If only Bertha would close her mouth for a little while. “You’re too old for it,” she said, following him out the door onto the apron of grass where they had dropped the trailer. “Do you want to be a quadriplegic? Do you want to wear a drip bag under your clothes for the rest of your life?”
“I rode Bodacious to the buzzer, woman,” he replied. “There ain’t many can say that. We used to call him the widow-maker. I rode him into a tube steak. What do you think of that?”
“Call me ‘woman’ again, and I’m going to slap you cross-eyed.”
“Bertha, I’m not exaggerating, blood is leaking out of my ears.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get a brain transplant.”
“Please, Wyatt.”
“I got the message. Even though I am near deaf, by God, I got the message.”
“You won’t ride?”
“I don’t think I said that. You want some cotton candy or a tater pig?”
“No, I do not. I want you to act like a reasonable human being.”
“There ain’t no fun in that.”
She threw a slipper at his head.
Oh, well, he’d known worse, he consoled himself. When he was seventeen, he’d married a Mexican woman who used to blow flaming kerosene out of her mouth in a carnival. Or at least he thought he’d married her. The two of them had eaten enough peyote buttons to start a cactus farm and had woken up on top of a bus loaded with stoned hippies on their way to San Luis Potosi. He remembered a ceremony conducted by an Indian shaman dressed in feathers; he was almost sure of that. But maybe the ceremony was a funeral, because somebody had dropped a wooden casket off a mountainside, and Wyatt had seen it bounce and break apart on the rocks. Or maybe the fire-eater was in the casket. Or maybe that was her mother. It was somebody, for sure.
He had decided long ago that memory and reliving the good times weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Anyway, Bertha Phelps was a good woman. The problem was, she was too good. She worried about him day and night and made love like it was about to be outlawed, sometimes leaving him worn out in the morning and afraid she would corner him in the bedroom by midafternoon.
He bought her a tater pig whether she wanted it or not, and a great big fluffy cone of cotton candy for himself. He heard the announcer on the loudspeaker in the box above the bucking chutes tell the crowd to stand up for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Through an aisle lined with game booths, he saw a familiar figure walking toward him, followed by three men wearing suits and shades.
Wyatt was not up for another session with a billionaire oilman who just wouldn’t let it alone, whatever “it” was. Wyatt had never given much thought to rich people; he’d always assumed they had the same vices and compulsions as everyone else but were a whole lot smarter about hiding them. He didn’t care what they were, as long as they tended to their own business, which was buying politicians and making sure the toilets flushed and the cops got paid off, and nobody told him what he could and couldn’t do.
Too late.
“I just want a couple of minutes,” Love Younger said.
“Not a good idea,” Wyatt said.
“Come on, sit down, son. Let me have my say, and I’ll be gone.”
They were standing on a grassy spot under a birch tree by the bingo concession, the grandstand not far away, buzzing with noise. “Is that Jack Shit with you?”
“That’s Jack Boyd.”
“What happened to him?” Wyatt asked.
“Excuse me, I have to rest a minute,” Younger said, easing himself down at one of the plank tables. “Age is a clever thief. It takes a little from you each day, so you’re not aware of your loss until it’s irreversible.”
Wyatt could hear the announcer in the grandstands trading jokes with one of the rodeo clowns. “Tell me what you’re after and be done with it,” he said, and sat down at the table.
“My granddaughter is dead,” Younger said. “My daughter-in-law has disappeared, and my son is dissolute and perhaps in a dangerous state of mind.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Wyatt asked.
“Be patient. I’m trying to set some things straight without causing unnecessary harm to anyone. Have you seen my son?”
“I wouldn’t know what he looks like. What the hell is this?”
“What would you do if a great amount of money came into your hands?” Younger asked.
“I’d ask what the trade-off was, ’cause ain’t nothing comes free. Second of all, I’d probably say kiss my ass, ’cause I ain’t interested in what other people own.”
“Then you’re a rare man.”
“You didn’t answer my question about Jack Shit.”
“A man named Clete Purcel attacked him.”
“You let Louisiana Fats knock you around?” Wyatt said to Boyd.
“Listen to me, son,” Younger said.
“Take your goddamn hand off me. Don’t be calling me ‘son’ again, either.”
“The fates have not been kind to you. I want to correct that if I can. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“No, I got no idea. I’m getting pretty tired of it, too. How come you always got guys like this around? People that’s been inside or belong there?”
“I try to give other men a second chance. Pap, why did he beat you? Why did he have such animus toward you?”
“Ani-what?”
“You’re part Shawnee Indian, boy. It’s in your profile. Your people were trash, but you’re a warrior. Look at my hands, look at yours. Those are hands that could break down a brick wall. How do you think you ended up the man you are? You think your genes came from your worthless father or your whore of a mother? Was it the nigger in the woodpile?”
“You get the fuck away from me, old man,” Wyatt said.
He threw his cotton candy and Bertha’s tater pig in a garbage barrel and walked behind the bucking chutes, a sound like fireworks popping in his head. He squatted in the sawdust and began buckling on his spurs.
“You’re not up, Wyatt,” a cowboy said.
“Hell I ain’t.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
Wyatt lifted his eyes to the cowboy’s face. “Do I got to say it again?”
He climbed on top of the chute while his horse was loaded, then eased down on its back, hooking his left palm through the braided suitcase handle on the bucking rig. Like most rough stock, the horse was almost feral, walleyed, jerking up its head, its body quivering with fear and rage at the confines of the chute, knocking against the wood sides, trying to kick itself free of the flank strap.
Wyatt fixed his hat and steadied himself. “Outside!” he said.
He was once again borne aloft, his legs up, his body springing backward almost to the croup, the rowels of his spurs slashing down, the twelve hundred pounds of gelding thudding so hard into the sod that Wyatt thought his sphincter had been broken and he was about to urinate into his athletic supporter. He’d drawn Buster’s Boogie, a hot-wired gelding that had crippled a rider for life at the Russian River Rodeo in California. Buster’s Boogie sunfished twice, then corkscrewed and twisted sideways unexpectedly, all within three seconds. Wyatt saw the grandstand begin rotating around him, then the bucking chutes, then the Ferris wheel, then the greased faces of the clowns by the rubber barrel, as though he were stationary and the entire world, even the stars embroidered on the pink sky, had all become part of a giant Tilt-A-Whirl that had gone out of control and was doing things that had never happened to him before.
He felt the gelding explode under him with renewed energy, prying Wyatt’s clamped legs loose from its sides, flinging him high in the air, his shoulders and back still hunched in a rider’s position, the suitcase handle slipping beyond his reach, the ground suddenly coming up like a fist, the blat of the eight-second buzzer coming too late, almost like a pent-up mockery that had never been allowed to express itself.
He heard the thud when he struck the sod, then all sound went out of
his head, as though he had been plunged deep underwater, his lungs collapsing like punctured balloons, his eardrums about to burst. He saw the pickup rider coming hard toward him, swinging down from the stirrup, a paramedic running with a first-aid bag, the crowd rising in unison, their faces filled with pity and sorrow.
I’m all right, he wanted to say. I just got the wind knocked out of me. There ain’t no problem down here. Just let me get on my feet. Anybody seen my hat? Why y’all looking at me like that? Have I done gone and messed myself?
His shirt was wet. He clutched it in his fingers and pulled it loose from his belt and saw the starlike wound where his championship silver buckle had punched a hole in his stomach, releasing a fluid that felt more like water than blood.
Then he saw Bertha Phelps running toward him, her breasts bouncing inside her oversize dress, her body haloed by the electric lights and humidity and dust and desiccated manure in the arena. He wanted to ask her if someone had just played a terrible joke on him. The kind Pap might play, if he were still alive and full of meanness, ready to work mischief in the world in any fashion he could.
Chapter 31
Asa Surrette called again at noon on Saturday and told her where to park her car. “I’ll be watching you,” he said. “If everything meets my approval, you’ll be given a sign.”
“I need to see the girl,” Felicity said.
“You will. She’ll be glad to see you. She hasn’t seen a human face in some time.”
“What do you mean?” Felicity asked.
“You’re a foolish woman,” he replied.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed. She closed her eyes, shutting out the light from the French doors, and tried to think. What was he saying? “She hasn’t seen your face?”
“She hasn’t heard my voice, either. At least not since somebody came in the back door of her little house up by Lookout Pass. What do you think of that?”
“I’m not interested in your games.”
“You have a strange way of showing it,” he replied. “I have reservations about you. You wouldn’t try to trick me, would you?”
“Why did you kill my daughter?”
“Who says I did? From what I’ve read, it’s an unsolved crime.”
“Tell me where to go or I’ll hang up.”
“You know where the Alberton Gorge is?” he said. “Get off at the Cyr exit. Cross the river and go four miles north on the dirt road, then wait.”
After he broke the connection, she called Clete Purcel and got his voice mail. “Clete, I’m not sure if I’ll ever see you again,” she said. “There’s a good chance you’ll never know what became of me. I want you to know that none of this is your fault. I also want to apologize to Gretchen for stealing her cell phone. You’re a lovely man. I wish we had met years ago in New Orleans. It’s not really such a bad place. We could have had great fun there.”
She stood up from the bedside, her palms dry and stiff, the skin around her fingernails split and painful whenever she touched a hard surface. In the silence, she could hear the pine needles sifting across the roof in the wind, scattering in the sunlight onto the balcony. The house seemed to swell with the wind, the joists and walls creaking in the silence. She had no idea where Caspian was. Maybe he was drunk; maybe he was with his father. Her footsteps were as loud as a pendulum knocking inside a wood clock as she walked down the stairs and into Love’s den. She opened one of the toolboxes on his worktable and lifted out a leather punch that he used sometimes when he made a holster for one of his antique revolvers. It was sharp at the tip and mounted on a T-shaped wood handle. She lifted her dress and taped it inside her thigh, then walked outside and got in her Audi and drove away. The sun had passed its high point, and the shadows of the poplars that lined the road looked as sharp-edged as spear points on the asphalt.
* * *
At 1:48 P.M. Clete came up to the main house. I was sitting on the deck by myself, Albert’s potted petunias in full bloom all around me. It was a fine day, the kind that, at a certain age, you do not let go of easily. When I looked at Clete’s face, I knew that whatever plans I’d had for the afternoon were about to change. He played Felicity’s message. “She knows where Surrette is,” he said. “She’s going to meet him.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“You don’t know her. She loved her daughter. She thinks she closed her eyes to what her husband was doing.”
“Maybe she plans to kill Surrette.”
“That’s not like her. Surrette has outsmarted us, Dave. He’ll kill Felicity and the waitress, too.”
“I don’t think that’s the way it’s going down. He has something else planned. I think he’ll let the waitress go.”
“Why?”
“To show his power. He decides who lives and who dies. He also proves he’s not governed by compulsion. Look, Clete, Felicity Louviere may be suicidal. She’s going to let Surrette do it for her.”
“She’s risking her life to help somebody else. Why don’t you show a little respect?”
I had been drinking a glass of iced tea with a twist of lemon. I wished I had not come to Montana. I wished I had the authority and power and latitude that my badge in Louisiana gave me. I also wished I had the option of operating under a black flag and going after Surrette with a chain saw.
“I’m trying to figure out what we can do,” I said. “I think we should contact the sheriff or the feds.”
“They’re not going to believe us. We’re on our own.”
“We should start with Caspian Younger.”
“I kicked the shit out of him. He laughed at me,” he said.
“Who do you know in Vegas and Atlantic City?”
“Lowlifes and warmed-over greaseballs who wouldn’t piss on me if I was burning to death.”
“Dial them up.”
“Talking to those guys is like drinking out of a spittoon.”
I set down my iced tea and looked at it.
“He’s going to kill her, isn’t he?” Clete said.
I lowered my eyes and didn’t reply. The twist of lemon in my glass made me think of a yellow worm couched inside the ice, the canker inside the rose, the inalterable fact that you cannot hide from evil.
* * *
Felicity Louviere followed the instructions and drove through the tiny settlement of Alberton. She exited not far from a railroad track and crossed the Clark Fork and continued up a dirt road into an unpopulated area of wooded hills and outcroppings of gray rock that resembled the knuckle bones of prehistoric animals. Rain clouds had moved across the sun, dropping the countryside into shadow. She turned on the car heater, even though the dashboard told her the temperature outside was sixty-seven degrees. When the odometer indicated she had traveled exactly four miles from the bridge, she pulled to a wide spot in the road, next to a hill that sloped up into lodgepole and ponderosa pine and black snags left over from an old burn.
She cut the engine and stepped out into the wind, her ears popping slightly with the gain in elevation. What’s that sound? She turned in a circle and saw no other vehicle but thought she heard the throaty rumble of twin exhausts, a sound she associated with 1950s films about hot rods, or one she’d heard in the parking lot at the health club.
She suspected that her caller was watching her through binoculars and that her wait would be a long one. The air smelled of night damp and the outcroppings of rock that seldom saw sunlight and were freckled with lichen.
He surprised her. No more than three minutes passed before she saw a figure inside the trees up on the hillside, just below a switchback logging road left over from the days of clear-cutting. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and held it in the air. There was nothing histrionic in the gesture. He didn’t wave it; he simply held it, showing his control over the situation.
She walked to the front of the Audi and stared up the hill, the wind blowing her hair over her face. The figure turned and walked back in the shadows, then reemerged with a woman wearing sho
rts and a T-shirt; a drawstring bag had been pulled over her head, and her wrists were fastened behind her.
Felicity began walking up the hill, her eyes lowered, stepping carefully over the holes burrowed between the rocks by pocket gophers and badgers. The sun had disappeared from the sky entirely, and she felt as though a cold wind were blowing through her soul. Give me strength, give me strength, give me strength, a voice chanted in her head.
She heard the rumble of the twin exhausts again, echoing in a canyon, trailing away into the trees. She was forty yards from the man on the hill and could see his wide shoulders and the tropical shirt that he wore inside a cheap tan suit. He held his captive by the arm with his right hand and began cupping the fingers of his left, indicating that Felicity should keep walking toward him.
“You have to let her go first,” she said.
He stared at her without replying. Behind him, up on the logging road, Felicity could see a gray SUV, a spray of rust on one side. “I’ve done what you asked,” she said. “Release the young woman and I’ll go with you.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He walked the woman thirty feet away, upwind from where he had been standing. He eased her into a sitting position on top of a fallen tree trunk and returned. The bound woman was out of earshot. Still he did not speak. He turned up his palms as though they glowed with spiritual grace.
“She’s never heard your voice or seen your face?” Felicity said.
He shook his head, his grin in place.
“You’re Asa Surrette,” she said. “You’re older than your pictures, a little more coarse. Your hair is dyed, but you’re him.”
“Nice to meet you in person. Please get in my vehicle. I’m looking forward to our association.”
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