"Why not get it the hell out of your Me?"
"Everybody don't chop cotton the same way. I'm going inside for a brew. You want to come?"
I watched him walk across a board ramp into the bar side of the restaurant. I had wasted most of the morning, part of the afternoon, had accomplished nothing, and I felt a great weariness both with Dixie Lee and my situation. I followed him inside. He sat at the far end of the bar, by the windows, silhouetted against the sunlight on the lake. The walls of the bar were decorated with life preservers and nautical ropes and fish nets Dixie was drinking from a bottle of Great Falls with a shot of whiskey on the side.
The bartender walked toward me, but I motioned him away.
"You don't want anything?" Dixie said.
"Who would Mapes and Vidrine have reason to kill?" I said.
"Not Vidrine. Mapes."
"All right."
He looked out the window.
"I don't know," he said.
"It was somebody who was in his way, somebody who would cost him money."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"So who would cause Mapes trouble?"
"Maybe the crazoids. The tree spikers. Star Drilling wants to get into a wilderness area on the eastern slope. The tree spikers want everybody out."
"But they don't represent anybody. You said they were cultists or something."
"I don't know what they are. They're fucking wild men."
"What could they do to keep Star out of a wilderness area?"
"Nothing, really. People up here don't like them. Them gyppo loggers will rip their ass if they get the chance."
"Who's that leave?"
He sipped off his whiskey, chased it with beer, and looked out at the lake. His face was composed and his green eyes were distant with either thought or perhaps no thought at all.
"Come on, partner, who could really mess up Mapes's plans?"
"The Indians," he said finally.
"Star wants to drill on the Black-feet Reservation. It shouldn't be a problem, because in 1896 the Indians sold all their mineral rights to the government. But there're some young guys, AIM guys, that are smart, that are talking about a suit."
"The American Indian Movement?"
"Yeah, that's them. They can tie everything up in court, say the treaty was a rip-off or the reservation is a religious area or some other bullshit. It can cost everybody a lot of money."
"You know some of these guys?"
"No, I always stayed away from them. Some of them been in federal pens. You ever know a con with a political message up his butt? I celled with a black guy like that. Sonofabitch couldn't read and was always talking about Karl Marx."
"Give me one name, Dixie."
"I don't know any. I'm telling you the truth. They don't like white people, at least white oil people. Who needs the grief?"
I left him at the bar and drove back toward Missoula. In the Jocko Valley I watched a rain shower move out from between two tall white peaks in the Mission Mountains, then spread across the sky, darken the sun, and march across the meadows, the clumped herds of Angus, the red barns and log ranch houses and clapboard cottages, the poplar windbreaks, the willow-lined river itself, and finally the smooth green hills that rose into another mountain range on the opposite side of the valley. Splinters of lightning danced on the ridges, and the sky above the timberline roiled with torn black clouds. Then I drove over the tip of the valley and out of the rain and into the sunshine on the Clark Fork as though I had slipped from one piece of geographical climate into another.
I picked up Alafair at the baby-sitter's, next door to the rectory, then took her to an ice cream parlor by the river for a cone. There was a big white M on the mountain behind the university, and we could see figures climbing up to it on a zigzag trail. The side of the mountain was green with new grass, and above the M ponderosa pine grew through the saddle on the mountain and over the crest into the next valley. Alafair looked small at the marble-topped table, licking her cone, her feet not touching the floor. Her red tennis shoes and the knees of her jeans were spotted with grass stains.
"Were they nice to you at school?" I said.
"Sure." Then she thought for a moment.
"Dave?"
"Yes."
"The teacher says I talk like a Cajun. How come she say that?"
"I can't imagine," I said.
We drove back to the house, and I used my new phone to call Dan Nygurski at the DEA in Great Falls. At first he didn't know where I was calling from, then I heard his interest sharpen when I told him I was in Montana.
"What do you think you're doing here?" he said.
"I'm in some trouble."
"I know about your trouble. I don't think you're going to make it any better by messing around up here in Montana."
"What do you mean, you know about it?", "I got feedback from our office in Lafayette. Vidrine and Mapes worked with Dixie Pugh, and Pugh lives with Sally Dio. It's like keeping track of a daisy chain of moral imbeciles. You shouldn't have gotten involved, Robicheaux."
I couldn't resist it.
"I was at Sally Dio's today," I said.
"I think that's dumb, if you're asking my opinion."
"You know who Cletus Purcel is?"
"Yeah, he was your old homicide partner. I heard he blew away a witness. It looks like he found his own level."
"He told me Dio is called the Duck because he wears duck tails but I think he left something out of the story."
"I bet he did. Dio was playing poker with one of the Mexico City crowd on a yacht out in the Gulf. They were playing deuces wild, and the grease ball had taken six or seven grand off our friend. Except Dio caught him with a deuce hidden under his thigh. Sal's old man used to be known as Frankie "Pliers." I won't tell you why. But I guess Sal wanted to keep up the tradition. He had another guy hold the grease ball down on the deck and he cut off most of his ear with a pair of tin snips. Then he told him, Tell everybody a duck ate your ear." That's the guy you were visiting today. That's the guy who takes care of your buddy Dixie Lee."
"Why does he care about Dixie Lee?"
"He gets something out of it. Sal doesn't do anything unless there's a blow job in it for him somewhere."
"Leasing or buying land for him?"
"Maybe. But don't concern yourself. Go back to Louisiana."
"You know anything about some AIM members who might have disappeared from the Blackfeet Reservation?"
"I'm really wondering about the soundness of your mind at this point."
"It's a simple question."
"If you really want to step into a pile of shit, you've found a good way to do it."
"Look, Mr. Nygurski, I'm all on my own. Maybe I'm going to Angola pen. That's not hyperbole, I'm just about wiped out financially, my own testimony is my only defense, and my personal history is one that'll probably make a jury shudder. Tell me what you'd do in my circumstances. I'd really appreciate that."
He paused, and I heard him take a breath.
"I never heard anything about any AIM guys disappearing," he said.
"You'll have to talk with the tribal council or the sheriff's department. Maybe the FBI, although they don't have any love lost for those guys. Look, the reservation is a world unto itself. It's like a big rural slum. Kids cook their heads huffing glue, women cut each other up in bars. The Browning jail is a horror show on Saturday night. They're a deeply fucked-up people."