Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

THIRTEEN

LINCOLN, MONTANA, POPULATION ELEVEN hundred, was a hamlet in the Helena National Forest on the bank of the Blackfoot River. The little community made the news in the 1990s when Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was arrested there in his hovel of a cabin, which was later shipped whole over Stemple Pass to the capital city of Helena fifty-nine miles to the southeast. It was a tough and sloppy little town that looked as if it had been dropped into the trees from a helicopter, and some of the buildings didn’t land well.

It was also the home of Jeter Hoyt.

We arrived at 3:00 P.M. on Saturday. Fourteen hours. It was like driving across most of Western Europe, and all we’d done was cross one state and enter another.

Cody parked at a bar. Apparently, his cell-phone charge was depleted because it had spent seven or eight hours searching vainly for a signal to grab on to, so he’d need to use the phone inside. I got out with him, said, “You were a little rough back there.”

He lit a cigarette. “I get like that when I’m not smoking or drinking,” he said. “When all I’ve got is reality staring me in the fucking face.”

“Thanks for driving, though,” I said.

“My plea sure.”

“What if your uncle isn’t around?”

“Always a possibility,” Cody said. “It’s the tail end of hunting season. Remember hunting season?” he asked, his expression wistful.

“I do. But you talked to him a while ago, right?”

Cody nodded. “I told him we might be coming up. He didn’t say he’d be here or not. He just grunted at me.”

While Cody went inside, I leaned against the Cherokee with my hands in my pockets. There was snow on the tops of the peaks to the south and the Scapegoat Wilderness Area to the north. I could see a skiff of snow in the shadows of the pines behind the bar. Little mountain towns like this were especially unattractive during two periods of the year: now, when there was just enough early snow to muddy the ground but not enough to freeze and cover it, and again in the spring, when the snow melted and revealed all the garbage that had been tossed aside. But as if to offset the appearance, this is when a town like Lincoln smelled best, a heady mix of pine trees, the forest floor, woodsmoke. As I breathed it in, it reminded me of home, wherever that was.

I turned to see that Angelina was awake and grinning at me through the window. Melissa held her tightly. That smile filled me with such unabashed joy that I knew I was doing the right thing. I rapped at the window so she’d open it.

“Smell that,” I said.

“It smells, um, woody,” she said.

“If only these little places had jobs for international tourism specialists,” I said, reaching inside the Jeep so Angelina could grab my finger. “What a great place to live, to raise little kids.”

“Where her neighbor could be the Unabomber,” Melissa said, and we both laughed. Angelina squealed with delight simply because her parents were laughing. We hadn’t done enough of that lately, I decided.

Cody came out of the bar with a Coors Light in his hand and a cigarette.

“Some old high-school buddies in there,” he said. “D’you remember the Browning brothers or Chad Kerr? They asked about you and Brian.”

“They did?”

“Yeah,” Cody said. “So much for coming up here incognito, eh? I forgot how everybody knows everybody’s business in Montana.”

“What about Uncle Jeter?”

“He’s waiting for us out at his place. He said he’d disarm the trip wires so we could drive right up to his house.”

“What?”

“I’m joking,” Cody said, tossing his cigarette aside into the mud.

UNCLE JETER’S CABIN WAS tucked away in an alcove of pine and aspen trees and accessed via an ascending two-track road with potholes filled to the top with chocolate-milk-colored water. Cody said, “I think I still remember how to get there…”

We passed under an ancient sagging lodgepole-pine archway that was dark gray with moisture and crawling with bright green and white lichen. On one support pole was a tiny wood-burned sign that said HOYT OUTFITTING SER VICES. On the other was a rusted metallic sign that said NO WHINERS. Inside the archway, Uncle Jeter’s cabin was shambling and low-slung, looking like a scene from 1880 except for the satellite dish mounted on a pole and aimed at a southern gap of cloudy sky to the south. I saw two four-wheel-drive vehicles-a Dodge Power Wagon from the 1960s and a new-model but beat-up Ford pickup-parked butt end first in an open garage. A cross pole high in the trees supported the hanging carcasses of an elk and what looked like a heavily muscled man.

I started to point when Cody said, “Bear. Skinned bears look like if you hung a linebacker. It always creeped me out. Melissa, if I were you, I’d not let Angelina see that.”

“Luckily,” Melissa said from the back, “she’s looking out the other window at the horses.” Three horses, two mules, and a couple of goats watched us from a corral.

“Quite a place,” Melissa said, deadpan.

“About what I’d always expected,” I said.

Uncle Jeter greeted us at the front door with a cheese plate: dozens of overlarge squares of Velveeta hastily cut up on a chipped dinner plate with Ritz crackers piled up in a couple of columns and colored toothpicks bunched together by a rubber band. It struck me as incongruous and sweet that this man, after receiving Cody’s call, set about chopping little squares of cheese with a hunting knife for a snack.

Uncle Jeter was tall but not as tall as I remembered him, broad but not as wide as I recalled. In fact, he looked distressingly normal, except for the long beard striped with gray and the ponytail that fanned down half of his back. His eyes were the same, though-light blue-gray and piercing, set in hollows that were slightly red-tinged. His nose was large and beaky, complicated with hairlike blue veins. His hands were outsize and looked like mitts. He wore a heavy flannel shirt and a wool Filson vest so old it was shiny, tight Wranglers, and lace-up outfitter boots with heels for riding.

It was dark inside, the walls covered with tanned bear and elk hides. The antlers of mounted deer and elk served as gun racks for a dozen long rifles and shotguns. The place smelled of smoke, grease, and gun-cleaning solvent. Melissa, Angelina, and I sat on an ancient leather couch with three-quarter wagon wheels on the ends for armrests. Melissa had a tough time keeping our daughter on the couch and not scrambling to the floor. Jeter set the cheese plate next to a six-pack of Molson beer on a coffee table.

“I’m sorry,” Uncle Jeter said in a gravelly voice to Melissa and Angelina as we entered. “This ain’t no place for a lady and a baby.”

“It’s fine,” Melissa said, flashing a tight-mouthed smile.

“No,” he said, “no it ain’t. Is there anything I can get the little one? Some milk or something?”

Melissa gestured to her overlarge baby bag, and said, “Not necessary-we came prepared.”

To our surprise, Angelina seemed to be charming him. She’d give him her silly demure look, bat her eyelashes, then cover her face with her hands. It wouldn’t be long before she’d spread her fingers and gaze at him through them, then giggle. I noticed that he had a tough time devoting his attention fully to Cody, who outlined our problem. Despite what Cody had said to us in the car, he didn’t indicate any doubt at all as he told his uncle Hoyt how Garrett and Luis had fouled our house and shot me with paintballs, how Garrett said he owned us now. When Cody told him about Harry, I saw Hoyt’s eyes turn hard.

When Cody was done, Uncle Jeter sat back and raked his fingers through his beard.

“So,” he said, “you’ve got a boy who needs scared, and you came to me to do it. Why?”

Cody deferred to me.

“Because you scared us.”

“That was twenty years ago, Jack.”

Cody leaned forward and handed his uncle the envelope of reports and photos Torkleson had given us. Jeter took it and fanned through the photos of Garrett, while Cody said, “Because you’re not known in Denver, Uncle Jeter. You’ve got no priors down there. I know how things work with the police-where they’d look if something went bad. They wouldn’t look to Lincoln, Montana, unless you did something stupid like dropped your wallet.”

Or if the Browning Brothers and Chad Kerr in Lincoln were questioned, I thought.

Uncle Jeter shot him a look that made me fear for Cody.

“Not that I’m saying something like that would happen,” Cody said, backtracking. “Or even that Garrett would go to the police. The point is for him not to go to the police. The point is for you to persuade him to sign his custody rights away.”

Hoyt raked his beard again, as if considering all of the odds. “I ain’t done too many things like this in the last few years,” he said. “I might be a little rusty. But you say this Garrett likes to associate with Mexicans, that it makes him feel like a big shot?”

Cody nodded. “Specifically, a gang called Sur-13.”

Uncle Jeter turned to Melissa. “I’m sorry, ma’am, would you want to take a few minutes and show the baby the horses outside? I got some horses and two fine mules out there. And a goat, a good goat. He don’t bite. Do you think that little angel might want to see them?”

Melissa looked at me, and I nodded.

As soon as the front door shut, Uncle Jeter said, “I got a problem with this illegal immigration. I got a big problem with the way them Mexicans are taking over our cities and flying the Mexican flag and all. A big problem, you understand me?”

Cody nodded.

Jeter said, “I called my bank in Helena a couple of weeks ago because they fouled up a deposit I made from a hunting client. They don’t know what to do with cash anymore, it makes their eyes get all buggy. Well, when I called them, I got this recorded message that said press one for English and two for Espanõl. This was Helena, Montana, fellows! I got so goddamned mad I drove down there and took all my money out. When the bank manager asked why I was doing it, I said, ‘Press one for English and two for Espanõl, you little prick!’

“As I was leaving town I drove by the hospital, and I saw these Mexicans lined up-lined up!-outside the emergency ward. They was carrying their little sick kids and just waiting in line because I guess the doctors have to treat them no matter what. I thought, whose country is this, anyway? What’s wrong with our so-called leaders that sit by while we get infiltrated by our so-called neighbor from the south. Now I hear that some wannabe Mexican and his Mexican gang friends want that little angel out there.” He glared at us and stabbed a long finger toward the front door. “It ain’t right!”

Uncle Jeter was on such a frightening roll I didn’t want to tell him the problem was the judge.

“Taking down a couple fucking Mexicans don’t bother me at all,” Uncle Jeter said. “Getting this Mexican wannabe to sign a piece of paper sounds like a piece of cake.”

To demonstrate, he stood up swiftly-much quicker than I thought him capable of-and put an imaginary Garrett in a headlock and fashioned his other hand into a pistol and cocked his thumb back.

“Remember that scene in The Godfather?” Jeter asked us.

“Either your name goes on that agreement,” Jeter said in a fake Mexican accent to imaginary Garrett, “or your brains, senõr!”

He continued to talk to imaginary Garrett, and his playacting was intense, unnerving, as if Garrett were truly in his hands.

Jeter snarled, “And if you think you can sign this paper, then run off and tell your daddy or the cops that you were coerced, you got another think coming, little senõr. ’Cause if that happens I’m coming back for you and I’m feeding your nuts to my goats. And that’s just for starters, little senõr!”

He looked up. “Think that’d do it?”

“Maybe a little more subtle,” Cody said.

“We’ve got eight days,” I said.

Uncle Jeter nodded, let the imaginary Garrett drop to the floor, and took a breath to cool down. “Compensation?” he asked.

“You’ll be working that out with Brian Eastman,” I said. “He’s handling the money.”

“Brian Eastman?” Jeter asked, rubbing his chin beneath his beard, “Your old pal? Son of the minister?”

“Yes.”

“He was queer, wasn’t he?”

I sighed, “Yes. And he’s helping us out with expenses. He’s done well in Denver.”

“I bet he has,” Jeter said, sneering. “But fag money is as good as any, I guess.”

I bit my tongue and glanced at Cody, who was rolling his eyes and shaking his head, embarrassed.

Jeter said, “Give me a day or two to get my poop in a group. There’s supposed to be a hell of a storm coming first of next week, so I need to get out of here shortly, I guess. I can be in Denver by Tuesday or Wednesday latest. I ain’t seen that city in years. I hear it’s grown like crazy.”

“It has,” Cody said.

He turned to his nephew. “You regret leaving Montana and moving to a place like that?”

Cody nodded. “Lately I have.”

Jeter nodded back. “Yeah, I can’t see why anyone would want to leave Montana. Makes no sense to me. In my experience all cities are the fucking same-filled with undesirables.”

I slapped my knees, stood up, and said, “Cody, a minute outside?”

After he’d shut the door, Cody said, “Second thoughts?”

“Yes. He’s older and crazier than I remember. I don’t think we can control him or count on him to stop what he’s started.”

Cody slowly nodded his head. “I agree. He’s not the same guy we remember.”

“Look, can you just tell him I got cold feet at the last minute, and we can get the hell out of here?”

Melissa walked up to us holding Angelina. She’d over-heard. “He does seem unstable,” she said.

Cody barked a short laugh. “He’s always been unstable. It’s hard to find a stable hit man these days. But yes, he’s gotten worse. I guess I didn’t realize how damned old he was.”

Cody put his hands on our shoulders. “Look, you two get in the car. I’ll go in and tell him you’re reconsidering your options.”

AS WE DROVE THROUGH LINCOLN, I asked, “How’d he take it?”

“He’s hard to read,” Cody said. “I think he’s disappointed. He was really getting worked up there.”

“It was the right choice,” Melissa said from the backseat. “I just wish we had a ready option. Maybe Brian has one if we ask him.”

Cody snorted. Then: “I wish the old fart had given me that envelope back.”

FOURTEEN

HER VOICE WAS HESITANT. Who called on Saturday evening except telemarketers or someone complaining that there were cows on the road? “Hello?”

“Hi, mom.”

“Jack!” Her voice was a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I called so rarely that when I did it must be bad news, I knew she was thinking. That tone unnerved me, sent me back in time.

“We’re driving through Helena and I’ve got Melissa and your granddaughter with me. We’ll be coming down through Townsend and thought maybe we’d stop by.”

“Oh my! Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”

“I’m sorry. Don’t worry about dinner or anything, and I mean that. We just thought you might want to see your granddaughter. Is Dad around?”

“Oh my, yes! He’s outside doing something with the tractor. I was just starting dinner, and, oh, you’ve got me flustered. I don’t know what to say. Why didn’t you let us know sooner?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, feeling my face flush. “Look, if this isn’t a convenient time…” I could feel Melissa’s eyes on me from the backseat. How was it that even after seventeen years in the outside world, I instantly reverted back to my sullen high-school-senior self, when I had left the ranch-and them-for good? How quickly I was ready to call it off and go on down the road.

“No, no! You must come by! I was just so surprised you called. I was just opening a package of steaks and the phone rang and it was you. No, come by. When will you be here?”

“About forty-five minutes.”

“Oh my!”

“Look, Mom…”

“Goodness. I’ll open another package of steaks. Is it just you and Melissa and the baby?”

“Cody, too.”

“Cody! Cody Hoyt?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my! I’ll go tell your father. Forty-five minutes, now more like forty, I suppose.”

“Mom, we can grab something to eat. We can take you out to dinner. You don’t have to fix anything. Really!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, a little angry I’d even suggested it.

I closed the cell and looked back at Melissa. “There, are you happy now?”

“Aren’t you glad you called?” she said, smiling.

“I’m not sure. Mom’s in a dither.”

Cody said, “This is a good thing to establish some cover since everybody and their dog knows we’re up here. If need be, we can always say you decided to visit your folks with Angelina for the last time. That makes perfect sense. And I drove because I don’t have anything else to do.” Then, sourly: “I just hope your old man doesn’t put me to work fixing fence or some damn thing.”

AS WE CLEARED EAST Helena en route to Townsend, and I saw Canyon Ferry Lake to the left-a few more houses on the banks than I remembered, but not many-I felt a twang of recognition.

“Hasn’t changed much,” Cody said, as if reading my thoughts.

“No.”

“Not like Denver, where there’s a new subdivision every few days,” he said. “It’s frozen in time here. I used to not like that, but now I do.”

My anxiety grew. I was getting more nervous than I had been earlier in the day on the way to meet with Uncle Jeter.

“Maybe we should have gotten fast food in Helena,” I said.

“Your mother would be furious,” Melissa said. “Showing up and not eating? What are you thinking?”

Cody said, “Saturday night is steak night if I remember. Steak and baked potatoes. Every Saturday night. I wonder if that’s changed?”

“It hasn’t as far as I know,” I said. “She said something about opening up another package of steaks.”

“Good steaks, too,” Cody said, nodding. “I can still remember the drill. Pork chops on Monday, spaghetti on Tuesday, hamburgers on Wednesday, cabbage rolls Thursday, pot roast Friday, steaks on Saturday, fried chicken on Sunday.”

I nodded.

“Did it ever change?” Melissa asked.

“Never,” I said. “If she tried something new, Dad would sit at the table and just stare at his plate and pout.”

“I really liked the cabbage rolls,” Cody said. “Maybe next time we drive up here to hire a hit man we can come on Thursday.”

“Cody!” Melissa said. “Stop that. What if Angelina starts using those words?”

Cody grinned as he slowed down and clicked the turn single, and we were soon on the gravel road that led to the ranch.

THE HOME RANCH LOOKED almost exactly as I’d left it. A few new things-a bigger gas tank, a larger Quonset for the equipment-but basically the same buildings, the same layout. A few inches of snow lay in the hayfields, and the Big Belt Mountains rose dark blue and snowy to the east. Between the ranch and the mountains, the foothills shimmered with the intense gold light of dusk, the kind that makes snow look like molten lava. I saw a small herd of mule deer hanging around the windmill and tin stock tank. A few hundred bald-faced Angus were bunched in the east meadow, massed and no doubt awaiting the cattle truck.

We swung into the ranch yard. Through Cody’s window I got a glimpse of Dad in the Quonset working under a trouble light, tractor parts and tools scattered around his feet. On my side, Mom’s face was framed in the kitchen window, looking out anxiously, and as soon as she saw us, she vanished and reappeared at the front door wearing the same apron she’d had on eighteen years before, the one with the blue ducks.

“Melissa!” she called out. “Bring that little darling in here!”

“She means Angelina,” Cody deadpanned, “not you.”

Mom gave me a quick cheek kiss and punched Cody affectionately in the arm to say hello, but both gestures were done en route to Angelina, who she scooped up in her arms. Angelina squealed happily, and Mom turned and took her in the house. Melissa followed with one of the diaper bags and gave me an amused over-the-shoulder look before going inside.

Cody and I walked over to the Quonset. Cows bawled in the meadow, punctuating the otherwise complete silence. I had forgotten about silence.

Although they’d been to the wedding and to Denver to see Angelina when we brought her home, I hadn’t been back. I didn’t want to come back and feel like I was feeling now. I didn’t know what to expect, but my heart was thumping, and my hands felt cold.

Dad stepped back from the tractor and wiped his hands on a rag with very little white left on it and watched us approach. His face had filled out some recently, and his lenses were so thick they distorted his eyes bigger. He looked old, which shocked me.

“Couldn’t cut it in the big city, huh?” he said. “Coming back begging for your old jobs back, you two?”

My belly clenched, but Cody realized he was kidding and said, “Naw, Walt. We just want our wages. We don’t want to have to work for ’em.”

“Nothing’s changed in that regard,” Dad said, before breaking into a grin. “Good to see you, Jack,” he said, reaching out. My God, I thought, is he going to kiss me? And he did! After a rough one-handed hug, he kissed me on the cheek before letting me go. I was left with a whisker burn and a lingering smell of engine oil in my nose. “You boys mind helping me put away these tools before we go in and eat?” he asked.

“See what I told you?” Cody joked.

“Hurry up,” Dad said. “I want to go in the house and see my good-looking daughter-in-law and especially my granddaughter!”

“It’s not like you haven’t seen her, Dad,” I said, gathering up from the floor scarred wrenches that were as familiar to me as my own fingers and toes.

“Yeah, but that’s when you first brought her home. When she was just a little pink thing. I haven’t seen her since she became a person.”

“I’m sorry we just showed up without any warning,” I said. “This was kind of a last-second trip.”

He shrugged. “I’m just glad you’re here. Besides, after dinner I got some fence that needs fixed.” Again, I thought he was serious. Again, he was joking. What had happened to him?

“You sure you don’t mind us crashing dinner?”

“As long as we’ve got enough steaks we’re okay,” he said, gesturing to the hundreds of bawling cattle out in the meadow. “I think we’ll be okay.”

DINNER WAS PLEASANT. No, it was more than pleasant. I was joyous. Angelina, as she had with Jeter Hoyt, spent most of the time trying to get Dad’s attention. In turn, he doted on her, fed her, made funny faces that made her laugh. I looked at Melissa, and Melissa shook her head, as surprised with this new turn in both of them as I was.

Cody declined the offer of a beer with dinner since he was driving, which I thought admirable because I knew he wanted one.

Through a mouthful of steak, Dad said the ranch had sold, the result of a divorce settlement with the old owner. It was bought quickly by a hedge fund manager in New York City.

“This new bird, I don’t know,” he said, gesturing with his fork, “I’m not sure we’re gonna see eye to eye.”

“Give him a chance, Walter,” Mom said. “We’ve been here a long time. I’m not sure I’m up to moving again.”

“Hell, I’ll give him a chance,” Dad said, grumbling. “As long as he doesn’t say the word ‘bison’ again in my presence, we might get along. There are too many goddamn buffalo in Montana as it is, and too many Ted Turners.”

For the first time, I thought about what my parents would do when they finally left the ranch. Did they have retirement savings? Medical insurance? These were things that had never been discussed in my presence. Where would they live? I thought about the marriage they had, which, despite its flaws, had lasted forty years. Just the two of them, out here twenty miles from the nearest town on an expanse of land so big and raw it could have easily swallowed them up. God, I thought, they’re tough.

The topic turned to Judge Moreland and Garrett. Melissa told the story but left out the most unpleasant details. Even with that, it was too much for Mom to handle, and she simply shook her head as if it were another of those big-city things she’d just never understand.

“Tell them to screw themselves, I like this one,” Dad said, reaching over and mussing Angelina’s hair, which resulted in a belly laugh that was contagious. “Keep her.”

As if that were the end of the subject.

Angelina tried to reciprocate and stretched her arm out at him. Surprisingly, he bent forward and dipped his head so she could tousle his white hair.

“Yup,” he said, sitting back while she laughed. “Keep this one.”

“ARE YOU SURE YOU CAN’T STAY?” Mom begged. “Jack and Melissa can stay in Jack’s old room. Cody can have the spare or the bunk house if he’d prefer. Jack’s old crib is up in the attic for Angelina.”

Looking past the fact that they’d kept my crib all these years, I explained that I had to go to work Monday, that I’d just returned from overseas the night before and had follow-up to do.

“I’ve never understood your job,” Dad said. “What-you go to foreign countries and hand out maps? You get paid for that?”

Actually, I’d explained my job to him three or four times over the years. His eyes glazed over each time.

“Why don’t you stay?” she said again.

He said, “I’m sure they can spare you for one day, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

His face darkened, and I braced for it; you sure are sorry or something similar and cutting. He was still Walter McGuane in there. But he caught himself, held it in, let it pass. “I wish you weren’t going to take this little one away from me,” he said instead, tickling her, making her laugh.

“Isn’t there supposed to be a big storm coming down from the north?” Melissa said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want us to be snowed in here.” She was good at saying reasonable things.

“Hell,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

WHILE MELISSA AND MY MOTHER cleaned up dishes, Dad said he wanted to show me something out in the barn. He didn’t. As we walked outside in the last gasp of dusk in the cold, he didn’t look at me as he said, “I’ve realized something since you left this place, Jack. I was hard on you. I guess I didn’t know how to be a father. My old man was a bastard, and he’s the one supposed to teach you those things.”

“You did okay,” I said, a lump in my throat. All I remembered of my grandfather was a tall man with a full black beard that smelled of cigarette smoke and eyes that weren’t kind.

“Naw. But that don’t mean you shouldn’t know how to be a son. Call your mother more. Hell, invite her to Denver. That little girl in there is her only grandchild. I’ll survive if she comes down to see you. I know how to cook a steak.”

We walked to the Quonset, crunching gravel. So much to say. “I’ll do that, Dad. But didn’t you hear what Melissa was saying about Angelina?”

“I did.”

“We may not get to keep her.”

“Bullshit. Fight it.”

“We are.”

“Good,” he said. “And if you ever get the time from your busy damned job passing out maps of Denver, come back and stay a little while. I got fence to fix.”

I laughed.

“I’m proud you done so well on your own,” he said. “I was telling a cattle buyer about you just yesterday morning. He acted all interested, but you know you can’t trust those bastards. But I am proud of you.”

IN THE CAR, the lights of Bozeman looking like the last vestige of civilization in the pure dark of a cloudy, moonless night, Cody said, “We’ll never figure ’em out, Jack. They are what they are. My old man’s a drunk. I didn’t fall very far from that fucking tree. This is a good place, Montana. I hope to come back someday.”

“It is a good place,” I said. “Or is it just because it isn’t Denver right now?”

“Maybe for you. I just hope I can figure out a way to make it back.”

Why did he say that as if he never would?

I WAS SLEEPING when Melissa’s cell phone burred. I sat up, had no idea at all where we were in Wyoming. It was midnight.

“It’s Brian,” she said from the backseat, looking at the display.

She listened, mostly, saying, “That’s great,” and “You be careful, Brian.”

She closed the phone, said, “Brian’s meeting the guy with the photos to night someplace downtown. By the time we get back, we’ll have them.”

“Everything’s working,” I said. “I’m glad we canceled that thing with Jeter.”

“We’ll see,” Cody cautioned. “Brian could just as easily be on a wild-goose chase. That would be very Brian-like.”

WE WERE APPROACHING CASPER at two in the morning when Melissa’s phone rang again. She said “Brian again,” and answered. A few seconds went by when she gasped, and said, “Who are you?”

“Give it to me,” I said, and she quickly handed the phone over, as eager to get rid of it as I was to get it.

I could hear city noises and the sound of someone laughing in the background.

“Who is this?” I asked. “What are you doing with Brian’s phone?”

“Brian?” the voice said. A young voice, Hispanic accent. “Brian? We kicked his ass.”

Again the laugh in the background, and a phrase I’d heard before. My entire body went cold.

We fucking own you, man.

“Brian,” the caller said before punching off, “is one dead faggot.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Someone called us on Brian’s phone, and I think I heard Garrett in the background.”

“Shit,” Cody spit, and floored it.