I CALLED the sheriff in Missoula early next morning, then drove in to meet him at his office. When I entered the office, he was standing at his window, looking out at the street, dressed in a blue, long-sleeve shirt, charcoal-black striped trousers, and a wide leather belt. I realized he was even a bigger man than I’d thought. His arms were propped against the sides of the window, and his back and head blocked out the view of the street entirely.
“I checked on that gal, Dixon’s sister, what’s-her-name, Katie Jo Winset. Evidently she was a professional snitch. She died of a heart attack while being taken from the woman’s prison to a trial in Houston,” he said. “Why would her brother want to put it on you?”
“She killed her own child. I got her to plead out. Part of the deal was she had to snitch off some bikers who were muleing dope up from Piedras Negras. If I remember right, one of the mules took Wyatt Dixon down with him. I just didn’t remember Dixon’s name.”
“If Dixon cared about his sister, he should be grateful to you. In Texas she could have gotten the needle,” the sheriff said.
When I didn’t reply, he said, “She might have skated if she hadn’t pled out?”
“I wanted her to fire me and go to trial. She killed two of her other children and buried them in Mexico. Truth be known, I wanted her to hang herself,” I said.
The sheriff sat down behind his desk. He wore a black string necktie and there were scars on the backs of his hands. He saw me looking at them.
“I used to drive a log truck. I had a boomer chain snap down on me once,” he said. “Mr. Holland, I can’t say I’m glad to see you here. I’ve got enough problems without you people bringing your own up from Texas. This biker, Lamar Ellison, the one your friend Dr. Voss remodeled up at Lincoln? He’s been in Deer Lodge and Quentin, both. Your friend’s mistake is he didn’t kill Lamar when he had the chance.”
“Lamar’s going to be back around?”
“Don’t expect to see him soon at First Assembly.”
“Do y’all have a narcotics officer working inside his gang? An Indian girl with blond streaks in her hair?” I said.
“You got some nerve, don’t you?”
“I thought I’d ask. Thanks for your time,” I said.
“Don’t thank me. I wish you’d go home.”
I left his office and walked out of the courthouse toward my truck. It was windy, and the sky was blue, and above the university I could see an enormous smooth-sided mountain, with a white “M” on it and pine trees in the saddles and lupine growing in grass that was just turning green.
I heard heavy steps behind me, then a big hand reached out and encircled my upper arm.
“I get short with people. It’s just my nature,” the sheriff said. “This is a good town, by God. But there’s people here with fingers in lots of pies. Dr. Voss hangs with some of those Earth First fanatics and he’s gonna get hisself hurt. The same can happen to you, son.”
“I appreciate it, Sheriff.”
“No, you’re a hardhead. Talk with a man name of Xavier Girard. At least if you get broadsided by a train, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“The novelist? His wife’s an actress?”
“Maybe it’s different where you come from, but most people’s public roles hereabouts are pure bullshit. That don’t exclude me,” he replied.
THE SHERIFF told me that by noon I could probably find Xavier Girard, unless the Apocalypse was in progress, at a low-rent bar down by the old train depot. The last I had read of his escapades was about two years ago in People magazine. A photo showed him being escorted out of a Santa Barbara nightclub by two uniformed policemen, the tangled pieces of a broken chair draped over his head and shoulders, a maniacal grin on his bloodied face.
The cutline, as I recall it, had stated something like: “Famed Crime Novelist Takes on Crowd That Boos His Poetry Reading.”
I walked into the bar, a long, high-ceilinged place with brick walls, and saw him eating at a table by himself in back. His girth and beard and thick, unbrushed hair and big head made me think of a cinnamon bear. His hands even looked like paws. The bar was full of derelicts, Indians, a few college kids, and a group who looked like they had just bought their Western fashions in the shopping malls of Santa Fe. Xavier Girard watched me approach him as he upended a mug of beer.
“Mr. Girard, my name’s Billy Bob Holland. I’m an attorney from Deaf Smith, Texas. The sheriff said I should talk to you,” I said.
“Oh yeah? About what?” he said.
“About Tobin Voss.” I pulled out a chair from the table and sat down.
He picked up his paper napkin and looked at it and dropped it. “Why don’t you just plunk yourself down without being invited?” he said.
“I need some help, sir. If I’ve intruded, I’ll leave.”
“You that private detective my film agent hired?”
“Pardon?”
“Got some ID?”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
He thought about it and let his eyes rove over my face.
“I guess that Southern-fried accent didn’t come out of Laurel Canyon,” he said. “Tobin Voss is on the right side, but he’s busting up the wrong people. Over-the-hill meth heads aren’t the problem in Montana.” Then he raised his voice and looked in the direction of the group dressed in stylized western clothes. “California douche bags buying up the state with their credit cards are a different matter.”
“You know a guy named Wyatt Dixon?” I asked.
“No. Who is he?”
“An ex-con from Texas. He seems to be buds with this militia leader, Carl Hinkel.”
“If Hinkel had his way, the rest of us would be bars of soap.”
“You know this Earth First group?” I said.
“The first line of defense against the dickheads—those are Los Angeles dickheads I’m talking about,” he said, his voice rising again, his eyes resting on the tourists, “who want to drill for oil in wilderness areas and denude the national forest.”
“I see.”
“You’re not convinced?” he said.
“It’s been good meeting you, Mr. Girard. I read a couple of your books. I admire your talent.”
He seemed to look at me with a different light in his eyes.
He said, “Holly and I are having some people over tonight. It’s a publication party. A collection of essays done by local writers on the Blackfoot. Bring Tobin Voss or whoever you like.”
“That’s kind of you. Tell me, Mr. Girard, why would a fellow’s film agent want to send a private detective after him?”
“Man claims I set fire to his convertible outside the Polo Lounge. But don’t put any credence in that. The poor guy’s unbalanced. He’s trying to set up 900 toll numbers for Charlie Manson and the Menendez brothers.”
“This is your agent?”
“Not anymore,” he said, his eyes smiling.
“COME WITH US,” Doc said to his daughter Maisey that evening.
“Holly Girard looks like melted wax somebody put in the refrigerator,” Maisey said.
“I don’t want you here alone,” he said.
“Steve is picking me up. We’re going to the movies. If you don’t trust me, then stay home.”
“What time are you coming back from the show?” Doc said.
“Maybe you could put an electric monitor on me. The kind that criminals wear when they’re sentenced to home arrest.”
“How about it with the histrionics?” Doc said.
“How about it yourself, Dad? You’re the selfish one. You give up nothing and want me to give up everything.”
Maisey’s face had the bright shininess of a candied apple. The skin above her upper lip was moist with perspiration, like a little girl’s.
Ease up, Doc, I thought.
He looked out the front window at the twilight in the hills and the black swirl of the river as it made a bend and flowed deeper into woods that had already gone dark with shadow.
“We’ll be back by eleven. Can you do the same?” he said.
“I don’t know. Kids in Missoula fill condoms with water and throw them at each other’s cars. Can I give that up for my father’s peace of mind? Gee, I’m not sure,” she said. She fixed her hair in front of the mirror and looked at her father’s reflection and raised her eyebrows innocuously.
I went outside and waited for Doc by my truck. Through the front window I could see him and Maisey arguing bitterly. When he came outside he tried to be good-natured but he couldn’t hide the strain in his face.
“They say a father has a few rough moments when his daughter is between thirteen and seventeen. I think it’s more like being rope-drug up and down a staircase on a daily basis,” he said.
“Who’s the kid she’s going out with?” I asked.
“He lives up the road. He’s a good boy. There’s his car now,” Doc said.
“Then quit worrying,” I said.
WE DROVE into Missoula through Hellgate Canyon and met Cleo Lonnigan at an ice cream parlor on the Clark Fork of the Columbia River. She was outside, at a table by the water, the cottonwoods blowing in the wind behind her. She wore a black dress and pearls and looked absolutely beautiful.
“I called your house. I thought maybe I was late. Maisey said you’d already left,” she said.
A network of lines crisscrossed Doc’s forehead.
“How long ago did you call?” he asked.
“Just a minute ago,” Cleo answered.
“Why is she still at home?” Doc said, then went to the pay phone inside the ice cream parlor before either Cleo or I could speak.
“He’s a little wired,” I said.
“I think Doc and his daughter should get a divorce,” she said.
I saw him replace the receiver on the hook, then walk down the steps toward us.
“Nobody home. They probably took off,” he said.
“Sure,” I said, glad the conversation was about to change.
He glanced at his wristwatch, his eyes busy with thought. “I’ll call from Girard’s place,” he said.
XAVIER GIRARD and his wife Holly lived in a big log house on a bluff above the Clark Fork. The sun was only a spark between two ridges in the western part of the valley now, but the afterglow rose high into the vault of blue sky overhead, and looking to the north you could see snowcapped mountains in the Rattlesnake Wilderness and, toward Missoula, the maple trees in residential neighborhoods riffling in the breeze and the lights of downtown reflecting on the river’s surface.
“Whose money bought this place?” I said as we walked up the drive toward the sundeck of the Girards’ house.
“Not Xavier’s. He has the reverse King Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to garbage. He went back to Louisiana and built a million-dollar home on the bayou, you know, boy from Shitsville makes good, except he built it in a sinkhole and the foundation caved in and the whole thing slid into the bayou,” Doc said.
The guests on the deck and in the living room were writers and university people, artists, biologists and conservationists, photographers, liberal arts students from the East, an editor from Doubleday, a journalist from Time, a movie producer from A&E, smoke jumpers, and Xavier Girard’s entourage of barroom fans.
An actor from north-central Texas, who wore a suit with no tie, his dress shirt open at the collar, was holding forth at a glass-topped table, his mouth downturned at the corners like a drill instructor’s.
He was talking about a casting lunch of years ago.
“See, Dennis is a right good boy and all, but he don’t have no understanding of Southerners whatsoever. We was waiting on the food to come out and he started lecturing at me and using profane language and carrying on and getting in my face like he growed up in a vacant lot. So I reached across the table and grabbed him by the necktie and dragged him through the Caesar salad and cut off his tie with a steak knife and slammed him back down in the chair and told him to start acting like a white person for a change. I didn’t have no trouble with him after that, but damned if the part didn’t go to…”
Down below the deck we could hear Xavier Girard, stripped to the waist, pounding a speed bag with his bare fists while his barroom pals looked on admiringly.
It was Girard’s wife who was the surprise. I expected her to possess at least some of her husband’s eccentricities. Instead, she was either an extraordinary actress or she must have been blind-drunk the night she married him. She seemed to gaze into your eyes with total interest, regardless of the subject of conversation. Her skin was pale, her mouth irregularly shaped, as though her expression and smile were unpracticed, perhaps a bit vulnerable. She wore her dark blond hair in tresses and stood close to the person she was talking to, either man or woman, in a way that seemed sexually intimate yet defenseless.
“You were an Assistant United States Attorney?” she said.
“For a while. In Phoenix,” I replied.
“Why’d you quit?” she said.
“I probably wasn’t that good at it.”
Her eyes probed mine, as though my sentence contained meaning that the two of us should examine together. Then she fitted her thumb and forefinger around my wrist and said, “Will you let me share something with you?”
We walked to the edge of the deck, into the shadows and a layer of cold air that rose from the river. The pines farther up the hill were black against the stars. She wore a purple evening dress and there was a shine on the tops of her breasts. Through the sliding glass doors I could see Doc punching in numbers repeatedly on a telephone while Cleo stood behind him, an exasperated expression on her face.
“I’m concerned for Doc. He’s obsessed about this gold mine up the Blackfoot,” Holly Girard said.
“Seems like he has a lot of company,” I said.
“But people listen to him. He was a war hero. He’s got this Byzantine aura of spirituality about him. He could read the phone book and sound like John Donne.”
“You think somebody’s going to hurt him?”
“How would you feel toward Doc if you had no work and no food in the house and a poet was telling you a trout stream was more important than feeding your family?” she said.
Through the glass door I saw Doc bang the phone receiver down in the cradle.
“Excuse me,” I said, and went inside.
Doc widened his eyes at me, his hand still on the phone receiver, feigning a smile.
“I called the theater they were going to. I know the manager. He didn’t see her,” Doc said.
“Like the theater manager doesn’t have anything else on his mind,” Cleo said.
“Y’all want to go?” I asked.
“I should have brought my car,” Doc said.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“It’s been quite an evening. I just don’t know if I can stand any more like it,” Cleo said.
I told them I’d see them outside and I went down a hallway to the bathroom. Three women and two men were standing by an abstract oil painting, not far from the bathroom door. Their eyes were bright, their conversation gilded with laughter.
“Is this the line for the bathroom?” I asked.
They stopped talking and looked at me peculiarly, as though I had spoken in another language. Then a woman said, “Holly’s inside.”
The door was ajar, and I saw Holly Girard bend over a framed mirror that lay horizontally on a marble-topped counter. Her evening dress was backless, and I could see the delicate bones under her skin as she inhaled a chopped white line deeply into her lungs through a rolled dollar bill. She wiped the mirror’s surface with her index finger and rubbed her finger inside her gums.
She straightened her shoulders, turned and opened the door, and looked blankly into my face.
“Oh hello, again,” she said. “The maid must have misplaced my toothbrush. I had to brush my teeth with my finger. Can you imagine?”
“Right. Can I get out through that far door?” I said, pointing toward the end of the hallway.
“Are you offended in some way?” she asked.
“No, I’m not.”
“Then stay,” she said, and reached out and encircled my wrist as she had earlier.
“You asked me why I quit the Justice Department,” I said. “It’s because a Texas Ranger named L.Q. Navarro and I killed a bunch of cocaine and tar mules down in Old Mexico. I hate the sonsofbitches who sell that stuff, and if I had it to do all over, I’d kill those men again. So I guess it’d be a little hypocritical of me if I prosecuted homicide cases.”
The group by the oil painting stared at me with the opaqueness of people caught in a strobe light.
“Don’t be that way,” Holly said to me, her expression suddenly tender.
I walked down the hall and out the door into the night, the back of my neck flaming with embarrassment.
DOC AND I dropped Cleo at her car by the ice cream parlor, then drove up the Blackfoot River toward his house. We turned off the highway north of Potomac, rumbled across the log-and-cable bridge onto the dirt road, and drove along the edge of a dry creek bed that was white and dusty and webbed with algae under the moon.
Doc kept squinting his eyes through the front window.
“That looks like a fire,” he said.
“Where?”
“Through the trees. You see it?” he said.
“No,” I said, irritably, and used the electric buttons on the door to roll down all the windows in the truck. “You smell any smoke?”
“None,” he said.
“Then for God’s sakes, shut up. I don’t want to hear any more doom and gloom. If just for five minutes. Okay, Doc?”
We went across a cattle guard and drove down the two-track lane through the meadow behind his house. I had been right. There was no fire in the vicinity. Instead, Doc’s yard was filled with emergency vehicles whose flashers lit the front porch of the house and the trees and the pebbled bank of the river and the current that flowed through the boulders with the dull red glow of a smithy’s forge.