Free Fire

5

West Yellowstone, Montana October 7

Clay McCann didn’t like how the reporter from the Wall Street Journal had described his hair as “pink.” The description denigrated him, made him sound less serious, like a circus clown. No one wanted to have pink hair. The reasonfor the description in the Journal, and this was patently unfair,was that his hair-once a deep red-was now streaked with silver-gray hairs. The silver made it look from a distance (if the observer was a jaded Eastern reporter) like he dyed his hair pink. Which he did not!

He confirmed it once again in the rearview mirror of his car as he drove through Yellowstone Park. While looking at himself in the mirror instead of watching the road, he nearly collided with a herd of buffalo. McCann cursed and slammed on his brakes, bringing his car into a skidding stop three feet from the front quarters of a one-ton bull. The animal swung its woolly triangle head toward the car, stared through the windshield at him with black amoral prehistoric eyes, snorted with what sounded like indignation, and slowly joined the rest of the herd.

A buffalo jam. Anyone driving through Yellowstone Park had to get used to them. The dank smell that hung in the air, the clip-clop of ungulate hooves on the pavement.

Wouldn’t that have made a hell of an ironic story, McCann thought, saying the headline aloud: “Freed Murderer Killed in Park Collision With Bison.”

While he waited he studied his face again in the mirror. The same reporter had described him as “pale, paunchy, and past his prime” in a flowery alliterative rhetorical flourish filled with popping P’s. That prick, McCann thought.

The buffalo herd seemed endless. Dozens of them, maybe a hundred dark woofing behemoths. None of them cared that he was there, only that they needed to cross the road to get to the Madison River. McCann had no choice but to sit and wait. He had tried to push through a herd once, but a bull swung its head and dented his driver’s door with a horn.

The heavy buck-brush near the river blazed red with fall color in the last half-hour of dusk. It was a great time and season to see the park, if one cared. But the tourists were all but gone. The roads were virtually empty. And Clay McCann, who had been the focus of so much attention, the center of so many conversations, was now utterly alone except for the buffalo.

Finally, as the last cow crossed, leaving blacktop spattered with steaming piles of viscous dung, McCann shifted into drive and accelerated.

McCann was nearly out of the park. He was going home.

The ranger at the West Yellowstone gate waved a cheery “Good-bye!” from her little gatehouse as he slowed to leave the park. The town of West Yellowstone was just ahead.

Although she waved him through, McCann stopped next to the exit window, powered down his window, and thrust his face outside so she could see him.

She began to say, “You don’t need to stop. .” when she recognizedhim. Her eyes widened and her mouth pulled back in a grimace and she inadvertently stepped back, knocking a sheaf of Yellowstone News flyers to the ground outside her box. “My God,” she mouthed.

“Have a pleasant night,” he said, basking in her reaction, knowing now, for sure, he’d entered the rarified air of celebrity.

He’d been away for nearly three months. During that time, Clay McCann had gone from a semi-obscure small-town lawyer specializing in contracts and criminal defense law to beingknown both nationally and internationally. For a brief time, every utterance he made to reporters inside the tiny jailhouse at Mammoth Hot Springs made the wire services. Profiles of him and the Yellowstone Zone of Death appeared in a half-dozen nationalpublications. For a delicious week or two, his face and the crime were as familiar to viewers of twenty-four-hour cable networks as any celebrity criminal or victim. His arguments beforethe court were dissected by celebrity lawyers who predicted,correctly, that he’d win, which he did. Although the federal prosecutors threatened loudly to appeal the decision to the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court, the thirty days allowedto file had lapsed and he’d received no notification. McCannbanked on the assumption that the Feds didn’t want the case to go further with the very likely possibility that higher courts would have to declare that the Zone of Death actually existed.

He was as free as those buffalo back on the road. Originally, the news of the murders burned bright and his face was everywhere.Reporters and cameramen camped out on the lawn of the old Yellowstone jail, sharing the grass with grazing elk. But the story soon became eclipsed by the circumstances. He faded out of it, and other crimes that had more appeal-like blondes found missing on islands or cruise ships-overtook the hard-to-understandconcept of vicinage and the Sixth Amendment, and he was discarded onto the electronic landfill of old news. It was expensive, a reporter told him, for the network to keep a team out there in the middle of nowhere with little to report. Plus, he complained, there was nothing to do at night for the crew. Eventually,they all left. But McCann had no doubt he was still hot stuff up and down the Rocky Mountains.

He drove through the empty, familiar streets of West Yellowstone as the few overhead lights charged, hummed, and lit against the coming darkness. His house was located in a cul-de-sac within a stand of thick lodgepole pines west of town. His neighbors were a doctor and a fly-fishing guide who had turned his name into a well-known brand. The doctor and guide were among the elite in town and it was an exclusive, if tiny, neighborhood.McCann had acquired his house in a foreclosure auction,but nevertheless.

As he pulled into his driveway he saw immediately that his house had been vandalized. The windows were broken and FILTHY FUCKING MURDERER was spray-painted in red on the front door, drips of paint crawling down the wood like dried blood.

He charged up the walk and kicked through weeks of porch-deliverednewspapers and entered his dark house to find the power and water shut off. He experienced a moment of overwhelmingdespair: How could they expect me to keep up with the local bills when I was incarcerated?

Retrieving a flashlight from his car, he returned to his home as despair sharpened into quiet rage. His house reeked of spoiled food from inside the refrigerator and freezer. He didn’t even open them. Long-dead tropical fish floated in a slick of scum on the top of his fish tank. His cat was long gone, althoughhe’d shredded most of his living room furniture and sprayed the carpet in his bedroom before finding his way out.

Drawers and closet doors were agape, clothing thrown across the floors by investigating cops. His telephone was ripped from the wall for no good reason at all. His bookcase was ransacked, emptied, law books tossed into piles along with the military thrillers he liked to read. Holes were punched into his walls as they looked for. . what? What were they trying to find and why were they trying to find it? The case wasn’t a mystery,after all.

What made him angriest was to visualize the slow-witted localcops and park rangers rooting through his personal belongings,reading his mail, laughing, no doubt, at his collection of pornography in the drawer of his nightstand and finding- Jesus-the cardboard box containing the stuffed animals from his childhood that he just couldn’t make himself throw away. He wondered how many people knew about that. If somebody said something about the box in town, he vowed, he’d sue their ass so fast it would leave skid marks.

No note of apology, no crime-scene tape, no acknowledgmentof what they’d done. They simply trashed the place and left it for vandals.

He would need protection. Some yahoo might try to take him down, try to become famous for killing the man who beat the system. These people here liked that kind of rough frontier justice. Unfortunately, the Park Service hadn’t returned his weapons and he’d have to threaten a suit to get them back. As he drafted the action in his head, he remembered something. Months before, a client charged with his third DUI had paid him a retainer consisting of cash and a.38 snub-nosed revolver. The lawyer had dropped the gun into a manila envelope and filed it among his casework portfolios in his home office. Remarkably,the cops had missed it. He retrieved the gun and checked the loads, more familiar with weapons than he used to be, and slid it into his jacket pocket. It felt solid and heavy against his hip. He liked how it felt.

Pausing on the porch among the litter of unopened mail and newspapers, McCann took a deep breath of cold air. It tasted faintly of pinecone dust and wood smoke. He fought against the dark specter of being absolutely alone.

Because it was late in the year, only locals were out. McCanndrove to Rocky’s, a local favorite they all raved about like it was Delmonico’s, but he found more or less passable. It was both a bar and a restaurant, one big room. He wanted a beer and a burger, something they couldn’t mess up. Ninety days of jail food had screwed up his system.

The place was humming with raucous conversation as he entered,and it took a moment to get the bartender’s eye. When he did, the man simply looked at him with tight-lipped trepidation as if he were a ghost, a demon, or Senator Teddy Kennedy.

Then the din started to fade, and it continued to diminish untilit was almost silent inside. McCann felt nearly every set of eyes in the restaurant on him. He heard whispers:

“Oh my God, look who’s here.”

“It’s Clay McCann.”

“What’s he think he’s doing here?”

A few of the men’s faces hardened into deadeye stares, as if challenging him to start something. A young mother covered the eyes of her child, as if she thought simply seeing him would scar the little tyke for life.

Even though he’d expected this reception, it still came as a sour jolt. Sure, he was used to indirect derision and whispered asides because he was a lawyer. Lawyers made enemies. But this was full-scale, almost overpowering. His only solace was the knowledge that it would be short-term and that he had a.38 in his pocket.

He looked back at them, not without fear. Eight percent, he thought. Look for the eight percent. Take comfort in the eight percent.

Early in his career, before he messed up, McCann had been a criminal defense attorney in Minot, North Dakota, after he’d fled Chicago to avoid that ethics charge. He’d been lucky enough to land a deep-pockets client almost immediately-a North Dakota banker accused of hiring thugs to kill his wife. The case was considered a slam-dunk conviction by the prosecution,and it looked hopeless to McCann. Because splitting the fee was better than losing the case outright, McCann brought in Marcus Hand, the flamboyant Wyoming trial lawyer who was famous for four things: long white hair, buckskin clothing, delaysthat sweetened the payout for the lawyers, and his ability to persuade a jury. McCann watched Hand perform in the courtroomand the Wyoming lawyer nearly convinced McCann himselfthat his client didn’t do it. Eventually, the jury deadlocked at 10-2, and couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. In the retrial a year later, Hand managed to create almost the same result, with an 11-1 hung jury. Although the embarrassed prosecutors let it be known that they would bring the case to trial a third time, it never happened. The doctor walked away into bankruptcy and into the arms of his pretty, new twenty-five-year-old wife.

Over victory drinks, Hand explained the Eight Percent Rule to McCann. “It’s really very simple,” he said, using the same melodic voice he used to pet and stroke the jury. “I have to convinceone juror out of twelve to vote with us. One of twelve is eight percent, give or take. Not that I need to convince him our client is innocent, understand. I just need to establish an intimatepartnership with that one fellow or lady in a crowd who is contrary. The man or woman who has an ax to grind. My theory,and you saw it happen twice, is that in any group of people forced to be together, at least eight percent of them will go against the majority if for no other reason than to shove it up their ass-if they have an authority figure they can trust to be on their side. I am that leader in the courtroom. I talk only to my soul mate, Mr. Eight Percent. That man-or woman, in the case today-will follow me into hell, just so we can put one over on the rest. Remember, Clay, we aren’t running for election. We don’t care if ninety-two percent of the voters want the other guy. Who cares about them if we have our pal, Mr. Eight Percent?We just want our evil partner, Mr. Eight Percent, who hates the guts of the majority and always will, to show his true colors. He just wants to be bad, unique-an individual! — and I’m there to show him the way.”

McCann remembered that conversation as he tried to boldly return the stares. Sure enough, when he studied the dinner and bar crowd, he detected two or three people who looked back not with horror, disgust, or revulsion, but with guarded neutrality. All were former clients.

Gavin Toomey, a local miscreant best known for poaching violations and his palpable hatred for the federal government, sat alone at the opposite end of the bar. Toomey actually noddeda discreet greeting.

Butch Toomer, the former sheriff who was recalled by angry voters for accepting bribes, looked at him coolly and raised his beer bottle in greeting. Toomer would be pleased McCann was back because McCann owed him.

And Sheila D’Amato, the dark-eyed former vixen who had shown up on the arm of a reputed mafioso en route to the park only to be dumped on the street after an argument, met his eyes while wetting her lips with the point of her tongue.

She was with him, for sure. Good enough for now.

McCann said with a tone of triumph, “West Yellowstone’s most infamous resident has returned.”

Someone in the back mumbled, “Let’s see how long he lasts.”

A few men snorted in assent.

McCann visualized the room standing en masse and charginghim. He inconspicuously lowered his right hand and brushed the dead weight of the.38 in his jacket pocket with his fingertips.

Les Davis, owner of the Conoco station, said, “I don’t think you’re welcome here.”

“So get the hell out,” another man rasped.

McCann found his voice, said, “We don’t want this to get out of hand.”

Davis mumbled something inaudible.

“We can be friends or we can be enemies,” McCann said. “I’d prefer to be friends. That way none of us winds up in court.”

He turned to the bartender. “I’d like a cheeseburger, medium rare, and a Yellowstone Pale Ale.” His voice didn’t quaver and he was thankful.

The barman attempted to stare McCann down, but he couldn’t hold it. Sheepishly, he glanced over the bar at the still-silentcrowd. They were all watching him to see what he’d do.

McCann said softly, “Are you refusing me service? I’d hate to bring a discrimination suit against this place since everyone loves it so much.”

“Give him some fucking food,” Butch Toomer growled from his corner table. “The man’s got to eat.”

The barman looked down, said, “I just work here.”

“Then place my order.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

McCann nodded his appreciation to Toomer, who raised his beer in silent partnership. Sheila was practically devouring him with her dark, mascara’d raccoon eyes. She smiled wickedly at him, her eyes moist. And not just her eyes, he hoped.

“Tell you what,” he said to the barman, “I’ll order it to go. You can have someone bring the order to my office. That way your patrons can reel their eyes back in.”

“Good idea,” the man said, visibly relieved.

As he opened the door, McCann shot a glance over his shoulder at Les Davis and his crowd of burghers and fought the impulse to say, “Losers.”

On the way to his office two blocks away on Madison, McCannbought two six-packs of local Moose Drool beer from the dingy convenience store and carried them to his office. He fished the gun from his pocket and placed it on his desk, then sat in his chair and waited for his dinner to arrive. His nerves were still tingling.

The Journal reporter had made fun of his office location too, that his practice was on Madison Avenue, but not that Madison Avenue. This Madison Avenue, in West Yellowstone, Montana, saw more wandering elk on the sidewalks than it did men in three-piece suits.

There was a huge pile of unopened mail on his desk and he rifled through it. Hate mail, mostly, he assumed. He swept the pile into the garbage can. He’d done the same with letters sent to him while he was in jail.

The only letters McCann took seriously were from other lawyers threatening civil actions against him on behalf of the murdered campers. McCann knew they’d have a good case. Luckily, he thought, it could take years to get to trial, and he didn’t plan to be available when and if it did.

While he waited, he imagined hearing the sounds of a mob building outside on the street. Pitchforks and torches being raised. Guttural shouts morphing into a chant: “Justice. . Justice. . Justice. .” Then the door would burst open and dozens of dirty hands would reach for him across his desk. .

So when there was a knock on his door he gripped the.38 with one hand before reaching for the handle with the other. Sheila D’Amato stood in the threshold with a large foam containerand a tray with two tap beers in mugs covered by plastic.

“Why you?” McCann asked.

“I offered.”

“I don’t remember ordering two beers.”

“I thought maybe I’d drink one with you.”

He nodded, let her in after checking the street to confirm there was no mob, and shut the door behind them. He gestured to the sack with the six-packs. “I’ve got more.”

“What you did to those people in Yellowstone,” she said, “it was just so baaaaad.” Her eyes glistened as she drew out the word. “And the way those people reacted in Rocky’s-wow.”

Wow, he knew, was probably the best she could do.

She drank beer after beer and watched him eat. He was grateful for her company, he admitted to himself, which was proof of his desperation.

He’d represented Sheila after she was arrested for shoplifting$200 worth of makeup from the drugstore. That was when she’d been around town for a few months, long enough that merchants had learned to watch her closely. He employed a “high-altitude” defense, claiming to the judge that Sheila’s brain was out of whack because she came from New Jersey and her brain had yet to adapt to the altitude and lack of oxygen. It made her forgetful, he said, and she had simply forgotten to pay the clerk. The judge was amused with the argument but still would have convicted her if the drugstore owner hadn’t forgotten to show up and testify. Sheila credited McCann for her acquittal.

Sheila D’Amato admitted to McCann after the trial that she was getting old and her clothes were too tight. All she wanted was her old life back, before she’d been dumped. She was pathetic,he thought, but he enjoyed her stories of being a kept woman in Atlantic City, being passed from mobster to mobster for fifteen years. She claimed she hated Montana and all the tight-assed people who lived here. She’d left town with men a few times since her arrival, but had drifted back after they cut her loose. She said she didn’t know why she kept ending up here.

“Do you plan to stay around?” she asked him. Sheila had an annoying little-girl-lost voice, he thought.

“Why are you asking?” But he knew why.

She shrugged and attempted to look coy. “Well, everybody hates your guts.”

“Not everybody,” he said, saluting her with his beer bottle.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, letting a little hard-edged Jersey into her voice, but cocking her head to make sure he knew she was teasing.

“I won’t be here long,” he said. He knew not to tell her too much. But she could be of use to him, even if he couldn’t trust her. She probably didn’t trust him either. They had that in common.

“Where will you go?” she asked, trying not to be obvious.

“Someplace warm.”

“What’s keeping you?”

That, he couldn’t tell her. “I’ll leave when the time is right.”

She nodded as if she understood. He drank another beer and she started to look better.

“What was it like?” she asked, her eyes glistening. She wanted him to tell her killing was a rush, a high. He wondered what the mobsters used to tell her it was like.

“It solved the problem,” he said, measuring his words, lettingher interpret them however she wished. How could he tell her it meant nothing to him? That, in fact, it was hard work and unpleasant but simply a means to an end?

He waited her out until she finally asked if he would take her with him when he left.

Of course not, he said to himself, not in a million fucking years. To Sheila, he said, “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On you.”

She had paid her legal bill to him for the shoplifting charge in blow jobs. They’d haggled and determined $50 per. She was pretty good. He’d been in jail for three months. He’d make her keep those too-tight clothes on.

Early the next morning, after shaving in his office and deciding that maybe he would look into some sort of hair coloringthat would drown out the gray, McCann dropped the.38 into his coat pocket and went outside into the chill. Sheila had been gone for hours, but not before they’d made a date for later that night. At least she was someone to talk to, he thought, although he preferred her with her mouth full. Maybe she wasn’t so patheticafter all. She’d do until he left, at least.

West Yellowstone was called a gateway community; it existedalmost solely as a staging area or overnight stop for tourists en route to the park. With a permanent population of less than two thousand people, the little town swelled to seven or eight thousand on summer nights and about half that with the snowmobile crowd in the winter. The place was unique in that they didn’t plow the roads so snowmobiles could be used legally on the streets.

West, as it was called, was rough-hewn and blue collar, consistingof motels, fly-fishing shops, and souvenir stores. Winters were severe and the people who lived there were rugged. Of the five places McCann had practiced law-Chicago, Minot, Missoula,Helena, and now West Yellowstone, West was by far the bottom of the barrel for a lawyer. Not that he’d had any choice, of course, after the trouble he’d had. For McCann, West was the place he ended up, like something washed up on the shore of the Madison River. Sheila’s story was similar. He could go no farther. He liked to tell people that when they brought him their problems.

A sheen of frost covered the windshields of parked cars and stiffened the dying grass between the cracks in the sidewalk. His breath billowed as he walked down Madison. There were no cars on the streets except those parked haphazardly around Bear Trap Pancake House. Locals, most of them. He bought a newspaperfrom the stand and went in.

He sat alone in a booth with his back to the front door and surveyed the crowd. Men wore cowboy hats or caps proclaimingtheir allegiance to fly shops or heavy equipment. They were sullen, waking up, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. In contrast were the four bustling waitresses who seemed unnaturallycheery. McCann figured it out: the staff was happy becausetoday would be their last day for the season. Like most businesses in West, the Bear Trap would close until December when there was several feet of snow and the snowmobilers would be back.

A middle-aged waitress with a name tag that read “Marge” practically skipped across the restaurant toward him with a pot of coffee. McCann pushed his empty mug across the table towardher.

As she began to pour, she looked up and her eyes locked on his, and she froze.

“Yes, please,” he said, gesturing toward his cup.

Her face hardened and she righted the pot without pouring a drop. Then she turned on her heel and strode into the kitchen.

A few moments later, McCann saw the face of the cook above the bat wing doors, then the face of the owner of the Bear Trap. The lawyer nodded toward the owner, who acknowledged him cautiously, then returned quickly to the kitchen.

A young waitress (nameplate: Tina) had apparently not witnessedMarge’s reaction and came over with a pot.

“No,” Marge said out the side of her mouth from two tables away.

Tina stopped, unsure of what to do.

“No,” Marge said again.

Tina shrugged apologetically at McCann and retreated to the far end of the restaurant to take care of other tables.

McCann sat quietly for twenty minutes as customers came in and placed their orders. Nothing was said to him. He was simply being frozen out, as if he didn’t exist. His coffee cup remainedempty.

As Marge passed with another fresh pot, McCann reached out and tugged on her apron and she jumped back as if he’d goosed her.

“I’d like breakfast,” he said.

“In hell,” she answered, swinging her large hips away from him.

McCann stood up angrily and reached for his coat. The.38 thumped against his side and for a second he considered reachingfor it. Several patrons watched him furtively between forkfulsof pancakes. Most didn’t even look up.

He slammed the door so hard that the bells on it swung and hit the glass, punctuating his exit. He stormed halfway across the street before stopping and turning around. Marge glared back at him from behind the window, her face distorted by condensationon the glass. His eyes slipped from Marge to the rust-tingedFOR SALE sign on the door of the building. Every place in West, it seemed, was always for sale. That went with the transientnature of the town.

But it gave him an idea.

Maybe he could buy the goddamned place and fire Marge. He could buy Rocky’s too. He could own the whole fucking town; then they’d have to respect him.

Mccann couldn’t feel his feet as he walked back towardhis office to make a call. His insides boiled, and he kept his mouth clamped shut so tightly that his jaw ached. His brief revenge fantasy of buying the town faded quickly. Despite his hunger for reprisal, the last thing he wanted was to stay a minute longer in this place than he had to.

He looked at his wristwatch, calculating the time difference. He needed to make a call. As he began to open the door to his office, he changed his mind. Who knew who might be listening on his line?

At a pay phone outside the supermarket he dropped in coins and dialed. It was answered on the third ring and he gave his accountnumber from memory. The receptionist transferred him to his banker.

The banker asked him to repeat the account number and asked for a password. McCann gave both and waited a moment, listening to a keyboard being tapped.

“Yes,” the banker said in a clipped Islands/English accent.

“Has the transfer been made?”

Hesitation. “There’s been a problem.”

The words cut through him like a sword. He swooned, and the sky seemed to tilt to the right, causing him to reach out to steady himself on the frame of the phone booth. “What do you mean, There’s been a problem?”

“The bulk of the funds didn’t arrive when you said they would. We don’t know when the remainder will arrive.”

He tried to stay calm. “How much?”

More tapping. “Approximately five percent of what you told us to expect.”

“Five percent?” He did the math. Five percent was nothing. Five percent would barely cover his current debts.

Fighting panic, he asked the banker to check it again. While he waited, he backed away from the booth as far as the cord would let him. He looked down the empty street. Walls of dark pine closed in. Even the crooked sky seemed to push down on him.

“I’m sorry,” the banker said. “It is correct.”

“How fucking long do I have to stay here in this shithole and wait?” he said, his voice rising to a choked shout.

“It is not the fault of our institution, sir,” the banker said defensively.“The problem is with the sender. You should talk to him and find out what is the cause of the delay.”

McCann wanted to plead to the banker, This was not the plan.

“Your issue is not with us,” the banker said.

“I’ll check back with you,” he said, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood and slamming down the receiver.

Stunned, he turned to walk away. But to where? How could this be happening?

And to think, three months ago he’d been famous.