The Final Country

TWELVE

The copy of the file on Dickie Oates was still at Carver D's, so I stopped there when I got back to Austin. The fat man was oddly somber and sober, sitting in his antique wheelchair, warming in the sun broken by the live oak branches.

"What's up?" I asked. "You look like something the dog threw up and the cat drug home."

"Petey just got accepted at Harvard Business," he said.

"And that's bad? Isn't an MBA a license to steal?"

"He won't let me go with him unless I stop drinkin', man," he said. "So I've stopped. You stopped once, didn't you?"

"I took a ten-year break," I said.

"How'd you do it?"

"Smoked a lot of dope, drank a lot of tonic water," I said, "read a lot of books, saw a lot of movies, and found the extra time hard to fill."

"You were tending bar, weren't you? Didn't that make it harder?"

"Hell, I worked all the time because the people on the other side of the bar showed me where I was headed if I didn't slow down."

"Well, I can't imagine life without Petey," he said, "so I'm gonna give it a try."

"Good luck," I said. And meant it. "Hangas going with you?"

"No. Hangas has too much family down here," Carver D said, then chortled. "He's gonna handle my affairs down here. Gonna be my bidness manager. Take care of things till we get back." As if cheered by the notion of coming back home, Carver D smiled. "So what the hell do you want, Mr. Nosy?"

"Dwayne Duval's autopsy report," I said.

And there it was. From ankle to scalp, Duval's body was covered with more than fifty fading contusions.

"Looks like somebody tried to kick the asshole to death before they shot him," Carver D said. "Makes you wonder."

"Makes me wonder where Enos Walker was that night," I said as I thumbed through the rest of the file. No matter how hard I looked, no female names appeared on the witness list, just Billy Long and one of Dickie's frat buddies. Of course, Long was inside and Dickie's buddy was around the corner in the parking lot on the side and just heard the shots. They claimed they never saw any particular women. "Makes me wonder what he was doing."

"According to the stuff that wasn't in the trial record, I'm guessing he might have been pretty close to Tulsa," Carver D said. "Maybe waitin' for a cocaine delivery around that time."

"What about his brother?"

"That'll be a little harder to dig up," the fat man said. "Call me in a couple of days."

"Maybe you should do this computer thing professionally," I suggested.

"And take all the fun out of it," he said, then laughed as he wheeled himself toward his office.

As I left, I realized that Carver D wasn't the only one who needed Petey. Shit, I was going to have to find another silent partner to help me launder the drug money. Which made me think about Travis Lee, so I returned his call.

Travis Lee's wife, who had died in a car wreck some years before, had left him a rambling house that sprawled along the crest of a small ridge overlooking one of the string of lakes along the Colorado River, a large but ordinary house except for the view. Travis Lee hadn't changed the house in the years since his wife's death, except to fill it with enough junk to start a Civil War museum. I had been to a couple of parties at his place – without Betty – but his' friends were either too young, too old, or too Texas to be interested in anything I had to say.

Travis Lee waited out on the patio, a new pair of custom-made alligator boots propped on a small table. The boots and their matching belt gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. At this angle, his golden buckle looked more like a golden frog than a snake. He lifted his can of Tecate in my direction as I came out the back door. "Thanks for coming out," he said, a grin large on his face as he waved at his Chicano butler standing by the back door to bring us a beer. "You ain't been exactly religious about returning my phone calls lately."

"I've been busier than a whore at a meat cutter's convention," I said. "What's up?"

"You know, son, I'm just an old country boy," he said as he started his routine.

"Spare me the preface," I said, grinning as I held up my hands in surrender. "I told you, Travis Lee, I just don't have the time to worry about investments now."

"Spare me," he said. "At some point, you're gonna have to piss on the fire and call the dogs."

"Trav, I've been long on busy, and you've been short of details," I said. "You think we could talk about this later? Then maybe my voice mail won't be quite so full of bullshit."

"Yeah," he said, his face large with concern. "Sorry to hear about you and Betty. Women come and women go, but business lasts. How much money you got in that offshore bank?"

"Enough. Why?"

"If you've got a million to lend me for thirty days," he said, ruffling his wild white hair as he stood up, "I can move it just across the street and turn it into three million clean and clear in a New York bank. We can split the profit down the middle." When I didn't answer, he added, "I'd even be more than willing to put up my share of the Lodge as collateral."

"Hell, man, if it goes bad, I don't want to end up with a fucking motel," I said, laughing. "I don't even want the bar, if you get right down to it."

"Hell, boy," he said, laughing and slapping my shoulder, "I thought you loved that place."

"I do," I admitted. "But it's always full of the wrong people." And in the wrong part of the world, I thought but didn't say. "Besides, the kind of profit you're talking about can only come from insider trading or drug deals, and I don't need that kind of heat."

"Don't be silly," Travis Lee said, still grinning. "I wouldn't do anything like that. Straight property deal, and we're covered all the way down the line anyway." He could tell I didn't like the sound of that. "And speaking of heat, there's another damn good reason to consider this deal," he said. "You might be needing a dose of clean cash. Like^ I started to say, I'm just a country boy, but I'm aware that you and that kid have been washing cash through the bar." '

"I'm just a country boy myself," I said, "and even if I was running a laundry, it'd just be chump change, and I'd be covered like your Granny's ass."

"Leave my poor old dead Granny out of this," he said, his smile unbroken. "An old buddy of mine in D.C. whistled a little bird song in my ear last week. You're about to have tax people all over you like stink on a dead hog's ass."

"That's not a problem," I said, hoping I wasn't lying. At least not to myself.

"Not a problem? Tax people are always a problem," he said. "They can bury you, and nobody can do a thing about it. And there's some suggestion that the little whoredogs are sittin' in your bar as we speak."

I didn't say anything. I guess I didn't have anything to say. I just stared north like some dumb beast, not really looking at the dark bank of clouds moving down the long, empty plains toward me. Another goddamned norther.

"And speaking of whores? Any luck finding that woman for Sylvie Lomax?" he said. "If I were in your boots, son, I'd look for a double dose of clean money, and all the influential friends I could find. Hayden Lomax draws a lot of water around here. And I can guarantee that she draws a lot of water with him."

"I've been back and forth across five states and came up empty." I wasn't sure why I lied to him, but I had promised myself that once Molly told me what the hell this was all about, I'd see her home safely.

"Well, if you find her, don't tell my big brother. I understand that he's still got the bejesus hots for her," he said, and jerked his dimpled chin at Tom Ben's pickup sitting in front of his house, then he laughed long and loud, the laughter guttering on the rising north wind like a dying candle.

"I'll keep that in mind," I said, thinking that, given his history, it was a strange thing to say. And I wondered how Travis Lee knew about the incident. Unless Betty had told him.

"Well, you call me now," Travis Lee said, "sooner rather than later." He stood up abruptly, slapped me on the shoulder again, then headed for the back door of his house. "You want a real drink?" he said.

"No thanks," I said. "Not right now. And thanks for the warning."

"My pleasure, son. You're a stranger down here," he said, "and Texas hospitality is the rule, not the exception."

When I climbed out of the pickup in front of Tom Ben's dairy barn, I could hear the laughter cracking against the metal walls. The light, fading behind the rolling storm, had drawn the shine from the steel, leeching it to an ashen gray. Inside, in the corn crib, Tom Ben sat on a milking stool and Molly on her cot, her long hair combed out and her face made up. They huddled over a bottle of Jack Daniel's, laughing and slapping their knees. Tom Ben's glass was as dark as raw molasses, but Molly's was very light.

"Wow," she said as I came in. "My master returns."

The old man stood up quickly, stumbling a bit, a guilty boy's grin lopsided on his unshaven face. "Hell, Milo," he said, "I just thought I'd check on the girl."

"Thanks," I said. "I appreciate it."

"Well, I best be headin' out to the house," the old man said as he picked up the half-empty bottle of bourbon.

"I'll give you a hand," I said, but the old man turned on me.

"I got every place I ever started to go, boy," he said quickly. "One of them was back from the Yalu River. Ever hear of that fucking place, boy?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "I spent part of a spring staring in that direction once." Then watched the old man wobble out the door and into the dim evening. I guess I could see my legs wobbling in my future. He was only twelve years older than me. Then I looked at Molly.

"Don't look at me," she said. "I didn't invite him in."

"I'm sure you didn't," I said. "But one more of those drinks, honey, you would have had to help me carry him out."

Molly held up her foot with the shackle on it, smiling like a child. "We could work something out."

"Don't tempt me."

"So what did you find out, Mr. PI? When can I go home?"

"Where the hell do you call home?" I said.

She looked briefly puzzled. "Vegas, I guess," she said. "I've got some business there."

"I'm sure you do," I said. "You want some Mexican food?"

"What?"

"You want some Mexican food for dinner?" I said. "I've got one more chore to do before dark, then I'll bring you some dinner."

"And some cold beer?" she said. "Can't eat Mexican food without cold beer."

"Sure," I said, then checked the locks on her shackle.

"You've changed my diaper and you still don't trust me?" She sounded almost hurt.

"Not much," I said, then locked the door to the corn crib, and then the barn door.

As I leaned on Betty's gate in the rising north wind, it seemed like a hundred years instead of five since the first time I stood there. But it's always that way when things go bad between two people. The first time I had leaned on her gate, she held a pistol on me. But she let me inside that time. This time she just looked at me with dead eyes, holding back the three-legged lab, Sheba, who had the slobbery tennis ball in her mouth.

"What the hell do you want?" she said flatly.

"Thought I'd see how you're doing."

"As you can see, I'm fine," she said. "You brought that fucking woman back down here, didn't you," she said. "I told you not to do that, I told you to let the law handle it. You didn't do that, did you? No? So what do you want?"

"I guess I came to see if I could heal the breach."

"It's long past that time," she snorted. "You chose your life, Milo, now you can sleep in it," she added, then turned away, pulling the whining dog behind her as she walked back to the house.

It would be pretty to say that the cold rain and the biting wind started as I climbed back into the Beast, but the norther held back its sharp teeth and hard rain until I got back to the barn.

The wind and rain rattled the barn and the small milk-house heater roared as Molly and I shared the food from Taco Cabana and a six-pack of cold Negra Modelo.

"You know what that old man told me?" she said.

"Hard to imagine."

"He said that he had hated the cold ever since he had carried one of his dead buddies until his body froze solid as a cedar post," she said. "Why would he tell me something like that? And what was he talking about?"

"Tom Ben was a Marine company commander in the Korean War. He was proud of it. And maybe he was trying to impress you."

"Oh," she said as if she wasn't quite sure where Korea was. Hell, I wasn't quite sure either and I'd been there for almost three months before the broken collarbone got me out of combat and into a hospital, and some doctor suggested that I wasn't really eighteen. "Why would he want to impress me?"

"Who knows," I said. "Tom Ben's a tough old bird, but maybe he was trying to get in your pants."

Molly giggled for a second, then suddenly became serious. "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure."

"It's a lot different meeting him like this, instead of on the job."

"Maybe it's you that's different," I said.

Molly paused for a moment, tore off a piece of brisket, and held it in front of the heater. "You're always trying to look inside my head," she said. "I'm not sure I like it."

"That's my job," I said, remembering what Betty had said at the gate.

"Do you like it?"

"Not always," I admitted. "How about you? You like your job?" Then I paused. "I'm sorry. I've no right to say something like that."

But she didn't answer. We finished our meal in silence, then a couple of beers and cigarettes. When she finally spoke, it was to ask if the shower in the corner of the barn had any hot water. I told her it did.

"Do you trust me enough to let me take a shower?"

"That's the wrong question to ask, lady," I said as I unlocked the shackle from her ankle. "There's soap and stuff on the shelf," I added as she picked up a clean pair of sweats and a T-shirt, then walked over to the dark corner where the shower stood. I tried not to watch as she slipped out of the sweats and under the rushing water, her long silken body shining darkly in the shadows. In spite of everything, she was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I could not stop looking at her, not while she showered, not while she came back to the crib to brush out the long, black ribbons of her hair, the soft weight of her breasts bobbing beneath the T-shirt. Finally, I busied myself unrolling two down sleeping bags, one on her cot, the other on my pad.

"It's going to be chilly tonight," I said. "This wet Texas cold seeps into your bones."

"You know," she said softly, paused with her face turned to me, the brush still in her thick hair. "You know, of all the men I've conned in my life, you were the hardest." Then she touched me on the forehead softly with the brush handle. "Of all the men I conned, you believed me the most."

"I guess I've always been a fool," I said. "How hard did you sting Paper Jack?"

"Thirty or forty grand," she said, yawning. "I don't remember the actual figure."

"How?" Reminded that yet another Texan had lied to me.

"Probably promised to make a single copy video just for him," she said. "Sometimes I block the details of a job."

"Why?"

"Why what?" she said. "I did it for the money. You think I want to be a whore all my life?"

"No," I said. "Why Paper Jack?"

"He slugged some old guy at a poker table in Vegas," she said calmly. "They were going to kill him, but somebody talked them into just spanking his billfold."

"I guess they thought he got what he deserved."

"Given the guy he hit," she said, "he's damn lucky to be alive." Then she paused. "You're sleeping here again tonight?"

"You're my only lead."

"Then you're shit out of luck, man," she said, but she was smiling.

When she finished with her toilet, I locked the shackle around her ankle, snapped off the lights, and we shared a few drinks of Scotch in the light of the milk-house heater almost without conversation, then slipped into our beds.

Later that night I had a version of the dream, the one where I stood beside her cot. This time, though, she reached her hands down from the cot, took my hands, and pulled me into the cot with her, saying, "Get in here, you old fart. It's cold down there." But this time it was no dream. I just had to act as if it was one to live with myself. Then I blamed the Scotch for making me open the cocaine and the shackle, then the cocaine for Molly, then I blamed myself for everything. But for a few hours the dead kept their eyes closed and the living shut their flapping mouths. And the dream lived. For the moment.

Although the storm still loomed cold and ashen outside, it was nearly bright noon when the nightmare began. When the scrambled cell phone began to ring, I untangled myself from Molly, then stumbled around the corn crib until I found the phone in my war bag.

"What the hell," I muttered.

"Milodragovitch," an oddly familiar voice shouted, "I've got your fuckin' nigger, I want my whore back."

"Shit," I said. Molly looked up at me from the cot. "What? Who is this? What are you talking about?"

"Listen to this, you asshole," the voice said, then I heard a grunt of pain, as if somebody had been hit with a truck. "We're standing here in North Las Vegas, asshole," the voice came again, "and your nigger's head is in a vise. If she ain't back here in forty-eight hours, I'm going to take a hammer to his face until he looks like crawdad shit. Not even his Momma will recognize his body. Of course it won't matter because she'll be fishbait floating in Lake Mead. Forty-eight hours, dickwad." Then the connection was broken.

"What's up?" Molly asked.

"Your buddy, Jimmy Fish, has got a friend of mine and his mother," I said, "and he's going to butcher them if I don't bring you back. He claims you're his whore."

"Oh God," she said, "that little fuck will kill them," then buried her face in her hands. "What are you going to do?"

"Put your clothes on," I said, then found my pants, dug out Fresno's card, and dialed the number. It took a few minutes to argue my way past secretaries and into the august presence of himself.

"Mr. Milodragovitch," he crooned, "what can I do for you now?"

"You can earn your money for a change," I said, then explained before he could interrupt.

The next four hours clicked by like the passage of death beetles. Molly and I drank coffee, chewed on oranges, and smoked like wood stoves. But neither of us said an extraneous word, just waited quietly. When the cell phone rang, it sounded as if we were trapped in a bell tower, as the ringing crashed off the metal walls.

"Milodragovitch," Fresno said.

"I'm here."

"Well, I don't know exactly what happened, but it went okay."

"What the hell's that mean?"

"The McCraveys are okay. Not fine, but okay. Red has a bunch of scrapes and bruises. And his mother had some kind of heart spell, but the paramedics said it's nothing serious. But Mr. Jimmy Fish, he'd been watching too many of his own movies."

"Yeah."

"I don't know why, but he decided to shoot it out with me and my boys. Tossed his crutch aside and grabbed for his piece," Fresno said. "I took a chance and put one in his shoulder. Little fucker dropped the piece, but before he hit the floor, one of the goons with him – some slick Frenchman, Red says – put one in Jimmy's head, then threw his piece down and slipped out the back door. I don't fucking know how he got away, but he did."

"Are we covered?" I asked.

"As far as I can tell, the two other guys don't speak English. So we're covered. I stuck one of our alarm shields on the outside of the building," he said. "Jimmy Fish had a gunshot crease in his thigh, but everybody around here knows that he did that himself. So as long as your friends keep their mouths shut, you're covered."

"Can you get the cell phone to Red?"

"I'll run it by the hospital. He rode along with his Mom."

"Thanks," I said, then asked him how much I owed him. He said he'd send a bill. I said I'd send a check.

"I guess I should thank you for more than the money," he said.

"Why?"

"I don't know. After the way we met, I guess I should thank you for even thinking that I might help."

"You didn't seem all that happy about your situation," I said. "I had to hope I read you right." Once again, asking for help seemed to have worked out.

"Maybe someday you'll tell me what's going on," he said, "but thanks anyway." And we left it like that.

"Jimmy Fish is dead," I said as I turned to Molly.

"I guess I can go home then," she said.

"What?"

"I don't know anything, man. Jimmy Fish set up the job on you," she said. "Hell, he's been getting me jobs since he turned me out running cons. One of his so-called buddies – Vegas, Hollywood, or Richboy Land – would want to fuck a guy up, and I'd be the instrument of revenge."

"Isn't that just fucking lovely."

Then Molly explained just how lovely it had been.

Jimmy Fish and Rollie Molineaux had been childhood buddies, had grown up together, and gone to work roughnecking offshore out of Morgan City to support their garage band habit. They had been working on the rig floor together the day the backup cable on the cathead tongs broke and snapped Rollie's arm off clean as a police whistle. They had gone into the bar business with the insurance settlement. Rollie became the world's best one-armed bartender. Jimmy discovered that nobody wanted to listen to him sing, but he had a real talent for handling hecklers, running whores, and setting up cons. Even during his run as a semi-famous comic and character actor, Jimmy Fish couldn't stop the gangster life.

"He never recovered from the fact that he wasn't going to be the Cajun Frank Sinatra," Molly said. "He always thought the audiences hated his act and him, that they were just laughing at him, so the gangster life gave him a way to be in charge. Running drugs and whores and cons."

"Sounds like a sweetheart."

"Except for the fact that he sort of raped me when I was thirteen, he had his moments," she said softly. "Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Oh, hell," she sighed. "I was a goofy, gawky teenager, and he was Rollie's best friend, almost a member of the family, and sort of a celebrity, and we'd been drinking wine, so maybe I flirted with him a little bit. He'd bought Rollie a fishing boat, and I think maybe they were running a little coke or something for somebody, so one night when Rollie hadn't made it back yet… I don't know. You know what they say, shit's what happens while you're waitin' for life to start."

"That's what they say, I guess."

"But I don't think they really know," she said, then released a bark of laughter, short and sharp as if she was biting off a sob. "But what the hell, man, he paid for college all the way through my first year of law school, and he didn't bother me too much, then…"

"Then?"

"Oh, hell, the usual story. Some rich guy I was datin', he OD'd one night and suddenly I was in the middle of a cocaine bust I couldn't skate," she said slowly, "without help from Jimmy and his connections, then suddenly there didn't seem any sense in finishing law school, right, and I wasn't skinny anymore, so I started taking my clothes off for a living, and believe me I made a good living… until Jimmy showed me how to make a better one."

"When did you start running cons?" I asked.

"It seems like a long time ago," she said. "A hundred years. Jimmy turned me out on the cons, but I had already turned myself out as a whore. It started out as a way to get even with a john, a rich bastard who had fucked me over badly, then the next thing I knew, I discovered a talent for it…"

"I guess I can vouch for that," I said.

"And Jimmy had his moments. But they had become few and far between. Shit, I thought if I made the son of a bitch pay for it, he'd feel guilty enough to leave me alone. But he wouldn't stop. No matter how high I raised my price, he paid it. Until the other day when he decided to pound on me when I wouldn't give it up."

"What changed your mind?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "We've got too much history. I didn't know where else to hide after all this stuff down here went bad. I was scared, man. There was a dead cop, Jimmy wouldn't tell me what was going on, and I guess I got tired of him treating me like a whore.

"He wasn't always like that. After Rollie drank his way out of the bar business, Jimmy took care of him when I couldn't. Then the feds took his boat and started hanging on his ass like fat ticks like he was some kind of big-shit smuggler." Then she stopped, shook her head. "In the beginning, man, it was fun. More fun than the other part. Not that I hated the other part – the money and the clothes, the guys kissing my ass, the limos, the low-rent movie stars. But now… I don't know."

"Now?"

"I don't know," she repeated. "Sometimes it starts to feel like I'm just another fuckin' whore."

"But you don't have any idea who set me up?" I asked again.

"Not the vaguest," she said. "Jimmy set it up." Then she paused. "Did your friend shoot him?"

"Hell, no," I said, unlocking the shackle. "Jimmy's own hired help put one in his ear. So I guess that's the end of it. I'll take you to the airport when you're ready."

Molly glanced up quickly, a wild look in her eyes as they cut around the corn crib. "You know, man, suddenly I'm thinking maybe I should stay here for a while."

"What?"

"I don't know," she said, a small frightened grin on her face. "I don't know who hired you or for what and I don't know what the hell you've got in mind but maybe I can help."

"What?"

She stood up quickly. "Hey, man, listen. I think you're right. Maybe I should stay out of sight. Just until you clear this shit up."

"That'll be the day," I said, then suddenly tired and confused, I sighed and slumped over to sit on the cot. "How's your mother fit into all this?"

"I don't know," she said. "She was just some whitebread hard-shell Baptist kid from a little town outside Shreveport. Vivian, I think. She came down to Baton Rouge to do some cheerleading and sow a few wild oats, then got knocked up, so her redneck parents run her off and she wandered down to Lake Charles and went to work hopping tables for Rollie. That's what she was doing when I was born."

"So who knocked her up?" I asked, a question as aimless and pointless as when I asked Albert Homer why his wife left or how his father died.

"Some black basketball player at LSU," she said.

"Maybe you can help," I said, standing up. "Maybe you can help after all." I was on the scrambled cell phone to Carver D in a long heartbeat.

When I walked through the driving rainstorm to borrow Tom Ben's pickup again, he was sitting in the living room in his recliner, wrapped in his bathrobe, and sipping something that smelled like bourbon and honey. "Shit, son," he said, his voice hoarse and gravelly, "I should have let you walk me home last night."

"What happened?"

"Like an idiot I fell asleep in the rocking chair on the front porch, and woke up with this throat," he said, then tilted up his mug to finish the dregs. "Maria," he shouted over his shoulder, "otra copa." As I picked up the keys off the table, Maria, the tiny, stooped cook-housekeeper, came bustling into the living room bearing a steaming mug in her small hands. "So where you headed, son?"

"It's Saturday, man, and I'm going downtown to shop for ladies underwear," I said, and the old man smiled a moment before he started coughing.

Molly walked into the fancy woman's store like a queen wearing a sweat suit and plastic slippers, trailing me like a royal guardian. We'd stopped at a western store on the way to buy me a black cowboy hat and a black leather jacket, and I didn't make any secret of the Browning strapped under my arm. I hoped we looked like rich, eccentric Texans. If the response of the sales clerks was any indication, it worked. They nearly trampled us in their haste to serve. Molly was a quick study and obviously had shopped with other people's money before. We were in and out in thirty minutes. Molly looked like something worth guarding, elegant in a lilac cashmere suit, high-heeled knee-high boots, and a long sueded lambskin coat, and a matching floppy hat.

"How do I look?" she asked as she settled into the cluttered cab of Tom Ben's pickup.

"You have to ask?"

"A woman likes to hear it."

"Pretty classy," I said.

"Thanks," she said. "I feel pretty classy. So what am I supposed to do?"

"Just stand outside the pickup," I said, "and don't run away."

"That's easy enough," she said, then patted my leg, smiling.

Jonas Walker stood just inside the doorway of his church, as he said he would over the telephone, glaring at me through the slanting rain as I walked up the steps. I stopped beside him, then turned to watch Molly climb out of the pickup, then lean against the pickup, professionally elegant.

"What do you want?" Jonas Walker asked without hesitation. "What the hell is so important that you'd take me away from my family on Saturday night?" he demanded, drawing himself up to his full height as if he could intimidate me.

"Well, let's see," I said. "First off, I want a little respect."

"What?" The large man doubled up his giant fists.

"Respect," I said. "That's important. Then I want to introduce you to the daughter you abandoned all those years ago. She's a high-class hooker and a professional con artist, but compared to you, man, she's a saint. I'm sure your congregation will appreciate meeting her."

"My flock knows about my troubled life and the sinful days in my youth," he said without much conviction.

"You've told them, of course, about the cocaine bust that got you thrown off the LSU basketball team and would have gotten you a jolt in Angola if the coach hadn't called in some political favors." Jonas Walker had nothing to say. The deep, angry lines around his mouth said it all. "And if that's not enough to gain your respect, you phony asshole, I've got enough financial information about you, your church, and Mr. Hayden Lomax to keep the IRS and a dozen forensic accountants busy for years."

"I'll ask you one last time," he growled. "What do you want?"

"Where's your brother?"

"Montana," he answered slowly, as if he didn't want to give him up but had no choice. "Up in Montana."

Of all the answers I might have expected, that was the last. "What the hell? Where?" was all I could say.

"Lomax has a place north of Livingston," he said. "Some kind of experimental mine site. Trying to cook minerals out of bad ore, I think. It's about halfway between Wilsall and Ringling, off to the east. You'll see some dirt roads leading to some gas leases. At the end of one of those roads, you'll find an abandoned mine called Punky Creek and a small steel building. Enos is guarding the machinery or some such bullshit while it's being sold off." Then he paused.

"That's a hell of a place to hide a black man that size," I said.

"That's the point," he said. "He gets bored, he drives to Billings, gets on a plane, flies to Denver or Seattle, flies back when he gets tired." Once again he hesitated.

"Is he up there alone?"

"He was when I dropped him there," he admitted grimly.

"You drove him up?" I asked.

"In the church van," Walker muttered, finally ashamed.

"What's the rest of it?"

"Ah, hell, man, I think he's cooking crank, too. He's a crazy man. Always has been." Then he began to explain like a lowlife talking to the law, "You don't appreciate my problem, man. I owe him."

"I know exactly how it is," I said. "He took the Tulsa bust and left you out of it, right? You better goddamn understand, I'd appreciate it if he didn't know I was coming to visit," I said. "And believe me, man, I'll tear this fucking church scam down around your ears."

"Believe me, brother," he said, "I've regretted abandoning my daughter all these many years. I've spent many, many hours on my knees in prayer, asking for God's forgiveness."

"Hey, man," I said, "people who actually give a shit do something about it. Praying is for people who ain't doing anything. As far as I'm concerned, you're an unforgivable asshole. And by the way, I am not your fucking brother."

Jonas Walker nodded once, sadness heavy on his giant face, glanced once at Molly, then stepped into the church, slamming the heavy door, locking himself inside with his God and his memories. I didn't envy either one of them.

"What was that all about?" Molly wanted to know as we drove away in the fading light.

"That was a man's past coming home to roost on his shoulder like a dead crow," I said, sliding out of my shoulder holster, then she shoved the rig into my war bag for me.

"That was my father, wasn't it?" she said.

"No. Your father is the man who raised you," I pointed out. "And much as I dislike Rollie, he wouldn't have given you up even if I had put his last hand into the fire." Molly seemed to engender loyalty in even the worst of men. I suspected that even Jimmy Fish had been killed because he wouldn't give her up. At least not until he got her back. "Rollie's your father."

"You're right," she said calmly as if suddenly cheered. "Thanks. What now?"

"Let's find a place to eat that deserves your new wardrobe," I said. "Then I've got an all-night stakeout."

"Sounds like a date," she said. "Can I come along?"

"Damn right it's a date," I said, grinning suddenly as she kissed me, our faces hot in the cold rain, a fire that not even this cold Texas rain could quench. Whatever had happened between Betty and me, this wasn't part of it. "Then tomorrow morning I've got to stash you somewhere so I can go to Montana. I don't seem to be doing any good down here."

"Great," she said, then punched me on the shoulder. "I've never been to Montana. Went to Pocatello, Idaho, once, to ruin a state senator's life for a timber company."

"Montana isn't the same sort of place," I said, "or this the same kind of job." Molly turned her face to the rain-streaked window. "Shit, I'm sorry," I said quickly. "Really sorry. You didn't deserve that. These people down here are making me into an asshole." She didn't deserve my judgment. Molly was just another version of the capitalist success story: buy low, sell high, fuck the consumer. "I could probably use some help with the driving," I said by way of apology. "Please."

"You're going to drive? Why not fly?" she asked. She seemed to have forgiven my mean-spirited witlessness.

"Airplanes leave tracks," I said. Then admitted, "It's never a good time of the year to fly to Montana, and only February is worse than December. If the weather holds, we can make it in two hard days. Or three easy ones."

"I could go for some easy times," she said. "Somehow I feel like I've earned them."

"Me, too. Let's start with a decent meal," I said, then dialed Jeffrey's to see if they'd had a reservation cancellation.

"Good idea," she said, patting my leg again, leaving her warm hand on my thigh as we crossed town on our way to dinner.

Red called during dinner, so I stepped outside the restaurant to talk to him. He was fine, his mother was fine, and things had gone down pretty much as Fresno had recounted them, Red said, except he didn't point out how calm the Frenchman had been when he put the round in Jimmy Fish's head.

"Man," he squealed, "I seen some cold shit in Detroit, and I wouldn't have minded puttin' a pill in the little motherfucker's head myself, but that Frenchman was one cold piece of work."

"I'll send you a check, Red, and you send me the phone."

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. "You done overpaid me, man," he said, sounding hurt. "We're cool."

"I'm the old guy here, Red. I'll decide when we're cool."

Austin was so full of pickups, I didn't think another one would look out of place in Albert Homer's neighborhood, and Tom Ben had told me in a hoarse growl that he didn't think he'd be needing his this night, so Molly and I parked it down the street from Homer's studio just after midnight. Just a couple of rednecks spooning. We changed locations a couple of times, and Molly proved to be a good companion on a stakeout. She didn't have any trouble holding her bladder and she held up her end of the hushed conversations. I wished for a touch of Billy Long's coke, which was still stashed in the foot locker. I had to make do with convenience store coffee that was almost thick enough to snort. Then maybe we got a little deep into our ruse toward false dawn. Molly saw the black van with its headlights off stopped in front of Homer's mailbox before I did.

Except for Molly's soft company, the night was a waste. The van sped away from Homer's so quickly that it was already on the Interstate heading south before it turned its headlights on, but by that time I was too far behind it to read the license plate or even tell what kind of van it was.

"Well, that was a waste of time," I said.

"Not completely," Molly said, her voice muffled against my leg as she slipped into an easy sleep, her breath warm on my thigh.