Swan Peak

CHAPTER 11

I WENT EARLY FRIDAY morning with Clete to the health club on the Bitterroot highway, south of Missoula, and watched him work out on the heavy bag. He wore a purple-and-gold Mike the Tiger sweatshirt, the sleeves sawed off at the armpits, and a pair of shiny red rayon boxing trunks that hung to his knees. He was smacking the gloves hard into the bag, up on the balls of his feet, his weight forward, throwing his shoulders into it, vibrating the bag on its chain, whap, whap, whap. I could smell beer in his sweat.

I stood up from the chair I was sitting on and steadied the bag. I could feel the power of his blows thudding through the bag’s thickness into my hands. He reminded me in his style of Two-Ton Tony Galento. He swung his left and his right with equal murderous effect, full-out, in sweeping roundhouse hooks, his face deadpan, his brow furrowed. And like Galento in either the ring or a broken-glass back-alley brawl, Clete was as indifferent to his own pain as a bull is when it advances toward a matador.

He had been in a funk for days, and I didn’t know what it would take to get him out of it. He said his liver ached, and his blood pressure was probably through the roof. I thought if I stayed with him, got him into the steam room and a shower and a change of clothes, he could start the day fresh and clean and free of the boilermakers that daily fouled his blood. We could drive downtown to a workingman’s café and enjoy a breakfast of steak and eggs and spuds, like we used to do when the two of us walked a beat in the French Quarter. It would be a modest start, but at least it would be a start. As the writer Jim Harrison once said, we love the earth but we don’t get to stay. So why not have a decent sunrise or two while we’re hanging around?

But I knew my chances were remote. I also knew the thoughts that were going on behind that furrowed brow. “That Wellstone woman isn’t worth it, Cletus.”

“Who said she was? What does it take to get you off my case, Streak?”

How do you tell your best friend that his problem is not the women in his life but himself? Maybe it had not been Jamie Sue Wellstone’s intention, but she had driven the barb deep, twisted it, and broken it off inside Clete’s elephantine hulk. In fact, she had done what is perhaps the worst thing one human being can do to another. She had made Clete feel that he had been used and used badly, led into a tryst and discarded like yesterday’s bubble gum. Even worse, she had left him with uncertainty about her motivation. She had fixed it so he couldn’t simply close the door on what had happened and mark off the whole episode as bad judgment, the kind of mistake that men over forty line up to commit again and again. Instead, he would repeatedly sort through each sordid detail with tweezers, wondering if he was being too severe in his judgment of her or if he wasn’t simply an over-the-hill fool.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

He smacked the bag hard, flinging sweat out of his hair. “Like it’s me who’s always got that problem. Like it’s me who doesn’t see the world as it is.”

“I never said that.”

He threw a left into the bag, then hit it with a right hook that was so hard the blow pushed me back, even though my feet were set and I was holding the bag with both hands.

“You didn’t make Heckle and Jeckle over there?” he said.

At the other end of the building, two men in their thirties were shooting baskets, concentrating on their game, their backs to us.

“No, I didn’t make them for anything except two guys playing with a basketball,” I replied.

“How many guys have haircuts like that and look like jocks on crystal meth?”

“The FBI has other things to do besides follow guys like us around.”

“Watch this,” Clete said, cupping his hands by his mouth. “Hey, ladies, I got to grab a shower, then Dave and I are going to motor downtown for some eats. Join us if you like.”

The two men stopped their game and looked at us blankly. I felt my face shrink with embarrassment.

“We’ll see you at Stockman’s,” Clete shouted. “They make pork-and-beef sandwiches that’ll rev up your dorks for a week.”

“I’ll see you out front,” I said.

“Nobody believed Hemingway when he said the feds were bird-dogging him. After he blew his head off, somebody got hold of his FBI file and found over two hundred pages of surveillance on him. You’re always quoting Hemingway. You think Hemingway was just blowing gas?”

“Why should the feds have this huge interest in you? Why don’t you try a little humility for a change?”

“Maybe they’re looking at me for Sally Dee’s death. Maybe they’re humps for the Wellstone family. How do I know what they’re after? I camped on the Wellstone ranch by mistake and got in the Wellstones’ crosshairs. Why should they care about a PI with a jacket like mine? I don’t think it’s about oil and methane, either. What’s crazy is I think we’re probably looking right at it, but we don’t see it.”

“See what?”

“I don’t know. It’s not just money. These cocksuckers moved past that a long time ago. They can punch wells all over the planet and send the bill to the taxpayers. Look at those two guys bouncing the ball off the rim. You don’t think they have Quantico written all over them?”

I didn’t want to hear any more of his obsession. I drank coffee in the lobby, then went outside and sat in his Caddy and waited some more. The two men who had been shooting baskets emerged from the health club, still wearing their sweats, looking back over their shoulders. They walked to the far end of the parking lot and got in a four-door black car with a fresh wax job and drove off. They got as far as a half-block from the club when one of them picked up a handheld and put it to his ear.

Clete and I drove to Stockman’s and ate at the counter. Outside, the street was still cool and covered with shadow. The black four-door sedan was parked halfway down the block. The crew-cut, unshowered jocks from the health club were sitting in the front seat. I had a hard time concentrating on my food.

Clete followed my line of vision to the sedan. “Feel like voyeurs are looking through your bathroom window?”

“Order me a glass of milk,” I said.

“Where you going?” he said.

I went out the door and down the street. I tapped on the passenger window of the sedan. The man rolled down the window. Neither he nor the driver spoke.

“Mind if I get in and have a word with you?” I said.

The driver hit the lock release on the back doors. Both men remained silent. I sat down inside and closed the door behind me. The car’s interior smelled new and clean. I pulled out the badge holder Joe Bim Higgins had given me and opened it. “We’re on the same side, right?” I said.

The driver peeled off the foil on a yogurt cup and began eating it with a tiny plastic spoon. The scalps of both men were shiny inside their crew cuts, the backs of their necks and heads somehow reminiscent of shoe spoons. “Why don’t you guys share information, maybe cooperate a little bit with the locals?” I said.

No response.

“It sends a bad signal,” I said. “We always get the sense we’re the dildos and you guys are the serious dicks. Not cool, right?”

“Know what he’s talking about?” the passenger asked the driver.

“Search me,” the driver said.

“That’s clever, coming from two guys who got made five minutes into their surveillance,” I said.

“I’m a rep for a feminine hygiene spray. He’s with Orkin Pest Control,” the driver said, spooning yogurt into his mouth, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Who’d you say you worked for?”

“Here’s what it is,” I said. “The death of those two college kids is somehow hooked in to the Wellstones. Your guys are firing into the well when you spend time chasing Purcel around. The Wellstones are the target, not Purcel and not me. The murder of the two kids and perhaps the tourists on the interstate is the issue. Those aren’t hard concepts to work with. If you want to follow us around, be our guests. Just try not to be so obvious. It’s embarrassing to watch.”

I got out of the car and closed the door behind me. The passenger rolled down his window again. “Your friend has a dirty jacket, and so do you, Mr. Robicheaux. Neither one of you has the right to lecture anybody. Your fat friend may have deliberately caused a plane crash that resulted in a mass murder. You think the two of you can come up here and fish and simply say ‘fuck you’ to the United States government?”

I leaned down to the window, right in his face. “Clete and I were fighting for this country about the same time your mother’s diaphragm slipped. Stay away from us, you arrogant pissant.”

I went back into Stockman’s and started eating, my face hot and bright in the bar mirror, my food now as tasteless as cardboard.

“You lose your Kool-Aid out there?” Clete said.

“I wouldn’t necessarily call it that.”

He clasped his big hand on the back of my neck, his face suffused with a grin. “You’re an awful liar, Streak.”

“We need to do something about this crap.”

“We take it to them with tongs, big mon.”

“You’re my kind of situational philosopher, Cletus,” I replied.

“Give us fresh coffee and another plate of spuds and a bowl of gravy on the side, will you?” Clete said to the bartender.

REVEREND SONNY CLICK wasn’t hard to find. He was listed in the Missoula phone directory in the Yellow Pages under the heading “Church” and the subheading “Charismatic Churches.” His particular church was called the Wings of the Dove. Where was its location? Nowhere. He operated out of a farmhouse east of Rock Creek, and his church consisted of a sleek red twin-engine plane that he kept in a tin shed in a meadow bordered by the Clark Fork River on one side and a rock-sheer mountain on the other.

“You’re sure this is the same guy who was at the revival on the res?” Clete said, getting out of the Caddy.

“Wait till you see him.”

“What’s different about this guy?”

“It’s not what’s different, it’s what’s the same. Every one of these guys looks like an actor playing a charlatan. I’ve never understood how anyone can look at their faces on a television screen and send them money.”

“Check out the audience on the wrestling channel,” Clete said, not really listening. “Is that the guy?”

A man had emerged from the front door of the farmhouse, his features dark with shadow under the porch roof. As soon as he reached the sunlight, he was wearing a smile that had not been there seconds earlier. His stylized beard made me think of lines of black ants running from under his earlobes, down his lower jawbone, and up to the corners of his mouth. He wore no coat but had on a white dress shirt and a silver tie tucked inside a sequined vest. There were rings on his fingers and two fine chains, one gold and one silver, looped around his neck.

When we introduced ourselves, his handshake was square and firm, his eyes direct and respectful, as though he was eager to help out with a criminal investigation. Everything about him reeked of disingenuousness and manipulation.

“You’ve been with Wellstone Ministries for quite a while, have you?” I said.

“Actually, I don’t work for them. I work with them on occasion. There are several ministries I help out with. This afternoon I’ll be in East Oregon and tomorrow up in the high country in Nevada. Tuesday I’m back here, and Wednesday I’ll be in Winnemucca again. That little plane has carried the Word to many a remote community.” He pulled back his shirt cuff to check the time on his watch. “I need to be in the air pretty soon. What’s this case you’re working on again?”

Reverend Sonny Click wasn’t very good at dealing with cops. Like all people who are afraid or who have something to hide, he continued to provide extraneous information we didn’t ask of him, filling the air with words, controlling the conversation so others couldn’t talk. In the meantime, Clete said nothing, his eyes roving over the farmhouse and the yard and the unwatered plants in the window boxes and flower beds.

“Can you take a look at the pictures of these two kids?” I said.

Click cupped the photographs of Cindy Kershaw and Seymour Bell in his palm and studied them. Studied, not glanced at or simply looked at. He studied them long enough to give himself time to think about his next statement and time enough to make me believe he was doing everything in his power to help us.

“No sir, I can’t say that I’ve seen them,” he replied. “They could have sat in my congregation at one time or another, but I don’t remember them.”

He tried to return the photos to me, but I didn’t take them. Instead, I continued to look into his face without speaking.

“Wish I had more information for you, but it doesn’t look like I do,” he said.

“You’re sure about that?” I said.

“Nobody can be absolutely sure about anything, except faith in the Lord. But in this case, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen these people.”

I removed the photos from his hand and placed them in my shirt pocket. The wind was blowing through the canyon, stiffening an air sock at the end of the mowed runway. Clete had not spoken. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth but did not light it. His gaze was fixed on the front doorway of the farmhouse. “That your daughter?” he said.

“No, she’s an assistant. In our campus ministry program,” Click said.

“We’d like to talk with her,” I said.

“She’s a mite shy. She’s had an unfortunate life. Her father was a drug addict and died in prison, and her mother became a street person in San Francisco. I created a little job for her helping out with my paperwork and such. She takes care of the yard and the plants while I’m gone, too. She’s a good kid, and I hate to see her drug into something like this.”

“Where’d she get that little wood cross around her neck?” Clete asked.

There was a beat like wheels stopping for an instant behind Sonny Click’s eyes. “A number of youth ministers wear them on the UM campus,” he said.

“Ask her to come over here, sir,” I said.

“Fay, these gentlemen are here about that tragedy at the university. I’ve told them everything we know, but they thought maybe you-”

“At this point you need to be quiet, Mr. Click,” I said.

“You don’t need to take that tone. It’s ‘Reverend,’ too, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Look, this other man here didn’t show me his identification.”

Clete took out his gold PI badge, which, like most of them, was bigger, more baroque, and more visually impressive than any state or county or federal law enforcement ID. “Have you ever visited Louisiana?” Clete said. “We’ve got the most famous faith healer in the country right there in Baton Rouge. Know what I can’t ever figure? Instead of curing people onstage, why doesn’t this guy go to emergency wards and hospitals and sanitariums where people are really in need of help? You know, rip the oxygen masks off their faces and tell them to get up and boogie? Walk over to my car with me, will you? My cigarette lighter must have fallen out on the seat.”

In the meantime, I walked to the porch, into the shade, where the girl was watching us. She wore cutoff blue jeans and a plain T-shirt and Indian moccasins with soles, the kind sold to tourists in reservation stores. She was heavyset and plain and big-breasted, with no expression at all, wearing a cross and leather cord that was exactly like the one Seymour Bell had probably worn the night of his death. She said her name was Fay Travis, and she lived in a dormitory on the university campus.

I showed her the photos of Bell and Cindy Kershaw. Then one of those strange and unexpected moments occurred, the kind that makes you feel every human being carries a secret well of sorrow whose existence he or she daily denies in order to remain functional. When she lifted her eyes to mine, I felt, rightly or wrongly, that I could see right into her soul. “You knew them?” I said.

Her eyes looked in Click’s direction. “I saw them around the campus. Maybe in the Student Union sometimes.”

“Did you see them other places?” I asked.

“You mean on campus?”

“No, I don’t mean that at all. I think you know what I mean.”

“What are you saying to me?” she asked.

“Don’t be afraid of this man.”

“I’m not. He’s good to me.”

“Don’t look at him, look at me. Reverend Sonny Click is a fraud and a bum. I think you’re a good person, Miss Travis. Don’t let this man use you. Were Cindy Kershaw and Seymour Bell here at the reverend’s house?”

I saw her swallow. I stepped into her line of vision so that she was facing me and not Sonny Click.

“At the end of the spring semester, the campus ministers met a few times for coffee at the Student Union. Brother Click was there as a guest. But I don’t remember Seymour or Cindy coming out to the house.”

“But he knew them?”

“Yes sir. He talked with them. He’s real good with young people.”

“Where did you get the wood cross?” I asked.

“From Brother Click.”

“Did he tell you not to talk about Seymour and Cindy?”

“He just said we should pray for them.”

I bet he did, I thought.

I removed one of my Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department business cards from my wallet and made an X through the printed information on it, then wrote my cell number and Albert Hollister’s home number on the back.

“You call me if you have any other information about Seymour and Cindy,” I said. “My wife and I will do whatever we can to help you. Do you understand what I’m saying? You get away from this guy, Miss Travis. He’s a predator, pure and simple. He’ll continue to hurt you as long as you allow him to.”

“Why are you saying that? He hasn’t hurt me.”

In her eyes I could see the lights of shame and denial and self-resentment, and I tried to remember Saint Augustine’s admonition that we should never use the truth to injure. “What I’ve told you is in confidence. Reverend Click didn’t hear us. You don’t have to be afraid – not of me, not of him, not of anyone.”

She turned her face to the wind, pretending to brush at something that had caught in her eye.

“What are you majoring in?” I asked.

“Pre-veterinary, but I might have to drop out. My student loan didn’t come through.”

I wanted to wish her well and pat her on the arm, but I didn’t want to send a signal to Click that one of his youth ministers had cooperated with the investigation at his expense. I put away my notebook and said goodbye to Fay Travis and walked back toward Click, trying to keep my emotions at bay. But how do you do that when you encounter a grown man who is probably sexually exploiting a young woman who can barely scrape together enough money to pay her college tuition?

“Before we go, Reverend, did you ever visit that religious store downtown?” I asked.

“I may have, but not recently.”

“You didn’t buy one of those little crosses for Seymour Bell?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What kind of car do you drive?”

“A Mercury.”

“What color is it?”

“Midnight blue. Why?”

“No reason. Have a good day. We’ll be checking back with you later.”

“I think you’re wasting your time. I don’t think I need to have any more conversations with you, either.”

The wind changed and seemed to become colder, smelling of animal dung and dead fish in the cottonwoods down on the riverbank. I stepped closer to Sonny Click, as though we were intimates, as though I feared my words would be smudged by the wind, their meaning lost on a man who long ago had abandoned moral nuances.

“I don’t want to offend you, Reverend, but I despise men like you. You hijack Christianity and use it to manipulate trusting souls who have no other place of refuge. If I find out you’re sexually abusing that young woman over there, I’m going to come back here and shove you into your own airplane propeller. It’s not personal. It’s just one of those situations when the shit really needs to hit the fan.”

Clete lit his cigarette with his Zippo and snapped the lid shut. A bloom of white smoke rose from his mouth and broke apart in the wind. “Dave is probably exaggerating. But on the other hand, Streak gets out of control and goes apeshit sometimes. I’d err on the side of safety, Preacher. Keep your stiff one-eye on a short leash. We know you can do it.”

THAT AFTERNOON, AT a shady roadside filling station and convenience store just south of Swan Peak, Candace Sweeney was gassing up the SUV while Troyce was inside buying a quart of chocolate milk and a bagful of Hershey bars, which he claimed thickened his blood and contributed to the healing of the wounds in his chest and face. Earlier that morning he had bought her a new pair of Acme cowboy boots, a snap-button western shirt that shimmered like pink champagne, and jeans stitched with roses on the pockets. It was a lovely afternoon, and she wanted to lie on the beach at one of the chain lakes that fed into the Swan Drainage, like other couples did on the cusp of summer in western Montana. Then she and Troyce could have dinner in a steak house built of logs and, later, dessert and drinks on the terrace, under a sky bursting with the constellations. It wasn’t a lot to ask, was it? To have a normal relationship?

Or maybe it was. Troyce treated her with respect; his words were always tender. She seemed incapable of doing wrong in his eyes. But were his tolerance and patience and understanding a disguise for indifference? This morning she had gotten up early, brushed her teeth and gargled with mouthwash and combed her hair, then gotten back in bed with him, caressing his cheek, rubbing her hand down the length of his hip, feeling her internal organs melt when his sex hardened under her touch.

“Hi, little darlin’,” he said sleepily.

“You sleep okay, baby?” she said.

“You never called me that before.”

“You mind?”

“I’ve answered to a lot worse.”

She propped herself on her elbow and looked straight into his face. “You want me to rub your back?”

“I think the world of you, Candace. I just got problems sometimes.”

“Did you get hurt in the war?”

“I worked at a jail outside Baghdad. The army sent me back home ’cause of some things I did there. It wasn’t a dishonorable discharge but right close to it.”

“What things?”

“Giving some prisoners the worst day I possibly could.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

He picked up a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, then replaced it. “I was raised by an uncle who ran a truck-repair shop on the highway outside Del Rio. When I was about eleven years old, him and a couple of his friends come back from drinking all night in Coahuila. One of the friends took me in the bedroom and entertained me proper while my uncle and the other guy was playing cards. Then my uncle and the other guy had their turn. I can still smell them in my sleep sometimes. It’s like a fog in the darkness, like stale sweat and mechanic’s grease. I run away the next day, but my uncle brought me back, and the next week two different guys did it to me.”

She laid her head on his shoulder and picked up his right hand in hers. “You like me?” she said.

“Sure I do.”

“You trust me?”

“Ain’t many like you, Candace.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I trust you ’cause you don’t want anything. ’Cause you accept folks for what they are.”

“I want you.” She took off her top and placed his hand on her breast. “You feel my heart? You feel how it beats when your hand touches my skin? It’s going too fast to count the beats, isn’t it?”

She could see the surprise, the puzzlement, in his face as he held his hand to her breast.

“You know what that means? It means I can never lie to you,” she said.

“No, I don’t believe you ever will.”

“People like us are different, Troyce. It’s in our hardwiring. It doesn’t mean we’re bad. We didn’t get to vote about the kind of homes we grew up in. But here’s the big joke. People taught us the homes we grew up in were normal. It’s like somebody doing a double mind-fuck on you.”

“What’s that got to do with you and me?”

“It means I’m here whenever you want me.”

He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I ever tell you you’re always pretty when you wake up in the morning?”

“I got to ask you something, Troyce.”

“About Baghdad?”

“Did you come out here to kill a man?”

“There’s things I keep hid around a corner in my mind. When I get to them, I can make my choices and do what I need to do. It beats fretting your mind about events that ain’t real yet. Would you not like me if I told you I got a long memory for people who do me harm?”

“Who hurt you so bad, Troyce?”

“A fellow who’s right around the corner, just waiting for me to get to the end of the street.”

Now she was in a breezy gas station shaded by pine trees, filling up the SUV, gazing at mountain peaks that looked like they belonged on a postcard. Twenty feet away was an unshaved man filling a five-gallon plastic fuel container. He was wearing a flannel shirt and laced boots and canvas work pants, obviously overdressed for the mild weather in the way that men deliberately overdress to indicate their indifference to their own discomfort. “Can I help you with something?” he said, catching her stare.

She didn’t reply. She glanced through the window of the convenience store, where she could see Troyce counting out coins next to the cash register.

“Did you hear me?” the unshaved man asked.

She could feel the gas humming through the hose and handle into the SUV’s tank. She heard the unshaved man drop his five-gallon fuel container onto the floor of his vehicle and slam the door. But he was still standing on the concrete slab, his eyes probing the side of her face, his hand squeezing his scrotum. Troyce came out of the store eating a candy bar. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Check it out,” she said, her eyes on Troyce’s.

“What?”

“The guy from the revival.”

“What about him?”

“Nothing. He’s here, that’s all.”

“He crack wise or something?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“What’d he say?”

“He’s a jerk. Who cares?”

Troyce dropped the paper bag containing his candy bars and chocolate milk through the open window of the SUV and walked over to where the man named Quince stood by the pump. “You make some kind of remark to Miss Candace?” he said.

“She was eyeballing me, so I asked if I could help her.”

“You been in the pen?”

“What?”

“You said she was eyeballing you. That’s an expression that convicts on the hard road use.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“At the revival I showed you a photograph of a man I’m looking for. You said you’d never seen him. But that’s not the truth, is it?”

Quince brushed at his nose and huffed air out of one nostril. Then he surprised Troyce Nix. “Maybe it’s the truth, maybe not.”

“How am I supposed to read that?” Troyce asked.

“What’s in it for me?” Quince asked.

Troyce looked around and seemed to think about it. The breeze was blowing through the pine trees. His face looked cool and untroubled inside the shade. “I don’t like talking out here. Go in the restroom and wait for me.”

“You hold your negotiations in the shitter?” When Troyce didn’t reply, Quince said, “I’ll move my car.”

Quince went inside the convenience store, looking once over his shoulder.

“Troyce, don’t get in trouble. Not because of me,” Candace said.

“Ain’t gonna be no trouble, darlin’,” he replied.

“Troyce, I don’t want to lose you.” She said this without emotion, as a fact, in the way women know facts that men do not, and he knew he had entered a new stage in his life. “You’re a good man. You just don’t know how good you are.”

He looked at her for a moment, as though seeing her more clearly than he had ever seen her before. Then he winked and went inside the restroom. Quince was relieving himself in a urinal.

“You seen the man in the photograph?” Troyce asked.

“What kind of finder’s fee we talking about?”

“Finder’s fee?”

“Yes sir,” Quince said, zipping his pants. He began touching at his face in the mirror, feeling the stubble, without washing his hands.

“How about you don’t get charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive?” Troyce said.

“You aren’t a cop.”

“No, I’m not. But can I tell you a secret?”

Someone tried to open the door. “I got a sick man in here. You’ll have to wait,” Troyce said, squeezing the door shut again, shooting the bolt.

Quince stopped touching at his face and looked at the locked door.

“You know why you don’t get a finder’s fee?” Troyce said. “It’s ’cause you’re for sale. A man who’s for sale suffers the sin of arrogance. What he don’t understand is that nothing he’s got is worth the spit on the sidewalk. You remind me of the tramps down at the blood bank. The blood you sell has disease in it, but you pass it on to other people to put wine in your stomach. You ain’t no different from a whore, except your skinny ass ain’t worth the time it’d take to kick it around the block… Where you think you’re going?”

“I’m finished talking with you,” Quince said.

“What’d you say to my lady friend out yonder?”

“You don’t listen, do you, boy? That woman was staring at me like her shit don’t stink. Your size don’t bother me, either. Mess with me, I’ll get you down the road. Take that to the bank, motherfucker.”

Quince tried to brush past Troyce and unbolt the door. Troyce ripped his elbow into the side of Quince’s face, knocking him into the condom machine. Then Troyce hit Quince with his elbow again, this time in the temple, splaying him cross-eyed to the floor. He grabbed the back of Quince’s neck and drove his face down on the toilet bowl, smashing it again and again on the rim. Blood and pieces of a dental bridge slid in rivulets down the porcelain into the water.

When Troyce straightened up, the pain that went through his chest felt like tendons were pulling loose from the bone. For a moment he was sure he was going to pass out. He forced himself to breathe slowly, his face draining in the mirror, his eyes out of focus.

Quince was on his knees, bent over the toilet, his hands cupped to his mouth, strings of blood and saliva hanging from his fingers.

Troyce pulled a half-dozen paper towels from the dispenser and wadded them up and stuck them in Quince’s hand. “You dealt it, bubba. Don’t come around for seconds,” he said.

He slid the bolt and went outside, the racks of snack food bright and colorful under the fluorescent lighting, the glass doors on the cold boxes smoky with refrigeration, the cashier ringing up a purchase for a sunburned woman in a swimming suit, the world of normality back in place.

“Is that sick man still in there?” the cashier asked.

“He’s cleaning up. He’s gonna be fine,” Troyce said. “Thanks for the use of your facilities.”

“Anytime,” the cashier said.

Troyce got in the SUV and let Candace drive. As they headed up the highway, she glanced sideways at him. “There’s blood coming through your bandages,” she said.

He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Want to rent a cabin at one of those lakes? Maybe have dinner at the steak house up the road this evening and dance under the stars? Like reg’lar folks, just me and you. What do you say, you little honey bunny?”

She was sure there were words that would adequately express what she felt, but she didn’t know what they were.