch group at fifty feet with the nine-millimeter. The Python is a little sloppier, but it fits in my backpack, on the side pocket there where it is easy to hand.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré, “I will come and get you.”
“Yes, Papa,” said Maria.
Du Pré hung up. He rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, Bart’s hand was in front of them with the keys to the Rover dangling from his fingers.
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Bart, “but I just want you to know that I am extremely glad you have an adult along with you. I would worry otherwise, but now I will not. I can’t afford to have heard anything, because I would have to tell Michelle, who would go completely batshit. Now, would you please get out of my sight, and do you have enough money?”
“Yes and I don’t know,” said Du Pré.
Bart went to the kitchen and came back with a wad of hundreds.
“Have you thought of family counseling?” he said, eyes wide.
Du Pré took the money, the keys, his fiddle, then he walked out the door. He got in the Rover and headed north.
He didn’t get to Massachusetts till dawn, and it took him a while to find where in Northampton it was that Maria lived.
He pulled over to the curb and got out.
Maria came striding out the front door of the huge old house. She had a backpack and a carryall. She kissed Du Pré on the cheek. He put her luggage in the back.
“You know where them Mohawks live?” said Du Pré.
Maria pointed north and Du Pré started the Rover.